Emergency Crime Scene and Biohazard Cleanup in Barnesville, MN

Barnesville is a city in Clay County in northwestern Minnesota, located on Interstate 94 at the edge of the Red River Valley, about 25 miles southeast of Moorhead.

Barnesville traces its start to 1874, when grain buyer George S. Barnes set up a store and grain collection center run out of a railroad boxcar about seven miles from the present townsite.

As the railroad lines shifted, Barnes kept moving his operation east, and by 1879 his business had reached the site of present-day Barnesville.

Peter E. Thompson, a clerk who arrived in 1878 to work for Barnes, named the town Barnesville in his employer's honor and became known as the 'Father of Barnesville.'

Thompson served as Barnesville's first postmaster from 1878 to 1885, and after the village was incorporated in 1881, he became the town's first mayor in 1889.

Barnesville became a division point on the Great Northern Railway, and its railroad shops helped the town grow to 1,326 people by the 1900 census.

The 2020 census counted 2,759 people in Barnesville, and the 2010 census counted 1,013 households.

Barnesville celebrates its potato-growing heritage every August with Potato Days, a festival that has drawn more than 17,000 visitors — several times the town's population.

Barnesville also hosts the annual Clay County Fair at the fairgrounds in town.

The Hannah C. and Peter E. Thompson House, built in 1903 for the town's founding family, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1996.