The National Trust for Historic Preservation placed Red Wing on its 2008 distinctive destinations list because of its "impressive architecture and enviable natural environment.

"[9] In the early 1850s, settlers from Mississippi River steamboats came to Red Wing to farm in Goodhue County.

[citation needed] In 1873, Red Wing led the country in wheat sold by farmers.

[10] The warehouses in the port of Red Wing could store and export more than a million bushels.

[10] Once the railroads connected southern Minnesota with Minneapolis and Saint Anthony, where the largest flour mills were built, the port at Red Wing lost prominence.

[13][14] In 1889, the federal government established a Mdewakanton Sioux Indian reservation along the Mississippi River to free up land for settlers.

[citation needed] Red Wing's first settlers built small mills, factories, and workshops like those they were familiar with in New England and the upper Midwest, whence many had come.

[10] Numerous immigrants from Germany, Ireland, Norway and Sweden settled in this area and were also skilled craftsmen.

Some early industries were tanning and shoe-making, while other businesses manufactured farm equipment, bricks, barrels, boats, furniture, pottery, and clothing buttons.

[10] Red Wing was once home to Hamline University, founded in 1854 as Minnesota's first institution of higher education.

It closed in 1869 because of low enrollment due to diversion of students to the American Civil War.

[15] Red Wing also was the home of Minnesota Elementarskola, a Swedish elementary school that was the predecessor to Gustavus Adolphus College, a private liberal arts college of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA).

The school was founded in Red Wing in 1862 by Eric Norelius, moved to East Union in 1863, and then was built in St. Peter in 1873–76.

The Red Wing Pottery and stoneware industry began in 1861, when county potter John Paul discovered the large, glacially deposited clay pit beds in the northwest of the city, close to Hay Creek.

[16] It used clay from the area of the Hay Creek headwaters, close to Goodhue, near a hamlet named Claybank.

A railroad branch line was built to carry clay to Red Wing for this industry.

The institution was the subject of "Walls of Red Wing", a folk song by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan.

In the last half of the 20th century, the United States Army Corps of Engineers built Lock and Dam No.

Such projects have revitalized Mississippi River traffic for shipping grain and coal.