Blood & Biohazard Cleanup Near West Willmar Willmar, MN

Willmar is a city in, and the county seat of, Kandiyohi County, Minnesota, in the west-central part of the state.

Willmar is named for Leon (Chadwick) Willmar, a Belgian who acted as agent for the European bondholders of the Saint Paul and Pacific Railroad and bought the title to the townsite land in 1870.

Willmar was established as the county seat in 1871 and was incorporated as a village in 1874 and as a city in 1901.

Willmar grew as a division point on the Great Northern Railway after the railroad reached Kandiyohi County in 1869, drawing settlers to the area's fertile farmland.

The 2020 census counted 21,015 people in Willmar, up from 19,610 in 2010.

Census Bureau survey figures for 2020-2024 put Willmar at about 8,297 households, with an owner-occupied housing rate of just 59.4% - low for Minnesota, in part because of its large rental and immigrant workforce population.

On July 15, 1930, Willmar was the site of the famous Great Willmar Raid, a bank robbery carried out by the Machine Gun Kelly gang.

From 1977 to 1979 Willmar was the site of the Willmar 8, a nationally famous strike by women bank employees fighting sex discrimination at a local bank.

Willmar is home to Ridgewater College, a community and technical college with a sister campus in Hutchinson that enrolls more than 5,500 students.

Jennie-O Turkey Store operations are a major Willmar employer - Jennie-O founder Earl B. Olson was a Willmar notable - and demand for labor at the poultry plant has drawn large Latino and Somali immigrant communities to the city since 1989.