Airmail service between the Twin Cities and Winnipeg begins.

Congress creates the Illinois Territory, which includes all of present-day Minnesota east of the Mississippi River.

The Reverend William T. Boutwell is born in Lyndeborough, New Hampshire. In 1832 he accompanied Henry R. Schoolcraft on the trip, guided by the Ojibwe leader Ozaawindib, that confirmed Lake Itasca as the source of the Mississippi River. Boutwell supplied the Latin words from which Schoolcraft named the lake (veritas, truth, and caput, head).

Faribault is platted (surveyed and mapped). Trader Alexander Faribault, a son of Jean-Baptiste and Pelagie Faribault, had settled there in 1826.

A groundbreaking ceremony for the Northern Pacific Railroad line is held at Northern Pacific Junction, later called Carlton. The line to the Pacific Ocean, completed on September 8, 1883, with the same spike used to begin construction in Minnesota, is the first single-company transcontinental line.

Mankato, named with a variation of Mahkato, the Dakota word for the Blue Earth River, is founded.

The Fort Snelling post band travels to Stillwater to play for a Valentine's Day dance.

About 250 demonstrators in Minneapolis protest the Vietnam War with a march from the University of Minnesota campus to the Federal Building on Washington Avenue, where they throw a few snowballs and then disperse to distribute leaflets and "get into raps with people about the war."

Lieutenant Zebulon M. Pike, exploring the Upper Mississippi territory included in the recent Louisiana Purchase, arrives at the North West Company post on Gaa-zagaskwaajimekaag (Leech Lake). Incensed that the British Union Jack still flies there, he orders it shot down and replaced with the Stars and Stripes. Pike was something of an ingrate, however, as he enjoyed the hospitality of the post both before and after the incident. British fur traders remained in the region until the end of the War of 1812.

In the treaty ending the French and Indian War (a part of the Seven Years' War in Europe), France transfers to Britain the territory that later became Minnesota.