The nearest large settlement (by North Dakota standards) is Jamestown to the south-west, followed by Valley City to the south-east, which is the county seat.

It was named for Wimbledon, London, which featured in the ancestry of John Henry Gibson, who homesteaded the land the town was built on.

[7] Gibson was born in 1844 of farming stock at East Wallingford, Vermont, but went West as a young man and obtained title to 149 acres (60 hectares) of the local prairie in 1889.

The survey line crossed his property, but initially the nearest town was pencilled in to be two miles south-east, and was to be called Hilltown.

Instead of the original platting grid conforming to the Public Land Survey System (PLSS), as most of the state of North Dakota does, it aligned to the railroad.

As the town grew, its additions conformed to the PLSS, including areas originally part of the undeveloped back three strips.

However, it was good for peace of mind -because it enabled an effective fire-fighting department to be set up in 1893 (the early town buildings were all wooden, and fire was capable of burning a whole block out or worse).

[15] Indications of the town's coming of age in the new century were the acquisition of a bank (it had two for a time), a horse racing venue and a public cemetery.

[16] It built a two-storey brick edifice on Third and Center (122 3rd Avenue), but in 1913 faced competition when the Farmers & Merchants Bank of Wimbledon was founded.

In 1920 it was 521, and this was an indication that the first generation of homesteaders was already making way for commercial growers of grain, who were beginning to combine farms in order to enjoy economies of scale.

In 1908, the town had the following businesses and services: Four churches (three survive), a school, two banks, a post office, two hotels, two restaurants, two billiard halls, a newspaper, a telephone exchange (opened 1904), a realtor, two physicians, a dentist, a veterinary, two music instructors, two barbershops, four general stores, two butchers, a bakers, a confectioners, a drugstore, a clothes shop, a jewelers, a furniture store, two hardware stores, a harness shop, two blacksmiths (ironworkers), two tin shops (non-ferrous metalworkers), two implement shops, two livery stables (horse and mule hire places), a dray line (cart hire -no motor taxis or auto hire yet), a feed supplier (ancestor of the filling station), a printer, two painters, a builder and a stonemason.

In 1908, the Midland Continental Railroad (MICO) began construction of a trunk line from Winnipeg to Galveston, Texas passing through Courtenay, Jamestown and Edgeley.

It built Edgeley to Jamestown but then, fortunately for Wimbledon, ran out of money for a bridge over the Northern Pacific Railway transcontinental line at the latter place.

It was forced to build east to a point where it could burrow cheaply through a fill carrying the main line, and then head north to Wimbledon instead of Courteney.

[13] The new railroad was finished in October 1913,[13] apart from a very short extension of 0.3 miles (0.5 km) to a location called Frazier north of the Wimbledon passenger station and in open country.

[26] In 1920 the MICO railroad moved its Wimbledon passenger station downtown from its former location on the city's eastern outskirts, on 17th Street SE.

[32] In 1968, the city had: Three churches, a school, a bank, a post office, a hotel, a restaurant, two insurance brokers, two meeting places (the American Legion Hall and the Wimbledon Community Building), a barbershop, a laundromat, two general stores (one called Jack's Red Owl), a hardware store (called Cherney's Hardware), two implement shops, a blacksmith, two oil company outlets, a filling station, a lumber yard, two truck lines, a builder, a home service company and a crop sprayer (based at the airport).

This was the end of the passenger train station at Wimbledon, and so of any public transport links since the city had no scheduled bus service.

[28] In 2012, the old MICO train station was refurbished and opened as the Midland Continental Depot Transportation Museum, featuring the life of Peggy Lee as well as the railroad.

As with most small American towns outside touristy areas, running an independent retail or service business here became very economically challenging towards the end of the 20th century.

[39] In 2020, the city had: Three churches, a bank, a post office, a general store with small restaurant and kitchenette for rental, a bar, two insurance brokers, a sleep consultant, a child care center, two farm suppliers (one a co-op with a retail outlet and diner), a car wash and two campsites.

North Dakota has a distinctive checkerboard landscape, owing to its conforming to the Public Land Survey System (PLSS) as it was developed by settlers.

Route 9 is to the south-west, on the wrong side of it, so the city's Welcome sign is on the junction between it and 3rd Avenue and is surrounded by grain elevators and silos.

The pre-settlement prairie was treeless because of bison grazing pressure, not because of climate or soil quality -as was the case further west in the state.

When they realised that Wimbledon was going to be more important, they jacked the church up, put it on rollers and used horse power to drag it to its new site just north of the town plat in 1895.

The nave side walls each have five large pointed windows with two-light tracery, separated by buttresses each of which has two sloping steps in stone.

The top of the tower's second storey and the sloping nave rooflines on each side are embellished with little floating arcades of Gothic arches in brick.

An unusual device tops the entrance portal, in the form of an acute-angled triangular gable which obscures the large tower window.

This is in reinforced concrete with pink brick infill, and is a low rectangular edifice with a distinctive shallow triangular apse occupying its front end flanked by vertical window strips.

[42] Students in the Wimbledon area attend Barnes County North Public School, which is located two miles west of Leal.