Glenburn, ND

Glenburn is a Renville County city in north-central North Dakota, three miles east of U.S. Highway 83 and about twenty-three miles north of Minot. It was founded in 1903 when the Great Northern Railway laid track from Granville to Mohall, giving the settlement a railroad reason to exist. Its first name was Lincoln; local county history says it became Glenburn after a boy on a bicycle prompted a passerby to remark that Glen was burning up the road. The name stuck.

Glenburn sits in the open agricultural country between Minot and the Mouse River valley. Minot Air Force Base is about ten miles south, and Minot serves as the larger regional center. Renville County history names early settlers including the Aitken, Healy, Winderl, Hoke, Clapper, Gidley, Carroll, Sharp, and Knudson families. The city remains legible as a small rail-era town, with the old transportation logic still connecting its streets to the highways, farms, and northern North Dakota communities around it.