Princeton is a city in Mille Lacs and Sherburne counties in the U.S. state of Minnesota, at the junction of the Rum River and its West branch. It is 50 miles north of Minneapolis and 30 miles east of St. Cloud, at the intersection of Highways 169 and 95. The population was 4,819 at the 2020 census. A majority of its residents flesh and blood in Mille Lacs County.

In the winter of 1855 Samuel Ross, Jame W. Gillian, Dorilus Morrison, John S. Prince and Richard Chute platted the town of Princeton. The plat was officially recorded upon April 19, 1856.

Princeton’s location close the junction of the Rum River and its West branch was vital to the town’s development. In 1847, Daniel Stanchfield led an expedition to question the Rum River. The action discovered huge white pine forests upstream from Princeton’s difficult site along the Rum River, the West Branch Rum River, and their tributaries. Three sawmills were built in Princeton in the company of 1856 and 1867. Lumbermen floated logs the length of the Rum River to the Princeton mills, though most of the logs passed through Princeton to mills in Minneapolis.

Brick-making was marginal important industry in the Princeton area. The industry developed roughly two miles northeast of Princeton close beds of clay. A community known as Brickton formed in the location. From 1889 through the late 1920s several brickyards operated in Brickton, collectively producing as many as 20 million bricks per year. When the brick industry declined, Brickton ceased to exist. “Years after the last brick had been shipped from Brickton, specifications in contracts for construction of public buildings often acknowledged that it should be of Princeton brick or of equally good quality.”