Get Pre-Approved for a Mortgage in Stillwater, MN

Stillwater was the world’s largest lumber city — before it became a state

The first settler arrived in 1839 — a trader named Joseph Renshaw Brown who called the place Dakotah. The real founding came four years later, on October 26, 1843, when John McKusick and three partners purchased a riverside claim and formed the Stillwater Lumber Company, named after a town in Maine. McKusick chose the name for the calm, lake-like stillness of Lake St. Croix at that bend in the river. He built a water-powered sawmill on a narrow plateau between Myrtle and Mulberry streets, supplied by a flume that dropped water 150 feet from Lake McKusick atop the bluff. The settlement that formed around it was the first of its kind in what would become Minnesota.

In August 1848, with Wisconsin entering the Union and leaving the lands west of the St. Croix without government, delegates gathered at the corner of Myrtle and Main streets in Stillwater for a territorial convention. They appointed Henry Sibley to petition Congress for the organization of Minnesota Territory. Minnesota became a Territory on March 3, 1849. When the convention divided three institutions among the territory’s leading cities, Stillwater’s importance was confirmed: Saint Paul received the capital, Minneapolis received the University of Minnesota, and Stillwater received the territory’s first prison. The Minnesota Territorial Prison opened in 1853 — and held Cole, Jim, and Bob Younger, three of the Younger brothers of the James-Younger Gang. Stillwater was incorporated as a city on March 4, 1854 — the same day as Saint Paul — and was at that moment the largest city in Minnesota.

The lumber boom that followed was extraordinary. Logs floated down the St. Croix from northern forests were collected at the St. Croix Boom Site two miles upstream, sorted by "boom rats," and formed into rafts for the mills lining the riverfront. By the 1880s Stillwater had become the world’s largest lumber producer, its mills turning out thousands of railcars of white and Norway pine that powered construction across the American West. The boom ended in 1914 when the last lumber rafts left Lake St. Croix. Population fell from 13,000 in the 1880s to 7,000 by 1940. Recovery came after World War II when good roads put residents in commuting range of the Twin Cities.

What remains is remarkable: more than 100 Heirloom Homes, 21 buildings on the National Historic Register, the Stillwater Commercial Historic District on the National Register, the Washington County Historic Courthouse built 1870 (Minnesota’s oldest functioning courthouse), a Carnegie library from 1902, and the 1931 Historic Lift Bridge spanning the St. Croix — now part of a 5-mile trail loop. Stillwater is 20 miles east of St. Paul, part of the Minneapolis-Saint Paul metropolitan area, and the county seat of Washington County. Population 19,394 (2020).

Who buys in Stillwater — and what each profile needs

What to gather — exact list confirmed after the first call

A jumbo buyer in Stillwater’s bluff-top segment needs different documentation than a first-time buyer using FHA. A veteran needs a Certificate of Eligibility. A buyer targeting a renovation property needs scope documentation. The 20-minute initial call confirms the right program and the exact document list — so nothing is gathered twice.

Every step from verified letter to keys in hand

What Stillwater buyers ask about getting pre-approved