Loretto, MN

Loretto is a Hennepin County city that began as a Soo Line railway village in 1886, settled by German and Dutch immigrants. Its name reaches back to a Huron refuge near Quebec, the Sisters of Loretto in Kentucky, and ultimately Loreto in Italy. The old business list—Koch's Meat Market, Van Beusekom's store, Dutch Mill Dairy, blacksmith, feed-and-seed, bank—still survives in pieces: the 1910 bank building houses a landscaping business, and Sts. Peter and Paul Church, built in 1903, remains in use. Loretto incorporated in 1940, and its volunteer fire department, town baseball, and Lions Club keep the small city's civic calendar grounded in its railway-village past.