On the night of May 6, 1965, two F4 tornadoes cut through the northwest Twin Cities metro area. Known collectively as the Fridley tornado, these twisters were the worst cyclonic disaster to hit the Twin Cities to date.

Cottonwood County’s now-dry Mountain Lake was the site of Indigenous villages and encampments over the course of 3,000 years. The area has provided clues—some of the oldest evidence of human habitation in present-day Minnesota—about the lives of a group of people who remained relatively isolated from Upper Mississippi trade networks. In the 1970s, the site was developed into a public park operated by Cottonwood County.

The Ranier Railroad Bridge (Canadian National River Bridge) was constructed in 1908 by the Canadian Northern Railway and its subsidiary, the Duluth, Rainy Lake and Winnipeg Railway. The single-track lift bridge crosses Rainy River between Ranier, Minnesota, and Fort Frances, Ontario, and is one of the busiest ports of entry for international rail freight in the United States.

The Coast Guard station at Grand Marais was built in 1928 to aid the people who traveled and worked on the sometimes turbulent waters of Lake Superior. Since the opening of the station in 1929, Coast Guard personnel from the station have rescued hundreds of fishermen, boat crews and passengers, and recreational boaters from the lake.

As a trader, businessman, treaty negotiator, and legislator, Henry Mower Rice played a crucial role in Minnesota’s statehood and the development of St. Paul. At the same time, Rice was responsible for policies that benefited himself and his business partners at the expense of Minnesota’s Indigenous populations.

In 1897, lumberman William Harris Laird offered to fund the designing and building of a library for the city of Winona. Two years later he presented this Classical Revival building to the library board. It is the oldest building in Minnesota built as a public library that continues to fulfill that function in the present day.

The history of science and technology in Minnesota is the history of both how people have perceived and organized the world and how they have brought these worldviews into practice. They have defined science and technology in different ways over time, often according to their social, cultural, political, and economic circumstances.