St. Vincent: The End of the Line

St. Vincent occupies the extreme northwestern corner of Minnesota, where the Red River meets the Canadian border. Fur traders had posts here as early as the late seventeen hundreds, and Peter Grant established a trading post in seventeen ninety-three.

The town became a railroad target when James J. Hill and his partners purchased the bankrupt Saint Paul and Pacific Railroad in eighteen seventy-eight. Their group pushed the line to the Canadian border, and St. Vincent became the northern terminus of what would grow into Hill's Great Northern Railway empire.

The community was incorporated in eighteen fifty-seven, before Minnesota became a state, and carries a saint's name. Today fewer than one hundred people live here, directly across the Red River from Pembina, North Dakota.