Curator Adam Scher chose this one-of-a-kind automobile, built in 1906 by Ole Bjella, a blacksmith from McIntosh, Minn., as an especially meaningful 20th century artifact. Constructed from the carriage of a horse-drawn buggy, the Bjella was fitted with a two-cylinder, air-cooled engine that had a top speed of 20 miles per hour. Unable to secure financing to mass-produce the vehicle, Bjella built only one car and then returned to making sleighs and harrows.

"No single invention has had a greater impact on life in this century than the auto," Scher says. "The car has changed patterns of work, play, education, residency and courtship, and these innovations have set the pace of American life for this century and beyond. About 50 different makes of autos and trucks were built in Minnesota between the 1890s and late 1920s, when car design ceased in the state."

About 15 one-of-a-kind cars may have been built in Minnesota before 1910.