Biohazard Cleanup Near Mill Run Monticello, MN

Monticello is a city on the Mississippi River in Wright County, Minnesota, about 41 miles northwest of Minneapolis along Interstate 94.

Monticello was first settled in 1852, platted in 1854 and founded on March 1, 1856; it incorporated as a village in 1875 and as a city in 1906, and a post office has operated there since 1855.

The nearby village of Moritzious merged into Monticello in 1891, one of the more unusual place names ever absorbed by a Minnesota city.

Monticello had 14,455 residents at the 2020 census, living in 5,485 households — up from just 1,636 people in 1970, before Interstate 94 and the nuclear plant fueled decades of growth.

Monticello is famous for its wintering trumpeter swans: each winter between December and March, as many as 2,700 swans gather at Swan Park on Mississippi Drive, drawn by the open water kept ice-free by warm discharge from the nuclear plant.

The Monticello Nuclear Generating Plant, owned by Xcel Energy, began operating in 1971 on the Mississippi River; its single General Electric boiling-water reactor generates about 671 megawatts, and its federal license was renewed to run until 2030.

Xcel Energy is Monticello's largest employer, with about 600 jobs at the plant according to the city's 2021 financial report.

Monticello maintains an extensive parks system of 28 city-owned parks, including Ellison Park on the Mississippi River, Montissippi Regional Park and the nearby Lake Maria State Park.

The city and Wright County jointly acquired 1,200 acres for the Bertram Chain of Lakes Regional Park, a four-lake preserve with miles of hiking and single-track mountain-biking trails and a swimming beach on Bertram Lake.

Monticello High School enrolls about 1,314 students, making it Wright County's third-largest school, and its teams are known as the Magic — a name adopted to replace the former 'Redmen.'