Crime Scene & Biohazard Cleanup Near West Walker Walker, MN

Walker is a city in Cass County in north-central Minnesota, and it is the county seat of Cass County.

Walker was founded in 1896 by Patrick McGarry after the railroad reached the area, and he named the settlement after logging giant Thomas B. Walker in hopes of luring him to build a sawmill there.

The ploy failed — Thomas B. Walker instead set up his operations in nearby Akeley, because of his wife's moral objection to the bars and brothels of rough frontier Walker — but four other logging companies generated the business that built the town.

Walker's population was 966 at the 2020 census.

Walker sits on the southwest corner of Leech Lake, Minnesota's third-largest lake, within the Leech Lake Indian Reservation region.

Before European settlement, the Ojibwe moved into the Walker area from the Great Lakes, pushing out the historic Dakota peoples such as the Assiniboine and Hidatsa.

Every February, Walker hosts the International Eelpout Festival on the frozen surface of Leech Lake, a three-day celebration of the bottom-dwelling eelpout fish that has run since 1979 and swells the town's population roughly tenfold.

The Paul Bunyan State Trail, a paved trail of more than 100 miles, passes through Walker along Leech Lake.

The Cass County Museum and research center, operated by the Cass County Historical Society, is located in Walker and interprets the history of Cass County.

Walker covers just 2.47 square miles, all land, and is part of the Brainerd micropolitan statistical area.