Gaylord boxes in Dakota County

Dakota runs from the river towns of Hastings and South St. Paul down to Lakeville and Northfield. It has the metro's big distribution parks, Minnesota's largest UPS hub in Eagan, a refinery at Pine Bend and flour mills on the Vermillion.

Dakota is the county of docks. Parcel hubs, grocery distribution and cereal mills all move boxes by the trailer, so the questions that matter are about the dock: heated or open, how many days a stack stands, and whether the trailer is the storage. Those three answers decide the wall count more than the product does.

Dakota County at a glance

Dakota County's page gives 439,882 people at the 2020 census over 587 square miles, with Lakeville (72,812), Eagan (68,642) and Burnsville (63,943) the largest cities on its 2021 estimates. It says 54 percent of residents work outside the county and that the county has absorbed some industry and jobs from the core cities.

The page records rail arriving in 1866 via the Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis and Omaha Railroad, which shipped grain to millers, and calls the South St. Paul stockyards and meat-packing plants the world's largest in their day. Roads named include Interstates 35, 35E, 35W and 494, U.S. 52 and 61, and County Road 42. The Mississippi, Minnesota, Vermillion and Cannon rivers all touch the county.

Roads and rail

I-35 splits into 35E and 35W at the county's southern end, I-494 and US 52 run through it, and the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers form its edges.

Towns in Dakota

Dakota's towns lean on distribution, parcel and logistics (5), food and ingredients (5), chemicals, lubricants and refining (3) and agriculture and co-ops (3). The largest towns are Lakeville, Eagan and Burnsville.

Eagan

Population 67,240 (Census estimate, July 2024). Warehouses and distribution centres sit in the north of the city; UPS 1,500 and Coca-Cola Bottling 750 staff in the 2025 city report.

Thomson Reuters employs 4,500 in Eagan (2025 financial report), ahead of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota (3,000), the US Postal Service (2,100, estimated), Prime Therapeutics (2,100), UPS (1,500), Ecolab (1,400) and Coca-Cola Bottling (750). The UPS hub is Minnesota's largest, there is a Coca-Cola Midwest bottling facility, and warehouses and distribution centers sit in the sparsely populated northern part of the city.

Burnsville

Population 64,864 (Census estimate, July 2024). Manufacturing is the city's second-largest industry.

Burnsville's largest employer is Independent School District 191, followed by Fairview Ridges Hospital, UTAS Sensor Systems, Northern Tool + Equipment, Pepsi-Cola Bottling, YRC and Mackin Educational Resources. Manufacturing is the second-largest industry, with Abdallah Candies and UTC Aerospace Systems in the industrial areas of the southwest and north.

Lakeville

Population 77,971 (Census estimate, July 2024). Airlake Industrial Park covers 1,500 acres.

Airlake Industrial Park in Lakeville covers 1,500 acres, one of the state's largest contiguous industrial parks, home to as many as 200 companies and an estimated 4,500 employees. Post Consumer Brands has been headquartered in the city since 2015. Airlake Airport, a regional reliever with one runway and an ILS approach, is managed by the Metropolitan Airports Commission.

Inver Grove Heights

Population 36,226 (Census estimate, July 2024). CHS headquarters; the Pine Bend Refinery straddles the Rosemount line.

Cenex/CHS Cooperatives employs 1,600 in Inver Grove Heights (2021 report), then the school district (668), Gertens (435), the city (421) and Travel Tags (350). CHS, an agricultural cooperative, is headquartered here.

Rosemount

Population 30,581 (Census estimate, July 2024). Pine Bend Refinery is the area's largest private employer.

The Pine Bend Refinery, built by the Great Northern Oil Company in 1955 on the Rosemount and Inver Grove Heights border and now owned by Flint Hills Resources, is the area's largest private employer. In the 1940s the Gopher Ordnance Works made smokeless rifle and cannon powder here, and the University of Minnesota acquired part of that land in 1947, now UMore Park or the Rosemount Research and Outreach Center.

South St. Paul

Population 20,590 (Census estimate, July 2024). The Saint Paul Union Stockyards closed in 2008.

South St. Paul's main historical industry was the Saint Paul Union Stockyards, with Swift & Company and Armour Meats the two largest employers at the stockyards' peak. The stockyards have been closed since 2008 and much of the area is being redeveloped, though the page flags that claim as needing a citation.

Hastings

A Canadian Pacific spur still serves the Ardent Mills flour mill above Vermillion Falls.

Hastings' page is mostly about movement. The Mississippi is described as a major barge thoroughfare, Lock and Dam No. 2 was completed in 1930 by the Army Corps of Engineers and hosts what is described as the nation's first commercial, federally licensed hydrokinetic power facility, and the St. Croix meets the Mississippi near the town. A ConAgra grain elevator stands at Vermillion Falls, where an Ardent Mills mill sits on a Canadian Pacific spur.

Farmington

A Kemps dairy packing plant operates in the city.

Farmington's facilities include the Minneapolis Air Route Traffic Control Center and a Marigold Kemps packing plant. A proposed 2.5-million-square-foot data center on a former golf course by the developer Tract, which projects 275 to 300 permanent jobs and $16 to $18 million a year in property tax, while opponents cite a potential use of more than 2 million gallons of water a day; the project is under legal challenge.

Apple Valley

Uponor is the largest manufacturer, with 400 employees in the city's 2016 report.

Apple Valley's top employers in the 2016 financial report: Independent School District 196 (1,414), Target (520), Uponor (400), Dakota County (384), Walmart (350), Augustana Care (265), Menards (250), Wings Financial Federal Credit Union (225) and the Minnesota Zoo (220). Uponor appears here as a piping manufacturer, the only plainly industrial name on the list.

Northfield

Population 21,316 (Census estimate, July 2024). Cereal plant is a remnant of the wheat-milling era.

Northfield is a milling town: Malt-O-Meal, now MOM Brands, is a local cereal producer and one of the few remnants of the historic wheat boom, and the old Ames Mill plant was originally powered by the dam on the Cannon River. The downtown grain elevator took its last load of corn in 2000 and was torn down in 2002. Agriculture today centres on corn, soybeans and hogs, with dairy and beef declining.

West St. Paul

TapeMark is the main manufacturer.

West St. Paul's major employers are TapeMark, a medical adhesives manufacturer with approximately 300 employees, Dakota County government at the Northern Dakota County Service Center and Courthouse (approximately 500) and Independent School District 197 (approximately 300) as its major employers.

Questions, answered