General Mills did not invent cake mix, but in the early 1950s, Betty Crocker helped make it nationally popular as a staple of the American pantry.

La Prensa is the first state-wide Spanish-language and bilingual newspaper in Minnesota dedicated to informing and representing issues pertinent to the Latinx and Chicanx community.

Known as one of the continent’s oldest team sports, lacrosse was invented by Native American nations that played the game for social, political, and ceremonial purposes. Today, in Minnesota, Native Americans continue to play lacrosse in the same manner and on the same fields as they have for over 400 years.

In 1934, the US Bureau of Indian Affairs set up a new organizational model to transform Native American tribal governments. The articulation of that model, the Indian Reorganization Act, influenced the governance systems of Native people, including Minnesota’s Ojibwe and Dakota. They now work to customize the government forms imposed upon them.

Originally a feature of the 1934 Paul Bunyan House, the Fireplace of States is a symbolic hearth and art project made to represent the cooperation of American states, national parks, and Canadian provinces. When the Paul Bunyan House was torn down in 1995, the fireplace was moved to a new Tourist Information Center on Lake Bemidji.

Ojibwe people have made maple sugar, a traditional dietary staple, for centuries. It is easily accessed in the woodlands of Minnesota and can be stored for months without spoiling. While the technology used in the process has changed over the years, Ojibwe people continue to harvest maple sugar in the present day.

National Prohibition went into effect January 17, 1920. On March 23—sixty-six days into Prohibition—federal liquor agents arrested Oscar Martinson, sheriff of Hennepin County. Next came William M. Nash, Hennepin County Attorney, indicted April 6, arrested May 13. Martinson pleaded guilty. Nash was acquitted, but Governor J. A. A. Burnquist removed him from office. Nash and Martinson were the highest-ranking Minnesota law enforcement officials prosecuted under Prohibition.

Harmony’s first school, nicknamed the Little Red Schoolhouse, was a one-room structure built in 1864 in the village of Greenfield Prairie, a mile south of where Harmony would later be incorporated. The modest school, built by some of the area’s earliest immigrants, provided the foundation for what would become a thriving independent school district, a source of great pride, and a sign of prosperity for those living in and around Harmony for almost a century.

The Jefferson Highway, established in 1915 and named for President Thomas Jefferson, was a product of the early twentieth century’s Good Roads movement. Its route followed existing roads that extended from Winnipeg to New Orleans. In this way it passed through Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, and Louisiana on variant routes. Like other named routes, the highway faded from public awareness after the advent of the federal numbering system in 1926.

The State of Minnesota and the health insurance federation Blue Cross and Blue Shield brought a lawsuit against tobacco companies in 1994. The suit—State of Minnesota et al. v. Philip Morris et al.—ended the companies’ chain of legal victories and turned the tide in anti-tobacco efforts throughout the nation.