Mabel Simis Ulrich was a public health educator, physician, author, and public figure whose pioneering work in sex education propelled her onto multiple public health commissions in Minneapolis. She contributed to the cultural scene in Minneapolis through a bookstore that she owned, and headed the Federal Writers’ Project (FWP) in Minnesota under the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in the 1930s.

In 1887, Carrie H. Lippincott was a twenty-seven-year-old New Jersey native with an eighth-grade education. She moved to Minnesota, where she created a mail-order company focused on selling flower seeds to women. Lippincott established herself in her new home by practicing innovative marketing methods and developing what we might call today a personal brand, declaring herself “The Pioneer Seedswoman of America.”

Christopher Columbus (C. C.) Andrews was a Minnesota lawyer and publisher known for his military service in Tennessee, Mississippi, and Arkansas during the Civil War. After working as an international diplomat in the 1870s and 80s, he embarked on a second career as a pioneer of scientific forestry and Minnesota's first chief fire warden. His work led to the creation of the two national forests in Minnesota and a state forest named in his honor.

Dr. Roland Dille was the longest-serving president of what is now Minnesota State University Moorhead, from 1968 to 1994. While shepherding the campus through tumultuous years of Vietnam War protests, racial tensions, and other controversial issues, he earned the respect of his campus community and helped the university grow to its peak enrollment in 1990.

Harold LeVander ran for political office for the first time at age fifty-six. He won, served a single term as governor of Minnesota, and never held political office again. A Republican with Republican majorities in the state house and senate, he encouraged some of the most progressive legislation in Minnesota history.

In his youth a hobo, a radical, a soldier, and a scholar, Karl Rolvaag became an adroit politician—a key builder of the Democratic Farmer–Labor (DFL) Party. He served eight years as lieutenant governor and four years, 1963–1967, as Minnesota’s thirty-first governor.

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.

Jim Denomie, one of Minnesota’s most significant and beloved visual artists, is best known for his large-scale narrative paintings. He used irony and humor to depict the political realities Native Americans face, including brutality and abuse, as well as his personal visions of eroticism, joy, grief, and spirituality. Denomie’s style is distinct and inimitable, especially in its use of color.

Virginia Lane Frazier was one of the first Black US Army’s Women’s Corps (WAC) soldiers to enlist in Minnesota during World War II. She served with the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, a unit made up entirely of Black women that was stationed in England between February and November of 1945. The battalion won praise for clearing a backlog of mail that provided solace to American soldiers in combat.

William Little Wolf left his home on Minnesota’s White Earth Reservation as a child to attend a series of boarding schools. In 1917, he ran away from Carlisle Indian Industrial School in order to join the Navy and fight for the United States in World War I. He earned praise for his service as a gunner on the USS Utah and returned in 1919 to live out the rest of his life in Minnesota.