The Beltrami post office opened in 1900, the earliest record of the town by name. Another post office, Edna (1878), opened inside today’s city and later closed.
First census: 149 in 19102020 census: 88126 years
How did Beltrami get its name?
Beltrami was named for Giacomo Beltrami (1779–1855), an Italian exile who traveled to the Red River and the upper Mississippi in 1823.
Founding year: the first Beltrami post office (Blevins & Helbock, CC0). Name: Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
What stands out about Beltrami’s past
Read from the archive, the National Register and the record. The page puts what stands out first.
Wikipedia doesn’t have a history of Beltrami yet. The photos, dates and memories neighbors add here are how it gets written.
Beltrami is a city in Polk County, Minnesota, United States. It was named for Giacomo Beltrami (1779–1855), an Italian exile who traveled to the Red River and the upper Mississippi in 1823. The city was incorporated in 1901, but there had been settlers in the area since 1870. It is part of the Grand Forks, ND-MN Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 88 at the 2020 census.
Its first post office opened in 1900. Between the 2010 and 2020 censuses its population fell from 107 to 88 (-18%).
Intro from Wikipedia. Population: U.S. Census Bureau.
People over time
Beltrami, census by census
Peaked at 226 in 1930; 88 people lived here in 2020.
12 censuses, 1910–2020.
U.S. Census Bureau decennial counts, from the census table on Beltrami’s Wikipedia page.
From the old history books
What they wrote about Beltrami in 1916
Passages that mention Beltrami, cut from the printed page as they were published.
Compendium of history and biography of Polk County, Minnesota1916 · page 290Read the page →
Read the text
Polk county, Minnesota, ia 1879, settling on a farm in section 12, Rice township. They lived on their farm until 1913, when they moved to the village of Beltrami, where the father died September 26, 1914, and the mother is now living. Edward W. Johnson came to Polk county in 1879 with his parents and lived with them until 1887, when he began his business career as a clerk in a general
Text read by machine from the scan; it may contain errors.
Compendium of history and biography of Polk County, Minnesota1916 · page 138Read the page →
Read the text
The First State Bank of Beltrami, one of the most substantial banking houses in the county, was organized in 1905, as the successor of the Bank of Beltrami, a private bank which had been in operation since 1901, when it was established by William Mathews, with D. E. Fulton as cashier. In 1903 C. C. Heath and H. H. Reed became the owners and continued for two years when it was organized as a State bank with
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.
Timeline
Beltrami, 1878 to 1943
Woven from the archive, old maps, post office records, the National Register and the people born 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 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.
