Editing Wadena County, Minnesota (section)

==History==
[[File:Wadena County Historical Society Museum entrance, Wadena, Minnesota.jpg|thumb|left|Wadena County Historical Society Museum]]The newly organized [[Minnesota Legislature]] created the county on June 11, 1858. A settlement began at the future city of [[Wadena, Minnesota|Wadena]] in 1871,<ref>{{Cite book |last=Upham |first=Warren |url=https://archive.org/details/minnesotageogra00uphagoog |title=Minnesota Geographic Names: Their Origin and Historic Significance |publisher=Minnesota Historical Society |year=1920 |page=[https://archive.org/details/minnesotageogra00uphagoog/page/n579 562]}}</ref> and by 1873 a post office was in operation there.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Wadena County |url=http://www.postalhistory.com/postoffices.asp?task=display&state=MN&county=Wadena |access-date=August 11, 2015 |publisher=Jim Forte Postal History}}</ref> The settlement was designated the county seat when the state legislature organized the county on February 21, 1873. The town took the name of a trading post {{convert|15|mi|km}} to the east, which had flourished for several years but was largely abandoned by that time. The trading post was named for Chief Wadena, an [[Ojibwe]] Indian chief of the late 19th century in northwestern Minnesota.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Wadena's Namesake |url=http://wadenacountyhistory.org/wadena-town-history/general-history |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160529113611/http://wadenacountyhistory.org/wadena-town-history/general-history/ |archive-date=May 29, 2016 |access-date=July 14, 2011 |publisher=Wadena County Historical Society}}</ref>

Wadena County comprises 15 townships, first surveyed in 1863. Each township is six miles square and contains 36 sections of land (with the exception of Bullard and Thomastown, which have a slightly different configuration because their boundaries are aligned with the Leaf and Crow Wing Rivers, respectively). In 1857 Augustus Aspinwall laid out a town site in what is now Section 15, Thomastown township, at the junction of the Crow Wing and Partridge rivers, and named it Wadena. When the railroad went through the area in 1872, it ran about three miles south of this site and the town quickly withered away.

During the last part of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th, there were two railroads in the county. The Northern Pacific main line running east to west through Wadena was built in 1872, while the Great Northern branch or "K" line which ran from Sauk Centre to Bemidji, via Sebeka and Menahga, was completed in 1891. The line from Park Rapids to Long Prairie was abandoned in 1984 while the rest was abandoned in the early 1970s with the northern section from Park Rapids to Cass Lake since converted to the Heartland Trail.

Wadena used to be served by the Greyhound Bus Line, Elliott Bros. Transportation Co., Northwest Transportation Co., Red Bus Line, Gray Bus Line, Liederbach Bus Co. and Mercury Bus line.

There are four historical societies in the county, including the Wadena County Historical Society, the Verndale Historical Society, the Sebeka Finnish American Historical Society and the Menahga Historical Society.

In 2010 there were four organized school districts in the county: Wadena, Verndale, Sebeka and Menahga. In 1906 there were 52 school districts in the county, most of which were rural schools.

Sebeka once had Minnesota's second-largest creamery. Over the years there have been approximately ten creameries in the county and ten cheese factories.<ref>[http://www.wadenacountyhistory.org Wadena County Historical Society]</ref>