New York Mills, MN

New York Mills is an Otter Tail County city that grew from timber, the Northern Pacific Railroad, and a large Finnish immigrant community. A lumber mill came first, followed by the railroad, and the town was established in 1884. Finnish families came for the sawmills and stayed long enough to leave a mark in the local press; the city became known as a center of Finnish-language newspaper publishing. U.S. 10 now cuts through the town. New York Mills is west-central Minnesota with a mill-town name and a distinctly Finnish thread.