The City of Harmony traces its origins to an 1854 Norwegian settlement called Greenfield Prairie, just outside the town’s current southern edge. Its creation, population growth, and lasting economic vitality were made possible by the arrival of the Caledonia, Mississippi and Western Railway in 1879.

Drivers may easily miss Henrytown, a rural hamlet five miles north of Canton, as they speed through it on Fillmore County Highway 21. In 2018, not much exists to indicate it was once a town populated by hardworking immigrants who dreamed of building a thriving and long-lasting community.

In 1923, the City of Harmony created a central park amid a national urban planning movement focused on adding outdoor spaces to cities. The park quickly became a venue for a variety of summer events as well as a community gathering spot.

Built in 1909, the Harmony Opera House was used for a wide range of activities. It provided a venue for dances, high school graduation ceremonies, political debates, local organization gatherings, and music and theatre performances. In 2018, it is an Old Legion Hall event-rental facility.

St. Olaf College is a private liberal arts college in Northfield, Minnesota. It was founded by Norwegian Lutherans in 1874 and continues to thrive as a top-ranking school.

The Fillmore County Poor Farm, outside the small village of Henrytown, was part of a statewide initiative in the late 1800s to provide housing for poor and elderly people. At its start in 1868 it was considered one of the best of Minnesota’s county poor farms, but it eventually fell victim to a lack of funds and resources.

Grand Portage (Gichi Onigamiing) is both a historic seasonal migration route and the traditional site of an Ojibwe summer village on the northwestern shore of Lake Superior. In the 1700s, after voyageurs began to use it to carry canoes from Lake Superior to the Pigeon River, it became one of the most profitable fur-trading sites in the region and a headquarters for the North West Fur Company.

The Beltrami County Poor Farm provided shelter and care for elderly and disabled people from 1902 until 1935, when old-age assistance programs replaced the poor farm system.

Connemara Patch began as a community of Irish immigrants on St. Paul’s East Side in the early 1880s. An unintended result of Bishop John Ireland’s Catholic colonization efforts and a victim of 1950s freeway construction, it was a small, swampy neighborhood on the banks of Phalen Creek. Despite its short and oft-forgotten existence, Connemara Patch was home to several generations of Irish working-class families and later immigrant groups.

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.