Editing Tenney, Minnesota (section)

==History==
The city of Tenney was named for the owner of its site, lumberman John P. Tenney,<ref>Upham, Warren (2001) Minnesota Place Names, A Geographical Encyclopedia, Third Edition, p629; MHS Press; {{ISBN|0-87351-396-7}}</ref> because of his willingness to give land to the railroad, which came through in 1885.  The first house was built by his son-in-law, Fred Maechler. The post office was established in 1887, the plat was filed for record with the office of the [[Register of Deeds]] in Wilkin County on August 4, 1887, and the city was incorporated on November 30, 1901. The city originally encompassed four square miles, but never grew enough to meet its boundaries, so in 1916 the farmers petitioned their land from the city, and their request was granted. According to an unpublished town history written in the mid-1980s, the city's population peaked at about 200 in 1910. Before 1910 the city boasted a church, three grain elevators, a hardware store, two mercantile stores, a butcher shop, bank, machine shop, implement shop, blacksmith shop, pool hall, lumberyard, and a hotel, which also housed the barber shop, saloon, and post office.<ref name="ReferenceA">unpublished town history compiled by the city for its 1985 centennial, author uncredited</ref> In 1909 a small post office building was erected and used until 1952, when Leonard Hardie became postmaster and moved the post office to the general store.<ref name="ReferenceA"/> Electricity arrived in Tenney in 1914, through a franchise granted to [[Otter Tail Power Company]].<ref name="ReferenceA"/>

After 1910 steady population decline was driven by the lack of significant population in outlying areas, migration to larger urban centers, and the absence of dynamic economic factors to generate wealth. The hardware store closed in 1928<ref name = Haagenson>{{cite book| last =Haagenson| first =Heidi| author-link =Heidi Haagenson| title =The Tenney Quilt: Celebrating the Women of Minnesota's Tiniest Town| publisher =Mill City Press| year =2007| location =Minneapolis, Minnesota| pages =55| isbn =978-1-934248-67-6}}</ref> and the bank, like thousands of other undercapitalized small-town banks in the United States, went out of business in 1929 or 1930 in the aftermath of the [[stock market crash]] of 1929.<ref name = "Haagenson b">{{cite book| last =Haagenson| first =Heidi| author-link =Heidi Haagenson| title =The Tenney Quilt: Celebrating the Women of Minnesota's Tiniest Town| publisher =Mill City Press| year =2007| location =Minneapolis, Minnesota| pages =68| isbn =978-1-934248-67-6}}</ref> U.S. Census bureau data indicates that the population fell to 102 in 1920, 80 in 1930, rose slightly to 89 in 1940, and fell to 62 in 1950, 35 in 1960 and 24 in 1970. As local establishments burned down or went out of business they were not replaced, and finally the post office was discontinued in 1980 when the census bureau pegged Tenney's population at 19.<ref name="ReferenceA"/> Today the only remaining business in town is the elevator. The last commercial building remaining in town was the former James Bigsby general store (later owned by G. A. Klugman), which also housed the post office until its closing in 1980.

The population reached its lowest point of 2 sometime after the 2000 census{{Citation needed|date=September 2016}}, but had risen to 5 by the 2010 census.

In late June 2011, residents of Tenney voted 2 to 1 to dissolve the town and have it become part of [[Campbell Township, Wilkin County, Minnesota|Campbell Township]].<ref name=tata>{{cite news|last=Smith|first=Mary Lynn|title=Teeny Tenney says ta-ta; residents vote 2-1 to dissolve town|url=http://www.startribune.com/local/124328119.html|access-date=June 23, 2011|newspaper=[[Star Tribune]]|date=June 22, 2011}}</ref>