Biohazard and Crime Scene Remediation in Cuyuna, MN

Cuyuna is a city in Crow Wing County that sits within its namesake, the Cuyuna Range, a line of iron-bearing hills in central Minnesota.

The name Cuyuna was coined by combining 'Cuy' from prospector Cuyler Adams with 'Una,' the name of the dog who accompanied him on his lone prospecting trips.

Cuyuna began as a mining village in 1906 near the Kennedy mine and was platted on November 14, 1908 — the first village on the Cuyuna Iron Range.

Cuyuna was incorporated in 1910, and by the end of that year the boomtown had a hospital, a doctor, a theater-meeting hall, two hotels, two restaurants, a church and a post office.

By 1912 Cuyuna had grown to more than 700 residents, and The Cuyuna Miner became the first newspaper published on the range.

The first shipment of ore from the Cuyuna Range — 147,649 tons from the Kennedy Mine — went out by rail in 1911, and mining on the range continued until 1984.

The range's history includes Minnesota's worst mining disaster, the Milford Mine flood of February 5, 1924, which killed 41 miners.

After mining ended, flooded mine pits became deep lakes within the roughly 5,000-acre Cuyuna Country State Recreation Area, which includes fifteen former mine-pit lakes.

Cuyuna's abandoned mine lands were reinvented as mountain-bike trails that were declared the best trail system in Minnesota in 2014.

The 2020 census counted 296 people in Cuyuna, down from a mining-era peak of 417 in 1920; in 2010 there were 332 people in 126 households.