Adrian, MN

Adrian arrived with the St. Paul-Dakota Railroad in 1876, when railroad employee O. D. Brown surveyed a sixteen-block town site in western Nobles County. The city was named for Mrs. Adrian Iselin, mother of railroad director Adrian C. Iselin, giving this prairie town a name that came from a railroad family rather than the local landscape. Nobles County's earlier map includes Sisseton history, lakes recorded during Joseph Nicollet's 1842 survey, and the first rail line that crossed the county in 1871. Adrian grew as an agricultural service town, with the railroad, farms, churches, and school holding the center together. It is southwestern Minnesota in a compact grid, with a railroad beginning still built into the name.