The history of law enforcement in the Twin Cities, as in the rest of the United States, has been deeply influenced by race. Since the early twentieth century, many Minnesotans of color have responded to racial targeting and police brutality by forming community organizations and citizen patrols; others have served as officers themselves and grappled with racial inequality inside the police force.

An effort to move the Red Lake County seat from Red Lake Falls to Thief River Falls in 1909 divided the citizens of the county. A suspicious courthouse fire on April 23 of that year brought the situation to a head.

From 1890 to 1910, timber speculators and lumbermen patented most of the valuable pine lands in north-central Minnesota—the homeland of the Bois Forte Ojibwe. By the 1920s, dams and deforestation had so damaged the landscape that it could no longer support the tribe’s subsistence economy, and its members were forced onto their reservation at Nett Lake.

An early settler-colonist in Wheeling Township (Rice County), Norwegian immigrant Halvor Quie is often remembered as a member of the Second Company of Minnesota Sharpshooters during the Civil War. He was instrumental in local religious and educational affairs and offered lasting support to St. Olaf College.

Begun in 1918 and active until the late 1970s, the Barberry Eradication Program was an unprecedented cooperative effort between the US Department of Agriculture and twelve US states to remove the invasive common barberry bush from major areas of wheat production in the United States. The common barberry bush was a problem because it is a secondary host for the fungus that causes stem-rust disease, the most devastating disease of wheat. Minnesota played the central role in the establishment and operations of the eradication program.

Martinus Stenseth left a small farming community in northwestern Minnesota in the 1910s to pursue a career in the military. He found his passion in flying airplanes and proved his mettle in World War I, when he achieved "Flying Ace" status. His long career included many promotions and led to national military recognition.

Ernest Oberholtzer first paddled the lakes of the Rainy Lake watershed in 1909. Starting in the 1920s, he lived on Rainy Lake’s Mallard Island and was a prominent conservationist. He led the campaign for legislation to protect the watershed, including parts of what would become Voyagerus National Park and the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.

The house built in the 1880s by Henry G. Leathers on a site near the Rum River is a prime example of late-Victorian architecture in Anoka County. Used as both a dry goods store and a family home, the building is dually significant—first for its level of preservation and second for its association with a family that contributed to the commercial, social, and religious history of the town of St. Francis for three generations.

Originally built in the 1870s at 214 Jackson Street in Anoka, the Jackson Hotel was destroyed in an 1884 fire. It was quickly rebuilt and continued to function as a hotel until 1975, making it a center of local commerce and social gatherings for more than ninety years.

Designed by noted architect Frederick Marsh, this seventeen-room Georgian Revival-style home, built in Anoka in 1904, received the name “Colonial Hall” courtesy of its original residents, the doctors Alanson and Flora Aldrich.