Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Lilydale, MN

Lilydale is a tiny city in Dakota County, Minnesota, covering just 0.87 square miles — about a third of it water — on the Mississippi River bluffs directly across the river from St. Paul.

Lilydale was named for the lilies and lily pads that cover Pickerel Lake, the shallow floodplain lake at the foot of its bluffs.

Lilydale's original village stood on the river floodplain below the bluffs, where so many residents lived in boats and trailers to stay mobile when the river rose that the town earned the nickname 'City on Wheels.'

Lilydale's brickyards powered the old village: the Twin Cities Brick Company, starting in 1894, quarried Decorah shale from the bluffs and fired bricks for nearly a hundred years that built much of the Twin Cities, including the St. Paul Hotel.

Lilydale was remade by the great Mississippi flood of 1965 — afterward the surviving town relocated to the top of the bluff, and the abandoned floodplain village site became parkland.

Lilydale Regional Park now spreads across the old townsite as a 636-acre floodplain forest within the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area, preserving the brick company's kiln ruins and the shores of Pickerel Lake; the state legislature designated it a regional park in 1971.

Lilydale had a population of 809 at the 2020 census, a jump of nearly 30 percent from 623 at the 2010 census, when the city counted 375 households; the blufftop city is now built mostly of townhomes, condos and apartments with sweeping river views.

Lilydale is served by State Highway 13, the Sibley Memorial Highway, and its students attend schools in the West St. Paul-Mendota Heights-Eagan district, including Two Rivers High School in Mendota Heights.

Lilydale's Vento's View overlook, dedicated in 2001 atop the bluff in the regional park, frames a panorama taking in Pickerel Lake, Fort Snelling and both the Minneapolis and St. Paul skylines.