page_title: Austin, Minnesota
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Austin, Minnesota / History
caption_attribution_description: English: 1920 postcard made by Curt Teich &amp; Company of Chicago, showing the Homel Plant, Austin, Minnesota, United States
context_page_description: Austin is a city in, and the county seat of, Mower County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 24,718 at the 2010 census. The town was originally settled along the Cedar River and has two artificial lakes, East Side Lake and Mill Pond. It was named for Austin R. Nichols, the area's first European settler.
  Hormel Foods Corporation is Austin's largest employer, and the town is sometimes called "SPAM Town USA". Austin is home to Hormel's corporate headquarters, a factory that makes most of North America's SPAM tinned meat, and the Spam Museum. Austin is also home to the Hormel Institute, a leading cancer research institution operated by the University of Minnesota with significant support from the Mayo Clinic.
  In 2015 Austin was named one of the "Top 10 Affordable Small Towns Where You'd Actually Want to Live" and one of the "Best Small Cities in America".
context_section_description: Fertile land, trapping, and ease of access brought first trappers and then the early pioneers to this region. The rich gameland attracted Austin Nichols, a trapper who built the first log cabin in 1853. At that time there were "about twenty families in the area." More settlers began to arrive by wagon train in 1855, and by 1856 enough people were present to organize Mower County. In 1856 the settlement adopted the name Austin, in honor of its first settler. That year the first hotel opened to travelers and the first physician, Dr. Ormanzo Allen, moved to town. The first newspaper, the Mower County Mirror, was started in 1858.
  Mills, powered by the Cedar River, were the first industries in Austin. They provided much-needed flour and lumber. Growth was slow during the first two decades, but the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul railroad arrived in the late 1860s, hastening economic development. The town's first schoolhouse was constructed in 1865 and the first bank opened the following year.
  In 1891 George A. Hormel opened a small family-owned butcher shop in Austin, which eventually grew into today's Fortune 500 company, Hormel Foods. By 1896 area doctors, with the help of local Lutheran congregations, formed the Austin Hospital Association, later becoming St. Olaf Hospital, and (since 1995) part of Mayo Clinic Health System.
  In 1897 Charles Boostrom opened Austin's first college, the Southern Minnesota Normal College and Austin School of Commerce. It closed in 1925 and the city was without an institution of higher education until Austin Junior College opened in 1940. In 1964 it became part of the State College and University System and is now Riverland Community College.
  In 1913 the Minnesota Legislature made a 50-acre parcel of land into Horace Austin State Park. At the time, the land was "one of the beauty spots of Southern Minnesota, but of late years has not been cared for and in places the banks have been disfigured by dumping along the shore of the stream," according to the bill's author, Senator Charles F. Cook. The park was converted to a state "scenic wayside" in 1937, then transferred to city ownership in 1949.
  In the 1930s Austin Acres was built with funding from the Subsistence Homesteads Division of the Department of the Interior. The Austin Parks Board was formed in the 1940s to oversee the growing number of green spaces within the city.
  In 1971 the Jay C. Hormel Nature Center, a 500-acre nature preserve also including the 60-acre Hormel Arboretum, was purchased from Geordie Hormel with a state grant. In 1973 the city opened Riverside Arena, the city's first indoor ice arena, now home to a variety of ice activities including the Austin Bruins junior hockey team.
  In August 1985, 1,500 Hormel meatpackers went on strike at the Austin plant after management demanded a 23% cut in wages. A protracted battle between union employees and Hormel continued until June 1986, one of the longest labor struggles of the 1980s. In January 1986 some workers crossed the picket lines, leading to riots; the conflict escalated to such a point that Governor Rudy Perpich called in the National Guard to keep the peace. The strike received national attention and a documentary, American Dream, was filmed during the 10-month conflict. The movie was released in 1990 and won Best Documentary Feature at the 63rd Annual Academy Awards. Dave Pirner of the Minneapolis band Soul Asylum wrote a song about the strike, "P-9". It is on the band's 1989 album Clam Dip & Other Delights. Hormel never gave in to the workers' demands, and when the strike ended in June 1986, 700 employees were left without work.
caption: A postcard from the 1920s showing the Hormel meatpacking plant
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