Black Hammer is so-named because Knud Olsen Bergo came upon the prairie bluff after a wildfire blackened its sides, and Money Creek was named after a gust of wind blew the contents of an unlucky early settler’s wallet into the creek. These and other little gems of history are found in Houston County Place Names, an excerpt of a 1920 volume on Minnesota place names.
NorwegianRidge.com also contains a database of 1,342 named places in the Norwegian Ridge area. In addition to covering both Minnesota and Iowa place names, this database contains many more places and types of features (such as churches, schools, parks and trails), but offers less information on each place.
