In 1890, Adam Roth and his son, William E., established a butcher business in Nerstrand (Rice County) that grew to specialize in smoked and grilled meats—particularly bologna and wieners. In 2019 the family-owned enterprise, Nerstrand Meats and Catering, celebrated 129 years of continuous operation.

Begun in 1918 and active until the late 1970s, the Barberry Eradication Program was an unprecedented cooperative effort between the US Department of Agriculture and twelve US states to remove the invasive common barberry bush from major areas of wheat production in the United States. The common barberry bush was a problem because it is a secondary host for the fungus that causes stem-rust disease, the most devastating disease of wheat. Minnesota played the central role in the establishment and operations of the eradication program.

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.

Minneapolis real estate developers began writing racial covenants—race-based property ownership restrictions—into property deeds in 1910. They were banned by the Minnesota state legislature in 1953, but their use in the early twentieth century laid the foundation for contemporary racial disparities in Minnesota.

Polaris Industries of Roseau, Minnesota, manufactured its first snowmobiles in 1956. In the years since then, it has remained an industry leader in production, sales, and innovation, even as it has diversified into other, more lucrative product lines.

In the summer of 1994, the League of Women Voters of Minnesota convened a group of thirty women to form the Nineteenth Amendment Celebration Committee. The committee organized events around the seventy-fifth anniversary of the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, giving women the right to vote. They left a lasting legacy in the form of the Minnesota Woman Suffrage Memorial Garden. It was the first monument to a movement approved for the mall of the third Minnesota State Capitol.

Minnesota's early woman suffragists endured many setbacks in their fight for the vote. Perhaps none was as disappointing as Governor Horace Austin's veto of the 1870 female suffrage bill—the first to pass both the House and Senate. His controversial decision appeared to defy the state constitution.

The Winona Normal School was Minnesota’s first teacher-training school when it opened in 1860. The school fostered many innovations, including the state’s first “model school” program, a kind of laboratory school for training teachers. Over the years, the normal school evolved into a four-year state college and then into Winona State University.

When migrant workers from Mexico began to look for homes in Minnesota in the mid-twentieth century, many joined a growing enclave in Westside St. Paul. In spite of challenges, they sought opportunities to create a strong community and build a brighter future. They saw the Chicano Movement of the 1960s and 1970s as a means to that end.

Hmong Pages is a St. Paul-based newspaper created by, for, and about Hmong people. To reach a wide audience of individuals, it features articles written in both English and Hmong. The monthly publication seeks to raise awareness about Hmong people throughout the Twin Cities and is distributed across the metro area.