At almost 36 square miles in size, Woodbury is a direct descendant of one of the congressional townships that Minnesota Territory was divided into when the territory was ceded by the Native Americans of the United States and "opened to settlement." Woodbury was originally named Red Rock, but was renamed Woodbury after Levi Woodbury, the first justice of the Supreme Court of the United States to attend law school, after it was realized that another Red Rock Township existed in Minnesota. When first settled in 1844, the land was mostly wood but was converted to farmland. The township government was organized in 1858. One of the city's few surviving 19th-century farms, the Charles Spangenberg Farmstead, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.