Crime Scene and Trauma Cleanup in Cannon Falls, MN

Cannon Falls is a city in Goodhue County in southeastern Minnesota, named for the falls on the Cannon River where the Little Cannon River joins it.

The name 'Cannon' is a frontier misunderstanding: French fur traders called the stream 'Riviere aux Canots,' the River of Canoes, because Native Americans and traders hid canoes near its mouth, and English speakers heard 'canots' as 'Cannon.'

Charles Parks settled the land that is now Cannon Falls in July 1854, and the village was laid out by Richard and William Freeborn and platted in 1855.

Cannon Falls was incorporated as a village on March 10, 1857, and reincorporated as a city in 1905; its post office opened in 1855 as Cannon River Falls and the name was shortened to Cannon Falls in 1889.

Local heritage sources note that Cannon Falls is the only city in the world with that name.

The 2020 census counted 4,220 people in Cannon Falls, living in 1,855 households.

Cannon Falls is the western trailhead of the Cannon Valley Trail, a 19.7-mile paved rail trail built on a former Chicago Great Western Railroad line that follows the Cannon River through Welch to Red Wing and descends 115 feet along the way.

Cannon Falls is home to Pachyderm Studios, the recording studio where Nirvana recorded its 1993 album In Utero, along with many other famous musicians.

The Cannon Falls Historic District, added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2000, is a four-block downtown area with 22 historically significant structures.

The Cannon Falls Historical Museum is housed in the 1888 Cannon Falls Fire Hall, an Italianate building described as one of the nation's oldest surviving fire halls, and it tells the story of Colonel William Colvill of the First Minnesota Volunteers, whom many Civil War historians credit with helping save the Battle of Gettysburg.