Heron Lake is a tiny city located in the state of Minnesota. With a population of 596 people and just one neighborhood, Heron Lake is the 438th largest community in Minnesota. Much of the housing stock in Heron Lake was built prior to World War II, making it one of the older and more historic cities in the country.
Heron Lake is a blue-collar town, with 36.80% of people working in blue-collar occupations, while the average in America is just 27.7%. Overall, Heron Lake is a city of service providers, transportation and shipping workers, and professionals. There are especially a lot of people living in Heron Lake who work in food service (15.73%), management occupations (8.15%), and teaching (7.30%).
Because of many things, Heron Lake is a very good place for families to consider. With an enviable combination of good schools, low crime, college-educated neighbors who tend to support education because of their own experiences, and a high rate of home ownership in predominantly single-family properties, Heron Lake really has some of the features that families look for when choosing a good community to raise children. Is Heron Lake perfect? Of course not, and if you like frenetic nightlife, it will be far from your cup of tea. But overall this is a solid community, with many things to recommend it as a family-friendly place to live.
Residents will find that the city is relatively quiet. This is because it is not over-populated, and it has fewer college students, renters, and young children - all of whom can be noisy at times. So, if you're looking for a relatively peaceful place to live, Heron Lake is worth considering.
Compared to the rest of the country, citizens of Heron Lake spend much less time in their cars: on average, their commute to work is only 19.10 minutes. This also means that noise and pollution levels in the city are less than they would otherwise be.
As is often the case in a small city, Heron Lake doesn't have a public transportation system that people use for their commute.
The population of Heron Lake overall has a level of education that is slightly above the US average for all US cities and towns of 21.84%. Of adults 25 and older in Heron Lake, 23.67% have at least a bachelor's degree.
The per capita income in Heron Lake in 2022 was $35,113, which is middle income relative to Minnesota, and upper middle income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $140,452 for a family of four. However, Heron Lake contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
Heron Lake is a somewhat ethnically-diverse city. The people who call Heron Lake home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Heron Lake residents report their race to be White, followed by Asian. Heron Lake also has a sizeable Hispanic population (people of Hispanic origin can be of any race). People of Hispanic or Latino origin account for 10.50% of the city’s residents. Important ancestries of people in Heron Lake include German, Irish, Norwegian, Danish, and English.
The most common language spoken in Heron Lake is English. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish and African languages.
The way a neighborhood looks and feels when you walk or drive around it, from its setting, its buildings, and its flavor, can make all the difference. This neighborhood has some really cool things about the way it looks and feels as revealed by NeighborhoodScout's exclusive research. This might include anything from the housing stock to the types of households living here to how people get around.
Uncrowded roads, rural America and space to be the individual you are. If you like these characteristics, this neighborhood may fit you. With just 8 residents per square mile, is less crowded than 97.4% of all U.S. neighborhoods.
Each year, fewer and fewer Americans make their living as farmers, foresters, or fishers. But the neighborhood truly stands out among U.S. neighborhoods. According to exclusive NeighborhoodScout analysis, this neighborhood has a greater proportion of farmers, foresters, or fishers than 96.5% of all American neighborhoods. This is truly a unique cultural characteristic of this neighborhood.
Did you know that the neighborhood has more German and Danish ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 56.7% of this neighborhood's residents have German ancestry and 3.4% have Danish ancestry.
There are two complementary measures for understanding the income of a neighborhood's residents: the average and the extremes. While a neighborhood may be relatively wealthy overall, it is equally important to understand the rate of people - particularly children - who are living at or below the federal poverty line, which is extremely low income. Some neighborhoods with a lower average income may actually have a lower childhood poverty rate than another with a higher average income, and this helps us understand the conditions and character of a neighborhood.
The neighbors in the neighborhood in Heron Lake are middle-income, making it a moderate income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis reveals that this neighborhood has a higher income than 56.7% of the neighborhoods in America. In addition, 8.5% of the children seventeen and under living in this neighborhood are living below the federal poverty line, which is a lower rate of childhood poverty than is found in 54.4% of America's neighborhoods.
The old saying "you are what you eat" is true. But it is also true that you are what you do for a living. The types of occupations your neighbors have shape their character, and together as a group, their collective occupations shape the culture of a place.
In the neighborhood, 36.1% of the working population is employed in executive, management, and professional occupations. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is manufacturing and laborer occupations, with 30.3% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants (18.3%), and 10.6% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 95.7% of households. Some people also speak Spanish (3.8%).
Culture is shared learned behavior. We learn it from our parents, their parents, our houses of worship, and much of our culture – our learned behavior – comes from our ancestors. That is why ancestry and ethnicity can be so interesting and important to understand: places with concentrations of people of one or more ancestries often express those shared learned behaviors and this gives each neighborhood its own culture. Even different neighborhoods in the same city can have drastically different cultures.
In the neighborhood in Heron Lake, MN, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as German (56.7%). There are also a number of people of Irish ancestry (9.1%), and residents who report Norwegian roots (8.2%), and some of the residents are also of Mexican ancestry (5.0%), along with some English ancestry residents (4.6%), among others.
How you get to work – car, bus, train or other means – and how much of your day it takes to do so is a large quality of life and financial issue. Especially with gasoline prices rising and expected to continue doing so, the length and means of one's commute can be a financial burden. Some neighborhoods are physically located so that many residents have to drive in their own car, others are set up so many walk to work, or can take a train, bus, or bike. The greatest number of commuters in neighborhood spend between 15 and 30 minutes commuting one-way to work (47.0% of working residents), which is shorter than the time spent commuting to work for most Americans.
Here most residents (71.1%) drive alone in a private automobile to get to work. In addition, quite a number also carpool with coworkers, friends, or neighbors to get to work (10.3%) and 8.2% of residents also hop out the door and walk to work for their daily commute. In a neighborhood like this, as in most of the nation, many residents find owning a car useful for getting to work.