Each edition grades its towns against each other only.
Below: maps from 1959 on and the census since 1880.
The Audubon post office opened in 1872, the earliest record of the town by name.
Read from the archive, the National Register and the record. The page puts what stands out first.
The first neighbors to add old photos shape how Audubon’s history is told.
Wikipedia doesn’t have a history of Audubon yet. The photos, dates and memories neighbors add here are how it gets written.
Audubon ( AW-də-bən) is a city in Becker County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 560 at the 2020 census.
Its first post office opened in 1872. Between the 2010 and 2020 censuses its population grew from 519 to 560 (+8%).
Intro from Wikipedia. Population: U.S. Census Bureau.
Passages that mention Audubon, cut from the printed page as they were published.
The northern rabbit or hare, as every one knows, changes its color twice a year. Audubon, the celebrated American naturalist, and the man that our village of Audubon was named for by his own niece, once kept an animal of this class in confinement for a whole month in the spring of the year while it was undergoing this change, and he ascertained that the change was made gradually by the white hairs falling out and new hairs of a brown color growing in their place. So he laid it down
Text read by machine from the scan; it may contain errors.
Finally the railroad officials became tired of dallying any longer with a scheme that promised no satisfactory outcome, and in the spring of 1873 moved the temporary station from Oak Lake to Audubon, where a townsite had just been laid out by the Lake Superior and Puget Sound Townsite Company. This proved the final undoing of Oak Lake. Everybody moved away but Burger and his family; the land office was moved to Detroit that same year, and for many long years afterwards all that remained of the
Text read by machine from the scan; it may contain errors.Scans and text from the Internet Archive. Books published in 1930 or earlier, which are in the public domain.
Woven from the archive, old maps, post office records, the National Register and the people born here.
On the mapFirst mapped by the U.S. Geological SurveyEvery edition of the U.S. Geological Survey’s map of Audubon. Tap a year, or press play to watch the town change.
U.S. Geological Survey historical topographic maps (public domain), via Esri’s collection of the scans. The red ring marks the center of Audubon.
Grew from 91 people in 1880 to 560 in 2020, 6 times over.
15 censuses, 1880–2020.
U.S. Census Bureau decennial counts, from the census table on Audubon’s Wikipedia page.
Audubon’s post office has been open since 1872.
US Post Offices dataset (Blevins & Helbock, CC0). Places and cemeteries from the USGS Geographic Names Information System (2021).
The Audubon post office opened in 1872, the earliest record of the town by name (U.S. post office records).
What the archives can’t tell you, neighbors can.
Founding dates: Wikidata, Wikipedia, the U.S. post office records of Blevins & Helbock (CC0) and the Census. Homes by year built: Census ACS 2020–24. National Register of Historic Places: National Park Service (list of May 22, 2026). Old photos, postcards and papers: Wikimedia Commons, the Library of Congress and other public archives, credited on each item’s page. Maps: U.S. Geological Survey historical topographic maps (via Esri) and Sanborn fire-insurance maps (Library of Congress). History text and census tables: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0). Places that used to be: USGS Geographic Names Information System (2021). How TownRatings grades history →
From Wikimedia Commons (2), Wikidata and Wikipedia for famous people, U.S. Geological Survey historical maps, U.S. Census counts (via Wikipedia), the US Post Offices dataset (Blevins & Helbock), the USGS Geographic Names Information System and old county and town histories (Internet Archive). Archive images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.
2013
2013