Songfacts®:

• All 10 tracks from the Bon Iver album are named after, or describe, a place or location. This song appears to be titled after Minnesota Junction, an unincorporated community located, in the town of Oak Grove, Dodge County, which is located in eastern Wisconsin. The band's home state is Wisconsin, though they are based in the central western county of Eau Claire.
• The song finds Bon Iver leader Justin Vernon crooning, "Fall is coming soon, a new year for the moon and the Hmong here." The Hmong are an indigenous people of South East Asia, some of whom after emigrating to the States ended up in Eau Claire.
• Bon Iver was recorded at April Base Studios, a remodeled veterinarian's clinic in rural Fall Creek, Wisconsin. Vernon told Q magazine why he felt the need to return home to Wisconsin to record the album. "I wish I could do stuff on the road and pop it into a computer, but the studio gave me the opportunity to work on sounds I wasn't equipped to make anywhere else. I needed the audio set up, keyboards, gear - because I would start the songs for this record with sounds. I had to work backwards, in a way. The lyrics sort of came as the melodies and songs came together. I'm not positive that the process was the same as For Emma - but it made sense for the voice of the songwriter to be the same."