Osmund Osmundson, founder of Nerstrand, Minnesota, played a prominent role in a variety of local affairs, including business, civics, and education. He was one of several men who incorporated St. Olaf College in 1874. Built in 1880, his spacious brick house in Nerstrand was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.

Eugenics, meaning “good stock,” is a scientific doctrine of race. It aims to produce what are considered good racial traits and eliminate those deemed harmful or defective, with the goal of reaching an ideal of purity. To the people eugenics policies targeted, it said that their physical or mental differences made them deficient or immoral. It further implied that, due to characteristics deemed “undesirable” or low IQ-test scores, their lives were not worth living.

The Woodbury House is the second-oldest extant house in the city of Anoka. It served as a home to several families from the time of its construction until the mid-2000s. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. In 2020, it is owned by the City of Anoka and leased to the Mad Hatter Tea Room restaurant.

For untold generations, Indigenous people traversed North America’s interlocking waterways by canoe. When moving between drainage systems, it was necessary for them to bridge the high ground that kept the waters separated. This meant carrying, or “portaging,” canoes and belongings between watersheds. One of the most important portage routes in Minnesota, known today as the Northwest Trail, connected the Mississippi River to Lake Superior.

The International Eelpout Festival in Walker began in 1980 as a way to bring tourists to northern Minnesota during the long winter months. Centered on what is considered the state’s ugliest fish, it grew into an annual four-day festival that has attracted national attention and thousands of visitors.

The Thorstein Veblen Farmstead is a historic landmark in Nerstrand, Minnesota. From 1866 until 1888, it was the primary home of Thorstein Veblen (1857–1929), a son of Norwegian immigrants who would become a world-renowned economist and social scientist. His most famous work, The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), introduced the term “conspicuous consumption.” The ten-acre farmstead was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975, and designated a National Historical Landmark in 1981.

To sum up the broad scope of Oscar C. Howard’s life, one could say simply that he fed Minnesota— literally. The trained chef moved from managing large industrial cafeterias to owning successful catering businesses, which culminated in the development of the Meals on Wheels program. Many others were nourished in a more figurative sense through Howard’s teaching, mentorship, preaching, and philanthropy. Along the way, he broke through countless racial barriers, both official and unspoken.

On September 3, 1894, a headline of the Minneapolis Tribune screamed, “A Cyclone of Wind and Fire: Northern Minnesota and Wisconsin Bathed in a Sea of Flame and Hundreds of Human Lives are Sacrificed to the Insatiable Greed of the Red Demon as He Stalks through the Pine Forest on His Mission of Death.” In just four hours on September 1, the red demon destroyed an estimated 480 square miles, resulting in massive destruction and over 418 deaths. The fire zone lay within Pine County, which was named for its majestic white pine forests.

Economist and social scientist Thorstein Veblen has been called one of America’s most original and creative thinkers. His highly acclaimed treatise The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions (1899) introduced the term “conspicuous consumption.” Veblen’s body of work remains seminal reading in understanding the modern consumer society and criticisms of capitalism.

Minnesota’s suffragists worked tirelessly to win the vote beginning in the late 1850s, when Mary Colburn delivered what is believed to be the state’s first women’s rights speech. After a long struggle, the dream of equal suffrage took a big leap forward on September 8, 1919, when the state legislature voted to ratify the woman suffrage amendment, making Minnesota the fifteenth state to do so.