Rush City: Named for the Rushes

Rush City was born in eighteen seventy along the route of the Lake Superior and Mississippi Railroad, later part of the Saint Paul and Duluth, the line that was stitching northern Minnesota to the capital. Settlers named it for the abundance of bulrushes, the tall aquatic plants that filled the marshes along Rush Creek. The village was incorporated in eighteen seventy-four and served as a small but steady service town for the farms and logging operations scattered through Chisago County. Today Rush City is one of the larger towns along this stretch of Interstate Thirty-Five north of the Twin Cities, a modest gateway community between the metro sprawl and the lake country to the north.