CHAPTER 4: COMMUNITY AND SCHOOL PROFILES COMMUNITY PROFILE The City of New York Mills is located in northeast Otter Tail County on the eastern fringes of the Lakes Region of west central Minnesota. New York Mills is 154 miles northwest of the state capitol in Saint Paul. While the area is the ancestral lands of the Dakota Sioux and the Ojibwa or Anishinaabe, the city was founded in 1884 by Finnish immigrants who first came to the region a decade earlier. Founded originally as a rural agrarian and timber community, today New York Mills is best known as the home of the Lund Boat Company which has its offices and factory right in town. Agriculture still makes up a large portion of the land use around the city with resorts and vacation homes dotting the lakes to the west. New York Mills sits almost perfectly on the border between the Eastern Deciduous Forest Biome and the Coniferous Forest Biome which dominates
Figure 18: New York Mills location in Minnesota relative to major landmarks.
northeastern Minnesota. Fittingly New York Mills also sits upon the Gulf of Mexico / Hudson Bay Continental Divide. The Class I BNSF-North Pacific Railroad Line traverses through the center of New York Mills while U.S. Highway 10 has been routed around the core of the city to the north.
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