Osage, MN

Osage is a census-designated place and unincorporated community in Osage Township, Becker County, Minnesota, where the 2020 census counted 282 residents. The community lies in west-central Becker County, a region of forests, lakes, and more than 400 inland waters. Osage's own footprint includes about 0.44 square miles of water, giving the small settlement a landscape shaped by both roads and nearby shorelines. Smoky Hills State Forest and the broader Park Region add woods and trails beyond the settlement's small built center.

The township's Riverside Cemetery was established in 1883, and an 1898 schoolhouse bell still stands by the Osage Community Center. The bell moved to a new District 31 school in 1935, where it called children to class, helped summon residents during fires, and rang when World War I ended. Earlier Osage had churches, schools, a creamery, hardware store, post office, grocery, hotel, lumber yard, and manufacturing company. Those pieces sketch a community whose story lives in a cemetery, a school bell, and the old services that once gathered around them.