 In 1857 Augustus Aspinwall laid out a town site in what is now Section 15, Thomastown township, at the junction of the Crow Wing and Partridge rivers, and named it Wadena.When the railroad went through the area in 1872 it ran about three miles south of this site and the town quickly withered away.During the last part of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th, there were two railroads in the county.