Maplewood, MN

Maplewood’s unusual shape and the 3M campus grew from the same mid-century decisions. The city stretches along Saint Paul’s northern and eastern borders, with a narrow southern leg left by nineteenth-century annexations of the former New Canada and McLean townships. This 17.04-square-mile city had 42,088 residents in 2020. In 1952, 3M chose 139 acres in New Canada for a consolidated research and headquarters campus. Its first research laboratory opened in 1955 and its first headquarters building in 1962. Concern that Saint Paul might annex the site helped prompt residents to incorporate Maplewood as a village in 1957, preserving the campus within the new tax base. Highway construction and postwar housing then accelerated the shift from farms to suburb. Despite that highway-defined development, public open space occupies a substantial part of the city. Maplewood’s adopted parks plan inventories thirty-six parks and fifteen preserves, more than 930 city-owned acres, and roughly 130 miles of sidewalks and on- and off-road trails; eighteen percent of the city is park or open space.

At the forty-acre Maplewood Nature Center Preserve, 1.5 miles of trail circle Green Heron Pond and cross a 600-foot floating boardwalk, with observation decks, a nature play yard, and occasional educational programs. More than three miles of the Gateway State Trail pass through Maplewood parks and City Hall before meeting the Bruce Vento Trail at the former Gladstone rail junction. Indoor recreation is centered at the city-owned, YMCA-operated Maplewood Community Center, which includes pools, an indoor track, gym space, meeting rooms, and a performing-arts theater. Transit gained a new east-west spine in March 2025, when Metro Transit’s Gold Line began frequent all-day bus rapid transit service on a ten-mile route linking downtown Saint Paul with Maplewood, Oakdale, Landfall, and Woodbury.