Blood, Trauma, and Biohazard Cleanup in Kinbrae, MN

Kinbrae (pronounced KIN-bray) is a city in Nobles County in southwestern Minnesota, and with just 10 residents in the 2020 census it is the least populous incorporated place in the entire state.

Kinbrae was founded in 1879 as a station site on the Southern Minnesota Railroad's line from Heron Lake to Fulda, in the Graham Lakes region of northeastern Nobles County.

The townsite was first named Airlie in honor of David Ogilvy, the 10th Earl of Airlie, whose Scottish Dundee Improvement Company built a 16,000-bushel steam elevator, a hotel and a general store there in the fall of 1879.

When the site was surveyed in December 1879 it was renamed DeForest, and a depot and a post office followed in 1880 — even though the census that year counted a mere 19 residents.

After the town's steam elevator burned on April 20, 1883, the station, townsite and post office were renamed Kinbrae that August — a Scottish name whose exact origin remains unknown.

Kinbrae and the neighboring town of Dundee stood just half a mile apart and were rivals, each built along the line of a competing railroad.

Bought in 1895 by promoters determined to 'boom the town,' Kinbrae by 1896 boasted two general stores, a hardware store, a lumber yard, two grain elevators, a blacksmith shop, a hotel, a bank, a creamery, two churches and a school.

Kinbrae was incorporated on February 17, 1896, and its first village president was L. F. Miller.

Kinbrae's population peaked at 137 in both 1900 and 1910, then shrank for more than a century — 85 people in 1950, 21 in 2000, 12 in 2010 and just 10 in 2020.

Kinbrae's post office was discontinued in 1971, but the city kept its municipal government — in 2010 residents briefly considered disincorporating and chose instead to remain a city, however small.