Saint Peter

Saint Peter

Saint Peter is a warm and welcoming community located in the scenic Minnesota River Valley. 

The city of Saint Peter was incorporated in 1873 and is located approximately 60 miles south of Minneapolis/Saint Paul in the beautiful Minnesota River Valley (10 miles north of Mankato). Our city has a population of over 11,400 and was originally intended to be the capitol of the State of Minnesota. As the legislators were preparing to vote on the location of the capital, Joe Rolette stole the bill that would have named Saint Peter as capital and he hid with it until after the legislature voted for Saint Paul.

Even though Saint Peter was not named the Capital, visitors can see how our founding fathers planned for that designation by platting extra wide streets in town. In addition, the capitol building would have been located in Minnesota Square Park which is adjacent to Highway 169 on the south end of our City.

The city is rich in historical buildings and besides having about a dozen structures on the National Register of Historic Places, our entire downtown area was also given that designation. Many of the old buildings downtown still maintain the historical features that have been lost on other buildings.
 

Schools

Elementary Schools

South Elementary	North Elementary	John Ireland Catholic School
Saint Peter Lutheran School

Middle Schools

High Schools

History

St. Peter was founded in 1853 by Captain William Bigelow Dodd, who claimed 150 acres (0.61 km2) north of what is now Broadway Avenue. He named the new settlement Rock Bend because of the rock formation at the bend of the Minnesota River. The town site was platted and surveyed in 1854 by Daniel L. Turpin. In 1855 a group of St. Paul businessmen interested in promoting the town formed the Saint Peter Company, and the town was renamed St. Peter. The president of the Company was Willis A. Gorman, Territorial Governor of Minnesota. Many of the streets in St. Peter were named after streets in New York City; Park Row, Chatham, Broadway, Nassau, Union for example. Captain Dodd was originally from Bloomfield, New Jersey, his second wife Harriett Newell Jones, a native of Cabot, Vermont was living in New York at the time of their marriage at the Church of the Holy Communion in New York City, that church helped fund the church in St. Peter which shares the same name.

In 1857 an attempt was made to move the capitol from St. Paul to St. Peter. Gov. Gorman owned the land on which the bill's sponsors wanted to build the new capitol building, and at one point had been heard saying, "If the capitol remains in Saint Paul, the territory is worth millions and I have nothing." At the time, St. Peter - a city in the central region of the territory - was seen as more accessible to the far-flung territorial legislators than St. Paul, which was in the extreme eastern portion of the territory, on the east bank of the Mississippi River. A bill was passed in both houses of the Territorial Legislature and was awaiting Governor Gorman's signature. A member of the Territorial Council (Senate) Joseph J. Rolette of Pembina (now in North Dakota), the son of a Canadian fur trapper and chairman of the enrollment committee, took the bill and hid in a St. Paul Hotel, drinking and playing cards with some friends as the City Police looked fruitlessly for him, until the end of the legislative session, too late for the bill to be signed. Rolette came into the chamber just as the session ended. One might say that the bill was an attempt to "rob Paul to pay Peter". Today, St. Paul is the second largest city in the state (second only to neighboring Minneapolis), while St. Peter is a relatively small rural town.

In 1851 the Treaty of Traverse des Sioux was signed between the Sioux (Dakota) and the U. S. Government just one mile (1.6 km) north of St. Peter. The Nicollet County Historical Society—Treaty Site History Center is located near the site of the treaty signing. The promises of the treaty were not kept. The Dakota became angered and the Dakota War of 1862 began in Cottonwood County. In August 1862 the Dakota attacked the German settlement of New Ulm. A company of volunteers from St. Peter, headed by Captain William B. Dodd, St. Peter's founder, went to the defense of New Ulm. Captain Dodd was killed on August 23, 1862, and was briefly buried in New Ulm. On November 11, 1862, Captain Dodd was buried with high military honors in St. Peter on the grounds of the Church of the Holy Communion (Episcopal), on land he donated to the church. Captain Dodd, his wife Harriet and two children are buried behind the present stone church built in 1869-70 at 118 North Minnesota Avenue.

In 1866 the Legislature established the first "Minnesota Asylum for the Insane" in St. Peter. Later it was known as the St. Peter State Hospital and now as St. Peter Regional Treatment Center.