In the winter of 1820, a military detachment from
Fort Snelling settled the area around Hastings to guard a blocked shipment of supplies. Lieutenant William G. Oliver camped in an area that came to be known as Oliver's Grove; in 1833 a trading post was opened there. After the
Treaty of Mendota of 1851 opened the area for white settlement, Oliver's Grove was surveyed and incorporated as a city in 1857, a year before Minnesota's admission to the Union. The same year, Hastings was named the
county seat of Dakota County. The name "Hastings" was drawn out of a bucket from suggestions placed in it by several of the original founders. In the mid-19th century, Hastings,
Prescott, Wisconsin, and the adjacent township of
Nininger were areas of tremendous
land speculation.
Ignatius L. Donnelly promoted the area as a potential "New Chicago." The
Panic of 1857 put an end to this dream. The speculation and panic caused the cities' growth to be less than expected given their location at the confluence of two significant rivers; today, their combined population is approximately 25,000, and all that remains of Nininger is a few building ruins. Hastings has Minnesota's second-oldest surviving county
courthouse (after
Washington County Courthouse,
Stillwater), finished in 1871 at a cost of $63,000. The county administration began moving to a new facility in 1974, and in 1989 the City of Hastings purchased the old building. It was rededicated in 1993 as
City Hall. In 1895 a spiral bridge was built over the Mississippi River, designed to slow down horse-drawn traffic as it entered downtown. The novel design became a tourist attraction, but the bridge was demolished in 1951 because it could not handle modern vehicles. The 1951 bridge was itself demolished and
its replacement opened in 2013. In 1930, the
Army Corps of Engineers completed
Lock and Dam No. 2 at Hastings, part of the
canal lock systems on the Mississippi that stretch from
Minneapolis to
St. Louis. Lock and Dam No. 2 is the site of the nation's first commercial, federally licensed hydrokinetic power facility, a partnership between the City of Hastings and Hydro Green Energy, LLC of Westmont, Illinois.
Fasbender Clinic, designed by
Frank Lloyd Wright, is a city landmark.
Railroads Hastings's name was affixed to two major Minnesota railroads, the Hastings & Dakota Railway and the Stillwater & Hastings Railway. In 1867 civic leaders William LeDuc, John Meloy, Stephen Gardner, E. D. Allen, and P. Van Auken—with financial backing from investors John B Alley, Oliver Ames, William Ames and Peter Butler—incorporated the Hastings & Dakota Railway with the goal to "cross the Rocky Mountains and meet the Pacific Ocean". In the 1870s the H&D was completed from Hastings to the
South Dakota border at
Ortonville. During this time, the H&D became part of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad (
Milwaukee Road) and became known as the H&D Division of the Milwaukee Road. The H&D also built the famous "Lake Street Depression" in
Minneapolis, which gave the H&D two districts around Minneapolis and St. Paul: the south district from Hastings to
Cologne via
Chaska, and the north district from Hastings to Cologne via
St. Paul/Minneapolis. The H&D never made it to the
Pacific on its own, but the H&D Division became the mainline of the Milwaukee's Coast Extension to
Seattle, which the Milwaukee completed in 1909. In 1880 a new branch line, the Stillwater & Hastings, was built between the two cities. It funneled logging and agriculture products from Stillwater to Hastings, allowing Hastings to become an important railroad switching hub. In 1882 the Milwaukee Road gained control of the S&H and operated it as a profitable branch line. The Milwaukee abandoned the S&H line in 1979, after 99 years of service. The north H&D district remains intact from Minneapolis to Ortonville—except for the Lake Street Depression—and is operated by the
Twin Cities & Western Railroad from Minneapolis to
Hanley Falls and by
BNSF Railway between Hanley Falls and Ortonville. Nearly all of the south H&D district was abandoned over time, with the last section between
Shakopee and Cologne abandoned in the early 1970s. The
Canadian Pacific Railway spur from downtown Hastings to the Ardent Mills mill atop
Vermillion Falls is all that remains of the south H&D district. The old H&D trestle over the Vermillion River at Hastings—which was replaced four different times—is now part of a bicycle path. The H&D bridge over the
Minnesota River at Chaska remained until 1995, when the
Army Corps of Engineers removed it as the Chaska levees were rebuilt. Canadian Pacific Railway now operates the former Milwaukee mainline through town as well as the Ardent Mills spur. ==Geography==