Warsaw, MN

Warsaw is an unincorporated Rice County community on the west side of Cannon Lake, at the junction of Minnesota 60 and Rice County Road 13. The 2020 census counted 644 residents. Warsaw Township was organized in 1858 and took its name from Warsaw, New York, while the post office had already taken the name in 1856. Earlier, Alexander Faribault kept a trading post on Cannon Lake, and Peter Bush later claimed land there, built a blacksmith shop, and platted the village of Lake City.

Today the lake and the highway still do the local organizing. Rice County’s Shager Park provides a Cannon Lake beach, boat launch, and access to the Sakatah Singing Hills State Trail. Most of the CDP is in Faribault Public Schools, with a western section in Waterville-Elysian-Morristown, so school routes follow the same local boundaries that shape other services. Faribault is east of the community, Morristown sits to the west, and farm roads run out from the lake into Warsaw Township. Warsaw is a lakeside crossroads with a nineteenth-century village story and a practical present-day map.