Driven to emigrate by overpopulation, unfulfilled nationalism, and a fractured economy, hundreds of thousands of Norwegians came to Minnesota Territory, and then to the state of Minnesota, between 1851 and 1920, making the Twin Cities the unofficial capital of Norwegian America. Internal religious and social conflicts shaped the group’s experience in its new home as much as Minnesota’s climate and geography.

Herbjorn Gausta, one of the first Norwegian American professional artists, gained critical acclaim during the late nineteenth century for creating images of landscapes, people, and daily Norwegian American life. He may be best known, however, for his religious work, which comprises over 400 rural church altar paintings.

Clara Ueland was a lifelong women’s rights activist and prominent Minnesotan suffragist. She was president of the Minnesota Woman Suffrage Association when the nineteenth amendment was passed in 1919. That same year, she also became the first president of the Minnesota League of Women’s Voters.

St. Olaf College is a private liberal arts college in Northfield, Minnesota. It was founded by Norwegian Lutherans in 1874 and continues to thrive as a top-ranking school.

Grand Portage (Gichi Onigamiing) is both a historic seasonal migration route and the traditional site of an Ojibwe summer village on the northwestern shore of Lake Superior. In the 1700s, after voyageurs began to use it to carry canoes from Lake Superior to the Pigeon River, it became one of the most profitable fur-trading sites in the region and a headquarters for the North West Fur Company.

The Ames-Florida-Stork House was completed in 1861 on the banks of the Crow River in Rockford, Minnesota, and was listed on the National Historic Register in 1979. In 1986 the house was sold to the City of Rockford, and the Rockford Area Historical Society was organized to manage the house as a museum. The historical society also runs historical programs, hosts on-site events, and preserves related archives.

Antoine Grignon was a French Indigenous interpreter and fur trader who lived and worked along the Mississippi River between Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, and St. Paul, Minnesota. With Ho-Chunk (Winnebago), Dakota, and French roots and a bilingual education, Antoine, like many mixed-race people, was frequently called upon to interpret or negotiate for the US government.

The Ravine House (Daniel Dayton House), three-and-a-half miles northwest of Harmony, was an overnight stop on the Dubuque–St. Paul Trail, a frontier mail and stagecoach route through Iowa and Minnesota.

The evacuation of Georgetown took place during the US–Dakota War of 1862 when the town’s residents fled to safety on August 22—five days after the war’s start. Only the families of Randolph M. Probstfield and E. R. Hutchinson chose to return afterwards.

Randolph M. Probstfield is commonly considered Clay County’s first European settler-colonist. A farmer in the Red River Valley, he was a local leader in politics, education, and agricultural development from his arrival in Minnesota in 1859 until his death in 1911.