Aviva Directory » Local & Global » North America » United States » States » Minnesota » Cities & Towns » Hector

Hector, Minnesota is in Renville County, in the lower part of the state. The main routes through the city are US Route 212 and Minnesota Highway 4. Along Highway 212, Hector is east of Bird Island and west of Buffalo Lake. Other nearby communities include Bechyn, Churchill, Fernando, Lakeside, Olivia, and Stewart. Sleepy Eye is about thirty miles south, Glencoe is thirty miles east, Willmar forty miles northwest, and Granite Falls is about forty miles west of Hector. The community was founded in 1874 as Milford. When townspeople were told that there was already a town named Milford in Minnesota, they voted to change the town’s name to Hector a few months later, although they later learned that the other Milford was actually in South Dakota. A post office was established in 1875, and Hector was surveyed in 1878 after the Hastings and Dakota Railway Company laid it tracks on the north side of the original town site. Hector was incorporated as a village in 1881. By the turn of the 20th century, the village include six churches, four lodges, a fire department, two banks, an opera house, a flour mill, telephone system, and a water system. After reaching a population of one thousand in 1940, the city’s population has remained relatively consistent, with minor increases and decreases from one census year to another, its peak population being 1,297 in 1960.

 

 

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