24/7 Trauma and Biohazard Cleanup in Fridley, MN

Fridley is a northern first-ring suburb of Minneapolis in Anoka County, nicknamed 'Friendly Fridley.'

Fridley was first settled as Manomin, where Rice Creek flows into the Mississippi River at a Red River oxcart trail crossing - Manomin is a variant of manoomin, the Ojibwe word for wild rice.

Settlement began with the Red River Trails oxcart route in 1844; John Banfill, the first settler in 1847, built the Banfill Tavern and platted the town of Manomin in 1851.

Manomin County, created in 1857, was for a time the smallest county in the nation with only 18 sections of land, before it was annexed by Anoka County in 1870.

The township was renamed in 1879 by the Minnesota Legislature for Abram M. Fridley, the area's first territorial representative.

Fridley incorporated as a village on June 18, 1949 - an event still celebrated by the city's '49er Days' festival - and became a home-rule charter city on May 23, 1957.

The 2020 census counted 29,590 people in Fridley living in 11,695 households.

Fridley endured a brutal spring in 1965: the Upper Mississippi River's flood of record - a so-called 500-year flood - hit just weeks before two F4 tornadoes struck on May 6, 1965, destroying or damaging one of every four homes; the second twister killed 13 people and remains the deadliest storm in Twin Cities history.

Fridley's 127-acre Springbrook Nature Center was itself struck by a tornado on July 18, 1986, that spent 16 minutes in the park destroying thousands of century-old trees - famously filmed by a KARE 11 news helicopter.

Totino's opened its frozen pizza factory in Fridley in 1970, before the company was sold to Pillsbury in 1975.