Hokah ( HOH-kə) is a city in Houston County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 580 at the 2010 census. Hokah is located near the confluence of the Root and Mississippi rivers, opposite La Crosse, Wisconsin, and is allocation of the La Crosse metropolitan area.

Prior to the start of Europeans, the Place that is now the city of Hokah was a Native American concurrence of the Dakota people. The city’s name, which is said to be a Native American word meaning gar fish or the Dakota make known for the handy Root River, derives from the chief of the settlement, Chief Wecheschatope Hokah. There were, at one time, more than thirty Indian mounds throughout the Place including several effigy mounds, though most have been lost.

The first recorded European settler in Hokah was Edward Thompson, who arrived in 1851 bearing in mind his wife and family and constructed a flour mill and dam upon Thompson Creek, a tributary of the Root River that runs through the city and now bears his name. The first town meeting was held in 1858, and the town was officially incorporated into a village by the come clean of Minnesota on March 2, 1871.

By 1875, Hokah had several major industries including four flour mills, cooper shops and a railroad depot, driven by the city’s location upon the navigable Root River near where it empties into the Mississippi River as competently as the Root River Valley Railroad which ran through the north fade away of the village from genial La Crescent to Rochester, Minnesota. The railroad depot was equipped for anything types of railroad work, including the construction of railroad locomotives and coaches. The depot employed as many as 500 workers and build up as many as 300 coaches in one year. As of 1880, Hokah furthermore had a plow factory, a furniture factory, three blacksmith shops, a shoe shop, two drug stores, and six general stores.