(from The Great Northwestern Magazine, December 1909)

Napoleon Hamel “We believe that no town of the size of Delano can boast of a cleaner, more attractive and more modern bakery than you have right here. People who are acquainted with Napoleon Hamel and who have occasion to patronize him always remark that his place is one of the cleanest, most inviting and up to date that they have seen. Besides this the store and shop are large and finely equipped and only the best of goods are handled. Mr. Hamel has been established here for the past seven years, although he has had much more experience in this line, and during that time he has always met the demands of the public in the most satisfactory manner. He carries an excellent stock of the choicest cakes, pies, pastries, rolls and baker’s goods of every variety. He ships goods of this nature to Watertown, Waverly and Montrose. He is prompt and courteous in attending to his patrons, and employs only the most competent and obliging help. He is a man of honest convictions, more than ordinary discernment and business enterprise and sagacity.”

(from the History of Wright County Minnesota Volume II 1915)

The brief business directory lists Napoleon Hamel, baker.

Napoleon Hamel was born in Quebec, Canada in 1872; he immigrated to the United States and Minnesota in 1886. The Minneapolis City Directories for 1890 and 1891 list Napoleon as a cook in the French Hotel. Napoleon was working as a cook in Minneapolis in the 1895 census. The Minneapolis Directories for 1899 and 1900 show that he was in the restaurant business at 1009 Washington Avenue N. Napoleon married Virginia Scott on August 23, 1897, in Hennepin County. The couple moved to Delano in 1902, and the 1905 census lists Napoleon as a baker. He continued to have a bakery in Delano until he passed away September 23, 1927. Napoleon and Virginia had four children: Bernadette Angela, Pearl Alice, Marie Eugenie, and Joseph Napoleon. Bernadette married Edward Henry Dunn; their daughter Virginia married Clarence “Buzz” Matter. Pearl married Alvin C Weihe in 1936. Marie married Francis Harney, and Joseph married Mary T. Kelly. Napoleon’s wife Virginia passed away in 1925; she and Napoleon are buried in Calvary Cemetery in Delano.

Ad from the Delano Eagle, Sept. 26, 1926

The Delano Home Town Bakery opened in September 1930, next to the (old) City Hall. Swanberg and Cox, proprietors.

This ad appeared in the Delano Eagle in April 1933.

(Ads from the Delano Eagle, March, 1933)

(from the Special Edition - The Eagle, 1946)

“Mr. and Mrs. Roy Hanson have operated for the past 15 years. Starting on Third Street in 1933, after a few months they moved downtown where they have since been located. Presently the bakery is situated next door to Marshall-wells store. It is currently the only retail bakery in Delano.”

This building is the Ziebarth/Lebovsky Block. It currently houses, in 2026, DownTown Social. Hanson’s Bakery was in the south half of the building.

Hanson’s Bakery, 1946

New Delano Bakery Will Be Ready for Business Saturday

“The new Delano bakery next to the city hall will open for business on Saturday, May 8, according to the owner, Mr. Hilmer Hansen. Mr. Hansen, who came here from Hutchinson where he had been operating a bakery for his father, has had many years’ experience in the bakery business. Something a little different in the line of bakery goods will be offered in the Danish Kringle. This according to Mr. Hansen, looks like a giant pretzel but is a form of coffee cake.”

The building next to city hall was a bakery for several years, with several different proprietors, but became a Red Owl store in 1940.

Sept.1937

Kerney and Genevieve Jacobson opened the Delano Bakery in 1948.

Cornelius ("Kerney") and Genevieve Jacobson first opened the original Delano Bakery in 1948.  Kerney was a cook in the army during World War II, and upon returning from the war, he and his wife, Gen, along with their 4-year-old son, Dale, opened the famous “Delano Bakery” in Delano, Minnesota.  

The bakery quickly became very successful, and for the next 40 years, Kerney and Gen made countless loaves of bread for all the schools in the area, hundreds of thousands of doughnuts for all their regular customers from locals to non-locals, and thousands of beautifully decorated cakes for graduations, birthdays, and especially weddings.   Kerney would do all the baking and Genevieve would decorate as many as 15+ wedding cakes in a single weekend.  In over 40 years, neither of them missed a single day of work.   They stayed very busy and the bakery only continued to become more well known and well-respected.  Genevieve remembers the day she realized they had baked over one million loaves of bread.

The original Delano Bakery remained open for almost 40 years before finally closing its doors in 1988, when Dale and his family moved from Delano to Forest Lake, Minnesota. (historical information from www.thedelanobakery.com)

The Delano Bakery

The Delano Bakery was located on the corner of Bridge Avenue and Second Street. The small pocket park, next to Joe McDonald’s Photography Studio. (The Delano Bakery is the two-story building with the outside staircase in the left of this 1963 photo.)

When the Delano Bakery closed on the corner of Bridge and Second, it opened in a new building around the corner, between Bridge and Railroad avenues. Interestingly, that was almost in the same location where Napoleon Hamel had his bakery.