Blood, Trauma, and Biohazard Cleanup in Winona, MN

Winona is a city in southeastern Minnesota and the county seat of Winona County, sitting on a sandbar-like strip of land between the Mississippi River and Lake Winona — a setting that earned it the nickname 'the Island City.'

Winona was founded in 1851 and incorporated on March 6, 1857, growing out of the Dakota village site known as Keoxa on what settlers called Wabasha's Prairie.

Winona's population was 25,948 at the 2020 census, spread across 10,631 households.

Winona sits in Minnesota's Driftless Area — the 'bluff country' that glaciers never covered — beneath towering limestone bluffs, with the sheer rock pinnacle of Sugar Loaf as its most recognizable landmark.

Winona State University traces its roots to the Winona Normal School of 1858, the first teacher-training school west of the Mississippi River.

Saint Mary's University of Minnesota, a private Lasallian Catholic university, was founded in Winona in 1912 by Bishop Patrick R. Heffron.

Between 1859 and 1900, about 5,000 Polish and Kashubian immigrants settled in Winona, making it known as the 'Kashubian Capital of America' and prompting the building of the Polish Basilica of Saint Stanislaus Kostka.

Winona's weather station records the warmest average climate of any in Minnesota, with a year-round normal temperature of 48.9 degrees Fahrenheit — mild by state standards thanks to its sheltered river valley.

In Winona's steamboat heyday, more than 1,300 steamboats stopped at the city in 1856 alone, and for a time Winona reportedly had more millionaires than any other American city of its size.

Latsch Island, officially part of Winona since 1998, is home to a long-standing community of houseboat residents moored in the Mississippi River backwaters.