Staples, MN

Staples is a city spread across Todd and Wadena Counties, built first around a sawmill and then around the rail lines that turned Staples Mill into a town. The settlement was platted in 1889 and named for lumbermen Samuel and Isaac Staples. U.S. 10 and Minnesota 210 cross the city, while the Amtrak Empire Builder stops at the station on its Chicago-to-Seattle and Portland route. The Staples depot also houses a local history museum, so the railroad still supplies both transportation and a place to remember the town's beginning. Staples-Motley High School keeps education in town, and the surrounding woods and farm country give the city its north-central Minnesota setting. Staples is a rail-and-lumber city whose old mill name and present-day station still belong in the same sentence.