Blood & Biohazard Cleanup Near North Nerstrand Nerstrand, MN

Nerstrand is a small city in Rice County in southern Minnesota, served by State Highway 246 and pronounced 'NEER-schrand.'

Norwegian immigrant Osmund Osmundson homesteaded the town site in 1856 and platted Nerstrand in 1885, naming it after his hometown of Nedstrand in Norway.

Nerstrand incorporated in 1897, and its second city hall, built in 1907, was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982 alongside the Osmund Osmundson House and the Bonde Farmhouse.

The population of Nerstrand was 273 at the 2020 census, down from 295 in 2010.

At the 2010 census, Nerstrand's 295 residents lived in 108 households.

Economist Thorstein Veblen, author of The Theory of the Leisure Class, grew up on a farm just outside Nerstrand, and the Thorstein Veblen Farmstead is now a National Historic Landmark.

Nerstrand lends its name to nearby Nerstrand-Big Woods State Park, established in 1945 to preserve one of the last remnants of the Big Woods hardwood forest, famous for its Hidden Falls waterfall and the endangered dwarf trout lily, which grows naturally in only three Minnesota counties.

Nerstrand Elementary School, a K-5 charter school operated by Faribault Public Schools, had 155 students in the 2019–20 school year.

A working grain elevator still operates in Nerstrand and provides over half of the town's employment.

Railroad engineers once dreaded nearby Nerstrand Hill, the steepest grade on the line from St. Paul to Manly Junction, Iowa, though the tracks have since been removed.