Location
Castle Rock is in Dakota County CASTLE ROCK Township, organized April 6, 1858, was named, on the suggestion of Peter Ayotte, an early settler, for a former well-known landmark, a pillar or towerlike remnant, spared by erosion and weathering, of "a sandstone rock which stands alone on a prairie in that town. This geologic formation, before its partial disintegration which left it in ruins, closely resembled a castle." Nicollet's Report, in 1843, gives its Dakota name, Inyan bosndata, Standing Rock, which, he adds, on the authority of Pierre Charles Le Sueur in the year 1700, was the Dakota name also of the Cannon River. Prof. N. H. Winchell's "Final Report of the Geology of Minnesota," in vol. 2, 1888, has a good description and historical notice of Castle Rock in chapter 3 (pp. 76-79), "The Geology of Dakota County," with three pictures of it from photographs. Its height was 44 feet above the ground at its base, and 70 feet above an adjoining hollow, but the slender pillar, 19 feet high, forming its upper part, fell in about 1900. The village of Castle Rock, section 31, had a post office, first named Vermillion in 1855, changing to Castle Rock in 1858-95; it had a station of the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad. From: Upham, Warren. Minnesota Place Names: A Geographical Encyclopedia. St. Paul, MN: Minnesota Historical Society Press, First edition 1920. Third Edition 2001. Print.
