The Belgrade post office opened in 1886, the earliest record of the town by name. Another post office, Crow Lake (1871), opened inside today’s city and later closed.
2020 census: 738140 years
Founding year: the first Belgrade post office (Blevins & Helbock, CC0).The full story ↓
What stands out about Belgrade’s past
Read from the archive, the National Register and the record. The page puts what stands out first.
Belgrade is a city in sections 18 and 19 of Crow River Township. It shares its name with the capital of Serbia, a township and its village in Maine, as well as villages in Missouri, Nebraska, and Montana. It was platted in 1887 by the Pacific Land Company and incorporated as a village on March 19, 1888; the post office began as Crow Lake in 1871, changing to Belgrade in 1886. When the railroad came in 1886, there already were a number of businesses; it had a station of the Minneapolis and Pacific Railroad. The first house in Belgrade was built by Norwegian immigrant, Otto Christianson in 1874. Belgrade was named after the first child born in the township right before the town incorporation, Isabella Theolina Christianson in 1887. The city contains one property listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the 1904 Christopher Borgerding House. Arthur Michael Braun (1910-1989), pol…
Passages that mention Belgrade, cut from the printed page as they were published.
History of Stearns County, Minnesota1915 · page 1364Read the page →
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Olson of Colfax, Kandiyohi county. The school house stood on the southeast corner of Section 15, two miles west of the present village of Belgrade. This was in District Number 76. The first school officers were F. A. S wen son. Even Hendrickson and Frank McMine. When the Belgrade village district was organized the
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History of Stearns County, Minnesota1915 · page 1004Read the page →
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1886 when the Minneapolis, St. Paul and Sault Ste. Marie Railroad came through this county Anderson and Knudson dissolved partnership and discontinued the North Fork store, Mr. Anderson building a large general store at Belgrade, where he has ever since done a large business and Mr, Knudson moving to Brooten, also starting a general store. At about the same time he sold out his Minneapolis interests, and opened a store at Superior, now one of the largest of its kind in that place. In the spring of 1914, however, he opened another store at Minneapolis under the firm name of Anderson Grocery
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Scans and text from the Internet Archive. Books published in 1930 or earlier, which are in the public domain.
Timeline
Belgrade, 1871 to 1908
Woven from the archive, old maps, post office records, the National Register and the people born here.
Nothing in the archives for these yearsWeddings on Main Street, storms, parades, school pictures, the old store. If it’s in your family album, it belongs here.
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 (4), the Library of Congress (1), the National Register of Historic Places (1), 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.
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