Blood, Trauma, and Biohazard Cleanup in Rutledge, MN

Rutledge is a small city in Pine County in east-central Minnesota, set at the confluence of the Kettle and Pine Rivers.

Long before the town existed, the Government Road between St. Paul and Superior, Wisconsin passed through the area in the 1860s, and stagecoaches stopped at a station by the Rock Dam on the Kettle River to change horses.

The community first grew around Kettle River Station, a depot built about two and a half miles upstream from the Rock Dam after the Lake Superior and Mississippi Railroad was completed through the region in 1870.

Rutledge was incorporated as a village after an election on February 14, 1893, in which 19 of 22 votes cast favored incorporation.

The village was named after local lumberman Edward Rutledge, who had built several mills in the area, and James D. McCormack served as its first mayor.

The Willard Munger State Trail, a paved bicycle and snowmobile trail, passes through Rutledge, and Pine County Road 61 serves as a main route in the community.

Rutledge had 229 residents in 94 households at the 2010 census, and the 2020 census counted 212 people spread across the city's roughly 3 square miles.