The city of Akeley was incorporated on December 30, 1916. It was developed on large tracts of timber land that had been surveyed by Thomas Barlow Walker in 1876 and purchased by him and Akeley a short time later; their Red River Lumber Company began in 1893. General settlement began about 1895, with a general store, a brick industry, and hotels; the railroad came in 1899; the post office began in 1895 as Akely in postmaster John A. Plummer's home. Plummer was born in Indiana in 1851, came with his family to Minnesota in 1855 and to Akeley Township in 1894; the name changed to the present spelling in 1927. Dairying replaced the lumber industry by the early 1900s, and the Red River Lumber Company moved its mill to California in 1917.