ST. CLOUD, the county seat, first settled in October 1851, was platted in the fall of 1854 by John L. Wilson, "familiarly called the 'Father of St. Cloud.'" The history of the county says: "The choosing of St. Cloud as the name for his new town was due to the fact that while reading the life of Napoleon I, Mr. Wilson had observed that the Empress Josephine spent much of her time at the magnificent palace at St. Cloud, a few miles out of Paris, a circumstance which appealed so strongly to his fancy that he adopted it."

The city with Benton and Sherburne Counties is the only city in the state that is located in three counties; three communities, all developed at the same time, were merged into one: (1) Middle Town, platted in 1854 by John L. Wilson, is the central business district and was primarily settled by German Catholics; (2) Lower Town was developed on land purchased by George Fuller Brott for his St. Cloud Township Company; his partners included Charles T. Stearns, for whom the county is named, and Joseph Wilson, brother of John, the Middle Town developer, who was later involved in development of East St. Cloud; and (3) Upper Town was platted by Sylvanus P. Lowry as Acadia and later replatted as Lowry's Addition to St. Cloud. While John Wilson's area did not develop as fast as the other two, he was the only one who remained in the area; he served in both the territorial and state legislatures, held numerous positions, and founded the community of St. Augusta. The post office began in 1855; it had a station of the Great Northern Railway. The city was incorporated as a town March 1, 1856, and as a city March 6, 1868.

Alluding to the granite quarries in the wards east of the river, St. Cloud is called "the Granite City," and in 1916 the street department automobile, used for street sprinkling, bore the popular slogan, conspicuously painted in large letters, "Busy, gritty, Granite City."