Crookston was first settled in 1872, organized in 1876, and incorporated in 1879. By 1880, the enterprising young town known as the "Queen City of the Northwest" had 1,500 inhabitants. Its location on the Red Lake River and in the fertile Red River Valley secured its tenure as the Polk County seat. Crookston first served the northwest as a trading center, then as a grain shipping point, a lumbering center with large sawmills, a brewery and liquor distribution base, and a railroad hub with terminal facilities, a roundhouse, and office headquarters. It was also a banking center of the prospering northwest. By 1915, Crookston's population of over 8,000 people made it the 14th-most-populated city in Minnesota.