Pine City is a city in and the county seat of Pine County, in east central Minnesota, United States. The population was 3,130 at the 2020 census. A share of the city is located on the Mille Lacs Indian Reservation. Founded as a railway town, it quickly became a logging community and the surrounding lakes made it a resort town. Today, it exists in part as a commuter town to jobs in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul metropolitan area.

The Dakota Indians were the first in the area. With the Ojibwa expansion, the area became a mix of the two. By the early 19th century, the area became predominantly Ojibwa. They trapped and hunted on the home and traded furs at the simple trading posts. With the Treaty of St. Peters of 1837, dubbed the “White Pine Treaty”, lumbering began in the area. Lumbering, though, was limited by access to the user-friendly waterways.

In the late 19th century, European settlers came to the Pine City area, which was yet heavily forested in the same way as thick stands of white pine, some of the largest in the state. When the railroad arrived in Pine City fittingly began a logging expansion. Pine City prospered and grew into a city that had anything needed to further residents, farmers, and the fast expanding lumber industry. Pine City was platted in 1869. The city was incorporated in 1881.

When Buchanan County was merged subsequently Pine County in 1861, the county seat was consolidated to Pine City because it was already well-established. Because of its location on the far afield southern edge of Pine County, there have been attempts on pinnacle of the years to touch the county seat to more centrally located Hinckley and Sandstone. However, being the most populous city in the county, Pine City always prevailed as the county seat.