Superior National Forest is an iconic part of northeast Minnesota that comprises over three million acres (more than 445,000 of which are surface water) of boreal forest. The forest itself is part of the vast North Woods, a tourist destination in northern Wisconsin and Minnesota and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCA) is within the forest, which is itself part of the Quetico Superior region that extends into Canada.

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.

The Minnesota Music Hall of Fame in New Ulm offers a wide-ranging display of artifacts, mementos, and photos acquired since it recognized its first class of inductees in 1989. It pays tribute to music performers and artists who shaped Minnesota’s music scene in the mid-twentieth century, with a focus on the polka groups and dance orchestras that were popular around New Ulm at that time.

Minnesota Correctional Facility-Shakopee (MCF-Shakopee) is Minnesota’s only state women’s prison. Women reformers pushed for its existence in the 1910s, arguing that women needed a place away from men where they could receive training instead of punishment. It opened in 1920 as the State Reformatory for Women. Over the next hundred years, it became increasingly crowded, and its focus shifted from “retraining” its prisoners to confining them.

Minnesota Correctional Facility-Stillwater, Minnesota’s oldest prison, was built in Stillwater as the Territorial Prison in 1853. It moved to a location in what is now Bayport between 1910 and 1914. MCF-Stillwater has been the site of multiple rebellions and also publishes the Prison Mirror, likely the oldest continuously operated prisoner newspaper in the US.

Prairie Home Cemetery, founded in 1875, is the oldest cemetery in Moorhead. Many of the city's settler colonists, such as Randolph M. Probstfield and Solomon G. Comstock, are buried there. It inspired the name of Garrison Keillor’s famous National Public Radio (NPR) program A Prairie Home Companion.

In 1976, the doors opened to a new art gallery—the first in Minnesota dedicated exclusively to women artists. During its fifteen years of operation, WARM: A Women’s Collective Art Space (often referred to as the WARM Gallery) was at the center of women’s visual arts programming in the Twin Cities. Informed by second-wave feminism and in step with the national Women’s Art Movement, the WARM Gallery built a new arts community focused on promoting equality. It gave women artists the professional experiences necessary to compete in the art world and provided public access to women’s art, history, and theory.

Voyageurs National Park is located on the Minnesota–Ontario international border and is Minnesota’s only national park. Established in 1975, it is a 341-square-mile network of lakes and streams surrounding the Kabetogama Peninsula. Though the region has been home to various Indigenous nations for countless generations, the park is named for the predominantly French Canadian voyageurs (travelers) who transported furs and other trade goods between hubs like Montreal and points further west.

The Mesabi Iron Range wasn’t the first iron range to be mined in Minnesota, but it has arguably been the most prolific. Since the 1890s, the Mesabi has produced iron ore that boosted the national economy, contributed to the Allied victory in World War II, and cultivated a multiethnic regional culture in northeast Minnesota.

For untold generations, Indigenous people traversed North America’s interlocking waterways by canoe. When moving between drainage systems, it was necessary for them to bridge the high ground that kept the waters separated. This meant carrying, or “portaging,” canoes and belongings between watersheds. One of the most important portage routes in Minnesota, known today as the Northwest Trail, connected the Mississippi River to Lake Superior.