Cottage Grove, MN
Cottage Grove wildfire risk explained
Out of every US place USFS scores, Cottage Grove lands at the 33rd percentile for wildfire risk to structures — close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — a figure built from its 14,159 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Cottage Grove's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 33rd percentile nationally.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
USFS classifies 70.6% of Cottage Grove's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 17.7% Direct and 11.8% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one. At 14,159 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where Cottage Grove ranks
Cottage Grove scores 33rd nationally and 41st within Minnesota — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Cottage Grove ranks 21,082 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,062 by building count (1 is largest). Within Minnesota alone, it ranks 540 of 914 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Minnesota on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
At the 33rd national percentile, Cottage Grove rates moderate for wildfire risk — well short of the threshold where insurers have been withdrawing coverage, though comparing a quote costs nothing either way.
Hardening a home in Cottage Grove
Cottage Grove's 70.6% Minimal-exposure share means structure-level hardening matters less here than it would elsewhere — still worth the low-cost basics, per the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Cottage Grove's 33rd-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Cottage Grove, see the exposure-zones guide.