Brandon, Minnesota

Brandon sits in Douglas County, and both names point to the same man: Stephen A. Douglas, the Illinois senator famous for his debates with Abraham Lincoln. Douglas was born in Brandon, Vermont, in eighteen thirteen, and both the county and this town were named in his honor.

The original settlement was two miles north of here, called Chippewa. When the railroad pushed through in August of eighteen seventy-nine, the townsite moved to meet it, and the village incorporated as Brandon in eighteen eighty-one. It was a pattern repeated across Minnesota: wherever the iron rail landed, so did the town.