Tracy, Minnesota

9 topographic sheets cover this place, the earliest surveyed in 1953 and the latest in 1986. It stands in Tracy City. It lies in ZIP code area 56175. The Survey maps it on the Tracy East quadrangle. 2,076 people lived here at the 2020 count. It stands 1,391 feet above sea level.

Tracy within Lyon County

On record in Tracy

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 2 records

First National Banklisted 1982
Tracy Municipal Building and Armorylisted 2023

Population over time

2 figures

Tracy fell from 2,163 to 2,076 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	2,163
2020	2,076	-87 (-4%)

Topographic sheets covering this place

6 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 New Ulm quadrangle1:250000, 3 printings
1957 USGS New Ulm quadrangle1:250000
1958 USGS New Ulm quadrangle1:250000
1967 USGS New Ulm quadrangle1:250000
1967 USGS Tracy East quadrangle1:24000
1986 USGS Tracy quadrangle1:100000, 2 printings

In the county-history sources

7,513 words on this township

An Illustrated History of Lyon County, Minnesota, published 1912 names this settlement in its chapter on Tracy City. These are the passages that mention it, exactly as the scans read.

Tracy is a prosperous and progressive city and presents an attractive appearance. It has broad streets, lined with substantial business houses and handsome residences. As a business point Tracy takes high rank, because of its favorable location as regards trade territory. All the improvements to be found in Minnesota towns of its size are in Tracy. It has an excellent waterworks system, electric light plant, good schools and churches.

Passage source: An Illustrated History of Lyon County, Minnesota, published 1912.

While Tracy was not founded until 1875, we may go back of that date several years to get at the beginning of its history. When the Winona & St. Peter railroad was constructed in 1872 there was apparently no thought of planting a village where Tracy was later built, and the only station established in Lyon county at that time was Marshall. But a country postoffice named Summit (which the Tracy office succeeded) was located on the line of the road just over the line in Redwood county, one and one-half miles east of the future city, of Tracy. The office was established in 1872 and Levi Montgomery was the postmaster, conducting it at his farm home. Summit postoffice was operated there until moved to Tracy in the spring of 1875.

Passage source: An Illustrated History of Lyon County, Minnesota, published 1912.

During the first half of the seventies quite a number of homesteaders located in Monroe township and there was also quite a flourishing settlement on Lake Shetek, only a short distance south of the site of Tracy. In the spring of 1875 the Winona & St. Peter Railroad Company, which had come into possession of section 23 by grant, laid out the village and named it Tracy, in honor of a director of the Chicago & Northwestern Railroad Company.

Passage source: An Illustrated History of Lyon County, Minnesota, published 1912.

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 Tracy City - it names this place 58 more 58 times.

Storms near this place

25 since 1999

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Tracy in 25 storm reports between 1999 and 2025: 11 hail, 7 thunderstorm wind, 4 flash flood, 2 lightning. 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
April 2002	Thunderstorm Wind	Tracy	$20,000	Thunderstorm winds caused tree and roof damage.
June 2001	Thunderstorm Wind	Tracy	$10,000	Thunderstorm winds destroyed a store front.
August 2000	Lightning	Tracy	$5,000	Lightning struck an electrical pole at a car dealership, starting a small fire in the electrical meter. The lightning also caused slight damage to an adjoining grocery store.
July 1999	Hail	Tracy	$5,000	no account filed
September 2005	Lightning	Tracy	$1,000	Lightning struck a transformer at the back of a food store, causing a local power outage which lasted for 10 hours. Volunteers moved perishable refrigerated and frozen food into ice trucks and a freezer trailer, avoiding spoilage of over $100,000 worth of food.
August 2025	Thunderstorm Wind	Tracy	-	Six to eight inch diameter tree limbs downed by thunderstorm winds.
August 2025	Flash Flood	Tracy	-	Widespread flooding occurred in Tracy between Rowland Street and Front Street and from S 1st Street to S 4th Street, which required pumping of water.
October 2023	Hail	Tracy	-	The ground was covered by nickel to quarter size hail.
July 2018	Flash Flood	Tracy	-	Significant water reported over roads and into yards. Report received via social media. Rainfall of 5.77 inches was reported in Tracy.
June 2016	Thunderstorm Wind	Tracy	-	Thunderstorm winds caused tree damage, including a large tree blown down.
July 2016	Flash Flood	Tracy	-	Heavy rain caused flash flooding of streets, forcing the fire department to barricade the flooded streets.
August 2010	Thunderstorm Wind	Tracy	-	Thunderstorm winds caused tree damage, including several branches blown down.
August 2010	Thunderstorm Wind	Tracy	-	Thunderstorm winds caused tree damage, including several branches blown down.
June 2007	Tornado (EF0)	Tracy	-	A tornado caused no reported damage as it moved northwest for about a half mile in open country. The tornado was photographed from a position several miles to the west.
June 2005	Flash Flood	Tracy	-	Heavy rain caused flooding of numerous roads.
September 2005	Hail	Tracy	-	Large hail covered the ground.
July 2002	Thunderstorm Wind	Tracy	-	Thunderstorm winds caused tree damage, including branches blown down.
July 2002	Hail	Tracy	-	Large hail caused an unknown amount of crop damage.
August 2023	Hail	Tracy	-	no account filed
May 2022	Hail	Tracy	-	no account filed
May 2012	Hail	Tracy	-	no account filed
May 2012	Hail	Tracy	-	no account filed
June 2011	Hail	Tracy	-	no account filed
July 2002	Hail	Tracy	-	no account filed
July 2002	Hail	Tracy	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in Lyon 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
Amiret	7.1 miles	9
Garvin	7.4 miles	10
Balaton	13.4 miles	10
Dudley	13.8 miles	10
Village Park	16.1 miles	11
Garvin Park	17.2 miles	11
Marshall	17.3 miles	11
Lynd	17.8 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 Tracy	An encyclopaedic summary. Its text is share-alike, so it is linked here rather than copied.
Wikidata item Q1924419	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 653262. 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.