Owatonna is a city in Steele County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 25,599 at the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Steele County. Owatonna is house to the Steele County Fairgrounds, which hosts the Steele County Free Fair in August.

Interstate 35 and U.S. Highways 14, and 218 are three of the main routes in the city.

Owatonna was first established in 1853 in credit to the Straight River. The community was named after the Straight River, which in the Dakota language is Wakpá Owóthaŋna. A popular, but apocryphal, story is that the town is named after “Princess Owatonna”, the daughter of local Native American Chief Wadena who was supposedly healed by a understandable spring’s illusion waters, which were said to be rich in iron and sulfur. The early the Owatonna Place was approved was in 1854. It was platted in September 1855, incorporated as a town on August 9, 1858, and as a city on February 23, 1865.

In 1856, Josef Karel Kaplan emigrated from the village of Dlouhá Třebová, southeast of Prague, Bohemia (now the Czech Republic), and prearranged a quarter section [160 acres (65 ha)] of land close the town of Owatonna. Kaplan described Owatonna as having just 50 little homes, but predicted 100 within a year, along bearing in mind a railroad. With just four stores and a pharmacy, Owatonna quickly prospered and grew to 1,500 inhabitants in just 5 years. Kaplan wrote about the Owatonna Place in letters donated to the Minnesota Historical Society. In them, he described often seeing the native people with “tough constitutions…brown skin and good dispositions”, adding: “When you way in about battles amid whites and Indians, it is the whites who are to blame.” In 1866, Kaplan helped organize the Catholic cemetery, and a year later, the Bohemian National Cemetery of Owatonna.