Paynesville is a city in Stearns County, Minnesota, United States, on Lake Koronis, in the central part of the state. The population was 2,388 at the 2020 census. It is part of the St. Cloud Metropolitan Statistical Area.
History
Paynesville was platted in 1857 by Edwin E. Payne, and named for him. The town was completely evacuated to the relative safety of Richmond and St. Cloud during the 1862 Dakota War; the Dakota burned the townsite to the ground. The town was subsequently rebuilt, this time with the addition of a wooden stockade built by the U.S. Army.
The arrival of the Soo Line and Great Northern Railway in 1886 spurred increased settlement near the railroad lines, leading to the formation of the new settlements of Jim Town along the Soo Line and North Paynesville near the Great Northern. Jim Town, on the site of today's downtown Paynesville, became the largest of the three Paynesvilles, eventually merging with the others as New Paynesville, later shortened back to Paynesville.
A post office has been in operation at Paynesville since 1857.
In the late 1980s, a series of sexual assaults on pre-teen and teenage boys occurred in Paynesville. In 1989, 11-year-old Jacob Wetterling disappeared in nearby St. Joseph. That case inspired a federal law to create the first sex offender registries, and it was still not discovered until 2014 that the cases in both cities were perpetrated by the same person. Wetterling's body had been dumped in Paynesville.
Geography
Paynesville lies along the North Fork of the Crow River and Lake Koronis. According to the United States Census Bureau, it has an area of , all land.
Demographics
thumb|left|Paynesville City Hall