Emergency Biohazard Cleanup Near West Cologne Cologne, MN

Cologne is a city in Carver County, Minnesota, about 30 miles from Minneapolis, founded by German immigrants and named for Cologne, Germany.

The community was platted in August 1880 and incorporated as a village on February 9, 1881.

Cologne actually began as two villages — Benton, on land owned by Casper Kronschnabel, and Cologne, on land owned by Adam and Paul Mohrbacher — both incorporated in 1881; they merged in 1891, though Benton was not officially annexed until the late 1970s.

The Hastings and Dakota Railroad was built through the area in 1872, and Cologne's first depot stood south of the tracks at what was then called Benton Junction.

Cologne had 2,047 residents at the 2020 census, up sharply from 1,519 in 2010; the 2010 census counted 539 households in the city.

Everyday life in this German-American community was preserved in the 1939 amateur film 'Cologne: From the Diary of Ray and Esther,' which was named to the National Film Registry in 2001 — one of only about a half-dozen amateur works on the list.

The Paul Mohrbacher House, built in 1880, is among Cologne's buildings listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Cologne Fire Department was organized on December 13, 1890, and an 1896 village ordinance required every male citizen between the ages of 21 and 50 to join it.

Cologne's first baseball team, founded in 1898, was called the Cologne Chronicles after the town newspaper, the Cologne Chronicle.

U.S. Highway 212 and Minnesota State Highway 284 are the two main routes through Cologne.