Best of St. Cloud

I love Halloween. Just love it. There are so many fun things to do with this holiday. (All the spectacle of Christmas without all that pesky gift giving.) So, go get your costume and have some spooky fun at these Best Halloween Events and Attractions in the St. Cloud Area.

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It’s game day, you don’t have tickets, but you’re looking to get out of the house. What do you do? Where do you go? There are plenty of places across the St. Cloud metro area that offer not just a bunch of TVs with the game on, but also food and drink specials, and some even give you a chance to win prizes…

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This week I took on the task of finding new and interesting tidbits of trivial information about the St. Cloud area. I figured since I've lived in St. Cloud for six years now, and I'm a lifelong Minnesotan, this should be easy! I just went to my computer and started googling. But the

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So a few weeks back, we explored a smattering of supernatural legends from St. Cloud State University. This time around, I wanted to take a different approach to the concept of haunted spaces, and turn focus to a bunch of real "ghosts" we unknowingly encounter every day - the dissolved, forgotten towns of central Minnesota.

Many of us probably get the same old timey, western-style mental image when we hear the phrase “ghost town” – sepia-toned montages of overgrown, decrepit buildings with punched out floors and collapsed roofs, flanked by cacti and maybe a tumbleweed or two. I’m sure those Hollywood-style colonies are out there somewhere – but really, you won’t find them here in central Minnesota. As a matter of fact, most of the structures in the towns on this map were extinct before the turn of the century.

Like a good ghost story, the forgotten towns of central Minnesota are full of mystery. It took this reporter a few hours of digging around in the spectacularly organized archives of the Stearns History Museum to find the essential maps, facts, dates and photos to prove these places really existed. Now, while I’m crazy about history, research and heavy-duty air conditioning on 90-degree days, I was slightly discouraged when I realized that the vast majority of these towns have one thing in common – hardly ANY documentation exists to describe exactly where they were, what they looked like or who lived there. 

Another mystery I quickly uncovered - there's no good reason some of these towns flourished (if only for a while) and others failed almost immediately. These towns (pictured on the above map) were surveyed and settled by enterprising immigrants during the 1850s and 60s, itching to develop profitable commercial trade centers. Some were temporary outposts  - they drifted into disrepair and vanished. Others were platted, named and never saw so much as a single building. A handful served as the foundations for towns we know and live in today.  Take a close look at the map we've created.

The latter sums up the towns that made this list. May I present for your consideration - and in no particular order - 5 central Minnesota ghost towns that captured and haunted my imagination.

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Central Minnesota has produced a number of high-caliber athletes that have left their marks on the sports world. Pro athletes in baseball, football and hockey as well as college football and hockey coaches are represented in our top 10 list of famous sports figures and athletes from the St

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The weather in Minnesota never leaves us lacking for something to talk about. The conversation at the dinner table, the water cooler at work and even in the elevator with strangers always seems to turn to what’s going on outside. Bein

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Whether you believe or not, it can’t be refuted that history is full of earnest accounts of things going bump in the night. So, in the spirit of spooky speculation, here’s a brief list of some ghost stories from right here in St. Cloud – St. Cloud S

The St. Cloud area's had some pretty interesting people pass through over the years. Everyone from the stars of the silver screen to politicians to musicians to business moguls. Here are some of those folks and what made them famous. Oh,

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If you had asked me about what I like to do outside in St. Cloud when I moved here at the start of winter, I would have looked at you all cross-eyed. “What do you mean “do outside?’ Does sprinting from my car to my house in the blistering cold while trying not to fall on the ice count? No?"

Ok, so I admit I didn’t hold out much hope for the outdoors in the middle of January.

But as it always does, summer

This fall I'll be celebrating my 25th anniversary of moving to and becoming a citizen of St. Cloud. That got me thinking about all those wonderful things that make our area what it is. So I put together a list. Help me out -- tell me how you would finish the phrase, "You know you're from St. Cloud if..."

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