Local city information for Bloomington, MN

Bloomington is the fifth largest city in the U.S. state of Minnesota in Hennepin County, and the third core city of the Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI MSA. Located on the north bank of the Minnesota River above its confluence with the Mississippi River, Bloomington lies at the heart of the southern
metro area, 10 miles (16 km) south of downtown Minneapolis. The city's population was 85,172 in the 2000 Census and was estimated at 80,869 in 2006.

Established as a post-World War II housing boom suburb connected to the urban street grid of Minneapolis and serviced by two major highways, Interstate 35W and Interstate 494, Bloomington's residential areas include upper-tier households in the western Bush Lake area and traditional middle-class families in its rows of single-family homes in the central to eastern portions. Large-scale commercial development is concentrated along the Interstate 494 corridor.
Besides an extensive park system, with over of parkland per capita, the city's south border with the Minnesota River is buffered by the Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge.

Bloomington, considered by many to be a bedroom community, has more jobs per capita than either Minneapolis or St. Paul.. Its economy includes headquarters of major companies such as Ceridian, Donaldson Company Inc., HealthPartners, and Toro. The city is a hospitality and retail magnet, recognized nationally for the United States' largest enclosed shopping center, Mall of America. It is presently the only suburb in the metro to be serviced by a light rail line.

Early settlers named the city after Bloomington, Illinois.


In 1839, with renewed conflict with the Ojibwa nation, Chief Cloud Man relocated his band of the Mdewakanton Dakota from Lake Calhoun in Minneapolis to an area called Oak Grove in southern Bloomington, close to present-day Portland Avenue. In 1843, Peter and Louisa Quinn, the first European settlers to live in Bloomington, built a cabin along the Minnesota River in this area. The government had sent them to teach farming methods to the Native Americans. Gideon Pond, a missionary, who had been following and recording the Dakota language from Cloud Man's band, relocated later that year, establishing Oak Grove Mission, his log cabin. Pond and his family held church services and taught the local Dakota school subjects and farming. Passage across the Minnesota River in Bloomington came in 1849 when William Chambers and Joseph Dean opened the Bloomington Ferry. The ferry remained operational until 1889, when the Bloomington Ferry Bridge was built.

Following the Treaty of Traverse des Sioux in 1851, the territory west of the Mississippi, including Bloomington, was opened to settlers. A group of pioneers settled Bloomington, including the Goodrich, Whalon, and Ames families. They named the area Bloomington after the city they were from, Bloomington, Illinois, which means "flowering field." Most early jobs were in farming, blacksmithing, and flour milling. The Oxborough family, who came from Canada, built a trading center on Lyndale Avenue and called it Oxborough-Heath. Today, the Cloverleaf Shopping Center rests on the old trading center site and the nearby Oxboro Clinic is named after them. The Baliff family opened a grocery and general store at what is today Penn Avenue and Old Shakopee Road, and Hector Chadwick, after moving to the settlement, opened a blacksmith shop near the Bloomington Ferry. In 1855, the first public school for all children was opened in Miss Harrison’s house with the first school, Gibson House, built in 1859. On May 11, 1858, the day the state of Minnesota was admitted into the union and officially became a state, 25 residents incorporated the Town of Bloomington. By 1880, the population had grown to 820. In 1892 the first town hall was built at Penn and Old Shakopee Road. By then, the closest Dakota to Minneapolis lived at the residence of Gideon Pond.

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