Andrews, Frances (1884–1961)

Frances Andrews worked as an advocate for social justice, education, and conservation in the early twentieth century. She called for preservation of the forests and lakes that became the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and experimented with land restoration in northwestern Wisconsin. Her legacy includes an endowment that continues to support social and environmental causes in the 2010s.

Beltrami Island Project

The Beltrami Island Project was a pioneering land program of the New Deal enacted across hundreds of thousands of acres in northern Minnesota. Federal and state governments worked side by side to move residents off of poor farmland as well as to restore forest across areas of the cutover region.

Beltrami, Giacomo Costantino (1779–1855)

Born in 1779 in the Lombardy region of Italy, Giacomo Costantino Beltrami achieved fame and fortune at a young age. When political pressure and personal loss spurred him to leave home, he set out to explore the world. Today he is best known for an account of his travels through present-day Minnesota, and for his claim to have found the source of the Mississippi River.

Blue Mounds State Park

Blue Mounds State Park, named for a long, high Sioux quartzite cliff, is located in southwestern Minnesota on the Iowa and South Dakota borders. The cliff, one and one-half miles long and up to ninety feet high, appeared to be blue in color to the early Euro-American immigrants who saw it from a distance. A unique herd of bison, the largest North American mammal, makes its home in the park on 533 acres of native tall grass prairie, which escaped plowing due to poor soil quality.

Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW)

The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness is located in the northern third of Superior National Forest. It is the most heavily used wilderness in the country, with about 250,000 visitors annually.

Carlos Avery Game Farm

In the mid-twentieth century, Anoka County's Carlos Avery Game Farm helped to build populations of dwindling game bird species, such as the bob white quail, chukar partridge, and ring-necked pheasant. A National Register-listed historic district since 1991, it is now part of the nearly 25,000-acre Carlos Avery Wildlife Management Area (WMA) and has become a reserve for deer, waterfowl, and other woodland animals and birds.

Carver, Jonathan (1710–1780)

Jonathan Carver was an explorer, mapmaker, author, and subject of controversy. He was among the first white men to explore and map areas of Minnesota, including what later became Carver County. While French explorers had been in the area earlier, they did not leave behind detailed maps or journals of their travels as Carver did.

Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve

Dr. William S. Cooper, head of the botany department at the University of Minnesota, urged a newly formed committee of the Minnesota Academy of Science to purchase part of the Anoka Sand Plain in 1937. The Cedar Creek Forest was a bit of natural Minnesota worthy of active protection from disturbance, he believed. He and others would help establish and protect what became the Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve, about thirty miles north of the Twin Cities.

Chandler–Lake Wilson Tornado, 1992

On June 16, 1992, an F5 tornado devastated the towns of Chandler and Lake Wilson in Murray County. It was the most powerful tornado recorded in the US that year and the eighth F5 to touch down in Minnesota, reaching wind speeds in excess of 260 miles per hour and causing over $50 million in property damage. It was one of 170 twisters that hit the Northern Great Plains during the June 1992 tornado outbreak, one of the largest such outbreaks in US history.

Children's Blizzard, 1888

The winter of 1887-1888 was ferocious and unrelenting. But nothing prepared southwestern Minnesota for the January storm that came to be known as the Children's Blizzard.

Civilian Conservation Corps Camp Rabideau F-50

Camp Rabideau is a Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) site established as part of the “New Deal” in 1933 to help alleviate unemployment during the Depression. Located in Beltrami County, it operated until 1942. It later became a satellite campus for University of Illinois forestry and engineering students; a Native American learning center; and an educational center for Chippewa National Forest visitors.

Civilian Conservation Corps in Minnesota, 1933–1942

The U.S. Congress paved the way for the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) when it passed the Emergency Conservation Work (ECW) Act in March 1933, at the height of the Great Depression. This New Deal program offered meaningful work to young men with few employment prospects. It resulted in a lasting legacy of forestry, soil, and water conservation, as well as enhancements to Minnesota's state and national parks.

Cloquet, Duluth, and Moose Lake Fires, 1918

The worst natural disaster in Minnesota history—over 450 dead, fifteen hundred square miles consumed, towns and villages burned flat—unfolded at a frightening pace, lasting less than fifteen hours from beginning to end. The fire began around midday on Saturday, October 12, 1918. By 3:00 a.m. on Sunday, all was over but the smoldering, the suffering, and the recovery.

Commercialization of Taconite

Though taconite was identified as an iron-bearing rock on the Iron Ranges of northern Minnesota long before the 1950s, it wasn’t until then that it was extracted, processed, and shipped to steel mills on the Great Lakes. As natural ore reserves diminished, taconite became an alternative source of iron that allowed the Iron Range to continue mining operations in a changing global economy.

Como Zoo

Minnesota's first zoo opened in St. Paul in 1897 with three donated deer in a fenced-in pasture. More than 100 years later Como Zoo continues its mission of animal conservation, education, and family entertainment.

Coon Rapids Hydroelectric Dam

Between 1913 and 1914 the Coon Rapids hydroelectric dam was constructed with the intent to provide power to Anoka County. The dam was shut down in 1966 after becoming too expensive to operate. It later became part of Minnesota’s environmental control program.

Cottonwood County Blizzard of 1936

Early twentieth-century winters in Minnesota were a hardship for the state’s residents―including those of Cottonwood County. Newcomers, hearing stories about the weather, soon learned that the accounts weren't exaggerated. A few storms stand out, but the blizzard of 1936 topped them all.

Creation of Itasca State Park

The Itasca forest during the late nineteenth century contained towering pines and numerous lakes. Individuals like surveyor Jacob Brower became captivated by the region and the wildlife that inhabited it. They recognized that the economic potential of northern Minnesota would change its landscape. Their effort to preserve Lake Itasca led them to contend with the lumber industry, public interests, and the politics that weaved between them.

Creation of Nerstrand Big Woods State Park, 1945

Between 1934 and 1945, many local advocacy and state legislative efforts were introduced to preserve the Nerstrand Woods as the last sizable remnant of Minnesota’s “Big Woods.” On March 28, 1945, the bill establishing the Nerstrand Woods State Park was approved by the legislature. It was signed by Governor Edward J. Thye on April 2.

Destruction of Bois Forte Ojibwe Homeland, 1891–1929

From 1890 to 1910, timber speculators and lumbermen patented most of the valuable pine lands in north-central Minnesota—the homeland of the Bois Forte Ojibwe. By the 1920s, dams and deforestation had so damaged the landscape that it could no longer support the tribe’s subsistence economy, and its members were forced onto their reservation at Nett Lake.

Flooding in Carver County, 1965

In April 1965, the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers crested at record levels, flooding cities and towns across the Upper Midwest. The disaster was especially evident in Chaska and Carver, where the Minnesota River reached its highest-recorded local level on April 12. While much of the two communities was severely damaged, residents pulled together to save the new Carver County courthouse.

Franz Jevne State Park

Franz Jevne State Park is Minnesota’s smallest state park, consisting of about 120 acres of hardwood forest and wetlands. Stretching along the southern shoreline of the Rainy River in Koochiching County, the park represents the combination of natural resources and social history that built Minnesota’s far north. It shares a rich culture with the Manitou Burial Mounds, a National Historic Site of Canada, on the river’s northern bank.

Fridley Tornado, 1965

On the night of May 6, 1965, two F4 tornadoes cut through the northwest Twin Cities metro area. Known collectively as the Fridley tornado, these twisters were the worst cyclonic disaster to hit the Twin Cities to date.

How The Environment Has Shaped the State

From Sustenance to Leisure on Minnesota Land

Expert Essay: Associate professor of history Michael J. Lansing, published in Environmental History as well as Ethics, Place, and Environment, highlights the many ways people have made use of Minnesota's flora and fauna over time and reviews the state's more recent efforts at conservation.

Ginseng Boom in Rice County, 1858–1859

The demand for American ginseng (panax quinquefolius), which grew abundantly in the “Big Woods,” reached its peak in 1859. Following a nationwide economic panic in 1857, and near crop failure for Rice County in 1858, many locals found themselves in dire circumstances. Enticed by ginseng’s profitability and local abundance, settler-colonists were quickly overcome by “ginseng fever,” which led many to dig up as much of the aromatic green root as they could. However, it was not long before excessive exploitation depleted easily accessed ginseng and the rising grain market encouraged farmers to work the land again.

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