Thanks to the limestone bluffs and hills that surrounded Red Wing, the town became a Minnesota lime-making and stone quarrying center from 1870 to 1910. Those forty years are sometimes known as the city’s “Stone Age.”

As a trader, businessman, treaty negotiator, and legislator, Henry Mower Rice played a crucial role in Minnesota’s statehood and the development of St. Paul. At the same time, Rice was responsible for policies that benefited himself and his business partners at the expense of Minnesota’s Indigenous populations.

A devastating cyclone hit Rochester on August 21, 1883. It killed dozens of people and injured many more, but emergency health services in the tornado's aftermath also led to the eventual creation of the Mayo Clinic.

Minneapolis historically has been home to a small but vibrant African American population. From the 1930s to the 1970s, an African American neighborhood flourished on the city’s Southside, between East Thirty-Fourth and Forty-Sixth Streets and from Nicollet Avenue to Chicago Avenue.

The St. Paul Resettlement Committee formed in October of 1942 to assist with the relocation of Japanese Americans from the concentration camps established by the US government in March of 1942. It was one of thirty-five such committees that operated across the country during World War II.

The St. Peter Armory was the first state-owned armory built in Minnesota. Architecturally, the structure is an excellent example of Minnesota's so-called "early period” armories, all of which predate World War I. The building is also important because it served as a center of military and social affairs in St. Peter.

The earthquake that rattled a large portion of central and northern Minnesota on September 3, 1917, while small by historical standards, fascinated many Minnesotans. In the days after the quake, exaggerated accounts and faulty expert analysis reflected the state’s inexperience with geological convulsions.

Nestled into a small valley between the mansions of Dayton's Bluff and St. Paul proper, Swede Hollow was a bustling community tucked away from the prying eyes of the city above. It lacked more than it offered; houses had no plumbing, electricity, or yards, and there were no roads or businesses. In spite of this, it provided a home to the poorest immigrants in St. Paul for nearly a century.

Wards 1 and 3 in Northeast Minneapolis have been the center of the Twin Cities’ Ukrainian community since the late nineteenth century. Vibrant and long-lasting cultural institutions—including churches, Kramarczuk’s Sausage Company, and the Ukrainian American Community Center—have made Ukrainians in Northeast one of the city's most visible groups of European immigrants, in spite of their relatively small population.

For much of the twentieth century, a section of Southeast Minneapolis was called the University District. By the 1980s, parts of the same area were known as Marcy-Holmes and Dinkytown. The emergence and disappearance of the District as a place name occurred as the neighborhood’s relationships with the rest of the city and the nearby university changed.

On August 20, 1904, a large cyclone hit the City of Waconia, changing the face of the city forever.

On the evening of May 2, 1878, the Washburn A Mill exploded in a fireball, hurling debris hundreds of feet into the air. In a matter of seconds, a series of thunderous explosions—heard ten miles away in St. Paul—destroyed what had been Minneapolis' largest industrial building, and the largest mill in the world, along with several adjacent flour mills. It was the worst disaster of its type in the city's history, prompting major safety upgrades in future mill developments.