Delavan, Minnesota
6 topographic sheets cover this place, the earliest surveyed in 1954 and the latest in 1985. It stands in Delavan City. It lies in ZIP code area 56023. The Survey maps it on the Delavan quadrangle. 172 people lived here at the 2020 count. It stands 1,063 feet above sea level.
Population over time
2 figuresDelavan fell from 179 to 172 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 | 179 | |
| 2020 | 172 | -7 (-4%) |
Topographic sheets covering this place
4 surveys from 6 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.
- 1954 USGS Fairmont quadrangle1:250000, 3 printings
- 1958 USGS Fairmont quadrangle1:250000
- 1967 USGS Delavan quadrangle1:24000
- 1985 USGS Fairmont quadrangle1:100000
What happened here
An account from the chapter on Delavan city. The inset identifies its exact source book and publication year.
Murder
A murder was committed at Wells, on the 4th day of November. This was the fourth homicide in the county. The facts in the case, briefly stated, are about as follows. A number of Swedes and Norwegians under the influence of intoxicating liquors got into a street brawl when one Nels Hast stabbed or cut one Ole Olsen in the neck.
In the county-history sources
12,180 words on this townshipThe History of Faribault County, Minnesota : from Its First Settlement to the Close of the Year 1879 : the Story of the Pioneers, published 1896 names this settlement in its chapter on Delavan City. These are the passages that mention it, exactly as the scans read.
On the 10th and 11th days of October, a new town site was surveyed and another village founded in this county. It was located on section 36, in town 104, of range 27, on the line of the Southern Minnesota Railroad, and was named "Delavan." This was the fifth village in the county, according to number and age. A fuller reference to this village will be found elsewhere in this work.
Passage source: The History of Faribault County, Minnesota : from Its First Settlement to the Close of the Year 1879 : the Story of the Pioneers, published 1896.
The township of Delavan is congressional township one hundred and four (104) north, of range twenty-seven (27) west. On the north of this town lies the town of Mapleton, in Blue Earth county. On the east it is bounded by the township of Lura, south by the town of Prescott, and on the west by Winnebago City township.
Passage source: The History of Faribault County, Minnesota : from Its First Settlement to the Close of the Year 1879 : the Story of the Pioneers, published 1896.
The town was named Guthrie by the special commissioners, and there has been some (juestion as to in whose honor the town was named. There is a southwest county of Iowa by this name. There was a very eminent Scottish clergyman by the name of Thomas Guthrie, who died in 1873, and during the last century there was a Scottish author of distinction by the name of Wm. Guthrie. We have also had a statesman of eminence, in our own country, the Hon. James Guthrie, who was United States senator from Kentucky, from 1865 to 1868, and formerly Secretary of the Treasury in President Pierce's administration. But it was not in honor of either of these men that the town was first named, but the honor was reserved for a resident of the town. Wm. and Sterrit Guthrie were among the earliest settlers of this township, and it is quite certain that the name of Sterrit Guthrie, the first of the two to settle in the town, was in the minds of the commissioners when the town was named. The name of the town was changed to Delavan, by act of the legislature, apiJi-oved March 1st, 1872, to agree with the name of the village of Delavan, some time previously located in this town.
Passage source: The History of Faribault County, Minnesota : from Its First Settlement to the Close of the Year 1879 : the Story of the Pioneers, published 1896.
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 Delavan City - it names this place 7 more 7 times.
Fires near this place
1 since 2006Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 1 fire within 5 miles of Delavan in 2006, burning about 55 acres in total. None started naturally. None was recorded as arson. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.
| Reported cause | Fires |
|---|---|
| Missing data/not specified/undetermined | 1 |
The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.
| Date | Cause | Size | Reported by | Name on the report |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9 November 2006 | Missing data/not specified/undetermined | 55 acres | Windom Wetland Management District | PRESCOTT |
Settlements close enough to share some of these fires:
Mines and quarries near this place
1 within 5 milesRegional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 1 working within 5 miles of Delavan: 1 producer. All of them still produce. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.
| Where | Site | Commodity | Status | Recorded |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sheedy Pit & Mill | Sand and Gravel, Construction | Producer |
Storms near this place
5 since 1997Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Delavan in 5 storm reports between 1997 and 2025: 2 hail, 1 tornado, 1 thunderstorm wind, 1 funnel cloud. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| August 2025 | Funnel Cloud | Delavan | - | A trained spotter reported several brief funnel clouds with a storm just west of Delavan. |
| August 2005 | Thunderstorm Wind | Delavan | - | Large branches were downed. |
| June 1998 | Tornado (F1) | Delavan | - | Barn and shed damage. Trees down. |
| April 2022 | Hail | Delavan | - | no account filed |
| June 1997 | Hail | Delavan | - | 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Easton | 6.3 miles | 7 | |
| Winnebago | 7.7 miles | 7 | |
| Riverside Heights | 8.6 miles | 7 | |
| Blue Earth | 10.0 miles | 7 | |
| Minnesota Lake | 11.2 miles | 8 | |
| Marna | 11.2 miles | 6 | |
| Dell | 11.4 miles | 8 | |
| Huntley | 11.8 miles | 7 |
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 Delavan | An encyclopaedic summary. Its text is share-alike, so it is linked here rather than copied. |
| Wikidata item Q2230989 | 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 642751. 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.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
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.



