Crispus Attucks Home, St. Paul

In 1910 there were over sixty orphanages and homes for the aged operated by and for African Americans in the United States. Minnesota had one of them: St. Paul's Crispus Attucks Home. The home was named for the African American patriot killed in the Boston Massacre of 1770. It served the community for six decades, beginning in 1906 during the Jim Crow era and ending in 1966 at the peak of the civil rights movement.

Crookston City Hall

At the southeast corner of Crookston’s historic downtown business district stands the old city hall, built in 1899 to house the booming city’s police department, fire department, and government offices.

Crookston’s American Legion Auxiliary Drum and Bugle Corps

Led by “Mr. Music,” Theodore W. Thorson, Crookston’s all-female drum and bugle corps won four straight American Legion Auxiliary state championships, from 1932 to 1935.

Crown College

Crown College, like other biblical colleges in Minnesota, seeks to provide a Bible-based education for Christian leadership. Teaching is focused on training lay people for Christian service. Crown is one of only four colleges in the United States affiliated with the Christian and Missionary Alliance denomination.

Cultural Society of Filipino Americans of Minnesota (CSFA)

The Cultural Society of Filipino Americans of Minnesota (CSFA) was founded on September 17, 1972, when forty-two Minnesotans signed its constitution and by-laws. They adopted as their mission the preservation and sharing of Filipino customs, culture, and traditions. To realize that mission, they organize dance performances, social gatherings that offer traditional Filipino fare, educational opportunities, fundraising efforts, and disaster relief events through their own Disaster Relief Fund.

Currie Line Railroad

Railroads played an important role in the development of Cottonwood County. The 38.6-mile railway called the Currie Line hastened the growth of agriculture and establishment of towns in the northern part of the county in only a decade.

Custom Dressmaking, 1880–1920

Throughout the nineteenth century, custom dressmaking was one of the few socially acceptable professions for women of multiple ages and classes, including immigrants, young farm girls, wives, and widows. Dressmaking establishments—run and staffed primarily by women—provided creative labor, living wages, and career advancement opportunities for businesswomen and skilled workers alike.

Cuyuna Iron Range

The Cuyuna Iron Range is a former North American iron-mining district about ninety miles west of Duluth in central Minnesota. Iron mining in the district, the furthest south and west of Minnesota’s iron ranges, began in 1907. During World War I and World War II, the district mined manganese-rich iron ores to harden the steel used in wartime production. After mining peaked in 1953, the district began to focus on non-iron-mining activities in order to remain economically viable.

Dacotah Building

A Cathedral Hill landmark, the Dacotah Building in St. Paul is best known for the businesses that have thrived under its roof, including pioneers of the local food movement.

Dakota, Ho-Chunk, and French Indigenous Communities Between St. Paul and Prairie du Chien, ca. 1300–1865

The stretch of land between present-day St. Paul, Minnesota, and Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, served as a highway for Native and mixed-ancestry (metis) fur traders—especially those with French heritage or kinship ties—during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Building on Native trade networks, they created new communities, adapted to cultural change, and contributed to Minnesota’s recognition as a state in 1858.

Dan Patch

Sired by a champion pacer and born in 1896, Dan Patch was bred to be a racehorse. At first glance, though, his chances didn't look too good. He had long legs, knobby knees, and worst of all, a sweet disposition—not considered an asset in the hypercompetitive world of harness racing.

Danebod

Part of a Danish settlement near Tyler, the Danebod church and folk school have been a center of Danish American life for over a century. Danebod is a Danish word meaning "one who mends or saves the Danes." The Danebod community is home to programs that preserve, teach, and celebrate Danish American culture on the Minnesota prairie.

Dar Al-Hijrah Mosque, Minneapolis

Dar Al-Hijrah was founded in 1998 in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood in Minneapolis and is the oldest Somali mosque in Minnesota. It signals the latest of many phases of immigration to the state, from Scandinavians and other Europeans in the nineteenth century to East Africans in the 1990s and 2000s. The congregation has a unique commitment to civic education and advocates for the idea that Islam is compatible with democracy through its sister organization, the Islamic Civic Society of America.

Daughters of Norway

The largest secular organization of Norwegian American women to date, the Daughters of Norway, was founded in Minneapolis in 1897. Its creators worked to form a group that focused on women’s needs, their interests, and their connections to Norway.

David and Wanda Park House, Bemidji

The David Park House in Bemidji is an outstanding example of residential Streamline Moderne architecture. It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1988.

Dayton’s

Dayton’s began as a single store at Seventh Street and Nicollet Avenue in Minneapolis in 1902. When the last Dayton family member retired from leadership in 1983, the company had stores nationwide and profits of over $240 million. It became Target Corporation in 2000.

De la Barre, William (1849–1936)

While working at Minneapolis's Washburn mills in the late 1870s, William de la Barre became an internationally known hydroelectricity expert and a key player in the development of water power at St. Anthony Falls.

This Day in Minnesota History

December 1, 1982

Clement Haupers dies in St. Paul, in the same Ramsey Hill house in which he was born in 1900. Known for developing the Minnesota State Fair art show into a major exhibition of local work, he also led the Works Progress Administration's Federal Art Project in Minnesota. Throughout his career, Haupers insisted that artists should support themselves without government grants.

This Day in Minnesota History

December 11, 1876

Ada Louise Comstock is born in Moorhead. She became the first dean of women at the University of Minnesota and then, beginning in 1912, served as dean of Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. Although she in effect ran the school from 1917 to 1918, she was not given the title of "acting president" because she was a woman. She became the first president of the American Association of University Women in 1921 and served as president of Radcliffe College from 1923 to 1943.

This Day in Minnesota History

December 11, 1895

After a sensational trial, Harry T. Hayward is hanged in a Minneapolis jail for the murder of Katherine Ging, owner of a fashionable dressmaking establishment. He had arranged for her to be killed so that he could collect her life insurance money.

This Day in Minnesota History

December 11, 1956

The dwellings in Swede Hollow, a St. Paul immigrant neighborhood, are burned after the city health department declares them contaminated.

This Day in Minnesota History

December 11, 1970

Norman E. Borlaug, University of Minnesota alumnus and crop researcher, receives the Nobel Peace Prize for his research in hybridizing wheat to increase crop yields. Borlaug is known as the father of the green revolution.

This Day in Minnesota History

December 11, 1999

St. Paul native Paul Molitor announces his retirement from baseball, having spent his final three seasons with the Minnesota Twins. His career hits numbered over 3,000, most of them from his years with the Milwaukee Brewers.

This Day in Minnesota History

December 11, 1999

After sixteen month of often bitter protest, four oak trees sacred to the Mdewakanton Dakota community of Mendota are cut down to make way for the rerouting of Highway 55 in Minneapolis.

This Day in Minnesota History

December 12, 1928

The newly finished Foshay Tower, already an icon of architecture in Minnesota, is strung with lights and lit up like a Christmas tree. It was Minneapolis's tallest building for nearly fifty years,

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