Cold Spring, Minnesota

9 topographic sheets cover this place, the earliest surveyed in 1953 and the latest in 1986. It stands in Wakefield Township. It lies in ZIP code area 56320. The Survey maps it on the Cold Spring quadrangle. 4,164 people lived here at the 2020 count. It stands 1,099 feet above sea level.

Cold Spring within Stearns County

On record in Cold Spring

Buildings and businesses the archive holds for this place. Each opens its own page, with the source record it came from.

On the National Register 3 records

Population over time

2 figures

Cold Spring grew from 4,025 to 4,164 between 2010 and 2020. These are the recorded population figures Wikidata holds for this place, reached through the Geographic Names Information System number this page is keyed on rather than by name, so they belong to this place and not to another of the same name. Most are census counts, but not all are: an early figure may be a founding or settlement estimate, and an estimate published within five years of a census is left out. The change column is computed, and is left blank where more than 20 years separate a figure from the one before it, because a gap that long is not a change between two counts.

Year	People	Change
2010	4,025
2020	4,164	+139 (+3%)

Topographic sheets covering this place

5 surveys from 9 printed sheets

Matched by testing this settlement's coordinate against the published boundary of every sheet in the United States Geological Survey's historical collection. Each opens the scanned sheet at the Survey.

1953 USGS Saint Cloud quadrangle1:250000, 3 printings
1957 USGS Saint Cloud quadrangle1:250000
1958 USGS Saint Cloud quadrangle1:250000
1967 USGS Cold Spring quadrangle1:24000, 2 printings
1986 USGS Litchfield quadrangle1:100000, 2 printings

In the county-history sources

5,557 words on this township

History of Stearns County, Minnesota, published 1915 names this settlement in its chapter on Wakefield Township. These are the passages that mention it, exactly as the scans read.

Wakefield lies in the southeast part of the county, and is bounded on the north by Collegeville, on the east by Rockville, on the south by Luxemburg, and on the west by Munson. It contains an area of 23,040 acres, of which about sixty per cent is under cultivation, and embraces the whole of township 123, range 30. The surface is undulating and in places quite broken. Originally the greater part of the township was covered with brush and poplar groves, with here and there a patch of open prairie. The soil is variable, but chiefly a rich, black loam, very productive, with clay and gravel subsoil. The Sauk river enters the town on section 30, and crosses in an easterly direction, forming an excellent water-power at Cold Spring.

Passage source: History of Stearns County, Minnesota, published 1915.

In 1853, William Buchanan, being directed by Gen. Lowry, then residing near St. Cloud, made a claim near the present site of Cold Spring City. He was accompanied by a number of Winnebago Indians, who assisted him in the erection of a log cabin, but only remained a few weeks.

Passage source: History of Stearns County, Minnesota, published 1915.

In the spring of 1855, a party of Germans settled in the eastern portion of the town, near the river. Their names and location of claims, as near as can be ascertained, were as follows: Nicholas Jacoby settled on section fourteen; J. Maselter settled on the same section; Nicholas Hansen located on section twelve; John Theis and John Fuchs settled on section fourteen. Nicholas Kirsch made a claim en section thirteen. Of this colony, John Fuchs is still alive, being one of the wellto-do men of the neighborhood. The rest of the party all became substantial men and are now dead, but all left large families, the members of which stand high in the community. In connection with the coming of this colony it may be mentioned that ninety per cent of the population is German-Catholic, sturdy, substantial. Godfearing people. The center and trading point of this community is at Cold Spring.

Passage source: History of Stearns County, Minnesota, published 1915.

Machine-read from a century-old scan, so expect the errors a machine makes: misspelled names, dropped words, stray characters.

Read the whole chapter on Wakefield Township - it names this place 4 more 4 times.

Mines and quarries near this place

7 within 5 miles

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 7 workings within 5 miles of Cold Spring: 7 producers. All of them still produce. What was taken out: Granite, Stone, Crushed/Broken, Sand and Gravel, Construction, Limestone, General. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Site	Commodity	Status	Recorded
Gertkin Marl Pits	Limestone, General	Producer	Marl
Richmond Pit and Mill	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Producer
Cold Spring Crushing Plant	Stone, Crushed/Broken	Producer
Rockville Shop	Granite, Stone, Crushed/Broken	Producer
Opalescent Quarry	Granite	Producer
Rockville Quarry No 1	Granite	Producer
Rockville Quarry No 2	Granite	Producer

Every working recorded in Stearns County

Storms near this place

1 since 1996

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Cold Spring in 1 storm report in 1996: 1 thunderstorm wind. No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date opens the federal record of that event.

When	Event	Place named	Harm	What the report says
October 1996	Thunderstorm Wind	Cold Spring	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in Stearns County

Nearest settlements

The eight closest, with where each one stands in the county. Distances are straight-line, computed from the Geographic Names Information System coordinates.

Place	Distance	Sheets
Jacobs Prairie	2.9 miles	9
Richmond	4.7 miles	9
Rockville	4.8 miles	8
Saint Nicholas	5.2 miles	9
Marty	6.4 miles	8
Pleasant Lake	8.1 miles	8
Saint Joseph	9.5 miles	12
Luxemburg	9.7 miles	10

Elsewhere

Matched on this settlement's Geographic Names Information System number rather than its name, so it cannot be a different place of the same name in another state.

Wikipedia article on Cold Spring	An encyclopaedic summary. Its text is share-alike, so it is linked here rather than copied.
Wikidata item Q2033424	The structured record the population and elevation above come from. Public domain (CC0).

Provenance

This settlement is recorded in the Geographic Names Information System as feature 641388. The sheet list is computed by point-in-boundary test against the United States Geological Survey's historical topographic inventory. Both are works of the United States government and carry no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.

Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.

Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.