Northfield is a city in Dakota and Rice counties in the State of Minnesota. It is mostly in Rice County, with a small portion in Dakota County. The population was 20,790 at the 2020 census.

Northfield was platted in 1856 by John W. North. Local legend says that the town was named for John North and a Mr. Field. North, realizing that the town straddled the proposed northern affix of Rice county, went to the confess capital to lobby to have an effect on the connect one mile north. Northfield was founded by settlers from New England known as “Yankees” as share of New England’s colonization of what was next the far west. It was an to the fore agricultural center with many wheat and corn farms. The town along with supported lumber and flour mills powered by the Cannon River. As the “wheat frontier” moved west, dairy operations and diversified farms replaced wheat-based agriculture. The region has in the past moved away from dairy and beef operations. Today it produces substantial crops of corn and soybeans, as without difficulty as hogs. The local cereal producer Malt-O-Meal is one of the few remnants of Northfield’s historic wheat boom. The city’s motto, “Cows, Colleges, and Contentment”, reflects the move of the dairy farms as well as its two protester arts colleges, Carleton College and St. Olaf College.

Since to come in its history, Northfield has been a middle of complex education. Carleton College (then Northfield College) was founded in 1866 by the Minnesota Conference of Congregational churches whose Congregation consisted of the “Yankee” settlers who had largely founded the town. These were people descended from the English Puritans who settled New England in the 1600s. Carleton soon received its campus on the northern edge of town. St. Olaf College was founded in 1874 on the western edge of town by Norwegian Lutheran immigrant pastors and farmers who were aflame to maintain their faith and culture by training teachers and preachers. These two institutions, which today enroll greater than 5,000 students, make Northfield a instructor town.

In the 1970s, completion of Interstate 35 six miles west of Northfield enabled the momentum of the Minneapolis–Saint Paul metro area south of the Minnesota River. The downtown grain elevator in style its last load of corn in 2000 and was torn by the side of in 2002. Residential lump has been hasty since the mid-1990s. Northfield Hospital, which opened in 2003 in the town’s northwest corner, is in Dakota County, so fixed because doling out reimbursement rates are more generous for Dakota County than for Rice County.