The Fisher post office opened in 1882, the earliest record of the town by name. Another post office, Fisher's Landing (1875), opened inside today’s city and later closed.
First census: 239 in 18802020 census: 422144 years
Founding year: the first Fisher post office (Blevins & Helbock, CC0).The full story ↓
What stands out about Fisher’s past
Read from the archive, the National Register and the record. The page puts what stands out first.
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.
Fisher is one of the oldest settlements in Polk County. It was originally named "Shirt-Tail Bend" because a shirt had once been tied to a stick to warn steamboats of a bend in the river. It was renamed 'Fisher's Landing', and later shortened to Fisher. These names were adopted in honor of William H. Fisher, who was born in Hunterdon county, N. J., December 24, 1844; engaged in railroad business after 1864; settled in St. Paul in 1873, as attorney for the receiver of the St. Paul and Pacific railroad, and as its assistant manager and superintendent; later was president and manager of the St. Paul and Duluth railroad company, 1883–99; was vice president and general manager of the Duluth and Winnipeg railroad company, 1888-93.
Passages that mention Fisher, cut from the printed page as they were published.
Compendium of history and biography of Polk County, Minnesota1916 · page 168Read the page →
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ing in Walter A. Wood's harvesting and other machinery. He claims the distinction of selling and delivering the first twine binder in Polk county. The firm distributed forty-two twine binders from Fisher, and forty from Crookston in that year. The same year the firm opened a genei-al store at Fisher. He was mayor and postmaster of Fisher for several years.
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Compendium of history and biography of Polk County, Minnesota1916 · page 411Read the page →
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The late Anson C. Merrill, who lived on Section 10, Fisher township, two miles north of the village of Fisher, was one of the greatest farmei-s Polk county has ever had, and when death cut short his usefulness on January 21, 1897, at the early age of thirty-four years, everybody who knew him or of him felt that a career of imperial magnitude and consequence had come to an unfortunate and verj' untimely end. Mr.
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Scans and text from the Internet Archive. Books published in 1930 or earlier, which are in the public domain.
Timeline
Fisher, 1875 to 1964
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 the Library of Congress (18), Wikipedia, 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.
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