Wadena County contains three known fur trade sites. One is located on private property along the Leaf River where Joseph Réaume, an independent fur trader, set up a winter camp in the late eighteenth century. Between 2011 and 2012, the University of Minnesota conducted archaeological surveys and excavations at this location. They confirmed a late-eighteenth century occupation, validating its association with Réaume's 1792 wintering activities.

The Carson Mennonite Brethren Cemetery, surveyed and platted in June 1900, has 185 recorded burials as of 2017. Some graves have been relocated from other sites.

In 1895, on land provided by James J. Hill, the Northwest Experiment Station was founded to maximize the agricultural potential of the Red River Valley. Through many changes in the business of farming, the experimental farm continued to provide data on the most effective and efficient crops, livestock, and farming methods in the fertile land around Crookston. The facility was renamed Northwest Research and Outreach Center in 1999.

Dar Al-Hijrah was founded in 1998 in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood in Minneapolis and is the oldest Somali mosque in Minnesota. It signals the latest of many phases of immigration to the state, from Scandinavians and other Europeans in the nineteenth century to East Africans in the 1990s and 2000s. The congregation has a unique commitment to civic education and advocates for the idea that Islam is compatible with democracy through its sister organization, the Islamic Civic Society of America.

During World War II, prisoners of war helped relieve a severe labor shortage in many rural areas of the U.S. In Clay County, Minnesota, POWs worked on farms to plant, tend, and harvest the crops that otherwise might have been lost.

St. Paul’s Rondo neighborhood ran roughly between University Avenue to the north, Selby Avenue to the south, Rice Street to the east, and Lexington Avenue to the west. African American churches, businesses, and schools set down roots there in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, creating a strong community. Construction of Interstate-94 (I-94) between 1956 and 1968 cut the neighborhood in half and fractured its identity as a cultural center.

Camp Ripley, a state-owned military reservation in central Minnesota, serves as the primary field training site for the Minnesota Army National Guard. It is one of the largest such installations in the country.

In 1881, John Sweetman brought forty-three immigrant families to farms near Currie and established the Sweetman Catholic Colony. Another nineteen families joined the colony in 1882, but two unseasonably wet growing seasons made farming difficult. By the end of 1882, half of the colonists had abandoned their farms and left the colony.

Minneapolis historically has been home to a small but vibrant African American population. From the 1930s to the 1970s, an African American neighborhood flourished on the city’s Southside, between East Thirty-Fourth and Forty-Sixth Streets and from Nicollet Avenue to Chicago Avenue.

The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness is located in the northern third of Superior National Forest. It is the most heavily used wilderness in the country, with about 250,000 visitors annually.