The Kensington Runestone: Minnesota’s most brilliant and durable hoax?
The Kensington Runestone has provoked a host of scholarly and popular articles and books. The Minnesota Historical Society library carries more than forty titles on the subject.
MNopedia
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.
This content is shared with MinnPost by MNopedia, the digital encyclopedia created by the Minnesota Historical Society and supported by the Legacy Amendment’s Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund.
It only took two interventions by the U.S. Supreme Court for Minnesota to revamp its legislative districts
By the late 1950s, populations of House districts ranged from 7,290 residents to 107,246, and Senate districts from 16,878 to 153,455.
Around the turn of the century, blackface minstrel shows were a staple of prominent Minnesota theaters
Theaters such as the Orpheum, the Pence Opera House and the Academy of Music (Minneapolis) all hosted the performances.
In the space of a year foragers practically wiped out the ginseng supply in Minnesota’s Big Woods
The appeal of hunting ginseng came from the cash paid for it — hard currency was scarce after the financial crash of 1857.
A pay cut prompted the 1889 Twin Cities streetcar strike
On April 11, 1889, six hundred Minneapolis streetcar drivers walked off the job. Three hundred St. Paul drivers and other workers struck the following morning.
In the name of eugenics, Minnesota sterilized more than 2,000 people
After years of effort on the part of Charles Fremont Dight and his Eugenics Society, the Minnesota legislature passed a law authorizing sterilization of the “feebleminded” and the “insane” in 1925.
The journey from the Mississippi River to Lake Superior used to involve a lot of portaging
A brief history of the Northwest Trail.
Caterer, inventor and philanthropist Oscar C. Howard developed Minnesota’s Meals-on-Wheels program
The trained chef moved from managing large industrial cafeterias to owning successful catering businesses.
In 1894, fire destroyed Hinckley, killing hundreds
A fire survivor described Hinckley as occupying “a hole cut in the brush lands and for miles in all directions young trees, huge stumps, and fallen logs covered the land.”
‘Leisure class’ theorist Thorstein Veblen got his academic start in Minnesota
Veblen’s highly acclaimed treatise The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions (1899) introduced the term “conspicuous consumption.”
A goodie idea: The history of Pearson’s Nut Goodie
The Nut Goodie’s annual revenues in the mid-1960s totaled nearly $3 million.
From trading to mines to resorts, the Gunflint Trail has long played a big role in northeastern Minnesota’s economy
An advertisement from 1938 describes the Gunflint Trail as “a wilderness drive unsurpassed for its wild and enchanting beauty” and boasts, “Now you enter the greatest canoe country in the world.”
Conservation concerns led to creation of Minnesota’s Nerstrand Big Woods State Park
Between 1934 and 1945, many local advocacy and state legislative efforts were introduced to preserve the Nerstrand Woods as the last sizable remnant of Minnesota’s “Big Woods.”
How 3M went from a failed mining operation on the North Shore to an international manufacturing powerhouse
3M’s developments had far-reaching impacts on various industries, including office supplies and entertainment.
In the 1970s, some Minnesota farmers were very upset about a plan to route power lines across their fields
Even after the towers for the power line were installed, they were targets for vandalism.
How barber S. Edward Hall became an important advocate for St. Paul’s black community
Hall used connections fostered in his barber shop to circulate job openings to blacks in the community.
Considered state of the art at its opening, the Anoka State Hospital eventually fell behind ideas about mental health care
The hospital was the first in Minnesota to be built according to the cottage plan to reduce the institutional feel for its chronic patients.
How Near North came to be one of Minneapolis’ largest black communities
By 1960, one third of Minneapolis’ African Americans lived in Near North.
The rise and fall of the Minnesota North Stars
The team’s twenty-nine-year residency in the state produced two trips to the Stanley Cup finals.
How Minnesota got to be a top turkey-producing state
In 1959, Minnesota received its first top ranking in turkey production in the U.S. with more than 13 million raised, a position it consistently holds. By 2016, annual production totaled 45 million birds raised by 450 growers on 600 farms.
