Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Lonsdale, MN

Lonsdale is a fast-growing exurb in Rice County, located about 40 miles south of downtown Minneapolis in the southern Twin Cities metro.

Lonsdale was born as a railroad town: the townsite was launched with a grand lot auction on July 16, 1902, as the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railway built through the area, and the tracks were laid on August 1, 1902.

Lonsdale incorporated on July 1, 1903, by a unanimous 24-to-0 vote, starting out with an initial population of just 84 people.

Lonsdale had a population of 4,686 at the 2020 census — it has more than tripled since 2000, when only 1,491 people lived there.

Lonsdale had 1,551 households at the 2020 census, and it is an exceptionally family-heavy town: 49.1 percent of households included children under 18, and the median age was just 32.1 years.

Lonsdale was settled heavily by Czech immigrants from Bohemia, while Norwegian farmers had earlier built a Lutheran church in 1878 at the nearby settlement they called Trondhjem, after Trondheim, Norway.

In Lonsdale's earliest days, some residents of nearby Veseli put their houses on skids and pulled them into Lonsdale with steam tractors so they could live closer to the railroad.

Lonsdale's Catholic Church of the Immaculate Conception was completed in the fall of 1904, and its Catholic school was built in 1912.

Nobody knows for certain how Lonsdale got its name — one theory holds it was named for a railroad surveyor, another that it was named for another place called Lonsdale in the United States or England.

Lonsdale's city parks include Singing Hills Park, Trenda Memorial Park, Sticha Park, and the Rezac Nature Preserve, and the town is served by the Tri-City United and New Prague school districts.