Brown County (pop. 25,893) is just east of Redwood County. It’s bordered on the north by the Minnesota River.
There are nine Brown counties in the U.S., most of them in the Midwest. Four of them are named for Jacob Brown, a general in the War of 1812; Minnesota’s is the only one named for Joseph Renshaw Brown, a 19th-century trader, businessman, and politician.
The county seat is New Ulm (pop. 13,522), named for Ulm, Germany.
New Ulm was once known as the Polka Capital of the Nation; it’s now the home of the Minnesota Music Hall of Fame.
In Schonlau Park, New Ulm has a German glockenspiel – a 45-foot, free-standing carillon clock tower.
Actress Tippi Hedren was born in New Ulm in 1930.
The Sons of Hermann, a German-American fraternal order, erected the Hermann Heights Monument in New Ulm in 1897. The monument is 102 feet high, with a stairway to the base of the statue.
The former post office in New Ulm, built in 1909, is now the Brown County Historical Society.
The town of Sleepy Eye (pop. 3,599) was named for the 19th-century Sisseton Sioux Chief Sleepy Eye (Ishtakhaba).
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