The area around Hastings was first settled by a military detachment sent from Fort Snelling to guard a blocked shipment of supplies in the winter of 1820. A Lieutenant William. G. Oliver camped in an area that would come to be known as Oliver's Grove. After the Treaty of Mendota of 1851 opened the area for white settlement, the Oliver's Grove area was surveyed and was incorporated as a city in 1857, four years after admission of the state of Minnesota to the union. The name "Hastings" was drawn out of a hat having been one of the suggested names placed in by four of the original founders (the middle name of Henry Sibley). Hastings and nearby township of Nininger Township, MinnesotaNininger were areas of tremendous land speculation in the late 19th century, being billed by Ignatius L. Donnelly as the potential "New Chicago". The Panic of 1857 would put an end to this dream. Hastings is the site of the second oldest surviving county courthouse in the state (after Stillwater, MinnesotaStillwater) which was finished in 1871 at a cost of $63,000. The county administration began the process of moving to a new facility from 1974 until 1989, when the City of Hastings purchased the old building. It was rededicated in 1993 as city hall. A spiral bridge over the Mississippi River was built in 1895 that was designed to slow down horse-drawn traffic from the opposite side of the river as it entered downtown. The novel design became a tourist attraction for the town, but was demolished in 1951 to make way for the Hastings High Bridgecurrent span that could accommodate truck traffic. Nevertheless, the spiral bridge is still remembered as a nostalgic landmark. In 1930 the Army Corps of Engineers completed the first Lock and Dam No. 2 at Hastings, part of the canal lock systems on the Mississippi that stretch from Minneapolis to St. Louis, MissouriSt. Louis. Fasbender Clinic, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, is a city landmark. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hastings%2C_Minnesota