Brainerd Wedding

Brainerd is a city in Crow Wing County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 13,178 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Crow Wing County6 and one of the largest cities in Central Minnesota. Brainerd has been assigned ZIP code 56401. Brainerd is known for the Brainerd International Raceway.

Originally Ojibwe territory, Brainerd was first seen by white men on Christmas Day in 1805, when Zebulon Pike stopped there while searching for he headwaters of the Mississippi River. Crow Wing Village, a fur and logging community near Fort Ripley, brought settlers to the area in the mid-1800s.

In these early years the relationship between the settlers and the Indians was complicated. The most famous example of this tenuous relationship was he so-called "Blueberry War" of 1872. Two Ojibwe were hanged for allegedly murdering a missing girl, and when a group of Indians approached the town, troops from nearby Fort Ripley were called in to prevent a potential reprisal. As it turns out, however, the Ojibwe only wanted to sell blueberries and the settlers narrowly avoided a bloody misunderstanding.