The Independent Order of Odd Fellows (IOOF) is a service-oriented fraternal organization. Started in England in the 1700s, it spread to the US in the early 1800s and to Minnesota in 1849. In Polk County, though Crookston Lodge No. 73 disbanded in the 1910s, members of Fisher Lodge No. 87 met regularly for over a hundred years.

In the late 1960s, Allan Fingerhut and Danny Stevens leased the old Greyhound Bus Depot in Downtown Minneapolis with the plan to open a rock club. Since then, First Avenue & 7th Street Entry has nurtured a diverse group of musicians, both local and national, and brought together people from various backgrounds. It remains one of the most highly regarded music nightclubs in the country.

Prince was a Minnesota-based singer, songwriter, musician, studio engineer, actor, director, dancer, and music legend. Over his nearly forty-year career, he sold more than100 million albums; he also won seven Grammys and an Oscar. He was the main creator of the Minneapolis Sound, a blending of rhythm and blues, funk, rock, pop, punk, and new wave that defined the music of the 1980s.

Somali poetry is a unique art form with an ancient history and a living legacy. Since 1991, it has connected Somali and Somali American refugees living in the United States with those who remain in their East African homeland. In the twenty-first century, Somali Minnesotans have kept their poetic traditions alive by forming arts groups, organizing public performances in the Twin Cities, and encouraging young people to become poets.

Since their origin in 1902, 4-H clubs have helped American youth explore various professional fields—many related to farming—while mastering practical skills. In Minnesota’s West Polk County, 4-H branches formed in the late 1920s to train and inspire the next generation of local farmers.

Pennsylvania native Dorothy Molter spent over fifty years in Northern Minnesota, where she helped to run the Isle of Pines resort and provided nursing care for those in need. From the 1950s through the mid-1980s, she made batches of homemade root beer at her cabin on Knife Lake that drew thousands of tourists, anglers, and canoeists each summer and earned her the nickname “the Root Beer Lady.”

While recovering from a fall in 1971, Moorhead Junior High School guidance counselor Robert Asp read a book on Viking shipbuilding. This sparked the thought that he should build and sail his own Viking ship. After ten years of planning, building, and training, the ship named Hjemkomst sailed from Duluth, Minnesota, to Oslo, Norway.

Red River carts were used by the Métis for bison hunts and for trade between the heart of the Red River Colony (present-day Winnipeg) and St. Paul in the early 1800s. By the mid-1800s, nearly continuous use of the carts had worn trails into the prairie grasses. These trails connected the hunting-farming culture of the Métis on the Red River with the growing industrial culture of St. Paul on the Mississippi River.

Henry Schmidt’s dream of becoming a physician in his hometown of Westbrook, Minnesota, came true in 1910. His dream of opening a hospital, however, was postponed when he died during the 1918 influenza epidemic. Schmidt’s father was instrumental in opening Westbrook’s Henry Schmidt Memorial Hospital in 1951.

Believing that war and violence are inconsistent with Jesus’s teachings to love one’s enemies, a group of people from Molotschna Colony, Russia—Mennonites of Dutch descent—searched for a permanent home in the early 1870s. They found such a place, where they could follow their faith without persecution, in Minnesota’s Cottonwood County.