Tracy Municipal Building and Armory

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.

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 - 7,513 words on its settlement, mills, schools and churches.