Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Mendota, MN

Mendota's name comes from the Dakota word bdóte, meaning the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers — a place regarded in Dakota tradition as the center of the world.

Mendota is one of the first permanent European-American settlements in Minnesota, founded around the same time as Fort Snelling at the meeting of the two rivers.

The Sibley Historic Site in Mendota preserves buildings of the American Fur Company from the 1830s, including the Henry Hastings Sibley House and the Faribault House, among the earliest known stone buildings in Minnesota.

The Sibley House, completed about 1836 for fur trader Henry Hastings Sibley, is considered the oldest private residence in Minnesota.

Henry H. Sibley, who arrived in Mendota in 1834 to run the American Fur Company's operation, went on to become the first governor of the state of Minnesota in 1858.

The Treaty of Mendota was signed in the village in 1851, an agreement under which the Dakota ceded roughly 35 million acres of land to the United States.

Mendota served as the seat of Dakota County from 1854 to 1857, before the county seat was moved downriver to Hastings.

The Dupuis House, built in 1854 by fur-trade clerk Hypolite Dupuis, was the first red brick house in Mendota.

Mendota is home to the Mendota Mdewakanton Dakota Tribal Community, a Dakota community organization that has sought federal recognition since 1996.

Today's Mendota is tiny — the 2020 census counted just 183 people in a city of about 0.30 square miles, and the 2010 census recorded 198 people in 78 households.