Ruthton is a city in Pipestone County, Minnesota, United States.

[5] Ruthton was platted in 1888, and named for the wife of a member of the town company.

[8] The Redwood River flows through the city as an intermittent stream near its headwaters.

[9][10] Minnesota State Highway 23 serves as a main route in the community.

Ruthton is located in Minnesota's 7th congressional district, represented by Collin Peterson, a Democrat.

Final Harvest: An American Tragedy, by New York Times reporter Andrew H. Malcolm, is about the farm crisis of the 1970s and the murder of two Ruthton bankers by a man who had lost his farm, Jim Jenkins, on September 29, 1983.

Jenkins, along with his son, Steve, managed to lure the president of the Buffalo Ridge State Bank in Ruthton, Rudy Blythe Jr., and the bank's loan officer, Toby Thulin, onto a lonely farmhouse road.

Jenkins murdered both bankers, then fled to Texas, where he walked into an open field, carefully took his eyeglasses off, put a shotgun into his mouth and pulled the trigger.