In 1854, the United States took the mineral-rich lands of northeastern Minnesota Territory from the Ojibwe Nation after the signing of the Treaty of La Pointe. Four years later, it granted to the new state of Minnesota sections 16 and 36 of every one of its townships, either to be held in trust or leased to support state schools. Close to three million acres were dedicated to a public school trust fund, and the iron ore and forest lands of the Ojibwe generated over 85 percent of its value. In 2017, it is worth over a billion dollars.
When James C. Burbank began his transportation business in 1851, it was a one-man operation. By 1859, Burbank's Minnesota Stage Company controlled all the major stagecoach lines in the state. In the years before railroads linked Minnesota communities, the Minnesota Stage Company played a crucial role in shaping the commercial and social life of the young state.
Minnesota's boundaries were established by treaties between the U.S. and Great Britain and the formation of the states of Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota.
Since its founding in 1859, the Minnesota State Fair had been an essential yearly tradition in the agricultural state. However, after the United States entered World War I in 1917, the fair took on an entirely new significance. Organizers reframed the event as a “Food Training Camp” that showed Minnesotans how to produce and conserve resources vital to the Allied war effort.
The Minnesota State Fair is a yearly celebration of agriculture, crafts, food, and community. In the twenty-first century, nearly 1.8 million people attend the twelve-day event every year, making it the second-largest state fair in the nation. The gathering is a Minnesota tradition that has more than earned its nickname, "The Great Minnesota Get-Together."
What good is a state flag? According to flag expert Lee Herold of Rochester, Minnesota, a good flag creates a distinctive brand. Ideally, Minnesota’s flag should also create unity, representing our state’s values everywhere it flies. But this has not always been the case. The people of Minnesota have altered their state flag’s design in the past to meet changing needs. They continued to do so in 2023, when public input informed a redesign commission’s choice for a new flag.
The year 2016 marked the 150th anniversary of the Minnesota State Horticultural Society. In its early years, the society was a small, male-dominated organization focused on fruit production. Its mission shifted to become more educational as members taught each other, and the public, how to use plants to enhance their environments.
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.
The Minnesota State Public School for Dependent and Neglected Children operated from 1886 to 1947. The campus is one of the most intact examples of a state cottage school standing in the United States, and is significant on a national level.
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.
In 1906, construction began for the Minnesota State Sanatorium for Consumptives, or Ah-Gwah-Ching, about three miles south of Walker in Cass County. Overlooking Shingobee Bay on the south shore of Leech Lake, the hospital evolved into a massive complex of distinctive buildings.
The original Great Seal of Minnesota was created by men who tied their fortunes to the progress (as they defined it) and settlement of the state, often at the expense of Native Americans. Starting in the late 1960s, critics of the seal argued that its imagery reflected an anti-Native American bias. In 2023, a State Emblems Redesign Commission chose a new design for the seal intended to better represent twenty-first-century Minnesota.
Minnesota State University, Mankato, was founded as Minnesota's second normal school in 1868. It went through phases as a normal school, teachers college, college, and university. By 2011 it was one of Minnesota's largest and most comprehensive universities.
The Minnesota Timberwolves have competed in the National Basketball Association (NBA) since the 1989–90 season. The team is the second professional NBA franchise to represent Minnesota, which was home to the Minneapolis Lakers from 1949 to 1960.
The Minnesota Twins—the first franchise from Minnesota to compete in Major League Baseball (MLB)—made their debut in the 1961 season. They have appeared in three World Series (1965, 1987, and 1991) and won two World Series titles (1987 and 1991).
The Minnesota Valley Historical Society (MVHS) was formed in 1895 under the leadership of Charles D. Gilfillan to determine and mark sites significant to the US–Dakota War of 1862 in Redwood and Renville counties. MVHS was largely Gilfillan’s project. He founded it, was its principal leader during its most active period, and personally funded significant portions of its work. After his death in 1902, MVHS became much less active, and the group dissolved in 1915.
The Minnesota Vikings professional football club has competed in the National Football League (NFL) since 1961. The team ranks among the most successful franchises in the NFL, with seventeen divisional titles since 1970. They have reached the playoffs in twenty-nine of their fifty-seven seasons and made four Super Bowl appearances. Eleven former players, one coach, and one general manager from the Vikings have been inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, in Canton, Ohio.
From 1881 to 1920, the Minnesota Woman Suffrage Association (MWSA) struggled to secure women's right to vote. Its members organized marches, wrote petitions and letters, gathered signatures, gave speeches, and published pamphlets and broadsheets to force the Minnesota Legislature to recognize their right to vote. Due in part to its efforts, the legislature ratified the Nineteenth Amendment in 1919.
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 became a U.S. territory on March 3, 1849. After much debate, the new territorial government chose St. Paul as the permanent capital city. The first capitol building was completed in 1853 and served as the seat of Minnesota's territorial and early state government until it burned in 1881.
Fire destroyed Minnesota's first capitol building on March 1, 1881. The second capitol, completed in 1883, served as the seat of Minnesota state government for just ten years before state officials began planning a grander, more efficient capitol. The second capitol building stood on the site of the first capitol for fifty-five years until its demolition in 1937.
Since the early 1900s, Latinos have been a productive and essential part of Minnesota. Most of the earliest Minnesotanos were migrant farm workers from Mexico or Texas and faced obstacles to first-class citizenship that are still being addressed. They overcame the instability associated with migratory work by establishing stable communities in the cities and towns of Minnesota. Latinos faced, and still face, discrimination—both racial and the kinds common to all immigrants, migrants, and refugees.
During the late 1800s, dairy farmers in Minnesota and other states faced what they considered a serious and immediate threat to their livelihoods: the growing popularity of a butter substitute called oleomargarine. For nearly a century, the dairy industry and its legislative allies waged a series of campaigns to prohibit or limit the manufacture and sale of margarine. No state retained its anti-margarine laws longer than Minnesota.
On Wabasha Hill, just north of downtown St. Paul, stands Minnesota’s third state capitol building. This active center of state government was built between 1896 and 1905, and was designed by architect Cass Gilbert. Its magnificent architecture, decorative art, and innovative technologies set it apart from every other public building in the state.
The Miracle on Ice is the name given to the American men’s ice hockey victory over the heavily favored Soviet Union at the 1980 Winter Olympics. The team drew heavily on Minnesotan talent, including twelve players and coach Herb Brooks. Coming amid American setbacks in the Cold War, their unlikely win inspired and united the country.
