Editing Litchfield, Minnesota (section)

==History==
Immigration to the county was slow until the St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Manitoba Railroad, later called the St. Paul and Pacific and then the Great Northern, started coming through the area in 1869. The first train to arrive was a construction train on August 13, 1869.

The town site was laid out in 1869, with agriculture and agriculture-related industries making up a large base of the economy.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Halvorson |first=Darlene |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MHVMtAEACAAJ |title=Meeker County Memories |publisher=Meeker County Historical Society |year=1984 |location=Litchfield, Minnesota |pages=105}}</ref><ref name=WPA>{{cite book |author=<!--The Federal Writer's Project--> |orig-date=1938|date=1985 |title=WPA Guide to Minnesota |url= |publisher=[[Minnesota Historical Society]]|location=[[Saint Paul, Minnesota]] |pages=385 |isbn=0873517121}}</ref>

The town's first post office opened in a home on September 20, 1869. It later moved to the northwest corner of Sibley Avenue and Second Street, to a clothing store owned by the town's first official postmaster.

===Town name===
The settlers living in the area named their new community "Ness" on April 5, 1858, after the home of many of the first settlers: the [[parish]] of [[Nesbyen_(municipality)|''Næs'']] in the traditional region of [[Hallingdal]], Norway.<ref name="indrev">{{cite web |last1=Shaw |first1=Terry |title=Looking Back at Litchfield: A dry tale ... when Litchfield voted for prohibition |url=https://www.crowrivermedia.com/independentreview/news/entertainment/looking-back-at-litchfield-a-dry-tale-when-litchfield-voted-for-prohibition/article_217142aa-b5b4-11ec-9333-4fbc09a2f4c7.html |website=Litchfield Independent Review |access-date=17 October 2024 |language=en |date=13 April 2022}}</ref>

Litchfield got its name from a man named Electus Bachus Darwin Litchfield. He was a contractor, an investor, and a stockholder in the St. Paul and Pacific Railroad, which originally went from [[St. Paul, Minnesota|St. Paul]] to [[St. Cloud, Minnesota|St. Cloud]] and was built from 1862 to 1864.<ref name=WPA/> Later, his investments provided the means for building a more southern line through Meeker County to [[Breckenridge, Minnesota|Breckenridge]].

The village of Litchfield was originally called several different names, including "Round Lake", "Ripley", and finally "Ness". Litchfield was originally a portion of a congressional township named Round Lake, but most people called it Ripley after Ripley Lake one mile from its center.{{Citation needed|date=January 2024}}

The people of Ness were permitted to vote on the actual chartered village name of their township. Electus Litchfield donated grants of $2,000 each to various religious sects in town to build churches, the Episcopal and Presbyterian churches being two of them. The Presbyterian Church, Litchfield's first church, was built in 1870.

The majority of the 350 people voted for the name Litchfield over Ness, and the township of Litchfield was chartered as a village on February 29, 1872. The first village council meeting was held on April 5, 1872, in the railroad's land office. Jesse Vawter Branham, Jr. was elected the President of the Council.<ref name="indrev" />

===Early history as village===
{{unreferenced section|date=November 2022}}
By 1871, the village had grown to double the population of [[Forest City, Minnesota|Forest City]], a community {{convert|7|mi|0}} to the northeast. The railroad put up a {{convert|25|by|60|ft|adj=on}} one-story building called an "immigrant's reception house". In addition to Litchfield, the railroad in the 1870s put immigrant houses along its lines in villages including [[Willmar, Minnesota|Willmar]], [[Benson, Minnesota|Benson]], [[Morris, Minnesota|Morris]], and [[Breckenridge, Minnesota|Breckenridge]]. The houses were "fitted up with cooking stoves, washing conveniences, and beds." Newly arriving immigrants were given shelter in the reception houses and the chance to buy food and clothing at cost from the railroad while they looked for land in the area.

While most sidewalks in town were made of wood, the first cement sidewalk in Litchfield was laid in 1895 in the 200 block of Sibley Avenue.

===Early history as city===
The village of Litchfield incorporated as a city in 1943.