The Porter Kelsey house was built in Andover in 1887 from materials produced by the owner’s own brickyard. In 2020, it is one of the few structures built with Kelsey Brickyard brick that still stands in Anoka County.

Camp Rabideau is a Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) site established as part of the “New Deal” in 1933 to help alleviate unemployment during the Depression. Located in Beltrami County, it operated until 1942. It later became a satellite campus for University of Illinois forestry and engineering students; a Native American learning center; and an educational center for Chippewa National Forest visitors.

An effort to move the Red Lake County seat from Red Lake Falls to Thief River Falls in 1909 divided the citizens of the county. A suspicious courthouse fire on April 23 of that year brought the situation to a head.

Minnesota’s governors did not have an official residence until 1965, when the daughters of lumber magnate Horace Irvine donated their family home to the state. Over the years, the house on Summit Avenue has provided Minnesota’s First Families with a comfortable home and has served as a ceremonial building for visiting dignitaries and the public alike, though not without controversy.

From 1890 to 1910, timber speculators and lumbermen patented most of the valuable pine lands in north-central Minnesota—the homeland of the Bois Forte Ojibwe. By the 1920s, dams and deforestation had so damaged the landscape that it could no longer support the tribe’s subsistence economy, and its members were forced onto their reservation at Nett Lake.

An early settler-colonist in Wheeling Township (Rice County), Norwegian immigrant Halvor Quie is often remembered as a member of the Second Company of Minnesota Sharpshooters during the Civil War. He was instrumental in local religious and educational affairs and offered lasting support to St. Olaf College.

Begun in 1918 and active until the late 1970s, the Barberry Eradication Program was an unprecedented cooperative effort between the US Department of Agriculture and twelve US states to remove the invasive common barberry bush from major areas of wheat production in the United States. The common barberry bush was a problem because it is a secondary host for the fungus that causes stem-rust disease, the most devastating disease of wheat. Minnesota played the central role in the establishment and operations of the eradication program.

The Theodore Hamm Brewing Company, one of Minnesota’s most iconic breweries, began brewing beer in about 1865 as Excelsior Brewery in St. Paul. Hamm’s was brewed in Minnesota for well over a century, and its brief national profile was bolstered by both its iconic animated bear and its Minnesota-centric slogan: “From the land of sky-blue waters.”

Martinus Stenseth left a small farming community in northwestern Minnesota in the 1910s to pursue a career in the military. He found his passion in flying airplanes and proved his mettle in World War I, when he achieved "Flying Ace" status. His long career included many promotions and led to national military recognition.

Ernest Oberholtzer first paddled the lakes of the Rainy Lake watershed in 1909. Starting in the 1920s, he lived on Rainy Lake’s Mallard Island and was a prominent conservationist. He led the campaign for legislation to protect the watershed, including parts of what would become Voyagerus National Park and the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.