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Brainerd is the county seat and largest city of Crow Wing County, Minnesota, straddling the Mississippi River just upstream from its confluence with the Crow Wing River.

Brainerd had 14,395 residents at the 2020 census, living in 6,086 households, and its micropolitan area with Cass County counted 96,189 people.

Brainerd was founded in 1870 when the Northern Pacific Railway chose the site for its Mississippi River crossing, and it was organized as a city on March 6, 1873.

Northern Pacific president John Gregory Smith named Brainerd after his wife, Anne Eliza Brainerd Smith, and her father, Lawrence Brainerd.

Brainerd was a quintessential railroad town: the Northern Pacific shops once employed over 1,000 people, and by the 1920s roughly 90% of Brainerd's residents depended on the railroad for their livelihood.

Explorer Zebulon Pike first camped at the future Brainerd site on Christmas Day 1805 while searching for the headwaters of the Mississippi River.

On October 27, 1933, Brainerd's First National Bank was briefly famous as the bank robbed by Baby Face Nelson and his gang.

Brainerd's first paper mill was built by the Northwest Paper Company in 1903, and paper and tourism have been the city's twin economic pillars ever since.

Although Brainerd itself has few lakes, there are more than 460 lakes within 25 miles of the city - the heart of the Brainerd Lakes Area, Minnesota's classic cabin country.

Brainerd International Raceway, opened in 1968 northwest of the city, combines a quarter-mile dragstrip with 3.1-mile and 2.5-mile road courses and hosts the NHRA Lucas Oil Nationals, one of the longest-running stops on the national drag racing tour.