For a single trading season between the fall of 1804 and the spring of 1805, the Snake River Fur Post was an epicenter of the Upper Mississippi fur trade. The stockaded structure, supervised by veteran trader John Sayer, was a place where employees of the North West Fur Company came together with Ojibwe and Metis hunters and trappers. The Minnesota Historical Society rebuilt the post’s buildings and opened them as a historic site in 1970.

Charles Fremont Dight grew up believing in the power of medicine to ascertain and correct natural or social problems. After a series of disappointments in politics in the 1910s, he turned to the burgeoning field of eugenics in the 1920s to realize his dream of a centrally planned economy and population.

“We are one race—the Human Race.” These are the words of Irene Gomez-Bethke, a daughter of Mexican parents who immigrated to Minnesota. Throughout her life, she played a leadership role in bending the arc of history toward social justice, serving as Minnesota Commissioner of Human Rights, guiding boards and commissions as a volunteer, and co-founding both Centro Cultural Chicano and Instituto de Arte y Cultura.

The rustic cabin Jun Fujita built on an island in Rainy Lake in the late 1920s is a rare surviving artifact of the opening of northeastern Minnesota to tourism and recreation. The remarkable personal history of Fujita, one of the first prominent Japanese Americans in the Midwest, adds to its historical interest. The cabin was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1996.

Public art created during the late 1960s and early 1970s responded to the destruction of America’s inner cities. Chicanos painted murals in their neighborhoods to express their cultural pride, to protest injustice, and to celebrate their aesthetic values. While many of the first Chicano murals painted on St. Paul’s West Side are now lost, murals continue to reflect the community’s growth and progress.

Pat Bellanger was an Ojibwe activist and a cofounder of the American Indian Movement (AIM) who spent over fifty years fighting for Indigenous rights on a national and local level. Though she often escaped the public eye, her work survives through her children and community, the attendees of survival schools, and the children protected by the Indian Child Welfare Act (1978).

Comunidades Latinas Unidas En Servicio (CLUES) is the largest Latino-led nonprofit in Minnesota. It formed in 1981 in St. Paul in response to the need for language-appropriate, culturally competent mental health services for the Latino Spanish-speaking community. Throughout the history of CLUES, as the Latino community has grown, the agency’s leaders have identified new opportunities to support Latino children, families, and individuals.

The American Crystal Sugar Company evolved out of its predecessor, the American Beet Sugar Company, in 1934 to operate factories in Minnesota, Iowa, and Colorado. After the Red River Valley Sugarbeet Growers Association bought it in 1973, American Crystal moved its headquarters to Moorhead, Minnesota, and became the first farmer-owned sugar beet cooperative in the United States.

Founded in 1974, Centro Cultural Chicano (known since 2014 as Centro Tyrone Guzman) is the oldest and largest multi-service Latine organization in Minneapolis. Centro’s mission and values are grounded in supporting the well-being of Latine families through a holistic approach to education and family engagement. Annually, Centro staff serve around 5,000 participants diverse in Latin American nationality, gender identity, and sexuality, as well as in age groups.

Penumbra Theatre is one of the premier legacy Black theaters in the United States, and one of the few founded during the Black Arts Movement that survived into the twenty-first century. Penumbra's plays examine universal themes rooted in the daily lives and perspectives of Black folks across a spectrum of African American theater ideologies.