St. Cloud or Saint Cloud (; ) is a city in Stearns County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 68,881 at the 2020 census, making it Minnesota's 12th-most populous city. St. Cloud is the county seat of Stearns County, though it also extends into Benton and Sherburne counties. The city lies along the Mississippi River and is named after Saint-Cloud, a suburb of Paris named for the 6th-century monk Clodoald.
The St. Cloud metropolitan area has an estimated 206,000 residents and is Minnesota's fifth-largest metropolitan statistical area. St. Cloud is northwest of the Twin Cities of Minneapolis–St. Paul along Interstate 94, U.S. Highway 52 (conjoined with I-94), U.S. Highway 10, Minnesota State Highway 15, and Minnesota State Highway 23. The St. Cloud metropolitan area is included in the greater Minneapolis–St. Paul combined statistical area.
St. Cloud is home to St. Cloud State University, Minnesota's third-largest public university, located near the Beaver Islands, a group of around 30 undeveloped islands in the Mississippi River. These islands, part of a 12-mile designated wild and scenic river segment, attract kayakers and canoeists. The city also owns and operates Minnesota's largest municipally managed hydroelectric dam on the Mississippi River, which generates nearly nine megawatts of electricity, about 10% of the total output from the state's 11 hydroelectric dams on the river.
History
thumb|[[Red River cart at Saint Cloud, 1887]]
What is now the St. Cloud area was occupied by various Indigenous peoples for thousands of years. Voyageurs and coureurs des bois from New France first encountered the Ojibwe and Dakota through the highly profitable North American fur trade with local Native American peoples.
The Minnesota Territory was organized in 1849. The St. Cloud area opened up to homesteading after the Treaty of Traverse des Sioux was signed with the Dakota people in 1851. John L. Wilson, a Yankee homesteader from Columbia, Maine, with French Huguenot ancestry and an interest in Napoleon, named the settlement St. Cloud after Saint-Cloud, the Paris suburb where Napoleon had his favorite palace.
St. Cloud was a waystation on the Middle and Woods branches of the Red River Trails used by Métis traders between the Canada–U.S. border at Pembina, North Dakota, and Saint Paul, Minnesota. The cart trains often consisted of hundreds of oxcarts known as Red River carts. The Métis, bringing furs to trade for supplies to take back to their rural settlements, camped west of the city and crossed the Mississippi in St. Cloud or just to the north in Sauk Rapids.
The City of St. Cloud was incorporated in 1856. It developed from three distinct settlements, known as Upper Town, Middle Town, and Lower Town, that European-American settlers established starting in 1853. Remnants of the deep ravines that separated the three are still visible today. Middle Town was settled primarily by German Catholic immigrants and migrants from eastern states, who were recruited to the region by Father Francis Xavier Pierz, a Catholic priest who also ministered as a missionary to Native Americans.
Lower Town was founded by settlers from the Northern Tier of New England and the mid-Atlantic states, including former residents of upstate New York. Its Protestant settlers opposed slavery. Upper Town, or Arcadia, was plotted by General Sylvanus Lowry, a slaveholder and trader from Kentucky who brought slaves with him, although Minnesota was organized as a free territory. He served on the territorial council from 1852 to 1853 and was elected president of the newly formed town council in 1856, serving for one year (the office of mayor did not yet exist). In 1857, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Dred Scott that slaves could not file freedom suits and found the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional, so the territory's prohibition against slavery became unenforceable. Nearly all Southerners left the St. Cloud area when the Civil War broke out, taking their slaves with them. The number of slaves in the community was estimated in single digits at the 1860 census. Lowry died in the city in 1865.
Many young men from St. Cloud and the surrounding area served in the Union Army during the American Civil War. After it ended, many local Civil War veterans remained heavily involved in St. Cloud's chapter of the Grand Army of the Republic, and raised money for the building of a statue in memory of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln that still stands near the St. Germain Street bridge. Beginning in 1864, Stephen Miller served a two-year term as Minnesota governor, the only citizen of St. Cloud ever to hold the office. Miller was a "Pennsylvania German businessman", lawyer, writer, active abolitionist, and personal friend of Alexander Ramsey. He was on the state's Republican electoral ticket with Lincoln in 1860.
Steamboats regularly docked at St. Cloud as part of the fur trade and other commerce, although river levels were not reliable. This ended with the construction of the Coon Rapids Dam in 1912–14. Granite quarries have operated in the area since the 1880s, giving St. Cloud its nickname, "The Granite City". In 1917, Samuel Pandolfo started the Pan Motor Company in St. Cloud. He claimed his Pan-Cars would make St. Cloud the new Detroit, but the company failed at a time when resources were directed toward the World War I effort. He was later convicted and imprisoned for attempting to defraud investors.
According to documents at the Stearns History Museum, more than 2,000 residents from the heavily German-American St. Cloud area served in the U.S. military against their ancestral homeland during World War I. On January 26, 1918, President Woodrow Wilson wrote a letter to Bishop Joseph Francis Busch thanking him for his support of the war effort.
Geography
thumb|Downtown Saint Cloud, 2007
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has an area of ; is land and is water.
The city developed on both sides of the Mississippi River. Part of the Sauk River runs along its northern edge.
Just south of downtown is the 7-acre, 35-feet-deep Lake George. In 2021, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) credited decade-long city investments in stormwater filtration with reducing Lake George's phosphorus levels well below the state standard. It called Lake George one of three "success stories" in the state, and planned to remove it from a list of impaired waters.
Granite bedrock quarried in the area has been estimated to be 1.7 billion years old and was exposed after several miles of rock above it eroded. The city lies on a band of modern Mississippi river sediment surrounded by land scoured several times by Wisconsin Age glaciers beginning about 35,000 years ago, ending with the Lake Superior St. Croix lobe. The later Des Moines lobe created glacial moraines and drift south and east of the city.
Climate
thumb|right|Climate chart for St. Cloud
St. Cloud lies in the warm summer humid continental climate zone (Köppen climate classification: Dfb), with warm summers and cold winters with moderate to heavy snowfall. The monthly normal daily mean temperature ranges from in January to in July. The record high temperature is . The record low temperature is . extremes 1894–present)
|single line = Y
|collapsed = Y
|Jan record high F = 56
|Feb record high F = 59
|Mar record high F = 81
|Apr record high F = 96
|May record high F = 105
|Jun record high F = 102
|Jul record high F = 107
|Aug record high F = 105
|Sep record high F = 106
|Oct record high F = 90
|Nov record high F = 76
|Dec record high F = 63
|year record high F = 107
|Jan avg record high F = 41.9
|Feb avg record high F = 45.1
|Mar avg record high F = 61.0
|Apr avg record high F = 78.1
|May avg record high F = 88.3
|Jun avg record high F = 92.4
|Jul avg record high F = 92.6
|Aug avg record high F = 90.8
|Sep avg record high F = 87.2
|Oct avg record high F = 79.3
|Nov avg record high F = 59.9
|Dec avg record high F = 44.4
|year avg record high F = 95.1
|Jan high F = 20.7
|Feb high F = 25.7
|Mar high F = 38.5
|Apr high F = 54.3
|May high F = 67.8
|Jun high F = 77.2
|Jul high F = 81.6
|Aug high F = 79.2
|Sep high F = 71.0
|Oct high F = 55.9
|Nov high F = 39.3
|Dec high F = 25.8
|year high F = 53.1
|Jan mean F = 11.8
|Feb mean F = 16.1
|Mar mean F = 29.2
|Apr mean F = 43.3
|May mean F = 56.2
|Jun mean F = 66.0
|Jul mean F = 70.3
|Aug mean F = 67.7
|Sep mean F = 59.5
|Oct mean F = 45.7
|Nov mean F = 30.9
|Dec mean F = 17.8
|year mean F = 42.9
|Jan low F = 2.9
|Feb low F = 6.5
|Mar low F = 19.8
|Apr low F = 32.4
|May low F = 44.6
|Jun low F = 54.8
|Jul low F = 58.9
|Aug low F = 56.3
|Sep low F = 48.0
|Oct low F = 35.5
|Nov low F = 22.6
|Dec low F = 9.8
|year low F = 32.7
|Jan avg record low F = -22.5
|Feb avg record low F = -16.2
|Mar avg record low F = -5.0
|Apr avg record low F = 16.7
|May avg record low F = 30.1
|Jun avg record low F = 41.3
|Jul avg record low F = 47.4
|Aug avg record low F = 44.3
|Sep avg record low F = 31.1
|Oct avg record low F = 19.6
|Nov avg record low F = 3.2
|Dec avg record low F = -14.8
|year avg record low F = -25.1
|Jan record low F = −43
|Feb record low F = −40
|Mar record low F = −32
|Apr record low F = −3
|May record low F = 18
|Jun record low F = 32
|Jul record low F = 40
|Aug record low F = 33
|Sep record low F = 18
|Oct record low F = 5
|Nov record low F = −23
|Dec record low F = −41
|year record low F = -43
|precipitation colour = green
|Jan precipitation inch = 0.67
|Feb precipitation inch = 0.76
|Mar precipitation inch = 1.57
|Apr precipitation inch = 2.61
|May precipitation inch = 3.66
|Jun precipitation inch = 3.75
|Jul precipitation inch = 3.60
|Aug precipitation inch = 4.00
|Sep precipitation inch = 3.01
|Oct precipitation inch = 2.61
|Nov precipitation inch = 1.37
|Dec precipitation inch = 0.88
|year precipitation inch = 28.49
|Jan snow inch = 8.8
|Feb snow inch = 8.9
|Mar snow inch = 8.2
|Apr snow inch = 4.7
|May snow inch = 0.1
|Jun snow inch = 0.0
|Jul snow inch = 0.0
|Aug snow inch = 0.0
|Sep snow inch = 0.0
|Oct snow inch = 1.0
|Nov snow inch = 6.9
|Dec snow inch = 9.3
|year snow inch = 47.9
|unit precipitation days = 0.01 in
|Jan precipitation days = 7.8
|Feb precipitation days = 6.4
|Mar precipitation days = 8.3
|Apr precipitation days = 9.7
|May precipitation days = 11.4
|Jun precipitation days = 12.3
|Jul precipitation days = 10.6
|Aug precipitation days = 9.3
|Sep precipitation days = 10.0
|Oct precipitation days = 9.7
|Nov precipitation days = 7.3
|Dec precipitation days = 7.7
|year precipitation days = 110.5
|unit snow days = 0.1 in
|Jan snow days = 8.5
|Feb snow days = 6.4
|Mar snow days = 5.0
|Apr snow days = 2.2
|May snow days = 0.2
|Jun snow days = 0.0
|Jul snow days = 0.0
|Aug snow days = 0.0
|Sep snow days = 0.0
|Oct snow days = 0.9
|Nov snow days = 4.6
|Dec snow days = 8.2
|year snow days = 36.0
|humidity colour = green
|Jan humidity = 70.0
|Feb humidity = 66.1
|Mar humidity = 67.3
|Apr humidity = 65.8
|May humidity = 62.0
|Jun humidity = 67.3
|Jul humidity = 67.7
|Aug humidity = 69.5
|Sep humidity = 73.5
|Oct humidity = 68.3
|Nov humidity = 73.3
|Dec humidity = 75.2
|year humidity = 68.8
|Jan dew point C = -18.3
|Feb dew point C = -15.2
|Mar dew point C = -8.1
|Apr dew point C = -0.8
|May dew point C = 4.7
|Jun dew point C = 11.1
|Jul dew point C = 15.1
|Aug dew point C = 13.7
|Sep dew point C = 9.1
|Oct dew point C = 2.3
|Nov dew point C = -5.0
|Dec dew point C = -10.7
|source 1 = NOAA (relative humidity and dew point 1961–1990)