Emergency Biohazard Cleanup Services in Bemidji, MN

Bemidji is the county seat of Beltrami County and the largest commercial center between Grand Forks, North Dakota, and Duluth, sitting on the southwest shore of Lake Bemidji in northern Minnesota.

The name Bemidji comes from the Ojibwe word Bemidjigamaag, meaning a lake with water flowing through it, and the city also took its name from Ojibwe leader Shay-Now-Ish-Kung, whom settlers called Chief Bemidji.

Bemidji was incorporated on May 20, 1896, after a settlement grew up in the early 1890s around the Carson Trading Post on the south shore of Lake Bemidji, and it later became a city in 1905.

The 2020 census counted 14,574 people in Bemidji, and Census Bureau QuickFacts figures for 2020-2024 put the city at about 6,636 households, with only about 43.1% of its homes owner-occupied — a low rate explained by its large student and renter population.

Bemidji calls itself the First City on the Mississippi because Lake Bemidji is the northernmost lake feeding the Mississippi River, which flows into the lake from the south and exits on the east.

Bemidji is the alleged birthplace of the legendary lumberjack Paul Bunyan, and its statues of Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox, built in 1937 on the lakefront, are listed on the National Register of Historic Places; the 18-foot Paul weighs over two tons above its footings.

Bemidji proclaims itself the curling capital of the United States, and a Bemidji team led by Pete Fenson won the first Olympic medal in curling in US history, a bronze in 2006.

Bemidji State University opened in 1919 as a State Normal School and now enrolls around 5,000 students on a wooded campus along the shores of Lake Bemidji, offering more than 70 undergraduate majors as part of the Minnesota State system.

As a central city for three Indian reservations — Red Lake, White Earth and Leech Lake — Bemidji is the site of many Native American services, including the Indian Health Service.

Lake Bemidji State Park sits on the north shore of the lake, and the city's Sanford Center serves as the regional events arena for northern Minnesota.