Location
Pleasant Mound is in Blue Earth County PLEASANT MOUND Township was first named Otsego, April 6, 1858, but on October 14 of that year it was renamed Willow Creek, "probably an eastern name familiar to some old settler." There is a creek of this name in the east part of the township, flowing northeast into the Blue Earth River. A village named Pleasant Mound, first settled in 1857 in section 26, had a post office established in 1863 at the home of F. O. Marks, near a series of hills of drift gravel, called kames, in section 25, which then was moved to section 26 in the home of John S. Parks. The Dakota name of these hills, according to Hughes, was Ichokse or Repah Kichakse, meaning "to cut in the middle, perhaps from the fact that the ridge is divided into a number of mounds, or it may mean 'thrown down or dumped in heaps,' as the spelling is uncertain." September 6, 1865, this township was organized and was given its present name, on the suggestions of Marks and Parks, taken like that of the post office from the knolly gravel ridge. From: Upham, Warren. Minnesota Place Names: A Geographical Encyclopedia. St. Paul, MN: Minnesota Historical Society Press, First edition 1920. Third Edition 2001. Print.
