When completed in 1867, the Spangenberg house was surrounded by an eighty-acre dairy farm, well outside the St. Paul city limits. Today, the house is surrounded not by fields and barns but by the paved streets and ample houses of the Highland Park neighborhood.

Often, the first structure built by Finnish immigrants to Minnesota was a sauna. That was the case with the Barberg-Selvälä-Salmonson sauna in Cokato—the oldest savusauna, or smoke sauna, still existing in Minnesota and likely in the United States.

In forty-six years as a Minnesotan, John Sargent Pillsbury helped establish what eventually became one of the world's largest flour-milling businesses, served three terms as governor, and contributed—generously and often anonymously—to numerous causes he deemed worthy.

John Ireland was ordained a Catholic priest in St. Paul in 1861. By the time he was appointed archbishop of the newly organized Archdiocese of St. Paul in 1888, he was one of the city’s most prominent citizens. Ireland’s causes were many; he is remembered for attracting Irish immigrants to the state, for founding educational institutions, and for establishing the Catholic church in Minnesota.

The Wealthy apple was the first apple to thrive in Minnesota's humid continental climate. Horticulturalist Peter Gideon grew it first in 1868, after years of trial and error with various apple varieties.

Norwegian immigrant Knute Nelson served state and country throughout his life, first as a soldier and a lawyer, then as a legislator and the twelfth governor of Minnesota. He was the state's first foreign-born governor.

Famed author and lecturer Charles Eastman (Ohiyesa) was raised in a traditional Dakota manner until age fifteen, when he entered Euro-American culture at his father's request. He spent the rest of his life moving between Native American and white American worlds, achieving renown but never financial security.

In the 1850s and 60s, Thomas Barlow (T. B.) Walker worked his way through school and into Minnesota's lumber industry, where he became unusually successful. He later helped found two of Minneapolis's significant cultural organizations: the public library system and the Walker Art Center.

Since the first sawmill was built near Red Lake in 1856, the harvesting and processing of timber has been a significant part of the local economy. It has provided an enduring source of income for the Ojibwe living in the area that became the Red Lake Indian Reservation.

On October 5, 1869, water seeped and then gushed into a tunnel underneath St. Anthony Falls creating an enormous whirlpool. The falls were nearly destroyed. It was years before the area was fully stabilized and the falls were again safe from collapse.