Map of Hawley city, Minnesota

Hawley is a town in Clay County, Minnesota, United States, along the Buffalo River. The population was 2,219 at the 2020 census. The town went through six quick name changes after 1871 until, in 1872, it was finally named after Thomas Hawley Canfield, an officer in the Northern Pacific Railway, which laid out the town. General George Custer visited the town in 1876. The incident was recalled in WCCO Television’s short film Incident at Hawley, which aired during America’s bicentennial year of 1976.

In 2007, the town started an ad campaign called “Hawley Would” (a pun on “Hollywood”). The campaign focuses on both Hawley’s small-town atmosphere and its proximity to the Fargo-Moorhead metropolitan area; Hawley is 22 miles from downtown Fargo.

Hawley was at one time settled by a colony of immigrants from Yeovil, Somerset; among these was Elisabeth Chant, later a painter in Minneapolis.

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Geography

Hawley is east of Moorhead, at the intersection of the Buffalo River, U.S. Route 10, and the Burlington Northern Railroad. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has an area of 2.53 square miles (6.55 km), all land. A number of pastures and farmlands are nearby.

The land is flat (mostly treeless) farmland west of the city, with hillier and more forested land to the east. There is much wildlife, including deer, moose, waterfowl, raccoon, skunk, wolf, fox, and other indigenous species. The indigenous trees in the forests are mostly leafy, with very few natural evergreens.

See also