Brookston, Minnesota.
Typical home $203,747 (+3.3% in a year). Duluth, MN-WI metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$504 (+89%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $6,580 +3%
- $197,167$203,747 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $16,577 +9%
- $187,170$203,747 since Sep 2021
Monthly payment to buy the typical home
Home value × that month's 30-year mortgage rate, 20% down, principal and interest. This is the line households feel: prices and rates compound each other.
- Brookston$1,069
- Minnesota$1,831
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 41 years.
Typical home values in Brookston, MN rose 3.3% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Brookston, St. Louis County, Minnesota
Brookston is a city of 118 people in St. Louis County. Unemployment in St. Louis County was 5.4% in August 2026, and the county had 0.4% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in St. Louis County work in schools and health care, then shops.
Written by AI Claude Haiku 5.5 wrote this on 22 October 2026 from the figures here, a list of nearby places and what it knows. It can be wrong or out of date.
What it’s like
The place. Brookston is a small city in St. Louis County in northeastern Minnesota. It is among the smaller places in the county, so daily life tends to be quiet and neighbors often know one another. Winters here are colder than in most of the country, with heavy snowfall, and summers are warm enough to bring the outdoors back into daily life.
Work. Many residents work in schools, hospitals and social care, which are among the main employers in the area. Others work in shops, in restaurants, hotels and entertainment, or in professional and business services. Work tends to be close to home, since many of these jobs are found in the wider county as well as in town.
Things to do. The Cloquet River runs in or beside town, so it is one of the easiest places to walk or spend an afternoon outdoors. The Pine River is a short drive away and suits a quieter day outing. Jay Cooke State Park, a state park a longer drive away, offers a larger place to explore on foot.
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What people in St. Louis County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. St. Louis County had 95,078 jobs in 2025, 0.4% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 18° and lows near 2°; warmest in July, with highs near 78° and lows near 54°. About 71 inches of snow and 33 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Cloquet weather station, 12 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in St. Louis County
- St. Lukes Hospital of DuluthGeneral hospital2,059FTE
- St. Marys Medical CenterGeneral hospital1,859FTE
- Smdc Medical CenterGeneral hospital1,607FTE
- University of Minnesota-DuluthUniversity or college1,539
- Duluth Public School DistrictSchool district1,287FTE
- St. Louis CountyGeneral government815
- Essentia HealthMedical office management services746
- Range Regional Health ServicesGeneral hospital692FTE
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 343 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 41,741 people in all across the county; Brookston has none of its own. Hospitals come from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023), colleges from IPEDS (NCES, 2023–24) and school districts from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24); FTE marks full-time equivalent staff. Not listed: many offices and banks, which need not report to OSHA; military bases, whose staff OPM withholds; and, in about half the states, city and county governments.
Natural hazards
- LightningRelatively high
- Inland floodingRelatively high
- HailRelatively moderate
- Strong windRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Brookston’s census tracts, against the rest of the country; all of them together, relatively moderate. It is meant for planning, not a substitute for a local risk assessment or a flood map: FEMA’s index.
From the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2020 census and its American Community Survey (2020–2024 five-year estimates), and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A survey, so each figure has a margin of error, and figures it is not sure of are left out. More on St. Louis County and the Duluth, MN-WI metro.
Brookston home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Brookston$203,747
- Minnesota$348,778
- United States$366,157
When this market ran hot
Each cell is that month's year-on-year home-value growth. Read left to right, top row is the latest year — the 2021–22 band is the boom.
Zip codes with a Brookston address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Brookston — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.