The giant lumberjack Paul Bunyan—bearded, ax in hand, clad in red flannel and work boots—has come to represent Minnesota’s Northwoods. Folklore credits him and his sidekick, Babe the Blue Ox, with creating the Mississippi River and the Grand Canyon. But his legacy is complicated. While Paul Bunyan myths celebrate Minnesota, they also leave out the facts of the state’s logging history, which led to deforestation and the displacement of Native American histories, places, and people.

Writer and activist Irene Levine Paull was born in Duluth to Jewish parents. Faced with discrimination because of her ethnicity, gender, and political views, Paull fought for the rights of people who were oppressed.

Flowing out of Detroit Lake to the southwest, short segments of the Pelican River connect a string of five large lakes and two small ones. From 1889 to 1918, steamboats, launches, and a system of locks and channels connected this chain of lakes, which stretches twelve miles southwest from the town of Detroit Lakes.

More than 1,000 left-wing protesters gathered at the Minnesota Capitol. on April 4, 1937, to support Governor Elmer Benson as he tried to persuade the legislature to pass a $17 million aid package for the unemployed. About 200 of the protesters stayed overnight in the senate chamber after someone jimmied open the doors with a knife, and two organizers were later convicted of the gross misdemeanor of preventing senators from assembling.

Insect pests have harmed harvests in Minnesota country since European immigrants first arrived in the area. Most local farmers, however, did not actively manage pests. Instead, they planned for the risk of losing some of their crop. It took both huge losses from the late 1800s grasshopper plagues and the industrialization of agriculture for Minnesota’s government to invest in pest management methods.

Though his life was tragically short, Colorado Pete made his mark on the history of Clearwater County, Minnesota, through both his civic activities and his poetry.

Founded in 1924, the Phyllis Wheatley House was the first settlement house to serve the social service needs of African Americans in Minneapolis. In the 1930s, it became a center of African American life at a time when racial segregation divided the city.

Pilgrim Baptist Church in St. Paul was the first African American Baptist church established in Minnesota. The congregation was founded during the Civil War, in 1863, by enslaved people who had escaped from Missouri, including pastor Robert Thomas Hickman. The church’s third building (732 West Central Ave.) was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1991.

Designed by Leroy Buffington and Harvey Ellis in the Richardsonian Romanesque style, Pillsbury Hall at the University of Minnesota opened in 1889 and is part of the National Register-listed Old Campus Historic District.

In forty-six years as a Minnesotan, John Sargent Pillsbury helped establish what eventually became one of the world's largest flour-milling businesses, served three terms as governor, and contributed—generously and often anonymously—to numerous causes he deemed worthy.

It began as Minneapolis (or Layman’s) Cemetery, a privately owned burial ground, in 1858. By 1919 it was full, with more than 27,000 bodies, and was closed by the City of Minneapolis. Only a handful of burials have taken place there since. It is the oldest cemetery in Minneapolis.

From ancient times to the present, a pipestone quarry in southwestern Minnesota has been a sacred gathering place for Native nations from all over North America. Modern highways following traditional migration routes used by indigenous people intersect at this venerated place, designated a national monument in 1937. Dakota people called it―and still call it―Inyan Sa K'api, [the place where] they dig the red stone.