Crime Scene and Trauma Cleanup in Clearwater, MN

Clearwater was founded in 1855 by Simon Stevens, Horace Webster and John Farwell on land first claimed in 1854 under the name El Dorado — a name that lasted only one year before the town became Clearwater.

In 1856 the settlers strung a swing cable ferry across the Mississippi River, for decades the only link between Clearwater and Sherburne County, until a bridge replaced it in 1930.

Clearwater's first hotel went up in 1855 at the meeting of the two rivers — the Mississippi River and the Clearwater River — where the original downtown stood along the waterfront.

The railroad did not reach Clearwater itself until 1881, some 15 years after trains first arrived on the far bank of the Mississippi in Sherburne County.

Clearwater straddles two counties — most of it in Wright County, with a small part in Stearns County — putting one foot in the Twin Cities metropolitan area and the other in the St. Cloud metropolitan area.

The 2020 census counted 1,922 residents in Clearwater.

Clearwater has boomed along Interstate 94: it held only 858 people in 2000 but more than doubled to 1,735 by the 2010 census, when its residents lived in 680 households.

A third Mississippi River bridge at Clearwater opened in 2017 on Highway 24, and local historian Elaine Paumen cut the ceremonial ribbon and was the first person driven across it, in an antique car.