North Branch: Logging Town on the Sunrise River
Minnesota
North Branch takes its name from the north branch of the Sunrise River, a stream in the logging country that drew crews here in the mid-eighteen hundreds. The township was organized in eighteen sixty-one and the village incorporated in eighteen eighty-one as timber crews worked through Chisago County's forests. When the logs ran out the farms took over, and North Branch settled into a quieter existence as an agricultural community.
Today it is one of Chisago County's largest cities, swelled by Twin Cities commuters who follow Interstate Thirty-Five north to find affordable land. The Sunrise River still runs through town.
