Hastings is a city mostly in Dakota County, Minnesota, of which it is the county seat, with a part in Washington County, Minnesota. It is near the confluence of the Mississippi, Vermillion, and St. Croix Rivers. Its population was 22,154 at the 2020 census. It is named for the first elected commissioner of Minnesota, Henry Hastings Sibley.

The advantages of Hastings’s location that led to its indigenous growth are that it is well-drained, provides a great riverboat port, and is near to a hydropower resource at the falls of the Vermillion River. Other sites closer to the river confluence are either too swampy (Dakota County) or too hilly (Washington County and Pierce County, Wisconsin).

U.S. Highway 61 and Minnesota State Highways 55 and 316 are three of Hastings’s main routes.

In the winter of 1820, a military reserve from Fort Snelling fixed the area around Hastings to protect a blocked shipment of supplies. Lieutenant William G. Oliver camped in an Place that came to be known as Oliver’s Grove; in 1833 a trading herald was opened there. After the Treaty of Mendota of 1851 opened the Place for white settlement, Oliver’s Grove was surveyed and incorporated as a city in 1857, a year previously Minnesota’s gate to the Union. The similar year, Hastings was named the county seat of Dakota County. The name “Hastings” was drawn out of a hat from suggestions placed in it by several of the native founders.