Anoka County, MN

Settlement & growth (pre-1960)

Before European settlement, the area now called Anoka County was home to the Dakota (Sioux) people, particularly the Mdewakanton band, who lived along the Rum River and Mississippi River corridors. The Ojibwe (Chippewa) also contested the region during the 18th-century fur trade era, but by the time of the 1837 Treaty with the Chippewa, the U.S. government had acquired most of the land. French-Canadian voyageurs and fur traders were the first Europeans to pass through, but they left no permanent settlements.

American settlement began in earnest after 1849, when the Minnesota Territory was organized. The first wave was overwhelmingly Yankee—English-speaking settlers from New England and upstate New York—who arrived via the Mississippi River and established the county’s earliest towns. Anoka (founded 1844 as a trading post) became the county seat in 1857, drawing millers and merchants who harnessed the Rum River’s waterpower. St. Francis and Bethel, settled in the 1850s, attracted subsistence farmers and loggers who cleared the dense pine forests.

The second major wave, from 1860 to 1890, was overwhelmingly German and Scandinavian. German immigrants—many from Pomerania and West Prussia—settled in Columbia Heights and Fridley, where they worked in sawmills and later in the burgeoning railroad industry. Swedish and Norwegian families clustered in Ham Lake and East Bethel, drawn by the 1862 Homestead Act’s promise of 160 acres. By 1900, Anoka County’s population was 90% northern European, with a small but visible Irish Catholic community in Anoka proper, employed in the city’s flour mills and the Anoka State Hospital (opened 1900).

The third wave, from 1900 to 1960, was driven by industrialization and suburbanization. The 1910s and 1920s saw a modest influx of Polish and Italian laborers who built the Northern Pacific Railway’s Anoka shops and worked in the gravel pits of Coon Rapids. However, the county’s population remained overwhelmingly white and native-born through the Great Depression. The real transformation came after World War II. The 1950s and 1960s brought a massive domestic migration of white families from Minneapolis and St. Paul, fleeing urban density for new subdivisions in Blaine, Spring Lake Park, and Lino Lakes. The construction of Interstate 35W and U.S. Highway 10 made these towns commuter suburbs, and Anoka County’s population more than doubled between 1950 and 1970, from 35,579 to 98,717.

Modern era (post-1965)

The 1965 Hart-Cellar Act had a limited immediate effect on Anoka County, as the region lacked the industrial or agricultural pull factors that drew immigrants to Chicago or California. However, the 1970s and 1980s saw the first significant non-white settlement: Hmong refugees from Laos, resettled by Catholic and Lutheran charities, began arriving in 1976. They concentrated in Anoka and Coon Rapids, where affordable housing and entry-level manufacturing jobs at companies like Medtronic and Honeywell provided a foothold. By 2000, the Hmong community numbered roughly 2,000, making them the county’s largest Asian subgroup.

The 1990s and 2000s brought two new domestic migration streams. First, African American families from Chicago and Detroit moved to Blaine and Fridley, drawn by the Twin Cities’ strong labor market and lower crime rates. Second, white retirees and young families from the Dakotas and Wisconsin moved into exurban developments in Ramsey and Oak Grove, seeking larger lots and lower taxes. The county’s Black population grew from 1.2% in 1990 to 8.3% today, while the East/Southeast Asian population (now predominantly Hmong and Vietnamese) reached 4.7%.

Hispanic settlement has been more modest. The 5.6% Hispanic population is largely Mexican-American, with families concentrated in Anoka and Columbia Heights, working in construction, landscaping, and food processing. The Indian-subcontinent population (0.6%) is tiny but growing, with professionals in healthcare and tech settling in Blaine near the Northstar Commuter Rail line. Notably, the county’s foreign-born share (3.1%) is less than half the Minnesota state average (8.5%), reflecting the region’s continued reliance on domestic migration rather than international immigration.