Biohazard and Crime Scene Remediation in Red Wing, MN

Red Wing is a city on the upper Mississippi River in southeastern Minnesota and has served as the county seat of Goodhue County since the 1850s.

The city is named for Chief Red Wing, an early 19th-century Mdewakanton Dakota leader whose people lived along this stretch of the Mississippi River.

Red Wing was established in 1857, growing from a missionary outpost into an important Mississippi River trade center just six years after treaties opened the land to settlement.

Red Wing was once home to Hamline University, founded there in 1854 as Minnesota's first institution of higher education, before it closed in 1869 as enrollment collapsed during the Civil War.

The school that became Gustavus Adolphus College also began in Red Wing, where Eric Norelius founded a Swedish Lutheran school in 1862 before it eventually settled in St. Peter.

The Red Wing Shoe Company was founded in Red Wing in 1905 by Charles Beckman, and its headquarters, tannery, and main boot factory remain in the city today.

Red Wing Shoes became the primary footwear manufacturer for American soldiers in both World Wars, producing more than 200,000 boots a year within a decade of its founding.

Local clay deposits made Red Wing a famous stoneware and pottery center, and the old Union Stoneware factory has been converted into Pottery Place, a complex of shops, restaurants, and apartments.

The Red Wing Shoe Museum downtown displays a giant oversized boot that has become a local landmark.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation named Red Wing one of its 2008 Distinctive Destinations, citing its impressive architecture and enviable natural environment of river bluffs, including the climbable Barn Bluff overlooking downtown.