Cottonwood, Minnesota
9 topographic sheets cover this place, the earliest surveyed in 1953 and the latest in 1986. It stands in Lucas Township. It lies in ZIP code area 56229. The Survey maps it on the Cottonwood quadrangle. 1,149 people lived here at the 2020 count. It stands 1,079 feet above sea level.
On record in Cottonwood
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 1 record
Martin Norseth Houselisted 1982
Population over time
2 figuresCottonwood fell from 1,212 to 1,149 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 | 1,212 | |
| 2020 | 1,149 | -63 (-5%) |
Topographic sheets covering this place
6 surveys from 9 printed sheetsMatched 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 New Ulm quadrangle1:250000, 3 printings
- 1957 USGS New Ulm quadrangle1:250000
- 1958 USGS New Ulm quadrangle1:250000
- 1962 USGS Cottonwood quadrangle1:24000
- 1967 USGS New Ulm quadrangle1:250000
- 1986 USGS Montevideo quadrangle1:100000, 2 printings
In the county-history sources
4,033 words on this townshipHistory of Lyon County, published 1884 names this settlement in its chapter on Lucas Township. These are the passages that mention it, exactly as the scans read.
In section 3 is Sham Lake, not very large, nor very d«ep, but a pretty little body ot water. In sections 4, 5, 8 and 9 a much larger body of water is found, called Cottonwood Lake, from several large cottonwood trees on the east cud There is also a grove of timber on the north shore. In section 11 is Lake Hamre, named from E. T. Harare, a settler near it. It has a little timber on the south side. In section 17 a small lake is named Lake Susan on the railroad maps, but called Bogus Lake by the Lucasites. On section 20 and 21 is Lady Shoe Lake named from its supposed resemblance to that ariicle. There
Passage source: History of Lyon County, published 1884.
Machine-read from a century-old scan, so expect the errors a machine makes: misspelled names, dropped words, stray characters.
Storms near this place
22 since 1993Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Cottonwood in 22 storm reports between 1993 and 2025: 12 hail, 7 thunderstorm wind, 2 tornado, 1 flash flood. The reports record 4 injuries. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| May 1993 | Tornado (F1) | Cottonwood | 4 hurt | A short-lived tornado destroyed a home and injured four people. |
| July 1997 | Thunderstorm Wind | Cottonwood | $100,000 | no account filed |
| May 1996 | Thunderstorm Wind | Cottonwood | $3,000 | no account filed |
| August 2025 | Thunderstorm Wind | Cottonwood | - | Thunderstorm wind gusts snapped off a cottonwood tree of 6 to 8 inches diameter at the base. |
| June 2022 | Thunderstorm Wind | Cottonwood | - | A thunderstorm wind gust of 73 mph was measured by a personal weather station near Cottonwood. |
| May 2022 | Hail | Cottonwood | - | Crop damage is an estimate from insured losses. Information provided by the United States Department of Agriculture. |
| May 2022 | Thunderstorm Wind | Cottonwood | - | Thunderstorm winds damaged the grain elevator and several roofs in Cottonwood. Trees and powerlines also down. |
| May 2022 | Thunderstorm Wind | Cottonwood | - | A thunderstorm wind gust to 82 mph was measured by a personal weather station northwest of Cottonwood. |
| June 2019 | Hail | Cottonwood | - | Along with hail, there was a quick 1.50 inches of rainfall. |
| June 2014 | Flash Flood | Cottonwood | - | Heavy rain caused flash flooding of numerous streets, parks, and fields near and south of the town of Cottonwood. Basements of some homes were also flooded. |
| June 2001 | Tornado (F0) | Cottonwood | - | A brief tornado caused no reported damage. |
| July 2023 | Hail | Cottonwood | - | no account filed |
| July 2023 | Hail | Cottonwood | - | no account filed |
| May 2022 | Hail | Cottonwood | - | no account filed |
| May 2022 | Hail | Cottonwood | - | no account filed |
| June 2019 | Hail | Cottonwood | - | no account filed |
| June 2019 | Hail | Cottonwood | - | no account filed |
| July 2008 | Hail | Cottonwood | - | no account filed |
| May 2004 | Hail | Cottonwood | - | no account filed |
| August 2004 | Hail | Cottonwood | - | no account filed |
| June 2003 | Hail | Cottonwood | - | no account filed |
| October 1997 | Thunderstorm Wind | Cottonwood | - | no account filed |
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.
| Map | Place | Distance | Sheets |
|---|---|---|---|
| Green Valley | 7.2 miles | 9 | |
| Garvin Park | 12.7 miles | 11 | |
| Marshall | 12.7 miles | 11 | |
| Dudley | 12.7 miles | 10 | |
| Ghent | 13.3 miles | 9 | |
| Village Park | 13.5 miles | 11 | |
| Minneota | 16.9 miles | 9 | |
| Lynd | 19.2 miles | 9 |
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 Cottonwood | An encyclopaedic summary. Its text is share-alike, so it is linked here rather than copied. |
| Wikidata item Q1012289 | 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 641528. 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.
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.





