A post office was first established in Golden Gate, Minnesota, in 1868. The little town sprang up around John Heimerdinger’s grist mill.
One road ran through town. A cemetery was located at the southern edge of the village with the blacksmith shop, town hall, and a few houses on the western side of the road. The post office, general store, and a couple more houses on the eastern side. To the north, there was the mill along Spring Creek, a couple more houses, and a schoolhouse.
Residents often joked that the town’s name sounded much too ambitious for what was actually there. They were known to refer to the town among themselves as Podunk.
Today, there is a small place to pull off the highway where the main part of the town was once located. A historic marker and two millstones from Heimerdinger’s mill tell the story of Golden Gate.
