Wikipedia:WikiProject Minnesota/GNIS cleanup

Per Project:Reliability of GNIS data there are many (sub)stub articles on Minnesota places that have been created sourced to GNIS entries. A lot of them falsely designate things as "unincorporated communities", which is several GNIS importers' catch-all equivalent to the the GNIS catch-all feature classification code "populated place". GNIS has many errors, and all of these (sub)stubs need cleanup.

Detailed problem statement

The simple truth is that Minnesota does not have "unincorporated communites". Per the Census of Governments and Brill & Kaplan 2011, p. 55, figures being rough because they have gone up and down over the past 40 or so years:

It has approximately 900 cities, which we have in Category:Cities in Minnesota.
It has approximately 1800 townships, which we have in Category:Townships in Minnesota.

The overwhelming majority of the state is either a home-rule city, a statutory city, or a town/township under a board of supervisors; the rest (most of which is in the north of the state) being "unorganized territories", which we have Category:Unorganized territories in Minnesota for.

Category:Unincorporated communities in Minnesota should actually have zero members. Anything there is either a mislabelled city (sic!), faulty GNIS data, or faulty articles.

Questions and answers

But I have a source that confirms that something is a village!: The Project:Notability (geographic features) criteria talk about legal recognition. If you have a source that says something is a village, especially in the present tense after 1973, it is not legal recognition. Minnesota legally abolished villages and boroughs on 1974-01-01.^{(Hellmann 2006, p. 562 and LM 1973)} Legally, there is no such thing as a village and hasn't been for 50 years.
Cities? That's ludicrous!: It's not the only United States state where even a mere hundred people could legally be a city. There were 85 cities with populations of under 100 people in Minnesota in 2010.^{(Nobles 2012, p. 4)} The definition of "city" around the world is fairly arbitrary. Minnesota has home-rule cities that have adopted a charter, and statutory cities that are unchartered. The city of Solway, Minnesota has 96 people and is surrounded by the town/township of Lammers Township, Minnesota.
So Cloverton, Minnesota is a statutory city?: Yes. It was platted and donated in 1911 by the Tri-State Land Company. And now you know that the statement about it being named by a second company 5 years later is false.
Cities within towns?: Yes. There's even legal provision for townspeople to vote a statutory city out of the town.

Towns/Townships in Minnesota

The United States Bureau of the Census has consistently said from at least as far back as 1936 to the 21st century that "[t]he terms 'town' and 'township' are used interchangeably in Minnesota with reference to township governments"^{(USBS 1936, p. 46)}.

When what was now the state of Minnesota was one of several Territories of the United States after the Louisiana Purchase, it was surveyed into rectangular areas named "townships". Old 19th century sources (e.g. Kiester 1896) and the 19th century Laws of the State of Minnesota (e.g GLSM 1860, p. 113) consistently call these survey townships congressional townships because it was of course the United States federal government that invented them. After statehood, provision was made so that congressional townships could be incorporated as units of local government below the county level, an optional so-called Township Government system.

Strictly speaking, Minnesota local government townships (a.k.a. civil townships) are towns.^{(Adams 2003, p. vi)} The legislation from 1860 to the current Minnesota Statutes of the 21st century consistently uses the word "town" and says that legally these are corporations and their governing boards of supervisors are called "Town Board of name".

Rather than a town being a settlement larger in size than a village and smaller than a city, as our town article would have it, a town in Minnesota is actually countryside, a rural area and explicitly not a population centre or an urban area. The urban areas used to be villages and cities and are now only cities.

Relevant legislation

S.F. 655, Chapter 123. Laws of Minnesota. 1973. p. 233..
Cities, Classes (01, Chapter 410). Minnesota Statutes. 2023.
Statutory Cities (Chapter 412). Minnesota Statutes. 2023.
Towns, Corporation may sue, make public contracts (02, Chapter 365). Minnesota Statutes. 2023.
Separation from statutory city (44, Chapter 365). Minnesota Statutes. 2023.
Town Board powers listed; formal name (01, Chapter 366). Minnesota Statutes. 2023.
"An Act to provide for Township Organization". General Laws of the State of Minnesota. Earle S. Goodrich, state printer. 1860.

Resources

Minnesota Natural Resource Atlas: Cities. Townships, and Unorganized Territories

This will at least tell you what town, city, or unorganized territory a GNIS-imported article is in. But being based upon OpenStreetMap it is not a source, merely a guide for figuring out what a faux "unincorporated community" likely really is.

Upham, Warren (2001). Minnesota Place Names: A Geographical Encyclopedia (3rd ed.). Minnesota Historical Society Press. ISBN 9780873513968.

This is an edition of Upham, Warren (1920). Minnesota Geographic Names: Their Origin and Historic Significance. Minnesota Historical Society. (which is Minnesota Geographic Names: Their Origin and Historic Significance at the Internet Archive) that was revised by "the staff of the Minnesota Historical Society". Unfortunately, it is unclear when during those 80 years the revisions were made, as this edition consistently uses "village" for places in Minnesota, almost 30 years after "villages" stopped being villages in Minnesota.

Arcadia Publishing books

As usual, these are broad guides to where the history will be found. Here are just some of them:

Foster, Earl J.; Troolin, Amy (2011). Northern Pine County. Images of America. Arcadia Publishing. ISBN 9780738583440.
Johnson, Nathan (2010). Pine City. Images of America. Arcadia Publishing. ISBN 9780738577401.
Day, Holly; Wick, Sherman (2016). Stillwater, Minnesota: A Brief History. Brief history. Arcadia Publishing. ISBN 9781625857873.
Swift County Historical Society (2000). Swift County, Minnesota. Images of America. Arcadia Publishing. ISBN 9780738507965.
Grand Marais Historical Society (2009). Grand Marais. Images of America. Arcadia Publishing. ISBN 9780738560663.
Freeborn County Historical Society (1999). Freeborn County, Minnesota. Images of America. Arcadia Publishing. ISBN 9780738503035.

If the local historians that Arcadia usually uses have something, that probably means that there are older, full histories and newspapers and other sources to be found and consulted, such as, again to pick just some:

Curtiss-Wedge, Franklyn (1912). History of Fillmore County, Minnesota. Chicago: H.C. Cooper, Jr.
Curtiss-Wedge, Franklyn (1909). History of Goodhue County, Minnesota. Chicago: H.C. Cooper, Jr.
Curtiss-Wedge, Franklyn (1919). History of Houston City, Minnesota. Chicago: H.C. Cooper, Jr.
Rose, Arthur P. (1908). An Illustrated History of Nobles County, Minnesota. Northern History.
Mitchell, William Bell (1915). History of Stearns County, Minnesota. Chicago: H.C. Cooper, Jr.
Fritsche, Louis Albert (1916). History of Brown County, Minnesota: Its People, Industries and Institutions. Walsworth.

Gazetteers

These are useful for telling whether an "unincorporated community" is a post-town/post-village or only a post office. Lippincott's, in particular, has a uniform scheme for this. Many do not use the Minnesotan meaning of town, though, and long pre-date the conversion to city.

Baldwin, Thomas; Thomas, Joseph (1855). Lippincott's pronouncing gazetteer. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott. hdl:loc.gdc/gdclccn.tmp96023479. LCCN tmp96023479.
Lippincott's gazetteer of the world. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & co. 1880. hdl:loc.gdc/scd0001.00193145826. LCCN 02002832. OL 24447594M. (Lippincott's gazetteer of the world at the Internet Archive)
Wisconsin and Minnesota State Gazetteer, Shippers' Guide and Business Directory for 1865–'66. G.W. Hawes. 1865.
Leighton, Hudson (1998). Gazetteer of Minnesota Railroad Towns, 1861–1997. Heritage Collection. Roseville: Park Genelogical Bookx. ISBN 9780915709618.

Bibliography

"Minnesota". Local Government Structure in the United States. State and Local Government Special Studies. United States Bureau of the Census. 1936.
Kiester, Jacob Armel (1896). The History of Faribault County, Minnesota: From Its First Settlement to the Close of the Year 1879 : the Story of the Pioneers. Harrison & Smith.
Hellmann, Paul T. (2006). "Minnesota". Historical Gazetteer of the United States. Routledge. ISBN 9781135948597.
Brill, Marlene Targ; Kaplan, Elizabeth (2011). "How the Government Works". Minnesota. It's My State!. Marshall Cavendish. ISBN 9781608700547.
Adams, John S. (2003). Urbanization of the Minnesota Countryside: Population Change and Low-density Development Near Minnesota's Regional Centers, 1970–2000. Transportation and regional growth study report. Vol. 10. University of Minnesota Center for Transportation Studies.
Stangl, Alexis (January 2017). "Structures of Counties, Cities, and Towns" (PDF). Senate Counsel, Research, and Fiscal Analysis, State of Minnesota.
Nobles, James (2012). "Consolidation of Local Governments" (PDF). Office of the Legislative Auditor.