24/7 Trauma and Biohazard Cleanup in Sartell, MN

Sartell is a city in Stearns County, Minnesota (extending into Benton County), that straddles the Mississippi River just north of St. Cloud; the input record places it in Stearns County.

Sartell had 19,351 residents at the 2020 census, making it St. Cloud's most populous suburb and the fourth-largest city in central Minnesota, after St. Cloud, Elk River and Willmar.

Census Bureau survey estimates for 2020-2024 put Sartell at about 7,630 households, with roughly 61.8% of its housing owner-occupied.

The city is named for Joseph B. Sartell, a millwright who arrived in 1854, opened a flour mill on the Watab River in 1877 and started the Sartell Brothers Lumber Company with his sons in 1884.

Sartell's original name was 'The Third Rapids,' for the third set of rapids French fur traders met traveling up the Mississippi from St. Anthony Falls.

Sartell incorporated in 1907, the same year the Sartell Dam and the Watab Pulp and Paper Company mill were completed - a dam project that claimed the lives of seven workers.

Paper defined Sartell for over a century: the mill passed through owners including St. Regis, Champion International and Verso Paper and was long the city's largest employer and biggest taxpayer.

On May 28, 2012, an explosion and fire at the Verso paper mill killed one worker and injured four others; that August Verso closed the mill permanently, ending more than 100 years of papermaking in Sartell and eliminating about 260 jobs.

Sartell's other signature manufacturer, the DeZurik valve company, was founded in 1925 by Matt DeZurik, who had once worked as a millwright at the paper mill.

Sartell was a tiny mill town of fewer than 800 people in 1960 before exploding into a St. Cloud bedroom community of more than 19,000 by 2020.