Biohazard and Pathogen Disinfection in Hinckley, MN

Hinckley is a city in Pine County in east-central Minnesota, sitting at the junction of Interstate 35 and Minnesota State Highway 48, and it is generally considered the halfway point on I-35 between Minneapolis-Saint Paul and Duluth.

Hinckley's name in the Ojibwe language is Gaa-zhiigwanaabikokaag, meaning "the place abundant with grindstones," a reference to its location along the Grindstone River.

Hinckley Township was named in 1870 after Isaac Hinckley, president of the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad, and the settlement was first founded in 1885 as the Village of Central Station before being incorporated as the City of Hinckley on November 27, 1907.

The first railroad reached Hinckley in 1869, launching a logging boom in the thick white pine forests around the town, some of the largest stands in Minnesota.

On September 1, 1894, the Great Hinckley Fire - a firestorm fed by drought and logging slash - burned at least 200,000 acres and destroyed the town in a matter of hours, with an official death count of 418, though the true toll was likely higher.

Hundreds of Hinckley residents survived the 1894 fire by fleeing on rescue trains or by crouching in the mud of nearby Skunk Lake, and the engineers who drove the evacuation trains were honored as heroes.

The Great Hinckley Fire led Minnesota to create the position of Chief Fire Warden, the beginning of organized fire protection in the state's forests.

The Hinckley Fire Museum, nine blocks west of Interstate 35 in downtown Hinckley, tells the story of the fire and the town's recovery from inside a restored railroad depot that is an exact replica of the pre-fire depot, rebuilt on the same spot.

After the fire, Hinckley rebuilt itself on agriculture rather than lumber, clearing burned stumps to farm the nutrient-rich soil, with potatoes, fruit, vegetables and dairy cattle becoming the local mainstays.

The Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe opened Grand Casino Hinckley in 1992, and the casino's workforce is roughly equal to the population of the city itself; portions of the Mille Lacs Indian Reservation lie within and adjacent to Hinckley.