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.

Originally conceived as a gimmick to promote tourism during the city’s 1937 Winter Carnival, the Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox statues in Bemidji became the second-most-photographed sculptures in the country in the 1940s. The prototypical “roadside colossus” inspired dozens of other Minnesota and Midwest cities to create similar works in the decades that followed.

Wendell Anderson, a Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party (DFL) governor elected at age thirty-eight, campaigned in 1970 on a promise to reduce school-district property taxes. He faced a legislature controlled by Conservatives,* and his plan to reform property taxes asked for a 37-percent increase in state spending. It took the longest special legislative session in state history, but he fulfilled the promise. Anderson’s initiative raised income and sales taxes, and he became one of the most popular governors in Minnesota history.

In 1914, miners often walked two miles from their homes in Alice, Minnesota, to their jobs in the iron mines of Hibbing, even during dangerous winters. Former driller and failing car salesman C. Eric Wickman changed that when he decided to use a Hupmobile to transport miners for a small fee: 15 cents for a one-way trip and 25 cents for a round trip. Wickman’s service became one of the earliest examples of intercity busing in the US and, fifteen years later, led to the establishment of the multimillion-dollar Greyhound Bus Corporation.

Lac qui Parle Mission in Chippewa County was the leading station of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions’ work among Dakota people between 1835 and 1854. Though missionaries cited it as the most successful project of its kind among the Dakota, the mission failed in its objective to replace Dakota culture with European American lifeways. Throughout its existence Lac qui Parle was a multicultural community, where Dakota people and European Americans cooperated with each other but experienced deep divides.

Lydia B. Angier was declared insane and committed against her will to Rochester State Hospital in 1896. For the next three years, she wrote letters arguing for her release and restoration to her old life in St. Paul, where she had run a newspaper stand. Her letters provide a window into life inside hospitals for the insane at the turn of the twentieth century, where many people faced poor living conditions and abuse.

Welsch v. Likins (1974) was a landmark legal case for disability rights in Minnesota. It dealt with three issues fundamental to the disability community. First, it addressed the right to treatment under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Second, the case confronted the provision of care in the least restrictive of environments, including home and community-based services (HCBS). Third, it questioned whether institutional environments violate the Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause of the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution.

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.

The Memorial Chapel at Lakewood Cemetery (3600 Hennepin Avenue) in Minneapolis is one of the few buildings that can claim to be modeled after two World Heritage Sites. Its exterior, designed by architect Harry Wild Jones, was inspired by the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. Its interior was designed by J&R Lamb Studios of New York and drew inspiration from St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice.

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.