Each week, MinnPost brings you a highlight of our state’s past from MNopedia, an encyclopedia of Minnesota history written by experts and produced by the Minnesota Historical Society.
Established by fur trader and politician Henry Hastings Sibley, it sits on a bluff on the south side of the Minnesota river, just east of Historic Fort Snelling.
Madson designed an AIDS memorial in the mid-1990s, when few memorials for the disease existed and the epidemic was at its height.
Over a period of about six decades, the mill produced millions of board feet of lumber and provided construction material used in towns and cities throughout the state.
The Minnesota turkey industry began with small backyard flocks raised on family farms.
Robert Aaron Brown was a prolific St. Paul painter, mostly of watercolors, whose productive years were roughly 1930 to 1950.
An unusually close election in 1962 led to a recount in the race between Gov. Elmer L. Andersen and his challenger, Lt. Gov. Karl F. Rolvaag.
On Oct. 30, 1991, no one in Minnesota foresaw a blizzard. Local meteorologists predicted a few inches of snow. The snow began to fall in the early to mid-afternoon of Oct. 31 and fell steadily for almost three days.
The title recognizes its status as one of the first cities to discourage Halloween tricks by hosting a city-wide party.
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.
Public art created during the late 1960s and early 1970s responded to the destruction of America’s inner cities. 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.
Gomez-Bethke served as Minnesota Commissioner of Human Rights, guided boards and commissions as a volunteer, and co-founded both Centro Cultural Chicano and Instituto de Arte y Cultura.
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.
The rustic cabin was built by Jun Fujita, one of the first prominent Japanese Americans in the Midwest.
Agricultural societies held fairs in Minnesota Territory as far back as the early 1850s.
Since its founding in 1859, the Minnesota State Fair had been an essential yearly tradition in the agricultural state. However, after the United States entered World War I in 1917, the fair took on an entirely new significance.
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.
While recovering from a fall in 1971, Robert Asp read a book on Viking shipbuilding. This sparked a thought.
In 1970, President Richard M. Nixon failed twice to fill an opening on the Supreme Court when the Senate rejected first Clement Haynsworth, then Harrold Carswell. On his third try Nixon chose Blackmun.
The name “Aquatennial” was chosen by contest to highlight the abundance of lakes, rivers, and parks around Minneapolis.
Entire families came up from Texas for the sugar beet planting season and harvest, and American Crystal provided housing.
