[{"alt":"Orange salt-and-pepper shakers, a yellow pitcher, and a taupe oil pourer in fluid, round shapes sit against an indigo background.","author":[{"name":"Alex Magnolia","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/alex-magnolia"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"September 18, 2026","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Red Wing Pottery","postbody":"The pottery produced in Red Wing is a tangible, material record of Minnesota’s history. In the late nineteenth century, Red Wing stoneware supported agriculture. In the early twentieth ...","searchtext":"The pottery produced in Red Wing is a tangible, material record of Minnesota’s history. In the late nineteenth century, Red Wing stoneware supported agriculture. In the early twentieth century, Red Wing ceramic art decorated houses and apartments. And after World War II, Red Wing dinnerware fueled the domestic imaginations of postwar families. In this way, the pottery influenced how Minnesotans lived, worked, and created the idea of “home.” It endures in museum archives and private collections in the twenty-first century and remains popular as everyday vintage dinnerware and decor. Red Wing pottery is literally Minnesota. Indigenous people have used the clay of the Upper Mississippi River to make ceramic vessels since at least the Late Woodland period, 500 BCE–1000 CE. Settlers in the region (many of them English and German immigrants) began using clay soil on their properties to make stoneware in the 1860s. The first commercial pottery workshop, the Red Wing Terra Cotta Works, opened in 1868, moving to St. Paul in 1880. In 1877, the Red Wing Stoneware Company was formed to mass-produce pottery. The new company made an array of durable stoneware that found numerous uses in agriculture: crocks for storage, laundry, or dyeing; jugs for keeping liquids; jars for preserving food; butter churns; spittoons; water coolers; and feeders for poultry. The successful business inspired competitors. Within fifteen years, two rival enterprises (Minnesota Stoneware and North Star Stoneware) emerged in Red Wing, then joined forces as Union Stoneware in 1894. In 1906, the two remaining firms merged to form the Red Wing Union Stoneware Company and cultivated a national market by shipping their goods on trains around the country. The potters of Red Wing showed a remarkable ability to change with the times. After World War I, more people than ever lived in cities, decreasing demand for agricultural stoneware. In response, Red Wing potters joined the art pottery movement, making objects that were decorative, functional, and beautiful all at once: colorful vases, ornate jardinières, sculpted planters, brushware umbrella stands, and whimsical sculptures. Neutral-colored glazes coated most early Red Wing stoneware, but as art pottery swept the nation, potters applied vibrant and exuberant glazes to their new designs. Red Wing Potteries, Inc., the company’s new and final name after 1936, worked with three leading midcentury designers to diversify their offerings: Charles Murphy, Belle Kogan, and Eva Zeisel. Each designer’s unique creations—particularly Zeisel’s flowing and whimsical dinnerware—shaped the company’s product lines and created lasting impressions with consumers. In the 1930s and 1940s, the company introduced hand-painted lines of dinnerware. In 1947, however, it discontinued agricultural stoneware. For the next two decades, hundreds of employees created dinnerware (plates, cups, salt and pepper shakers, pitchers) and art pottery. Red Wing produced dozens of patterns of dinnerware in several price ranges, helping families serve meals across the country. By the 1960s, Red Wing produced more than a million pieces of dinnerware and art pottery per year. In the late 1940s, the company became an all-union shop. Most of the workers shaping, throwing, and firing the pieces were men. Women, meanwhile, worked mainly in administration and as painters and designers, hand-painting the final flourishes on pottery before firing. Some even went off book and added their own flair to patterns, like a worm emerging from an apple. In the decades after World War II, Red Wing Potteries faced numerous headwinds. First, imported ceramics, especially lower-priced Japanese dinnerware, eroded Red Wing||s market share. Second, sales of Red Wing pottery in department stores sagged throughout the 1950s and 1960s, creating lean years for the company. Third, management doubled down on popular dinnerware sets, especially the Pepe and Bob White lines, by commencing riskier sales in supermarkets, where customers bought fewer pieces, expected lower prices, and were unfamiliar with Red Wing. Finally, new management tried to shrink the workforce and cut costs. Red Wing Potteries, Inc. closed permanently in 1967 during a labor strike over wages, health insurance, and benefits. Management had previously lambasted the union, including in a full-page newspaper ad in 1950. While the labor disagreement proved an acute crisis, declining sales, an aging factory, and the loss of market share also likely doomed the company in the long term. Major museums around the world showcase Red Wing pottery, including the Minnesota Historical Society, the British Museum, the Metroplitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/MNopedia/MNopedia%202026/Red%20Wing%20Pottery/Eva_Zeisel_Red_Wing_Pottery_02_resized.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/red-wing-pottery-mnopedia"},{"alt":"A wrecked steamship sits partially submerged in water, with its bow facing the shore of a lake, with buildings behind it.","author":[{"name":"Abigail Venuso","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/abigail-venuso"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"August 19, 2026","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Mataafa Storm, 1905","postbody":"On November 27, 1905, sailors on Lake Superior faced heavy snowfall, sustained winds up to seventy miles per hour, massive waves, and subzero wind chill temperatures. The Mataafa storm, ...","searchtext":"On November 27, 1905, sailors on Lake Superior faced heavy snowfall, sustained winds up to seventy miles per hour, massive waves, and subzero wind chill temperatures. The Mataafa storm, named after a steamship wrecked near Duluth, was one of the most costly in Lake Superior’s history, and resulted in new navigational aids and safety practices on the lake. A large storm delayed fifteen loaded vessels in Duluth harbor on Friday, November 24. Winds at sixty miles per hour swept the lake, and the few boats that ventured out were severely damaged. Three days later, when Duluth weather forecaster Herbert Richardson ordered storm flags raised in the harbor again, many captains ignored the warning, arguing from experience that a large storm on Lake Superior was always followed by a week or more of calm weather. US Steel’s 430-foot freighter Mataafa, along with several other boats, left port on the afternoon of Monday, November 27. At 6:00 p.m. that evening, heavy, wet snow began to fall in Duluth and continued overnight and throughout the following day. The wind picked up to forty miles per hour on the evening of November 27, and by early morning on Tuesday, November 28, sustained gales had reached sixty-eight miles per hour. Late in the evening on Tuesday, the wind shifted to the northwest. This caused temperatures to plummet, resulting in subzero windchill temperatures overnight. Although the winds remained strong, the shift in direction slowed the storm, and by the afternoon of November 29, the gale had abated. The storm’s intense snowfall hampered transportation both on the lake and on land. The Duluth Street Railway Company reported that streetcars were inoperable by 11:00 p.m. on Monday. Fast snow accumulation and downed electric lines made it nearly impossible to run the streetcars on Tuesday, except for a few in West Duluth. Railroad traffic was paralyzed by the storm. Freight trains were impossible to move after a few hours of heavy snow, and most passenger trains got stuck on the tracks. Winds blew down telegraph and telephone wires in Duluth, making it impossible for station operators to locate trains outside of town. Near the harbor, flooding submerged railway tracks in as much as three feet of water. On Lake Superior, all of the boats that left Duluth on the evening of November 27 were forced to turn around or find shelter just a few hours into the storm. From late morning to early afternoon on November 28, five vessels made it back to the head of the lake and attempted to enter Duluth harbor. The Arizona, the Isaac B. Ellwood, and the E. C. Pope all suffered serious damage but managed to enter the relative safety of the harbor. At noon, the R. W. England missed the entrance canal and beached at Park Point. The single lighthouse on the south pier was an insufficient guide in the low visibility caused by the blowing snow. Two hours later, the Mataafa attempted to enter. It struck the north pier, damaging seams amidships, and was pushed north of the entrance canal. The vessel grounded just 150 yards from shore, where the constant pounding of waves eventually broke the ship in half, dividing the crew between the bow and the stern. Spectators watched from the beach as crew members attempted to cross the break in the boat from stern to bow. Only three succeeded. Life-saving personnel made several attempts to rescue the crew late in the day, but falling darkness and rough seas made the endeavor impossible until the morning of November 29. Fifteen men were rescued from the bow of the ship, but nine stuck at the stern perished from exposure during the night. The horrific wreck was witnessed by thousands of Duluthians and became the namesake of the storm. Overall, twenty-nine vessels were damaged or destroyed on Lake Superior during the Mataafa storm. The storm claimed thirty-six lives and caused $3.1 million of damage on the lake. These heavy losses prompted decisive action to bolster safe shipping. Two lighthouses were built in 1910 as a direct result of the storm—one at Split Rock and one on the north pier of the Duluth harbor entrance. Additionally, both piers at the Duluth shipping canal were stocked with life boats and flotation devices to improve accessibility to life-saving devices. Freighters installed cables from bow to stern on deck to aid sailors in the event of a ship splitting in two, as the Mataafa had done. Editor’s note: Definitions of “boat” and “ship” vary by location and naming authority. In line with the most common definition of |||ship||| (a watercraft intended for travel across deep water, especially seas) and |||boat||| (a smaller, open vessel without decks, intended for use in sheltered water), this article refers to the Mataafa as a ship. On the Great Lakes, however, |||ship||| or “salty” usually refers to a vessel that can sail on both the lakes and the ocean. |||Boat||| or “laker,” meanwhile, refers to a vessel that is lake-locked, or not fit for ocean voyaging. Freight vessels like the Mataafa and modern thousand-footers that can||t leave the Great Lakes are therefore referred to as “boats||| within the trade.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/MNopedia/MNopedia%202026/Mataafa%20Storm/umn001606.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/mataafa-storm-1905"},{"alt":"A painting of a man wearing dark judicial robes, a black tie, and a white collared shirt. He sits at a three-quarter angle in a red upholstered chair. The painting is housed within an ornate golden frame.","author":[{"name":"Paul Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/paul-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"August 05, 2026","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Butler, Pierce (1866–1939)","postbody":"Pierce Butler was the first Minnesotan to serve as a justice of the United States Supreme Court. His nearly seventeen years there (1923–1939) followed three decades as one of the most ...","searchtext":"Pierce Butler was the first Minnesotan to serve as a justice of the United States Supreme Court. His nearly seventeen years there (1923–1939) followed three decades as one of the most successful trial lawyers in early twentieth-century Minnesota. He was a prosecutor, railroad lawyer, litigator for hire, and University of Minnesota regent. Some of his work, including his opposition to minimum wage laws, remains controversial. Pierce Butler was born to Irish immigrants on a farm near Northfield, Minnesota, in 1866. He graduated from Carleton College in 1887, read law in St. Paul for a year, then went into practice. Elected Ramsey County attorney in 1893, he prosecuted the killers Otto Wonnigkeit and Charles Ermisch, resulting in the only double execution in Ramsey County history in 1894. Butler spent a quarter century, 1897 to 1923, mostly in service of the railroad industry. He was in great demand for his skill in the arcane fields of railroad regulation and asset valuation, first as general attorney to the Omaha Railroad, then in private practice. Over six feet tall and burly, he won a reputation as an intimidating courtroom warrior. The Taft administration twice called on Butler to prosecute businesses, first the milling industry under the Pure Food Act, then the nation’s leading meat packers under the Sherman Antitrust Act. His greatest victory took place in St. Paul, where he persuaded the federal district court to declare Minnesota’s railroad rate regulation unconstitutional. This victory was later undone by the US Supreme Court. During World War I Butler leveraged institutional power against those he deemed insufficiently patriotic. As a University of Minnesota regent (1907-1923), he engineered the firing of political science professor William A. Schaper, whom he called “the Kaiser’s man,” for not “boosting” the war effort in his classes. As a lawyer he defended prominent citizens of Luverne, Minnesota, who kidnapped, threatened with death, and tarred and feathered John Meints. They did it, Butler argued, to protect Meints from even worse consequences of his disloyalty. Butler won the case, but on appeal his defense was ruled illegitimate. Former President Taft got to know Butler and was impressed by him during important railroad valuation hearings in Canada in 1921. When Taft became chief justice, he recommended Butler for the Supreme Court to President Harding. Butler joined the court in January 1923. Most scholars have described Butler’s Supreme Court service as undistinguished and devoted to protecting the wealth of the wealthy. He wrote over 300 majority opinions, almost all for uncontroversial cases. Only a handful of his opinions and dissents are remembered now. In Buck v. Bell, the court approved Virginia’s program of sterilizing women deemed by the state to be “genetically defective.” Justice Holmes wrote of Carrie Buck, her mother, and her daughter, “three generations of imbeciles are enough.” Only Pierce Butler dissented, but he declined to state his reasons. In Olmstead v. United States he wrote, again on the losing side, that the Fourth Amendment should be interpreted to ban government telephone wiretaps if done without a search warrant. His reasoning was adopted forty years later in Katz v. US. In Powell v. Alabama, the Scottsboro Boys case, he dissented again. Eight innocent Black teenagers had been sentenced to death for rape after rushed trials before all-white juries, their lawyers given no time to prepare. By a vote of 7-2 the Supreme Court overturned their convictions. Butler, who knew from experience the importance of trial preparation, found no defect in the proceedings. Butler was one of the “Four Horsemen” justices who opposed the New Deal. In 1936 he wrote the majority opinion in a 5-4 case, Morehead v. New York ex rel. Tipaldo, which declared a New York minimum wage law unconstitutional. Government, he wrote, had no power to set wages. Coming as the seventh in a series of cases striking down New Deal-era legislation, Tipaldo set off President Roosevelt’s so-called “court-packing plan” to add six seats to the Supreme Court. Roosevelt lost that battle—the worst legislative defeat of his presidency. However, just nine months after Tipaldo, the Supreme Court reversed the decision in a minimum wage case called West Coast Hotel v. Parrish. Butler’s opinion in Tipaldo had been based on his concept of “freedom of contract,” the idea that the state should not intervene in contracts between employers and their employees. In Parrish, Chief Justice Hughes wrote that “the Constitution does not speak of freedom of contract,” sweeping aside Butler’s way of thinking. Pierce Butler died of leukemia on November 16, 1939. Editor’s note: Pierce Butler Route in St. Paul is named after Pierce Butler Jr., the son of the justice.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/MNopedia/MNopedia%202026/Pierce%20Butler/Justice-Butler-Pierce-1923-1939-b.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246060,"name":"Crime and Punishment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/butler-pierce-1866-1939"},{"alt":"Flames and smoke rise above a mostly green treeline, with water in the foreground.","author":[{"name":"Hayden Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/hayden-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 27, 2026","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Forest Fires","postbody":"Before settlers came to what is now Minnesota, Indigenous people stewarded forests by setting fires. These controlled burns eliminated dead trees and underbrush that could have fueled ...","searchtext":"Before settlers came to what is now Minnesota, Indigenous people stewarded forests by setting fires. These controlled burns eliminated dead trees and underbrush that could have fueled unstoppable, more destructive fires. Although settlers continued this practice in the 1800s, they did so as industrial expansion was building up ignitable fuel. The Hinckley Fire of 1894 and the Cloquet Fire of 1918, caused by this buildup as well as drought, rank among the deadliest forest fires in recorded history. Fire has fundamentally shaped Minnesota’s environment. In forested regions through the mid-1800s, Native people set controlled fires to break up the habitats of game animals, and to make space for crops and wild plants like blueberries. They did this regularly to support both the environment and their own goals. High-intensity crown fires, by contrast, were uncontrolled. Also called stand-replacing fires, these were caused by natural sources such as storms (which downed trees) and lightning (which ignited them). They burned treetops, sometimes casting firebrands that sparked new fires miles away. Unlike the fires set by Native people, stand-replacing fires occurred every couple of centuries and started new cycles of forest succession. Colonization transformed the region’s longstanding fire regime. Settlers used fire as a tool to clear brush and transform forest into farmland. Setting fires every year, however, desensitized them to seeing smoke, which they regarded as a regular occurrence. Beginning in the 1870s and continuing through the 1920s, Minnesota experienced periods of drought at the same time that the logging and mining industries developed. The expansion of railroads into northern Minnesota’s forests began in earnest during the 1880s alongside the development of the Iron Range, which allowed logging companies to push deeper into previously inaccessible regions. Sparks from trains caused more than half of all forest fires. In this environment of increased settlement, industrial activity, and drought, small fires converged to form large, destructive, stand-replacing fires. Before 1900, logging was an incredibly wasteful industry, with most companies leaving behind their slash (narrowed tops, branches, etc.). Slash dried out in the spring and summer, and by fall became a powerful incendiary. One result was the Hinckley Fire (1894), which killed at least 413 people. Survivors buried their deceased family and friends in mass graves (“death trenches”), with one serving as the final resting place for ninety victims. The fire wiped out the city of Hinckley, home to about 1,200 people at the time. But the region was also home to an uncounted number of Native American and backcountry settlers. At least twenty-three Ojibwe people living on the Mille Lacs Reservation died in the Hinckley Fire. The number of dead among other Indigenous people, squatters, and backwoodsmen may have been much higher. The Hinckley Fire helped reform forest-management policies. Afterward, Minnesota created the position of chief fire warden and appointed Civil War veteran Christopher Columbus Andrews to the post. Once in office, Andrews deputized local fire wardens to levy fines against companies that did not burn the slash piles they left behind. This was an imperfect system, however, as local wardens hesitated to punish their community members. Since there was no minimum penalty for not burning slash, many fines were, according to Andrews, “as low as $5.00 and $1.00.” Not all destructive fires resulted in high death tolls. The 1908 fire season, for example, burned more than 400,000 acres across Minnesota. The costliest of these was the Chisholm Fire, which burned 20,000 acres of forest on the rapidly industrializing Mesabi Iron Range. Flames imperiled the Mesabi, with reports that fire completely surrounded Hibbing. The fire did not cause any casualties, but it did cause nearly $1.5 million in damages in the richest iron-producing region in the world. It also led to renewed calls for fire prevention as the state narrowly avoided a second Hinckley. After Chisholm, the state followed Andrews’s advice by passing H.F. No. 76 in 1909. The law divided the state into fire districts, employed rangers, and increased the state’s annual fire budget to $21,000. While this was an improvement, the Forestry Commission was still woefully underfunded. Andrews had asked for $38,000—a figure he regarded as inadequate to manage Minnesota’s fire problem. Drought persisted in Minnesota, and the 1910 season was the worst of all. The historically dry year made the Forestry Commission burn through its funds as fast as the fires raged across the state. By the end of August, the fire fund had run out, forcing Andrews to recall his rangers from their districts on September 1. On October 7, a mere thirty-six days after Andrews pulled his rangers out of their districts, perfect weather conditions whipped up fires that had been smoldering for weeks into an inferno. More than a million forested acres burned in Minnesota during 1910. The biggest of these, the Baudette Fire, burned more than 300,000 acres, destroying the towns of Baudette and Spooner, killing at least twenty-nine people, and leaving thousands more homeless. Andrews and many other Minnesotans claimed the responsibility for the disaster lay with the state legislature. According to Andrews, if the legislature had approved his request for a $38,000 budget, it would have allowed the ranger service to continue through the rest of the fire season. Less than a year after the Baudette Fire, the state established the Minnesota Forest Service. World War I contributed to slash buildup in Minnesota and relaxed policing of logging companies. William T. Cox, the state’s chief forester, was appointed special recruiting officer for forestry engineers and contributed 1,000 men for work in forestry battalions in Europe. As a result, however, Cox reported that “the war had drained so many men out of the north country that it was hard to find even an emergency fire-fighting force.” In early October of 1918, flames raged across more than 250,000 acres toward the densely populated Twin Ports of Duluth and Superior, home to more than 100,000 people. Like most settlement-era fires, what became known as the Cloquet Fire was not one fire but many, whipped into a conflagration by prime weather conditions. It left the Twin Ports largely unaffected but destroyed much of the surrounding area, including the towns of Cloquet and Moose Lake. Most of the Fond du Lac reservation burned, resulting in a devastating loss of property and livestock––though the Ojibwe people living there suffered no deaths. The Cloquet Fire killed at least 453 people and injured or displaced more than 52,000 others, most of whom sought refuge in the Twin Ports. Relief efforts for the white settlers was swift, largely administered by the National Guard and the American Red Cross. The Fond du Lac Ojibwe, however, were not as lucky. Only those who had accepted the allotment of land into private plots received relief, and even this took years to arrive. The Cloquet Fire is the worst disaster in Minnesota history, and it, like the other fire disasters, was only partly natural. Logging’s decline, the US Forest Service, and state regulation reduced forest fires in Minnesota overall after 1920. Large fires persist in the twenty-first century, however, due to the Forest Service’s fire-suppression policies––efforts to remove fire from the American landscape that build up fuel loads. Fuel-load buildup contributed to both the Ham Lake Fire in 2007 and the Pagami Creek Fire in 2011. Warming temperatures and renewed use of fossil fuels in the early 2000s made fires—and their smoke—common sights in Minnesota, Canada, and the Upper Midwest. Despite regulations passed during the 1990s and 2000s to reverse ozone deterioration, explosive forest fires undid that progress.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/MNopedia/MNopedia%202026/Forest%20Fires/Pagami%20Creek%20Fire_Lake%20Polly_photo%20by%20Hans%20Martin-USGS_resized.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/forest-fires"},{"alt":"Laborers stand on logs floating in a river. The logs fill the river from the foreground to the shore in the background.","author":[{"name":"Hayden Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/hayden-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 27, 2026","eraTag":[{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Commercial Logging, 1839–1949","postbody":"For more than a century (1839–1949), commercial logging reshaped Minnesota’s environment, transforming its land and water as well as its people. Although logging boosted economic enterprise ...","searchtext":"For more than a century (1839–1949), commercial logging reshaped Minnesota’s environment, transforming its land and water as well as its people. Although logging boosted economic enterprise before statehood and helped form Minnesota’s cultural identity, the pursuit of old-growth forests drove the dispossession of Dakota and Ojibwe people from their lands between the 1830s and the early 1900s. Logging in the western Great Lakes exploded after the Civil War, particularly due to the expansion of railroads into the North American West. Pine lumber from Wisconsin and Minnesota became the building materials for settlements throughout the wood-scarce Great Plains, from Texas into Canada. As the industry grew, it remained dependent on river transportation and followed the seasons. In winter, logging crews ventured into the woods to fell trees. They hauled logs via oxen and, later, horse-drawn sleds to frozen riverbanks. After the spring thaw, log drivers sent millions of board-feet downstream to sawmills. Log jams became spectacles, perhaps none more so than the 1886 St. Croix River jam, which one newspaper headline called “the jam of all jams.” Indigenous lumberjacks (particularly Ojibwe men) began working as wage laborers in the industry, often as river pilots on log drives. Some Ojibwe log drivers earned reputations for their skills, and by the early twentieth century, several Ojibwe men had won log-rolling contests. By the 1880s, most of the best pine had been taken from the Minnesota forests close to riverways like the St. Croix and the Mississippi. To capitalize on forests in the northern part of the state, however, they needed a new technology. They found it in railroads. Commercial interest in iron ore on the Iron Range spurred the region’s infrastructural development—particularly the extension of rail lines into formerly remote areas. Some lumber barons (Healey Cady Akeley and Thomas Barlow Walker, for example) built rail lines of their own. The new northern railroads revolutionized logging in Minnesota. They carried wood that had been too remote or too heavy for water transport to new markets. They made the draft animals that had hauled logs to waterways obsolete. And they allowed logging companies to operate outside the winter months, freeing them from the rigid schedule of wintertime cutting and springtime log drives. Selective logging transformed into clearcutting as lumber barons hurried to profit from even the “waste” trees they had previously disregarded. They lowered their standards and took small trees that they’d passed over only a few years earlier. As the industry matured in Minnesota, however, only the largest, richest logging companies could draw upon the new rail networks to extract the ever-receding pine from the remote forests. Industrial-scale production in Minnesota’s logging industry during the 1880s and 1890s produced prodigious amounts of waste. Without industry regulation or forestry policies to restrain them, sawmill operators dumped sawdust into rivers by the ton, channelizing stream beds and choking fish-spawning areas. Logging dams, constructed to regulate water flow for log drives, killed essential wild rice crops for Ojibwe people. Loggers left slash (narrowed tops of trees and branches) in the woods, adding fuel loads to drying-out forests. The ecological degradation that came with logging culminated in devastating forest fires in the western Great Lakes, including at Hinckley (1894), Chisholm (1908), Baudette and Spooner (1910), and Cloquet (1918). These fires killed hundreds of people, burned millions of acres, and contributed to the cut-and-run practices of logging companies. In 1895, in the wake of the Hinckley Fire, Minnesota established the fire warden system, a precursor to the Minnesota Forest Service, appointing Christopher Columbus Andrews as chief fire warden. By the turn of the twentieth century, Minnesota’s white pine forests were nearing exhaustion. Overcutting had depleted the most accessible and valuable timber stands. Lumbermen like Walker and Frederick Weyerhaeuser increasingly shifted their operations to the yellow pine forests of the South, and to the Douglas fir forests of the Pacific Northwest. In Minnesota, deadhead logging, or raising sunken logs from riverbeds, became a profitable business. “The Mississippi River” from St. Cloud to Minneapolis, one 1904 newspaper article read, “is literally paved with money,” with millions of dollars|| worth of sunken logs lining the riverbed. Preserved by water, old-growth white pine logs cut decades earlier were the most valuable and most accessible wood remaining. Loggers estimated that between five and ten percent of all logs that floated downriver sank along the way. As the industry looked for ways to capitalize on the state’s remaining forests, the wood-pulp paper industry developed, with paper companies increasingly taking spruce and aspen and younger, smaller trees for pulpwood. Outside the rosy mythology of Paul Bunyan, real lumberjacks lived hard lives marked by low wages, itinerant labor, and dangerous conditions that sometimes resulted in death. Many were immigrants, and a large number were Indigenous. Logging camps were thus hierarchical but socially and culturally diverse environments in often isolated forests, headed by a foreman or “boss.” Labor organizing in the logging industry lagged behind other sectors, partly due to the transient nature of the workforce. By the early twentieth century, however, groups like the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, established in 1905) were organizing lumber workers, advocating for better wages and working conditions. Under the “One Big Union” (or OBU, as the IWW was sometimes called), lumberjacks combined their voices with other exploited laborers, such as miners and railroad workers, to fight against corporate control. Strikes and labor unrest, particularly during the 1910s, reflected broader national trends in industrial labor conditions. Although organizing helped lumberjacks wield their collective power, strikes during the winter, which remained the primary logging season, drove companies to log more heavily in the summer months to make up the lost profits. In 1917, for instance, the Virginia and Rainy Lake Company logged “practically forty-one million [board] feet” between May and October. Superintendent Frank H. Gillmor explained that the extra effort “offset this loss of feet and dollars” due to industry-wide strikes that had begun in January. As timber supplies dwindled by the 1920s, many logging towns declined or disappeared altogether. Logging companies defaulted on their cutover lands, and tax-delinquent parcels fell into the hands of the state. At the same time, conservation movements gained momentum. State and federal authorities passed laws protecting Minnesota’s remnant forests and so-called “wilderness areas,” such as the Superior National Forest. The US Forest Service and Minnesota state agencies implemented policies aimed at sustainable forestry, fire prevention, and reforestation. The Great Depression accelerated the decline of industrial logging in Minnesota. Reduced demand for lumber led to mill closures and widespread unemployment. New Deal programs helped reshape the state’s forests and rural economy. The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), established in 1933, employed thousands of young men in reforestation and park development projects across Minnesota’s cutover, tax-delinquent lands, leading to the creation of state parks and forests during the 1930s. By 1937, the era of large-scale white pine logging had effectively ended. In that year, the International Logging Company completed the last log drive in Minnesota history on the Little Fork River, a tributary of the Rainy River. While timber harvesting continued, it no longer dominated the state’s economy as it had in previous decades. Instead, forestry evolved into a more regulated and sustainable industry, integrated with broader environmental and economic policies. Pulpwood harvesting for papermaking and recreation serve as the two primary economic drivers in Minnesota’s forests today. Editor||s note: The fires that burned in northeastern Minnesota and northwestern Wisconsin in the late summer of 1894 were patchy, leading to disputes about the total acreage destroyed. Combined, the fires raged across an area of more than 2,000 square miles in the two states. Hinckley||s fire was the deadliest, and burned an area of between 250 and 480 square miles.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/MNopedia/MNopedia%202026/Commercial%20Logging%2c%201840%E2%80%931949/HD5.44%20r1.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/commercial-logging-1839-1949"},{"alt":"Scene of a shoreline and encampment, with canoes on the water, people standing on shore, and buildings, trees, and a cloudy sky in the background.","author":[{"name":"Hayden Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/hayden-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 01, 2026","eraTag":[{"id":186622056203,"name":"1792–1861 (Expansion and Reform)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Origins of Commercial Logging, 1821–1839","postbody":"Even before the formation of Minnesota Territory in 1849, the vast pine forests and navigable rivers west of the St. Croix River influenced the interactions of US politicians with the ...","searchtext":"Even before the formation of Minnesota Territory in 1849, the vast pine forests and navigable rivers west of the St. Croix River influenced the interactions of US politicians with the Native nations who lived there. The lure of logging for profit intensified in the 1830s, when settlers pressured the US government to sign treaties that would transform Dakota and Ojibwe homeland into a business opportunity. Eastern white pine was among the most valuable tree species in early US history, and the most sought-after wood for building. It is strong, light, attractive, straight-grained, and easy to work—qualities that made it the premier building material. Its buoyancy, too, was invaluable in a period before railroads, when companies transported logs by floating them to downstream mills. White pine was so desirable, in fact, that the first commercial loggers selectively cut it from forests, leaving other trees standing. Minnesota marks the westernmost limits of eastern white pine in the US. As logging deforested northeastern states in the early nineteenth century, the white-pine logging industry slowly shifted westward to the Great Lakes. Soldiers stationed at Fort Snelling built Minnesota’s first sawmill at St. Anthony Falls in 1821. This operation, however, remained small, and most of the wood produced was used locally. It was not until the 1830s, when white settlers moved to the Upper Mississippi lead-mining district, that demand for local supplies of pine lumber soared. Like most white Americans at the time, settlers in the lead district used pine lumber to build their towns and homes; most of their supply, however, came from as far away as Pennsylvania. This made lumber prohibitively expensive—in some instances ten times more expensive than back East. In 1837, settlers in the lead district pushed for the federal government to make treaties with the Ojibwe, Dakota, and Menominee peoples that would let them log the seemingly inexhaustible pinelands east and southeast of Lake Superior. One of them, the so-called “White Pine Treaty,” marked the beginning of large-scale logging operations in Minnesota. As in other treaties, what the Ojibwe and Dakota thought they were agreeing to differed from what American officials desired. Some Ojibwe and Dakota people thought they were ceding the right to log their lands (i.e., stumpage rights), not the land itself. As Eshkibagikoonzh (Flat Mouth), a prominent Pillager Ojibwe leader from Leech Lake, explained at the 1837 treaty negotiation, “It is hard to give up the land. It will remain and cannot be destroyed, but you may cut down the trees, and others will grow up. You know we cannot live deprived of lakes and rivers. There is some game on the land yet, and for that we wish to remain upon it.” Before the treaty, some Native people had allowed settlers to establish sawmills on their lands in return for payment. White loggers operated sawmills on the Chippewa and Black Rivers as early as 1817, but they did so at the discretion of the tribal leaders upon whose lands they were cutting. The loggers often paid these leaders with tobacco, food, or ammunition. At the 1837 treaty negotiations, some Ojibwe leaders argued that the sawmill operators on the Chippewa River, and any others to whom they had granted logging privileges, should retain their ability to continue logging on the newly ceded lands. Before Congress ratified the White Pine Treaty or paid any of the signatory nations, however, white lumbermen commenced cutting. One man, John Boyce, established the first commercial sawmill in present-day Minnesota in late 1837 on the Snake River. When Ojibwe people returned to the area in the spring of 1838, according to the missionary William T. Boutwell, “they had never seen…such a pile of logs!” Boutwell recalled that the Ojibwe demanded Boyce pay them in pork and flour for their logs, since they had not yet received payment from the federal government. But Boyce refused to pay, insisting that he had cut the logs legally. Unpaid and unhappy Ojibwe people chased Boyce down the St. Croix as he rafted his logs, causing him to lose most of the logs and equipment. The steamboat Palmyra saved Boyce, and once aboard he learned of the treaty’s ratification. With most of his logs and equipment lost, however, “Boyce was disgusted and left the country.” Prior to the treaty’s ratification, Wisconsin Territorial Governor Henry Dodge, who coincidentally had presided over the signing, asserted that the pine region had “been taken possession of by the whites,” and that “The Government must purchase the Country from these Indians [by ratifying the treaty], or a War, will be the inevitable consequence.” Large-scale logging commenced in Minnesota after the 1837 treaty, slowly growing through the 1840s and 1850s. These early operations focused around the Upper Mississippi, St. Anthony Falls, and the St. Croix River, sticking to the waterways that facilitated log transport. Minnesota’s logging industry remained in its early stages through the Civil War, clinging to river valleys and an industry marked by smaller companies composed of small logging crews.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/MNopedia/MNopedia%202026/Origins%20of%20Commercial%20Logging%2c%201821%E2%80%931839/AV1999.203.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246059,"name":"Native Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/origins-of-commercial-logging-1821-1839"},{"alt":"Six figures act out the steps of making maple sugar.","author":[{"name":"Laura Laptsevitch","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/laura-laptsevich"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"June 24, 2026","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"DesJarlait, Patrick (1921–1972)","postbody":"Patrick DesJarlait (Red Lake Nation), a recognized Native modernist painter, is best known for depicting Red Lake Ojibwe people between the 1940s and 1970s. He lived a short but full life, ...","searchtext":"Patrick DesJarlait (Red Lake Nation), a recognized Native modernist painter, is best known for depicting Red Lake Ojibwe people between the 1940s and 1970s. He lived a short but full life, attending a federal Native American boarding school, serving in World War II, and building a commercial art career. DesJarlait is best known for his depictions of the Hamm||s Beer bear and the Land O’Lakes butter maiden. Patrick DesJarlait offered a new way of seeing Native Americans in art. During a time when Native people were stereotyped as either the foil or the sidekick in cowboy films, DesJarlait portrayed the Red Lake Ojibwe with dignity, in a heroic style depicting the tribal community as a part of a living culture. Born on the Red Lake Reservation in Minnesota on March 2, 1921, DesJarlait spent his early years exploring the outdoors. His Ojibwemowin name was Nagawbo, or Boy in the Woods. He sat, observed, and sketched the world around him. Animals and woodland scenes became the first subjects of his drawings. He watched and drew his relatives while they worked, depicting the daily life of the Red Lake Ojibwe people. He was eventually given the name Gwiwizens Odayn Ozhibii’ignaak: Boy with a Pencil. At five years old, DesJarlait contracted trachoma, a common illness among Native families at the time. He was blind for several months, but recovered with full sight. Soon after, DesJarlait was separated from his family and sent to boarding school. At his first school, St. Mary||s, engaging in Ojibwe crafts, games, or dancing was strictly forbidden. The struggle deepened with the death of his mother when he was just seven years old. Soon after, his father remarried; the family relocated to Red Lake, where DesJarlait attended Red Lake Boarding School. In 1928, DesJarlait transferred 300 miles south to Pipestone Indian School. After graduating from Pipestone in 1935, he attended Red Lake High School. Although there were no art classes in his high school, DesJarlait was encouraged to draw by his English teacher, Dorothy Ross. In 1939, he graduated from Red Lake High School and received a Bureau of Indian Affairs scholarship to study art at Arizona State College, which he attended from 1940 to 1942. DesJarlait began his military career after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the United States|| entrance into World War II. He left school in April 1942 and accepted a position as an art supervisor at a Japanese concentration camp in Poston, Arizona, offered by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. He left Arizona in September of that year to serve in the US Navy in San Diego, producing propaganda and instructional films. DesJarlait’s first solo exhibition was in 1945. His paintings, all depicting Ojibwe people, were displayed in a small room at the Fine Arts Gallery in San Diego. He sold all of his paintings in one week. In November of 1945, after the solo show and the conclusion of the war, DesJarlait was honorably discharged from the navy and returned to Red Lake. He spent a year painting at Red Lake Reservation, studying and drawing his people. In 1947, DesJarlait moved with his family to St. Paul and pursued a commercial art career, making three of his most famous works in one year: Maple Sugar Time, Red Lake Fishermen, and Making Wild Rice. The latter painting won first prize at the Philbrook Indian Annual exhibition of 1947. DesJarlait worked as a commercial artist for the next twenty-six years at advertising agencies in the Twin Cities. His most notable project was his 1954 revision of Mia, the Land O’Lakes butter maiden, originally designed by a white artist in 1928. DesJarlait reworked the design, drawing on his own life experience. He updated her clothing with Ojibwe beadwork designs along her dress and lowered the “O” in the Land O’Lakes logo to appear halo-like, evoking a feature of Byzantine religious icons. At Reid Ray Films and Campbell-Mithun he created campaigns that incorporated Northern Woodland Indian references, including a series of animated commercials featuring the Hamm’s Beer bear. In the last years of his life, DesJarlait spoke at Minnesota public schools and colleges, making presentations about the importance of educating non-Indians about Ojibwe life. His commitment to educating the public grew in tandem with the American Indian Movement (AIM), formed in Minneapolis in the summer of 1968. Though DesJarlait was not associated with AIM, he shared with younger AIM members a commitment to fostering a sense of Native pride and knowledge of Native lifeways. It was in the context of AIM and a commitment to education that DesJarlait created Indian Educations in 1970. He painted Native families in the Red Lake community, with positive imagery. Despite the prevalence of cultural stereotypes, he wanted to show loving Native families—specifically, loving Native fathers—with the belief that his paintings were relevant for the younger generation of urban Native Americans. DesJarlait continued to paint up until his death, in 1972 at age fifty-one, from cancer-related complications.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/MNopedia/MNopedia%202026/Patrick%20DesJarlait/R.2019-471_Philbrook_maple_sugar_time.jpeg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/desjarlait-patrick-1921-1972"},{"alt":"A spotted green frog sits on a white background. It is missing one hind leg.","author":[{"name":"Eva Loranz","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/eva-loranz"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"June 10, 2026","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Deformed Frogs in Le Sueur County, 1995","postbody":"In 1995, middle school students discovered eleven deformed frogs around a pond in south-central Minnesota (Le Sueur County). Their findings sparked research, led by Judy Helgen at the ...","searchtext":"In 1995, middle school students discovered eleven deformed frogs around a pond in south-central Minnesota (Le Sueur County). Their findings sparked research, led by Judy Helgen at the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA), into the potential causes of the frog deformities—research that remains inconclusive. In August of 1995, a group of students from Minnesota New Country School in Le Sueur examined northern leopard frogs (Rana pipiens) while walking around a pond in Ney Wildlife Preserve east of Henderson. After noticing eleven frogs with missing or extra legs, they told their teacher, Cindy Reinitz, who called the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency to report the abnormalities. Judy Helgen, a research scientist at the MPCA, received the call and sent Joel Chirhart to Ney Pond on August 15 to investigate the report. Chirhart reported back to Helgen, urging her to come to the pond herself; she did so on August 18. On Helgen’s first visit to Ney Pond, she recorded twisted legs, extra legs, missing legs, non-working legs, and missing eyes on the frogs she collected. Of the fifty-three frogs she collected that day, 60 percent were deformed in some way. A week later, Helgen’s team collected 137 frogs at the pond, of which 76 percent were deformed. Sarah Malchow from the Henderson Independent newspaper came to Ney Pond to ask Helgen questions about the recently discovered malformed frogs. Her article, published the next week, was one of the first pieces published on the deformed frogs at Ney Pond. Press coverage of the Ney Pond frogs led people from across Minnesota, and beyond, to call Helgen and her team. They reported similar findings, expanding the scope of the investigation outside of Ney Pond. Helgen coordinated research among an informal group of scientists across the United States and Canada studying the deformed frogs phenomenon. In September of 1996, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) held a meeting of US and Canadian scientists in Duluth on the issue of deformed frogs. At the meeting, several scientists presented on potential causes of malformations in frogs. Canadian researcher Martin Ouellet suggested pesticides as a potential cause for deformities. EPA scientists Joe Tietge and Gary Ankley proposed that an increase in ultraviolet light (UV) from the thinning ozone layer could be contributing to deformities. New York zoologist Stan Sessions presented his work on parasites that can cause extra limbs in their tadpole hosts if they enter during early limb development. Ken Muneoka, a developmental biologist from Tulane University, described experiments that involved introducing retinoic acid to recently removed tissues. The acid caused extra legs to sprout from the limb bud; the application of other chemicals, meanwhile, could stunt limb growth. He pointed out that the insecticide methoprene (related to retinoic acid and commonly used around the Twin Cities) could cause deformities in animals. By the end of September 1996, Helgen’s team had received reports of deformed frogs from fifty-five of Minnesota’s eighty-seven counties, in 172 different locations. They were largely concentrated in the wetlands and hard-water lakes of southeastern and central Minnesota.. That month, a third data set from Ney Pond concluded that 47 percent of the seventy frogs collected had deformities, which was up from 8 percent in early September and less than one percent in July. Helgen and her team at the MPCA continued to work on their investigation into the potential causes of the deformed frog phenomenon. In late 1996, media from across the country ran with Sessions’ idea that parasites, a natural cause, were the reason for the frog deformities. They did not point to pollution, a human cause. The Minneapolis Star Tribune attempted to discredit the MPCA’s investigation, claiming that their work was focused solely on pollution as the cause because it benefited them politically. The National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) reached out to Helgen to assist in the MPCA investigation. At the same time, however, the MPCA began to pull back support and funding for Helgen’s team. The MPCA ended its investigation in 2001, and Judy Helgen retired from the agency in 2002. The cause(s) of the deformed frogs phenomenon in Minnesota remains inconclusive.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/MNopedia/MNopedia%202026/Deformed%20Frogs%20in%20Le%20Sueur%20County%2c%201995/Northern_leopard_frog_with_missing_limb._(10820607003).jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246052,"name":"Science and Technology","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/deformed-frogs-in-le-sueur-county-1995"},{"alt":"Three-wheeled tractor with a yellow body sitting on green grass in front of a blue sky in the background.","author":[{"name":"Paul Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/paul-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"May 22, 2026","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Minneapolis-Moline Company","postbody":"Minneapolis-Moline Power Implement Company was created in 1929 by a merger of Minneapolis Steel and Machinery Company, Minneapolis Threshing Company, and Moline Implement Company. Together ...","searchtext":"Minneapolis-Moline Power Implement Company was created in 1929 by a merger of Minneapolis Steel and Machinery Company, Minneapolis Threshing Company, and Moline Implement Company. Together they formed what was called a “whole line” farm equipment company, one whose products served the planting, harvesting, and processing of grain crops. At the time of the merger it was the fifth-biggest farm equipment company in the country and one of the biggest employers in Minneapolis. Minneapolis-Moline dates back to the Candee & Swan Plow Company of Moline, Illinois, founded in 1865. It became Moline Plow Company (later, Moline Implement Company), a major Midwestern producer of tilling equipment: plows, harrows, and other tools for sowing grain crops. The Minneapolis Threshing Company began in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, in 1874, and settled in Hopkins, Minnesota, in 1887. It concentrated on equipment for the last stage of small grain production: threshing. Minneapolis Steel and Machinery Company, founded in 1902, began by making heavy construction equipment and steam engines, then moved into vehicles, including tractors (the Twin City line, 1912) and buses. Its chief executive, Warren C. MacFarlane, engineered the 1929 merger of the three companies and became president. The merger produced a company that served farming tasks year-round: tilling, planting, weeding, harvesting, and processing. Such integration was needed to compete with industrial giants like John Deere and International Harvester. All three of the constituent companies made, or had made, tractors. After the merger the company trimmed tractors to a single line, Twin City, made in Minneapolis. Harvesters and, later, combines, were built in Hopkins, also the company’s headquarters; tilling equipment was made in Moline. In its first full year of operation, 1930, Minneapolis-Moline earned a profit of slightly more than one million dollars on sales of about $13,500,000. Then two catastrophes struck. The Depression devastated farm country; farmers stopped buying equipment. Then, in September 1932, Warren MacFarlane was seriously injured in a car crash. He spent five months hospitalized, partially paralyzed. By 1933, sales had fallen to $2,336,000, producing losses of over $1,500,000 and a reduction of employees from over 3,000 to just 672. Losses grew to over $2,000,000 in 1934. The optimistic MacFarlane predicted a rebound in 1935, achieved through improved farm conditions, aggressive price-cutting, and innovation. Minneapolis-Moline’s new line of combines, called Harvestor and built in Hopkins, captured 20 percent of a reviving market and helped produce a profit of $170,000. Sales grew steadily over the next five years, from $9,000,000 in 1935 to over $16,000,000 in 1940. During World War II the company made artillery shells, naval winches, and construction machines for the Army and Navy, in addition to its regular agricultural line; sales and profits grew. The post-war years were even better. The company’s best-ever profit year was 1950, when it made over $7,000,000. Minneapolis-Moline did business in all forty-eight states and across Canada, in Argentina and Mexico; it had over 2,000 dealers. Sales once reached $100 million. At home its employees, whose numbers may have reached 6,500, competed in company baseball, volleyball, bowling, and sharpshooting leagues. But trouble lay ahead. In 1951, looking to strengthen its position in the American southeast, Minneapolis-Moline acquired the B. F. Avery Company of Kentucky. The hoped-for benefits did not come. Meanwhile, the number of farms in the United States continued to fall, while M-M’s competitors—chiefly International Harvester, Allis-Chalmers, John Deere, and J.I. Case—got stronger. M-M fell from fifth place among implement makers to eighth. Losses began in 1954, the same year it opened a factory in Turkey. Over the next five years losses exceeded $6,500,000. In 1955 a hostile takeover ousted most of the Minnesota directors; MacFarlane retired in January of 1957. His successor, J. Russell Duncan, returned the firm to profitability through cost-cutting and diversification, but he was ousted in 1960. That year the company changed its name to Motec, short for Moline Technology. In 1963 Motec was taken over by White Motor Company of Cleveland, with another new president and a return to the Minneapolis-Moline name. In 1972 White closed both the Hopkins and Minneapolis factories, putting over 1500 Minnesotans out of work. No physical trace of these enormous installations survives. By 1981, White Motors was out of business.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/MNopedia/MNopedia%202026/Minneapolis-Moline/960px-Chippokes_Steam_and_Gas_Engine_Show_Vintage_Tractor_Pull_(18377718652).jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246091,"name":"Agriculture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246052,"name":"Science and Technology","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/minneapolis-moline-company"},{"alt":"A woman in a blue button-up shirt and cardigan walks through a hallway with lobbyists surrounding her and a cameraman at the left of the image.","author":[{"name":"Tom Weber","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/tom-weber"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"May 11, 2026","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Election of Susan Allen to the Minnesota House of Representatives, 2012","postbody":"In January of 2012, Susan Allen became the first Native American woman elected to serve in the Minnesota Legislature and the first openly queer/Two Spirit Native woman elected to any state ...","searchtext":"In January of 2012, Susan Allen became the first Native American woman elected to serve in the Minnesota Legislature and the first openly queer/Two Spirit Native woman elected to any state legislature. Although her campaign for office was short (just over two weeks), it benefited from community support, high-profile advocates, and Allen’s willingness to share her background with voters. After longtime state senator Linda Berglin resigned from the Minnesota Legislature in August 2011, State Rep. Jeff Hayden was elected to Berglin’s seat, leaving Hayden’s House seat open in District 61B. The district, a swath of south Minneapolis from Lake Street to Minnehaha Parkway along I-35W and over to Powderhorn Park, was considered a stronghold for the Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) Party. No Republican announced a campaign for the seat. Susan Allen, an attorney who specialized in tribal law, had never run for office. She was approached by State Representative Karen Clark, who represented a neighboring district and was the first out lesbian to serve in the legislature, and Sharon Day, the founder and executive director of the Indigenous Peoples Task Force in Minneapolis. Allen’s supporters soon included former State Senator Linda Berglin and City Council member Robert Lilligren. An enrolled member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe (Sičháŋǧu Oyáte), Allen had been born on March 27, 1963, on the Ute Reservation in Utah, where her father was an Episcopal priest. Philip Allen (Oglála Lakȟóta) was well-known for his ministry in Indian country. Her mother, Helen, was a Sičháŋǧu Lakȟóta artist known for her beadwork and community education. Her family moved often as her father worked to reform the Episcopal Church, and by the time she was fourteen, Allen had attended twenty different schools in five states. As an adult, she came to identify as both lesbian and Two-Spirit. After she agreed to run in October 2011, Allen sprinted to shore up community support ahead of the DFL convention planned for November 12. Two additional DFL candidates vied for the party endorsement: educator Nelson Inz and Josh Bassais, who worked for the Laborers International Union (LIUNA). Allen had been drawn to the law as a tool for social justice while growing up during a time of major political and social change in Indian country. The American Indian Movement, founded in Minneapolis in 1968, promoted culturally relevant education for Allen’s generation of Native youth. During the campaign, she spoke of her own educational upbringing and the need to focus on the achievement gaps of students from marginalized communities. Allen also spoke freely about her sobriety journey. At one point during her struggles with alcoholism, she had been homeless on Franklin Avenue, just blocks from the district she later ran to represent. She hoped others would see hope in her ability to get sober and earn degrees from Augsburg College, the University of New Mexico Law School, and William Mitchell (now Mitchell Hamline) School of Law. In addition to education, Allen’s campaign focused on bolstering Minnesota’s social service safety net. At the November 12 convention at South High School, Allen—attending her first political convention—won the party’s endorsement with 65 percent of the vote on the third ballot. Inz and Bassais dropped out of the race (though their names still appeared on the primary ballot, as did Paul Davis’s). With the endorsement, Allen easily won the December 6 primary with 82 percent of the vote. In the general election, she faced activist Nate Blumenshine, who ran under the Respect Party. Allen garnered 1,155 votes—56 percent—to Blumenshine’s 896. She was sworn in on January 19, 2012, in a ceremony that included a Native American drum circle performing honor songs on the floor of the Minnesota House. Allen’s election was a trailblazing moment for Minnesota’s Native American, Two Spirit, and LGBTQIA+ communities. During her time in the House, marriage equality became law in Minnesota, the minimum wage was raised and indexed to inflation, and the voices of Native Americans were elevated at the Capitol. When she announced in 2017 she would not seek re-election after four terms, Allen reiterated that she ran “to be a voice for those left out of the political system.” “It was never my intent to serve in the Legislature forever,” she added, “but rather to answer a call to public service at a time when racial minorities were severely underrepresented in the Legislature. Since that time an increasing number of candidates from minority backgrounds have stepped up to run for public office at all levels of government.”","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/MNopedia/MNopedia%202026/Election%20of%20Susan%20Allen_2011/Rep_Susan_Allen_heads_in_to_vote%2c_Stand_up_Fight_Back_Rally_at_the_Minnesota_State_Capitol_Rotunda_(33901567140).jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246059,"name":"Native Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/election-of-susan-allen-to-the-minnesota-house-of-representatives-2012"},{"alt":"A golden-colored fish with black stripes on its back floats against a pure white background.","author":[{"name":"Marjorie Savage","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/marjorie-savage"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"April 22, 2026","eraTag":[],"keydate":"","name":"Walleye","postbody":"On the opening day of Minnesota’s fishing season in 1965, the Minnesota Legislature selected walleye as the state’s official fish. While walleyes are neither the state’s biggest fish nor ...","searchtext":"On the opening day of Minnesota’s fishing season in 1965, the Minnesota Legislature selected walleye as the state’s official fish. While walleyes are neither the state’s biggest fish nor its most abundant, they are consistently ranked as Minnesotans’ favorite. Walleyes are the largest members of the Perch (Percidae) family. They are typically brownish yellow or olive green in color, with a white belly and two transparent dorsal fins. The tail bears a distinctive white smudge on its lower edge. A walleye’s most noticeable feature, however, is its eyes. Like cats, skunks, raccoons, and deer, walleyes have a reflective layer of tissue behind their retinas, known as the tapetum lucidum (bright tapestry) that helps them see well in the dark. The fish are known by many names, including walleyed pike, yellow pike, yellow pikeperch, and yellow pickerel. Their Dakota names are hoištázi (yellow-eyed fish) and howakáŋ (sacred fish). Ho-Chunk people call them zook. Their Ojibwe name is ogaa, and their scientific name is Sander vitreus. “Vitreus,” Latin for “glassy,” is another reference to the fish’s eyes. “Sander,” the German word for walleye, reflects the theory that walleyes originated in Europe and reached North America by crossing the Bering Isthmus during the Pliocene Epoch. The ancestors of today’s walleyes are believed to have dispersed throughout much of North America after passing through the Rocky Mountains to the Great Lakes and Mississippi River Basins. In the 1600s, when Ojibwe and other Anishinaabe people arrived in the Upper Midwest, they found an abundance of walleyes in the area’s lakes and rivers––enough to sustain themselves year round. They regarded walleyes as a sacred gift from Gichi Manidoo, the Creator, and believed that the fish, with their glow-in-the-dark eyes, symbolized knowledge, illumination, and guidance. White settlers arriving from Europe in the 1800s relied on fishing as a primary food source during their first years in Minnesota. During World War I and World War II as well as the Great Depression, fishing provided sustenance for low-income Minnesotans. After opening in 1917, the Red Lake Nation Fishery (the first commercial walleye fishery of its kind in the US) supplied food to soldiers as well as the home front, and by 1929 the business was fully operated by the Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians on the Red Lake Indian Reservation. In the post-war economic recovery of the 1950s and 60s, anglers became less interested in fishing for subsistence and more interested in sport fishing, competing to see who could land the biggest fish, the most fish, the wildest fish. Walleyes were an ideal sport-fishing target due to their large size and their abundance in Minnesota. On average, a walleye caught in Minnesota is about three to six years old, weighing in at a little over one pound and measuring between twelve and twenty inches. Left to mature, male walleyes can live fifteen to twenty years, approaching a trophy-sized weight of nearly ten pounds and thirty inches in length. Female walleyes are larger and live longer, potentially reaching forty inches at twenty-five years. Fishing for walleyes is often described as a challenging puzzle, requiring different combinations of bait and tackle, depending on the weather, depth of water, time of year, and time of day. The fish tend to feed at dawn and dusk, when they can see their prey in the low light of their tapetum lucidum, but their prey can’t see them. When hooked, they dive fast and deep, and they’re fierce fighters with sharp teeth. Most walleyes served in Minnesota pubs, restaurants, and fairground booths are caught and processed in Canada. With the exception of Red Lake Nation Fishery, commercial fishing for walleyes is largely restricted in Minnesota in order to protect walleye populations, honor treaties, and support recreational fishing. In 1996, biologists studying walleyes in Red Lake found that the population had collapsed after years of overfishing. Knowing that the lake needed time to recover, a Red Lake’s fishermen’s cooperative voted to suspend all commercial gillnet fishing for the season. A year later the Red Lake Tribal Council halted hook-and-line fishing, and in 1999 it banned all fishing on Red Lake. With fishing shut down, a restocking effort began, and some thirty million walleye fry were released into the lake. Restocking was repeated in 2001 and 2003. By 2006, the lake reopened ahead of schedule with an estimated population of 7.5 million walleyes.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/MNopedia/MNopedia%202026/Walleye/Walleye_(Sander_vitreus)_(1).jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/walleye"},{"alt":"Workers in yellow protective gear handle a pink pipeline in front of construction vehicles, with a frozen stretch of water in the foreground.","author":[{"name":"Abigail Venuso","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/abigail-venuso"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"April 10, 2026","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Line 3 Oil Spill, Grand Rapids","postbody":"On March 3, 1991, Line 3 of the Lakehead Pipeline Company burst near Grand Rapids, Minnesota. An estimated 1.7 million gallons of oil spilled into the nearby Prairie River and surrounding ...","searchtext":"On March 3, 1991, Line 3 of the Lakehead Pipeline Company burst near Grand Rapids, Minnesota. An estimated 1.7 million gallons of oil spilled into the nearby Prairie River and surrounding wetlands, making it the largest inland oil spill in US history. Line 3 was built in the 1960s by the Lakehead Pipeline Company to transport oil from Canada to the Midwest. It passed east of Grand Rapids, Minnesota, near the Prairie River. On March 3, 1991, the thirty-four-inch pipeline ruptured along a small crack, resulting in a five-foot-long gash in the pipe. The pressurized oil shot into the air, immediately covering the surrounding trees and spilling into the Prairie River and the nearby wetlands. At 12:40 p.m. a local resident reported a strong oil odor to the fire department, which immediately notified Lakehead. The company turned off the line at 1:30 p.m. Between two and three hundred residents who lived near the spill site were evacuated for the remainder of the day, and Highway 169 was closed east of Grand Rapids for several hours due to proximity to the spill. Lakehead initially estimated that about 630,000 gallons of oil had spilled as a result of the ruptured pipe, but they nearly tripled the estimate later to 1.7 million gallons of oil. Marshes and vegetated riverbanks were the primary environment affected by the spill, and samples were taken of river water, groundwater, and well water to determine the extent of the damage. Several fish died where oil first entered the water stream, but there were few other wildlife impacts. Because the Prairie River is a tributary of the Mississippi River, the repercussions could have been far-reaching, but several factors limited the harm. Cold air temperatures made the oil viscous, so it moved more slowly than it would have in warmer months. Additionally, the Prairie River was covered by eighteen inches of ice, which barred much of the oil from entering the water stream. The frozen ground limited the amount of oil absorbed into the soil, and the absence of migratory birds prevented extensive wildlife impact. The cleanup effort took several months and cost millions of dollars. Steve Wuori managed the onsite cleanup for Lakehead, supervising about ninety people from several Midwest states. Crews worked around the clock in twelve-hour shifts, except when temperatures were too cold to safely operate machinery, and employed several methods of stopping and recovering the spilled oil. Downriver from the spill, personnel cut large slots in the ice with chainsaws to install booms in the water, preventing oil from spreading to the Mississippi River. Large berms of absorbent material were built on top of the ice to absorb any oil still sliding downstream on the surface. Personnel pushed the oil across the ice with squeegees to designated collection points, where vacuums removed it. Oil-permeated ice was cut into moveable blocks and taken to an unaffected part of the river. Crews sprayed the blocks with warm water, releasing the oil and recovering it with skimmers. Ice that was only slightly contaminated was removed from the river and set to thaw in lined holding ponds. Once the ice had melted, the oil was recovered from the ponds. Governor Arne Carlson visited the spill site during the cleanup and commended Lakehead on its efforts and cooperation with state officials. After the initial cleanup was complete, Lakehead built a pond near the spill site to collect runoff as the ground thawed and released more oil. By June, Lakehead had spent seven million dollars on cleanup, and they petitioned for a permit to release the water from the holding pond into the Prairie River. Twenty-five locals who lived near the spill site unsuccessfully opposed granting the permit, arguing that doing so would release the company of responsibility for the damage, as well as increase the amount of environmental harm. The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency countered that additional damage to the ecosystem was unlikely at that point, and maintained that the water met state quality standards. The board granted the permit to release the water once all of the petroleum compounds had sunk to the bottom of the pond and the volatile compounds had evaporated. The draining of the pond was the final step in Lakehead’s cleanup process after the Line 3 spill.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/MNopedia/MNopedia%202026/Line%203%20Oil%20Spill/still_2_from_Harry_Hutchins_video.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/line-3-oil-spill-grand-rapids"},{"alt":"A sign with text and a color image stands on two wooden supports in front of a grassy background. A historical marker set into the earth is visible at left.","author":[{"name":"Kristen Zschomler","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/kristen-zschomler"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"April 02, 2026","eraTag":[{"id":186622056201,"name":"1754–1800 (Revolution and a New Nation)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"21-MO-20 (archaeological site)","postbody":"At the confluence of the Little Elk and Mississippi rivers (present-day Morrison County), a fur trade post was established and occupied in the mid-to-late eighteenth century. Ojibwe ...","searchtext":"At the confluence of the Little Elk and Mississippi rivers (present-day Morrison County), a fur trade post was established and occupied in the mid-to-late eighteenth century. Ojibwe trappers and hunters gathered there to offer furs to white traders in exchange for beads, blankets, fabric, and other goods. The confluence of rivers is an ideal place for human settlement, offering strategic, spiritual, and practical reasons for occupation. One such location is two miles north of the modern-day city of Little Falls, where the Little Elk River flows into the west bank of the Mississippi River. The place occupies a unique environmental setting: a 340-mile-long band encompassing a patchwork of forests, wetlands, and prairie openings rich with game. Access to abundant natural resources, as well as transportation along the waterways, has made the confluence a place of human occupation since approximately 400 BCE, as shown by the presence of archaeological sites containing ceramics and other artifacts. The Indigenous peoples who lived there throughout the Woodland period (1,000 BCE to 1,000 CE) were semi-nomadic hunters and horticulturalists. When the Ojibwe moved west from Gichi Gamii (Lake Superior) due to pressures from European settlement beginning in the 1690s, they pushed the Dakota farther south. The band of mixed environs that extends from the southeast to the northwest across what is today the state of Minnesota became a contested zone between the Dakota and Ojibwe. Both nations vied for access to game, including beavers. The fur trade, which began in Minnesota in the mid-1600s, brought French explorers to the area, and by the mid-1700s, a fur-trading fort was built near the confluence of the Little Elk and Mississippi rivers. Three buildings were constructed, along with a pallisade. The buildings included a large central structure, 16.4 feet by 24.6 feet, consisting of two rooms. The first featured a stone hearth, around which occupants played games or made trade goods; the second was a smaller space used for storing trade goods, furs, and supplies. Two smaller buildings that stood to the north and south of the central structure, both with a fireplace, likely provided living quarters. The leader of the fort lived in the northern structure, while workers occupied the southern building. Since most beaver trapping was done during the winter, traders occupied the fort between the fall and the spring. In the spring, the fort’s occupants made arduous journeys back to their trading home posts to deliver their furs. There, they stocked up on new trade goods for the next season, such as beads, fabric, metal goods, guns, and gun flints. The fort was only briefly occupied. The reasons for its abandonment are unclear; some of the buildings burned. It is unknown if the fire was deliberate or accidental. 21-MO-20 underwent intensive and rigorous archaeological excavation during the 1980s under the guidance of the Institute for Minnesota Archaeology’s Douglas Birk. Birk hypothesized that the site was Fort Duquesne, a French fur trade post operated by Joseph Marin de la Malgue. Marin, as he was known, was a French military officer, trader, and explorer. According to extant documents, Marin’s post was built in 1752. Many aspects of the site support the idea that the site is Marin’s post, including its location, the number and types of buildings, and artifact assemblages. Birk, however, stated in 1991 that his working hypothesis needed to be tested with every new turn of a trowel or archival page. While the site was extensively excavated, no final site analysis and report was completed. In 2023, archaeologist Robb Mann presented an analysis of ceramic sherds from 21-MO-20 and concluded that they were British Delftware rather than French faience, as Birk has classified them. Mann’s study raises questions, since British Delftware is not known in this area until about 1760. The fort’s location was not only contested between the Ojibwe and Dakota, it was also a contested zone between British and French traders until the 1780s, when British dominance took hold. The presence of several British ceramic items could indicate that the British occupied the site after the French abandoned it, which was a common practice.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/MNopedia/MNopedia%202026/21-MO-20/960px-Fort_Duquesne_signs.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246059,"name":"Native Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/21-mo-20-archaeological-site"},{"alt":"Two rows and two clumns of people march on the Minnesota state capitol grounds carrying wreaths and flags. The capitol rises in the background against a blue sky.","author":[{"name":"Elena Mai","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/elena-mai"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"March 12, 2026","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Vietnamese Community of Minnesota","postbody":"Established in 1981 by first-wave Vietnamese immigrants, Vietnamese Community of Minnesota (Cộng Đồng Người Việt Minnesota) is a non-profit organization that supports Vietnamese Minnesotans ...","searchtext":"Established in 1981 by first-wave Vietnamese immigrants, Vietnamese Community of Minnesota (Cộng Đồng Người Việt Minnesota) is a non-profit organization that supports Vietnamese Minnesotans through cultural events, education, networking, and other initiatives. It holds multiple cultural events each year, aiming to preserve Vietnamese cultural heritage and promote cross-cultural relations with other Minnesota communities. After the Fall of Saigon in 1975, Minnesota became one of the major host states for Vietnam War refugees through the Indochinese Refugee Resettlement Office. In 1981, the office was renamed the Refugee Programs Office, and in the same year, Phạm Văn Vy and other first-wave Vietnamese immigrants established Vietnamese Community of Minnesota (VCM) in the Twin Cities. VCM was created to preserve and enrich Vietnamese culture, to unify the state’s Vietnamese populations, and to foster cross-cultural cooperation and understanding. In 2004, VCM revised this mission to include advocacy for the socioeconomic influence and wellbeing of the Vietnamese community. In the late 1980s, the effort to preserve the Vietnamese language and cultural heritage began in Minnesota. With VCM’s help, the state’s first Vietnamese church, St. Joseph Hiển in Minneapolis, and its first Vietnamese temple, Phật Ân Temple in Roseville, offered Vietnamese language classes to younger generations every Sunday after services. In 2013, due to growing demands for Vietnamese classes, a group of teachers founded the Vietnamese Language School—again with VCM support. (After Aŋpétu Téča Education Center opened in Roseville in 2021, the school began holding classes in the building.) In addition to its educational efforts, VCM holds several cultural and networking events annually. Since 1981, the organization has hosted the Lunar New Year (Tết) Festival. The event has been held at various locations in Minnesota, including Union Depot in St. Paul and, more recently, Burnsville Center. The festival features traditional Vietnamese clothing (áo dài), cultural performances by Vietnamese musicians and entertainers, dragon dances, vendors, and children’s activities. VCM’s other annual community events—all of them open to the public—include the Spring Festival Fair, the Summer Festival, and tennis, soccer, and pickleball tournaments. By 2023, the population of Vietnamese Minnesotans had grown to more than 33,000. Amid this growth, VCM began hosting small gatherings as well as large events, and providing resources to the community. In August 2023, the organization created the VCM Senior Group, which hosted senior meetings biweekly at its office. (After the office building was sold in 2024, VCM relocated these meetings to a rented park facility in Brooklyn Park.) The Senior Group allows seniors in the community to socialize, access resources and information, and participate in activities tailored to their interests and needs. In August 2023, Tri Tang was elected the president of VCM. Over the next two years, his leadership strengthened the organization’s community activities and outreach through collaboration with other Vietnamese organizations in Minnesota, including Vietnamese Social Services, the Vietnamese Language School, Vietnamese student associations, and Vietnamese veterans organizations. April 30, 2025, marked fifty years since the end of the Vietnam War. In response, VCM held a Black April (Tháng Tư Đen) commemoration event at the Minnesota State Capitol. A flag-carrying event took place, and Vietnam War veterans and their families attended. Leaders of the organization also traveled to Washington, DC, to further the organization’s efforts for the federal recognition and support of Vietnam War veterans. Also in 2025, the Council on Asian Pacific Minnesotans (CAPM) honored VCM with an Outstanding Service Award for its leadership, service, and impact across communities. Later that year, in an effort to preserve the history of Vietnamese in Minnesota and strengthen the community, the organization supported the establishment of the Vietnamese Minnesotan Museum. The organization has also collaborated with communities and institutions outside of the community: other Asian communities in Minnesota, Minnesota legislators, the Minnesota Humanities Center, and the Minnesota Historical Society. These collaboration efforts seek to unite and strengthen the community’s partnerships and identity. As of 2026, VCM has yet to secure a permanent location and operates with the help of volunteers. Over the past two years, it has advocated for state funding from the state of Minnesota. It shares this effort to gain state recognition and cultural funding with other Southeast Asian communities, such as Cambodians and Laotians, affected by the Vietnam War and the Laotian Civil War.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/MNopedia/MNopedia%202026/Vietnamese%20Community%20of%20Minnesota/image6.png","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/vietnamese-community-of-minnesota"},{"alt":"Canoe paddlers wait at the shoreline of a lake to start a race as spectators look on.","author":[{"name":"Frank Bures","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/frank-bures"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"March 03, 2026","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Paul Bunyan Canoe Derby","postbody":"Conceived as a way to launch the inaugural Aquatennial Celebration, the Paul Bunyan Canoe Derby was a 450-mile race that took place on the Mississippi River between 1940 and 1960. Teams of ...","searchtext":"Conceived as a way to launch the inaugural Aquatennial Celebration, the Paul Bunyan Canoe Derby was a 450-mile race that took place on the Mississippi River between 1940 and 1960. Teams of two paddlers raced in stages from Bemidji to Minneapolis, with stops in Grand Rapids, Palisades, Aitkin, Brainerd, Little Falls, St. Cloud, and Anoka. In some years, the race included a stop at Bena on Lake Winnibigoshish to mitigate the dangerous crossing. The first race began on the morning of Saturday, July 13, 1940. Teams finished in Minneapolis on Saturday, July 20, with brothers Ace and Ed Eliason of Hovland winning. Bud and Harry Tibbetts, Leech Lake Ojibwe paddlers from Ball Club, finished second. The first-place team was awarded $500. Second place received $250 and third place $100. Fourth-, fifth- and sixth-place competitors got seventy-five dollars, fifty dollars, and twenty-five dollars, respectively. The Minneapolis Tribune reported that 100,000 people watched the final sprint, and that another 100,000 people had seen the race en route. Throughout the 1940s, the race saw heavy participation from the Ojibwe community, most notably members of the Tibbetts family. In the 1940 race, for example, the second-, fifth-, and sixth-place teams were all composed of Ojibwe racers from the Leech Lake area. The canoe derby was held again in 1941 and 1942. The 1941 contest was marred by controversy over the winning Chicago team’s unusual canoe design and paddling style. The 1942 race was more congenial, with fewer teams entering. With the onset of World War II, the 1943 race on the Mississippi was replaced by a forty-five-mile race that saw a four-time circuit around the Chain of Lakes in Minneapolis, with prizes offered in war bonds and stamps. In 1944 and 1945, a shorter race on Lake Calhoun (later renamed Bde Maka Ska) was open only to those seventeen and under. The full canoe derby on the Mississippi River resumed in 1946. In 1947, sixteen-year-old Bill Smith Jr. entered the derby with his father. The two finished in thirteenth place. The race was won by Ray Tibbetts and Bill Evers. The following year, in 1948, Smith served as driver for two racers from North Minneapolis, Eugene Jensen and Tom Estes, who won the derby. After the race, Smith approached fourth-place finishers Jim and Bernie Smith (no relation), Ojibwe paddlers from Ball Club, and asked to purchase their canoe. They sold it to him for $100. In 1949, the race was renamed the “Mando-Aquatennial Canoe Derby” owing to sponsorship from Mando, the Minnesota and Ontario Paper Company. Bill Smith entered the race with speed skater Bob Bergstrom. The duo paddled Jim and Bernie Smith’s canoe, finishing in fourth place. Jensen and Estes won again. After the 1949 derby, Jensen approached Smith and offered to buy his canoe. Smith refused, but he lent the boat to Jenson. It is believed the round-bottomed hull, crafted by Jim and Bernie Smith, informed Jensen’s subsequent canoe designs. The next year, in 1950, the race was again referred to as the “Paul Bunyan Aquatennial canoe derby,” with Jensen and Estes winning a third time in their newly designed, round-bottom canoe. In 1951, Harlow Thompson and Dick Peck of Deer River took first place in a twenty-four-foot wooden canoe made by canoe maker William Hafeman of Big Fork. The race was discontinued in 1952 in favor of a “Power Boat Derby,” causing much controversy. Instead, a shortened, eight-mile canoe race was held on Cedar Lake, Lake of the Isles, and Lake Calhoun in that year. In 1953 and 1954 abbreviated versions of the derby returned to the Mississippi River, starting at Anoka and St. Cloud, respectively. Then in 1959, the 450-mile Paul Bunyan Canoe Derby from Bemidji to Minneapolis was revived, with the final race held in 1960. Jensen and Estes won for a fourth time. In 1961, the derby was turned over to the Boy Scouts of America. Troops competed in relay teams on an abbreviated course until 1964, after which the race was discontinued. Many of the participants in the Paul Bunyan Canoe Derby went on to win other major canoe races in Canada and the US. In 1961 derby veterans including Eugene Jensen and Karl Ketter founded the Minnesota Canoe Club, which later became the Minnesota Canoe Association. During the latter half of the twentieth century, Jensen continued to work as an influential canoe designer and innovator. He is credited with inventing the bent-shaft paddle.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/MNopedia/MNopedia%202026/Paul%20Bunyan%20Canoe%20Derby/4%201940%20derby%20start%2010724884.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246054,"name":"Sports and Recreation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246053,"name":"Transportation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/paul-bunyan-canoe-derby"},{"alt":"The torsos, heads, and hands of two men wearing ties. Both men are holding and looking at a piece of paper.","author":[{"name":"Paul Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/paul-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"February 18, 2026","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Citizens Alliance, Minneapolis","postbody":"From its founding in 1903 until the mid-1930s, the Citizens Alliance of Minneapolis fought organized labor with vigor, determination, imagination, and money. It scored victory after ...","searchtext":"From its founding in 1903 until the mid-1930s, the Citizens Alliance of Minneapolis fought organized labor with vigor, determination, imagination, and money. It scored victory after victory. But the Great Depression, the New Deal, and determined labor organizers eventually defeated the alliance and established labor unions as fixtures in the Minneapolis and Minnesota economy. In 1901 organized machine shop owners decisively defeated a strike by unionized Minneapolis machinists. This event—militant unions with national backing fighting aggressive business owners with national backing, while the businesses held the upper hand—set a pattern for the next thirty years. In 1903 the machine shop owners’ organization, fresh from its victory, expanded its reach across industries and reorganized as the Citizens Alliance. Its goal was what it called an “open shop,” that is, the banishment of unions from all city workplaces. It soon enlisted over 200 Minneapolis manufacturers, millers, and banks, controllers of most of the city’s economy. Alliance leaders attacked the union movement in many ways. They produced anti-union publications aimed at workers and the public, maintained a workplace spy network, and blacklisted pro-union workers. They set up compliant “company unions.” The Dunwoody Institute, endowed by an alliance member, trained thousands of non-union workers in skilled trades, to replace fired union members. When strikes occurred, alliance members responded consistently: they dismissed all strikers; hired replacement workers to keep struck firms open; and refused all negotiations. Struck firms got financial help from Alliance members. Alliance lawyers got state courts to issue injunctions against picketing. Members’ wealth enabled the alliance to overwhelm and outlast nearly all unions. Their connectedness to politicians, newspapers, judges, and law enforcement, meanwhile, gave them political influence that union workers could not match. Between 1903 and 1917 alliance members defeated every strike against them. The alliance was so successful that its organization and influence spread to St. Paul and Duluth, which established their own, less militant alliances. Alliance members participated in, influenced, and got support from national business groups like the National Association of Manufacturers. Despite all of the alliance’s strengths and victories, the growth of industry in Minnesota also fueled growth in the labor movement. Between 1918 and 1920, union membership in Minnesota grew by 70 percent. The alliance had grown to nearly 700 members and continued to expand its reach by creating new employers’ organizations in industries threatened by union activity. It created an employment agency that connected thousands of non-union workers with open-shop employers. It published regular newsletters informing employers of union activities and identifying union workers for blacklisting. The alliance maintained an extensive intelligence network in cooperation with the Minneapolis police, the Hennepin County sheriff, and private agencies. It also infiltrated most unions in the city with agents of its own. In 1925 the Alliance reported that “the open shop is more firmly established . . . than at any time in the history of the city.” The coming of the Great Depression in 1930, followed by the election of Franklin Roosevelt in 1932 and the creation of the New Deal in 1933, weakened the alliance, as private enterprise lost prestige and the public looked to the government for help. The National Recovery Act (NRA) of 1933 made union organizing, the antithesis of the open shop, a right protected by law. In Minnesota the election of pro-labor governor Floyd Olson (1930) also weakened the alliance. And the effective organizing of Minneapolis teamsters, led by the Communist-dominated Local 574, presented the alliance with an implacable enemy. Union membership in Minneapolis exploded, leading to the climactic Minneapolis Teamsters strike and general strikes of 1934, partial union victories. Two more bitter strikes followed in 1935, at Flour City Ornamental Iron Works and Strutwear Knitting Company. Though the alliance was able to claim victory in both, these victories were violent, costly, and limited; in these conflicts labor showed furious strength and achieved toeholds in both factories. The alliance was no longer invincible. The alliance was rocked in 1936 and 1937 when, in succession, major employers General Mills, Washburn-Crosby, and Archer Daniels Midland, Minneapolis wholesale grocers, signed union contracts along with Strutwear and Northern States Power. In November of 1936, Alliance leader and founder Albert Strong suddenly died. In December the alliance changed its name to Associated Industries of Minneapolis. The organization’s new constitution recognized the right of workers to bargain collectively and to strike. Though successor organizations to the Alliance continued to fight unions, the long battle for the open shop in Minneapolis had been lost.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/MNopedia/MNopedia%202026/Citizens%20Alliance/MplsPhotos_59239_large.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246055,"name":"Labor","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/citizens-alliance-minneapolis"},{"alt":"A basketball player in a blue uniform jumps toward a basket with a ball in hand. Three players wearing red uniforms surround her.","author":[{"name":"David Sandager","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/david-sandager"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"February 02, 2026","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Minnesota Lynx","postbody":"The Minnesota Lynx professional basketball franchise has competed in the Women||s National Basketball Association (WNBA) since the 1999 season. The Lynx are the second professional women’s ...","searchtext":"The Minnesota Lynx professional basketball franchise has competed in the Women||s National Basketball Association (WNBA) since the 1999 season. The Lynx are the second professional women’s basketball team to represent Minnesota, the first being the Minnesota Fillies of the now defunct Women||s Professional Basketball League, active from 1978 to 1981. The Lynx compete in the WNBA’s Western Conference and have won four WNBA titles: 2011, 2013, 2015, and 2017. The WNBA’s inaugural season began on June 21, 1997, when the league featured eight teams. Two additional expansion teams were added for each of the next two seasons. Minnesota’s expansion team was officially announced on April 22, 1998, with Minnesota Timberwolves owner Glen Taylor in a founding role. The team’s name and logo were unveiled at the Burnsville Mall on December 5. In their first-ever game, held at the Target Center in Minneapolis on June 12, 1999, in front of 12,122 fans, the Lynx defeated the Detroit Shock by a final score of 68-51. Minnesota’s eventual All-Star guard Tonya Edwards scored the first points in the franchise’s history with a layup off of an assist by teammate Sonja Tate. The Lynx finished the season with a final record of 15-17 under Head Coach Brian Agler. Success eluded the Lynx in their early history, and it was not until the 2003 season that the team finished with a record above .500 and secured their first playoff appearance. Finishing with a final record of 18-16 under new head coach Suzie McConnell Serio and All Star and future Hall of Famer Katie Smith, the Lynx finished fourth in the 2003 Western Conference standings. On December 8, 2009, the Lynx named Cheryl Reeve their head coach. They began the season by bolstering a roster anchored by 2006 Rookie of the Year Seimone Augustus. Key among these pickups were Rebekkah Brunson, Maya Moore, and Minnesota native Lindsay Whalen. The 2011 Minnesota Lynx finished with a record of 27-7 (the best in the WNBA) and secured a number-one seed in the WNBA Western Conference Playoffs. With a lineup featuring All Stars Whalen, Moore, Brunson, and Seimone Augustus, they advanced through the playoff field and faced the Atlanta Dream in their first-ever WNBA Finals. The Lynx swept the Dream three games to none, thanks in part to the efforts of Finals MVP Augustus, and the team took home the first title for a Minnesota sports franchise since 1991. Success and titles became standard for the Minnesota Lynx in the 2010s as they established a WNBA dynasty. They reached the postseason every year from 2011 to 2021 and were Western Conference Champions and WNBA Final participants in 2011, 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016, and 2017. In 2013 the Lynx achieved a WNBA Regular Season best record of 26-8 with a roster that reunited Lindsay Whalen with her Minnesota Golden Gophers teammate Janel McCarville. They clawed their way to a second WNBA title without losing a postseason playoff game. In 2015 the Lynx added to their roster by trading for center Sylvia Fowles, who brought added defensive prowess. Fowles helped guide the Lynx to the 2015 Finals, decided in a decisive Game Five victory at the Target Center against the Indiana Fever. Two seasons later, in 2017, the Lynx secured a rematch of the 2016 WNBA Finals contest against the Los Angeles Sparks. In a decisive Game Five on October 4, 2017 the Lynx secured their fourth WNBA title with an 85 to 76 victory. As the core of the Lynx roster changed over at the end of the decade, new stars stepped in to carry on the franchise||s winning ways. Napheesa Collier became the Lynx’s fourth-ever Rookie of the Year in 2019, with teammate Crystal Dangerfield receiving the same award in 2020. After missing the playoffs in 2022, the Lynx returned to them in 2023. The 2024 season also saw the Lynx return to the WNBA Finals in a down-to-the-wire, best-of-five series Game Five against the New York Liberty in New York City. In June of 2025, ownership of the Minnesota Lynx and the Minnesota Timberwolves passed from Lynx founding owner Glen Taylor to a group led by Marc Lore and Alex Rodriguez.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/MNopedia/MNopedia%202026/Minnesota%20Lynx/Sylvia_Fowles_(34)_puts_the_ball_up_as_shes_guarded_by_Myisha_HInes-Allen_(2).jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246054,"name":"Sports and Recreation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/minnesota-lynx"},{"alt":"Loading lumber onto a rail car via a conveyor belt","author":[{"name":"Hayden Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/hayden-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"January 21, 2026","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Virginia and Rainy Lake Company","postbody":"The Virginia and Rainy Lake Company (V&RL) incorporated in 1905 and consisted of three subsidiaries: the Virginia Lumber Company; the Duluth, Virginia, and Rainy Lake Railway; and the ...","searchtext":"The Virginia and Rainy Lake Company (V&RL) incorporated in 1905 and consisted of three subsidiaries: the Virginia Lumber Company; the Duluth, Virginia, and Rainy Lake Railway; and the Minnesota Land and Construction Company. In 1908, investment from lumber magnates Frederick E. Weyerhaeuser and Edward Hines transformed the V&RL into the world’s largest white pine lumber company overnight. In 1929, however, twenty-one years of mounting costs and decreasing yields forced the company to close. Logging operations began extending into northern Minnesota during the 1880s and 1890s, leaving devastated landscapes and forest fires in their wake. In 1901, two Minnesota lumbermen, William O’Brien and Wirt H. Cook, organized the Duluth, Virginia, and Rainy Lake Railway (DV&RL) to transport logs from their remote operations to sawmills and distribution centers. The DV&RL, along with the Virginia Lumber Company and the Minnesota Land and Construction Company, became subsidiaries of the O’Brien-and-Cook-owned Virginia & Rainy Lake Company, which incorporated in 1905. In November 1908, the V&RL offloaded the DV&RL to a holding company before merging with lumber magnates Edward Hines and Frederick Weyerhaeuser. The merger made it the largest lumber concern in the world, with control over most of the standing pine in the northern US and markets in Chicago, Buffalo, Duluth, and Minneapolis. Commanding these American markets while funneling lumber into the growing Canadian West made the V&RL a transnational supplier of pine lumber. Once amalgamated, V&RL controlled nearly three billion board feet of timberlands; valued at the common rate of $6 per thousand board feet, they gave the company a total valuation of around $20 million. The new board of the V&RL elected Hines (both a prominent lumber-industry figure and the company’s largest single shareholder), to assume the role of company president. In line with forestry protocols of the day, Hines pursued a policy of clearcutting. Like other companies, the V&RL stripped entire forests from the landscape in the name of fire prevention and agricultural development. Superintendent of Logging Frank H. Gillmor reported in 1919 that he had received instructions “to practically clean the ground of all timber that would make anything in the shape of lumber.” As the 1920s wore on and company profits dwindled, Hines reiterated clear-cutting efforts—not for the sake of conservation, but to log the timber, mill it into lumber, and “convert it into money as rapidly as possible.” The IWW strikes in 1916 and 1917 devastated the V&RL, with some logging camps losing more than 90 percent of their workforce. But the strikes were only the beginning of the V&RL’s labor problem. A labor shortage, which Hines and Gillmor attributed to state and county road construction, plagued the company throughout the 1920s. In 1915, the average daily wage per man on the V&RL payroll was $4.94; wages rose considerably after the strikes, never falling below $11.72 after 1920. By 1928, the V&RL logged more than 30,000 acres for only the second time since 1915, but with a significantly diminished yield per acre. Whereas 32,000 acres yielded over 130 million board feet in 1915, by 1928 the 30,000 acres yielded only 84 million board feet. The company needed to log more acreage simply to stay afloat with decreasing yields and increasing costs. Only a corporation as heavily financed as the V&RL could have logged Minnesota’s remnant pine forests, but by the late-1920s the high costs associated with transporting men, supplies, and logs increasing distances became too high even for them. The evolution of the nation’s logging industry, particularly in the Pacific Northwest, flooded the market with lumber that drove down prices, making the high costs of accessing Minnesota’s remnant white pine increasingly prohibitive. No longer able to justify increasing costs and diminishing yields, the V&RL closed after the 1929 season. At its height, the company’s flagship sawmill at Virginia had occupied one square mile, with seven band saws running nonstop. During its tenure, the V&RL had manufactured roughly 2.5 billion feet of lumber through capital expenses exceeding $30 million. A few years later, in 1937, the International Logging Company completed Minnesota’s last log drive, closing a critical chapter in state, regional, and national history. The logging industry had grown the state’s economy since before statehood, and produced irreversible effects on Ojibwe and Dakota peoples and their homelands.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/MNopedia/MNopedia%202026/Virginia%20and%20Rainy%20Lake%20Company/HD5.5V%20r4.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/virginia-and-rainy-lake-company"},{"alt":"Landscape at sunset with foundation ruins in the foreground and a building and upright pillar in the background.","author":[{"name":"Karl Nycklemoe","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/karl-nycklemoe"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"January 13, 2026","eraTag":[{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Fort Ridgely","postbody":"Fort Ridgely was a US military fort that operated between 1853 and 1867. It was located near the confluence of the Minnesota River and Fort Ridgely Creek, which was inside a Dakota ...","searchtext":"Fort Ridgely was a US military fort that operated between 1853 and 1867. It was located near the confluence of the Minnesota River and Fort Ridgely Creek, which was inside a Dakota reservation until 1862. To recognize the post’s role in the US–Dakota War of 1862, the state of Minnesota purchased the site in 1895 and established Fort Ridgely State Park in 1911. Mnisota Wakpa (the Minnesota River) has sustained Dakota people for generations. Dakota relatives gathered at and built burial mounds near its banks for thousands of years. By the mid-nineteenth century, their descendants lived in villages throughout the river’s watershed. The treaties of Traverse des Sioux and Mendota established a Dakota reservation along the Minnesota River in 1851. White settlers began flooding into the region even before the treaty was ratified, and in 1852, Henry Sibley requested that the US establish a fort on the Minnesota River to suppress potential violence between settlers and the Dakota. Fort Snelling soldiers began constructing the garrison in February 1853, creating an unwalled collection of buildings encircling a parade ground. Except for the granite barracks and commissary, the fort||s structures were made of wood. On June 27, Secretary of War Jefferson Davis named the fort in honor of one of three army officers—all brothers—killed in the Mexican American War. By 1855, construction of the fort’s buildings was mostly complete. Companies C, K, and E of the Sixth Infantry were the first units garrisoned at Fort Ridgely. Commanding officers and companies rotated frequently; two commanders and one officer brought enslaved African Americans with them. As a result, at least eight enslaved people lived at the garrison during the 1850s. After the Civil War began, the US used the fort as a training site before sending the soldiers south to fight. By 1862, a company of Minnesota volunteers was garrisoned there. During the US–Dakota War of 1862, settlers and some Dakota people sought shelter at Fort Ridgely. On August 18, the fort’s commander, Captain John Marsh, attempted to retaliate against Dakota combatants with a force of forty-six of the fort’s seventy-six soldiers. He and many of his men were soon killed in a Dakota ambush. As the region||s main military outpost, Fort Ridgely was stocked with supplies, weapons, and undelivered annuity payments, and was thus a strategic target for Dakota warriors. The Dakota laid siege to the fort, attacking on August 20 and 22. Civilian volunteers, soldiers under the command of Lieut. Timothy Sheehan, and the Renville Rangers (mainly composed of men with Dakota ancestry) defended the fort. After the Dakota retreated, Sibley||s militia of over 1,500 volunteers reached the fort on August 27 and 28. After the war, the US imprisoned around 1,700 non-combatant Dakota people at Fort Snelling. It also executed thirty-eight Dakota men; nullified all treaties and reservations with the Dakota; and exiled most of the Dakota—regardless of their role in the war. Without the Dakota reservation, the US Army abandoned the fort by 1867, and Congress permitted settlers to purchase lands within the former military reserve by 1870. Homesteaders tore down most of the fort||s original structures but left the south wall of the former commissary, which was converted into a stable. Minnesota began to commemorate the role of Fort Ridgely in the US–Dakota War in 1873, when the state legislature funded construction of a monument for Captain Marsh and his soldiers at the fort’s cemetery. The legislature apportioned additional funds to construct a monument for Eliza Müller, wife of the fort’s doctor (completed 1877), and those killed during the siege of Fort Ridgely (completed 1896). To further preserve the Fort Ridgely grounds and monuments, in 1895 the legislature purchased five acres of land holding the commissary and building foundations. It directed the Minnesota Adjutant General to care for the neglected state property, and by 1910, the grounds had been cleared and the commissary rehabilitated as a tourist attraction. The legislature designated Fort Ridgely as a state park in 1911. During the New Deal, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and Veterans Conservation Corps (VCC) labored there to control erosion and add amenities for visitors. After a 1936 archeological survey, the VCC also reconstructed the commissary to its original appearance. In 1969, the Minnesota Historical Society (MNHS) took over the fort grounds, with the state retaining control of the wider park. After the National Registry of Historic Places listed the Fort Ridgely historic site in 1970, the commissary building was used as an interpretive center and museum. In the twenty-first century, MNHS partnered with Friends of Fort Ridgely, and later the Nicollet County Historical Society, to administer the park. The latter partnership concluded in 2020.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/MNopedia/MNopedia%202026/Fort%20Ridgely/58FortRidgely.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/fort-ridgely"},{"alt":"A one-and-a-half-story bungalgow with two two columns supporting a front porch. The house and its columns are painted white.","author":[{"name":"Eric Hankin-Redmon","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/eric-hankin-redmon"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"December 18, 2025","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Arthur and Edith Lee House, Minneapolis","postbody":"In 1931, an unassuming house at 4600 Columbus Avenue South in Minneapolis was the site of racial violence directed at the Lees, an African American family who had recently purchased the ...","searchtext":"In 1931, an unassuming house at 4600 Columbus Avenue South in Minneapolis was the site of racial violence directed at the Lees, an African American family who had recently purchased the property. Over a period of several days, angry white mobs swarmed the neighborhood to harass and intimidate the family. With the help of community leaders, family, friends, and NAACP attorney Lena Olive Smith, the Lees persevered and remained in their house for another two years before moving in 1933. Constructed in 1923, the Lee House is a modest bungalow at the southwest corner of Columbus Avenue South and East 46th Street in South Minneapolis. In June 1931, African Americans Arthur and Edith Lee purchased and moved into the nondescript house in the all-white Field neighborhood, along with their daughter, Mary. Arthur was a United States Postal Service employee and World War I veteran. The Lees’ move infuriated their new white neighbors, who wanted the area to stay segregated. The house’s deed did not include a racial covenant—a statement barring people of color from ownership. Four years earlier, however, about 400 members of the Eugene Field Neighborhood Association had signed non-legally-binding “contracts” aimed at preventing non-white groups from renting or purchasing houses in the neighborhood. The association offered to purchase the house from the Lees for $5,000, about 6 percent more than what the Lees had paid for the property. After the Lees declined the offer, they were threatened and taunted, their house was vandalized, and neighbors hurled racial epithets at the family. Police did not respond when the Lees contacted them after continued intimidation, so the property was guarded by the Lees; family friends; Arthur’s brother, Edward; and fellow postal workers and World War I veterans. Between July 11 and July 16, angry white neighbors besieged the house. So many people joined in that police officers formed a circle around the bungalow, and reinforcements arrived to control the growing crowd. Onlookers continued to vandalize the property, throw stones, and shout at the Lees; eventually, the family’s dog was poisoned. On the night of July 16, more than four thousand people gathered a block away from the house but were held back by police. Minneapolis Mayor William A. Anderson asked residents to avoid the property but did not immediately aid the Lees or intervene. Civic leaders urged local newspapers to curtail their coverage of the unrest, and a group of Minneapolis ministers signed a resolution that protested the demonstrations. The July 18 issue of the Minneapolis Tribune reported on initial mediation sessions. The Lees’ white attorney, H. E. Maag, claimed that the Lees were considering selling their house. On July 18, the Lees dismissed Maag and retained Lena Olive Smith, an African American attorney with the Minneapolis chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). They hired Smith after Maag, representatives from Mayor Anderson’s office, and community leaders encouraged the couple to sell their house to the neighborhood association and vacate the area. Smith was vehement about the Lees remaining in their house. She was quoted in the July 20 issue of the Minneapolis Journal saying that “there will be no further negotiations with any committee of citizens.” Smith also released a statement in all three major Minneapolis newspapers informing the public that the Lee family would not be selling its house. While people feared that Smith’s resolute message would lead to further violence, the unrest subsided after its release. Smith’s statement, along with mediation and the large police presence on the block, helped to quell further intimidation by white neighbors after July 20. Seventy-five white residents, however, protested the Lees on August 4. Police presence persisted through September 1932, and officers escorted Mary to her kindergarten class throughout the school year. The intimidation was so great that the Lees slept in their basement for as long as they lived in the house. Seeking a less hostile neighborhood with more Black residents, they sold their house in late 1933. On July 16, 2011, a sculpture created by the Chicago Avenue Fire Arts Center and dedicated to the Lee family was installed on the northeast corner of the property. In 2014, the property was listed in the National Register of Historic Places. In 2016, it was designated as a local historic landmark.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/MNopedia/MNopedia%202025/Arthur%20and%20Edith%20Lee%20House/Arthur_and_Edith_Lee_House%2c_July_2014.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056216,"name":"African Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/arthur-and-edith-lee-house-minneapolis"},{"alt":"Seated man wearing a suit and bow tie with white hair, including white mutton-chop whiskers.","author":[{"name":"Alex Magnolia","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/alex-magnolia"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"December 05, 2025","eraTag":[{"id":186622056203,"name":"1792–1861 (Expansion and Reform)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Steele, Franklin (ca. 1813–1880)","postbody":"An attorney, businessman, city founder, war profiteer, and land speculator, Franklin Steele became one of the wealthiest men and most prominent landowners in Minnesota in the 1850s. He and ...","searchtext":"An attorney, businessman, city founder, war profiteer, and land speculator, Franklin Steele became one of the wealthiest men and most prominent landowners in Minnesota in the 1850s. He and his associates exploited the legal system to swindle tens of thousands of acres set aside by treaties specifically for Indigenous people, garnering enormous profits and paying the rightful land owners next to nothing. Born in Pennsylvania, Franklin Steele came to Minnesota in the late 1830s. Around 1838 he began working as Fort Snelling’s sutler (storekeeper/banker)––a lucrative position that connected him to fur traders like Henry Sibley, who married Steele’s sister. In this role, Steele oversaw the fort||s store for decades. The 1840s and 1850s saw Steele engaged in a frenzy of activity. He claimed a swath of prime real estate on the east side of St. Anthony Falls (Owámniyomni), then founded a sawmill there as well as the town of St. Anthony (which merged with Minneapolis in 1872). His company oversaw the construction of the first suspension bridge across the Mississippi in 1855, charging tolls when travelers crossed from St. Anthony to Minneapolis. In 1857, Senator Henry Rice notified Steele of the government’s imminent sale of Fort Snelling and thousands of surrounding acres. Steele sprang into action and raised huge sums of capital (including checks he sent to Rice personally totaling $30,000) to purchase the fort for $90,000. He hoped to found another town and make profits by selling individual lots. His ownership of the fort was controversial even at the time, sparking an investigation in Congress. When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Steele’s empire reached its zenith: he owned Minnesota’s central military installation and charged the government for the use of the land. He secured lucrative government contracts to supply the soldiers there. He refused to make further payments on the fort after 1861, writing, “I do not intend to make the other payments as long as there is no demand made for the money. My contract is good [...].” Despite a federal lawsuit against him, Steele leased the fort back to the government for $2,000 per month during the war, eventually settling his debts by an act of Congress in 1871. From the mid-1850s on, Steele led an elaborate, questionably legal scheme to acquire land that had been promised in the 1830 Treaty of Prairie du Chien to mixed-race Dakota people. They were issued “scrip”—paper coupons that could be exchanged for up to 640 acres per person. The law dictated that the scrip was non-transferable, preventing land speculators like Steele from buying it. Nevertheless, Steele and his network acquired Native peoples’ scrip by having the rightful owners sign legal instruments called land patents and powers of attorney. These papers gave the white men legal agency to buy, sell, trade, or take possession of the land, and to act on their behalf. In most cases, the Native landowners received just pennies per acre for their scrip. Steele’s network, which included businessmen, bankers, land dealers, and politicians around the country, bartered the scrip for stock, cash, and ownership of companies. Some used it themselves to claim land. Surviving records show that Steele and his associates took at least 35,000 acres of land promised to Native people, but the total is likely significantly higher. Steele found profit even in genocide. In 1862, in the aftermath of the US–Dakota War, the military forcibly removed Dakota people from their lands and interned them at a concentration camp beside Fort Snelling. Steele saw this not as a humanitarian crisis but as an opportunity for financial gain; he sold food and supplies to the imprisoned Dakota people. Facing disease, forced starvation, and misery, some sold or traded their scrip to Steele for rations just to survive the inhumane conditions. Their legally stolen lands would be worth untold hundreds of millions of dollars today. In the last fifteen years of his life (1865–1880), Steele used his wartime profits and scrip to develop his businesses outside of Minnesota. He and his associates opened silver mines in Nevada and speculated on lands in California. By the time Steele died in 1880, his estate had ballooned to millions of dollars. An inventory of his properties described more than 2,200 parcels of land which Steele owned in part or in full on his death. He died one of the wealthiest men in Minnesota and was buried in Washington, DC. Steele County as well as Franklin Steele Square and Franklin Avenue (both in Minneapolis) bear his name.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/MNopedia/MNopedia%202025/Franklin%20Steele/image2_cropped.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246079,"name":"Cities and Towns","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/steele-franklin-ca.-1813-1880"},{"alt":"A narrow river with algae and leaves is surrounded by bright green trees and bushes. In the distance, a bridge sits above the creek with blue sky and clouds in the background. ","author":[{"name":"Crystal Boyd","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/crystal-boyd"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"November 19, 2025","eraTag":[],"keydate":"","name":"Ȟaȟá Wakpádaŋ (Bassett Creek)","postbody":"The first creek that connects with the Mississippi River above St. Anthony Falls is known in Dakota as Ȟaȟá Wakpádaŋ (Falls Creek) and in English as Bassett Creek. Since 1851, changes in ...","searchtext":"The first creek that connects with the Mississippi River above St. Anthony Falls is known in Dakota as Ȟaȟá Wakpádaŋ (Falls Creek) and in English as Bassett Creek. Since 1851, changes in land use along the creek have reflected a shift from the Dakota tradition of sustainable practices to an industrial model that rerouted and polluted the water. Both of these worldviews continue to shape the creek in the twenty-first century. Ȟaȟá Wakpádaŋ begins at Medicine Lake in Plymouth and flows for about 13.5 miles before connecting with the Mississippi River in Minneapolis. The watershed surrounding the creek includes tributaries and parts of nine cities: Crystal, Golden Valley, Medicine Lake, Minneapolis, Minnetonka, New Hope, Plymouth, Robbinsdale, and St. Louis Park. Its drainage area covers thirty-nine square miles. The main stem of the creek travels through glacial outwash plains and a deep valley that was cut in the bedrock by the interglacial Mississippi River. Soils near the creek are often spongy and water-soaked, especially in the eastern section known as Bassett Creek Valley. By 5,000 years ago, the watershed was covered with deciduous forests and prairie openings, including oak savanna and elm, ironwood, and basswood trees. Abundant wildlife lived nearby, including wolves, deer, otters, and eagles. The watershed is part of the homelands of the Dakota people. For millennia it supported sustainable uses like seasonal hunting, fishing, and gathering. Dakota people walked footpaths that connected the creek with Bde Maka Ska and Ȟaȟá Wakpá. They also used the creek to transport furs by canoe. Dakota children played and swam at the mouth of the creek, and a Dakota woman named Háza Íŋyaŋke Wíŋ operated a canoe ferry above the falls in the mid-1800s. Many names have been used to describe the creek: first, Ȟaȟá Wakpádaŋ (Dakota), and then Petite Riviere des Chutes (French). The Dakota phrase shows Ȟaȟá Wakpádaŋ’s relationship to both Ȟaȟá Wakpá (Falls River; the Mississippi) and Owámniyomni (Turbulent Waters; St. Anthony Falls). Early maps simply labeled it Brook, Fall Creek, or Nine Mile Creek. White settlers staked claims near the creek before the 1851 treaties of Mendota and Traverse des Sioux. Squatters lived on the Fort Snelling Military Reservation until 1855, when an act of Congress granted pre-emption rights. Businessman Joel Bean Bassett squatted illegally at the mouth of the creek in the early 1850s, leading schoolteacher Mary Augusta (Scofield) Kissell to name the creek after him at about the same time. Bassett became Hennepin County’s first probate judge in 1852 and the Indian Agent at Crow Wing in 1866. The health of Bassett Creek deteriorated rapidly after the area was opened to settlers, who used it as a dumping ground as they industrialized Minneapolis. Raw sewage was piped into the waterway in the 1870s, and the creek was considered an open sewer by the late 1800s. Due to frequent flooding, the eastern portion of the creek was covered and tunneled underground in 1923. The Works Progress Administration attempted to restore parts of the creek during the 1930s, but new approaches to watershed health began in earnest during the late 1960s. The Bassett Creek Flood Control Commission, established in 1969, adopted its first management plan in 1972. Citizens became interested in more holistic improvements, and the flood control commission reorganized as the Bassett Creek Watershed Management Commission in 1984. Flooding remained an issue, and $28 million of federal funds supported developing a new tunnel through three phases in 1979, 1990, and 1992. Starting in 1992, the creek began flowing under downtown Minneapolis and discharged into the Mississippi River downstream of St. Anthony Falls. In the 1930s, public housing like Sumner Field Homes was built in the eastern portion of the watershed in Near North Minneapolis, where soggy soils caused building foundations to crack and sink. People experiencing poverty lived there because the unstable ground made housing less expensive. In 1998, after the settlement of a 1992 lawsuit, the Sumner Field Homes were demolished. The city was ordered to redevelop the area, and wetlands were restored in the creek’s original basin. In 2014, a Superfund site was designated along the creek in Minneapolis, where a metal plating facility had polluted the soil and groundwater. That same year, the City of Golden Valley drafted a feasibility report for improvements to the creek’s main stem. Later efforts recognized the creek as a Dakota landscape. In 2021, the Ȟahá Wakpádaŋ / Bassett Creek Oral History Project began working with cultural advisors to raise awareness of the creek’s Dakota name, and in 2025, the Bassett Creek Watershed Management Commission published a map celebrating Dakota culture and language.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/MNopedia/MNopedia%202025/%C8%9Ea%C8%9F%C3%A1%20Wakp%C3%A1da%C5%8B/image6.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246059,"name":"Native Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/haha-wakpadan-bassett-creek"},{"alt":"A white-haired man stands next to a desk with three books on it. He wears the robe of a Supreme Court justice. Behind him area an American flag and a bookshelf.","author":[{"name":"Paul Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/paul-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"November 06, 2025","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Burger, Warren Earl (1907–1995)","postbody":"Warren Burger was the second of three St. Paul lawyers to serve on the US Supreme Court, and the only one to serve as chief justice. Appointed by President Richard Nixon in 1969, he ...","searchtext":"Warren Burger was the second of three St. Paul lawyers to serve on the US Supreme Court, and the only one to serve as chief justice. Appointed by President Richard Nixon in 1969, he presided over controversial decisions involving abortion, the death penalty, school busing, the Pentagon Papers, and executive privilege during the Watergate scandal. He retired from the court in 1986. Burger grew up in St. Paul’s Dayton’s Bluff neighborhood (where Harry Blackmun was a childhood chum) and attended public schools. He was an athlete and student council president at Johnson High School before graduating in 1925. Although Burger took courses at the University of Minnesota, he never sought a degree there; instead, he got a law degree (1931) from St. Paul College of Law (later Mitchell-Hamline) after reaching the top of his class. He then joined a prominent downtown St. Paul firm and practiced law in the city for the next twenty-two years. Like many young Republicans, Burger joined the political network created by Minnesota Governor Harold Stassen. He served as Stassen’s floor manager at the 1944 Republican National Convention and his presidential campaign manager in 1948. At the convention of 1952 Burger’s deft management of a credentials dispute helped swing the presidential nomination to Dwight Eisenhower. After his election Eisenhower appointed Burger chief of the civil division of the Department of Justice and then, in 1955, to the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, generally considered the nation’s second-most important court. After Chief Justice Earl Warren announced his retirement in 1968, it fell to President Richard Nixon to choose Warren’s successor. Nixon had run on a tough-on-crime platform, and one of his goals for the Supreme Court was to roll back the Warren Court’s controversial reforms, especially in protections for those accused of crime. Judge Warren Burger also deplored those reforms, and his speeches and writings caught Nixon’s eye; he also had admirable experience and a spotless record. The senate confirmed him as chief justice by a vote of 74-3. A chief justice has limited powers. He controls just one vote of nine on the Supreme Court; his official functions otherwise are administrative and ceremonial. A chief may lead through gifts of intellect or diplomacy, or both, but Burger was not blessed with either. The Court turned more conservative during his tenure, but mostly through turnover. Presidents Nixon and Ford appointed six Republican justices—Burger, Blackmun, Rehnquist, Powell, Stevens, and O’Connor—between 1969 and 1984. President Nixon did not realize his hopes that Burger would lead the Supreme Court in a decisively conservative direction, in part because Burger himself professed no systematic ideology. The Burger Court made its decisions on a case-by-case basis, generally trying to balance competing interests. By the standards of the early twenty-first century, it would not be seen as particularly conservative. The same goes for Justice Burger himself. Scholars reviewing his tenure have found the record mixed and disputed, using the terms conservative, activist, pragmatic, and even liberal. Most rate his leadership as undistinguished. Many of the cases decided on Burger’s watch remain important and controversial. Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenberg (1971) allowed compulsory school busing to achieve desegregation; Furman v. Georgia (1972) suspended use of the death penalty, later re-allowed with severe limitations; Wisconsin v. Yoder (1972) allowed Amish families to opt out of compulsory schooling; Miller v. California (1973) established a new constitutional definition of obscenity; Buckley v. Valeo (1976) scuttled political campaign spending limits; California v. Bakke (1978) limited affirmative action in higher education. Burger voted with the majority in the most consequential decisions of the time: New York Times v. US (1971), allowing publication of the Pentagon Papers; Roe v. Wade (1973), allowing most. abortions; and US v. Nixon (1974), requiring President Nixon to surrender his Watergate-related tape recordings. That unanimous opinion, credited to Burger, led directly to the resignation of the man who had appointed Warren Burger to the Supreme Court. Warren Burger retired from the Court in 1986 and died in 1995.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/MNopedia/MNopedia%202025/Warren%20Burger/pf139938.640x640.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246060,"name":"Crime and Punishment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/burger-warren-earl-1907-1995"},{"alt":"Jacob H. Stewart","author":[{"name":"Caroline Life","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/caroline-life"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"October 24, 2025","eraTag":[{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Stewart, Jacob Henry (1829–1884)","postbody":"After he moved to Minnesota at the age of twenty-six, Jacob Henry Stewart accumulated many titles: doctor, mayor, postmaster, state senator, state surgeon general, US congressman, and state ...","searchtext":"After he moved to Minnesota at the age of twenty-six, Jacob Henry Stewart accumulated many titles: doctor, mayor, postmaster, state senator, state surgeon general, US congressman, and state surveyor general. But he remained known later in life for his service during the Civil War, when he earned praise for his work as a surgeon assigned to the First Minnesota Volunteer Infantry Regiment. Jacob Henry Stewart was born in Clermont, New York, on January 15, 1829. He moved with his parents to Peekskill, where he attended the common schools and graduated from Phillips Academy. He attended Yale College to study medicine and graduated from the University Medical College of New York City in 1851, returning to Peekskill afterward to practice medicine. Stewart moved to St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1855 and became the medical officer of Ramsey County in 1856. He married Katharine Sweeny (also identified in documents as Catharine and Kate), whose family came from Philadelphia. Their marriage certificate was signed and witnessed by Anna Jenks Ramsey (also from Philadelphia), the wife of Minnesota Governor Alexander Ramsey, on October 1, 1857. The Stewarts had three children: Ursula, Jacob Henry Jr., and Robert. During the Civil War, Dr. Stewart served as a surgeon in the Union Army after enlisting as a member of the First Minnesota Volunteer Infantry Regiment. During its first engagement, the First Battle of Bull Run, on July 21, 1861, the regiment suffered the highest casualty rate of any Union regiment involved. When Stewart stayed on the field after the battle had ended to care for the wounded of both the First Minnesota and the Confederacy, he was taken prisoner and surrendered his sword. News of Stewart’s action at Bull Run reached General P. G. T. Beauregard, the Confederate commander, and inspired him to return Stewart||s weapon. Beauregard stated, |||Such an act denotes not only bravery but is most unusual at this time. I, therefore, on acknowledgment of this act, return to you your sword.||| Stewart was held in Libby Prison in Richmond, Virginia. Not knowing his status, Governor Ramsey filled the void in the regiment by appointing Dr. Daniel Hand to the post of regiment surgeon. After receiving a conditional parole from prison, Dr. Stewart arrived in Washington, DC, in mid-August. From there, he was brought back to Minnesota, where he became post surgeon at Fort Snelling. The men of the First Minnesota began holding reunions shortly after the war||s end, and Dr. Stewart was elected the group||s president in 1867. On July 12, 1870, he joined the Union veteran fraternal organization called the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) and became a member of William Acker Post 21 in St. Paul. Before the war, Stewart had held multiple public offices, including Ramsey County medical officer (1856); state surgeon general (1857–63); and state senator (1858–59). After returning to Minnesota as a veteran, he reentered politics and raised his profile, serving four terms as the mayor of St. Paul (1864–65; 1868–69; 1872–73; and 1873–75) and one as a US congressman (1878–79). He was the majority-Democratic city of St. Paul’s first Republican mayor. During this time, Stewart also served as US Postmaster at St. Paul, a title he held from 1865–70. Stewart continued to practice medicine after the war. He formed a partnership with Charles A. Wheaton, who had graduated from Harvard Medical University. In 1872, the Ramsey County Board of Control authorized the purchase of Stewart||s mansion to serve as a hospital, and in 1873 it was established as the St. Paul City and Ramsey County Hospital. After two name changes, it became Regions Hospital in 1977. In 1874, the Stewarts moved to 50 Irvine Park, near the home of Alexander Ramsey and his family. A fire destroyed parts of the original building in 1980, but the overall structure survived and retained some of its historic character. Stewart died in St. Paul on August 24, 1884, at fifty-five years of age. He was buried in Oakland Cemetery in St. Paul. In 1928, during the construction of the Fort Snelling Memorial Chapel, Ursula and Charles Wheaton donated three stained glass windows above the altar as a memorial to Stewart. The first panel shows St. Luke, the physician; the lower medallion shows surgeons caring for the wounded.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/MNopedia/MNopedia%202025/Jacob%20Henry%20Stewart/por%2020578%20r2_resized.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/stewart-jacob-henry-1829-1884"},{"alt":"Peterson bluebird nest box in Frontenac State Park","author":[{"name":"Marjorie Savage","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/marjorie-savage"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"October 15, 2025","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Peterson Bluebird Nest Box","postbody":"The Eastern bluebird, indigenous to North and Central America, is said to have once been as common as the American robin. A population decline starting in the early twentieth century ...","searchtext":"The Eastern bluebird, indigenous to North and Central America, is said to have once been as common as the American robin. A population decline starting in the early twentieth century reduced the number of Eastern bluebirds by an estimated 90 percent, inspiring a grassroots movement to save them. Key to the movement’s success was the Peterson bluebird nest box, designed by Dick and Vi Peterson of Brooklyn Center. Eastern bluebirds (Sialia sialis) have a long history in North America, with mitochondrial DNA research suggesting the birds evolved into a distinct species about 2.5 million years ago. Fossil evidence dates the birds’ presence in the upper Midwest at 8,000 to 10,000 years ago, around the end of the last glacial period. The stories of many Native American cultures recognize bluebirds as symbols of spring and bearers of hope, friendship, and happiness. Minnesota Ojibwe called (and still call) the bluebird ozhaawashko-bineshiinh (blue bird). The corresponding word in the Dakota language is ziŋtkatȟo. Eastern bluebirds are secondary cavity nesters, meaning they build their nests in previously hollowed-out spaces. Although they require a sheltered nook for nesting, bluebirds can’t drill cavities with their beaks. In nature, they nest in other birds’ abandoned roosts, hollow rock niches, wooden fencepost notches, and dead or dying trees. As American settlement expanded during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, those natural nesting options dwindled. Logging removed woodlands, and metal fenceposts replaced wooden ones. Pesticides and insecticides killed the birds and the insects they fed on. Most devastating was the incursion of two European cavity nesters: the house sparrow (English sparrow) and the common starling (European starling). These non-native species invaded bluebird nests, killing off adult birds and their fledglings. By the 1960s, the nation’s Eastern bluebirds faced extinction, and a decade later the birds were on the National Audubon Society’s list of “vanishing species.” Bird lovers throughout the United States searched for ways to reestablish the bluebird population, recognizing that recovery would require human intervention. Minnesotans Dick and Vi Peterson joined the search, focusing their efforts on finding a substitute for nesting cavities. They lined “bluebird trails” with nearly 500 nest boxes, checking weekly during nesting season to identify elements that would keep the chicks warm, dry, and safe from pests. Every component of the Peterson nest box focused on protecting the birds. A wide roof provided shade on a hot summer day and shelter from wind, rain, and snow in inclement weather. The steep slant of the roof prevented raccoons and house cats from snatching the babies inside. The wedge shape of the box made it easier for fledglings to leave the nest when they were ready. An entry hole, measured to the sixteenth of an inch, was sized to keep starlings out. The Petersons shared their nest-box pattern with individuals and conservation groups at no charge and led workshops teaching the construction process. Children built the boxes in 4H clubs, Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, and Camp Fire Girls. Junior and senior high school students constructed Peterson boxes in shop class or as Future Farmers of America. Civic groups established bluebird trails in parks and on golf courses, at cemeteries, and along country roads. Volunteers took notes, recording when a nest was built; what kind of bird built it; when eggs were laid; and how many chicks hatched. The Peterson nest box worked. Although a 1979 spot check of Minnesota bluebirds revealed just eleven pairs, a bird census three years later showed a count of 1,490 fledglings. In 1992, 14,800 fledglings were counted in Minnesota, more than any other state in the nation. Nationally, researchers reported that Eastern bluebirds showed a preference for Peterson boxes when they were given a choice of nesting sites. Dick Peterson, described as a “tinkerer,” built and tested more than 5,000 nest boxes between 1978 and 1998. A retired Northwest airline pilot, David Ahlgren, simplified Peterson’s design and developed a method for constructing an entire nest box from just one board. He then spent twenty-five years cutting out more than 85,000 nest boxes and selling them to birders around the world or donating them to schools and non-profit groups. Over time, the efforts of countless volunteers stabilized Minnesota’s bluebird population, with bird census reports averaging just over ten thousand fledglings a year. In 2025, the Bluebird Recovery Program of Minnesota dropped “recovery” from its name, noting that the bluebird population has recovered.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/image2.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246052,"name":"Science and Technology","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/peterson-bluebird-nest-box"},{"alt":"Alonzo Pickle","author":[{"name":"Lee Skold","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/lee-skold"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"September 29, 2025","eraTag":[{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Pickle, Alonzo (1843–1925)","postbody":"Of the 262 Minnesotans who fought at the Battle of Gettysburg as part of the First Minnesota Volunteer Infantry Regiment in 1863, only forty-seven survived. One of them was Alonzo Pickle, a ...","searchtext":"Of the 262 Minnesotans who fought at the Battle of Gettysburg as part of the First Minnesota Volunteer Infantry Regiment in 1863, only forty-seven survived. One of them was Alonzo Pickle, a Canadian-born teenager who’d enlisted a year earlier in Winona. Pickle received the US Medal of Honor for his action at the Battle of Deep Bottom and lived out the rest of his life as a farmer, laborer, and salesman in Minnesota. Alonzo Huntingdon Pickle was born in 1843 in Farnham, Quebec, a town fifty miles to the east of Montreal. He was the son of Simon and Sarah Taylor Pickle, whose families had emigrated from Boston to Quebec. When Alonzo was fifteen, the family moved to Wisconsin, and then to Dover, Minnesota, outside of Rochester, where they bought a farm. In 1862, nineteen years old and still a Canadian citizen, Pickle responded to Governor Alexander Ramsey’s call for volunteers to fight in the Civil War by enlisting in the First Minnesota Volunteer Infantry Regiment. After enlisting at Winona on August 14, 1862, he was sent to Fort Snelling with other volunteers to be mustered in and begin training. Private Pickle was assigned to Company K of the First Minnesota and marched south. He participated in pivotal battles at Fredericksburg (1862) and Gettysburg (1863), where he was wounded in the leg during Pickett’s Charge, which fell on his twentieth birthday. He was promoted to the rank of corporal on February 1, 1864, and sent back to Fort Snelling for recruiting service. On July 22, after a promotion to the rank of sergeant, he transferred to Company B of the First Infantry Battalion to finish out his three-year enlistment. On August 14, 1864, while serving with Company B, Pickle was engaged in battle at Deep Bottom, Virginia. The battalion attacked the enemy’s lines but was unable to carry on. When Lieutenant Henry O’Brien was shot in the shoulder and lung, Pickle carried him to safety at great personal risk. He was promoted again—this time to first sergeant. He mustered out of service at Munson’s Hill, Virginia, in 1865, and was present at Appomattox when General Robert E. Lee surrendered. After the war, Pickle came back to Minnesota to work on his father’s farm in Olmsted County. He married Rhoda Jane Smith in Rochester on October 24, 1867, and the couple moved to Winona. There, Alonzo found two jobs: first, working for a horse dealer named W. S. Nevins, and second, hauling bricks for the construction of Winona’s Normal School. By 1869, he had moved back to Olmsted County and rented a farm. He and Rhoda raised their family of six children there for the next fifteen years. In the fall of 1888, Pickle bought a parcel of land in the southwest corner of Home Township, a few miles from Sleepy Eye, and made it his new home. After only four years, however, Pickle gave up farming and moved to Sleepy Eye, where he sold real estate and insurance. In civilian life, Pickle remained loyal to the men with whom he’d served. He was an active member of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), a national fraternal organization of veterans. He was a charter member of the Wesley Green GAR Post #71 in Sleepy Eye and, at the time of his death, its only surviving member. On June 5, 1897, he received the US Medal of Honor for rescuing Lieutenant O’Brien. Pickle was an active participant in the GAR and attended reunions, called encampments, around the country. When St. Paul hosted the thirtieth encampment in 1896, nearly 150,000 members (including Pickle) attended the event, and 200,000 visitors came out to watch the parade through the city streets. Pickle attended the GAR encampment held in Minneapolis in 1906 as well as a gathering to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg in 1913. Pickle died on May 24, 1925. Days later, the mayor of Sleepy Eye declared all businesses in town closed from 1:30 until 3:00 pm so that people could attend the funeral. Pickle was buried in Home Cemetery in Home Township.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/MNopedia/MNopedia%202025/Alonzo%20Pickle/Pickle%206%20Congressional%20Medal%20of%20Honor.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/pickle-alonzo-1843-1925-mnopedia"},{"alt":"Picketing and striking workers","author":[{"name":"Paul Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/paul-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"September 26, 2025","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Strutwear Knitting Company Strike, 1935–1936","postbody":"The Strutwear strike was the last, least violent, and longest of three bitter labor disputes that shook Minneapolis between 1934 and 1936. It pitted the anti-union leaders of Strutwear ...","searchtext":"The Strutwear strike was the last, least violent, and longest of three bitter labor disputes that shook Minneapolis between 1934 and 1936. It pitted the anti-union leaders of Strutwear Knitting Company (and its Citizens Alliance allies) against the United Hosiery Workers Union (and its labor allies, the Teamsters and the American Federation of Labor). When the strike ended in April 1936, Strutwear and the Citizens Alliance declared victory. A year later, however, events took a surprising turn. James Struthers had founded the Strutwear Knitting Company in 1916, with twenty employees. By 1935 it had over 1,100 workers, a six-story factory, and a headquarters in downtown Minneapolis. Some 200 of the workers, and the best paid, were skilled knitters, all men. Of the remaining 900, most (580) were women, and paid much less. All were paid less than industry workers elsewhere. In the summer of 1935 Strutwear knitters voted to join the national United Hosiery Workers Union. Strutwear responded by firing eight union activists. On Friday, August 16, a crowd prevented most workers from entering the plant at 1015 Sixth Street South. The following Monday morning hundreds of picketers surrounded the factory. Police used clubs to clear the sidewalks; in response, hundreds more picketers appeared. Strutwear closed the plant. Instead of dealing with the union, Strutwear marshaled a host of resistance measures. It threatened to leave Minneapolis. It put political pressure on Minneapolis officials. When Strutwear employees went on relief, the company got their payments cut. The virulently anti-union Citizens Alliance, a large Minneapolis business group to which Strutwear belonged, formed a “citizens committee” to lobby against the union effort. Among the workers, most of the suffering fell to the women and unskilled men whom the United Hosiery Workers were not trying to organize. The two sides presented starkly different versions of the truth. Labor organizers called Strutwear a sweatshop that paid 35 to 40 percent less than similar companies around the country. Strutwear presented itself as a benevolent employer and good citizen, beset by outside agitators. The dispute came on the heels of violent strikes by Minneapolis Teamsters in 1934 and at Flour City Iron Works in July 1935; thus, the stakes were high. They rose in November, when the company offered to arbitrate the case of the eight fired organizers and any other worker grievances—but not to deal with the union. The union refused. Through a ruse, Strutwear got a few truckloads of machinery and finished goods out of the factory, headed for Missouri. Then, in a confrontation outside the plant, Minneapolis Teamsters stepped in, smashing windows and stoning trucks. Minneapolis Mayor Thomas Latimer was caught in the middle. He had been elected as a socialist, and the workers were his constituents. But as mayor he had a duty to protect all, including Strutwear; it was a major employer and taxpayer, and he felt pressure to address its threats to leave Minneapolis. Latimer deployed police at the factory, but Strutwear complained that he did not do enough. One of its lawyers called Latimer “a conspirator and agitator.” Things got worse in late December when Strutwear tried to reopen the plant. Hundreds of picketers appeared, and there were more scuffles. Governor Floyd Olson sent national guard troops—not to open the plant, but to keep it closed. Strutwear advised its employees to seek jobs elsewhere. Strutwear now took the dispute to the courts. It sued Olson and Latimer to force them to allow the factory to open. It sued labor organizers and workers to end picketing. It sued Latimer and ninety-six others for damages of over $100,000. At one point, two major trials were going on in Minneapolis at the same time. The strike continued. Then, suddenly, it was over. On April 4, 1936, the union accepted the arbitration offer that had been on the table since November, along with a promise to rehire all striking workers and implement a previously-planned series of wage increases. Recognition of the union was not included. With justification, the Citizens Alliance hailed this as a victory. Strutwear reopened on April 6. A year later came a surprising denouement. In May 1937 Strutwear and the United Hosiery Workers revealed a comprehensive settlement. All Strutwear workers—not just the knitters, who had started the dispute but the mostly-female production workers, too—would unionize. What had been a union defeat the prior April had become a complete union victory.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/MNopedia/MNopedia%202025/Strutwear%20Knitting%20Company%20Strike/10729741.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246055,"name":"Labor","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/strutwear-knitting-company-strike-1935-1936"},{"alt":"Shoppers inside the Hungry Mind bookstore","author":[{"name":"Paul Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/paul-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"August 26, 2025","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Hungry Mind (bookstore)","postbody":"In its nearly thirty-four years, from 1970 to 2004, the Hungry Mind grew from a tiny neighborhood bookshop to a regional powerhouse with a national reach. It became a favored venue for ...","searchtext":"In its nearly thirty-four years, from 1970 to 2004, the Hungry Mind grew from a tiny neighborhood bookshop to a regional powerhouse with a national reach. It became a favored venue for appearances by hundreds of authors of local, national, and international stature. Its quarterly book review, the Hungry Mind Review, reached tens of thousands of readers in all fifty states and across Canada. Its press, Hungry Mind Press, published fifty titles. It promoted the local literary arts, especially small presses, poetry and fiction, and their creators. Financial pressures forced it to close in the summer of 2004. In 1970 an idea occurred to David Unowsky: Open a bookstore in his neighborhood, near Macalester College in St. Paul. It debuted with two small rooms in October of that year, and he called it the Hungry Mind. In 1972 it became the Macalester College bookstore, and the college became its banker and landlord at its permanent location, 1648 Grand Avenue. Unowsky took as his missions providing a wide variety of titles, tending to his customers’ interests, and supporting local writers and presses. In the late 1970s the store began hosting author readings—at first, mostly local poets. This practice slowly expanded. By the mid-1980s national publishing houses were regularly sending, at their expense, writers of national and international renown. The writers who appeared at Hungry Mind events (there would be more than 1,500) ranged from Minnesota baseball stars Dave Winfield and Kirby Puckett to Nobel Prize winners Orhan Pamuk and Kazuo Ishiguro. Others included Jimmy Carter, Kurt Vonnegut, Hunter S. Thompson, Isabel Allende, Studs Turkel, Molly Ivins, Norman Mailer, John Updike, Gloria Steinem, David Sedaris, Hilary Clinton, and hundreds more recognizable names. Hungry Mind readings were always free, but due to high demand many had to be held at much bigger venues, often at Macalester College or Central Presbyterian Church in downtown St. Paul. By the mid-1990s the bookstore routinely offered over 200 events per year. More than 1,700 authors made Hungry Mind appearances between 1978 and 2004. In 1985 Unowsky, with Bart Schneider as editor, launched the Hungry Mind Review, in time a quarterly journal of book reviews, author interviews, and original artwork. Like the author appearances, the Review employed local, regional, and nationally prominent writers; it also made a point of supporting local presses, such as Milkweed Editions, based in Minneapolis. In its first decade or so it was distributed solely through independent bookstores; it eventually achieved a circulation estimated at 50,000. In 1994 Unowsky and a small team of investors and collaborators created the Hungry Mind Press, which specialized in publishing out-of-print titles they believed had been overlooked by the big publishing houses. Though Unowsky denied ever having a business plan, the effect was to create a Twin Cities literary ecosystem with the Hungry Mind at its center. All of these ventures took place in the context of turmoil in the bookselling trade, most notably the rise of enormous chains such as B. Dalton (based in Minneapolis), Barnes & Noble, Waldenbooks, and Borders, and large independent stores in the Twin Cities, such as Gringolet, Baxter’s (both Minneapolis), and Odegard’s (Minneapolis and St. Paul). The Hungry Mind outlasted almost all the independents, but the competition was intense, and made worse by the appearance of the online bookseller Amazon in 1995. By the late 1990s the Hungry Mind was selling more books than ever, holding more events, employing more people—up to fifty, with health insurance—and losing money. It secured a temporary lifeline when a California publisher bought the Hungry Mind name; Unowsky then renamed his enterprises Ruminator. Despite the losses, in 2001 he opened a second store at Open Book, a book arts hub in downtown Minneapolis. This proved to be a fateful error. The Minneapolis store lost money from the first and closed in 2003, at which time Unowsky owed Macalester College, which had financed his ventures since 1972, over $600,000. He tried frantically to erase the debt in late 2003 and early 2004, to no avail. The bookstore closed in July of that year, and Unowsky went into bankruptcy. The Ruminator Press had already ceased to publish; Ruminator Review lasted a few months longer.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/MNopedia/MNopedia%202025/Kilmarnock%20Books/HM%20interior%202.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056210,"name":"Education","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/hungry-mind-bookstore"},{"alt":"“Christmas Eve on the Flats”","author":[{"name":"Alex Magnolia","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/alex-magnolia"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"August 14, 2025","eraTag":[{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Bohemian Flats, Minneapolis","postbody":"From the 1860s to 1931, thousands of people built homes on the west bank of the Mississippi River as it wends through Minneapolis, just south of St. Anthony Falls. The diverse immigrant ...","searchtext":"From the 1860s to 1931, thousands of people built homes on the west bank of the Mississippi River as it wends through Minneapolis, just south of St. Anthony Falls. The diverse immigrant community that residents created there—Bohemian Flats—survived seasonal floods and eviction threats until its demolition by the City of Minneapolis. It was sometimes called Slovak Flats and Washington Flats, among other, rougher names. But for the people who lived, worked, and worshipped there, it was simply called home. Bohemian Flats was one of several “landing place” communities in the Twin Cities where recently arrived, working-class immigrants could speak their languages, find cheap housing, live near workplaces, and begin their lives in America. These neighborhoods reflected the immense inequality of America’s Gilded Age: the rich occupied leafy hilltop neighborhoods like Lowry Hill and Summit Avenue, while many poor people, new immigrants, and laborers lived in leftover land, including floodplains, slums, and industrial areas. As they were in Connemara Patch, West Side Flats, and Swede Hollow, houses in Bohemian Flats were small and crowded. They were also built close together, with room between each only for gardens, woodpiles, animal pens, and outhouses. The labor of Bohemian Flats residents was essential for Minneapolis’ burgeoning industries, including flour and lumber milling, beer brewing, and construction. Factories sat just a few hundred yards up the hill from the workers’ homes. The streets that ran through the neighborhood were named after residents’ professions: Cooper, Mill, and Wood. Many performed unpaid labor: raising children, running households, tending gardens, and keeping dogs, cats, chickens, cows, ducks, and pigs. The 1900 census recorded about 1,200 Slovaks, Swedes, Czechs (Bohemians), Irish, Norwegians, Poles, Germans, and Austrians living there, among other nationalities. Minneapolis did not extend sewage service to the flats, and it struggled to build and maintain water infrastructure. Thus, the neighborhood suffered from poor sanitation and infectious disease, including diphtheria and typhoid. In 1889, residents collected funds to build a church of their own in the flats, the Slovak Evangelical Lutheran Church of St. Emmanuel. The community also gathered in the flats’ one large apartment building, grocery stores, and saloon. The Westminster Presbyterian Church opened a charitable mission in the neighborhood, too, and in 1913 it built a chapel (later the Cedar–Riverside People’s Community Center) at Twentieth and Riverside Avenue, just “up the hill” from the flats. The ever-present Mississippi River profoundly shaped the lives of the people who lived in Bohemian Flats. Each spring could present floods that sometimes swept away animals, homes, possessions, and even people. The river also provided. Flotsam and jetsam discarded upstream included logs, boards, and produce that residents collected. People used boats and built skeleton piers into the river to collect the goods. They fished, ice skated, and used the Mississippi for laundry and drinking water. Generations of artists drew inspiration from the lifestyle and picturesque, colorful houses of the flats. Modernist painter Vaclav Vytlacil rented a studio in the neighborhood and brought art students from the Minneapolis School of Art there. Ownership of the flats was contested. Title was variously claimed by Senator W. D. Washburn, companies, developers, and residents. Some residents paid rent to landlords, others were squatters, and some considered themselves homeowners. The threat of evictions from companies, landlords, and the city was constant. In 1893, residents won a lawsuit against the Minneapolis Gas Light Company for discharging refuse into their soil and wells. They also protested the expansion of a city trash dump near their homes. John Medvec, a sixty-something Bohemian Flats resident, led several neighbors in court against a developer who claimed he owned the flats and demanded rent. In November 1923, a judge ruled that the residents had to pay rent or face eviction. The next month, Minneapolis police began to forcibly evict people from their homes, resulting in a pitched standoff. Led by the women of the neighborhood, residents resisted eviction by refusing to budge from their doorways or threatening officers with brooms. Just before events escalated, a judge ordered that the evictions halt. The city of Minneapolis had used eminent domain powers in 1915 to seize land in the southern part of the flats to build a barge terminal. Then, in 1929, it began condemnation proceedings to demolish most of the remaining houses. For the next two years, city leaders issued eviction notices and forced nearly all the residents of Bohemian Flats to abandon their homes to make way for a coal terminal. After 1931, fourteen homes remained on and around the flats; the final structure was demolished in 1963.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/MNopedia/MNopedia%202025/Bohemian%20Flats/10347575.640x640_AV1983.149.31.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246079,"name":"Cities and Towns","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/bohemian-flats-minneapolis"},{"alt":"Reverend Moses Dickson","author":[{"name":"Karen Sieber","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/karen-sieber"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"August 08, 2025","eraTag":[{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Letter from Moses Dickson to T. M. Fullerton, 1857","postbody":"On March 24, 1857, abolitionist and St. Paul resident Moses Dickson wrote a scathing open letter to the Minnesota Weekly Times about freedom, democracy, and citizenship for Black Americans. ...","searchtext":"On March 24, 1857, abolitionist and St. Paul resident Moses Dickson wrote a scathing open letter to the Minnesota Weekly Times about freedom, democracy, and citizenship for Black Americans. Although it was addressed to a land agent named T. M. Fullerton, the letter appealed to all white Minnesotans to recognize the humanity of their Black neighbors. It provides a record of one man’s response to racial inequality in Minnesota (and across the US) in the 1850s. After the US Supreme Court took up the case of Dred Scott v. Sandford in February of 1856, it considered whether the US Constitution included Black people in its definition of citizens. The ongoing argument left many free African Americans living in Minnesota questioning their legal status. Although the Black codes that governed southern states at the time did not exist in Minnesota Territory, political leaders had found other ways to limit the freedoms of free Blacks moving to northern states. The national question of Black land ownership sparked local debates as Minnesota Territory readied for statehood. In late 1856, a letter-writer to the Minnesota Weekly Times presented a question to the newspaper: Did the Pre-Emption Act of 1841, which allowed US citizens to claim federal land, apply to African Americans in Minnesota? The paper’s editor passed on his query to Stillwater land agent T. M. Fullerton and published his answer on January 3, 1857. In his reply, Fullerton dismissed the land claims of African Americans by denying their citizenship. He wrote that “Colored persons are not, by any of the United States laws, regarded as citizens[.]” When the Supreme Court issued its ruling in Scott v. Sandford two months later, it agreed with him, and Fullerton celebrated the decision in a letter to the Daily Pioneer and Democrat. Black abolitionist and possible Underground Railroad agent Moses Dickson, who was also a business owner in St. Paul, read both of Fullerton’s letters. He responded via the Minnesota Weekly Times in a letter of his own published on March 28. He noted the irony of Fullerton’s training as a preacher and the fact that five of the Supreme Court justices were current or former slaveholders. After asking if Fullerton had ever read the Declaration of Independence, Dickson continued: Why do you make merry over this piece of Judicial Tyranny? In what have I offended that this injustice should be heaped upon me and mine? Is it because I love my country less than you?—No! for you have all the advantages of education and refinement that society can furnish, and are eligible to any office at the gift of the People, your affection for your native land is only enough to put her in chains; while I, though depressed and downtrodden by my country ever since I saw the light of day, love her still…. What kind of institution is a negro? Who am I? I am not an alien, for I was born on American soil. I am not a citizen, for you and your subordinates, the five slaveholders, say I am not. I am a thing. I live, breathe, eat, work, think, die, and if I have a soul—does it go before the eternal judge? Or does the Supreme Court take care of that, too? I may acquire property, but the United States refuses to protect it. I cannot sue for injuries done me, or money due me. There is only one palliating circumstance in this chapter of hellish law—I cannot commit treason as there is no nation to which I owe allegiance. I cannot longer love my country for I have no country to love! Dickson closed the letter by saying that although he expected Fullerton to ignore him in public after he read his words, the reverend could at least remember him in his private prayers. No written response from Fullerton to Dickson survives. Fullerton ended his role as land agent later that year and returned to preaching. Dickson moved downriver to Missouri and entered the ministry himself. Free Blacks who continued to live in Minnesota in the late 1850s and early 1860s did so without protection under the law, and without the same rights as white settlers, until 1868. In that year, a state amendment granted suffrage to all non-white men. Editor’s note: To read all of Dickson’s letter in a more accessible size than the original, see the citation in the bibliography below.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/MNopedia/MNopedia%202025/Underground%20Railroad/Moses_Dickson_Getty_Museum%20copy_resized.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056216,"name":"African Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/letter-from-moses-dickson-to-t.-m.-fullerton-1857"},{"alt":"Joseph Farr","author":[{"name":"Karen Sieber","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/karen-sieber"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 25, 2025","eraTag":[{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Underground Railroad in Minnesota","postbody":"Although long ignored in Underground Railroad scholarship, evidence indicates that small groups of Black and white abolitionists in Minnesota aided freedom seekers at different times and ...","searchtext":"Although long ignored in Underground Railroad scholarship, evidence indicates that small groups of Black and white abolitionists in Minnesota aided freedom seekers at different times and places in the 1850s and 60s. Waterways like the Mississippi River and territorial-era stagecoach roads were integral to the freedom movement. Free Black barbers, steamboat workers, and businessmen in Minnesota cooperated with abolitionists in Galena, Chicago, St. Louis, and beyond, all with a common goal: the end of slavery. As they do in other states, legends, inconsistencies, and a system of operation meant to be elusive complicate a full understanding of the Underground Railroad in Minnesota. While slavery was technically illegal there, boundaries between freedom and bondage were blurry. Southern businessmen and Fort Snelling officers often brought enslaved individuals in and out of Minnesota from slave states. The Dred Scott case famously examined the complexity of this issue in court. Following the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, crossing the invisible boundary into the North was not enough to guarantee one||s safety and freedom. Freedom seekers could still be captured and brought back to the South. In response, many self-emancipated individuals traveled deeper into the wilderness of the upper Midwest and away from the detection of slave catchers. While some continued on into Canada, others settled into the region’s growing boomtowns or mining and farming communities. Free Blacks also began moving to the region in search of opportunities for advancement and freedom from the oppression of Black codes enacted in other states. Minnesota Territory, then at the edge of westward growth, was an ideal destination for freedom seekers. Free Blacks found opportunities for work and community building in the area’s booming river towns. Goods and people circulated on steamboats and stagecoach lines, and the individuals who gathered in spaces like barbershops and eating saloons found opportunities to use those existing paths and industries to lead people to freedom. In 1850, around the same time as the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, a number of free Black abolitionists began settling in the territorial city of St. Paul from Galena, Illinois. Many worked on steamboats like the Dr. Franklin, Oronoco, and Nominee as barbers, porters, and laborers, moving up and down the river from New Orleans to St. Paul. Black barbers in particular were known to be integral to the freedom movement in other parts of the country for their roles in information sharing and gathering, and building networks. Many known Underground Railroad agents were barbers. Joseph Farr and his uncle William Taylor aided in the Underground Railroad in the 1850s after moving to St. Paul from Galena. Taylor’s barber shop on Third Street (now Kellogg) placed them in sight of incoming steamboats on the Mississippi River. Others involved in helping people to freedom in the city included a man named David Edwards [Talbert], who worked as a cook at International Hotel; steamboat worker Eugene Berry; an agent in Galena named James Garrett Johnson; and fellow barber James Highwarden. Berry and others working on the steamboats further down river disguised fugitive slaves, including women, as young male laborers on board. Once in St. Paul, they hid escapees at Taylor’s home across Third, or at an ice cream saloon a few blocks away. A white ally named Fournier who lived near White Bear Lake aided in the effort, as did stagecoach operator and future St. Anthony mayor Alvaren Allen, and unnamed allies in Prescott, Wisconsin, across the river from Hastings. Black abolitionist Moses Dickson, recognized nationally as a leader in the Underground Railroad, lived in St. Paul during the years leading up to statehood. Dickson lived near Farr and Taylor in Galena before moving north, and he had close connections to known UGRR operators in Galena and Saint Louis. James Garrett Johnson, whom Farr mentions as an agent in his own recollection, was a member of the International Order of Twelve in Galena, one of two secret abolitionist organizations Dickson started. In St. Paul, Dickson and his wife Mary operated an eating saloon and later a barbershop, both possibly aiding in his abolitionist efforts. Dickson was also the first educator of African American children in town. By the late 1850s, more abolitionist-minded individuals began moving to the region from New England. Among them were Ralph and Emily Grey, a free Black couple from York, Pennsylvania. The couple settled in Saint Anthony where Ralph ran a barber shop. In 1860, the Greys famously helped Eliza Winston in her freedom case and subsequent escape to freedom. Winston and her husband had partially paid for their freedom from the Gholson family years earlier, but Eliza was still sold to the Christmas family. When Eliza was brought North with the family from Mississippi the Greys helped her arrange a hearing. Although a Minnesota judge ruled in her favor, a pro-slavery mob converged on her location to return her to slavery. The Greys reportedly aided Eliza in an escape to Canada, although reports conflict about her eventual whereabouts. Emily’s father William Goodridge was a noted Underground Railroad leader in York, and joined them in Minnesota by the mid-1860s. Minneapolis Pioneers and Soldiers Memorial Cemetery, where the Grey and Goodridge family are buried, was recently awarded Network to Freedom designation for the burial site||s connection to freedom seeking history. Minnesota remained an active place of freedom seeking even up through the end of the Civil War. Following the Emancipation Proclamation, a group of formerly enslaved individuals in Missouri headed up river on the steamboat Northerner in search of freedom and a new life. The group of 125 refugees, including their leader Rev. Robert Hickman, founded Pilgrim Baptist Church in the years following the war. In 2023 the church and freedom seekers became the first Minnesota location designated on the National Park Service’s Network to Freedom map. In addition to the above stories, there are also numerous individuals from Minnesota’s past that are being explored as possible but unverified agents and operators. In Southeast Minnesota, numerous rumored locations exist around Rushford, like the Rosewell Valentine House. Daniel Dayton, owner of a stagecoach stop in Big Springs along the Dubuque-St. Paul Trail, is considered by some to be a possible agent given his abolitionist beliefs, industry, and location. Another hint of the Underground Railroad in the southeast part of the state is the Jeffrey family, who settled in Hart, north of Rushford. The free Black family has abolitionist roots in maritime Connecticut. From the 1840s through the 1860s, clusters of their family began settling around the upper Midwest, including Hart, the Twin Cities, Chicago, and Upper Peninsula Michigan. In Winona, steamboat Captain Orrin Smith may also have aided in the transportation of escaped slaves. Many in St. Paul and Galena’s Black freedom networks worked on boats owned by Smith over the years. Winona’s large abolitionist community at the First Congregationalist Church may also have contained individuals helping in the effort, as did Winona’s Black barbers. There is evidence that abolitionists active in the UGRR in other regions of the country later settled in Minnesota. Among them was Oren Birney Cravath, reportedly an agent in Ohio and New York, who settled in St. Charles in Winona County. Despite evidence of numerous abolitionists living in the southeast part of the state, and the region’s existing territorial transportation networks, no verified accounts from freedom seekers or agents have yet been discovered. Historians across the state continue to seek documentation that helps better understand these networks. Editor’s note: The claim that Farr, Taylor, Edwards, Berry, Johnson, and white allies operated an Underground Railroad network in Minnesota appears in a reminiscence written by Farr and printed in the St. Paul Pioneer Press in 1895, half a century after the events described. No other surviving source confirms this information. Farr’s story of dressing up a girl as a boy was a common one shared in Underground Railroad recollections nationwide. Moses Dickson, in fact, shares a nearly identical story in his own end-of-life memoir, but he claims the incident occurred in New Orleans. Dickson’s account also states that he was organizing a slave rebellion in the Deep South in the 1850s—even though records place him in St. Paul or Galena for most of the decade. Dickson’s account does mention being in Wisconsin Territory (which included Minnesota) in the 1840s, but it neglects to mention his time in St. Paul as a barber, business owner, and educator. As with the stories of Farr and Taylor, no additional evidence confirms Dickson’s account of helping freedom seekers beyond a half-century-old recollection. Paper trails conflict with both men’s stories.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/MNopedia/MNopedia%202025/Underground%20Railroad/Pioneer_Press_May_5_1895_page_8.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056216,"name":"African Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/underground-railroad-in-minnesota"},{"alt":"Evelyn Raymond, undated","author":[{"name":"Marjorie Savage","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/marjorie-savage"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 21, 2025","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Raymond, Leona Evelyn (1908–1998)","postbody":"Leona Evelyn Raymond is remembered for the large architectural sculptures she designed and named for such virtues as love, family, and peace. For sixty years, she taught workshops and ...","searchtext":"Leona Evelyn Raymond is remembered for the large architectural sculptures she designed and named for such virtues as love, family, and peace. For sixty years, she taught workshops and classes, creating a community of novice and professional sculpture artists who dubbed her Minnesota’s dean of women sculptors. Evelyn Raymond, who went by her middle name, was born in Duluth and grew up in a creative family that worked hard for a meager income. She learned early that what she didn’t have, she could make. Even as a small child she fashioned toys from twigs and whistles from willows. Her art education began with an innovative program connecting Duluth high school students with Columbia University instructors, providing classes in drawing, pottery, metal work, and art history. After completing high school, Raymond attended the Minneapolis School of Art, where she experimented in abstract and modernist sculpture. She is said to have produced the school of art’s first abstract sculpture. A few years into her studies, however, she was called back to Duluth to care for her ailing mother and to help raise a younger brother and sister. For eight years, she supported her family by working as a cook on a dairy farm near Duluth, but she produced no artwork. It was only after her mother’s death in 1938 that she felt she could resume her life as a Minneapolis artist. Clement Haupers, director of the Minnesota division of the WPA’s Federal Art Project (FAP), remembered her initiative and her work at the school of art, and he agreed to hire her if she could prove she was still able to create sculptures. Raymond responded to the challenge by constructing a twenty-inch-tall, gray plaster figure she named Erg, meaning “a unit of work or energy.” The statuette was constructed as a collection of tools and body parts, coming together in the form of a brawny humanoid––part man, part robot. Haupers hired Raymond, and within a year he appointed her to head the FAP sculpture department, which moved into the Walker Art Center’s new community art school. As an FAP instructor, Raymond’s responsibilities included teaching and creating three-dimensional works for post offices, schools, hospitals, and other public buildings. Her first major assignment at the FAP was to construct a large bas relief sculpture for the high school stadium in International Falls. It was a significant departure from the Erg figure: while Erg was measured in inches, this mural would be twelve feet by eighteen feet. It was more complex, featuring seven muscular athletes emerging from a cement frame. Tiny Erg was created within three months, while the Bronco Stadium relief was under construction for nearly three years. Both sculptures offered proof that she could still sculpt, and both demonstrated her range of media and style. FAP funding ended in 1943, and the program closed. Raymond remained as a teacher and head of the Walker art school’s sculpture department through the transition, with the continued charge of conducting classes and workshops and developing her own sculptures. Her work was often experimental, combining modernism with cubism and realism with abstraction. In her own works, she designed pieces she believed viewers could relate to; in her teaching, she encouraged students to create for themselves. In 1950, the Walker Art Center shut down its art school, and Raymond lost her job. Almost overnight, she launched Minnesota’s first “all-sculpting school,” which came to be known as the Evelyn Raymond Clay Club. For the rest of her life, she supported herself by combining teaching with sculpture commissions large and small. She created a community of sculpture artists by offering classes for children, high school students, and adults, then celebrating their work in exhibits staged in local cafes, libraries, shops, and, once, in a barn in Hopkins. Several of her large sculptures remain in situ in the 2020s, most notably her seven-foot-tall bronze statue of Maria Sanford, the University of Minnesota’s first woman professor. The Sanford statue is one of two statues representing the state of Minnesota as part of the National Statuary Hall Collection in Washington, DC.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/MNopedia/MNopedia%202025/Evelyn%20Raymond/Flickr_-_USCapitol_-_Evelyn_Raymond_-_Women_Artists.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056210,"name":"Education","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/raymond-leona-evelyn-1908-1998"},{"alt":"Fr. Hillary Madison and Archbishop John Garklavs","author":[{"name":"Erich Lippman","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/erich-lippman"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 01, 2025","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"St. Peter and St. Paul Russian Orthodox Church, Bramble","postbody":"Active only from 1918 until 1932, St. Peter and St. Paul Russian Orthodox Church in Bramble served a small number of farming families who had ventured north from Chisholm to claim ...","searchtext":"Active only from 1918 until 1932, St. Peter and St. Paul Russian Orthodox Church in Bramble served a small number of farming families who had ventured north from Chisholm to claim homesteads. The church received a new lease on life in 1968 when it was “discovered” by Paul Berg, an Episcopal priest from Grand Rapids. Berg’s restoration efforts led to a renewed interest in the church, which has continued to inspire the religious and artistic imagination of the region. In the late nineteenth century, eastern European immigrants flooded into the United States to work in mines and factories. Immigrants from the northeastern corner of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, often referred to as Ruthenians or Rusyns, filled the steel mills and coal mines of Pennsylvania as well as the iron mines of Minnesota. In the early 1900s, some of these miners claimed homesteads north of Chisholm, in southeastern Koochiching County—a community they called Bramble. Farmers in the Bramble area began organizing their own congregation in 1910, after William (Wasyl) Lucachick (Lukaczyk) donated two acres of land for a church building. Because of the need to gather building materials, construction did not begin until 1915 and was not completed until 1918. A few years later, the neighboring Sorokie family donated land nearby for a cemetery. The church’s architecture is common to many buildings built by Rusyn immigrants in the United States, and mirrors the construction of the St. Nicholas Orthodox Church in Chisholm. The narthex (nave entrance) features a belltower with a double onion dome made of bent sheet metal, topped by a Slavic three-barred cross. According to Russian tradition, the nave is free of pews, with only benches along the walls. Alex Terebenetz added the iconostasis in 1926. The sanctuary/altar area is also crowned by a Slavic cross on the exterior. There is no record of consecration for the church, meaning that it never had a priest assigned to it. It was served instead by a priest from Chisholm who made the trek north once a month when weather permitted. Due to the severity of the winters and the fact that many of the homesteaders worked in the mines near Chisholm, the church was seldom used during the cold months. By 1932, due to the Great Depression and the difficulty of farming in northern Minnesota, most of the families had given up and moved back to Chisholm. In that year, the church closed, and its semi-regular services ceased. An Episcopal priest from Grand Rapids named Paul Berg visited St. Peter and St. Paul Church in 1967. When he arrived, the caretakers of the church (the Diachok family) were discussing plans with the Koochiching County Historical Society to turn it into a museum. Berg recoiled at the idea, which reminded him of the conversion of Orthodox churches into museums in the USSR. He eventually suggested restoring the church and reviving occasional services instead, and his proposal won out. The restoration effort garnered interest throughout the state and beyond. Berg points out that it was an “ecumenical” effort, drawing on the art department of Augsburg College and the icon-writing expertise of iconographer Sister Mary Charles McGough from St. Scholastica Priory. In this spirit, Sister Mary Charles was commissioned to write a Marian icon called “Our Lady of Unity” for the church. An original troparion (hymn) was also composed that tied “the Bramble church” to the bramble bushes mentioned in the Bible. When the church celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in 1968, Archbishop John of the Russian Metropolia (soon to be the Orthodox Church of America) brought the famous Tikhvin icon, which he had taken out of the Soviet Union, to St. Peter and St. Paul Church. For several years into the mid-1970s, “Tikhvin Festivals” were held annually at the church, drawing interest from miles away and raising money for upkeep. In the more than fifty years since Fr. Berg’s efforts, the church has seen two major restoration efforts—in 2010/2011 and in 2018 for its centennial celebration. The same Lucachick family that donated the land for the church in 1910 nominated it for the National Registry of Historic Places in 1982 and became its primary caretaker. In the early 2000s, it began hosting the annual retreat of St. Basil of Ostrog Serbian Orthodox Church, the only active Orthodox church remaining in Chisholm.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/54279222_2381365391915575_72912777861136384_n.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246089,"name":"Religion and Belief","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/st.-peter-and-st.-paul-russian-orthodox-church-bramble"},{"alt":"Gay Pride Day in Minneapolis, 1975","author":[{"name":"Myra Billund-Phibbs","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/myra-billund-phibbs"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"June 27, 2025","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"1975 Minneapolis Non-Discrimination Ordinance","postbody":"In December of 1975, the Minneapolis City Council passed the first non-discrimination protections covering trans and gender-non-conforming people in American history. Approved with little ...","searchtext":"In December of 1975, the Minneapolis City Council passed the first non-discrimination protections covering trans and gender-non-conforming people in American history. Approved with little fanfare as a slight change to the city’s existing gay rights ordinance, it reflected collaboration among moderate and radical gay rights activists, transsexual women, and legislators across the political spectrum. Beginning in the mid-to-late 1960s, Minneapolis became a hotbed of gay liberation and lesbian feminist organizing, as well as a center of trans life in the Upper Midwest. The University of Minnesota’s gender clinic brought transsexual women to the city and increased their visibility; gay and lesbian activists founded groups like FREE (Fight Repression of Erotic Expression), Gay House, and the Lesbian Resource Center. In 1972 and 1973, gay activists swarmed the precinct caucuses of the Democratic Farmer-Labor party (as well as the party’s statewide convention in Mankato) in the hopes of electing pro-gay candidates to municipal offices in the Twin Cities and advancing a gay rights platform. In this environment, two gay activists with opposing political strategies lobbied the City of Minneapolis to add gays and lesbians to its non-discrimination ordinance. Stephen Endean, moderate and subdued in his affect, founded the Minnesota Committee for Gay Rights (MCGR). He lobbied councilmembers nearly every day, building a name for himself by pushing gay rights at City Hall and the State Capitol. Simultaneously, Jack Baker—an attorney by training and a gay liberation activist—organized with transsexual women, other gay activists, and sympathetic social service providers to craft legal language that would protect gays and lesbians from discrimination. The Minneapolis city elections of 1973 had reorganized the council from a 7-6 Republican majority to a 12-1 split in favor of the DFL. This almost entirely new council was elected alongside a new mayor: the liberal Albert Hofstede. Hofstede replaced Charles Stenvig, a Minneapolis police officer known for his conservative, law-and-order politics. Responding to Endean’s persistent lobbying, a group of five councilmembers quickly proposed amendments to Chapter 945 of the Minneapolis Code of Ordinances in February of 1974. The revisions banned discrimination on the basis of “affectional or sexual preference”—the language Baker and his collaborators had developed. Referred to committee, the amendments were debated in public hearings. Opponents feared that gay rights protections would permit child sexual abuse or force landlords to rent rooms to gays. Gays and lesbians, meanwhile, testified as to the necessity of the amendments, describing their varied experiences of discrimination. The committee approved the amendments and sent them back to the full council, where they passed unanimously with one abstention and two absences on March 29. It didn’t take long, however, for local trans activists to realize that the protections were not sufficient. Laura,* a prominent activist among local trans women who had been active in gay liberation organizing for years and had directly lobbied councilmembers, got word from the City Attorney’s Office that the ordinance would not apply to transsexuals. At some point that year, she and others drafted language that would cover transsexuals and other visibly gender-non-conforming people. While it remains unclear exactly how this language came to be, it was almost certainly written by some combination of Laura; Baker and/or other radical gay activists; Ward 2 councilmember Tom Johnson; staff at the City Attorney’s Office; and staff at the state legislature. It extended coverage to people “having or projecting a self-image not associated with [their] biological maleness or [their] biological femaleness,” broadening the definition of “affectional or sexual preference.” Somewhat surprisingly, this first-in-the-nation civil rights protection was slipped in almost completely under the radar. Following former Mayor Stenvig’s re-election in 1975 and the coinciding election of several conservative councilmembers, the outgoing council passed ordinances strengthening its authority over the city’s Civil Rights Commission, fearing that Stenvig’s pick to lead it, Richard Parker, was too right-wing. Passed on the next-to-last day of Hofstede’s mayoral term (until his re-election two years later,) the package included the new, trans-inclusive definition of “affectional or sexual preference.” But it was overshadowed in the press by the drama around Parker and garnered little immediate public outcry. The ordinance came under threat repeatedly over the ensuing half-decade. A union representing city employees raised objections, and the council received proposals to remove public accommodations protections and trans-inclusive language. Ultimately, though, it was spared the fate of St. Paul’s contemporaneous ordinance, which was rescinded overwhelmingly in a 1978 referendum. The Minneapolis ordinance remains on the books as the oldest law banning discrimination against trans and gender-non-conforming people in the United States. *Author’s note: “Laura” is a pseudonym. As of this writing, Laura lives a private life and does not wish to be identified by name in published writing, though she is named in a number of academic and non-academic history texts dating back to the 1990s.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/MNopedia/MNopedia%202025/1975%20Minneapolis%20Non-Discrimination%20Ordinance/image4.png","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246079,"name":"Cities and Towns","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/1975-minneapolis-non-discrimination-ordinance"},{"alt":"Quatrefoil Library","author":[{"name":"Karl Nycklemoe","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/karl-nycklemoe"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"June 10, 2025","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Quatrefoil Library","postbody":"Quatrefoil Library is a non-profit lending library and community center in Minneapolis that specializes in LGBTQIA+ material. Its circulating collections include books, DVDs, and CDs, but ...","searchtext":"Quatrefoil Library is a non-profit lending library and community center in Minneapolis that specializes in LGBTQIA+ material. Its circulating collections include books, DVDs, and CDs, but patrons can also access non-circulating periodicals, comics, zines, and Quatrefoil’s founder’s archives on site at 1220 East Lake Street. Open since 1986, it is the third-oldest library of its kind in the US. Dick Hewetson and David Irwin proposed the idea of a Minnesota gay lending library at brunch with friends on September 11, 1983. By that time, the couple had amassed a large collection of gay and lesbian fiction and books, which they loaned to friends. Lawyer and brunch attendee Ann Richtman quickly drafted the original articles of incorporation for the library as a non-profit. Irwin insisted that the library be named for Quatrefoil, a gay pulp novel by James Barr (the pseudonym of James Fugaté) published in 1950; Irwin believed Quatrefoil depicted homosexuality more positively than other books of its time. In 1985, Matt Stark, the executive director of the Minnesota Civil Liberties Union and a friend of Hewetson, offered two rooms of rental space for the library in the MCLU’s new building at 1021 West Broadway in North Minneapolis. Quatrefoil formally opened to the public on February 4, 1986, and held an opening celebration the following May. Thanks to donations, by the end of 1986 Quatrefoil had expanded to include 2,500 books crammed into five rooms at the MCLU building. In June 1987, Quatrefoil moved to the third floor of the remodeled Richards Gordon Building in St. Paul at 1619 Dayton Avenue. In the same year, the library implemented a new cataloging system and began to charge late fees for unreturned library material. In 1991, it moved from the third floor to the basement level of the Gordon Building to accommodate the continually expanding collection. Volunteers are an intrinsic part of Quatrefoil’s history. Staff and leadership roles at the library have been unpaid volunteer positions since the library’s founding, excluding several short-term, grant-project positions. In 1988, Quatrefoil established elections for a board of directors to join the Cooperating Fund Drive (CFD), a grassroots community fundraising group. After this change, the CFD summarily accepted the library’s application to be a member in 1989. Overall, volunteer numbers remained steady in the 1990s and early 2000s. In 1992, seventy volunteers donated 2,935 hours; in 1997, sixty-three volunteers logged 2,123 hours; in 2001, sixty-five volunteers worked a total of 3,352 hours; and in 2006, eighty volunteers contributed 4,296 hours. By the mid-2000s, the library had outgrown the Gordon Building and needed a community meeting space. Then, in December of 2012, staff announced that they would be moving to the Spirit on Lake building on East Lake Street in Minneapolis the following year. After a coordinated volunteer group effort, Quatrefoil closed the Gordon Building location on September 23, 2013, and the library officially reopened to the public on November 1 on East Lake Street. After moving back to Minneapolis, it has increasingly become a community center that hosted myriad speaker events, workshops, community groups, and book discussion groups in Spirit on Lake’s community room. In 2002, Quatrefoil volunteers created the library’s first website. They further updated their technology by implementing electronic barcodes to catalog and check out library materials in 2012; by launching their online Library World electronic catalog for patrons in 2013; and by making a new website in May 2014. More recently, Quatrefoil has increased the public’s accessibility to its collections. In 2019, the library abolished, and offered full amnesty for, all overdue fines. In March 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, it closed but offered curbside pickup for members. To remove financial barriers to access, the library began to offer free membership in 2021, and in 2022, it introduced a free e-book and audiobook service to all members residing in the United States. Since its founding, the library has consistently supported the broader LGBTQIA+ community of the Twin Cities and Minnesota. Volunteers from Quatrefoil have regularly attended and hosted events at Twin Cities Pride since at least 1988, and since 2016, Quatrefoil volunteers have attended Pride events throughout Minnesota and Wisconsin on behalf of the non-profit. Since 2019, Quatrefoil has awarded an annual competitive scholarship for LGBTQIA+ students attending Minnesota colleges and universities.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/MNopedia/MNopedia%202025/Quatrefoil_04.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056210,"name":"Education","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/quatrefoil-library"},{"alt":"Aerial view of East Grand Forks, flooded.","author":[{"name":"Tom Weber","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/tom-weber"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"June 10, 2025","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Flooding of the Red River, 1997","postbody":"Flooding on the Red River in April and May 1997 set twentieth-century records at most locations along the Minnesota–North Dakota border and into Manitoba, Canada. At the time, it was the ...","searchtext":"Flooding on the Red River in April and May 1997 set twentieth-century records at most locations along the Minnesota–North Dakota border and into Manitoba, Canada. At the time, it was the eighth-costliest flood in US history, causing an estimated $4 billion in damages across a swath of land roughly the size of Delaware. After an exceptionally rainy autumn in 1996, several cities along the Red River experienced as many as eight blizzards that winter, which created a ten-to-thirteen-inch pack of high-moisture snow in the southern part of the valley. On Valentine’s Day 1997, the first National Weather Service forecast for the Red River Valley warned of severe flooding. When temperatures rose, so did river levels from more than twice the average snowfall. Grand Forks, where the local newspaper named the storms like hurricanes, saw six inches fall in Blizzard “Hannah” on April 4, 1997—the same day the river reached flood stage. Freezing rain knocked out power to more than 300,000 people across the valley. Over the next two weeks, water continued to rise fast—sometimes as quickly as one foot per hour, far beyond flood-stage levels. Levees along the river, built to hold water back, were threatened. In the early hours of April 18, Grand Forks Mayor Pat Owens issued the first evacuation orders, with civil defense sirens sounding to wake sleeping residents. Ninety percent of the city’s 52,000 residents would be evacuated. While flooding heavily damaged several communities along the river, including the towns of Breckenridge and Ada, Minnesota, focus remained on Grand Forks. The following day, a fire began downtown, eventually damaging or destroying eleven buildings across three city blocks. The lasting image of the flood was a raging fire atop flood waters. On April 22, President Bill Clinton toured the area and visited victims and relief workers at Grand Force Air Force Base in Grand Forks, offering sympathy and announcing additional federal dollars for emergency response. Flood waters started to recede in Grand Forks the day after Clinton visited. Within a month, the water was below flood stage, leaving destruction and a long clean-up across hundreds of miles of the Red River Valley. East Grand Forks, Minnesota, a city of nearly 9,000 across the river from Grand Forks, North Dakota, ultimately reported damage to all houses except eight. By August, schools reopened—many in rented and temporary facilities, including churches and armories. Federal relief funding initially deadlocked in Congress after a presidential veto, but more than $1 billion in funding for the Upper Midwest was finally approved on June 12. It included money to repair infrastructure and to buy and remove homes and businesses most at risk of future flooding. More than 800 properties were purchased in Grand Forks alone through a voluntary buyout. Entire neighborhoods were removed in Grand Forks and East Grand Forks to make room for new levees, as part of a $409-million federally funded system. The result was the Greenway, nearly 2,200 acres of parks and other open space along the river intended to prevent structural damage and destruction in future floods (which is what happened when another severe flood hit in 2009). In 2005, levees and a flood diversion channel were built to protect Breckenridge, Minnesota, and Wahpeton, North Dakota. The $45 million project prevented $165 million in flood damages between that year and 2025, according to estimates. Fargo, North Dakota, and Moorhead, Minnesota, were “precariously close to being lost” in 1997. After another close call in 2009, efforts began to build a flood diversion channel to protect those cities. That project remains in progress as of 2025. While more than $1 billion in flood-control projects has helped prevent the catastrophic damage sustained along the Red River in 1997, flooding remains a regular occurrence. More than half of the top ten floods recorded in Fargo and Grand Forks have happened in the past twenty years, according to former North Dakota state climatologist Adnan Akyüz.","src":"https://www3.mnhs.org/hubfs/p7med.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/flooding-of-the-red-river-1997"},{"alt":"Flour City strike victims","author":[{"name":"Tom Beer","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/tom-beer"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"June 05, 2025","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Flour City Ornamental Iron Works Strike, 1935","postbody":"In 1935, Minneapolis was rocked by populist protests as workers responded to the Great Depression, unemployment, and anti-union employers. Industrial unions galvanized discontent and ...","searchtext":"In 1935, Minneapolis was rocked by populist protests as workers responded to the Great Depression, unemployment, and anti-union employers. Industrial unions galvanized discontent and challenged employers, craft unions, and the Farmer-Labor Party. A year after the Teamsters union led combat in the market district of Minneapolis, another union struck eight foundries, including the Flour City Ornamental Iron Works on the city’s south side. Flour City stood near rail yards and the Minneapolis Moline plant. The Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad had come to the Seward neighborhood in the late nineteenth century, attracting industry and jobs. Work was often dangerous and low paid, but workers might own small homes, and transient workers could room in boarding houses and hotels. The notorious Hub of Hell entertainment district was a stroll from Flour City and the Moline plant. The skilled artisans and helpers who worked in the foundry made artful bronze and iron castings, and screens and doors for buildings. Immigrant owner Eugene Tetzlaff, who built the firm from a blacksmith shop, was a member and defender of the Minneapolis Citizens Alliance, which had kept the city union-free for decades. He made sure that Flour City remained union-free, too. Machinists local union #1313 organized foundries amid Citizens Alliance spies and the firing of pro-union employees. The union was after wage increases, an eight-hour day, overtime, and union recognition. Tetzlaff adamantly refused to negotiate with the union, whose leaders he considered socialists and communists. The union struck Flour City on July 12, 1935. The Minneapolis Labor Review reported that pickets were active and effective, and tentative settlements at other foundries emboldened strikers. The Minneapolis Labor Federation and affiliates added to picket numbers. But in late July, Mayor Thomas Latimer, a Farmer-Laborite elected in June, helped non-striking employees return to work. As employees left the plant, they were pelted with rocks and bottles. “Public sentiment is strongly with the strikers,” wrote The Labor Review, as numbers of protesters increased. Tetzlaff and the Citizens Alliance continued to stoke fires in the newspapers. One half-sheet demanded that police take “immediate steps to prevent gatherings of such a mob…and prevent recurrence of these riotous demonstrations.” Latimer’s assistance to non-strikers, along with court restrictions on pickets and armed guards inside Flour City, put him at odds with union and Farmer-Labor faithful. With over 1,800 workers in job actions at twenty-one plants and construction sites in the city, the mayor was “…a great disappointment to the Farmer-Labor forces of the city,” The Labor Review later reported. The violent end to the strike came in early September, when union pickets, Farmer-Laborites, neighbors, and gawkers in the thousands—along with hundreds of militant Teamsters—laid siege to the foundry. On September 10, 100 or more police assembled in squad cars, in armored cars, and on motorcycles. Around midnight, someone started throwing rocks, and shots rang out. Armed with pistols and riot guns, the police drove the crowd away from the plant. They chased people down streets and alleys into yards and homes, but some regrouped and fought police hand-to-hand. The officers did not discriminate between pickets and spectators. Two young passersby were shot to death, and twenty-eight were injured by bullets, clubs, and thrown objects. A truce of sorts occurred. The machinists pushed to have a Flour City federal contract awarded to another foundry, and Governor Floyd Olson closed the plant. Tetzlaff refused to recognize the union but agreed to wage increases, a forty-hour week, and overtime. Mass meetings organized by Farmer-Laborites called for resignations of the mayor and police chief. The day after the riot, thousands of union members, Farmer-Laborites, and unemployed workers paraded down Nicollet Avenue demanding welfare relief. They were tear-gassed by the police. A special grand jury was convened to determine what caused the riot, but it laid no blame on the police. Mayor Latimer was not reelected in 1937. In audacity, drama, and solidarity, the Flour City strike is eclipsed only by the teamster rebellion of 1934 and the Strutwear hosiery workers’ strike, also in 1935. The Flour City strike laid bare tensions within the labor movement and the Farmer-Labor Party, which lingered for years. But Machinists Local 1313 had organized a powerful industrial union, and delivered another blow to the Citizens Alliance influence in Minneapolis. Before federal government recognition of union rights and the birth of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), “the abysmal conditions…across Minneapolis…provided the space for reawakening of radical protest.”","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/6.18%20Flour%20City%20strike%20victims.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246055,"name":"Labor","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/flour-city-ornamental-iron-works-strike-1935"},{"alt":"Linda Burfield Hazzard, 1913","author":[{"name":"Paul Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/paul-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"June 02, 2025","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Hazzard, Linda Burfield Perry (1867–1938)","postbody":"In 1914 Linda Burfield Perry Hazzard’s unconventional healing methods landed her in prison in Washington State for manslaughter. Despite minimal medical training, she styled herself as a ...","searchtext":"In 1914 Linda Burfield Perry Hazzard’s unconventional healing methods landed her in prison in Washington State for manslaughter. Despite minimal medical training, she styled herself as a physician and for more than thirty years promoted healing through fasting, killing as many as fifteen people. Most of her victims died in Washington, but this Minnesota native developed her craft, and took her first victim, in Minneapolis. Linda Laura Burfield was the first of seven children born to Montgomery Burfield and the former Susan O’Neil, in Carver County, Minnesota, in 1867. At age eighteen she married Erwin Perry, owner of a livery business in Fergus Falls. They moved to Minneapolis in 1897 and separated soon thereafter. Burfield Perry wrote that in her youth her father employed a physician to give the children an annual dose of a mercury-based anti-parasitic that left her with chronic digestive troubles. In 1898, at the age of thirty-one, she learned of the works of Dr. Edward H. Dewey, author of The No-Breakfast Plan and Fasting-Cure, a book that advocated for fasting as a way to allow the body to heal itself. She tried it, with success, and soon put herself (she claimed) under his care. Even before encountering Dr. Dewey’s work, Burfield Perry had been studying osteopathy, a branch of medicine that emphasized the manipulation of the body more than the use of medicines. By 1901 she had set up her own, unlicensed medical practice, under the name Dr. Linda Burfield Perry. She advertised treatment of “all nervous diseases, liquor habit, vices; painless childbirth.” In this era before antibiotics, even the best physicians had few tools to cure disease; most patients got well, or not, on their own. With cures elusive, and people often desperate, methods that would later be rejected were accepted by the public. Burfield Perry’s practice grew; she claimed later that over a ten-year period she had treated more than a thousand patients. In the fall of 1902 Gertrude Young of Minneapolis came her way seeking relief from partial paralysis. On about October 1 of that year she began a forty-day fast that she did not complete; Young died November 19. After an autopsy, the coroner, Dr. U. G. Williams, ruled the cause exhaustion brought on by starvation. But the death certificate lists the cause as “paralysis.” Dr. Williams demanded an investigation. The Hennepin County attorney, Frederick Boardman, found no ground for criminal prosecution: There was no law against advising a person not to eat, and Young’s fast had been voluntary. The death did not discourage Burfield Perry. In 1903 she appeared, now as simply Dr. Linda Burfield (she and Erwin Perry had divorced), in a full-page newspaper ad under the banner, “Prominent Osteopathic Physicians.” Her ad read, “Fasting Is Nature’s Remedy.” In 1906 she and her second husband, Samuel Hazzard, left Minnesota for Seattle, where she soon attracted a following. She established a clinic called Wilderness Heights in nearby Olalla, Washington. There, between 1908 and 1913, as many as fifteen people died while under her care. She had acquired a medical license in Washington, which gave prosecutors a weapon they lacked in Minnesota. In 1911 Dr. Hazzard, as she was known there, was charged with first-degree murder in the death of a wealthy heiress, Claire Williamson, who had dwindled to fifty pounds in Hazzard’s care. Convicted only of manslaughter, she got a sentence of five-to-twenty years. Her appeals took up most of the next two years, during which time her clinic thrived. She went to prison in January 1914, defiant: “ This will not be a painful departure, but, rather, a triumphal progress.” She served two years, received a pardon, practiced medicine in New Zealand, and returned to Washington in 1919. Though she now lacked a medical license, she rebuilt her clinic and practice, calling it a health school. A fire destroyed the clinic in 1935. She died three years later, while fasting. It was said that she starved herself to death, but she would have disagreed. In her first book, Fasting For the Cure of Disease, she had written that “it is questionable whether, in a conscious being, death has ever resulted from starvation.”","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Linda%20Burfield%20Hazzard.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246060,"name":"Crime and Punishment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246087,"name":"Health and Medicine","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/hazzard-linda-burfield-perry-1867-1938"},{"alt":"MplsPhotos_13921_large-2","author":[{"name":"Abigail Venuso","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/abigail-venuso"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"April 28, 2025","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Ulrich, Mabel S. (1876–1945)","postbody":"Mabel Simis Ulrich was a public health educator, physician, author, and public figure whose pioneering work in sex education propelled her onto multiple public health commissions in ...","searchtext":"Mabel Simis Ulrich was a public health educator, physician, author, and public figure whose pioneering work in sex education propelled her onto multiple public health commissions in Minneapolis. She contributed to the cultural scene in Minneapolis through a bookstore that she owned, and headed the Federal Writers’ Project (FWP) in Minnesota under the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in the 1930s. Ulrich was born in Brooklyn, New York, on April 2, 1876, to Adolph Simis, Jr., and Emma Van Duzen Simis. One of four children, Mabel attended Cornell University as a young adult, where she graduated with a degree in science in 1897. She then earned her MD in 1901 at Johns Hopkins University. On August 26, 1901, she married Dr. Harry Ulrich. They moved to Minneapolis and opened a joint medical practice. Ulrich became invested in expanding sex education for women after working as a physician in Minneapolis for more than a decade. Many women—especially young women and brides—came to her with basic questions about their bodies, reproduction, and sex. She consulted with teachers at the University of Minnesota and presented special lectures on sex education for young women at the college. In 1914, she was appointed by the YWCA as a traveling lecturer for sex education. Ulrich spoke at high schools and colleges across the nation, teaching “the fundamental facts of life,” as the YWCA termed it. In 1918, Ulrich expanded her work as a sex educator by writing informational pamphlets for the Board of Public Health in Minneapolis. As part of a national campaign to reduce cases of venereal disease during World War I, enlisted men received in-depth education through films, posters, and pamphlets. At the time, however, sex education for women was vague and euphemistic. Ulrich’s pamphlets, “The Girl’s Part” and “Mothers of America,” used anatomically correct terms and employed direct language, making them unique for the time. Ulrich framed sex education for women as a “supremely patriotic service,” emphasizing that the health of America’s youth was paramount to the success of the war and to the survival of humanity. While Ulrich’s work in women’s education was groundbreaking, her teaching reflected a strong belief in eugenics. She argued that including eugenics in a sex education curriculum in high schools would prompt young men and women to consider marriage and procreation more seriously. Her ultimate goal was to “improve” the genetic pool of the population. Ulrich disagreed with the more extreme practices that some contemporary eugenists suggested, such as the forced sterilization of criminals. Ulrich’s contributions to public health education prompted the mayor of Minneapolis to recommend her to the city’s vice commission in 1915, and to the Minneapolis Board of Welfare in 1920. Ulrich served on the board for several years, though her involvement was controversial. During her time on the board, Ulrich helped decrease spending and improved reporting methods for communicable diseases in Minneapolis. In 1921, Ulrich opened a bookshop on Twelfth Street in Minneapolis. The first of several bookshops that she eventually owned (including one in Duluth and another in Rochester), the store contributed to the growth of Minneapolis’s cultural scene. Ulrich hosted not only local authors, but also several internationally known literary icons, such as Edna St. Vincent Millay, Richard Halliburton, William Beebe, Vilhjalmur Stefansson, and Hugh Walpole. Her bookstore also carried rare prints, including some early works of Pablo Picasso. In 1935 Ulrich’s involvement in Minneapolis’s literary scene paved the way for her to accept a position with the WPA as the head of the Minnesota chapter of the FWP. Ulrich was given ten days in which to find and hire 250 writers, and she interviewed newspaper reporters, lawyers, preachers, physicians, and even a vaudeville skit author. She found it difficult to find qualified candidates and ultimately hired only 120 employees. Her team was tasked with writing a state guide book for Minnesota. Ulrich did not always agree with the editorial notes she received from the federal team, believing they wanted to romanticize Minnesotan culture. She also felt that politics increasingly influenced the work of the WPA on the federal level as it got more involved with the Workers’ Alliance, a union for WPA employees. Between friction with the federal offices and disagreements with unionized workers, Ulrich felt she could no longer effectively do her job with the FWP and resigned in 1937. Although Ulrich stepped away from the WPA, she was still active in the literary world. She continued to work in her bookshop until 1945, when she died in an accidental fall from a cliff near her summer cottage at Marine on St. Croix.","src":"https://www3.mnhs.org/hubfs/MplsPhotos_13921_large-2.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246087,"name":"Health and Medicine","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/ulrich-mabel-s-1876-1945"},{"alt":"Washburn-Crosby Mills advertisement","author":[{"name":"Jeff Kolnick","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/jeff-kolnick"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"April 25, 2025","eraTag":[],"keydate":"","name":"Washburn A Mill","postbody":"Washburn A Mill was one of twenty-six Minneapolis flour mills that lined the Mississippi River below St. Anthony Falls during the city’s industrial heyday. By the early 1900s, its company ...","searchtext":"Washburn A Mill was one of twenty-six Minneapolis flour mills that lined the Mississippi River below St. Anthony Falls during the city’s industrial heyday. By the early 1900s, its company (Washburn-Crosby) was the leading flour miller in Minnesota. The historic building has had five reincarnations in its more than 150 years: an original mill (1874–1878); a rebuilt second mill (1880–1924); a renovated mill (1924–1965); a warehouse (1965–1990); and a museum operated by the Minnesota Historical Society (2003–present). The first mill building was constructed by Cadwallader C. Washburn in 1874 at 701–729 First Street South and Portland Avenue. By 1877, Washburn had teamed up with John Crosby to form the Washburn-Crosby Company, and the partners made the A mill their headquarters. After a disastrous explosion and fire leveled that structure in 1878, they rebuilt. The second mill was a seven-story rectangular structure with a rock limestone face and an interior reinforced with heavy beam construction. It had a flat roof topped with a one-story, three-bay-wide monitor, segmentally arched windows, and walls that tapered from five feet thick at their base to twenty inches thick at their top. While the 1880 building resembled the original mill from the outside, it benefited from new machinery inside: an automatic all-roller system with a capacity of 560,000 pounds (5,000 cwt). An office building and a seven-story wheat house, both attached to the mill itself, provided space for storage and administration. The Washburn-Crosby Company adopted three groundbreaking technologies inside its new A mill. The land near Minneapolis produced spring wheat, a variety that was not commonly milled in the United States. This required new kinds of milling. The first problem was how to remove the dark, hard husks from the kernels of wheat. For this, Washburn hired Frenchman Edmund LaCroix to develop the middlings purifier: a machine that used jets of air to remove the husks from the flour. The second major technological development was the introduction of the gradual reduction process. This process used porcelain, chilled iron, or steel rollers to gradually pulverize the purified middlings and integrate the gluten with the starch. The result of these breakthroughs was the production of a product, Gold Medal Flour, that Washburn-Crosby began advertising as the world’s best baking flour. The final innovation came compliments of William de la Barre, who introduced and installed the Berhns Millstone Exhaust System. De la Barre’s technology solved the problem of flour dust that had led to the massive explosion that destroyed the first A Mill in 1880. Together, these three technological fixes helped make Washburn-Crosby (and its successor, General Mills), one of the biggest modern food companies in the world. Over time, the Washburn A complex expanded to include a grain elevator (1905), an eleven-story utility building (1914), and a feed elevator (1928). The radio station WCCO broadcast from the utility building starting in 1924, and the Betty Crocker Test Kitchens operated there between 1924 and 1958. After another fire gutted the mill in 1928, the interior was rebuilt, although the exterior remained largely unchanged. In the same year, Washburn-Crosby merged with three other companies to form GM, and production continued on the Minneapolis site under the new management. GM used the mill to continue manufacturing Gold Medal Flour while developing such dominant global products as Bisquick (1931), Wheaties (1924), Betty Crocker cake mix (1947), and Cheerios (1941). Washburn A Mill stopped producing flour in 1965. Although it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1971, and made a National Historic Landmark in 1983, the building had few tenants, and people without housing used it for shelter. It functioned as a warehouse until 1991, when yet another fire destroyed much of the interior. Shortly after that, the City of Minneapolis stabilized the remains of the mill, and the Minnesota Historical Society announced plans to turn the ruins into a museum. The completed site, Mill City Museum, opened to the public in 2003.","src":"https://www3.mnhs.org/hubfs/10331960.640x640.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/washburn-mill"},{"alt":"Capture_3","author":[{"name":"Lynnette Westerlund","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/lynnette-westerlund"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"March 20, 2025","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Uusi Kotimaa","postbody":"The Finnish-language newspaper Uusi Kotimaa (New Homeland) reached readers for more than fifty years, from the 1880s until 1934. For all but five of those years, its headquarters was the ...","searchtext":"The Finnish-language newspaper Uusi Kotimaa (New Homeland) reached readers for more than fifty years, from the 1880s until 1934. For all but five of those years, its headquarters was the town of New York Mills, Minnesota—one of the largest Finnish American immigrant communities in the state. The paper changed its politics multiple times, evolving from a conservative editorial stance in its first decades to an explicitly communist one. By the heyday of the Farmer–Labor Party in the 1920s, it was one of the leading Finnish-language newspapers in the United States. Finnish immigrant August Nylund founded Uusi Kotimaa in Minneapolis sometime between 1880 and 1882 before moving it to New York Mills (Otter Tail County) in 1884. The publication started out as a four-page weekly printed in a Fraktur Finnish typeface. It was politically conservative and included articles about religion—particularly Finnish Evangelical Lutheranism. Nylund chose New York Mills as the paper’s new home in part because of changing Finnish immigration patterns. After the first Finnish immigrants arrived in southern Minnesota in 1864, settlement shifted to the central part of the state, and by 1880, with the development of mining, to the state’s Iron Range. Finnish families moving to central-western Minnesota in the 1870s settled in New York Mills and throughout Otter Tail County, a region known for its lumber mills and later for farming and dairy industry. In the 1890s, Finnish settlements spread to the nearby towns of Sebeka and Menahga (Wadena County) and Wolf Lake and Susijärvi (Becker County). New York Mills was considered a Finntown, with a full complement of Finnish churches, businesses, and cooperatives. The article “A Finnish Settlement in Minnesota,” published in the March 1889 issue of the magazine The Northwest, describes a Finnish population of 4,000 in New York Mills and the surrounding region of Otter Tail, Wadena, and Becker counties. In spite of this growth, in 1888 August Nylund moved Uusi Kotimaa to Astoria, Oregon, seeking a larger Finnish readership and more financial support. J. W. (Johan Wilhelm) Lähde, a Lutheran pastor in the Augustana Synod and the editor of Uusi Kotimaa, bought the paper’s type and printing press and started a new weekly, the Amerikan Suometar (American Finn). By 1890, however, Nylund had returned to New York Mills and reestablished Uusi Kotimaa, which absorbed the Suometar. Lähde resumed his position as editor. August Nylund died on December 12, 1892, and his sons, Felix and August Ferdinand, continued to publish the paper. Lähde remained editor until 1894, when he left New York Mills. Uusi Kotimaa then continued under a succession of editors, including Felix Nylund, until Lähde returned around 1900. By 1896, Uusi Kotimaa had 4,120 subscribers. The paper boasted of its appeal to advertisers, noting that its large readership extended to thirty-eight states. By 1916, its circulation had grown to 9,000. At that time, Uusi Kotimaa was considered independent Republican, reporting on national, international, and Finnish news. It provided coverage of Finnish communities throughout the region as well as local obituary notices and advertisements. In 1919, Felix Nylund sold Uusi Kotimaa to the People’s Voice Cooperative Publishing Company, which was subsidized by the Nonpartisan League. At that time, the paper’s political orientation moved to the left, and Lähde left the paper in 1921. He had previously expressed the view that Uusi Kotimaa should not be a party organ, but instead impartially report the news. Finnish Americans in the Communist Party purchased Uusi Kotimaa in 1923, and K. E. Heikkinen, a well-known party member, became its editor. Thereafter, Uusi Kotimaa became a communist and Farmer-Labor publication with national news, local reporting, and topical articles following the Communist Party’s line. Its focus gradually evolved to promote the interests of industrial workers, although one page in each issue remained geared toward farmers. In 1931, Uusi Kotimaa moved to Superior, Wisconsin, where it was published weekly by Työmies Kustannusyhtiö (Työmies Publishing Company). Facing financial difficulties, the paper ceased publication around 1934. Minnesotan Uutiset (Minnesota News), another Finnish-language newspaper based in New York Mills, published an “obituary” for Uusi Kotimaa, observing that its service to the Finnish community in New York Mills and throughout the United States had been “far reaching and of great value.” Editor’s note: This text is adapted from the profile of the publication provided by the Minnesota Digital Newspaper Hub, a project of the Minnesota Historical Society. Digitized issues of Uusi Kotimaa, 1906-1922, are linked from the title profile in the Minnesota Digital Newspaper Hub. The Minnesota Historical Society digitized Uusi Kotimaa as part of the National Digital Newspaper Program for Chronicling America.","src":"https://www3.mnhs.org/hubfs/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Capture_3.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/uusi-kotimaa"},{"alt":"FM6_322 p1 original-2","author":[{"name":"Paul Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/paul-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[],"date":"March 10, 2025","eraTag":[{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Pardon Power in Nineteenth-Century Minnesota","postbody":"Until 1897, Minnesota’s governors enjoyed unrestricted power to pardon, or commute the sentence of, anyone convicted of a crime in state courts. The first such pardon was given in 1854, the ...","searchtext":"Until 1897, Minnesota’s governors enjoyed unrestricted power to pardon, or commute the sentence of, anyone convicted of a crime in state courts. The first such pardon was given in 1854, the last in November 1896. In that span fourteen governors, from Willis Gorman to David M. Clough, issued more than 1400 acts of clemency (the blanket term for pardons and commutations). They covered crimes ranging from petty theft to murder, and canceled (or reduced) penalties as minor as a one-dollar fine, and as dire as death by hanging. The pardon power derives from the unlimited authority of kings, and thus does not fit comfortably among the limited powers of elected leaders. Nevertheless the drafters of the US Constitution gave it to the president, for crimes against the United States, and it has never been altered. In 1849 the US Congress gave Minnesota’s territorial governor identical power regarding territorial crimes, and that power was carried over into the state’s first constitution, drafted in 1857. Territorial Governor Willis Gorman issued the first pardon in 1854, to Louis Monroe, an African American man convicted of assault with a deadly weapon. He did so at the urging of the trial judge, who wrote that the jury had simply got the case wrong. The pardon was debated vigorously in St. Paul newspapers in a back-and forth-that raised the essential question: Why and when should the governor overturn the lawful actions of a judge and jury? The question resists resolution. Nothing in law required governors to issue pardons or commutations, yet together they did so 1430 times, because they considered it their duty. In this they were led by Alexander Ramsey, Minnesota’s first Territorial governor, then its second elected governor, and a key figure in the state constitutional conventions of 1857 that gave the governor this power. Ramsey was also the only governor to give a clear public statement about when clemency ought to be used: “some defect in the proceedings, some doubt about the guilt of the convict, some new evidence discovered, some mitigating circumstances, or other reasons.” No other governor has put it more succinctly, and all who followed him used the power precisely that way. Minnesota’s first six state governors used the pardon power comparatively few times: 206. But with the post-Civil War population boom came a boom also in acts of clemency: In six years (1876–1882), 170 by John S. Pillsbury; in five years (1882–1887), 215 by Lucius F. Hubbard; and in four years (1889–1893), 246 by William R. Merriam. Hubbard was one of the governors most intensely interested in clemency. He sometimes responded to pardon petitions by investigating the cases himself, and on at least two occasions visited petitioning convicts at Stillwater Prison to discuss their cases. He alone among all the governors used his power mostly for serious crimes, including many violent ones. Sometimes, especially in the first two decades, the governors acted on no more than a letter or from the prisoner or his family. But starting with Governor Pillsbury they began asking for more formality—a petition that included statements from the prosecutor, presiding judge, and jurors. This gave them much more information, and alerted them to serious defects in the criminal justice system: overzealous prosecutors, incomplete or doubtful evidence, juries caught up in the emotions of the case, blundering defense counsel. In many of the petitions, the prosecutor, judge, and jurors joined in the plea for mercy. A common theme: He may be guilty, but he has been punished enough. The great majority of pardons and commutations went to men (only a tiny number of Minnesota women in this era went to prison) convicted of nonviolent property crimes; these acts of clemency served to release them from prison somewhat early. The governors, especially Pillsbury, Hubbard, and Merriam, did not shrink from taking on hard cases and difficult decisions (though, again, nothing required them to do so). Together these three granted clemency to sixty-seven killers and thirty-three men convicted of sex crimes. And though their deliberations were secret, the law required pardons to be reported every year. The press reported them, but without fanfare, and no governor paid a political price for a pardon or commutation. For a convict, an appeal to the supreme court was expensive (a lawyer was needed) and unlikely to succeed. Applications for pardon, by contrast, cost little or nothing, required no attorney, and could argue issues—like “punished enough”—that no court would hear. Thus the governors intervened in over a thousand more criminal cases in this period than the supreme court. They were, in effect, the chief officers of criminal justice administration. Starting again with Pillsbury, the governors asked the legislature for help. The legislature never responded directly, but in 1868 it began a series of reforms that culminated with the creation of the Board of Pardons in 1897. The first was the state reform school, which took offenders sixteen and under out of the adult system and gave their release decisions to the school’s superintendent, not the courts. The creation of the St. Cloud Reformatory, and with it indeterminate sentencing, put in place a similar mechanism from convicts under age thirty. Their release dates (parole)were decided by a committee at the reformatory. In 1893 the legislature extended eligibility for parole to most prisoners at Stillwater, too. These were early steps in the professionalization of Minnesota corrections: Experts at the prisons, not judges, would decide when convicts got out. These steps ought to have reduced the number of clemencies—prisoners now had other ways to get free—but they did not. The two governors in office after all these reforms, Knute Nelson and David M. Clough, roughly matched the pace of their predecessors. They pardoned nearly two hundred men and women held in the St. Paul Workhouse, all for short terms (usually thirty days or less), and more than seventy eligible for parole at St. Cloud. Nelson and Clough left no explanations for these decisions. The constitutional amendment that created the Board of Pardons, passed in 1896, did not come as a result of any scandal or discontent with the way governors had used the pardon power. Instead, it was the culmination of reforms in corrections. The amendment took away the governor’s power and gave it to a committee of three: the governor, attorney general, and chief justice. It also gave the board a staff person and required hearings to be public, decisions to be explained, and positive decisions to be unanimous. The reforms vastly reduced the number of clemencies. While Governor Clough, for example, issued 223 in four years, in 1902 the Board of Pardons granted only thirty-five and in 1906 just fifteen. A 1941 statute created what became known as “pardons extraordinary,” or pardons given only after the convict had served his or her sentence. In time these became the only variety of clemency given. Since 1980 the Board of Pardons has released only two people from prison early: Margaret Kinsky in 1985 and Myon Burrell in 2020. Clemency as understood in nineteenth-century Minnesota, once so common, no longer exists.","src":"https://www3.mnhs.org/hubfs/FM6_322%20p1%20original-2.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246060,"name":"Crime and Punishment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/pardon-power-nineteenth-century-minnesota"},{"alt":"Carrie H. Lippincott","author":[{"name":"Marjorie Savage","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/marjorie-savage"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"February 28, 2025","eraTag":[],"keydate":"","name":"Lippincott, Carrie H. (1860–1941)","postbody":"In 1887, Carrie H. Lippincott was a twenty-seven-year-old New Jersey native with an eighth-grade education. She moved to Minnesota, where she created a mail-order company focused on selling ...","searchtext":"In 1887, Carrie H. Lippincott was a twenty-seven-year-old New Jersey native with an eighth-grade education. She moved to Minnesota, where she created a mail-order company focused on selling flower seeds to women. Lippincott established herself in her new home by practicing innovative marketing methods and developing what we might call today a personal brand, declaring herself “The Pioneer Seedswoman of America.” When Lippincott arrived in Minneapolis in the late 1880s, she turned to her brother-in-law, Samuel Y. Haines, for advice on finding a job. Haines, who was working for the Minneapolis seed house Braslan, Northrup, Goodwin and Company (later renamed Northrup, King and Company), encouraged her to follow his example and sell seeds. He assured her that the nation’s rapidly expanding mail-order business had room for a woman “with the nerve to advertise and the knowledge to fill her orders satisfactorily.” Lippincott took Haines’ advice and worked side-by-side with him for a few years, learning the seed business and mapping sales strategies for an audience of women. She launched her business in 1891 under the name “Miss C. H. Lippincott.” That first year, she filled 6,000 orders. In 1894, she tallied 100,000. Lippincott’s mail-order marketing plan began each January with the release of a new catalog. At five by seven inches, her publications were half the size of most seed catalogs and designed to appeal to women. Cover art featured cherubic children and an abundance of flowers. Inside, pages offered instructions on cultivating seeds, with hints on how and where each variety might thrive. Her next step was to post advertisements in magazines and newspapers. Although the ads were small, they were conspicuous, typically positioned at the top or side columns of the page. The ads were not intended to secure a sale; they were an invitation to send for a free catalog. With catalogs in buyers’ hands, Lippincott used upselling methods to boost sales. Prices were just pennies a seed packet, but orders could be bumped up to qualify for free gifts. Her 1894 catalog offered fifteen cents’ worth of free seeds on orders totaling fifty cents. Costlier purchases earned more seeds or a rose plant. Every customer could request Lippincott’s free booklet Floral Culture, with its detailed instructions for growing hundreds of flower strains. Lippincott constructed a loyal community. Most years, she placed a friendly greeting in her catalogs with updates on the Lippincott family and her company. By 1896, she was receiving 150,000 orders a year from customers in Japan, India, and South Africa as well as Minnesota. She expanded her inventory based on customers’ requests, adding vines and more roses to her stock in 1903 and vegetable seeds in 1907. Lippincott’s success drew competition from other Minnesota entrepreneurs, including women with connections to established seed companies. In the mid-1890s, Jessie R. Prior took over the flower sales for her husband’s seed store, marketing herself as “Seedswoman.” A year later, a local florist, E. Nagel and Company, passed its flower seed business to Emma V. White, the “Northstar Seedswoman.” Lippincott’s most challenging rival, however, turned out to be her brother-in-law. In 1898 Haines filed a lawsuit against her, claiming rights to half the ownership of the C. H. Lippincott seed company. He claimed to be a partner in the business; she protested that the business that bore her name was hers alone. The case was dismissed when Lippincott and Haines agreed to divide the company’s assets equally. Lippincott quickly started over, releasing an 1899 catalog just weeks after the dissolution. Lippincott continued her mail-order sales for another twenty years. During World War I, she echoed the nation’s call for Liberty Gardens and offered a vegetable seed collection for twenty-five cents. She called on her customers to order seeds carefully and waste nothing while still planting flowers to provide beauty in troubled times. She continued to live in Minneapolis until her death, at age eighty-one, in 1941. The last of Lippincott’s seed catalogs was published in 1918, but her catalogs and seed packets have become Americana collectibles. They are preserved in numerous university and state library archives, including the University of Minnesota’s Andersen Horticultural Library and the Biodiversity Heritage Library, headquartered at the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives in Washington, DC.","src":"https://www3.mnhs.org/hubfs/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Carrie%20H.%20Lippincott.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246091,"name":"Agriculture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/lippincott-carrie-h-1860-1941"},{"alt":"Official portrait of Governor Jesse Ventura","author":[{"name":"Paul Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/paul-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"February 10, 2025","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Governorship of Jesse Ventura","postbody":"In November 1998 Jesse Ventura, a former professional wrestler and sometime movie actor, was elected governor of Minnesota after defeating the much better-known and better-financed ...","searchtext":"In November 1998 Jesse Ventura, a former professional wrestler and sometime movie actor, was elected governor of Minnesota after defeating the much better-known and better-financed candidates of the two traditional major parties. He won with the lowest plurality of any Minnesota governor, 37 percent of the vote, on the ticket of the Reform Party, a tiny organization with no track record of victory. His single term was one of controversy, and media reports focused more on his pursuits of money and celebrity than on his policies, which were mostly mainstream. Jesse Ventura was born James George Janos in south Minneapolis in 1951. He graduated from Roosevelt High School in 1969, then served in the US Navy as a SEAL until 1975. Afterward, he built a career as a professional wrestler (for which he adopted the name Jesse Ventura), television wrestling commentator, and movie actor that brought him national fame. Upon returning to Minnesota in 1987 he worked as a talk radio personality. He got his first political experience as nonpartisan mayor of Brooklyn Park, 1991–1995. In 1997 Ventura joined the Minnesota chapter of Ross Perot’s national Reform Party. There he met Dean Barkley, a two-time US Senate candidate on a Reform ticket who had gained enough votes to elevate Reform to a major party under Minnesota law. Ventura and Barkley formed a personal and political friendship and alliance. Upset by the Minnesota legislature’s decision to spend a large budget surplus in 1997, Ventura announced his intention to run for governor in 1998 and secured the Reform Party’s nomination, with no realistic expectation of winning. But his celebrity, outspoken manner, and appeal to first-time voters, plus the establishment ties of his two major-party opponents—DFL attorney general Skip Humphrey and Republican mayor of St. Paul Norm Coleman—propelled him to a surprising victory, with 37 percent of the vote. This made him Minnesota’s first third-party governor since Floyd B. Olson of the Farmer–Labor Party, elected in 1934. Ventura took office in 1999 with Republicans in control of the Minnesota House, the DFL in control of the Senate, and no other Reform Party officeholders anywhere in state government. He had no allies. His first legislative session was nevertheless fairly successful; taxpayers got income tax cuts and sales tax rebates, while public schools got a big funding increase. He enjoyed high public approval ratings. Ventura, however, repeatedly undermined his support through controversial interviews and by lucrative outside employment as a wrestling referee and professional football commentator. On the Late Show With David Letterman he said that St. Paul’s streets had been laid out by drunken Irishmen. In a Playboy magazine interview he said that organized religion was for the weak minded. In a single pay-per-view wrestling event, he made a reported one million dollars. He was often absent from the state for television appearances and incurred high security costs, paid for by Minnesota taxpayers. Because the local press reported these activities, often critically, Ventura took to calling Minnesota reporters and newspapers “media jackals.” His frustration with the workings of the legislature led him to propose a constitutional change to a unicameral legislature. This proposal went nowhere, but in his second and third legislative sessions, Ventura continued to have some successes: in tax reductions, reform of the property tax system, and more participation by the state in basic funding of the K-12 school system. He also prevailed in keeping planning for light rail transit alive, over Republican hostility. In 2000, he left the Minnesota Reform Party to lead the state’s new Independence Party. Ventura had campaigned on a pledge of no tax increases, under any circumstances. But when the 9/11 terror attacks brought on a recession and created a projected deficit of nearly two billion dollars, Ventura insisted that tax increases be part of the plan to balance the budget. In his final legislative session the two major parties ignored Ventura and passed a budget without tax increases. He vetoed that budget and called a special session in the summer of 2002; a compromise was reached. Two weeks later he announced that he would not run for a second term. Ventura had campaigned in 1998 on the importance of creating a third-party alternative to Republicans and Democrats. During his term, however, the Minnesota Reform Party failed to elect any other candidate to statewide office. It lost major-party status in 2014.","src":"https://www3.mnhs.org/hubfs/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Official%20portrait%20of%20Governor%20Jesse%20Ventura.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/governorship-jesse-ventura"},{"alt":"Women’s Advocates buildings in St. Paul","author":[{"name":"Emily Shepard","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/emily-shepard"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"February 06, 2025","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Women’s Advocates","postbody":"In the early 1970s, women across Minnesota calling a legal information telephone line told staffers that they were experiencing physical abuse from their partners. In response, a group of ...","searchtext":"In the early 1970s, women across Minnesota calling a legal information telephone line told staffers that they were experiencing physical abuse from their partners. In response, a group of St. Paul women formed Women’s Advocates to connect these callers with emergency housing and information. In 1974, the group purchased a St. Paul house and transformed it into a groundbreaking shelter for victim-survivors of domestic violence. In the following decades, Women’s Advocates expanded the shelter, initiated education programs, and advocated for policy changes—all with the goal of breaking the cycle of domestic violence. In 1971, a group of St. Paul women began gathering to explore social and political issues. At a meeting, attorney Delores Orey discussed the lack of public information about marital separation. To address this need, the group of women—who officially organized as the nonprofit Women’s Advocates in 1972—published a booklet on divorce rights and staffed a legal information telephone line. Women calling the telephone line frequently disclosed that their partners were physically abusing them. Many of these women wanted to leave their relationships but were forced to continue living with violent partners because they had no other housing options. Shelters for women experiencing domestic abuse did not yet exist. To address this, members of Women’s Advocates began hosting victim-survivors at their office and homes. The many women seeking emergency shelter underscored the importance of securing a permanent, larger facility. In 1974, Women’s Advocates purchased and renovated a house on Grand Avenue in St. Paul to shelter victim-survivors of domestic abuse and serve as the headquarters for their 24/7 crisis telephone line. The house, which had space for up to twenty-one people (women and their children), was filled to capacity on the first night it opened. Women learned about the shelter and telephone line through word of mouth, as well as through brochures and posters distributed at emergency rooms and legal offices. In establishing one of the first shelters for victim-survivors of domestic violence in the world, the staff, residents, and volunteers of Women’s Advocates were trailblazers. They innovated approaches to issues such as working with police, securing shelter, procuring funding, resolving conflicts with neighbors, occupying groups of energetic children, and cooking communal meals. Staff at Women’s Advocates frequently responded to requests for advice from other organizations that were establishing their own shelters. Women’s Advocates operated with a nonhierarchical structure common in the social justice movements of the 1970s. The staff worked with each victim-survivor to identify and respond to her needs. The founding members, who were predominantly middle-class white women, realized that their staff was not reflective of the racial diversity of the women they served, so they prioritized hiring women of color. Initial funding came solely from private donations. Within a few years, staff applied for and received grants from foundations and governmental entities. Increasing public awareness about domestic violence was a focus of Women’s Advocates from its inception. Educational efforts included publishing booklets and brochures; designing college courses; giving presentations at churches, schools, and workplaces; and providing interviews and tours to local and national press. Staff at Women’s Advocates and Sergeant Carolen Bailey overhauled domestic violence training for St. Paul police officers, resulting in improved security at the shelter. Concurrent with educational initiatives, Women’s Advocates worked to change domestic violence policy. It led efforts to establish state funding for domestic abuse shelters and improved legal protections for Minnesota victim-survivors. By the 1990s, the shelter had expanded to three side-by-side houses. The ongoing telephone line received over 10,000 calls a year, and demand for housing continued to exceed capacity despite the opening of other regional shelters. Women’s Advocates expanded the services they offered to victim-survivors’ children, many of whom had experienced domestic abuse themselves. Resources included housing assistance and children’s services after leaving the shelter. In May of 2020, the shelter temporarily moved to a hotel to decrease COVID transmission between residents. Many new initiatives were launched around this time, including a crisis chat line, online support groups, a pet foster program, pop-up advocacy events, and a Survivor Advocacy Council to guide organizational decision making. In 2024, Women’s Advocates launched a fundraising effort to open two apartment-style shelters to house up to fifty-eight people, including transgender and non-binary victim-survivors. Demand for services from people experiencing domestic violence has remained high. As of 2019, 37 percent of transgender people nationwide reported experiencing physical violence from a partner during their lifetimes; in 2024, 25 percent of cisgender women in Minnesota experienced the same.","src":"https://www3.mnhs.org/hubfs/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Women%E2%80%99s%20Advocates%20buildings%20in%20St.%20Paul.jpeg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246087,"name":"Health and Medicine","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/women-s-advocates"},{"alt":"Site where Glacial Lake Agassiz flowed into River Warren","author":[{"name":"Paul Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/paul-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"January 29, 2025","eraTag":[{"id":203519472229,"name":"Pre-1585 (Before European Contact)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Draining of Glacial Lake Agassiz","postbody":"About 13,000 years ago the melting glaciers that covered Minnesota and Canada created a vast lake, bigger than all the Great Lakes of today combined. Geologists later named this Lake ...","searchtext":"About 13,000 years ago the melting glaciers that covered Minnesota and Canada created a vast lake, bigger than all the Great Lakes of today combined. Geologists later named this Lake Agassiz (AH-ga-see), for the Swiss geologist Louis Agassiz. The lake drained twice: first to the south, to form the channel of the Minnesota River and the Upper Mississippi in the Twin Cities, and then, 1,600 years later, to form the course of the Red River of the North. Between 17,000 and 21,000 years ago the last North American glacier reached its maximum depth and extent, covering all but the southeast corner of Minnesota. Its slow melting and retreat then began. Some 13,000 years ago its meltwater formed Glacial Lake Agassiz, which covered most of what is now Saskatchewan and Alberta, plus a sliver of northwest Minnesota and eastern North Dakota. Its waters were contained by the ice sheet to the north and a natural dam to the south, since named the Big Stone Moraine. (A moraine is a ridge of debris formed by a glacier.) About 11,700 years ago the lake breached the moraine near present-day Browns Valley, Minnesota, at a place now called Traverse Gap. The flow of water and debris surged south, then southeast, with unimaginable force, creating what geologists later named the Glacial River Warren. This river carved a wide, deep valley—now the Minnesota River valley—which turned north at Mankato, because it hit bedrock, joined the much smaller Mississippi River at Fort Snelling, and joined the St. Croix at Hastings. It thus formed the river network around which all human habitation in southern Minnesota has since been organized. When River Warren’s surge reached what is now downtown St. Paul, about 10,000 years ago, it flowed atop the shelf of limestone upon which the city now stands. When it reached the edge of that shelf it met much softer rock—shale, with sandstone beneath. It then proceeded to cut deeply into that material, forming the basin still visible south of downtown. In time the flow dug a deep chasm, and the water cascading over the limestone edge formed a waterfall 175 feet tall and 2,700 feet across (later named River Warren Falls) spanning the entire basin from downtown to Cherokee Heights. The force of falling water ate away at the sandstone under the limestone shelf, and little by little the edges of the shelf broke off, again and again and again. Thus the falls marched slowly upstream to the west, progressively diminishing in height and force, until they reached the Mississippi at the site of Fort Snelling. It then followed the Mississippi north, split off at Minnehaha Creek to form Minnehaha Falls (where the shelf and softer rock below can still be seen), and continued north to what became Minneapolis. Dakota people called the water feature Owamniyomni: Turbulent Waters. After 1680, when Father Louis Hennepin saw the site and named it for the patron saint of Padua, Italy, it became known to Euro-Americans as St. Anthony Falls. While Glacial River Warren worked its way east, then north, the glacier, far to the north in Canada, continued to melt. Lake Agassiz re-formed, though smaller. About 7,400 years ago it broke through the weakening ice to the north and east, and flowed toward Hudson’s Bay, creating the shallow valley of the Red River of the North, which extends from Lake Traverse to the south to Winnipeg, and beyond, in a shallow, gently sloping valley. The breakthrough eventually drained all the accumulated melt water, and this marked the end of Lake Agassiz. In time the valley of the Red River proved to be fertile farmland, thus attracting European immigration and forming the population centers of western Minnesota and eastern North and South Dakota. The two successive drainings of Lake Agassiz created two of modern Minnesota’s three great river corridors: the Minnesota and the Red, along with the Mississippi.","src":"https://www3.mnhs.org/hubfs/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Site%20where%20Glacial%20Lake%20Agassiz%20flowed%20into%20River%20Warren.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246052,"name":"Science and Technology","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/draining-glacial-lake-agassiz"},{"alt":"The Replacements at First Avenue","author":[{"name":"Kristen Zschomler","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/kristen-zschomler"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"January 22, 2025","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Replacements (band)","postbody":"The Replacements (1979–1991) were an influential Minneapolis-based band that fused punk, rock, country, and blues to capture the teenage angst of the 1980s. Founded by innovative guitarist ...","searchtext":"The Replacements (1979–1991) were an influential Minneapolis-based band that fused punk, rock, country, and blues to capture the teenage angst of the 1980s. Founded by innovative guitarist Bob Stinson, the band also included bassist Tommy Stinson, drummer Chris Mars, and dynamic singer/songwriter Paul Westerberg. Known for their electric, erratic live shows, the Replacements attracted a devout fan base. They were foundational pioneers of the alternative rock genre of the late 1980s and the 1990s, most notably the Seattle grunge scene, as well as alternative country. In the late 1970s, guitarist Bob Stinson wanted to start a band, so he made his half-brother, Tommy, learn the bass, and recruited neighbor Chris Mars as drummer. Paul Westerberg heard their group, Dog Breath, through a basement window while walking home from his janitorial job in Minneapolis. He returned to listen to them for days, met them, and soon became the frontman of the group, replacing Mars as the main songwriter. They renamed themselves the Impediments, and after that, the Replacements. In 1980, the quartet recorded a demo tape that Westerberg gave to Peter Jesperson, whose famed record store, Oar Folkjokeopus (2557 Lyndale Avenue South), was packed with punk and new wave records from New York City and England. Jesperson was also the DJ at the Minneapolis venue Jay’s Longhorn, where touring punk and new wave bands like the B-52s, the Ramones, Blondie, and the Buzzcocks played. Owners Jay Berine and Al Wodtke also let local musicians perform. In fact, most of the bands that defined the Minneapolis punk and alternative rock scene of the 1980s started at Jay’s: the Suburbs, Flamingo/the Flaming Oh’s, Hüsker Dü, and the Hypstrz. Jesperson loved what he heard on the demo tape and became the Replacements’ biggest cheerleader and manager, advocating for them to play the Longhorn and sign to Twin/Tone, the label he’d founded with reporter Charley Hallman and sound engineer Paul Stark. Jesperson got his wish on both counts—Twin/Tone signed the Replacements after their first performance on the Longhorn stage in July 1980. The band recorded their first albums at the Dinkytown studio Blackberry Way: Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash (1981) and Stink (1982). The former packed eighteen fast, fiery songs into thirty-seven minutes, and the latter featured eight hardcore punk tracks. Hootenanny, released the following spring, showed that the band was evolving away from hardcore punk and blending rock, country, and blues into their aesthetic. The Replacements returned to Blackberry Way to record their final album for Twin/Tone. Released in October 1984, Let It Be was a critical success. The buzz around the album—more nuanced and eclectic than their previous punk efforts while still capturing the band’s characteristic humor and anti-establishment sentiment—caught the ear of major record labels. The Replacements signed with Sire Records and released four albums on the label between 1985 (Tim, their last recorded in Minneapolis) and 1990 (All Shook Down). Signing with a major label was both a major accomplishment and the beginning of the end for the band. While they were gaining more fans through wider distribution, their hardcore base and even band members themselves felt they were selling out. The tension that once fueled the band’s special angst and creativity—Stinson’s maniacal guitar playing contrasted against Westerberg’s vulnerable lyrics—grew into unsustainable artistic differences. Even though Tim was a critical success, by 1986, Bob Stinson was out, replaced by Bob “Slim” Dunlap, and manager Jesperson soon followed. When Pleased to Meet Me (1987) was released, many fans and critics felt the Replacements had lost their unique spark. The band’s disintegration continued when Mars left in 1990, frustrated by Westerberg’s direction for the group. By the following year, the Replacements were done. Westerberg went on to have a successful solo career, including his 1992 hit song “Dyslexic Heart” on the Singles movie soundtrack. Tommy Stinson also had a solo career and played with Guns N’ Roses, Soul Asylum, and other groups. In 1995, after playing with Static Taxi and the Bleeding Hearts, his brother Bob succumbed to organ failure after years of substance abuse. Mars released solo work in the 1990s, but primarily focused on his fantastical art and filmmaking. Often referred to as “one of the best bands to never make it,” a reference to their self-sabotage when presented with opportunities and their slow collapse after signing with Sire, the Replacements’ legacy lives on in their pioneering sounds, lyrics, and working-class aesthetics. Their high-school-dropouts vibe, fierce rhythms, and lyrics (which ranged from vulnerable and heartfelt to crude and confrontational) inspired the Bay Area punk scene, the Seattle grunge scene, and alt-country bands.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/06-18_Corrigan.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/replacements-band"},{"alt":"Anna Salzer’s cemetery marker","author":[{"name":"Alison Bergblom Johnson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/alison-bergblom-johnson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"January 14, 2025","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Death of Anna Salzer in Rochester State Hospital, 1897","postbody":"When Anna Salzer died while a patient at Rochester State Hospital in 1897, her death was first reported as the result of heart failure after a twelve-hour illness. Later, the cause of death ...","searchtext":"When Anna Salzer died while a patient at Rochester State Hospital in 1897, her death was first reported as the result of heart failure after a twelve-hour illness. Later, the cause of death was changed to pneumonia. But another patient, Lydia B. Angier, reported details about Salzer’s death to officials, writing that “every day I saw her abused—shoved about—and on the last day actually kicked.” The incident reveals how abuse contributed to excess mortality among patients confined to insane hospitals at the turn of the twentieth century. Anna Salzer, a fifty-five-year-old widow and immigrant born in Austria, was also the mother of three children, the youngest aged twenty-one. She arrived at Rochester State Hospital from Waseca County on the same day (June 22, 1897) she was committed, brought by sheriff’s deputy G. Goodspeed and admitted by Dr. R. M. Phelps at 6:45 pm. According to hospital records, Salzer believed relatives and her physician were trying to poison her. Although she was “disposed to injure others,” she was “not suicidal, filthy or destructive.” After examining her on June 23, Dr. Phelps and his wife, Dr. Sarah Linton Phelps, noted Salzer was complaining “almost constantly” of pain in her back. Nurses perceived that Salzer was physically healthy and active and that she spoke to them in English, but they also noticed that she had vague delusions. In August, Salzer was moved to a convalescing ward. At first, Dr. Linton Phelps noted that she ate well. Then, on September 5, she reported that Salzer had not eaten in two days, had been fed with a tube, and was “failing.” At 8 am on September 6, Dr. Linton Phelps wrote, “patient died suddenly.” St. Paul resident Lydia B. Angier was also a patient in Rochester State Hospital in 1897. Angier wrote at least three letters to Agent W. A. Gates of the board of Corrections and Charities, a governing body of the state hospital system. One letter referred to Salzer. On July 19, 1898, Angier described a German-speaking woman who was admitted in June 1897 in good physical health. By September, however, all other patients on the ward who spoke German were gone, and the woman had stopped eating. Angier wrote that “...every day I saw her abused—shoved about—and on the last day actually kicked.” Staff then dragged Salzer “to her bed and left [her] alone to die. She died at seven o’clock next morning. I was with her about ten minutes before she died.” Angier wrote to Gates that she had told Superintendent Dr. A. F. Kilbourne on November 9 that hospital staff were abusing Salzer in the days prior to her death. “He investigated,” Angier told Gates, “and attendant and Dr. Linton [Phelps] were laid off. Three children to care for—was a good excuse for dismissing Dr. Linton [Phelps].” There is no evidence that Salzer’s death received further attention from officials within or without the state hospital after 1897. Angier’s allegations of abuse complicate the hospital’s claims to reform in the 1890s, carried out after the 1889 homicide of patient Taylor Combs. In 1909, an independent investigation revealed that hospital staff had been drunk and abusive with patients, leading to the firing of nurses.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Anna Salzer grave.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246087,"name":"Health and Medicine","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/death-anna-salzer-rochester-state-hospital-1897"},{"alt":"Civic Caucus interview panel at the Woman’s Club of Minneapolis","author":[{"name":"Luka Jacobi-Krohn, Jacob Tosto, and Marta Cleaveland","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/luka-jacobi-krohn-jacob-tosto-and-marta-cleaveland"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"December 30, 2024","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Civic Caucus","postbody":"The Civic Caucus is a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy organization that serves as a forum for citizens to learn, analyze, and debate critical public issues in Minnesota. Founded in ...","searchtext":"The Civic Caucus is a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy organization that serves as a forum for citizens to learn, analyze, and debate critical public issues in Minnesota. Founded in 2004 and headquartered in Minneapolis, the caucus has conducted nearly 600 interviews with civic and business leaders, entrepreneurs, innovators, elected officials, researchers, academics, and other thought leaders from Minnesota and around the United States to glean their expert knowledge on policy challenges. The roots of the Civic Caucus trace back to 1950, when four students at the University of Minnesota—Verne Johnson, Charles Clay, Raeder Larson, and Jim Olson—began holding weekly meetings to talk about public policy. Public policy is legislation (or any action proposed/done by elected representatives) to solve a civic problem. Officials might adopt a policy of providing free school lunches, for example, to address the problem of hunger among children. After decades of informal meetings, lawyer John Mooty joined the group. All achieved noteworthy careers in Twin Cities business, law, and academia. Verne Johnson (later called a |||public policy giant||| by the Minneapolis Star Tribune) served as executive director of the Citizens League from 1957 until 1967. In that year, he helped create the Metropolitan Council, a Twin Cities organization active in city planning, policy, and services, including Metro Transit. He also advocated for metro tax-base sharing and more equitable funding of schools, transportation, and public safety. His impact continued as vice president of strategic planning at General Mills. Charles Clay, another forefather of the Metropolitan Council, served as a board member and president of the Citizens League in 1965. The death of founding member Raeder Larson in 2001 brought the group to a decision point. They decided to go bigger. They established the Civic Caucus as a Minnesota nonprofit corporation in 2004, and subsequently as tax-exempt under section 501(c)(3) of the federal Internal Revenue Code. At the same time, they expanded the number of core participants in the weekly discussion sessions. Although the internet was relatively new, Johnson recognized its potential to connect and engage civic-minded individuals. As a result, the caucus established a website with a free online archive of its interviews and position reports, and began email distribution to a growing followers list. Verne Johnson was the first chair of the Civic Caucus from 2005 until 2012, while Paul Gilje was its first executive director in the same time span. Upon Johnson||s death in 2012, Dan Loritz took over as chair. In 2017, Paul Ostrow became chair, and Janis Clay was executive director. In 2020, Clay became both chair and acting executive director. After its first interview in 2005—with John Brandl about political polarization—the Civic Caucus fostered in-depth dialogue, seeking nonpartisan solutions to a range of Minnesota public issues, including affordable housing, aging and long-term care, agriculture, business, campaign finance. In 2015 and 2016, caucus members conducted a review of the quality of Minnesota||s public policy process for anticipating, defining, and resolving major community problems. They then issued a concluding report: “Looking Back, Thinking Ahead: Strengthening Minnesota||s Public-Policy Process.” The report described the key elements of the |||Minnesota Process||| of developing public policy over the past fifty years and predicted that the state “will be able to maintain its quality-of-life position among the fifty states only with a renewed commitment to solving its pressing public-policy challenges.” It presented four prime recommendations in an eight-point strategy. In 2017 and 2018, the caucus held follow-up interviews on its report to gather further recommendations. It also organized conversations with major candidates for Minnesota governor, including Chris Coleman, Keith Downey, Jeff Johnson, Tina Liebling, Roger Moe, Al Quie, Tim Walz, and other discussions about Minnesota||s legislative process. Civic Caucus interviews are conducted by an evolving panel of volunteers with public policy expertise. Between 2005 and 2024, more than fifty interviewers participated in more than 600 sessions. The caucus distributes interview summaries via email to more than 7,000 followers and nearly 300 media outlets across Minnesota. Based on these interviews and citizen feedback, the caucus produces occasional position reports, each addressing a specific public policy issue. The organization created a directory of civic organizations in Minnesota, a free online resource including more than 550 organizations, in 2018. The directory is part of the caucus’s growing online hub of resources that aid in explaining Minnesota’s public policy process.","src":"https://23704355.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/23704355/Mnopedia%20Blogs/image3_2.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246079,"name":"Cities and Towns","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/civic-caucus"},{"alt":"View from Frontenac State Park","author":[{"name":"Marjorie Savage","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/marjorie-savage"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"December 18, 2024","eraTag":[],"keydate":"","name":"Frontenac State Park","postbody":"Frontenac State Park stretches over 2,600 acres along the widening of the Mississippi River known as Lake Pepin. The park is located in Goodhue County on the Mississippi Flyway, one of four ...","searchtext":"Frontenac State Park stretches over 2,600 acres along the widening of the Mississippi River known as Lake Pepin. The park is located in Goodhue County on the Mississippi Flyway, one of four major migratory bird routes in North America. With more than 260 bird species recorded within its boundaries, the park is a prime destination for Minnesota birders. The rock-faced cliffs and upland prairie of Frontenac State Park began to form 500 million years ago, when the land was covered by a shallow sea. Over time, sediment filtered out of the seawater, hardening into limestone, dolostone, and erosive sandstone. Following the last Ice Age 10,000 years ago, the meltwaters of Glacial River Warren shaped the steep valley, floodplain, and mud flats that now define the Lake Pepin shore. Current-day reminders of the glacial era include the remains of a nineteenth-century limestone quarry and the naturally carved rock called Iŋyaŋ Tiyopa (stone door), sacred to Dakota and Meskwaki people. From the earliest days of human contact, Lake Pepin’s southwestern shore served as a gathering place. Archaeological evidence indicates that builders of a burial-mound network, the Havana Hopewell people, met there from about 400 BCE to 500 CE, trading food and tools while sharing customs and practices. Beginning around 1600 CE, ancestors of Dakota people made the area part of their annual cycle of hunting, fishing, harvesting wild rice, and tapping maple syrup. French expeditions traveled from Canada to Lake Pepin in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, seeking trade with the Dakota and searching for a route to the Pacific Ocean. When steamboats proved the Upper Mississippi was navigable, tourism began, with voyages between St. Louis and St. Paul. In 1853, shopkeeper Evert Westervelt and Cincinnati lawyer Israel Garrard platted a 320-acre town called Westervelt, designating thirty-five acres for village parks. Over the next few years Garrard bought out Westervelt’s shares, expanded the town, quadrupled the parks, and (in 1859) changed the town’s name to Frontenac. Garrard continued developing his lakeside resort while buying a corridor of land lining twelve miles along the lakeshore. In the 1860s, paddleboats tied up at the Frontenac landing, delivering passengers who stayed a night, a week, or a month at the posh, three-story Lake Side Hotel that earned Frontenac the name “Newport of the West.” In the 1870s, most towns up and down the Mississippi Valley welcomed the railroad. But when the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul, and Pacific Railway approached Garrard to buy land for a line linking Lake City and Red Wing, Garrard refused. He wouldn’t allow the noise and dirt into his village. Instead, he donated land for tracks and a depot three miles from town. Growing numbers of passengers arrived at the new depot, known as “Frontenac Station,” and rode by horse and buggy to “Old Frontenac.” Thirty years later, automobiles and hard-surfaced highways cut into train travel while encouraging hikers, boaters, and picnickers. During the Great Depression, when President Roosevelt’s New Deal funded construction of hundreds of national and state parks, Frontenac was identified for state park status. The property met the criteria of providing historic and cultural significance, natural attractions, and recreational potential. Efforts failed, however, when federal officials decided the area lacked sufficient personnel and resources to support a Civilian Conservation Corps camp. Over the next twenty years, state park status was reconsidered multiple times, but approval repeatedly failed. Ultimately, it took a grassroots effort to move the project forward. In the mid-1950s members of the Hiawatha Valley Association, a business organization promoting tourism along the Upper Mississippi Valley, joined forces with the state’s park and conservation officials to advance a plan for a 500-acre park at the Frontenac location. To demonstrate local support, a group of citizens formed the Frontenac State Park Association. Members lobbied legislators, raised funds, and solicited donations of property for the park. Although approval remained contentious up to the final vote, the park was approved by the 1957 Minnesota legislature.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Gfp-minnesota-frontenac-state-park-close-view-of-bluff.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/frontenac-state-park"},{"alt":"People without housing in St. Stephen’s Church","author":[{"name":"Margaret Miles","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/margaret-miles"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"December 03, 2024","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Origins of the Minneapolis Homeless Shelter Movement","postbody":"In the winter of 1981–1982, a severe homelessness crisis prompted ten Minneapolis churches and community organizations to open their doors as emergency shelters. The city’s large-scale ...","searchtext":"In the winter of 1981–1982, a severe homelessness crisis prompted ten Minneapolis churches and community organizations to open their doors as emergency shelters. The city’s large-scale response was an example of public–private collaboration that got people safely indoors. It was also Minnesota’s first contribution to the nationwide homeless shelter movement. Economic instability, a tight housing market, and disinvestment from social welfare programs set the stage for a nationwide homelessness crisis in the early 1980s. Long before then, however, housing had been more available to some Americans than to others. Racism in the South led many African Americans to look for new homes during the Great Migration (1916–1970). Termination and relocation policies (1953–1969) did the same for Native Americans. Redlining and racial housing covenants made it challenging for these and other groups to secure housing. These factors were in play in Minneapolis in the mid-twentieth century. City planners and business leaders embraced urban renewal and interstate highway construction, both of which removed thousands of units of low-cost housing without replacing them. A 1976 city task force on rental housing reported that rental housing in Minneapolis was “in a state of crisis” that “could not continue in its present form.” By 1978, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) estimated that more than 57,000 Minneapolis–St. Paul renting households needed financial assistance to afford their housing. Before 1981, a patchwork of “emergency housing” ensured that most people had a place to stay, at least temporarily. Hennepin County social workers paid for people to stay at residential hotels or the YMCA downtown. City relief workers had a list of private homeowners who would take in mothers with children. Single men could stay at one of two Christian missions. The Urban League, the Native American community, and Sabathani Community Center each had a few units of emergency housing. And domestic violence shelters and youth shelters were developing. In the summer of 1981, however, the waves of housing loss became a tsunami. Minnesota redefined eligibility for General Assistance (GA), a critical financial benefit for people who don’t qualify for other support. The state dropped 58 percent of enrollees, more than 9,000 Minnesotans, from the program between June and November. People who’d relied on the assistance for their low-cost housing were evicted. The manager of a social service center said the result was hundreds of people looking for help and housing. Native American leaders called an emergency community meeting about the spike in homelessness in the Phillips Neighborhood, and a pastor from Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church brought that call for help back to his church. A member of Holy Rosary Catholic Church told her church that she’d seen evidence of people sleeping in her unlocked car overnight, so she filled it with blankets. A housing activist attending a retreat with St. Stephen’s Church challenged attendees to open the empty, heated part of their building and get people indoors. Hennepin County Social Services kept its lobby open overnight so that people could sleep on the floor or in plastic chairs. Minneapolis Mayor Don Fraser petitioned the City Council to fast‐track a resolution permitting churches and organizations to shelter people overnight. The council passed the resolution unanimously—but it also added stipulations that limited hours, reduced operation to cold-weather months, and allowed the effort as a “one‐season experiment.” In December 1981, the Minneapolis American Indian Center, St. Stephen’s Catholic Church, Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church, Faith Mission, and Holy Rosary Catholic Church began taking people into whatever spaces they had: a gymnasium, a parish library, a classroom. Catholic Charities worked to streamline referrals to the two missions. During the following month, January 1982, and throughout that year, another five churches and organizations opened spaces for shelter. The United Way, Hennepin County, and local foundations provided funding to operate the spaces. A survey of shelter guests that year showed that 60 percent had lost some form of government assistance that had been helping them make ends meet—general assistance, social security, or food stamps. These early shelters were started to address an emergency. Over time, however, they became part of an emerging national housing rights movement that included the Minnesota Coalition for the Homeless, formed through a merger of Minneapolis and St. Paul groups in 1983.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Zerby_7-8-82_8.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246079,"name":"Cities and Towns","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/origins-minneapolis-homeless-shelter-movement"},{"alt":"Battle flag of the Twenty-eighth Virginia Volunteer Infantry Regiment","author":[{"name":"Harper Beeland","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/harper-beeland"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"November 22, 2024","eraTag":[{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Twenty-eighth Virginia Infantry Regimental Battle Flag","postbody":"The battle flag of the Twenty-eighth Virginia Infantry Regiment was captured by the First Minnesota Volunteer Infantry Regiment in the Battle of Gettysburg on July 3, 1863. The storied ...","searchtext":"The battle flag of the Twenty-eighth Virginia Infantry Regiment was captured by the First Minnesota Volunteer Infantry Regiment in the Battle of Gettysburg on July 3, 1863. The storied Confederate banner has remained in St. Paul continuously since 1886, despite numerous requests to return it to its state of origin. The flag is roughly square, measuring forty-four and a half inches tall and forty-eight inches wide, and is made entirely of wool, except for the white cotton stars and filets (bands). The design features thirteen white stars (representing the eleven Confederate states, plus Kentucky and Missouri) inside a white-edged blue diagonal cross, or saltire, upon a red field. The creator of its general pattern, Confederate States Representative William Porcher Miles of South Carolina, chose a diagonal cross to avoid religious associations and used red, white, and blue because they “are the true republican colors,” representing “valor, purity, and truth.” The battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia was a practical tool of warfare that standard-bearers carried at the front line of battle to lead their military unit. Its visibility provided a clear reference point for soldiers during the heat of combat, but also made the bearer a crucial target for the enemy. Capturing the opponent’s flag practically guaranteed victory. Pvt. Marshall Sherman of the First Minnesota Volunteer Infantry Regiment captured the flag during the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863. On the second day of the battle, over three-fourths of the regiment’s men were killed or wounded after Maj. Gen. Winfield S. Hancock ordered them to charge at the advancing Confederates, who outnumbered the Minnesotans five to one. The next day, the survivors participated in Pickett’s Charge, during which Private Sherman captured the battle flag of the Twenty-eighth Virginia Infantry Regiment by threatening its bearer (Lt. John Lee) with his bayonet. “Throw down that flag,” newspapers reported him saying, “or I’ll run you through.” The bravery of Sherman and the First Minnesota helped secure the Union’s pivotal victory at Gettysburg, which historians later recognized as the “high-water mark of the Confederacy.” After the war, Sherman took the flag with him back to Minnesota. In 1867 the flag was sent to Washington, DC, to be inventoried by the War Department (note the “58” they stenciled on its top left corner), but the banner quietly returned to Minnesota in the late 1880s. Over the next few decades, it was displayed with other battle flags in the second Minnesota state capitol and in Civil War commemoration events. Although a 1905 congressional resolution authorized the secretary of war to return captured Civil War flags in the War Department||s custody to their state of origin, this flag remained in Minnesota. It was formally accessioned by the Minnesota Historical Society (MNHS) in 1923. On the occasion of the Civil War centennial in 1961, MNHS deaccessioned from its collection a Mississippi regimental flag captured by the Fourth Minnesota in the Battle of Allatoona in 1864, transferring it to the state of Georgia. This gesture prompted the Virginia Historical Society to request the return of the Twenty-eighth Virginia battle flag one week later. MNHS denied the request “because it has been so well documented in its relationship to the First Minnesota…that it has greater historical value if it remains in Minnesota than if it is returned to Virginia.” A Twenty-eighth Virginia reenactment group appealed again in 1998, asserting legal ownership of the flag. While the Minnesota attorney general disproved this claim, the controversy spurred much public comment and subsequent return requests from Virginia in 2000, 2002, 2003, and 2013. Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura notoriously responded to the 2000 request, “Why? I mean, we won. [...] We took it, that makes it our heritage.” In 2007, MNHS became the new steward of the state’s historic military flag collection, previously cared for by the Minnesota adjutant general. MNHS conservators cleaned and mounted battle flags for a rotating annual display in the first-floor rotunda of the state capitol. Around this time, the Twenty-eighth Virginia flag received a custom mount. Originally, the flag had been made with triangular shapes cut larger than necessary, which created excess fabric. Consequently, the textile conservator made a mount with four raised pillows to provide support for the flag overall. A plexiglass display case provided another layer of protection, while a dark cloth shielded it from light exposure. The flag continues to be cared for by MNHS.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/10242225.640x640.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/twenty-eighth-virginia-infantry-regimental-battle-flag"},{"alt":"C. C. Andrews, 1861 or 1862","author":[{"name":"Rick Magee","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/rick-magee"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"November 18, 2024","eraTag":[{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Andrews, Christopher Columbus (1829–1922)","postbody":"Christopher Columbus (C. C.) Andrews was a Minnesota lawyer and publisher known for his military service in Tennessee, Mississippi, and Arkansas during the Civil War. After working as an ...","searchtext":"Christopher Columbus (C. C.) Andrews was a Minnesota lawyer and publisher known for his military service in Tennessee, Mississippi, and Arkansas during the Civil War. After working as an international diplomat in the 1870s and 80s, he embarked on a second career as a pioneer of scientific forestry and Minnesota||s first chief fire warden. His work led to the creation of the two national forests in Minnesota and a state forest named in his honor. Christopher Columbus Andrews was born in Hillsborough, New Hampshire, attended Harvard Law School, and practiced law in Boston and Kansas. A prolific writer, he wrote a series of articles for the Boston Post about his travels through Minnesota and Dakota Territories in 1856. He settled in St. Cloud in 1857. A Democrat, Andrews served in the Minnesota Senate from 1859 until 1860, when he campaigned for presidential candidate Stephen A. Douglas. After the Civil War began, however, he and twenty young men from St. Cloud reported for duty at Fort Snelling. He was elected captain of his company, part of the Third Minnesota Veteran Volunteer Infantry Regiment. Observers praised the Third for their professional appearance, skill, and cleanliness, frequently mistaking them for Regular Army troops. Captain Andrews argued strongly against the surrender of the regiment at Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and was a prisoner of war for about three months, until his exchange in October 1862. He rejoined his regiment and took command in July 1863, following service at the Siege of Vicksburg. The model actions of Andrews and the Third during the occupation of Little Rock resulted in an increase in pro-Union sentiment. Arkansas Governor Issac Murphy wrote, “Such men are an honor to the government and the cause they serve. Their state may be justly proud of them[.]” After the war, Andrews (by now a general) returned to St. Cloud to practice law. He married Mary F. Baxter of Boston in 1868. In 1869, President Ulysses S. Grant nominated him to be US Minister Resident in Denmark, but he was soon reassigned to Stockholm, Sweden. As the top American diplomat in Sweden and Norway, Andrews was a keen observer of sustainable forestry practices there, so unlike the “slash and burn” logging he had observed in the United States. His reports to the secretary of state on the practice and teaching of forestry in Sweden were published. King Oscar II of Sweden–Norway confided to former President Grant in 1878 that “General Andrews had been the most useful representative the United States had ever sent there.” Andrews and his family returned to Minnesota in 1877. He spoke in support of presidential candidate James Garfield at the 1880 Republican National Convention, then became the US Consul in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, in 1882. While serving the needs of US citizens and businesses there, he wrote a book about his experiences in and observations of Brazil. Andrews delivered a paper at the American Forestry Association meeting in August 1894 entitled “The Prevention of Forest Fires.” Nine days later, the tragic Hinckley Fire broke out and claimed 418 lives. In response, Minnesota passed its first forestry law in 1895, creating positions for town fire-wardens and a chief fire-warden with scientific investigative duties. Andrews was appointed the state’s first fire-warden chief. In 1905 the title of the position changed from chief to forest commissioner; Andrews retired as commissioner in 1911. Andrews initiated the movement to create national forests in northern Minnesota. In 1902 he recommended that 225,000 acres be set aside at Cass Lake, and a half million acres preserved in Lake and Cook Counties. The effort prevailed, and on February 13, 1909, President Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed the creation of the Superior National Forest with 644,114 acres. Following his retirement as forestry commissioner, Andrews served on Minnesota commissions to place memorials at significant Civil War sites. His work helped add memorial sculptures to important battlefields and create national cemeteries. Conservation, however, remained a personal priority. He wrote, “The last years of my life were spent in the cause of forestry and in that cause, I believe, the best work of my life was done. I always loved trees.” Andrews died in St. Paul on September 21, 1922, and was buried in Oakland Cemetery. General C. C. Andrews State Forest in Pine County was established to honor his legacy in 1943.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/10455107_cropped.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/andrews-christopher-columbus-1829-1922"},{"alt":"A loon stretching","author":[{"name":"Peter J. DeCarlo","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/peter-j-decarlo"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"October 28, 2024","eraTag":[],"keydate":"","name":"Common Loon","postbody":"A migratory diver of the loon family, the common loon (Gavia immer) has been important to people living in the Great Lakes region for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Its striking ...","searchtext":"A migratory diver of the loon family, the common loon (Gavia immer) has been important to people living in the Great Lakes region for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Its striking calls and black-and-white summer plumage have made it an emblem of Minnesota, where more of the birds live than in any other state except Alaska. The loon became Minnesota’s state bird in 1961. Adult loons weigh eight to twelve pounds and are shaped like torpedoes. Their summer plumage is a spotted white and black, with iridescence on the head; in winter, that coloring changes to gray and white. Males can be a bit larger than females, but in all other ways they are identical. Loons have four calls: the yodel, the wail, the hoot, and the tremolo. They live on lakes in central and northern Minnesota but migrate south every September to the Atlantic coast (their northern range includes the northern US and Canada) before returning north in the spring. Their bones, unlike those of most birds, are not hollow, allowing them to dive deep underwater for their food: small fish, minnows, amphibians, insects, crayfish, and mollusks. The loon (maang in Ojibwemowin) is culturally important to Ojibwe people. It plays a role in some versions of Ojibwe creation stories, while other legends connect Maang to Nanaboozho, an Ojibwe cultural hero. It is said that when Maang calls in the rain at dusk, the bird is calling for Nanaboozho. Many Ojibwe people are members of the Maang Doodem (Loon Clan), and Maang is sacred to them. It is taboo for a member of the Maang Doodem to harm a loon or to marry another member of the clan. In Ojibwe culture, clans are named after animals (or parts of animals) and perform distinctive roles. The members of bird clans, such as the Crane and the Loon, take on civil leadership roles. Members of the Maang Doodem historically served as diplomats, often leading negotiations until a member of the Crane Clan (Ajijaak Doodem) offered final decisions. “Leading with your Loon|||| is an Ojibwe teaching today that encourages people to be diplomatic with others. Dakota people call the loon Mdóza and have incorporated some elements of it into their culture as well. As white settlers entered Minnesota in the 1800s, the loon population declined due to hunting and habitat destruction. The Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 prohibited the taking of loons without the authorization of the Department of the Interior’s Fish and Wildlife Service. Though protected from overhunting, loon habitat continued to decline in the 1920s due to residential development and summer vacationers in northern Minnesota. In the 1930s, loons began to disappear from central and southern Minnesota lakes. The loon became Minnesota’s state bird in 1961. Spurred by the work of Dr. Judith McIntyre and the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, programs focused on protecting and learning more about the state’s loons began in the 1970s. In 1977, Minnesota’s Nongame Wildlife Program started raising funds to conserve Minnesota’s nongame species. The investment paid off. By 1989, the loon was struggling across the US but not in Minnesota, where there were an estimated 10,000 loons for the state’s 10,000 lakes. To gather more information about the state’s loon population, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources began a loon-monitoring program in 1994. After the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion killed thousands of loons overwintering in the Gulf of Mexico, a settlement awarded Minnesota $7.52 million as compensation for injury to its natural resources. The money has been used to support Minnesota’s Loon Restoration Project, which focuses on eight counties in north-central Minnesota. The loon is a Minnesota icon, and organizations have adopted it as their emblem. When the Minnesota State Lottery began in 1989, it used the loon as its logo to remind people that some lottery earnings supported state conservation programs. In 2002 a loon design became an option on Minnesota license plates, and in 2005, it was put on the state quarter. The Minnesota United FC, Minnesota’s professional men’s soccer club, started using a stylized loon logo in 2013. The team is often called “the Loons.” And in May 2024, Minnesota adopted a new state seal featuring a loon at its center. Also in 2024, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) rated the loon a species of “Least Concern” for extinction, and the bird continued to return to its range south of the Twin Cities. In spite of these gains, however, climate change, pollution, habitat loss, disturbance by humans, and use of lead fishing weights continue to threaten the loon population in Minnesota.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/7944829792_4d605b25aa_b_loon_Flickr.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/common-loon"},{"alt":"","author":[{"name":"Anna Chu","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/anna-chu"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"October 21, 2024","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Origins of the Vietnamese Community at St. Adalbert Church, St. Paul","postbody":"The Vietnamese Catholic community at St. Adalbert Church in St. Paul (265 Charles Avenue) began growing in 1990, after Father Tim Kernan sponsored two Vietnamese families. Between 1990 and ...","searchtext":"The Vietnamese Catholic community at St. Adalbert Church in St. Paul (265 Charles Avenue) began growing in 1990, after Father Tim Kernan sponsored two Vietnamese families. Between 1990 and 2003, that community flourished due to increased immigration, a strong sense of faith, and the desire to maintain Vietnamese heritage in the youth born in Minnesota. The Vietnamese families that settled in St. Paul’s Frogtown neighborhood came at the end of the second wave and the beginning of the third wave of Vietnamese immigration to the US. Most immigrants in the first wave were Vietnamese military or government personnel who had worked closely with the US government during the Vietnam War and escaped after the Fall of Saigon (1975). The second wave (late 1970s) consisted of refugees escaping from communist rule, and the third (1980s–1990s) was made up of people reunited through family-sponsored programs. Two refugees in this last wave, Khuong Trieu and Thuat Nguyen, moved to Minnesota in 1989 to join the congregation at St. Adalbert after they were sponsored by Father Tim Kernan and Maggie Rein, a nun at the parish. In the early 1990, St. Adalbert’s Vietnamese community was a mix of families sponsored by the church and those relocated by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ Orderly Departure Program (ODP), as well as the subprogram Humanitarian Operation (HO). The HO program was specifically for former reeducation camp prisoners to immigrate to the US. In order to help Vietnamese families maintain their faith, Father Tim worked with a priest from St. Joseph Hien, a prominent Vietnamese Catholic Community in Minneapolis, to hold Vietnamese mass at St. Adalbert. At the time, St Joseph Hien Church celebrated the only Vietnamese-language mass in Minnesota. Starting in 1993, Father Matthias Chuong came every other week to St. Adalbert to host mass in Vietnamese. As St. Paul’s Vietnamese population continued to grow between 1990 and 1994, St. Adalbert was assigned a temporary associate Vietnamese pastor: Cha Le Quang Peter (Father Peter Quang Le). Father Tim and Vietnamese leaders encouraged the intermingling of the original, primarily Polish parish with the new and growing Vietnamese parish. In 1995, the Vietnamese community at St. Adalbert held its first annual celebration of Tết (Vietnamese Lunar New Year), and by 1996, there were 200 Vietnamese families attending mass there. When Cha Peter left in 1997 due to differences with Father Tim, the Vietnamese community and Vietnamese leadership expressed concerns about who would take over Vietnamese mass. In response, the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis assigned two temporary Vietnamese priests, Father Minh Vu and Father Son Nguyen, to hold Vietnamese mass at St. Adalbert. St. Adalbert Church struggled financially in the 1990s. When Father Tim passed away in 2001, the Vietnamese community requested that the archdiocese install Father Minh Vu (Cha Minh) as the first Vietnamese pastor of St. Adalbert. His mission began with reviving the congregation’s finances, improving church facilities, and strengthening the Vietnamese community’s ties to their heritage. To climb out of the debt, Cha Minh got creative with fundraising. He encouraged weekly donations and asked parishioners to bring in their recyclables to the church in order to meet operating expenses. He continued to grow the celebration of Tết, and the Vietnamese community came together to sell bánh chưng and bánh tét during the holiday. In the late summer and early fall he promoted Hội Chợ Hè—a summer festival where vendors sell Vietnamese food to fundraise and share Vietnamese culture. In the fall of September 2002, with the support of the Vietnamese families of Cha Minh and Anh Tu from the neighboring Vietnamese churches of St. Columba and St. Joseph Hien, the Vietnamese Eucharistic Youth Movement (Thiếu Nhi Thánh Thể) began at St. Adalbert Church. The group provided a gathering time and space for Vietnamese American Catholic youth. In 2003, workers renovated St. Adalbert’s basement to add bathrooms, another stairwell, and a new elevator. The church also added a PA system, a projector, and screens to better assist in delivering mass. In a newsletter, Cha Minh explained that the changes would make the basement a better and more accessible hosting venue for everyone in the community. The renovations were finished in October of 2003.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/F107-17.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246089,"name":"Religion and Belief","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/origins-vietnamese-community-st-adalbert-church-st-paul"},{"alt":"Buildings in the Albert Lea Commercial Historic District","author":[{"name":"Titian Butash","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/titian-butash"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"September 26, 2024","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Albert Lea Commercial Historic District","postbody":"The original Commercial Historic District of the City of Albert Lea consisted of three square blocks of forty-eight structures built between 1874 and 1928. Featuring iconic examples of ...","searchtext":"The original Commercial Historic District of the City of Albert Lea consisted of three square blocks of forty-eight structures built between 1874 and 1928. Featuring iconic examples of American architecture in a variety of styles, including Beaux Arts, Classic Revival, Neoclassical, Art Nouveau, and Craftsman, the district was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1987. Sixty-four additional properties added in 2004 extended its period of significance to 1953. The picturesque village of Albert Lea was platted in 1856. It wasn’t until 1868, however, when the Southern Minnesota Railroad built a line through town, that the community’s development accelerated. Albert Lea became a major railway juncture for southern Minnesota, leading to construction of a depot for the Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad at 606 South Broadway (also in 1868). A modern station replaced the original in 1914. The second structure supported rail networks connecting East–West and North–South crosspoints across the continental United States, giving Albert Lea a role in both local commercial growth and national westward expansion. Merchants and tradespeople moved to Albert Lea in these decades to market their goods, services, and amusements, building shops along central Broadway Avenue in architectural styles derived from Classicism. The appeal of this aesthetic, in turn, attracted new businesses to town. Prosperous citizens chiseled their names into the facades of their buildings, which inspired the practice in honor of other civic-minded individuals. Among them were Lester Wedge Spicer, who built a drugstore (104 South Broadway) showcasing Italianate masonry in 1874; Adam Wiegand, who erected the Wiegand Building (202 South Broadway) in 1892; and Henry J. Harm, who opened a namesake jewelry store (201 and 211 South Broadway) in 1922. Wiegand chose Romanesque-inspired arches in the monumental Richardsonian style for his building, while Harm hired Minneapolis architects who brought in marble and terra cotta tile for his store. Broadway was an entertainment hub in tandem with its business center. The Marion Ross Center for the Performing Arts (named for the Albert Lea-born actress known for playing Richie Cunningham’s mother on “Happy Days”) was built at 147 North Broadway between 1909 and 1910. The nearby Bessesen Opera House/Rivoli Theatre (224 South Broadway) was commissioned in 1916 by Dr. William Bessesen to showcase the singing talents of his wife, the opera singer Beatrice Gjertsen Bessesen. An international operatic sensation, Prima Donna Bessesen taught voice lessons in an upper floor studio of an adjacent Arts and Crafts and Art Nouveau building. The theater features Renaissance palace-style design and triptych-like arches spanning three upper storeys. Before the 1930s, Broadway Avenue was intersected by a series of unpaved streetways and boardwalks at Clark, William, College, and Pearl streets, as well as at Water Street (renamed Marion Ross Street in 2021). Though many roads remained unpaved, the area flourished. A 1902 grant from philanthropist Andrew Carnegie funded the 1903 construction of a red brickwork library at 147 West College Street designed by Schick and Ross of La Crosse, Wisconsin. The Beaux Arts building is defined by its signature angled entryway, a design adaptation to accommodate the site. The Classical Revival First National Bank, completed in the same year, originally welcomed customers through the main entrance on William Street; this entryway was reconfigured onto 139 South Broadway in 1920. Concrete replaced the original wood-block pavement outside the bank in 1935. Most of Albert Lea’s buildings were made of natural materials before the 1910s. Crews brought in stone from quarries in the upper Minnesota and Mississippi river valleys, including Mankato; clay was used in brickwork, and to replicate marble. After World War I, industrial materials like steel and glass replaced natural ones, bringing the architectural past into a new context reflecting local taste and national identity. When historians added Albert Lea’s Commercial Historic District to the National Register in 1987, they outlined a period of significance for both contributing and non-contributing structures from 1874 to 1928. In 2004, they extended that timeframe through 1953 to include original architectural structures that have not been physically altered, embracing the late-nineteenth through mid-twentieth centuries. The National Register listing secures the district’s legacy as a well-preserved collection of American architecture in the Renaissance, Neoclassical, Romanesque, and modern styles.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/LOC_service-pnp-highsm-59800-59803v.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246079,"name":"Cities and Towns","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/albert-lea-commercial-historic-district"},{"alt":"Roland Dille","author":[{"name":"Trista Raezer-Stursa","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/trista-raezer-stursa"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"September 13, 2024","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Dille, Roland (1924–2014)","postbody":"Dr. Roland Dille was the longest-serving president of what is now Minnesota State University Moorhead, from 1968 to 1994. While shepherding the campus through tumultuous years of Vietnam ...","searchtext":"Dr. Roland Dille was the longest-serving president of what is now Minnesota State University Moorhead, from 1968 to 1994. While shepherding the campus through tumultuous years of Vietnam War protests, racial tensions, and other controversial issues, he earned the respect of his campus community and helped the university grow to its peak enrollment in 1990. Roland Paul Dille was born on September 16, 1924, in Dassel, Minnesota, to Oliver and Eleanor (Johnson) Dille. He grew up on a farm. After graduating from high school in 1942, he attended the University of Minnesota before being drafted in 1943 to serve in the 66th Infantry Division of the US Army in World War II. Dille returned to the University of Minnesota after the war and earned a degree in English in 1949. In 1948 he married Beth Hopeman, and the couple had four children. After teaching English at the Dassel high school for a year, Dille returned to the University of Minnesota to work on a PhD in English while teaching English at the University of Minnesota, St. Olaf College, and California Lutheran College. Dille earned his PhD in 1962 and began to teach English at Moorhead State College (now Minnesota State University Moorhead) the following year. After teaching English for three years, Dille was promoted to associate academic dean, then academic dean, then college president. Faculty recommended him to the State University Board, and he became the first former faculty member to become president, in November 1968. Dille took over the presidency during a contentious time and had large shoes to fill. His predecessor, John Neumaier, a Jew who had escaped Nazi Germany, had been a charismatic and popular president, though not without controversy. Before he left, Neumaier had created Project E-Quality—a program that recruited disadvantaged students of color, offering them scholarships and support. Defending the project, on top of growing protests on campus against the Vietnam War, was quite the challenge for a new president. Dille had started the work to launch Project E-Quality while still academic dean, but it wasn’t until the fall of 1968 that fifty black, Hispanic, and Native American students started the program. Dille and his family received death threats, his car was covered in paint, and some community members voiced displeasure about bringing minority students to Moorhead. Tensions peaked when a misunderstanding over a dorm-room pizza delivery led to a scuffle between white and Black students in which a Black student shot a blank from a starter pistol. These initial tensions soon dissipated, however, and Project E-Quality students graduated at a higher rate than other students. The program ended in 1974. Dille soon had another controversy on his hands involving the student newspaper, the MISTIC. The first issue, published in the fall of 1968, included an article with printed quotations from Democratic National Convention witnesses who used swear words. The MISTIC was in hot water for the rest of the academic year, but things came to a head when another article was published in May 1969 that contained more swear words. Dille suspended the newspaper, arguing that he could now allow state funding to support it. Moorhead State did not have a student newspaper again until the Advocate started in 1971. When students held on-campus protests, Dille was more protective of free speech rights. He refused the FBI’s request to search the dorm rooms of two students suspected of being communists; protected an anti-war professor who some called on to be fired; and refused to allow police and national guard presence on campus after the Kent State shooting. After police killed two Black students at Jackson State College in 1970, Black students at Moorhead State planned to boycott classes. In response, Dille suspended classes—essentially ending the spring semester—to prevent violence and allow teach-ins and protests. Despite Dille’s early hurdles, his twenty-six-year presidency was considered a success. Five new buildings were erected, and enrollment rose from a little over 5,000 in 1968 to a high of 9,100 students in 1990. He was known for allowing students to visit his office at any time; for dressing up as Santa Claus in the Student Union every December; and for starting a popular on-campus Fourth of July celebration. During his tenure, Moorhead State College became Moorhead State University, and he founded the Alumni Foundation, the Regional Science Center, and the New Center for Multidisciplinary Studies. When he retired in 1994, the campus’s Center for the Arts was renamed the Roland Dille Center for the Arts. Dille died on May 26, 2014, in Moorhead, at eighty-nine years old. He was buried in Prairie Home Cemetery.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Dille004.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056210,"name":"Education","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/dille-roland-1924-2014"},{"alt":"Watt Munisotaram","author":[{"name":"ReligionsMN","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/religionsmn"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"August 29, 2024","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Watt Munisotaram","postbody":"Watt Munisotaram—the only Cambodian Buddhist temple in Minnesota and the largest in the US—sits on a forty-acre rural site about thirty minutes south of St. Paul. Although its founding ...","searchtext":"Watt Munisotaram—the only Cambodian Buddhist temple in Minnesota and the largest in the US—sits on a forty-acre rural site about thirty minutes south of St. Paul. Although its founding organization, the Minnesota Cambodian Buddhist Society, was established in 1982, it was not until 2007 that members consecrated a temple on forty acres of their own land. Significant Cambodian immigration to the United States did not begin until 1979. Of the foreign-born Cambodians in the US in 1990, 86 percent arrived after 1980 because of unrest after the Vietnam War, the Cambodian Civil War, and genocide under the oppressive regime of the Khmer Rouge. Because of the country’s politically unsafe environment, most Cambodians arrived in the US with refugee status, affording them the support of refugee organizations and government agencies. Although assimilating to a new country was difficult due to cultural differences and trauma from the horror many had experienced in Cambodia, the US nevertheless provided Cambodians the opportunity to live safely, healthfully, and freely. The influx of refugees slowed around 1985, when Cambodia started to stabilize. In 1982, a small group of Cambodian refugees to the US gathered with the intention of forming a Buddhist monastery in Minnesota. Seeking assistance, they contacted the main Buddhist temple in Washington, DC. The national organization then sent them a monk, the Venerable Chey Siddhi San, to serve as the first abbot of the watt (temple). The community formed the Minnesota Cambodia Buddhist Society, a nonprofit organization, and the Watt Munisotaram congregation held its first services in a rented house in Minneapolis. In 1984, the congregation moved to a house in St. Paul in order to be closer to the Cambodian refugees who had settled there. Many of them had struggled to travel to the location in Minneapolis, which was not close to public transportation. After discussion, they chose the St. Paul location based on its proximity to bus routes. In the summer of 1988, Watt Munisotaram relocated again, this time to a house in the southern Twin Cities suburb of Eagan. The community grew, and attendance at the watt increased, especially during large celebrations and festivals like Khmer New Year. Some neighbors, however, expressed their dismay that the watt||s visitors were accidentally parking in the wrong place, or stepping on their lawns. As a result, the community decided to move yet again, this time out of the Twin Cities and its inner suburbs. The migration continued. Later in the same year, the Minnesota Cambodian Buddhist Society purchased a forty-acre piece of land between the rural towns of Hampton and Farmington, a thirty-minute drive south of downtown St. Paul. At the time of the sale, the only buildings on the property were a rectangular, two-story clapboard house built in 1977 and two barns. The growing community required a larger space and made plans to build dedicated buildings for worship, gathering, and daily life, choosing Cambodian architect Yav Socchea to provide the designs. In 2002, with funding from the Cambodian Buddhist Society and “the generosity and support of the Buddhist Communities in Minnesota and other U.S. states,” construction of Watt Munisotaram began at 2925 220th Street East in Hampton. In addition to an outdoor shrine and a stupa (a place of meditation where relics of the Buddha and two of his disciples are housed), workers built a two-story, fifty-foot-high, 10,000-square-foot temple intended to serve as the watt’s main worship area and gathering space, as well as the centerpiece of the campus. Its top floor was designed with halls for meditation, chanting and ceremonies, while the lower floor was left open for celebrations attended by large groups. Workers finished the construction project in 2007, and a sīmā (sacred assembly area) was consecrated in the main temple in the same year. Thousands of people attended the consecration ceremony, signaling the temple’s importance to both Cambodian and non-Cambodian Theravada Buddhists in Minnesota, the Midwest, and the entire United States. Watt Munisotaram continued to grow into its role as a community hub in the 2010s. The temple hosted benefit parties featuring Cambodian dance; welcomed three new live-in monks; and opened a reflection pond to worshippers. The old temple (the two-story house) remained in use as a year-round residence for monks and priests, and in 2017, the Red Building (the congregation’s old social hall) reopened as a community center. Editor||s note: This article is adapted for MNopedia from a digital exhibit created by ReligionsMN, a project at Carleton College. Its content is available through a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Watt Munisotaram.jpeg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246089,"name":"Religion and Belief","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/watt-munisotaram"},{"alt":"Clarence Cochran","author":[{"name":"Paul Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/paul-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"August 07, 2024","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Die Volkszeitung financial fraud","postbody":"World War I took a toll on Die Volkszeitung, St. Paul’s German-language newspaper. The long-time editor, Fritz Bergmeier, was sent to an internment camp. The paper lost its state printing ...","searchtext":"World War I took a toll on Die Volkszeitung, St. Paul’s German-language newspaper. The long-time editor, Fritz Bergmeier, was sent to an internment camp. The paper lost its state printing contracts. Profits dwindled. After the war the paper’s owner, Clara Bergmeier, wanted to sell but found no buyers. This created an opportunity for an opportunist and con man, Clarence Cochran, to engineer a massive financial fraud aimed at German immigrants. Arthur Lorenz and Clarence Cochran met in the Ramsey County jail in 1921. Lorenz, then editor of Die Volkszeitung, had been arrested on an Illinois warrant for criminal libel; he had called American World War I veterans “tramps, vagabonds, and bums” in a German-language newspaper in Chicago. Cochran had been arrested on a bad check charge. Lorenz hired Cochran as Volkszeitung’s circulation manager. Within months he owned the newspaper. Clara Bergmeier had found no buyers at $100,000; Cochran agreed to pay her $150,000. He got the money (he had none of his own) by selling the stocks and bonds of Volkszeitung and two related businesses to many of its 16,000, mostly German-immigrant subscribers. The other businesses included Loring Park Sanatorium, which claimed a cure for diabetes devised in Germany, and Hardstone Brick Companies, which claimed to make superior bricks using German machines and formulas. Both businesses were fake, their stock and securities worthless. Cochran’s sales team nevertheless sold some two million dollars of stocks and bonds to Volkszeitung subscribers, mostly in Minnesota, but also in Wisconsin, the Dakotas, Iowa, Missouri, and Montana. They were trained to play upon German ethnic pride and resentments left over from the anti-German xenophobia of World War I. One obstacle that Cochran faced was Minnesota’s newly created securities law, which required stocks and some corporate debt, like bonds, to be registered with the state and their salesmen to be licensed. Cochran had had a license, but lost it, and was known to state investigators as a con man and crook. He nevertheless succeeded, for all the time he needed, in getting his ventures registered, at least in part because he had a friend in high places. In 1925 Governor Theodore Christianson had appointed Minneapolis banker Andrew Nelson state securities commissioner. Nelson, then fifty-eight years old, had no government experience. He did, however, have a side-business: he owned a Swedish-language newspaper—Minnesota Stats-Tidning—that shared a building and printing plant with Volkszeitung. He and Cochran got to know one another. In 1926, the year Cochran wanted to register some of his Hardstone Brick companies, he arranged to buy Stats-Tidning from Nelson for fifty thousand dollars, considerably more than its market value. When Hardstone Brick of Little Falls (a company that existed only on paper) came before the Securities Commission for approval, state investigators warned Nelson that every Cochran enterprise was a fraud. Nelson approved it anyway. At that moment, Cochran owed Nelson $35,000, so for Nelson to get paid, he needed Cochran’s salesmen selling Cochran’s securities. Meanwhile, the Securities Division was getting complaints from all over the state, and beyond that, holders of Volkszeitung, Loring, and Hardstone securities were not getting paid. The whole scheme soon came crashing down. Cochran, Nelson, and fourteen of their salesmen were charged with federal mail fraud. The trial, held in today’s Landmark Center, lasted over fifty days, making it the longest in Minnesota history at the time. Nelson insisted he had done nothing wrong. Cochran blamed the government; with just a little more time, the brick companies would have started making bricks (they made none), and all would have been well. The jury did not agree. Cochran, Nelson, and Lorenz all got twenty years in prison. Most of the salesmen got prison time, too. Almost all of the investors in Cochran’s enterprises were German immigrants of scant means. The number of identified victims exceeded one thousand, with losses ranging from twenty dollars to fourteen thousand. Average losses were only a few hundred dollars, but these people had very little to spare.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/37134.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246060,"name":"Crime and Punishment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/die-volkszeitung-financial-fraud"},{"alt":"Hallie Q. Brown House staff, 1935","author":[{"name":"Sherick Francois","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/sherick-francois"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 29, 2024","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Hallie Q. Brown Community Center, St. Paul","postbody":"Hallie Q. Brown Community Center (HQB) was founded in 1929 to support the growing Black community of St. Paul. Established to promote social harmony and help people find adequate housing, ...","searchtext":"Hallie Q. Brown Community Center (HQB) was founded in 1929 to support the growing Black community of St. Paul. Established to promote social harmony and help people find adequate housing, HQB also provided a place of refuge and solace. It became the second-largest neighborhood center in St. Paul, complementing the Phyllis Wheatley Settlement House in Minneapolis. HQB’s origins lie in the Settlement Housing Movement, ca. 1880s–1920s. As European immigrants joined Black migrants from the South in northern US cities, social reformers founded settlement houses: organizations that provided services like education, healthcare, and childcare to the newcomers. While European immigrants benefited, Black communities did not. The overall belief among many of the white settlement leaders was that “Blacks could better progress on their own, through separate self-help or racially oriented organizations, but not through the settlement house movement.” As a result, many Black women reformers participated in a separate settlement-housing movement. As more Black Americans migrated from the South to St. Paul, community leaders saw a need for social centers for Blacks, who were at that time barred from many local facilities. The local Odd Fellows and Masons—two St. Paul organizations—then came together to purchase six lots on Aurora Avenue between Kent and Mackubin Streets. This led to the formation of the Union Hall Association in 1914. With funding from the YWCA and the St. Paul Urban League from 1923 through 1929, the Union Hall Association hosted programs and provided meeting spaces. St. Paul Urban League Executive Secretary Elmer A. Carter surveyed additional sites, and in or around January 1929, members of an advisory committee met to discuss ideas for a new community center. In April of 1929, the emerging organization hired I. Myrtle Carden as its executive director and organized discussions about what its name should be. The board and community members decided to select the name through an essay contest that invited students to profile a prominent leader. Herbert Howell, a student from Hamline University, won the contest with an essay about the suffragist, educator, and activist Hallie Q. Brown. Thus, Hallie Q. Brown Community Center was born. During Carden’s tenure as director, HQB organized a daycare, young-adult and seniors programs, recreation opportunities, and meetings. It became a hub for local groups like the Golden Agers, the St. Paul Women’s Council, and the Men’s Council. Unique for its time, the center exposed participants to activities that many African Americans could not access, such as “camping, archery, athletics[,] debates, home economics, [and] nursery school.” Known as “Hallie,” the center offered an escape from the daily stresses of living in racially segregated America, including racist housing covenants. During the early 1960s, the Minnesota Highways Department collaborated with the Federal Highways Administration to build Interstate 94. The construction displaced thousands of residents in St. Paul’s Rondo neighborhood—the home of HQB and “the heart of Saint Paul’s black community.” Newly hired director Alice S. Onqué and other staff at HQB pondered difficult questions: “Where to relocate?” “How to best serve the community?” After conducting a community survey, HQB chose to relocate to the south side of I-94. Henry R. Thomas, the center’s third executive director, helped raise funds for the construction of a new building, as did HQB’s board of directors, and in 1972 the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Recreation Center was built at 270 North Kent Street. During the 1970s, HQB offered a myriad of arts programming that both served the community and reflected the diversity of needs within it. The center during this time also offered child development programs, juvenile delinquency prevention, activities for senior citizens, cultural arts opportunities, and job development. Program developers “recognized the fact that visual art, music, literature, and theater can strengthen collective identity, combat racial stereotypes, and affirm a sense of self-worth.” In 1976, HQB was awarded a $150,000 grant to support its cultural arts programming. This funding led to the hiring of Lou Bellamy, who founded Penumbra Theatre Company inside the MLK Community Center in the same year. In the 2020s, HQB functions as a multi-service center that prides itself on serving the community; promoting African American heritage; inspiring personal growth, self-sufficiency, and self-determination; and developing community leadership. It has continually expanded its outreach efforts to meet the needs of all groups seeking a supportive service agency, including the Twin Cities’ growing Hmong, Somali, and Latino populations.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/HV1.3 p12.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056216,"name":"African Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/hallie-q-brown-community-center"},{"alt":"Purple Rain album cover","author":[{"name":"Kristen Zschomler","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/kristen-zschomler"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 26, 2024","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Purple Rain (film and album)","postbody":"Purple Rain is the title of both a film and an album by Prince, released in 1984. The album gave the twenty-six-year-old Minneapolis native his first Number One hits, and the movie, while ...","searchtext":"Purple Rain is the title of both a film and an album by Prince, released in 1984. The album gave the twenty-six-year-old Minneapolis native his first Number One hits, and the movie, while not critically lauded, was a box office success. The film, album, and subsequent worldwide tour propelled Prince’s rising star into the stratosphere, making him as famous as contemporaries like Michael Jackson and Madonna. By his late teens, Prince had already worked as a session musician, recorded original songs, and learned studio recording techniques. He produced, arranged, composed, and performed all the songs on his demo tapes, which landed him a three-record recording contract with Warner Bros. His first five albums were released between 1978 and 1982; to promote the last of these (1999), he filmed music videos that aired on the newly launched MTV. He achieved growing success with each release but was by no means a household name. The young artist envisioned a major motion picture as early as 1982, sketching out a story he called |||Dreams.||| After he pitched the idea to Warner Bros., the studio hired screenwriter William Blinn and director Albert Magnoli to develop Prince’s story into the plot of Purple Rain. In the movie, Prince’s character, known simply as the Kid, is a struggling musician who leads the band the Revolution. The charismatic Morris Day and his band The Time are their rivals, and both bands are fighting to stay on the bill at Minneapolis’s biggest club, First Avenue. The two male leads fight for the affections of Apollonia, a dancer and singer also hoping to make it big at the famous club. The Kid struggles at home, where he witnesses his father abusing his mother, and with his band members, whose musical ideas he discounts. Ultimately, the Kid confronts and overcomes patterns of intergenerational abuse, learns to be vulnerable and trust others, and triumphs over the critics who had written him off. While the script was being finalized, Prince spent 1983 writing and recording songs not only for the Revolution, but for Morris Day and The Time and Apollonia’s group, Apollonia 6. An astute businessperson, Prince realized he could put out three albums instead of one soundtrack. Purple Rain was not a soundtrack; the album contained only songs by Prince and the Revolution, presented in a different order than in the movie. The songs by Morris Day and The Time and Apollonia 6 were released as separate albums and were essentially Prince releases. Prince wrote, performed, and engineered all of the music, with Day and the Apollonia 6 singers providing only vocals. To prepare for filming, all the Purple Rain musicians took acting and dancing classes (the latter with the Minnesota Dance Theatre, MDT). Prince wanted to support the financially struggling MDT, so on August 3, 1983, the Revolution headlined a fundraiser for them at First Avenue. The impact of that night, which raised $23,000 for MDT, extended beyond fundraising. When Prince listened to a recording of the live performance, he realized the audio quality was high, and the reaction from the crowd was electric. As a result, he used the versions of “I Would Die 4 U,” “Baby I’m A Star,” and “Purple Rain” recorded that night at First Avenue on the album and in the movie. The album was released on June 25 and the movie on July 27, 1984. Although it was a relatively low-budget production with a rookie cast, the movie grossed $70 million at the box office, and the album sold millions of copies by the fall. The album also gave Prince his first Number One hits: “Let’s Go Crazy” and “When Doves Cry.” While the movie’s climactic song of the same name reached only Number Two on the charts, in 1985 it brought Prince another accolade: the Oscar for Best Original Song Score for “Purple Rain.” The Purple Rain worldwide tour, launched that fall and continued through April 1985, solidified Prince as a superstar. The Purple Rain album consistently ranks highly among the entertainment industry’s lists of the top albums of all time. The album’s significance has been recognized not only in popular culture, but also by the National Recording Preservation Board, which included it in the National Recording Registry in 2012.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/c58e57-20220830-prince-purple-rain-album-webp1500.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/purple-rain-film-and-album"},{"alt":"Honeycrisp apple","author":[{"name":"Rita Pyrillis","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/rita-pyrillis"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 22, 2024","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Honeycrisp apple","postbody":"In 1982, apple variety MN 1711 at the University of Minnesota’s apple breeding program was saved from the reject pile by horticulturist David Bedford and given another year to prove itself ...","searchtext":"In 1982, apple variety MN 1711 at the University of Minnesota’s apple breeding program was saved from the reject pile by horticulturist David Bedford and given another year to prove itself worthy of a patent. The apple, renamed Honeycrisp™, became Minnesota’s official state fruit and one of the most popular apple varieties in the nation. The Honeycrisp (Malus pumila, cultivar Honeycrisp) was developed through cross-pollination at the University of Minnesota Horticultural Research Center in Victoria. After extensive testing for flavor, texture, and appearance, among other traits, it was patented in 1988 and released in 1991 to nurseries that sell to commercial apple growers. Apple breeding is a lengthy process, taking up to thirty years for a new apple variety to hit the market after cross-pollination. The tree that Bedford saved in 1982 was one of four clones of MN 1711, which was cross-bred in 1960 by Dr. Cecil Stushnoff, former head of the Horticultural Research Center. The original MN 1711 was badly damaged during the winter of 1976–77 and discarded, but not before it was propagated to produce the clones, which were forgotten. Bedford, who was hired in 1979 after Stushnoff left the university, rediscovered one of the clones while reviewing trees marked for termination. After researching its origins, he believed that the mother tree was planted in less-than-optimal conditions and decided to give MN 1711 another chance. When he did, the results were delicious. To capture the variety’s signature crunch and juicy texture, Bedford once described the Honeycrisp as “a piece of apple shrapnel in your mouth.” Its taste is often described as honey-sweet with a touch of tart. A medium- to large-sized apple compared with other varieties, in Minnesota it’s harvested between September 15 and October 5. The first Honeycrisps hit grocery stores in 1996, nearly a decade after Dennis Courtier, owner of Pepin Heights Orchards in Lake City, took his first bite while sampling apples at the university. The fruit soon developed a loyal following among consumers, and in 2006, it became the Minnesota State Fruit thanks to a letter-writing campaign by a class of fourth graders at Andersen Elementary School in Bayport. That same year, the Honeycrisp was recognized by the AUTM (formerly known as the Association of University Technology Managers) as one of twenty-five innovations that changed the world, along with Google and the nicotine patch. The Honeycrisp transformed Minnesota’s languishing apple-growing industry, bringing fresh revenue to small, family-run orchards. It was also an economic boon for the university, which received $16.5 million in royalties by 2019. These sales made the Honeycrisp its third-most-profitable invention after an anti-HIV drug and a gene-editing technique used in cancer treatment. The fruit’s patent expired in 2008, but the university continued to make money through overseas licensing. Honeycrisps sell at a premium price—more than double that of other popular varieties, such as the Gala and Granny Smith. This is in part because they can be difficult to grow, with delicate skins that sunburn easily and a tendency to develop sunken brown spots, known as bitter pit. Only 55 to 60 percent of the apples make it to market. But the Honeycrisp is a hardy variety, bred to maintain its quality through Minnesota’s frigid winters and humid summers. It’s also renowned for its long shelf life, keeping its signature snap for at least seven months in refrigerated storage. The university’s apple breeding program, one of three large-scale apple-breeding and genetics operations in the country, was created in 1878, discontinued, and then restarted in 1908 to create high quality winter-hardy apples. There are between 20,000 and 25,000 trees in various stages of development and evaluation at the research center at any given time. Only 1 percent are released to the public. Since its founding, the program has introduced twenty-nine apple varieties, but so far, Honeycrisp is its star. For many years it was believed that Honeycrisp descended from Macoun and Honeygold apples, but DNA tests conducted by the university in 2017 determined that its parents were the Keepsake and MN 1627, an unreleased variety. Further research revealed an august ancestry, determining that Honeycrisp is the grandchild of Golden Delicious and Duchess of Oldenburg, which was brought from England to the United States in 1835. Today, Honeycrisp is one of the top six apples grown in the United States. It is also commercially grown in Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, Australia, and Europe, where it’s known as Honeycrunch ®.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Honeycrisp-Apple.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246091,"name":"Agriculture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246052,"name":"Science and Technology","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/honeycrisp-apple"},{"alt":"Sign at the entrance of Cherokee Regional Park","author":[{"name":"Emily Shepard","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/emily-shepard"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 10, 2024","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Cherokee Park, St. Paul","postbody":"Cherokee Park, located in the West Side neighborhood of St. Paul, is a regional park comprising 100 acres of forested bluff and blufftop parklands along the Mississippi River. The St. Paul ...","searchtext":"Cherokee Park, located in the West Side neighborhood of St. Paul, is a regional park comprising 100 acres of forested bluff and blufftop parklands along the Mississippi River. The St. Paul Park Board first established a ten-acre section of the park in 1905 near the High Bridge, with subsequent expansions in 1906, the 1910s, and the 1970s. The park is well known for its spectacular view of the Mississippi River Valley, and of both downtown St. Paul and Minneapolis. Situated on a high bluff along the western bank of the Mississippi River, Cherokee Park sits amid a landscape of Dakota sacred sites, including Bdote (the confluence of the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers) and Wakan Tipi (Carver’s Cave). For thousands of years, the area’s proximity to the river, floodplains, Pickerel Lake, and upland bluffs offered a variety of resources for Indigenous inhabitants of the area. In 1851, the Treaty of Mendota resulted in the Dakota transferring a vast swath of land to the United States government, including the area that is now Cherokee Park. The United States government has yet to deliver much of the promised payment under the treaty. By the mid-1850s, the area that is now Cherokee Park was owned by various private citizens. By the 1890s, the land that is currently Cherokee Park was platted, with streets and homes planned for the area. Some homes and other structures had already been built on the current parkland. Nevertheless, the St. Paul Park Board was eager to use this land for a public boulevard, which was proposed to begin around the intersection of Cesar Chavez Street and Isabel Street West, head along the bluff toward the High Bridge, and then stretch another four miles to the town of Mendota. The Park Board had difficulty in securing this land, as it was all already privately owned. In 1905, however, donations of land and money from West Side residents resulted in a ten-acre section of land east of the High Bridge being designated as a park, which was called the West Side Boulevard. In 1906, a subsequent monetary donation made by James J. Hill enabled another nine-acre expansion of the park to the west of the High Bridge. The Park Board acquired the southern portion of the park in 1915, and around this time the park was renamed Cherokee Heights Park. Beyond grading a dirt road, few park “improvements” were made during these years. The 1920s marked the beginning of more extensive development in the park, including a widened and paved road, and construction of recreational facilities such as horseshoe, tennis, and kitten-ball courts. In 1920, a municipal tourist campground was established that hosted approximately 10,000 travelers each summer. Facilities at the campground included tables, permanent stoves, water, lights, a pavilion, and a bathhouse with hot showers. The campground was initially located along Chippewa Avenue. After a few years, the campground was moved to the western boundary of the park, away from the residential area and neighbors who considered it an eyesore. The campground was shuttered in the early 1930s, and the park became a popular destination for picnics. In the following decades, the park hosted band concerts, an ice-skating rink, a toboggan slide, community sings, horseshoe and tennis leagues, annual West Side Fourth of July celebrations, and countless community and family gatherings. In the late 1960s, several development projects were proposed in the vicinity of the park. The St. Paul Port Authority attempted to purchase fifty acres of land adjacent to the park owned by the Twin Cities Brick Company with the goal of establishing an industrial zone and scrapyard. This plan was ultimately rejected, and twenty-five acres of the Twin Cities Brick Company land along the bluff were eventually incorporated into Cherokee Park. Around this time, a private company presented an offer to lease a portion of the bluff within the park for a ski-racing run. This plan was dismissed due to overwhelming community opposition. In the early twenty-first century, park managers made efforts to restore native vegetation and increase accessibility to picnic facilities. In 2024, the spectacular views that first inspired the St. Paul Park Board to establish this area as public land continue to be enjoyed by park visitors.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/IMG_3210(2).jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246079,"name":"Cities and Towns","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/cherokee-park-st-paul"},{"alt":"Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis","author":[{"name":"Kristen Zschomler","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/kristen-zschomler"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 02, 2024","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Minneapolis Sound (music genre)","postbody":"The Minneapolis Sound is a music genre popularized by Prince and his many side bands, including Morris Day and The Time, the Family, Vanity 6, and Apollonia 6, as well as Jimmy Jam and ...","searchtext":"The Minneapolis Sound is a music genre popularized by Prince and his many side bands, including Morris Day and The Time, the Family, Vanity 6, and Apollonia 6, as well as Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis (working most notably with Janet Jackson) and the Jets. The Minneapolis Sound defined the sonic landscape of the 1980s and 1990s with its heavy punk- and rock-guitar solos, hard-driving, funky bass lines, and synth-forward, new-wave pop sensibilities. In the twenty-first century, it continues to influence artists like Janelle Monáe, Lizzo, Bruno Mars, and Brittany Howard. The unique blending of musical styles that became the Minneapolis Sound has its foundations in the geography, demography, and culture of its namesake city. Racial housing covenants concentrated African Americans into the Northside and Southside neighborhoods, where the artists associated with it grew up; the white rock music dominating the radio airwaves influenced their sound aesthetic; and the strong Minneapolis school-music programs taught by Jimmy Hamilton educating them in the business of music and music theory. But perhaps the most crucial ingredient in the development of the Minneapolis Sound was the community center The Way. Created after the civil unrest in the Near North neighborhood in 1966 and 1967, The Way was the cornerstone of local arts and music. Musically inclined kids from the Northside such as Prince, Terry Lewis, Morris Day, and André Cymone hung out with local musicians like Pierre Lewis and Sonny Thompson. They absorbed the rhythm and blues, soul, and funk grooves of the house band the Family, while playing on instruments The Way provided. They then took their skills to the street, playing in Battles of the Bands throughout the city. While these young artists were honing their musical skills, another key ingredient of the genre’s unique sounds developed. In the 1970s, the LinnDrum machine and Polymoog synthesizers revolutionized the sonic landscape of popular music. Even folk singer Cat Stevens experimented with these instruments on his pioneering pop-synth album Izitso (1977), partially recorded at Minneapolis’s premier recording studio, Sound 80. At the same time, a young, local musical prodigy named Prince Rogers Nelson was also recording in the studio, “got hip to Polymoogs,” and became a master of the drum machine. Prince, and then, later, James “Jimmy Jam” Harris III and Terry Lewis, infused these emerging technologies into their funk, rock, soul, punk, and new wave sensibilities to create a layered, complex synthesis of music never heard before. The 1980s were the heyday of the Minneapolis Sound. Prince’s popularity grew with each album he released that decade—Dirty Mind (1980), Controversy (1981), and 1999 (1982)—and his striking looks, fashion, and dancing spurred MTV to play his videos in heavy rotation. He was such a prolific artist that he wrote more songs that his record label allowed him to release, so he created numerous side projects with artists like Morris Day and the Time (which included Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis), Jill Jones, and Sheila E. With no Number One hits and only one Top Ten album (1999), Prince pitched the idea of a major motion picture to accompany his fifth album to his label, Warner Bros. The movie and album Purple Rain were released in 1984 and were instant hits, making Prince an international superstar and putting Minneapolis on the musical map. During the last half of the 1980s and throughout the rest of his life, Prince continued to explore new musical styles, and to evolve the Minneapolis Sound. After being fired by Prince in 1983, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis started Flyte Tyme Productions and opened a recording studio in South Minneapolis. The songwriting and producing duo had success with the Human League and S.O.S., but it was their work with Janet Jackson in the mid-1980s that catapulted them and their version of the Minneapolis Sound into worldwide fame. Infusing their New Jack Swing with Jackson’s neo-soul innovations, the trio went on to create numerous hit albums throughout the early 2000s. Jam and Lewis are among the most successful songwriting and producing duos of all time. Another popular Minneapolis Sound band was The Jets—eight Tongan American siblings who had attended Robbinsdale Cooper High School together. Having started out as a family band in 1977, they released the hit “Crush On You” in 1986 and performed on three subsequent world tours.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/141_A_1_6.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056216,"name":"African Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/minneapolis-sound-music-genre"},{"alt":"Independent Republicans on election night, 1978","author":[{"name":"Paul Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/paul-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"June 27, 2024","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Minnesota Massacre (1978 election)","postbody":"After the elections of 1974 the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL) held both US Senate seats, all the state constitutional offices, and control of the legislature. Four years ...","searchtext":"After the elections of 1974 the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL) held both US Senate seats, all the state constitutional offices, and control of the legislature. Four years later Minnesota’s Republican Party (the Independent-Republicans, or IR) took the governorship and both US Senate seats by landslide margins while achieving an even split with Democrats in the State House of Representatives. The stunning turnaround came to be known as the Minnesota Massacre. Minnesota’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party came into being with the merger, in 1944, of a resurgent Democratic Party and a Farmer-Labor Party in decline. It grew steadily in the 1950s, led by US Senator Hubert Humphrey and Governor Orville Freeman. Neither of the state’s two major parties dominated Minnesota politics; as late as 1968, however, Republican Governor Harold LeVander had Republican supermajorities in both houses of the legislature. The DFL took control in the elections of 1970, led by Governor Wendell Anderson, Lieutenant Governor Rudy Perpich, Attorney General Warren Spannaus, and US Senators Humphrey and Walter Mondale. In 1972 it took majorities in both houses of the legislature, and the transformation was complete. Governor Anderson and the legislature enjoyed productive sessions between 1971 and 1973, leading to Anderson’s unprecedented re-election victory in 1974. He defeated Republican challenger John Johnson by over 400,000 votes: 786,787 (62.8 percent) to 376,722 (29.35 percent.) In a feat unlikely to be repeated, he carried all eighty-seven of Minnesota’s counties. He later appeared on the cover of Time magazine and received praise for the bundle of legislation known as the Minnesota Miracle. No one could have anticipated the series of events that undid it all. In the summer of 1976 Governor Jimmy Carter of Georgia won the Democratic nomination for president and chose Senator Walter Mondale as his vice-presidential candidate. When they won in November, Mondale’s senate seat became vacant. Against the advice of many, Anderson resigned as governor so that his lieutenant governor, Rudy Perpich, could take his place and appoint him to the US Senate. One year later, in January 1978, Hubert Humphrey died. Perpich appointed his widow, Muriel, in his place, putting both Senate seats in the possession of appointees. As the 1978 midterm elections approached, the US economy suffered stagnation and high inflation. Muriel Humphrey declined to run in the special election to replace her husband as senator. Congressman Donald Fraser won the DFL’s endorsement, but Minneapolis businessman Robert Short narrowly beat him in a bitter and divisive primary election. The Minnesota Republican Party, by contrast, mustered a unified slate of able and personable candidates: Rudy Boschwitz and David Durenberger for the US Senate, and Congressman Albert Quie for governor. The party’s signature message was broadcast on billboards: “The DFL is going to face something scary—an election.” The DFL thus approached election day in 1978 with a ticket headed by Governor Perpich (who had come into office by succession), Senator Wendell Anderson (whose so-called self-appointment had displeased many), and Short (unpopular in his own party). The results vindicated the Republican billboard. Rudy Boschwitz beat Anderson by over 250,000 votes. David Durenberger beat Short by over 400,000 votes. Al Quie defeated Perpich by more than 110,000. The DFL also lost thirty-two seats in the state House of Representatives, leading to an unprecedented split (67 DFLers and 67 IRs) and no party majority on either side. Democrats did not regain both US Senate seats until 2000.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/10e Boschwitz-Quie-Durenberger 11-7-1978.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/minnesota-massacre-1978-election"},{"alt":"Joan and Walter Mondale","author":[{"name":"Tom Weber","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/tom-weber"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"June 05, 2024","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"1976 Presidential Election in Minnesota","postbody":"Former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter and his running mate, Senator Walter Mondale, overwhelmingly won the state of Minnesota and its ten electoral votes in 1976. The Democratic ticket ...","searchtext":"Former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter and his running mate, Senator Walter Mondale, overwhelmingly won the state of Minnesota and its ten electoral votes in 1976. The Democratic ticket scored a nearly thirteen-point victory (54.9 percent to 42.0 percent) over Republican President Gerald Ford and his running mate, Senator Robert Dole. The election was the third of four consecutive presidential races with a Minnesotan on the national ticket of a major party, and it marked the beginning of the longest active streak of any state voting Democratic in presidential elections. After President Richard Nixon’s resignation amid the Watergate Scandal in 1974, Democrats were bullish on their chances of winning back the White House in 1976. US Senator Walter Mondale had spent most of 1974 exploring a run for president but withdrew on November 21. Once Mondale departed, attention turned to Minnesota’s other US senator, Hubert Humphrey, who had run to varying degrees in the previous four presidential elections—including as his party’s nominee in 1968. Humphrey never formally declared a run. Instead, he said, he would allow himself to be a consensus candidate at the party’s convention if it deadlocked. This wasn’t an impossible outcome, given the number of Democrats running in 1976 and new rules on how convention delegates would be selected. Party leaders and Democratic voters didn’t fall behind any one candidate quickly. Humphrey’s chances, however, didn’t last long. Former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter steadily gained delegates in early Democratic primaries, and Humphrey fully dropped out in late April 1976. Republicans, meanwhile, had a contested primary between President Gerald Ford and former California Governor Ronald Reagan. Minnesota’s Republican Party (which had been the only in the country to change its name to the Independent-Republicans, to try to pivot away from the Watergate aftermath) held its convention late in the primary schedule. But the gathering in St. Paul drew more attention in 1976, with both Reagan and First Lady Betty Ford appealing personally to delegates at the convention in St. Paul. Ultimately, Ford won all but one of Minnesota’s delegates. With Nixon having narrowly won Minnesota in 1972, the race for president in Minnesota was still close in the summer of 1976. A confidential poll from June—before the conventions—found Carter leading Ford by just one point (41-40). Once Carter and Ford secured their nominations, attention turned to each nominee’s running mate for vice president. At the Democratic National Convention in July, Humphrey reemerged as a contender, as did Minnesota’s popular governor, Wendell Anderson. But Carter eventually selected Mondale, with Humphrey formally nominating his senate colleague. Two days later, 2,000 supporters greeted Mondale at Minneapolis–St. Paul International Airport ahead of his riding in the Minneapolis Aquatennial parade. He then spent Sunday, July 18, fishing in northern Minnesota before hitting the campaign trail. With a Minnesotan on a major party ticket, the idea quickly dissipated that the state’s race would be competitive. Carter made just one trip to Minnesota as nominee, when he spoke to 70,000 people at Farmfest on September 15. The Ford campaign then scrambled and dispatched vice presidential nominee Senator Robert Dole two days later. He spoke to a crowd about a fifth of the size of Carter’s. 1976 was the third of four consecutive presidential races with a Minnesotan (either Humphrey or Mondale) on the national ticket of a major party. Former Senator Eugene McCarthy also ran for president in 1976, as an independent. Although his candidacy seemed poised to be a spoiler for Democrats, McCarthy ended up a nonfactor. He garnered fewer than two percent of the vote in his home state. Gus Hall, a native Iron Ranger who ran several times as the Communist Party nominee, received less than a tenth of a percent. In addition to the Carter–Mondale ticket’s overwhelming victory in Minnesota in 1976, Humphrey also easily won reelection. The DFL party gained one seat in the Minnesota House and nine in the Senate, giving them majorities of 104-30 and 49-18, respectively. “Let’s face it, we got clobbered,” said Independent-Republican Party chair Chuck Slocum, in a speech to his executive committee a few weeks after the election. The party, however, enjoyed electoral success just two years later in the aftermath of Governor Wendell Anderson appointing himself to the US Senate when Mondale became vice president. The 1976 election marked the beginning of the longest active streak of any state voting Democratic in presidential elections. Only the District of Columbia has a longer active streak of voting Democratic with its three electoral votes.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/10360200.640x640.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/1976-presidential-election-minnesota"},{"alt":"Dimitri Mitropoulos with a musician, ca. 1940","author":[{"name":"Marjorie Savage","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/marjorie-savage"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"May 21, 2024","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Dimitri Mitropoulos at the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, 1937–1949","postbody":"Under the leadership of Greek conductor Dimitri Mitropoulos, the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra (later renamed the Minnesota Orchestra) ranked among the best symphonic orchestras in the ...","searchtext":"Under the leadership of Greek conductor Dimitri Mitropoulos, the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra (later renamed the Minnesota Orchestra) ranked among the best symphonic orchestras in the nation. Critics and audiences both lauded the ensemble, especially for its contemporary music program and its extensive national tours. On January 2, 1936, the popular conductor of the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, abruptly resigned to become co-conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra. With the 1935–36 symphony season well underway, the Minneapolis group’s board of directors decided to organize the 1936–37 season as a showcase of the world’s most talented emerging conductors and hire the best. A year later, and halfway through the line-up of conductors, a maestro little known in the Midwest arrived in Minnesota to present five performances during a two-week residency. From the moment Dimitri Mitropoulos loped across the stage and took his place on the podium, he became the city’s favorite. At the end of his first concert, typically reserved Minneapolis concertgoers were on their feet, shouting bravos and asking, “Can we get him?” Eighteen days later, during the intermission of another candidate’s concert, the orchestra announced that Mitropoulos had accepted a two-year appointment. The following January, Mitropoulos arrived in Minneapolis, moving into a small University of Minnesota dormitory room just steps away from the orchestra’s home in Northrop Auditorium. His energetic style of directing won rave reviews from the musicians and the orchestra’s patrons. He conducted with his whole body, leaping, dancing, and punching the air. His concerts were as much visual as aural. One music critic described him as leading the orchestra “like a man possessed.” Other critics called his conducting choreographic, even acrobatic. Within the first few months of his tenure, Mitropoulos featured some of the nation’s most popular guest soloists, including Artur Rubinstein, Marian Anderson, and Jascha Heifetz. Northrop Auditorium’s 5,000 seats were consistently sold out, earning Minneapolis a reputation as “the biggest weekly symphonic audience in the US.” Throughout World War II, orchestra concerts, like most public gatherings, were infused with patriotic messages, music, and symbolism. The Northrop stage was set with a service banner bearing stars representing the musicians on active military duty. Concerts opened with Mitropoulos leading the audience in singing the National Anthem. Programs highlighted works by Allied composers along with traditional and contemporary American music. Not all ticket holders appreciated the atonal, contemporary pieces, but the conductor insisted that his responsibilities included introducing his audience to new music that would become the classics of the twentieth century. To boost public spirit, the orchestra scheduled extra wartime performances: programs for soldiers at Fort Snelling, pension concerts for retired musicians, and charity concerts for the Red Cross and other local organizations. A new series of Sunday afternoon, one-hour “Twilight Concerts” was introduced for younger audiences. While other national orchestras were canceling or reducing touring dates during the war, the Minneapolis Orchestra expanded its long-standing schedule of off-season tours. Season by season, Mitropoulos’s reputation grew as a point of Minnesota pride. He was generous with his time, working with high school and college orchestras, and he was known for his philanthropy. A devout ascetic, he lived a simple life and gave away most of his salary to support university students, purchase new instruments for needy musicians, and lavishly tip waiters and cab drivers. And he continued to promote new compositions, especially the works of local composers and Hamline University instructors John Verrall and Ernst Krenek. Mitropoulos was frequently asked to serve as guest conductor for the country’s major orchestras, taking him away from Minneapolis for extended periods. The Minneapolis Orchestra opened its 1948–49 concert season without Mitropoulos, who was conducting the New York Philharmonic for eight weeks. Mitropoulos’s national attention sparked rumors that he would soon be lured away by one of the nation’s most prestigious orchestras. That call came at the end of December 1948. Front page headlines in Minneapolis newspapers announced that the maestro would be leaving Minnesota to become co-conductor of the New York Philharmonic, sharing the job with Leopold Stokowski. A year later, he was named the chief conductor of the New York orchestra, a position he held until 1958. His final performance in Northrop Auditorium was March 18, 1949. His successor, Antal Doráti, led his first concert as director of the Minneapolis Symphony on October 21, 1949.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/N5_1 p3.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/dimitri-mitropoulos-minneapolis-symphony-orchestra-1937-1949"},{"alt":"Pilgrim Baptist Church, St. Paul, 2012","author":[{"name":"Elyse Pearson-Hill","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/elyse-pearson-hill"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"May 13, 2024","eraTag":[{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Pilgrim Baptist Church, St. Paul","postbody":"Pilgrim Baptist Church in St. Paul was the first African American Baptist church established in Minnesota. The congregation was founded during the Civil War, in 1863, by enslaved people who ...","searchtext":"Pilgrim Baptist Church in St. Paul was the first African American Baptist church established in Minnesota. The congregation was founded during the Civil War, in 1863, by enslaved people who had escaped from Missouri, including pastor Robert Thomas Hickman. The church’s third building (732 West Central Ave.) was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1991. Robert Thomas Hickman was born into slavery around 1830 in Boone County, Missouri. While enslaved, he worked as a rail splitter, cutting up logs for building fences. After being taught to read by his enslaver, Hickman became a preacher, ministering to other enslaved individuals in the area. His wife, Minta, was born around 1837 in Missouri; she and their children were enslaved in Boone County by another owner, who lived near Robert’s enslaver. In the spring of 1863, Robert, Minta, and their children escaped their enslavers and tried to flee north out of Missouri. Ultimately they made their way to a contraband camp in St. Louis, where they found a steamboat called the Northerner. The boat then brought them up the Mississippi River to Fort Snelling, Minnesota.* On May 6, 1863, approximately 125 people arrived at Fort Snelling via the Northerner. Among them were some of Pilgrim’s charter members: the Hickmans, Fielding and Adeline Combs, Henry and Charlotte Moffit, John B. and Elizabeth Trotter, and Giles Crenshaw. They settled in St. Paul, called themselves Pilgrims, and initially held church services in private homes. As the freedom seekers and their families settled into their new lives in St. Paul, Rev. Hickman sought a place of worship for his group. In November 1863, the Pilgrims succeeded in renting a space in a music hall from Good Samaritans in the Good Templars, a temperance society based at the Concert Hall Building on Third Street. The Pilgrims later petitioned the trustees of First Baptist Church of St. Paul to purchase in trust a lot worth $200.00 on Sibley Street near Morris Street, on which to build a meeting place. First Baptist Church of St. Anthony gave a portion of their building, which was being razed, to Pilgrim’s congregation to be used in the construction of the new church. With this support, Pilgrim’s first dedicated structure was built in 1872 of stone and wood on the Sibley Street site. It cost $2400.00, measured thirty-five feet by seventy-five feet, and had a seating capacity of 300. Between 1864 and 1866, Rev. Hickman and his followers had been part of First Baptist Church of St. Paul and worshiped under Hickman’s direction, with sponsorship from First Baptist Church. On November 15, 1866, Pilgrim Baptist was formally organized and celebrated with a baptismal service on the shores of the Mississippi River. The church was then incorporated in 1870. Rev. Hickman, meanwhile, was licensed to preach, ordained, and became the congregation’s official minister in 1878. In 1886 the church moved from the Sibley Street location to Cedar and Thirteenth Streets. After the move, Hickman retired and was succeeded by Rev. Bird J. Wickins. Civil rights worker Nellie Francis and her husband, diplomat William T. Francis, were active members of Pilgrim Baptist throughout the 1890s and 1910s. Both were singers and performed in the church’s choir. In 1909, Nellie successfully persuaded Andrew Carnegie to donate an Estey organ to the church via his charitable foundation in New York. The congregation remained active throughout the 1910s, participating in local milestones like the founding of the St. Paul chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The congregation grew in the 1910s, creating an urgent need for a larger building, and a new church was built in 1928 at the corner of Central and Grotto Avenues in St. Paul (732 W. Central Avenue). The move brought the congregation into the heart of St. Paul’s Rondo neighborhood. In the same year, Pilgrim Baptist participated in the founding of Hallie Q. Brown House (later renamed Hallie Q. Brown Community Center). The church’s members in this period included Frank Boyd, founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, and S. Edward Hall. Both Boyd and Hall served as the church’s deacons. In the 1960s, when construction of Interstate 94 displaced thousands of Rondo residents, Pilgrim Baptist members took action to keep their community together. They requested that the City of St. Paul build a pedestrian bridge over the interstate at Grotto Street North, so that members could continue to walk to church. City officials complied, creating one of the new freeway’s few pedestrian crossing points. Pilgrim Baptist’s Rev. Floyd Massey, working with the Rondo–St. Anthony Improvement Association, stopped the construction of an elevated freeway. Pilgrim Baptist Church celebrated the 150th anniversary of its founding in June 2013. The congregation held a banquet, published a commemorative book, and hosted a worship service with guest speaker Rev. George Waddles, president of the National Baptist Convention Congress of Christian Education. *Editor’s note: On April 17, 1863, General Henry Sibley had requested that contraband refugees travel from St. Louis to Minnesota to work as teamsters (wagon drivers) at Fort Snelling due to wartime labor shortages. It’s possible that this request inspired Hickman and his congregation to choose Fort Snelling as their destination.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Pilgrim_Baptist_Church.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056216,"name":"African Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246089,"name":"Religion and Belief","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/pilgrim-baptist-church-st-paul"},{"alt":"Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox statues","author":[{"name":"Jennifer Kleinjung","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/jennifer-kleinjung"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"April 25, 2024","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox statues, Bemidji","postbody":"Originally conceived as a gimmick to promote tourism during the city’s 1937 Winter Carnival, the Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox statues in Bemidji became the second-most-photographed ...","searchtext":"Originally conceived as a gimmick to promote tourism during the city’s 1937 Winter Carnival, the Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox statues in Bemidji became the second-most-photographed sculptures in the country in the 1940s. The prototypical “roadside colossus” inspired dozens of other Minnesota and Midwest cities to create similar works in the decades that followed. In 1932, Bemidji teachers and civic leaders organized a simple winter carnival consisting of sporting events surrounding an annual basketball game between St. Cloud Teachers College and a team of local school teachers. This event was repeated only once until January of 1937, when Bemidji Rotarians sponsored construction of an eighteen-foot-tall statue of logging legend Paul Bunyan to launch the return of the winter games. As Cyril Dickinson and the workers at his lumber company oversaw construction of Paul, Jim Payton (manager of Bemidji Electric Company) was responsible for the construction of his companion: Babe the Blue Ox. Workers built both statues on a three-to-one-scale, using Bemidji Mayor Earl Bucklen and an ox from Headwaters Camp as models. They did not, however, follow that scale while constructing Paul’s neck (lighting was poor during construction), resulting in the appearance of little to no neck at all. Within three weeks, a concrete-and-plaster Paul was installed on the shores of Lake Bemidji (joining the Fireplace of States, constructed in 1934). Babe was more nimble, consisting of a wooden frame wrapped in wire netting covered by wool and canvas. After he was mounted onto a car, he served as the carnival’s mobile ambassador. Attendance at the four-day sports carnival was bustling, with roughly 15,000 people participating. Babe greeted visitors with a spectacle: auto tail lights shone out of his eyes, and vehicle exhaust poured out of his nostrils to give the appearance of exhaling cold air. Before Babe could tour downtown Bemidji, workers removed his fourteen-foot-wide tin horns so as not to pull down street decorations. After the event was over, a full-page spread about the statues in Life magazine (February 1, 1937) brought national attention to Bemidji. Babe traveled to the St. Paul Winter Carnival and later the Minnesota State Fair, escorted in all parades by highway patrol and Bemidji Fire Marshal Pete Johnson as designated “bull whacker.” In 1938, 100,000 people attended the Bemidji Winter Carnival. Babe was joined in the parade by a sixteen-foot-long black duck and corresponding rifle crafted by the community of Blackduck (twenty-five miles northeast of Bemidji). Bunyan must have hunted near their town, people joked, with the giant duck as his quarry. The duck was the first in a series of giant statues erected in area towns inspired by the Paul Bunyan legend and the Bemidji statues. Babe stopped traveling by 1939, with organizers citing damage to the statue as well as the expense. The ox was permanently installed next to Paul on the Bemidji waterfront. There, he overlooked the carnival until that, too, stopped in 1941, as World War II drew attention and resources elsewhere. The statues|| fame only grew, however, when they were featured again in Life in 1945. The Eastman Kodak corporation named them the second-most-photographed sculptures in the United States, following Mount Rushmore. In the 1950s, an amusement park with Bunyan-themed rides was built on fill added between the statues and the lakeshore, and a host of other businesses drew names and inspiration from the logging legends. In 1974, plans to renovate the park highlighted an ongoing tension in the community between natural preservation and commercial development on the city’s lakeshore. Concerns reappeared in the 1990s, when a new tourist information center replaced the original Bunyan house. In 2015, the City of Bemidji installed a two-foot berm and boulders in front of Paul and Babe to give tourists a better angle for selfie photography. The move sparked community outrage via letters to the editor, Facebook posts, and Twitter discussions using the hashtags #Paulmageddon and #Babeghazi. Citizens opposed to the renovations claimed that new landscaping would crowd the statues and make large-group photography more difficult. Ultimately, the Bemidji city council voted in agreement with them. It cost the city $65,000 to re-do plaza plans, remove 100,000 pounds of boulders, and regrade the plaza to prevent flooding. City Manager Nate Mathews explained, “There’s an emotional connection to that statue. It’s really kind of a sacred place to Bemidjians.”","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Paul_bunyan_wikimedia_large.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246079,"name":"Cities and Towns","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/paul-bunyan-and-babe-blue-ox-statues-bemidji"},{"alt":"placeholder","author":[{"name":"Minnesota Historical Society","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/minnesota-historical-society"}],"categoryTag":[],"date":"April 09, 2024","eraTag":[],"keydate":"","name":"November 7, 2000","postbody":"Neva Walker becomes the first African American woman elected to the Minnesota state legislature.","searchtext":"Neva Walker becomes the first African American woman elected to the Minnesota state legislature.","src":"https://23704355.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/23704355/MNOpedia_theme_2025/Images/placeholder-img.svg","topicsTag":[],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/november-7-2000"},{"alt":"Governor Wendell Anderson signs a 1971 legislation package (the Minnesota Miracle) into law","author":[{"name":"Paul Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/paul-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"April 09, 2024","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Minnesota Miracle (legislation)","postbody":"Wendell Anderson, a Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party (DFL) governor elected at age thirty-eight, campaigned in 1970 on a promise to reduce school-district property taxes. He faced a ...","searchtext":"Wendell Anderson, a Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party (DFL) governor elected at age thirty-eight, campaigned in 1970 on a promise to reduce school-district property taxes. He faced a legislature controlled by Conservatives,* and his plan to reform property taxes asked for a 37-percent increase in state spending. It took the longest special legislative session in state history, but he fulfilled the promise. Anderson’s initiative raised income and sales taxes, and he became one of the most popular governors in Minnesota history. In 1970 Minnesota had 434 independent public school districts, all of them mostly dependent on local property taxes. This led to vast differences in taxation and per-student spending. One paradoxical outcome was that the richest districts, like Edina, had both the lowest tax rates and the highest per-pupil spending. The poorest districts endured just the opposite. Many districts had raised their rates by double digits year after year in the 1960s. State Senator Wendell Anderson of St. Paul was just one of many legislators who saw that the system needed reform, and that it might be a winning political issue. He got the 1970 DFL nomination for governor and campaigned around the state for school tax reform—specifically, for the state to assume much more of school costs. This would reduce the property tax burdens in almost every district but require higher state tax rates. At the same time, the non-partisan Citizens League issued a report supporting the partial state school-finance takeover. At a gubernatorial debate, Anderson endorsed the league’s report, while Republican nominee Douglas Head rejected it, calling Anderson “Spendy Wendy.” Anderson defeated Head 54 percent to 46 percent. In January of 1971, when he took office, Anderson faced a legislature narrowly controlled by Conservatives, 70-65 in the House, 34-33 in the Senate. But school tax reform had crucial allies on the Conservative side, notably Senate Majority Leader Stanley Holmquist. The issue was complex, both technically and politically. Voters who wanted property tax reductions had to be sold on income tax increases. Conservatives and Liberals worked on competing plans throughout the legislative session, but no agreement was reached. Anderson then called a special session that went on all summer. It produced a bill, which Anderson vetoed—not enough money and not enough structural change. But the effort wasn’t over. Rather than call another special session, Anderson arranged for the key players from both caucuses to meet in private at the governor’s residence on Summit Avenue in St. Paul. The governor rarely participated, but he made his requirements clear, and in the end he got almost everything he wanted, with substantial bipartisan support. The state took 65 percent of local school costs, and local tax rates were restricted within limits. All but a handful of school districts saw reductions in property tax rates, while Minnesota taxpayers as a whole saw their burden rise by $580 million and the state budget increase by 23 percent. The reforms came to be known as the Minnesota Miracle: a set of laws comprising the tax changes as well as the Minnesota Fiscal Disparities Act of 1971, which set up a tax-base-sharing program. In his reelection bid three years later, Wendell Anderson carried all eighty-seven of Minnesota’s counties, a feat not accomplished before or since. *Editor’s note: Between 1913 and 1973, Minnesota legislators did not identify themselves with a party when they caucused or campaigned. Members of the Democratic–Farmer–Labor party formally identified as Liberals, and their Republican counterparts identified as Conservatives. This article reflects that terminology.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/OZVR244DCNMICJ6WTFT6NBFXZA.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/minnesota-miracle-legislation"},{"alt":"Mesaba Transportation Company buses and drivers, 1918","author":[{"name":"Ehsan Alam","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/ehsan-alam"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"April 02, 2024","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Northland / Mesaba Transportation Company","postbody":"In 1914, miners often walked two miles from their homes in Alice, Minnesota, to their jobs in the iron mines of Hibbing, even during dangerous winters. Former driller and failing car ...","searchtext":"In 1914, miners often walked two miles from their homes in Alice, Minnesota, to their jobs in the iron mines of Hibbing, even during dangerous winters. Former driller and failing car salesman C. Eric Wickman changed that when he decided to use a Hupmobile to transport miners for a small fee: 15 cents for a one-way trip and 25 cents for a round trip. Wickman’s service became one of the earliest examples of intercity busing in the US and, fifteen years later, led to the establishment of the multimillion-dollar Greyhound Bus Corporation. The demand for a car service around Hibbing in 1914 was too much for one person to manage alone. Soon, Wickman brought in Andrew G. Anderson and Arvid Heed; shortly afterwards, they conscripted competing taxi driver Ralph Bogan. The four partners formed the Hibbing Transportation Company and, by the end of 1915, renamed it the Mesaba Transportation Company. During these years, the company expanded its service to new towns, including Duluth, and acquired eighteen buses by 1918 to do so. The early vehicles were spartan, offering little in terms of comfort and barely providing shelter from the harsh Minnesota winters. Often, their frames were extended to accommodate more passengers. Mesaba Transportation Company grew rapidly during World War I; its revenues went from $8000 in 1915 to $16,000 in 1916 and $40,000 by 1918. With the increasing income, Mesaba was able to invest in better vehicles, such as the Fageol Safety Coach, a twenty-passenger bus. Wickman, Anderson, and Edwin Eckstrom established an auxiliary company, the Mesaba Motor Company, in 1919 for the maintenance, repair, and manufacture of buses, including the installation of efficient heating systems. Passage of the Federal Highway Act of 1921 increased the popularity of bus travel. This legislation funded the paving of thousands of miles of roads, which made bus routes a viable alternative to railways. In 1922, Wickman and Heed sold their portion of Mesaba Transportation to the other partners. They maintained sole interest in Mesaba Motor, which they moved to Duluth. At this point, Wickman and his associates began acquiring other bus lines, creating a more consistent and streamlined service across the region. They began with the acquisition of a Duluth concern called White Bus Lines, which reached Grand Marais. Wickman also bought a Wisconsin company called Superior White, making the venture an interstate company. By 1925, Wickman’s business was incorporated as Northland Transportation Company. The rapid acquisition of smaller lines was bolstered by state regulations and licensing. Larger companies like Northland had the financial resources and organizational sophistication to meet standards. Smaller bus ventures that struggled to make the grade found it profitable to sell their concerns to companies like Northland. Northland spent the late 1920s merging bus line after bus line, including most of Mesaba Transportation Company’s lines. The enormous investment of the Great Northern Railway under Ralph Budd aided this process. Budd saw an opportunity in partnering with bus transportation instead of viewing it as competition. Great Northern thus acquired 80 percent interest in Northland, pumping $240,000 into the company. Wickman retained 20 percent interest. With the railroad’s backing, Northland orchestrated a $2.5 million merger of several bus lines, comprising 150 buses and the better part of 3,000 miles of routes. Ultimately Northland controlled most of Minnesota’s bus lines (apart from the southeastern portion of the state), and provided routes into Wisconsin, the Dakotas, and even Canada. At the same time that Northland was absorbing much of the state’s bus business, Wickman, Eckstrom, and Wickman’s partner at Northland, Orville Caesar, founded a holding company for Midwestern bus transportation called the Motor Transit Corporation. With the help of Minneapolis investment banker Glenn Traer, this new venture was valued at $10,000,000. It sought to do across the region (and eventually the country) what Northland had done in Minnesota: merge numerous independent bus lines into a single organization. Then, in 1929, Motor Transit bought Northland and all of its interests. It moved its headquarters to Chicago and became the Greyhound Corporation.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/HE3_9 p41_cropped_2.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246053,"name":"Transportation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/northland-mesaba-transportation-company"},{"alt":"Reconstructed Lac qui Parle Mission","author":[{"name":"Peter J. DeCarlo","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/peter-j-decarlo"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"March 25, 2024","eraTag":[{"id":186622056203,"name":"1792–1861 (Expansion and Reform)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Lac qui Parle Mission","postbody":"Lac qui Parle Mission in Chippewa County was the leading station of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions’ work among Dakota people between 1835 and 1854. Though ...","searchtext":"Lac qui Parle Mission in Chippewa County was the leading station of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions’ work among Dakota people between 1835 and 1854. Though missionaries cited it as the most successful project of its kind among the Dakota, the mission failed in its objective to replace Dakota culture with European American lifeways. Throughout its existence Lac qui Parle was a multicultural community, where Dakota people and European Americans cooperated with each other but experienced deep divides. In the mid-1800s, the lake called Mde Iaúdaŋ (Small Lake that Speaks) was in the heart of Waȟpétuŋwaŋ Dakota homeland. The Waȟpéthuŋwaŋ had a village on the south side of the lake, where it empties into Mni Sota Wakpa (the Minnesota River). Sisíthuŋwaŋ Dakota people had a small village just to the south, at the mouth of Ptaŋ Siŋta Wakpa (the Lac qui Parle River). Iháŋkthuŋwaŋ and Mdewakaŋtuŋwaŋ Dakota visited the lake as well. French fur traders reached the lake in the 1700s and translated its Dakota name into their language, calling it “Lac qui Parle.” In 1826, Joseph Renville, a fur trader of Mdewakhaŋtuŋwaŋ and French ancestry, established a trading post at the lake and became an influential leader there. Raised a Catholic, he invited the missionary families of Thomas Williamson and Alexander Huggins to establish a mission at Lac qui Parle. In July of 1835 the Williamsons and Huggins arrived at Lac qui Parle and began their mission work. The missionaries depended on Renville and his family for protection and influence among the local Waȟpéthuŋwaŋ. Throughout the rest of the 1830s, the mission community grew. More missionaries arrived: Stephen Riggs and his family; brothers Samuel and Gideon Pond; and others. The Renvilles and their extended family made up the core of Dakota people who attended church services. Most of them were women and children, since the majority of Dakota men resisted the missionaries. Mary Renville (Tonkanne), the Mdewakaŋtuŋwaŋ wife of Joseph, and Tutidutawiŋ (Her Scarlet House, also called Catherine), a Waȟpéthuŋwaŋ woman, were early leaders of the mission community. The mission became a place of family life where the children of missionaries and Dakota children grew up. The early 1840s were a time of success according to the missionaries, but their accomplishments depended on the desires of Dakota people. Some Dakota men joined the congregation, and a few began giving sermons in Dakota. Dakota women led the effort to build a church, which was completed in 1841. The missionaries plowed fifty acres for corn, and Dakota families, who had been planting corn before the missionaries arrived, took to the fields. For years, Joseph Renville and the missionaries worked to translate religious texts into a written Dakota language. In 1842 the first of many religious texts in the Dakota language were published. The written Roman alphabet failed to capture the sounds, concepts, and nuances of oral Dakota. It also threatened to replace the Dakota language as part of a bigger project of assimilation. In response, most Waȟpéthuŋwaŋ and Sisíthuŋwaŋ people resisted. Some individuals killed the mission’s livestock, shot at its church bell, and threatened the missionaries. Some also harassed and ostracized the Dakota who were part of the mission community. The resistance culminated in 1842, when the Waȟpéthuŋwaŋ joined the Mdewakantunwan in an attempt to remove missions from Dakota lands. The mission survived these difficulties at first because a few influential Waȟpéthuŋwaŋ did not want the missionaries to leave. But in 1846, Joseph Renville died. Without his patronage, Lac qui Parle mission began to decline. By 1849, there were only eighteen members in the congregation. The signing of treaties in 1851 brought changes to Lac qui Parle. Though the mission was within the boundaries of the reservation, many Dakota people relocated further downriver to Pajutazee (Phežíhutazizi K’ápi) Mission, near the Upper Sioux Agency. The missionaries at Lac qui Parle argued that the mission could continue as a government boarding school for Native children. This never happened, and in 1854, when the Riggs’ family home burned to the ground, the mission was abandoned. In 1933 the Works Progress Administration (WPA) began a flood-control project at Lac qui Parle, leading to renewed interest in the old mission site. The Minnesota Historical Society excavated the site in 1940, and the Chippewa County Historical Society, in partnership with the WPA, reconstructed the mission in 1942. Lac qui Parle State Park was created in 1941. In 1973 the mission site was listed on the National Register as part of an archaeological historic district; in later decades, it was managed by the Chippewa County Historical Society.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/640px-Lac_qui_Parle_Mission copy.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246059,"name":"Native Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246089,"name":"Religion and Belief","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/lac-qui-parle-mission"},{"alt":"Lydia B. Angier","author":[{"name":"Alison Bergblom Johnson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/alison-bergblom-johnson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"March 07, 2024","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Commitment and Guardianship of Lydia B. Angier, 1896–1907","postbody":"Lydia B. Angier was declared insane and committed against her will to Rochester State Hospital in 1896. For the next three years, she wrote letters arguing for her release and restoration ...","searchtext":"Lydia B. Angier was declared insane and committed against her will to Rochester State Hospital in 1896. For the next three years, she wrote letters arguing for her release and restoration to her old life in St. Paul, where she had run a newspaper stand. Her letters provide a window into life inside hospitals for the insane at the turn of the twentieth century, where many people faced poor living conditions and abuse. In October 1886, a neighbor of a St. Paul woman named Lydia B. Angier filed a form with the Ramsey County Probate Court swearing to her insanity and need for commitment to a hospital for the insane. When medical doctors examined Angier, however, they found “her to be sane and not a fit subject for hospital treatment.” Approximately a decade later, on November 13, 1896, an Associated Charities of St. Paul employee named James F. (J. F.) Jackson filed a petition alleging that Angier was insane. Newspaper coverage of her subsequent hearing in the St. Paul Globe depicted Angier as a pathetic figure selling newspapers on the street corner. It also described her as “evidently something of an intellectual genius” who believed in the US constitution rather than religion. The writer failed to mention that the Globe had covered Angier’s win in court against the City of St. Paul for property damage a year and a half earlier. Medical doctors examined Angier again in 1896, declared her insane, and committed her to Rochester State Hospital. Drs. Sarah Linton Phelps and R. M. Phelps, a married couple, continued the medical examination at Rochester. They noted that Angier had no insane relatives, that she was not a church member, and that she did not drink alcohol. Their report described the death of her adult son, multiple circumstances regarding her son, and several lawsuits Angier had brought. They stated that one suit had been recent; after it was filed, the doctors noted, |||they sent her here.||| It is unclear to whom |||they||| refers. In January 1897, J. F. Jackson petitioned for John S. Grode to become Angier’s guardian, claiming her estate to be worth $100. Grode was a prominent citizen and estate executor whose name had been floated as a potential governor and member of the St. Paul Board of Public Works. Grode received letters granting him guardianship of Angier in February 1897. The available probate files do not describe anything further in Angier’s case, including actions Grode performed as guardian. Angier, meanwhile, remained at Rochester. “I prefer the Ramsey Co. Poor House to this place,” she wrote in a letter on May 25, 1897. “Here we are just dogs.” In 1898, Angier wrote an inventory of her “things left in St. Paul” that estimated their value to be at least $290, showing that she disagreed with Jackson as to her net worth. On June 19, she wrote to W. A. Gates, an employee of the Board of Corrections and Charities, describing the death of a fellow patient (Anna Salzer) due to staff abuse. A case-book entry for a patient who matches Salzer’s description describes her death after a forced feeding. Angier claimed to have reported the death to a doctor herself, months earlier. In the same letter, she observed, “I have not seen enough insanity to call this an insane asylum, nor sickness, to call it a hospital.” Hospital staff recommended Angier’s discharge from Rochester in early 1899. A doctor, however, blocked her from leaving, and she was transferred to Fergus Falls State Hospital. Angier wrote, Trustee Titus told me that they had investigated my case[,] Doctors and Trustees had recommended my discharge[,] & I would go home in a few days[.] But Dr. Kilbourne would not let me go, and I raised a row with his lovely servants & they compelled him to send me here. I left Rochester feeling that Hell would be better than staying under the hypnotic influences of the priest-ridden panderer [name of nurse]. I do not take back one word that I have said about either of the asylums. Fergus Falls records describe various searches for Angier’s assets, including her St. Paul valuables and bank accounts she claimed to have but did not provide detail about. Angier continued to advocate for her release, writing to William Watts Folwell (a member of the Board of Corrections and Charities) and Minnesota Governor John Lind for help. “I am still a prisoner,” she told Folwell. Angier remained at Fergus Falls State Hospital for eight years. She died there of a cerebral hemorrhage on May 21, 1907, and was buried the next day in a numbered grave.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Image 2 Lydia B Angier 2525_cropped.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246087,"name":"Health and Medicine","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/commitment-and-guardianship-lydia-b-angier-1896-1907"},{"alt":"Children’s meal in Cambridge State Hospital","author":[{"name":"Nathan Stenberg","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/nathan-stenberg"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"March 01, 2024","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Welsch v. Likins","postbody":"Welsch v. Likins (1974) was a landmark legal case for disability rights in Minnesota. It dealt with three issues fundamental to the disability community. First, it addressed the right to ...","searchtext":"Welsch v. Likins (1974) was a landmark legal case for disability rights in Minnesota. It dealt with three issues fundamental to the disability community. First, it addressed the right to treatment under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Second, the case confronted the provision of care in the least restrictive of environments, including home and community-based services (HCBS). Third, it questioned whether institutional environments violate the Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause of the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution. The commitment of disabled Americans to publicly funded, state-operated, and privately owned institutions dates to the eighteenth century. Called “custodial” because they attempted to care for people while confining them, these hospitals, asylums, and schools aimed to train disabled individuals and assimilate them back into non-disabled society. The majority of inmates had developmental and psychiatric disabilities. Legal, medical, and professional changes at the turn of the twentieth century shifted the institutions’ purpose from education to lifelong custodial care. By the 1940s, institutions had become overcrowded, critically short-staffed, and severely underfunded by state legislatures. As a result, they quickly devolved into human warehouses. Lawsuits against state institutions by disabled people in Pennsylvania and New York set in motion the deinstitutionalization movement—a push for the closure of most, but not all, custodial institutions in the United States, and a shift toward individualized HCBS. By the 1960s, Minnesota custodial institutions like the Cambridge State Hospital had reached their capacity. Reflecting national trends, many were understaffed and underfunded while remaining overcrowded. Families of those committed grew concerned about the use of restraints—chemical and physical—and the lack of individualized attention their relatives received. Employees within the institutions often shared these concerns, but calls for systematic change typically went unheeded by state lawmakers. After witnessing the deplorable conditions at the Cambridge institution, the parents of inmate Patricia Welsch obtained legal support from the Legal Aid Society of Minneapolis, which helps individuals with disabilities. Noticing similar conditions statewide, their lawyers, aided by the Arc of Minnesota, filed a class-action lawsuit for more substantial change. In 1972, six inmates from six separate state custodial institutions in Brainerd, Cambridge, Faribault, Fergus Falls, Hastings, and Moose Lake filed a lawsuit in the US District Court. The plaintiffs in the case, Welsch v. Likins et al., were individuals with developmental disabilities. They argued that the institutional environment, with its prolonged use of restraints, overcrowding, and lack of educational opportunities, violated their constitutional rights. They maintained that the defendants (including Vera J. Likins, the Commissioner of Public Welfare, and individual administrators from each of the six state institutions), failed to provide adequate individualized care, education, and training to the inmates. The State argued that neither state nor federal law required specific forms of treatment. A two-week trial was held in late 1973. While attention centered on the Cambridge institution, the trial addressed something broader: habilitation, a term for vocational training and rudimentary education designed to assimilate disabled people into nondisabled society. Much witness time was spent establishing the proposition that people deemed “mentally retarded” could develop even though they were believed to be severely handicapped. On February 15, 1974, US District Court Judge Earl Larson issued his first opinion, ruling in favor of the plaintiffs. The ruling relied heavily on a recent series of lawsuits in Alabama and New York that recognized disabled people’s constitutional right to treatment. The Court disagreed with the State’s stance. It determined that both the US Constitution (specifically the Due Process Clause) and Minnesota state law (the newly amended Minnesota Hospitalization and Commitment Act) mandated that state institutions provide habilitation to their inmates. Judge Larson, however, deferred ruling on the issues relating to cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment. After protracted legal proceedings, the parties reached a settlement in the fall of 1987. The settlement aimed to reduce the use of chemical and physical restraints in custodial institutions, increase the number of direct care workers, and improve the processes for discharging inmates and evaluating them in the community. After these reforms, the case was dismissed in August 1989.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Video_still_timestamp_38_min_22_secs.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246060,"name":"Crime and Punishment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246087,"name":"Health and Medicine","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/welsch-v-likins"},{"alt":"Harold LeVander giving a speech","author":[{"name":"Paul Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/paul-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"February 21, 2024","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"LeVander, Karl Harold Phillip (1910–1992)","postbody":"Harold LeVander ran for political office for the first time at age fifty-six. He won, served a single term as governor of Minnesota, and never held political office again. A Republican with ...","searchtext":"Harold LeVander ran for political office for the first time at age fifty-six. He won, served a single term as governor of Minnesota, and never held political office again. A Republican with Republican majorities in the state house and senate, he encouraged some of the most progressive legislation in Minnesota history. LeVander was born in Swede Home, Nebraska, but grew up mostly in Watertown, Minnesota, the son of a Lutheran pastor. At Gustavus Adolphus College he debated, played football, competed in the pole vault, and was a champion high-hurdler. In 1931 he won a national oratory competition; two years later, Macalester College hired him to coach students in debate. He graduated from the University of Minnesota Law School in 1935, then went to work for Harold Stassen as an assistant county attorney. When Stassen was elected governor, LeVander became a partner in Stassen’s former law firm in South St. Paul. In 1938, LeVander and Fallon Kelly bought out Stassen and renamed the firm Kelly and LeVander. While working there LeVander developed long-lasting ties with rural Minnesota through his representation of the South St. Paul Livestock Exchange and the Rural Cooperative Power Association (RCPA). Through RCPA he had a hand in bringing nuclear power to Minnesota at Elk River. LeVander was active in the Republican Party throughout the 1950s alongside Kelly; his brother, Bernhard LeVander; and legislators Walter Rogosheske and P. Kenneth Peterson. He declined invitations to run for office, however, until late 1965, when he announced his candidacy to oppose incumbent Democratic Farmer–Labor Party (DFL) governor Karl Rolvaag. He got the party endorsement at the state convention in 1966, over John Pillsbury, but only after sixteen ballots. He started the campaign with little name recognition, taking advantage of a deeply divided DFL to win the general election by over 72,000 votes; he carried over sixty of Minnesota’s eighty-seven counties. In that election the Republican Party also won big majorities in both houses of the legislature. In his inaugural speech LeVander pledged to revitalize cities, strengthen civil rights enforcement, raise pay for teachers and all state employees, improve highway safety, reform taxes, and modernize care in Minnesota’s state hospitals. LeVander proposed, and the legislature passed, creation of the Metropolitan Council and the state’s Department of Human Rights, the Pollution Control Agency, and increases of 30 percent or more in funding for schools, colleges and universities, and the state’s mental hospitals. But the defining issue of his governorship was adoption of a state sales tax. LeVander had supported it as part of tax reform aimed at reducing property taxes, but he insisted that the sales tax issue go to the voters in a referendum. The legislature did not agree. LeVander twice vetoed sales tax legislation, and twice the legislature overrode his veto. He did prevail, however, in his insistence that the sales tax not include food, clothing, and medicine. Despite his vetoes, the public blamed him for the sales tax, and his approval numbers dropped after both his legislative sessions (1967 and 1969). Though he had been a champion orator, his critics called him a poor communicator with the press and the public. LeVander did not enjoy the combat of state politics, and in January of 1970 announced that he would not run for a second term. After his term ended in January of 1971, LeVander returned to his law firm and practiced law almost to the end of his life. Parkinson’s disease afflicted him his last few years. He died at age eighty-one on March 30, 1992.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/10415354.640x640.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/levander-karl-harold-phillip-1910-1992"},{"alt":"Lakewood Chapel exterior, ca. 1996","author":[{"name":"Brian McMahon","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/brian-mcmahon"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"February 05, 2024","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Lakewood Cemetery Memorial Chapel, Minneapolis","postbody":"The Memorial Chapel at Lakewood Cemetery (3600 Hennepin Avenue) in Minneapolis is one of the few buildings that can claim to be modeled after two World Heritage Sites. Its exterior, ...","searchtext":"The Memorial Chapel at Lakewood Cemetery (3600 Hennepin Avenue) in Minneapolis is one of the few buildings that can claim to be modeled after two World Heritage Sites. Its exterior, designed by architect Harry Wild Jones, was inspired by the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. Its interior was designed by J&R Lamb Studios of New York and drew inspiration from St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice. In 1908, Lakewood Cemetery Association hired local architect Harry Wild Jones to design a chapel for its grounds. A graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Jones had already designed buildings around the world in various styles. Because the chapel needed to house a crematorium and a columbarium (urn storage room), which were relatively new building types, Jones visited crematoria in five Western cities as part of his planning process. Lakewood Association members took the fairly unusual approach of awarding a separate design contract for the building’s interior finishes. They chose J&R Lamb Studios, a decorative arts company that specialized in ecclesiastical architecture as well as furnishings, metalwork, stained glass, mosaic, and sculpture. The studio was headed by Charles R. Lamb, a well-known architect, city planner, and decorative designer. Its creative team included Ella Condie Lamb (Lamb’s wife), who was herself a highly accomplished designer of murals and mosaic tile installations. Lamb recruited six skilled mosaic artisans from Italy to fabricate over ten million pieces of marble, colored stone, and glass for the chapel. These were placed on gummed cloth and brought to Minneapolis for installation, a process that took nearly three years. An arts journal later declared that Lamb’s work at Lakewood “shows quite conclusively that Byzantine vaulting and Byzantine decoration constitute the best treatment for a chapel.” Another writer described the chapel as having “the most perfect example of Byzantine mosaic art in the United States.” Credit for the project was variously ascribed to its architect (Jones) and its interior designer (Lamb). Although critics praised the work by Lamb Studios, they often overlooked Ella’s significant contribution. She did receive recognition, however, from the New York Herald, which in 1911 dubbed her “The Mistress of Mosaic.” Jones based the architecture of the chapel on a Greek cross plan, modified at the crossing with transept-like extensions running north (and, later, south). At the center of the crossing is a floor panel that can be opened to lower a casket by hydraulic lift to the crematorium in the basement. The chapel is topped with a double dome consisting of an exterior structural roof and an interior decorative ceiling suspended approximately three feet below the exterior shell. As was the tradition with Byzantine architecture, the apse (the section behind the altar) is located on the east side of the building. Light from the clerestory windows in the dome streams across the colorful mosaics throughout the day, creating a shimmering and glowing effect described as “a sundial of masterful proportions.” Every part of the building’s design is layered with symbolism. The dome rests on four arches sitting on a base that forms a square. The circle has historically been seen as a symbol of heaven, particularly when found in a dome; the square has traditionally represented earth. Combining the two symbolically creates a sacred space. The dome is decorated with twelve angel figures representing departing spirits. Four of the angels, located at the four points of the compass, hold red roses symbolizing the four corners of the earth. The transition from the circular dome to the square floor area was completed with curved triangular wall sections at the four corners, known as pendentives. Here, the Lambs placed four circular mosaic portraits of seated women representing Faith, Hope, Memory, and Love. Mosaic geometric patterns adorn most of the other surfaces of the Chapel. Because of the working crematorium in the basement, the architect opted for fire-safety reasons to use virtually no wood, nails, varnish or paint. The building exterior is constructed with pink ashlar granite layered in alternating widths, and features a red tile dome. Brick segmental arches support the interior floors and roof. There are virtually no flat ceilings in the building, as all horizontal surfaces are vaulted. A 1996 renovation updated the chapel’s mechanical systems and added an expanded crematory designed by the architects Brooks Borg Skiles of Des Moines, Iowa. These additions are located below grade and covered with landscaping. The building, which can seat two hundred visitors, continues to be used for funeral and memorial services. It also hosts musical performances and other cultural activities for the general public. Editor’s note: The writer of this entry thanks George F. Cook III (the great-grandson of the original contractor of the Lakewood Chapel, George Cook), Julie Carpenter, and the staff of Lakewood Cemetery for their assistance.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Lakewood Chapel Exterior 1.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246089,"name":"Religion and Belief","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/lakewood-cemetery-memorial-chapel-minneapolis"},{"alt":"Karl Rolvaag","author":[{"name":"Paul Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/paul-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"January 18, 2024","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Rolvaag, Karl Fritjof (1913–1990)","postbody":"In his youth a hobo, a radical, a soldier, and a scholar, Karl Rolvaag became an adroit politician—a key builder of the Democratic Farmer–Labor (DFL) Party. He served eight years as ...","searchtext":"In his youth a hobo, a radical, a soldier, and a scholar, Karl Rolvaag became an adroit politician—a key builder of the Democratic Farmer–Labor (DFL) Party. He served eight years as lieutenant governor and four years, 1963–1967, as Minnesota’s thirty-first governor. Though a moderate in office, Karl Rolvaag received a radical political education that not even Floyd B. Olson could match. His father, novelist and scholar Ole Rølvaag, held leftist views, and his mother came from a family of South Dakota populists. After his father’s death, in 1931, Rolvaag roamed the West, working in mines, harvest crews, and lumber camps. He considered joining the Communist Party, and did join the radical union Industrial Workers of the World (the Wobblies). After six years Rolvaag returned to his hometown, Northfield, and to St. Olaf College, where he studied history, played football, and was elected senior class president. As World War II loomed, he co-founded a campus pacifist group, Patriots for Peace. Upon graduating, in 1941, he was drafted into the Army, where he became a tank commander and saw extensive service in Europe after D-Day, earning a Silver Star, a Purple Heart (from friendly fire, he said), and two Croix de Guerre. He then studied history and political science at the University of Minnesota. He did graduate work in Norway, where he associated with the radical Norwegian Labor Party. A DFLer, Rolvaag ran for Congress, and lost, in 1946, 1948, and 1952, and worked for the DFL as party chair, 1950–1954, traveling extensively to build the party statewide. He was a great friend and ally of DFL governor Orville Freeman. He was elected Lieutenant Governor (alongside Freeman, as governor) in 1954, 1956, 1958, and 1960 (when Freeman was defeated.) In 1962 he became the first Minnesota governor elected to a four-year term when he beat incumbent governor Elmer L. Andersen in the closest statewide election in Minnesota history, decided by ninety-one votes. In office, despite an unfriendly legislature, Rolvaag achieved expansion of state community colleges and vocational schools, improved conservation, the restoration of Fort Snelling, and better resources for developmentally disabled people. Rolvaag also appointed Walter Mondale to the US Senate as a replacement for Hubert Humphrey. While he had some legislative successes, DFL party leaders doubted Rolvaag’s popularity, and there were rumors he had a drinking problem. In the party’s 1966 convention, Lieutenant Governor Sandy Keith defeated him for party endorsement. Rolvaag then crushed Keith in the primary, leaving the DFL divided. Rolvaag narrowly lost re-election to Republican Harold LeVander. President Lyndon Johnson appointed Rolvaag ambassador to Iceland, where he served two years. He returned to electoral politics in 1972, elected to Minnesota’s Public Service Commission after defeating the incumbent chair. He served five years, but the alcoholism that had bedeviled him most of his adult life took an increasing toll. In 1977 he resigned to concentrate on his health; by then he had been through treatment four times. In November of 1978 he told reporter Steve Berg that he had been sober for eleven months, the longest such stint he could remember. Rolvaag died on December 20, 1990, at age seventy-seven.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/10169321.640x640.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/rolvaag-karl-fritjof-1913-1990"},{"alt":"State Representatives Keeler, Kozlowski, and Becker-Finn during House debate on MIFPA","author":[{"name":"Rita Pyrillis","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/rita-pyrillis"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"January 05, 2024","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Minnesota Indian Family Preservation Act (MIFPA)","postbody":"In 1985, Minnesota state legislators passed the Minnesota Indian Family Preservation Act (MIFPA) to address shortcomings in the federal Indian Child Welfare Act. The federal law had been ...","searchtext":"In 1985, Minnesota state legislators passed the Minnesota Indian Family Preservation Act (MIFPA) to address shortcomings in the federal Indian Child Welfare Act. The federal law had been enacted in 1978 in response to the alarming number of Native American children being removed from their families and placed in non-Native foster and adoptive homes. MIFPA gave Minnesota tribes more authority in all child custody decisions involving Native children. In the late 1960s and 1970s, between 25 and 35 percent of all Native children were separated from their families, resulting in a generation of Native people disconnected from their cultures. A long history of federal assimilation efforts had laid the groundwork for these removals. In the late nineteenth century, the US government created and ran boarding schools that stripped Native children of their identities. Nearly a century later, in 1958, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Child Welfare League of America launched the Indian Adoption Project to promote the adoption of Native children. There was a growing demand for adoptive children after World War II, when the economy was booming. But Native people were facing the highest rates of unemployment and the lowest incomes of any minority group at that time, among other hardships. Poorly trained social workers often deemed Native homes unsuitable, removing scores of children from their families. Meanwhile, as the number of Native children in foster care swelled, state governments began looking for ways to shift the cost of caring for them to the private sector. The Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) sought to put an end to these practices by establishing procedures and policies for child placements and ensuring tribal involvement in the process. When ICWA was passed, Minnesota led the nation in the removal of Native children from their families, a fact that was harshly criticized by ICWA advocates during congressional hearings. A 1974 survey by the Association of American Indian Affairs showed that one in eight Native children in Minnesota were in an adoptive home. One-fourth of Native infants under one year old were in pre-adoptive foster care. ICWA prompted changes in Minnesota’s child welfare system, such as the licensing of Indian foster homes using standards acceptable to the Native community. It also required cultural sensitivity training for non-Native social workers and foster families. In spite of these improvements, the law made little impact in Minnesota. Six years after ICWA’s passage, the state continued to rank first in the nation in out-of-home placements of Native children under the age of twenty-one. At the same time, the state ranked eleventh in the size of its population of Native children, according to a 1982 survey by the US Department of Health and Human Services. These statistics prompted tribal leaders, legislators, and advocates to push for a Minnesota law that would provide stronger protection for Native youth than ICWA. In 1984, representatives introduced a bill in the state legislature to create a Minnesota Indian Child Welfare Act. It was the first piece of proposed state legislation to address the placement of Native children in non-Native homes. It sought to give tribes more authority in both voluntary and involuntary child placements. The bill was defeated, however, over concerns about the competency of tribal courts to handle these cases, among other issues. The following year, a revised Minnesota Indian Family Preservation Act was introduced in the Minnesota legislature and became law when it was signed by Governor Rudy Perpich on May 10. It required social-service workers to notify tribes early in the process when a Native family entered their system. It also created more comprehensive guidelines and rules around foster care placement than the federal law provided. Despite these efforts, disparities between Native and non-Native children persisted. According to a report by the National Indian Child Welfare Association, the disparity rate among Minnesota children in foster care was the highest in the nation in 2019. Nearly 26 percent of children in state foster care were Native, yet 1.7 percent of the children in the state identified as Native American. The removal of Native children across the country continues to be an issue in the 2020s, and challenges to ICWA remain. In 2023, the US Supreme Court heard arguments challenging its constitutionality. As the fate of ICWA hung in the balance, Minnesota legislators passed a bill authored by Senator Mary Kunesh and Representative Alicia Kozlowski in March 2023 that strengthened MIFPA. It removed references to the federal law so that protections for Native children would not be affected, whatever the court decided. The federal law was upheld in a Supreme Court decision issued in June.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/P1093152-1024x683.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246059,"name":"Native Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/minnesota-indian-family-preservation-act-mifpa"},{"alt":"Paul Bunyan artwork by William B. Laughead","author":[{"name":"Kasey Keeler","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/kasey-keeler"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"December 26, 2023","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Paul Bunyan (folklore character)","postbody":"The giant lumberjack Paul Bunyan—bearded, ax in hand, clad in red flannel and work boots—has come to represent Minnesota’s Northwoods. Folklore credits him and his sidekick, Babe the Blue ...","searchtext":"The giant lumberjack Paul Bunyan—bearded, ax in hand, clad in red flannel and work boots—has come to represent Minnesota’s Northwoods. Folklore credits him and his sidekick, Babe the Blue Ox, with creating the Mississippi River and the Grand Canyon. But his legacy is complicated. While Paul Bunyan myths celebrate Minnesota, they also leave out the facts of the state’s logging history, which led to deforestation and the displacement of Native American histories, places, and people. The stories of Paul Bunyan had their beginnings in the camp stories of North American loggers in the mid-1800s. These stories, shared to build community, entertain, and teach lessons, circulated among Scandinavian (primarily Swedish and Norwegian), German, and Irish immigrants to the upper Great Lakes, including northern Minnesota. The timber cruisers (appraisers) of the Great Lakes, employed by logging companies to survey forests and collect information, played a key role in the spread of Paul Bunyan tales. During the winter of 1885–1886, timber cruisers of Rhinelander, Wisconsin, shared the first Paul Bunyan stories we recognize today. The first published, though uncredited, account of Paul Bunyan appeared in a Duluth News Tribune article from 1904 that told the story of “the decline of the great American Lumber Jack.” This article references a “series of imaginative tales about the year Paul Bunyan lumbered in North Dakota,” during the year of the “blue snow.” Then, in 1914, William B. Laughead popularized Paul Bunyan through a promotional pamphlet for the Red River Lumber Company. This pamphlet was reproduced as a second edition in 1916 and as a third edition in 1922, expanding Bunyan’s reach. This first pictorial representation of the Bunyan character, as a corporate mascot of sorts, promoted the company’s move from the Northwoods of Minnesota to Westwood, California. Only a decade later, in 1925, James Stevens published his best-selling collection of Paul Bunyan tales. The book detailed how Bunyan had rescued a giant blue ox calf (Babe) from a frozen bay and adopted it as a companion. Babe, Bunyan, and a lumberjack crew then traveled around the US, felling trees across an “empty” landscape. Another volume described them creating the Great Lakes (Babe’s footprints), the Mississippi River (water from Bunyan’s tank), and the Red River (tinted by their spilled ketchup). These myths imagined that Minnesota’s waterways were new, and created by immigrants. They displaced Native creation stories, which said that Gichi Manitou (Ojibwe) and Wakaŋ Taŋka (Dakota) had made the rivers and lakes. By the late 1900s, Paul Bunyan’s legendary figure was marked on the landscape of Minnesota: the 115-mile long Paul Bunyan Trail; the Paul Bunyan State Forest in Hubbard and Cass Counties; Paul Bunyan Land in Brainerd; and Paul Bunyan Mall in Bemidji. Roadside stands, statues, murals, and eateries used his image. As his myth spread, however, it overshadowed the ongoing cost of logging to Minnesota’s people and environment. Paul Bunyan is credited with logging the “Northwoods,” a vast geography that spans the international border with Canada from New England to the Great Lakes, and west to the Pacific coast. In Minnesota, it was the state’s vast stands of white pine that drew loggers near, far, and fictional. The state’s first sawmill, the Marine Lumber Company, opened on the St. Croix River in 1839, and it was not long before logging made its way north. The “golden days” of logging began. The loggers who came to northern Minnesota in the mid-1800s found not the empty forests of Bunyan myths but a network of established Ojibwe communities. Lumber companies were able to build their camps only after a series of treaties (1837, 1854, and 1855) transferred prime pinelands away from Ojibwe nations and into the hands of the federal government. Bunyan stories also leave out the destruction that followed. The state’s vast pine forests were depleted by 1930, and lumber companies moved out of the state. Clearcutting left woodlands vulnerable to uncontrolled burning, leading to disasters like the Cloquet Fire of 1918. And dams created by loggers destroyed so many wild rice beds in north-central Minnesota that the Bois Forte Ojibwe had to abandon their homes. The Native people who shaped the state’s logging history—as workers, residents, and land stewards—are missing from Bunyan lore. While Bunyan’s fictional crew is European American, Native men also labored in logging camps. Logging was exhausting and dangerous work. Yet it allowed many Native workers to enter the wage economy and remain close to their homelands. Other Native people, meanwhile, created Paul Bunyan tales of their own. By the late 1900s, Ojibwe storytellers explained the preservation of forests at Red Lake by saying that Bunyan had lost a fight with Nanabozho, the mythical Ojibwe trickster hero who predated him.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Screenshot 2023-12-26 103052_0.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/paul-bunyan"},{"alt":"Bird’s-eye view of Willmar State Hospital, 1962","author":[{"name":"Sasha Warren","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/sasha-warren"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"December 01, 2023","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Willmar State Hospital","postbody":"Originally structured as a small farm for the treatment of alcoholism, Willmar State Hospital expanded its client base and operations as conditions declined through the first half of the ...","searchtext":"Originally structured as a small farm for the treatment of alcoholism, Willmar State Hospital expanded its client base and operations as conditions declined through the first half of the twentieth century. Following reforms in the 1950s, it introduced innovative treatments for alcohol and drug dependency, the “open-door” model of psychiatric care, and the physical rehabilitation of disabled people. In the 1880s and 90s, Minnesota committed the “inebriate” (a category that included anyone we would today call chemically dependent) to a special ward at Rochester State Hospital. When that ward closed in 1897, the state attempted to subsidize treatment for committed alcoholics in small, private “liquor cure” facilities, but this was declared unconstitutional in the same year. After a decade of failed attempts to establish a special institution, the state legislature passed a law to establish a “Hospital Farm for Inebriates” in April 1907. In 1909, the state used revenue from a 2 percent tax on liquor licenses to purchase 482 acres of land on the Tallman Stock Farm in Willmar. It hired architect Clarence H. Johnston in 1910. Johnson designed the Willmar State Asylum according to the cottage plan, which organized its facilities in smaller buildings arranged on a campus. The Willmar Inebriate Farm opened to patients on December 26, 1912, with a fifty-person capacity. Under the first two superintendents, treatment emphasized two concepts: the water cure and the benefits of labor. The water cure consisted of drinking copious amounts of cold water, bathing daily, and using steam rooms and vapor cabinets to cleanse the body. In most cases, a minimum of two months|| labor on the farm was required to receive parole, the idea being that hard work, meaningful exertion, and time away from drinking could cure acute cases of alcohol addiction. Due to overcrowding in Minnesota’s psychiatric institutions, lawmakers had tried to open Willmar’s doors to surplus patients since it opened. They succeeded in 1917. Operating as the Willmar State Asylum, administrators separated the inmate population into two distinct groups: inebriates and the chronically mentally ill. Between 1919 and 1930, Willmar was consistently under construction to accommodate its rising population. It ballooned to nearly 1,500, most of whom were chronic patients arriving from other institutions. This practice of “dumping” patients effectively ended the inebriate programs at Willmar. By 1935, less than 1 percent of the patient population was committed for drug- or alcohol-related offenses. Rapid growth and the resulting lack of a coherent treatment plan degraded services and led staff to start using restraints and more aggressive treatments (shock treatments for psychiatric patients and lumbar puncture for withdrawal, for example). Staff shortages during World War II exacerbated the problem. Things changed rapidly in the 1950s. Building on the fact that alcohol-dependent patients had established an Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) group at Willmar in 1947, the new superintendent, Nelson Bradley, and his work partner, Daniel Anderson, transformed Willmar into one of three facilities responsible for developing the Minnesota Model, alongside Pioneer House in Plymouth and Hazelden in Center City. Central to the model were the tenets that alcohol and chemical dependency are multifaceted phenomena involving a person’s biology, spirituality, and psychological/biographical history. Bradley and Anderson unlocked wards, removed most restraints, hired former alcohol and drug users as counselors, attempted to segregate patients according to required treatment, and invited local townspeople to visit to foster better relationships and counter the prison-like feel of the space. Attempted escapes and violent episodes plummeted. After Bradley, Vera Behrendt became the first woman to serve as a superintendent in Minnesota in 1961 (one of only two in the country). This title was soon after abolished in favor of the more specialized “medical director.” In her first year, Behrendt made Willmar Minnesota’s first “open-door” institution, meaning that staff no longer locked doors on the wards, and abolished many time- and movement-based restrictions. Willmar continued to differentiate its treatments through the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, creating an adolescent unit, a geriatric care unit, and a training center for people with developmental and intellectual disabilities. Although Willmar maintained high patient-to-staff ratios compared with other Minnesotan institutions through the 60s and 70s, patient populations began to decline through the 80s, resulting in multiple vacancies. In 2006, Nova-Tech Engineering and Life-Science Innovations purchased thirty-seven of these buildings and created the MinnWest Technology Campus. The remaining seven buildings were purchased by Kandiyohi County, which uses them for youth behavioral services and community addiction programs.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/pf081920.640x640.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246087,"name":"Health and Medicine","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/willmar-state-hospital"},{"alt":"Jim Denomie in his studio","author":[{"name":"Heid E. Erdrich","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/heid-e-erdrich"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"November 15, 2023","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Denomie, Jim (1955–2022)","postbody":"Jim Denomie, one of Minnesota’s most significant and beloved visual artists, is best known for his large-scale narrative paintings. He used irony and humor to depict the political realities ...","searchtext":"Jim Denomie, one of Minnesota’s most significant and beloved visual artists, is best known for his large-scale narrative paintings. He used irony and humor to depict the political realities Native Americans face, including brutality and abuse, as well as his personal visions of eroticism, joy, grief, and spirituality. Denomie’s style is distinct and inimitable, especially in its use of color. A member of the Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, Denomie was born in 1955 on the reservation in Hayward, Wisconsin, and lived there through his early years. His family relocated to Chicago briefly in 1959. Denomie’s parents then divorced, and he and his mother relocated to Minneapolis, where he grew up, worked, and lived most of his adult life. Denomie attended public schools in Minnesota. After high school he worked in construction and eventually became a skilled drywall installer—a job he held until a year before his death. Denomie was driven to provide for his family, which grew to include two daughters and later a son and grandchildren. In 1989, Denomie became sober. He shared the fact of his sobriety publicly and privately, and it was a key aspect of his personality as an artist and a man. Denomie mentored others as they sought sobriety as he himself continued to make up for the years he had lost to alcohol abuse. In his late thirties, Denomie was determined to go to college. He did not, however, plan to take up art at the University of Minnesota, where he enrolled in 1990. Having taken a test that showed an extraordinary aptitude for mathematics, he entered college thinking he would major in a field where he could use his mathematical skills. He began taking courses in American Indian Studies, graduated with a BFA in art in 1995, and launched his visual art career with a graduate show at Two Rivers Gallery in the Minneapolis American Indian Center. Denomie’s first solo exhibit as a professional artist took place in 1997, also at Two Rivers Gallery. His first award was a 1999 Jerome Foundation travel and study grant; afterward, he joined group exhibitions several times a year. Denomie had studio space in the Rossmor Building in St. Paul during this time. Solo exhibitions in 1998 at Beauxmage Fine Art in St. Paul and in 2000 at Duluth Art Institute were well received and encouraged Denomie. He soon gained the support of gallerist Todd Bockley, who began representing him in 2007. Denomie married Minnesota author Diane Wilson (Mdewakanton Dakota, enrolled at the Rosebud reservation in South Dakota) in 2002. The couple lived for many years in St. Paul, then moved to rural Shafer (Chisago County), where Denomie built a two-story studio with space enough for large-scale projects. Throughout the 2000s, Denomie developed his distinct painting style as a colorist, humorist, and “metaphorical surrealist,” as he described his work in 2018. He also produced several series of works in other media, including sketching, photography, sculpture, and carving. He created found-object sculptures, specifically masks, and published a book of sketches in 2020 with Rez Rabbit Press. Landscapes and portraits formed the basis of his artwork. Subjects that carry through in much of Denomie’s art include faces, both beautiful and grotesque; historical and political events that included Native Americans; and rabbits (waaboozoog), which he identified with for cultural reasons. Denomie named his workspace Waabooz Studio. On March 1, 2022, Denomie died at his home in Shafer. He was sixty-six years old.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Screenshot 2023-11-07 105436_cropped.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246059,"name":"Native Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/denomie-jim-1955-2022"},{"alt":"Mine in the Vermilion Range","author":[{"name":"Jennifer Kleinjung","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/jennifer-kleinjung"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"November 02, 2023","eraTag":[{"id":186625246048,"name":"1585–1763 (Colonization)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056201,"name":"1754–1800 (Revolution and a New Nation)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056203,"name":"1792–1861 (Expansion and Reform)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":203519472229,"name":"Pre-1585 (Before European Contact)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Vermilion Iron Range","postbody":"The Vermilion Range, with its distinctive hard and high-grade iron ore deposits, looms large in the history of the mining industry in Minnesota. It was the first range to open (1884) and ...","searchtext":"The Vermilion Range, with its distinctive hard and high-grade iron ore deposits, looms large in the history of the mining industry in Minnesota. It was the first range to open (1884) and also the first to cease commercial mining operations (1967) due to changes in the steel-making process and the rise of cheaper-to-produce taconite on the nearby Mesabi Range. After mining ended, the area’s protected wilderness spaces—including the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness—took center stage in a new regional economy based on tourism and conservation. Millions of years ago, the land known as the Vermilion Range (between the present-day cities of Tower and Ely) was covered by an inland sea. Volcanic rock decomposition produced rich iron deposits of inter-bedded chert, magnetite, and hematite that later defined the region. By the mid-1700s, Ojibwe people lived there, especially around Onamuni Zaaga’iganiin (the lake with the sunset glow, later also called Lake Vermilion). When French traders arrived, they called the surrounding forests Bois Forte (Big Woods) after the local Ojibwe, who called themselves Zagaakwaandagowininiwag (men of the thick-fir woods). The Bois Forte Ojibwe knew about the minerals in their homeland and shared that knowledge with the Europeans who visited during the fur trade era (ca. 1679–1854). In 1849, Minnesota’s territorial governor, Alexander Ramsey, called for a road to be built from St. Paul to Lake Superior to open up northeast Minnesota’s rich mineral lands to trade. In 1866, state geologist Henry Eames confirmed the discovery of gold, silver, and iron deposits in Bois Forte, and the Vermilion Gold Rush began. Miners and settlers cut through woods and swamps using Ojibwe travel routes from Duluth to Lake Vermilion. Minnesota’s governor, Stephen Miller, asked the Commissioner of Indian affairs to remove the people of Bois Forte from the potentially valuable land around the lake, forcing them to move to a new reservation at Nett Lake. By May of 1866, Winston City was established on the south shore of Pike Bay with a sawmill, fourteen houses, mines, and three stamp mills. When the gold never materialized, this settlement became the area’s first ghost town. American interests in the Vermilion Range shifted to iron ore as Pennsylvania lawyer and businessman Charlemagne Tower funded an expedition in 1875. He acquired extensive lands in the area, bought the Duluth and Iron Range Railway, and founded Minnesota’s first commercial iron mine, spurring the growth of his namesake city (Tower). More than sixty other iron mining companies incorporated in Minnesota between 1887 and 1889, most of them on the Vermilion Range. Most of the wealthier people on the Vermilion Range—professionals, business owners, mining executives—initially lived in Tower. Soudan was intended to serve as a residential location for workers. There were no commercial establishments; beyond housing there were a mine hospital, a school, churches, a club house, and a Finnish temperance hall. Ely became the largest community on the Vermilion Range, with a population that peaked in 1930 at 6,150 citizens. Alongside the mining industry, logging shaped the local economy and landscape. Commercial logging began on Rainy Lake in the 1880s, and the first sawmill opened in Tower in 1884. The Knox Lumber Company incorporated in 1893 and focused operations east of Ely. Within two years, 300 people had formed the settlement of Winton next to the sawmill running on Fall Lake. Dams were constructed on Rainy and Namakan Lakes in 1910, launching the pulpwood industry. After World War I, the workforce in the mines on the Vermilion Range had declined significantly. Electrifying and mechanizing underground mining had addressed labor shortages during the war itself and now served as a cost-saving measure for companies. Soudan was permanently mechanized in 1924, making the labor of individual miners less important. Travel and outdoor recreation boomed in post-World War II America, with rising incomes and greater leisure time for the growing middle class. Federal legislation going back to 1902 had supported protecting large sections of land in and adjacent to the Vermilion Range district. Tourism near the Superior National Forest became a vital and growing source of income. By 1964, the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW) had received additional federal protection, while the Soudan Mine in Tower had ceased operations and been converted into a state park. The last mine on the Vermilion Range closed in 1967. Economic officials in Ely tried attracting new industry to town while simultaneously adapting the area for a new service and tourism economy. Wages in the service industry, however, did not equal that of mining. Environmental regulations (such as the 1949 prohibition of air travel into the boundary waters) aided some aspects of the tourism industry while styming others. By the 1970s, the perception that urban environmentalists from the Twin Cities did not care about local livelihoods was well established. The 1964 Wilderness Act and related efforts were referred to as “class legislation” by Stan Pechaver, secretary of the Ely Chamber of Commerce. By the early twenty-first century, tourism influenced by nature conservation was at the heart of the area’s economy. The Bois Forte Band of Chippewa ran a successful resort, casino, and golf course at Fortune Bay, which was one of the area’s largest employers in Tower. The Dorothy Molter Museum, the International Wolf Center, and Lake Vermilion-Soudan Underground Mine State Park served as principal attractions surrounded by protected lands in the Superior National Forest, BWCAW, and Voyageurs National Park. In 2012, Twin Metals Minnesota sought to renew mineral leases on copper and nickel mining in the Rainy River basin, renewing a generations-old debate about who has the right to use the lands surrounding the Vermilion Range. On one side, new mining ventures promised good-paying jobs to a community in need of them. On the other, they threatened to pollute water in federally protected lands and the Bois Forte reservation, as well as discourage nature-based tourism. Local communities were divided over the prospect, and attempts to build a new mine failed to clear regulatory hurdles.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/umn276648.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/vermilion-iron-range"},{"alt":"Rally flyer","author":[{"name":"Jennifer Kleinjung","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/jennifer-kleinjung"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"October 28, 2023","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"AIDS Conference Protest, St. Paul, 1987","postbody":"On November 7, 1987, roughly 400 people representing Minnesota’s gay community—including allies and activists—protested an AIDS conference in St. Paul sponsored by a conservative Christian ...","searchtext":"On November 7, 1987, roughly 400 people representing Minnesota’s gay community—including allies and activists—protested an AIDS conference in St. Paul sponsored by a conservative Christian political organization called the Berean League. With over 1,500 people in attendance, it was the largest gathering in the state to date addressing the HIV/AIDS crisis. It was also a show of force for fundamentalist Christians and other conservatives who opposed gay rights. When Minnesota’s gay community* became aware of the conference, a coalition of groups (the Minnesota Alliance Against AIDS, the Lesbian and Gay Community Action Council, the Minnesota AIDS Project, and the Minnesota Gay/Lesbian Freedom PAC) came together to organize a protest rally. The Gay/Lesbian Freedom PAC criticized the event as a pretext for fundamentalist groups to show their strength to the state legislature and also to the Minnesota Supreme Court, which was deciding a sodomy case filed by the Minnesota Civil Liberties Union. Berean League Executive Director Wayne Olhoft noted in response that “homosexual political activists feel threatened by the conference” and that “the protest rally is designed to distract attention from the conference content and to limit political damage.” The conference began on November 7 in St. Paul’s Civic Center with about 1500 people in attendance. Speakers included Dr. David Pence (a frequent Berean League spokesperson) arguing for closing bathhouses and adult bookstores. Minnesota State Representative Allen Quist advocated for all Minnesota students to receive HIV/AIDS education while decrying a “hidden moral curriculum” that promoted promiscuity and sodomy. In a forum with state epidemiologist Michael Osterholm, keynote speaker and divinity school graduate Gene Antonio accused media outlets of “covering up” HIV/AIDS because of their relationship with gay activists. By evening, the protest rally had begun outside the Civic Center. Local lesbian comic Becky Kent served as the MC and Zoe Nicholie led the crowd in singing civil rights songs. Eight counter-demonstrators appeared wearing surgical masks and gloves, carrying signs noting, “AIDS: God’s Gift to Sodomites” and “Jesus throws sodomites into hell.” This group shouted taunts throughout the evening, but protest organizers maintained a peaceful, determined, and even joyful tone. Conference speaker David Pence observed quietly; Berean League representatives claimed they were not affiliated with the counter-demonstrators. Inside the Civic Center, meanwhile, the crowd had dwindled to fewer than 600 people. Government officials, faith leaders, and activists spoke to encourage the crowd of protesters. Not all Christians, some noted, shared the Berean League’s values. Minnesota Commissioner of Human Rights Stephen Cooper, meanwhile, promised that his department would protect human rights. Dr. Frank Rhame of the University of Minnesota, claiming that most people have “tolerance as their morality,” called on the audience to reduce HIV transmission and support public health efforts. Activist Jim Chalgren related that Berean-caused hysteria had led to the defeat of a gay rights amendment to the Mankato Human Rights Ordinance in September. Minneapolis city council member Brian Coyle also spoke, musing that the local government response to HIV/AIDS would have been different if the virus had primarily affected straight Americans of Norwegian descent instead of gay men. He lamented how groups like the Berean League responded to HIV/AIDS based not on the severity of the disease, but rather the perceived social acceptability of its victims. Coyle took counter-protesters’ jeers in stride, encouraging rally attendees to remain politically active following the event. Other speakers included activist Robert Halfhill; Ken Solberg, director of Minnesota Clergy and Laity Concerned; George Moore, an HIV+ representative of the Coalition of People of Color Against Aids; and Emma Hixson, executive director of the Minneapolis Department of Civil Rights. In the middle of these speeches, six people dressed in prisoner-of-war garments evoking Nazi Germany (blue and white stripes with pink triangles) and white face paint prepared to enter the Civic Center to conduct a silent demonstration. Costumed activist Leo Treadway rallied the crowd, saying, “We’ve got better looking banners. We’ve got better looking men and women. Our songs are better. And at least our chants rhyme. We’re also not wandering around trying to pick fights.” As those in costume silently processed into the auditorium, those outside sang “We Are a Peaceful, Angry People” and lit candles. In the auditorium, a conference attendee chided demonstrators for spreading hate and discounting those with opposing views. Demonstrators remained silent, holding signs comparing the dangers of quarantine and extinction to threats faced by Jews in 1933 Nazi Germany. Tim Cole (of the Minneapolis Commission on Civil Rights) noted to the crowd afterward that there were many empty seats in the auditorium, and outside, “we outnumber them [Bereans].” Throughout the night, the protest rally remained peaceful. No arrests were made. After the conference, Wayne Olhoft explained that the Berean League had agreed to the silent demonstration ahead of time to avoid the “possibility of a less controlled situation.” *Editor’s note: This article refers to “the gay community” in 1987 rather than the more inclusive “LGBTQIA+ community” in order to match the language in use at the time. Although people who claimed identities other than the “G” were vital to this community throughout the 1980s, mainstream terms failed to recognize them individually.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/10445980.640x640.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246087,"name":"Health and Medicine","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/aids-conference-protest-st-paul-1987"},{"alt":"Matt and Kaisa Hill farmhouse (21A)","author":[{"name":"Jonathon Rusch","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/jonathon-rusch"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"October 26, 2023","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Matt and Kaisa Hill Farmstead, St. Louis County","postbody":"Located near the community of Embarrass, Matt and Kaisa Hill’s farmstead was one of a collection of rural properties in central St. Louis County that exemplified Finnish immigrants’ imprint ...","searchtext":"Located near the community of Embarrass, Matt and Kaisa Hill’s farmstead was one of a collection of rural properties in central St. Louis County that exemplified Finnish immigrants’ imprint on the cultural landscape of northern Minnesota in the early 1900s. When Finnish-born Matt Hill (also recorded as Matt Hilli) and his wife Kaisa (or Kate)* began to improve a 160-acre homestead in rural Pike Township in the final years of the nineteenth century, they joined a community of immigrant farmers near the small community of Embarrass who were introducing the rural settlement patterns of their native Finland to Minnesota. The Hills were among the many thousands of immigrants from Finland who made new homes in Minnesota around the turn of the twentieth century. Available historical sources do not reveal why Matt Hill sought to make a new home in Pike Township, although he had previously lived in Biwabik, where he may have been employed in the Biwabik Mine. Farming would have offered Hill a less dangerous livelihood than the mines in the Mesabi and Vermilion Iron Ranges, where many Finns found work when they first arrived in the United States. The 1862 Homestead Act allowed American residents to establish farms on land obtained from the federal government for a nominal cost, so long as the applicants settled on the granted properties and made improvements within their first five years there. Like other immigrants to the US of the same generation, Hill sought a homestead to strengthen his family’s foothold in their new country. In 1897, Hill applied for 160 acres in Section 26 of Pike Township. Situated on a bluff above the Pike River, the land lay in the “cutover region”—meaning lumber companies had already removed its first-growth trees. Farmland in the cutover region was viewed as having poor quality, but for this very reason it remained available for homesteads at the turn of the twentieth century. During the next five years, the Hill family cleared sixteen acres of rocks and tree stumps. They converted five acres into arable land, where they grew hay. To transform the property into a true home, however, they erected a collection of buildings in their clearing, including a dwelling, sauna, and several outbuildings loosely arranged around a central courtyard. This layout reflected a settlement pattern often found in rural Finland, although simplified for a small subsistence farm. The house (tupa) contained just two ground-level rooms, a loft, and a cellar, so it was not spacious for its six inhabitants: Matt, Kaisa, their three children, and Kaisa’s mother. Even so, the house was expertly constructed of logs hewn into planks, which were laid horizontally and joined at the corners with double notch joints. The cattle barn (navetta) and the original smoke sauna (savusauna)—a fixture of Finnish farmsteads—lay north of the residence and were built using similar methods. The double notch joints allowed the logs to fit so tightly together that no chinking (sealant) was added between logs. The cattle barn contained animal stalls and a hay loft. The sauna lay the furthest distance from the center of the farmstead, most likely because it posed a fire danger to the rest of the buildings. The Hill family’s farm also featured a well (kaivo) and a hay barn (lato), which was constructed of unhewn logs with saddle joints. Hay barns were common on Finnish farms and allowed farmers to store hay next to their fields. Accordingly, the walls of the Hills’ hay barn had spaces between logs, which let in air to dry the hay that was stored inside. Matt Hill completed the homesteading process in 1903, when he certified he had lived on his property continuously for five years and made the necessary improvements. Census records indicate his family remained in Pike Township until at least 1930, and they continued to add buildings to the property, such as a chicken coop and a second sauna. The farmstead was not electrified or otherwise altered substantially well into the twentieth century. Although the region’s harsh climate took a toll on the buildings, the farmstead retained its physical integrity and—along with several other Finnish American agricultural properties near Embarrass—was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1990. *Editor’s note: The 1990 National Register nomination form for the farmstead identifies Matt Hill’s wife as Emma rather than Kaisa. Accordingly, it calls the property the Matt and Emma Hill farmstead. The 1905 Minnesota state census, however, shows that in that year, Matt and Emma Hill were living in Morse Township, and the occupants of the Pike Township farmstead were the family of a different couple, Matt and Kaisa Hill. To reflect this fact, this article refers to the Matt and Kaisa Hill farmstead.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/house_1_09715_21A.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246091,"name":"Agriculture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/matt-and-kaisa-hill-farmstead-st-louis-county"},{"alt":"Dakota lace makers, including Maggie Whipple","author":[{"name":"Gavin Zempel","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/gavin-zempel"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"October 09, 2023","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Lacemaking at Birch Coulee, 1893–1926","postbody":"The lace-making school that operated at Birch Coulee at the turn of the twentieth century is an important part of the history of the Lower Sioux Indian Community. Although the school was an ...","searchtext":"The lace-making school that operated at Birch Coulee at the turn of the twentieth century is an important part of the history of the Lower Sioux Indian Community. Although the school was an extension of the assimilation efforts directed towards Dakota people in the late 1800s, the Birch Coulee lace makers used the project to support their community, and to continue a long tradition of communal artmaking among Dakota women. Before the US government named and recognized the Lower Sioux Indian Community in 1938, the same area was known as Birch Coulee. Its Dakota name was, and is, Caŋṡayapi (Where They Paint the Trees Red). In the early 1890s, Dakota women living there learned that their Ojibwe neighbors across Minnesota—at White Earth, Red Lake, and Leech Lake—were earning money by making lace as part of the Sybil Carter Indian Lace Association. Eager to bring the same financial support to Birch Coulee, the women contacted Carter and asked her to organize a similar operation for them. Carter agreed. With the help of Bishop Henry Whipple, they organized a lace-making school at Birch Coulee in 1893 and opened it inside the local mission. It was the only such school in Minnesota with Dakota students. Carter and other teachers introduced Birch Coulee students to the process of making lace, gave them supplies to begin working, and paid them by the piece. They mailed the finished lacework items to colleagues in New York, who then sold them in a shop on Fourth Avenue. In its first year of operation alone, the shop sold the lace to some of the most socially prominent women in the city, including Anne Morgan, Edith Stuyvesant Vanderbilt, and Olivia Mayard Cutting. In October of 1895, only two years after the school opened, Birch Coulee students traveled by train to Fort Snelling to exhibit their lace at the Women’s Auxiliary Missionary Society in Minneapolis. Almeda (Amelia) St. Clair led the group, accompanied by elders and young women. In a dispatch filed after the event, the St. Paul Daily Globe praised “the dexterous manner in which they ply their trade.” Almeda St. Clair, Julia Lawrence, Amelia Salisbury, and other women from Birch Coulee exhibited their artistry at the Paris Exposition (1900), the Pan-American Exposition (1901), and the Louisiana Purchase Exposition (1904). After the Paris Exposition of 1900, the Indianapolis Sunday Journal noted that “The most elaborate lace and the most intricate patterns are made at Birch Coulie [sic], and the work shown at the Paris exposition was principally from this mission.” Jeanette Brooks Campbell, Maggie Whipple, Mary Wabasha, Lucy Thomas, Julia Jones, Julia Lawrence, and Hanna Wells also participated in the school during this period. Unlike Ojibwe lace makers in Minnesota, who made needlepoint lace, most Birch Coulee lace makers made bobbin lace, also called pillow lace. They made a variety of products for sale, including piano scarves, lampshades, and altar cloths. The St. Paul Globe reported in 1903 that one lace bedspread made by a Birch Coulee artist had sold for $500. It also claimed that the lacework from Minnesota was “classed with the best Native lace in the country.” The lace-making schools at Birch Coulee and in other Minnesota reservations served an assimilating and Christianizing agenda that cast Native women as primitive. As an Episcopal Deaconess and missionary, Carter used the project to promote Christianity, “cleanliness,” and industry among Native women, in line with the US government||s overall policies. The exploitation underlying the project made Sybil Carter wealthy while leaving relatively little money for the lace makers themselves. Although Carter did promote artistry in the form of lace, she prevented women at Birch Coulee from continuing the traditional Dakota arts of beadwork, quillwork, and pottery. In spite of Carter’s paternalism, the creation and success of the school itself show the community’s agency over its own affairs. Lace-makers used their training to build economic self-sufficiency while maintaining their Dakota identity. Some, like those who presented to the Women’s Auxiliary Missionary Society in 1895, seized the opportunities provided by lace-making to travel and exhibit their work. They used the school as a site of community gathering, a place of education, and a source of employment. One writer noted in 1900 that the Birch Coulee women “take up the art with a strenuous desire to help themselves and their people.” After 1910, there is little evidence of lacemaking at Birch Coulee, and the Sybil Carter Lace Association disbanded in 1926. Dakota women, however, continued to make art with traditional materials like beads, ribbons, quills, and hides. At the same time, they invented handicrafts in hybrid styles (miniature moccasins, beaded prayer-book covers) to sell to tourists. In this way, they built on Dakota traditions while continuing to provide the income that had helped their community during the lacemaking years.","src":"https://www3.mnhs.org/hubfs/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Dakota%20lace%20makers%2c%20including%20Maggie%20Whipple.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246059,"name":"Native Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/lacemaking-birch-coulee-1893-1926"},{"alt":"Minnesota state seal, 2024","author":[{"name":"William Convery","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/william-convery"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"September 20, 2023","eraTag":[{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Minnesota State Seal","postbody":"The original Great Seal of Minnesota was created by men who tied their fortunes to the progress (as they defined it) and settlement of the state, often at the expense of Native Americans. ...","searchtext":"The original Great Seal of Minnesota was created by men who tied their fortunes to the progress (as they defined it) and settlement of the state, often at the expense of Native Americans. Starting in the late 1960s, critics of the seal argued that its imagery reflected an anti-Native American bias. In 2023, a State Emblems Redesign Commission chose a new design for the seal intended to better represent twenty-first-century Minnesota. Whether pressed into wax, printed, or embossed onto paper, seals represent the legal authority of government bodies. The creation of Minnesota Territory in 1849, therefore, spurred a need for a seal to endorse the new territorial government’s documents. In the absence of an official seal, Territorial Governor Alexander Ramsey first used one of his own design—a sunburst surrounded by the motto, “Liberty, Law, Religion, and Education.” The Territorial Council approved a second version depicting a Native family offering a ceremonial pipe to a white visitor, symbolizing “the eternal friendship” between settlers and Native Americans. Fur trader and politician Henry M. Sibley commissioned four alternatives from Colonel John J. Abert, an Army engineer and draftsman. Sibley solicited a watercolor painting of one of Abert’s options from the artist Seth Eastman. In it, a farmer pushes a plow while looking back at a Native American man on horseback, who rides away, lance in hand, towards a rising sun. A rifle and powderhorn rest against a nearby tree stump. The Falls of St. Anthony (Owamniyomni) cascade over a cliff in the background. Ramsey liked Eastman’s painting but suggested replacing the tree stump and implements of “improvement” with a “teepee” to emphasize “Indian life.” Instead, Sibley added an ax and the motto, “Quo sursum velo videre.” Although somewhat garbled grammatically, the motto essentially meant, “I wish to see what is beyond.” This seal design became official in 1849. The following year, poet Mary Henderson Eastman, Seth Eastman’s wife, penned a poem called “The Seal of Minnesota” that spelled out the seal’s implied celebration of Manifest Destiny. The territorial seal met official needs until Minnesota joined the Union in 1858. The state constitution awarded the right to create a new seal to the newly formed legislature. Both houses approved a design by late June. Sibley, by then the state’s governor, instead continued to use a modified version of the territorial seal. He flipped the tableau; the plowman now faced east, and the Native American horseman rode into the setting sun. Sibley also swapped the Latin motto for a French one: “L’Etoile du Nord,” meaning, “Star of the North.” Sibley’s unauthorized preemption of the legislature’s mandate raised some eyebrows, but his version received legislative approval in 1861. By the 1960s, the Civil Rights Movement and American Indian Movement spurred a critical reevaluation of the seal. Concluding that it placed Native Americans in “a derogatory light” and illustrated “a dark part of our history,” the Minnesota Department of Human Rights called for its replacement in 1968. Such criticism led the Minnesota Secretary of State to promote a variation that replaced the Native American horseman with a mounted pioneer carrying a rifle. Artistic variations, along with ongoing calls to replace the state seal by the Minnesota Intertribal Council and others, led to legislation affirming the seal’s design in the 1980s. State Senator Patricia Kronebusch introduced a bill formalizing the seal’s appearance. The description adhered closely to the original but contained new language intended to counter accusations that the seal was anti-Native American. The bill, which passed into law, decreed that the Native horseback rider faced “due south” instead of west, and specified that he “represents the great Indian heritage of Minnesota.” Claiming that critics had simply misinterpreted the designers’ original intention to celebrate co-existence, State Representative Timothy Sherman of Winona declared, “The whole matter was cleared up with one sentence.” But was it? Starting in 1983, critics again called for reconsideration of Minnesota’s state seal and the flag that bore its image. In 2022, state senator and Lakota descendant Mary Kunesh and others asked for a new design that better represented the resilience and contributions of Native Americans in Minnesota. Others, including former Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer, argued for honoring tradition. In 2023, the state legislature established a thirteen-member State Emblems Redesign Commission and charged it with coming up with new designs for the state flag and seal by January 1, 2024, to go into effect on May 11, 2024. After reviewing nearly four hundred public submissions, the commission chose a new version featuring a red-eyed loon (Minnesota||s state bird), wild rice, and a white five-pointed star. Above them are the Dakota words “Mni Sóta Makoce”: land of the sky-tinted water, or land where the waters reflect the skies.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Minnesota_state_seal_2024.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246059,"name":"Native Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/minnesota-state-seal"},{"alt":"Virginia Lane in uniform","author":[{"name":"Jokeda |||JoJo||| Bell","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/jokeda-jojo-bell"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"September 06, 2023","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Frazier, Virginia Lane (1921–2012)","postbody":"Virginia Lane Frazier was one of the first Black US Army’s Women’s Corps (WAC) soldiers to enlist in Minnesota during World War II. She served with the 6888th Central Postal Directory ...","searchtext":"Virginia Lane Frazier was one of the first Black US Army’s Women’s Corps (WAC) soldiers to enlist in Minnesota during World War II. She served with the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, a unit made up entirely of Black women that was stationed in England between February and November of 1945. The battalion won praise for clearing a backlog of mail that provided solace to American soldiers in combat. Minnesota-born Lane was deeply rooted in North Minneapolis’ Black community. As a young girl, she attended Wayman AME Church; sang with her two older sisters, Luvenia and Harriet, as the Lane Sisters; and graduated from North High. She also won literary and art awards throughout the state for her writing. According to the Minneapolis Spokesman, Lane was the granddaughter of Ophelia Rice—one of the founders of Bethesda Baptist Church and a member of the Negro State Federated Women’s Club. Rice had arrived in Minnesota in 1864 through the Underground Railroad. In 1943, Lane enlisted in the US Army Women’s Corps (WAC) with several Black women living in Minnesota, including Vernie Mae Smith, Bernice Eunice Huggar, and Elnora Alta Wallace. A few of these women lived in Rondo, a historically Black neighborhood in St. Paul. Lane completed basic training in Iowa before reporting to Walla Walla Air Force base in Washington state, where she was one of the first Black women assigned to the Air Corps. In the fall of 1944, Lane returned from Iowa to visit her parents at 722 Fremont Ave North in Minneapolis. Understanding the importance of Lane’s Army service, the Minneapolis Spokesman, Minnesota’s Black newspaper of record, interviewed Lane while she was on leave. Lane gave details about her military career and the activities she did with the little downtime that she had. She also reported winning a singles tennis championship for the WAC company stationed in Sioux City during training, winning a doubles championship with Pfc. Areatha Johnson, and announcing that she was crowned |||Miss Section B||| of the 224th WAC Battalion. Two years after basic training, in February of 1945, Lane landed in Birmingham, England, after joining the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, nicknamed the Six Triple Eight. The 6888th was responsible for processing a backlog of mail that contained letters, Christmas packages, and care packages from the US. The backlog of undelivered mail was creating morale issues for units on the European front, since soldiers needed mail delivery service to connect with family back home. In 1940, residents of the northern English city of Birmingham had survived the devastating Battle of Britain. In 1945, Lane and the Six Triple Eight worked under the stress of frequent air raids in a bombed-out Birmingham schoolhouse. There “was scant heat and barely any light, as the windows had been painted black to avoid detection by the Luftwaffe.” Despite being in an active war zone and being assigned an almost impossible mission, Lane and the all-Black 6888th produced outstanding results in Birmingham. With the new tracking system they created, the women processed an average of 65,000 pieces of mail per shift and cleared the six-month backlog of mail in three months. Their work, however, was further complicated by racial segregation. During the formation of the WAC, Black and white women were segregated in the barracks. There were also attempts to segregate cafeteria halls, even though Black and white women trained together. Transport of Black WACs was also segregated, sometimes resulting in makeshift “colored only” railcars and waiting rooms in the South. When on leave in London, the Red Cross attempted to place the battalion in a separate hotel from white servicewomen, claiming that the |||colored girls would be happier if they had a hotel all to themselves.||| Major Charity Adams refused and “coordinated with Black troops stationed in London to ensure her soldiers stayed only in integrated hotels.” When Lane was discharged from service in November of 1945, she received five medals: the European Theater of Operations ribbon, the WAC medal, the Good Conduct medal, the American Defense ribbon, and the Victory ribbon. In 1946 she married a fellow veteran: California native Arthur L. Frazier, recently returned from more than two and a half years of service in Europe. The 6888th’s efforts during the war have created a lasting legacy. In 2022, President Joe Biden awarded the battalion the Congressional Gold Medal; in 2023, filmmaker Tyler Perry announced plans to produce a movie about the battalion that features their bravery in the face of war and racism. Virginia Lane Frazier passed away in 2012 and was laid to rest at Fort Snelling National Cemetery.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Virginia_Lane_1945_St_Paul_Recorder_web_2.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056216,"name":"African Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/frazier-virginia-lane-1921-2012"},{"alt":"Woman operating a drill press","author":[{"name":"Brian McMahon","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/brian-mcmahon"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"August 02, 2023","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Women Industrial Workers in the Twin Cities, 1860s–1945","postbody":"For women to earn wage income in the 1800s, they first had to overcome the conventional, and often legal, strictures that led to the saying, “a woman’s place is in the home.” In the early ...","searchtext":"For women to earn wage income in the 1800s, they first had to overcome the conventional, and often legal, strictures that led to the saying, “a woman’s place is in the home.” In the early twentieth century, technological and economic change—as well as two world wars—transformed the industrial workplace, and much of daily life. In Minnesota and throughout the US, the women’s suffrage movement overlapped with these changes and helped the campaign for economic and social equality, including the right to work. St. Paul was the head of navigation on the Mississippi River and developed as a wholesale center in the 1860s. To reduce the uncertainties and expense of having merchandise shipped in, a number of companies started to make more of their stock locally. Shortly after its establishment in 1861, the wholesale dry goods house Auerbach, Finch, Van Slyck and Co. created a manufacturing department with over five hundred “girls” operating sewing machines powered by steam. They made from 4,000 to 6,000 oat and bran sacks and export bags daily, as well as tarpaulins, wagon covers, awnings, tents, and underwear. The women were almost all young and single; most had acquired sewing skills in their homes and needed little additional training. A visitor remarked in the 1860s that the scene reminded him of New England cotton mills, which had employed women since the 1810s. Another successful wholesale dry goods store, Lindeke, Warner and Schurmeier’s, opened in 1878 to offer a full range of merchandise. On the top floor, 125 women sewed tents, awnings, tarpaulins, cottonade pants, and outfits for miners and lumbermen. The sewing machines were arranged in long rows powered by a line shaft. In the 1860s and 1870s, a cluster of agricultural-implement manufacturers and related processing industries formed in the Twin Cities, making plows, harvesters, and threshers. Some companies, including Walter Wood Harvester Company and the American Grass Twine Company (both in St. Paul), had several thousand workers, including women. The International Harvester Company, a vertically integrated conglomerate based in Chicago, eventually monopolized the market nationally as well as locally, where they had warehouses, showrooms, and affiliated manufacturing operations. In Minneapolis, manufacturing was more mechanized, with factories clustered around the waterpower at St. Anthony Falls (Owamniyomni). At least one company had a significant female presence: the Minneapolis Paper Mill Company. Built in 1866, the mill grew to produce one million tons of print paper annually. It had a workforce of eighty, including about forty women. The Minneapolis firm Northwestern Knitting Company, later known as Munsingwear, was founded in 1887 by investors who saw an opportunity to hire women. It moved to a site away from the falls, where it became the largest manufacturer of underwear in the world with the largest garment factory in the country. It employed over 2,500 women, the most of any company in Minnesota. In 1888, twenty-one-year-old St. Paul Globe reporter Eva McDonald visited local factories undercover to observe the working conditions of women. She wrote over forty hard-hitting articles under the pseudonym Eva Gay, including one that chronicled the story of over 400 women working ten-hour days, five days a week, in a dark, wet basement at the Cascade Laundry in Minneapolis. “It looked more like a rat hole than a place where women were forced to work,” she wrote. “The steam, darkness, heat and smell from dirty clothing made a disgusting combination…Such a work room is a disgrace to humanity.” One of the workers said that most of the laundry staff were foreign born, as “Americans wear out too quick.” At another laundry McDonald visited, she was appalled that the women’s washroom was on the same floor as the men’s, but not even separated by a partition. McDonald became a nationally renowned labor organizer. Speaking at a rally in Indianapolis in 1891, she reported, “I made a round of the factories and shops of Minneapolis, and also of the school houses, and I found that the average pay to women was $5.18 per week, while at the same time I found that the actual living expenses were $6.25 a week….What does this mean? It means that life is simply a tug and a struggle to keep the wolf from the door, with none of the sunbeams to drive out the shadows.” Rapidly changing industrial practices greatly reduced the need for physical strength, and made it easier for women to work in the factories. Industrial factories also required more workers, leading companies to locate in cities with a large labor pool. The Crex Carpet Company, one of the largest manufacturing firms in St. Paul, was close to a residential district, so many of its 300 women workers could walk to work. Over 80 percent were single, and most lived at home and contributed to a family budget. At the turn of the twentieth century, Twin Cities hiring patterns by gender paralleled national trends. The 1900 federal census reported that approximately 20 percent of women older than sixteen were gainfully employed, compared to over 90 percent for men. Only 5 percent of married women worked, compared to 46 percent of single women. The so-called “marriage bar” greatly limited employment opportunities for women in all fields. At Munsingwear, 80 percent of the woman workers were single in 1918, but there were notable exceptions: many of the cleaning crew who worked the overnight shift were married Polish immigrants. In a bid to attract more women workers and to reduce turnover, companies made factories more appealing. The American Can Company, a national conglomerate, built a branch plant on Prior Avenue in St. Paul in 1907. It installed a tennis court, dressing rooms, flower beds, and well-kept lawns for its 300 workers to “make things pleasant about the factory.” Griggs, Cooper & Company started as a food wholesaler in Lowertown St. Paul in 1882 and branched into manufacturing in the 1900s. It acquired a large parcel on University Avenue adjacent to the Minnesota Transfer rail yard, then built a model industrial plant in a park-like setting with an aggregated floor area of over thirty-seven acres. The company employed women at its cracker and candy factories (built in 1912 and 1913) as well as at plants that produced coffee, tea, spices, syrups, and preserves (built in 1919). During World War I, women workers were needed to replace the five million men serving in the military. Of the estimated nine million women who mobilized, some found work in the military and some on the nation’s farms, but most went to work in factories at jobs that were previously done by men. Minneapolis Steel and Machinery Company, which made steel components for buildings, engines, boilers, mining machinery, and tractors, employed women in 1917 and 1918. World War II brought an even more severe labor shortage. Eleven million Americans served in the armed forces, and six million civilians supported the effort in the factories. Between 1940 and 1945, the percentage of women in the national workforce increased from 27 percent to 37 percent. By 1945, nearly one of every four married women worked outside the home. Most sizable companies in the Twin Cities area had military contracts, and many hired women. Women employees of International Harvester Company made anti-tank guns, military shell coverings, and motor trucks at its plant in St. Paul at 1550 University Avenue. In 1942, Ford Motor Company received contracts to build the M-8 armored vehicle and to make over thirty component parts for airplane engines. For security reasons, Ford’s Twin Cities Assembly Plant was divided into two parts. On the aircraft side, about 80 percent of the workers were women who wore uniforms, described as “a horrible kind of overalls.” Clerical workers had to wear a jacket, navy blue slacks, safety shoes, and white socks. One woman was assigned to test drive the finished armored cars alongside men on a specially built track at the rear of the factory. Over 3,000 people worked at the plant during the war—far more than during peacetime. After World War II, Ford needed only 1,800 workers, and the company expected that women would quit to make way for the returning soldiers. Many, however, refused to leave, with one saying, “I’m going to stay here till they carry me out on a stretcher.” With the acquiescence, if not support, of the company and the United Auto Workers (UAW) union, male workers mounted a campaign of intimidation and physical harassment, leading many women to quit. In 1957 the St. Paul Pioneer Press reported that only four “Rosie, The Riveters” remained. “They are vastly outnumbered by their male counterparts, some 450 to one…The present assembly line is not geared for employment of women.”","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/10274995.640x640.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246055,"name":"Labor","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/women-industrial-workers-twin-cities-1860s-1945"},{"alt":"Minneapolis teachers on strike, 1970","author":[{"name":"Jessica Ellison","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/jessica-ellison"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 19, 2023","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Minneapolis Teachers|| Strike, 1970","postbody":"In April 1970, Minneapolis public school teachers went on strike to demand higher pay and smaller class sizes. The strike resulted in the passage of the Public Employment Labor Relations ...","searchtext":"In April 1970, Minneapolis public school teachers went on strike to demand higher pay and smaller class sizes. The strike resulted in the passage of the Public Employment Labor Relations Act, granting public employees—including teachers—the right to bargain collectively. Teachers’ unions were active in Minnesota from 1861, when the Minnesota Education Association formed in Rochester. In 1946, St. Paul Public School teachers went on strike—the first organized teachers’ strike in the nation. More than 1,100 teachers struck for over a month, demanding smaller class sizes, funding for textbooks, improvements to facilities, and higher pay. The strike succeeded and attracted national attention. Five years later, the Minnesota legislature passed a law prohibiting all strikes by public employees. The law shifted in the next several years to include provisions that encouraged both sides of a labor dispute to negotiate and compromise, but the law did not require employers to recognize workers’ demands. If public employees––including teachers––were dissatisfied with pay or working conditions, they could not go on strike to insist their demands were heard. In the late 1960s, Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) faced the same challenges that their counterparts across the river had protested twenty years earlier. Class sizes were growing significantly. Classroom supplies were scarce, and teachers were forced to purchase their own or beg families to contribute. Negotiations between the teachers’ unions and district administration to address these issues, as well as teacher pay, had been in process for several months of the 1969–1970 school year, without reaching an agreement. By spring 1970, the teachers’ bargaining units were preparing to take further action. MPS teachers belonged to one of two separate unions: the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers and the Minneapolis Education Association. On April 6, 1970, Local 59 of the federation voted to go on strike. The association did not vote to strike, instead asking the district for two days’ leave of absence for its members, which the district declined. On the morning of April 9, 1970, 2,200 Minneapolis teachers picketed in front of district schools, an act that was illegal under Minnesota law. Teachers on strike risked losing not only their jobs, but also their benefits and pensions. For twenty days, teachers walked the picket line, often alongside their students and families. The Minneapolis School District closed all schools starting April 13; more than half of the district’s teachers were on strike, making instruction during regular school days impossible. The strike ended on April 29, when teachers accepted a compromise from the district. MPS leadership offered a revised wage and a no-reprisal clause that prevented the school board from imposing penalties on teachers who were illegally on strike. The long disruption of school schedules threw into sharp relief the impact of work stoppages and the impact of public employees’ limited bargaining power. In 1971, the Minnesota legislature passed the Public Employee Labor Relations Act (PELRA), granting public employees bargaining rights similar to those in the private sector. PELRA allows for public employees to strike legally if negotiations are deadlocked and certain requirements are met. During the same state legislative session, the Minnesota legislature passed new tax laws that, alongside PELRA, contributed to an overhaul of the state’s public school systems. Schools were solely funded by local property taxes, which increased local residents’ tax bills, levied additional pressure on school districts to balance their budgets, and created disparities between low-income and high-income communities. The set of reformed laws known as the Minnesota Miracle determined school funding until 2002, when tax laws changed. Minneapolis Public School teachers did not go on strike again until March 2022, and this time, they struck with the legal protection of PELRA. Their demands mirrored their 1970s peers’, and after two and a half weeks, Minneapolis teachers returned to school with an agreement that increased pay, addressed class sizes, and provided supports for teachers’ mental health.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/SPDPP negs box 281 4-9-70 Church 19.jpg","topicsTag":[],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/minneapolis-teachers-strike-1970"},{"alt":"","author":[{"name":"William Convery","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/william-convery"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 06, 2023","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Minnesota State Flag","postbody":"What good is a state flag? According to flag expert Lee Herold of Rochester, Minnesota, a good flag creates a distinctive brand. Ideally, Minnesota’s flag should also create unity, ...","searchtext":"What good is a state flag? According to flag expert Lee Herold of Rochester, Minnesota, a good flag creates a distinctive brand. Ideally, Minnesota’s flag should also create unity, representing our state’s values everywhere it flies. But this has not always been the case. The people of Minnesota have altered their state flag’s design in the past to meet changing needs. They continued to do so in 2023, when public input informed a redesign commission’s choice for a new flag. Thirty five years elapsed between Minnesota statehood (1858) and the creation of an official flag. When the organizers of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exhibition in Chicago organized a contest for the best state flag, Minnesota’s Women’s Auxiliary Board of exhibition planners got to work. A six-person committee, chaired by Florence M. Greenleaf, had issued a call for a design in 1892. After reviewing more than 200 entries, they selected the flag created by artist and leatherworker Amelia Hyde Center of Minneapolis. Center’s design incorporated rich symbolism. Each face of the flag was a different color—the front side white and the reverse blue with a gold fringe. In a nod to Minnesota’s Civil War regimental flags, the white field contained the Great Seal of Minnesota. The seal depicted a white farmer plowing a field while looking over his shoulder at a spear-wielding Native American man on horseback, who galloped off into the sunset. Center added a scrollwork ribbon and a wreath of pink-and-white lady’s slippers (Cypripedium reginae) around the seal. Norwegian immigrant sisters Pauline and Thomane Fjeld stitched together a silk prototype, and their flag took home a gold medal from the Chicago World’s Fair. At the Women’s Auxiliary Board’s urging, the Minnesota state legislature endorsed the prize-winning flag as the state’s official banner on April 4, 1893. Minnesota’s first flag flew proudly, if infrequently, into the twentieth century. Its two-ply design made it costly to make, while high winds played havoc with the heavy double layers. In 1955, the state legislature formed a bipartisan commission to review the flag’s design. The commission considered revisions to make it more usable “while still preserving its basic symbolism.” The commissioners recommended a simplified design. While preserving the state seal, they eliminated the scrollwork. Gone also was the double layer of fabric. Instead, the commission proposed a simple banner of medium blue, emblazoned with an image of the state seal. The new design simplified the font of the word “Minnesota” and added a reversed copy of the seal to the back. State Representative John Tracy Anderson proposed an alternate version that omitted the seal, but the Minnesota state legislature instead endorsed the commission’s design in March 1957. The 1957 design remained basically unchanged for sixty-five years, although with a seal slightly modified by state statute in 1983. Yet efforts to reimagine Minnesota’s flag persisted. Vexillologists (flag experts) gave the banner low marks for its complexity, similarity to other state flags, and bland design. A House Governmental Operations Committee considered an overhaul as early as 1989. In that year, a citizens’ group, led by Rev. William Becker of Austin and flag store owner Lee Herold of Rochester, proposed their own design, labeled the “North Star banner.” Judges ranked this design first among 154 entries in a public contest sponsored by the St. Paul Pioneer Press in 2001. That same year, the North American Vexillological Association ranked Minnesota’s flag among the nation||s ten worst. The state legislature considered ten separate bills to redesign the state flag between 2000 and 2023. Over time, critics focused on the white settler and the departing Native American who appear in the state seal. For many settlers and their descendants in the nineteenth century, the image had symbolized the supposed “inevitability” of white settlement. Later viewers pointed out that it also celebrated the forcible exile of Dakota people. In 2022, State Senator and Lakota descendant Mary Kunesh called for a new flag design that better represents the resilience and contributions of Native Americans in Minnesota: “We have been here, we are here, and we’re still contributing to the health and wealth of Minnesota.” Others, including State Senator and former Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer, argued to keep the modified 1957 version. In 2023, the state legislature established a State Emblems Redesign Commission. After reviewing input from flag experts as well as the public, the commission chose a new flag based on a design submitted by Luverne, Minnesota, resident Andrew Prekker: a simple three-color banner with a single eight-pointed star, representing Minnesota as the star of the north.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Minnesota_state_flag_2024.png","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/minnesota-state-flag"},{"alt":"Aronia berries","author":[{"name":"Rita Pyrillis","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/rita-pyrillis"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"June 14, 2023","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Dream of Wild Health","postbody":"Dream of Wild Health is a regenerative farm in Hugo, Minnesota, that offers programs to restore the health and well-being of the Native American community in Minneapolis–St. Paul. Founded ...","searchtext":"Dream of Wild Health is a regenerative farm in Hugo, Minnesota, that offers programs to restore the health and well-being of the Native American community in Minneapolis–St. Paul. Founded in 1998, it is one of the oldest Native-led non-profit organizations in the Twin Cities and has one of the largest Indigenous seed collections in the country. Since its start in 1998 as part of a transitional housing program for Native Americans in recovery, Dream of Wild Health has become a major hub of Indigenous agriculture and education in Minneapolis-St. Paul. It leads a growing national movement to preserve and restore Indigenous seeds to their communities. Dream of Wild Health began as a farm program at Peta Wakan Tipi (Sacred Fire Lodge), founded in 1986 by Sally Auger (Abenaki descendant). It was based in the Phillips neighborhood— the heart of Minneapolis’s Native community and the birthplace of the American Indian Movement. It was in Phillips that the idea of a farm was born after residents told Auger that they wanted to learn about traditional foods and medicines, and to reconnect with the land. From the start, she aimed for the program to improve the health of Native people who suffer disproportionately from chronic diseases. In Minnesota, the rate of type 2 diabetes among Native Americans is 600 percent higher than for whites, according to a 2021 study by the National Institutes of Health. In 2000, Auger leased a half-acre plot of land in Farmington. The small farm underwent a transformation after Cora Baker, a ninety-four-year-old Potawatomi woman, donated her lifetime collection of seeds to the organization. Baker had been farming in the Wisconsin Dells for more than thirty-five years, and she was known in the Native community as a “seed saver.” People sent her their seeds for safekeeping. Some of the seeds, which included varieties of corn, beans, squash and plant medicines, were about 300–400 years old and had been passed down for generations. After hearing about the work Auger was doing with Dream of Wild Health, Baker wrote her a letter offering help: I had prayed and prayed that someone would take this gardening up again. I am very pleased to learn about your project. I feel that the Great Creator has answered my humble prayers. With the help of my great granddaughter and grandson, we set out to help you. I wish that someday the children will come to realize the importance of the garden. Five months after donating the seeds, Baker passed away. But donations kept arriving, including Cherokee corn seeds that were carried on the Trail of Tears in 1838, when the tribe was forcibly removed from its homelands by the US government and relocated to Oklahoma. Dream of Wild Health quickly outgrew its Farmington location, and in 2004 it bought a ten-acre farm in Hugo, Minnesota. A year later, farming began. Youth programs followed, including Cora’s Kids, which teaches children ages eight to twelve about growing and eating healthy foods, and Garden Warriors, for teens ages thirteen to eighteen. In 2011, Auger retired, and Diane Wilson (Dakota) became executive director. A year later Peta Wakan Tipi officially changed its name to Dream of Wild Health. Wilson led the organization through a period of steady growth. She helped launch the Indigenous Food Network, a collaborative of Native-led organization working to create an Indigenous food system in Minneapolis. She also started the Indigenous Food Shares program, which offered produce for sale at the Four Sisters Farmer’s Market in Minneapolis. After Wilson’s retirement in 2019, Neely Snyder (St. Croix/Red Lake/Mille Lacs) took the reins and ushered in significant changes, such as the creation of the Seed Regeneration Team to restore seeds to their tribal communities. She also purchased an additional twenty acres in Hugo, tripling the size of the farm. By 2023, the farm had more than 200 seed varieties, including Oneida white heirloom corn, Hopi black beans, and squash from Lakota bands. Staff planned for a new farm building with a teaching kitchen, an outdoor pavilion, and incubator farms, among other improvements. They continued to provide Indigenous foods to Native students in the city’s public schools that is grown, harvested, and prepared by Native people, and to prepare future generations to carry on the traditional foodways of their ancestors.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Aronia Berries.jpeg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246091,"name":"Agriculture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246059,"name":"Native Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/dream-wild-health"},{"alt":"William Little Wolf, ca. 1917","author":[{"name":"William Convery","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/william-convery"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"May 24, 2023","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Little Wolf, William (1899–1953)","postbody":"William Little Wolf left his home on Minnesota’s White Earth Reservation as a child to attend a series of boarding schools. In 1917, he ran away from Carlisle Indian Industrial School in ...","searchtext":"William Little Wolf left his home on Minnesota’s White Earth Reservation as a child to attend a series of boarding schools. In 1917, he ran away from Carlisle Indian Industrial School in order to join the Navy and fight for the United States in World War I. He earned praise for his service as a gunner on the USS Utah and returned in 1919 to live out the rest of his life in Minnesota. William Little Wolf was born in Naytahwaush, on Minnesota’s White Earth Reservation, on April 22, 1899. Records suggest that William’s parents, Bishop (Mish-ki-bi-nince) and Maggie Little Wolf, either chose or were forced to move from Mille Lacs to the White Earth Reservation under pressure from logging companies. William claimed Ininew (Cree) and Ojibwe ancestry. His family spoke Ojibwe at home. In 1909, Willie Little Wolf entered the Indian boarding school system. The highly regimented boarding schools were designed to cut ties between Native American children and their traditional cultural and spiritual lives and prepare them for manual labor, farming, and domestic work. The details of Little Wolf’s school experiences are unknown. But the strict regimen and sometimes harsh punishment seem to have taken a toll. Little Wolf ran away from the Wild Rice Boarding School in 1912. He enrolled in the White Earth Boarding School, run by the Sisters of the Order of St. Benedict, the following semester. In 1913, Bishop Little Wolf consented to William’s admission to the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1879, Carlisle was the first government-run boarding school for Native Americans. Reflecting the school’s mission of forced assimilation, Carlisle’s founder, Richard Henry Pratt, coined the motto “Kill the Indian, Save the Man.” Housed in a former military barracks, the school cut students’ braids, assigned them European-American names, and punished the use of Native languages. During the summer, it boarded students out at local farms (a practice called “outing”) rather than allowing them to return to the influence of their homes and families. If William Little Wolf had a traditional Ojibwe name, it disappeared from public use. Little Wolf’s initial adjustment to Carlisle was difficult. He ran away soon after arriving, returning again after a month’s absence. Thereafter, he seemed to find his place. He enrolled for a second three-year term in 1916 and sought admission for a brother and sister. He developed close friendships with other students and expressed genuine affection for the school. In June 1917, Little Wolf slipped away from his “outing” at a Pennsylvania farm to join the US Navy. The United States had just entered World War I. The Navy, Little Wolf heard, “would be the first to go into action.” After leaving, he wrote Carlisle’s superintendent with an explanation and a half-apology for leaving without permission: “I am very sorry that I had to . . . run away from the country but I was anxious to join the Navy. But still I am glad that I did.” The superintendent admonished Little Wolf’s “mistake” but supported his decision to enlist. He promised to update Little Wolf’s status from “deserter” to “withdrawn” on his student record. In a sign of the assimilation pressures he faced, Little Wolf enlisted as “William Leon Wolfe.” After training at the Norfolk Training Station, Little Wolf worked as a baker on the USS Texas. In early 1918 he transferred to the USS Utah. There, he served on the fire control team for one of the ship’s twelve-inch guns. He won the Sixth Division’s lightweight boxing championship in 1918. The Utah’s skipper, Captain H. H. Hough, singled out Little Wolf’s “character[,] stalwart service and ability.” Little Wolf left the Navy in 1919 with the rank of Third-Class Petty Officer/Coxswain and leader of the crew serving the USS Utah’s No. 1 forward gun. He returned to something of a hero’s welcome: “My people were proud of my determination to fight,” he told the lecturer and photographer Joseph K. Dixon. As they did in other conflicts, more Native people per capita had enlisted to fight in World War I than any other American ethnic group. After the war, Little Wolf resumed a quiet life. The 1930 census listed him as living in Cass Lake with his wife, Margaret, a daughter, son, and two step children. He worked as a truck driver at a local lumber yard. During the Great Depression, he subsisted as a beadwork artist and craftsman and as a sub-foreman on a government-funded construction project. In 1940 and 1941 he took part in the nine-day, 450-mile Aquatennial canoe derby, paddling down the Mississippi River from Bemidji to Minneapolis. William Little Wolf died in September 1953. He was buried at Fort Snelling National Cemetery.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/NARA_1327_b118_4813_0001_Littlewolf_edited.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246059,"name":"Native Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/little-wolf-william-1899-1953"},{"alt":"Burnquist campaign poster, 1918","author":[{"name":"Greg Gaut","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/greg-gaut"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"May 15, 2023","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Republican Primary Election, 1918","postbody":"The Nonpartisan League nominated Charles A. Lindbergh Sr. as its candidate to challenge Governor Joseph A. A. Burnquist in the June 1918 Republican primary. Although Burnquist prevailed and ...","searchtext":"The Nonpartisan League nominated Charles A. Lindbergh Sr. as its candidate to challenge Governor Joseph A. A. Burnquist in the June 1918 Republican primary. Although Burnquist prevailed and went on to win the general election in November, the bitter, often violent campaign transformed Minnesota politics. Founded in 1915, the Nonpartisan League was an alliance of farmers that sought sweeping agricultural reforms, including state control of marketing facilities. Their strategy was to run candidates in the open primaries of established parties. After winning a sweeping victory in North Dakota in 1916, the NPL moved its headquarters to St. Paul and began organizing Minnesota farmers. In early 1918, the NPL held caucuses that led to the nomination of Lindbergh and a full slate of state-wide and local candidates. The NPL chose a difficult time to make its move. When the United States declared war on Germany in April 1917, Twin Cities business groups lobbied the legislature to create the Minnesota Commission of Public Safety (MCPS) to govern the state during the war. The commission included the governor, the attorney general, and five men chosen by the governor. John McGee, a conservative former judge, became the dominant figure, pushing an agenda of “100 percent Americanism.” Under his leadership, the commission sought to curb unions and the NPL by branding them as disloyal. To bolster its base of more than 50,000 farmer members, the NPL built a coalition with organized labor by supporting unions in the Twin Cities Streetcar Strike in late 1917. After the strike was broken by the transit company and the MCPS, Twin Cities unions felt betrayed by Burnquist and threw their support to Lindbergh. Burnquist claimed that he would not campaign because of the war, but he addressed many patriotic rallies around the state. He focused on loyalty, which he said was the election’s only issue. Uniformed Minnesota Home Guard units often participated in these events. Burnquist never mentioned Lindbergh, nor any issue facing the state other than the danger of electing disloyal candidates. Lindbergh campaigned on the NPL platform of economic democracy. He steadfastly supported the federal government after the declaration of war, but he had opposed the drift to war as a congressman and had also written Why Is Your Country at War, a book that argued that Wall Street bankers had dragged the country into war. Like the NPL, Lindbergh argued that if young men faced conscription, then wealth should be conscripted to finance the war. The MCPS and most newspapers painted Lindbergh as a socialist and a pro-German traitor. Local MCPS officials, sheriffs, and city officials banned the NPL from campaigning in many parts of the state. Lindbergh, for example, was completely shut out from campaigning in Duluth. Where he could campaign, he was often threatened and harassed. County attorneys from three southern Minnesota counties brought sedition prosecutions against NPL leaders, and a week before the primary, Lindbergh himself was arrested for sedition. The NPL’s signature campaign event was a massive car caravan decorated with Lindbergh banners that traveled around rural counties. When the farmers entered towns, banners were often torn off cars, leading to violent clashes between farmers and townspeople. On several occasions, Home Guard units were mobilized to thwart NPL campaigning. Burnquist won the June 17 primary with 199,325 votes to Lindbergh’s 150,626. Turnout was high, and many Democrats crossed over to vote in the Republican primary. Lindbergh carried thirty counties, including all of the Red River Valley and most of the Minnesota River valley counties. Burnquist prevailed in the two tiers of southern Minnesota counties along the Iowa border, in the Iron Range, and in the Twin Cities and Duluth. Rural counties were deeply divided, as towns and villages tended to vote strongly for Burnquist while agricultural townships overwhelmingly went for Lindbergh. In the cities, Lindbergh had strong support in working-class wards. A majority of the NPL legislative candidates did well and appeared on the general election ballot in November. The end of the primary was also the end of Minnesota’s progressive era. Moderately progressive professionals and businessmen, traumatized by the NPL and fearful of socialism, gravitated toward the conservative, big business wing of the Republican Party. The NPL, meanwhile, had assembled a new coalition of farmers, trade unionists, German Americans, and left-leaning progressives. In a few years, this coalition spawned the Farmer-Labor Party.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/J2 1918 b1.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/republican-primary-election-1918"},{"alt":"Heliotherapy at the Children’s Preventorium","author":[{"name":"Paul Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/paul-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"May 04, 2023","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Children’s Preventorium of Ramsey County","postbody":"Between 1915 and 1953 over 950 Ramsey County youth, most between the ages of four and fourteen, resided at the Children’s Preventorium of Ramsey County, in Shoreview. A handful stayed for a ...","searchtext":"Between 1915 and 1953 over 950 Ramsey County youth, most between the ages of four and fourteen, resided at the Children’s Preventorium of Ramsey County, in Shoreview. A handful stayed for a day or two; hundreds lived there for years. As its name suggests, the purpose of the Preventorium was to prevent disease—in this case, tuberculosis. It was the only such institution to function in Minnesota. In 1915 the leading cause of death in Ramsey County (in Minnesota and the United States, too) was tuberculosis, a disease spread from person to person. In St. Paul about one third of the victims were women of childbearing age and people under age twenty. It was a disease of the home. Tuberculosis (TB) then had no cure and no effective treatment. About half of those afflicted died. While physicians searched for a cure, public health officials worked on prevention. The preventorium, as its name implies, was designed to stop tuberculosis among some children before it started. In this era Minnesota built many tuberculosis sanatoriums for the treatment of people ill with TB. And though the Preventorium arose from the same public health concerns as the sanatoriums, and used some of the same methods, there was an essential difference. Sanatoriums were for the sick. No sick children were allowed into the Preventorium—it was for healthy children only. Admission to the Preventorium was always voluntary and free. In many cases the children’s families had been touched by a tuberculosis death. Starting in 1926 admission required a referral, usually from a public health worker. Over sixty families sent three or more children to the Preventorium, and one sent nine. The great majority of children came from working-class or poor families. Preventorium residents slept in outdoor sleeping porches and dressed year-round in oversized diapers known as drapes. They got two hours of schooling daily and two sessions of “heliotherapy,” that is, outdoor sun baths in warm weather, sun lamps in cold weather. The children spent as much time outdoors as the Preventorium’s staff could arrange: sunlight and fresh air were believed to have powers over tuberculosis. Time spent in the Preventorium ranged from one day to over nine years, with the average stay about thirty months. Many children stayed four years or longer. It was Preventorium policy to release children only when its staff judged their families ready to receive them. The Preventorium was run mostly by women. From 1916 to 1953 it had one resident director, Margaret Weikert. Teachers, nurses, and social workers were all women. Lena Yugend was its chief social worker during the Preventorium’s formative years. Together they created an institution with many modern features: detailed record-keeping, systematic follow-up, and a student-centered schooling system. The original buildings were all wood and not well designed for a modern residential facility. In April 1927 a fire damaged the main building and killed a St. Paul firefighter. This event provoked a great outpouring of support and money, which enabled the Preventorium to build a modern, brick main building that opened in 1928. Though African Americans, nationwide and in Ramsey County, died of tuberculosis at seven times the rate of Euro-Americans, between 1915 and 1950, only one African American child was admitted. She soon died of tuberculosis. By contrast, between 1926 and 1953 some fifty-seven Spanish-surnamed children were admitted. By the mid-1930s most public health experts had concluded that the preventorium model had no effect on rates of TB infection among children. By this time also, tuberculosis death rates, in Ramsey County and elsewhere, had fallen to half the rate of 1915. The Preventorium nevertheless continued admitting children and made no changes in its methods. Average stays for residents tended to get longer. Medical science had never found an effective treatment for tuberculosis until the isolation of streptomycin in 1943. In 1948, Joan Rose Danielson, a Preventorium resident, became the first Minnesotan to receive streptomycin treatment (but she stayed in the Preventorium for nearly four more years). By 1950 demand for beds at The Preve (as it was called) had so fallen that it began admitting infants and children with active cases. Ancker Hospital, Ramsey County’s public hospital, took it over in 1950. It closed in 1953.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/R3.2 p27.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246087,"name":"Health and Medicine","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/children-s-preventorium-ramsey-county"},{"alt":"View of Highway 61 from John A. Latsch State Park","author":[{"name":"Marjorie Savage","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/marjorie-savage"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"April 19, 2023","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Highway 61 in Minnesota","postbody":"For more than a century, the routes now known as US Highway 61 and Minnesota State Highway 61 have captured the imagination of Minnesotans looking for views of rushing rivers and cascading ...","searchtext":"For more than a century, the routes now known as US Highway 61 and Minnesota State Highway 61 have captured the imagination of Minnesotans looking for views of rushing rivers and cascading waterfalls. Although the road has been renamed, reconfigured, and interrupted multiple times, it continues to serve as a vital transportation channel along the state’s eastern corridor. At the end of World War I, a wave of economic developments changed the way Americans traveled. Improvements in automobile engineering and efficiencies in manufacturing made cars increasingly affordable for the country’s growing middle class. While the number of automobiles registered in Minnesota increased from 45,000 in 1913 to 324,166 in 1920, the state’s early roads were not built for automotive traffic. Most roads were little more than narrow, dusty lanes from the horse-and-wagon era, punctuated with deep ruts and inconsistent signage. Nationally, a populist Good Roads Movement called for collaboration among local communities, individual states, and the federal government to build a blended federal highway system. In Minnesota, that collaboration began in 1920. Voters approved an amendment to the state constitution, authorizing construction of a statewide network of hard-surfaced trunk highways. The amendment, developed by Minnesota Highway Commissioner Charles Babcock, identified seventy trunk routes crossing the state. The route that Babcock considered most important—Trunk Highway 1—was designed as a border-to-border roadway from the Iowa state line near Albert Lea to the Twin Cities and Duluth, then passing along the North Shore of Lake Superior to the Pigeon River crossing to Canada. Much of this route eventually became Highway 61. Work on Minnesota 1 began in 1921 with surveyors mapping the new road over footpaths and trails first traveled by Native Americans—particularly Ojibwe and other Anishinaabe people. Some sections were built over military roads laid out in the mid-1850s. Others were built adjacent to rail lines from the late 1800s. The road was constructed a section at a time, and a formal opening was celebrated on August 27, 1921. While Minnesota was making progress on its trunk highways, officials unveiled a national plan that included a mid-continental route to be named US Highway 61. The new route started in New Orleans and loosely followed the Mississippi River through Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. It then entered Minnesota from La Crosse, Wisconsin, and continued parallel to the Mississippi River on Minnesota Highway 3, rather than Minnesota 1, as far as St. Paul. US 61 joined Minnesota 1 at St. Paul before continuing to Duluth and the North Shore. Signposts were labeled US 61 and Trunk Highway 3 in the southeastern part of the state and US 61 and Trunk Highway 1 from St. Paul northward. In May 1934, however, the state trunk routes were fully absorbed into the US highway system, and the entire route from New Orleans to the Canadian border became US 61. During the Great Depression, the Civilian Conservation Corps completed projects along US 61, including a scenic overlook at the Cascade River and a refectory at Gooseberry Falls State Park. After a pause during World War II, President Dwight D. Eisenhower supported a comprehensive interstate highway plan. A network of divided, four-lane expressways was designed to skirt the country’s downtowns and congested neighborhoods. Three of the new interstate highways were proposed to run through Minnesota: I-90, I-94, and I-35. The new interstate expressways were not intended to replace US or state (trunk) highways; planners expected drivers to use the existing state roads for shorter distances, and to rely on the new interstate highways for long-distance trips at high speeds. US 61, then, retained its route through the lower half of the state as far as Wyoming, Minnesota, where it merged with I-35. The two highways ran concurrently from Wyoming to the Canadian border until about 1990 when the US Highway designation for all of US 61 north of Wyoming was withdrawn. The US 61 route along the North Shore was turned over to the state, and MnDOT renamed the North Shore section Minnesota Highway 61. Both roads—Minnesota 61 along the North Shore and US 61 in southeastern Minnesota—have inspired artists and writers. Bob Dylan recorded the album Highway 61 Revisited; Cathy Wurzer wrote Tales of the Road: Highway 61; actress Jessica Lange published Highway 61: Photographs, and Moose Lake’s Blacklock family produced multiple photography books related to the road’s path along Lake Superior.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/John_A._Latsch_State_Park_overlook.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246053,"name":"Transportation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/highway-61-minnesota"},{"alt":"Family members reunited after the Worthington ICE raid","author":[{"name":"Lizeth Gutierrez","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/lizeth-gutierrez"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"April 11, 2023","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Swift and Company ICE raids, 2006","postbody":"On Tuesday, December 12, 2006, federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents raided six meat-processing plants in six US states, including one in Worthington, Minnesota. At the ...","searchtext":"On Tuesday, December 12, 2006, federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents raided six meat-processing plants in six US states, including one in Worthington, Minnesota. At the Worthington plant alone, 239 workers were detained, leaving the city’s 11,283 residents in a state of turmoil. Children and families sought out community churches for asylum while local organizations worked tirelessly to establish faith-based and interpersonal networks to support the Worthington community. In early 2006, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials conducted a ten-month investigation into identity theft in Swift & Company, an eight-billion-dollar meat-processing business that was also the second-largest in the world. After the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) met with Swift officials, the company established a more rigorous procedure to review workers’ documents. Through a voluntary internet-based program called Basic Pilot/E-Verify, maintained by DHS and the Social Security Administration (SSA), Swift fired over 400 undocumented workers. According to the National Immigration Law Center, SSA database errors can misidentify about 3.6 million workers a year as not authorized for employment. The Basic Pilot/E-Verify can confirm whether a Social Security number is valid, but fail to detect when two people use the same number. Swift’s decision to use the program empowered corporate headquarters to deny any wrongdoing in their hiring practices, leaving the blame solely on the undocumented workers. Employees of the Swift plant in Worthington went to work as usual on the morning of December 12. It was a holy day for the Latino community dedicated to celebrating Our Lady of Guadalupe. In 2006, however, the day turned out to be far from a celebration. Ten white buses with tinted windows parked in front of the plant while 100-plus federal officers cordoned off areas of the building. ICE agents then arrested 239 people. They even arrested US citizens on false illegal immigration charges. The buses transported the detainees to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and to Camp Dodge, a military installation in Johnston, Iowa. Out of those 239 detainees, only twenty were criminally charged with identity-related counts. As the Worthington raid progressed, federal agents also arrested workers at Swift plants in Colorado, Nebraska, Texas, Utah, and Iowa. They arrested 1,297 undocumented immigrants in total, making it the largest federal immigration raid in US history. While all those arrested faced illegal immigration charges, several hundred were also charged with illegally assuming the identity of US citizens by using fraudulently acquired Social Security numbers. Federal agents raided the Worthington plant, like the other Swift sites, using civil warrants instead of criminal arrest warrants. ICE searched the premises, questioned employees about their immigration status, and failed to inform detainees of their immediate right to an attorney. Those held in detention centers were allowed out on bond after their processing only if they had no criminal record. Fear and intimidation spread rapidly through the city. In the days that followed, friends, family, and neighbors chanted “raza si, migra no” (“the people, yes, immigration authorities, no”) in protest of the raid. Worthington residents no longer felt safe. Families were afraid to go home. Children were separated from their parents, many of whom had only found out about the raids when no one came to pick them up from school. Community churches immediately acted as sanctuaries while local organizations generated a range of faith-based networks and community connections to support their Worthington residents effectively . The Communidad Christiana (Christian Community) church on Oxford Street opened its doors to children seeking asylum. Lawyers from the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota assisted in bond hearings and offered legal help with visas, forms, and work authorizations. It took Swift four-to-five months to resume full production. The company had to launch a major transportation initiative in all of their plants to attract immediate unskilled labor. For example, in Worthington, the company began busing in workers from Sioux Falls, South Dakota, attracting African refugees with employment authorization documents. Swift also sought out workers in homeless shelters in cities like Minneapolis and St. Paul, resulting in many single mothers arriving with their children. On September 4, 2007, Gloria Contreras-Edin, the executive director of Centro Legal, an immigrant rights law firm since 1981, filed a lawsuit against DHS on behalf of ten Latino plaintiffs. The suit alleged constitutional violations as well as abuse and humiliation on account of race. Federal judge Joan Ericksen dismissed the case in 2009. Swift had been bought by JBS, a Brazilian meat company, in an all-cash deal on July 12, 2007.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/reunited_family_Flickr.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246060,"name":"Crime and Punishment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246055,"name":"Labor","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/swift-and-company-ice-raids-2006"},{"alt":"Lenette and Lauraine Lee","author":[{"name":"Myra Billund-Phibbs","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/myra-billund-phibbs"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"March 22, 2023","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Transsexual Research Project","postbody":"The University of Minnesota performed sex-reassignment surgeries (as they were called at the time) on twenty-five trans women from 1966 to the mid 1970s as part of a program called the ...","searchtext":"The University of Minnesota performed sex-reassignment surgeries (as they were called at the time) on twenty-five trans women from 1966 to the mid 1970s as part of a program called the Transsexual Research Project. Helmed by psychiatrist Donald W. Hastings and surgeon Colin Markland, the project sought to alleviate the gender dysphoria of its patients through hormone treatment, psychotherapy, and surgery. At the same time, it tried to reform them into middle-class, heterosexual, conventionally respectable members of American society. Fueled by a complex mix of empathy, sensationalized concern, and pity, the project established Minnesota as the center of trans life it remains today. See editor’s note on language below. Trans medicine became a legitimate field of study in the United States in the 1950s through the work of sexologists (like John Money and Harry Benjamin) as well as trans people themselves, who demanded recognition across the country. Christine Jorgensen inspired a sensationalist media frenzy when she returned to the US after receiving sex-reassignment surgery in Denmark in 1953, and the attention made trans issues more visible. In this context, however, “trans” was transsexuality— a rigid condition of mind-body incongruence named by doctors. Trans people, the doctors believed, could be “cured” of sexual and behavioral pathologies deemed deviant or unacceptable through hormones, surgery, and social reconditioning. In December of 1964, a thirty-eight-year-old trans woman was admitted to the University of Minnesota Hospitals’ psychiatric wing. Psychiatrist Donald W. Hastings was deeply affected by her distress and desire for surgery. In response, he and colleagues designed a multi-year research project “to determine whether such surgery is a worthwhile approach to an otherwise untreatable condition.” They planned to study Hastings’ initial patient and twenty-four others during surgery and additional treatments, and then track their life progress over the next ten years. After getting approval from higher-ups, Hastings, Markland, and other medical faculty began to implement the project in 1966. A gender committee vetted and interviewed trans women before enrolling them in intensive psychotherapy. Eventually, the patients began a six-month regimen of hormone treatments and then surgery. While gender-affirming surgeries had been performed for years in Europe, Morocco, and Mexico, and in secret in some major American cities, the University of Minnesota (U of M) became only the second American health system to provide them openly, beaten by Johns Hopkins by less than two months. The project accepted Minnesota residents free of charge, but it rejected people who were married or assigned female at birth, as well as those with criminal records unrelated to cross-dressing. As patients received their operations and were discharged, project staff followed up every six months, recording patient progress according to a graded scale. “A” patients married heterosexual men, became professionals or housewives, passed as cisgender women, and abandoned their gay or trans friends. “Fail” patients did sex work, relied on welfare, failed to marry, and became “well-known to [the] morals squad of local police.” Implicit in this scale was the project’s secondary goal: to make acceptable the unacceptable, to erase homosexuality and gender difference, and to “treat” transsexuality by rendering it invisible. The final days of the project exemplify its complex legacy. By the mid-1970s, despite a lack of public pushback, the university began charging high fees for access to surgery “...so that transsexual surgery would not be at the expense of the Minnesota taxpayer.” At this point, local trans women found it increasingly difficult to access the services so readily offered just a few years prior. The change damaged the relationship between the U of M and the community for decades to come. Hastings died of a heart attack in 1977, marking the official end of the project. Despite its shortcomings, the Transsexual Research Project was revolutionary in its delivery of essential, low-cost medical services to trans patients. Patients awoke with tears of relief streaming down their cheeks; as of 1978, project staff could not find a participant who regretted their surgery, and half the group reported, unprompted, that the procedure had saved their lives. Many people in the trans community viewed Hastings positively. Patient Dona Ewing (aka Big Mama, a coat-check lady at the Gay ‘90s,) reported, “He was like a father to us…very kind and very accepting, and he was all for us.” Though the project ended in relative disfavor, it cemented the Twin Cities’ place in trans American history. Editor’s note: Doctors began using the word “transsexual” in the 1950s to refer to a person who sought out medicine and/or surgery to change their sex so that it aligned with their gender identity. Because of this clinical association, many trans people stopped using “transsexual” in the 1990s in favor of a word they chose for themselves: “transgender.” That word (and eventually its abbreviation, trans) included people who did not identify as transsexual or seek out medical treatment. It now includes gender-non-conforming people who identify as non-binary, agender, and genderqueer. This article uses “trans” in recognition of the shared history of these groups; it retains “transsexual” in some instances to reflect the historical use of that word. It similarly uses the historical term “sex-reassignment surgery” (more often called gender-affirmation or -confirmation surgery in the 2020s).","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Lee_Lenette_and_Lauraine_1970_02.jpeg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246087,"name":"Health and Medicine","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/transsexual-research-project"},{"alt":"Harris Martin","author":[{"name":"Jokeda |||JoJo||| Bell","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/jokeda-jojo-bell"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"March 03, 2023","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Martin, Harris (1865–1903)","postbody":"Harris Martin, also known as George Harris, was a middleweight boxer who went by the moniker “the Black Pearl.” In 1887 he became the first Colored Middleweight Champion of the World in a ...","searchtext":"Harris Martin, also known as George Harris, was a middleweight boxer who went by the moniker “the Black Pearl.” In 1887 he became the first Colored Middleweight Champion of the World in a fight staged on the banks of the Mississippi, making him one of the most famous boxers of the period. Martin was born on April 2, 1865, in Washington, DC, and made his way to Minnesota sometime in the late 1880s. Not much is known about his personal life in the years before he entered the ring in Minnesota. Early in his local boxing career he was coached by a number of Black professionals, like “Professor” Charles Hadley, who noticed his talent and encouraged him to be more active on the boxing scene. Martin made his earliest appearance in the Minnesota press in an 1886 St. Paul Daily Globe article detailing his fights against local boxers Dan Sommers and Jim O’Brien. The fights took place at the back of a Sixth Street saloon at midnight. Martin won both fights, gaining a reputation as a boxer who punched with “sledgehammer action.” Fighting in back rooms as well as established event centers around the country, Martin often received hefty prizes, like the seventy-five-dollar “purse” he won in his fight against “Young” Jack McKay in 1886. Martin’s star rose quickly in Minnesota, and just one year after winning his fights against McKay, O’Brien, and Sommers, he reached the pinnacle of his career. In 1887 Martin sparred with middleweight fighter Frank “Black Frank” Taylor, cementing his legendary status as a fighter who could take as much as he could give in the ring. On the night of May 2, 1887, the Black Pearl met Black Frank on “a well-shaded” spot on the banks of the Mississippi, somewhere on the border of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Prize money, reputations, and the title of Colored Middleweight Champion of the World were on the line. As Frank and Martin warmed up, a “tony” crowd gathered to witness the open-air fight with damp ground serving as the boxing ring. The fight started slow and steady. It lasted a grueling thirty-eight rounds, by which point both fighters were exhausted. Martin finally landed a blow that caused Frank to take at least ten seconds to get back on his feet, and the Black Pearl was declared the victor, winning a $225 prize. Outside of the ring, Martin lived a fast life, frequenting sporting houses and drinking into the early morning hours. On the night of July 31, 1891, he headed to the Minneapolis bordello belonging to the famous Black madam Ida Dorsey. Dorsey had a reputation for barring Black men from her sporting house, and she denied Martin admittance that night. After being refused entry, he attempted to kick down the door, which resulted in his arrest. After being arraigned, Martin offered to pay a fine in exchange for his freedom. The judge, however, cited past offenses and sent Martin to the workhouse, where he trained for an upcoming fight. The incident was one of many that signaled a decline for the famed boxer. The same year that he was arrested for kicking down Dorsey’s door, Harris faced a string of losses, and the press began to voice doubts about Harris’ fighting ability. The St. Paul Daily Globe made racially derogatory remarks, reporting that “The Pearlis [sic] too dark to be accused of showing the white feather” and claiming that he “refused to meet men in his [weight] class. After losing one of his last fights in 1899, at thirty-four years old, Martin took odd jobs in St. Paul to make ends meet. In 1903, after a few years of living out West, Martin returned to Minnesota and bartended at Phil Reed’s bar in St. Paul. On the night of April 26, Martin left the bar around 8 pm to visit Henry Shaw at his home at Fourth Street and St. Peter Street. As the retired pugilist walked from the bar to his acquaintance’s home, he suffered a heart attack. A doctor performed life-saving measures, but Martin died at the Central Police Station. He was thirty-eight years old. Martin’s funeral was presided over by Reverend W. D. Carter of Pilgrim Baptist Church, and he was laid to rest at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Maplewood. In 2010, over 100 years after his death, Martin was inducted into the Minnesota Boxing Hall of Fame. He is cited as a “pioneer” of the sport along with Oscar Gardner, Charley Kemmick, Danny Needham, and Pat Killen.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Saint_Paul_Globe_April_27_1903_page_2.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056216,"name":"African Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246054,"name":"Sports and Recreation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/martin-harris-1865-1903"},{"alt":"Lake in the White Earth Reservation of Ojibwe","author":[{"name":"Emily Poupart","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/emily-poupart"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"February 15, 2023","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"White Earth Land Recovery Project","postbody":"Activist Winona LaDuke founded the White Earth Land Recovery Project (WELRP) in 1989 in response to environmental destruction and a land-tenure crisis in the White Earth Reservation of ...","searchtext":"Activist Winona LaDuke founded the White Earth Land Recovery Project (WELRP) in 1989 in response to environmental destruction and a land-tenure crisis in the White Earth Reservation of Ojibwe. Since then, WELRP has taken steps to recover stolen land, to aid and educate Ojibwe communities, to maintain traditional culture, and to restore sustainable ways of life. In 1986, the federal White Earth Reservation Land Settlement Act (WELSA) cleared the clouded titles to 100,000 acres of privately owned land on the White Earth Reservation. Although it ended legal disputes by providing compensation, land, and funds for economic development, the act also prevented White Earth citizens from investigating land theft by non-Native people since the nineteenth century. Deforestation, meanwhile, endangered the ecosystems of the woodlands themselves. These environmental and land-ownership crises inspired White Earth enrollee Winona LaDuke to found the White Earth Land Recovery Project (WELRP) in 1989. To accomplish its primary task—returning land to the tribal government—the new non-profit organization began the work of raising funds to buy back parcels of White Earth land from willing sellers. It expanded its mission in 1993 by launching a Sustainable Communities initiative, designed to incorporate traditional Anishinaabeg lifeways into modern/Euro-American culture. The initiative promoted sustainable farming, clean energy, and cultural revitalization. WELRP’s work intensified as the 1990s progressed. When mercury contaminated lakes at White Earth, preventing tribal members from fishing, WELRP cooperated with the Indigenous Environmental Network and Clean Water Action Project to raise awareness of the connection between power plants and mercury poisoning. The Wadiswaan Project, begun in 1995, focused on Ojibwe-language education in tribal schools and organized immersion retreats for youth. And by 1999, WELRP had bought back over 1,300 acres of reservation land. Most of it was sugarbush forest that supported the traditional Ojibwe practice of maple-sugar harvesting. Also during the 1990s, WELRP reseeded reservation land with traditionally and organically grown crops, including manoomin (wild rice), beans, squash, tobacco, and heritage corn varieties. It worked to ensure a fair price for farmers and gatherers selling these goods at market. In 1994, WELRP launched the company Native Harvest to help Indigenous entrepreneurs sell their products, including wild rice, buffalo sausage, and maple syrup. With the help of PlainState Energy Associates and a grant from the Minnesota Department of Environmental Quality, WELRP analyzed the potential for wind energy at White Earth in the early 2000s. It installed a Jacobs twenty-kilowatt wind turbine on a tribal member’s farm near Waubun in 2002. By 2014, there were three wind turbines on White Earth: one in Naytahwaush; a second that had replaced the 2002 installation; and a third near the Reservation Tribal Council Building in the town of White Earth. In 2002, WELRP learned that researchers at the University of Minnesota had mapped a portion of the wild rice genome. The researchers had no plans for genetic engineering, but environmentalists, including Ojibwe people, worried that genetic mutations threatened the state’s wild rice beds. In another effort to conserve a sacred crop, the White Earth Nation banned the cultivation of genetically modified wild rice within its borders. WELRP, meanwhile, extended its reach across Minnesota by promoting a legislative bill (S.F. 1566/H.F 1382) to prohibit the growth of genetically engineered wild rice throughout the state. A revised version of the bill became law in 2007. In October of 2007, WELRP applied for a community broadcast license with plans to open one of the first Native American radio stations in the US. Local community members welcomed the chance to hear Native voices on the radio, and Niijii Radio KKWE 89.9FM aired its first show on November 11, 2011. Broadcasting to the people of White Earth from Calloway, Minnesota, the station evolved to provide independent news, music, Ojibwe-language programming, and a streaming service for online listeners. LaDuke stepped down from her role as executive director of WELRP in 2014. She was succeeded by Bob Shimek and then by Margaret Rousu, who officially took over as executive director in 2020. LaDuke continued to serve as the executive director of Honor the Earth, a national outgrowth of WELRP dedicated to Native environmental issues.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/White_Earth_Flickr.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246059,"name":"Native Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/white-earth-land-recovery-project"},{"alt":"Governor Harold Levander signs the Minnesota State Act Against Discrimination","author":[{"name":"Paul Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/paul-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"February 02, 2023","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Minnesota Human Rights Act","postbody":"Minnesota enacted its first major human rights law in 1967. That statute made it unlawful to discriminate against people based on race, color, creed, and national origin in unions, ...","searchtext":"Minnesota enacted its first major human rights law in 1967. That statute made it unlawful to discriminate against people based on race, color, creed, and national origin in unions, employment, education, public services, and public accommodations. Over the next twenty-five years DFL legislators tried and failed six times to amend the law to add sexual orientation. They succeeded in 1993. The 1967 Minnesota State Act Against Discrimination consolidated and strengthened existing anti-discrimination laws and created a new state Department of Human Rights. It was sponsored by Conservatives in the legislature (party designation was banned at the time) and supported by other prominent Conservatives, including Governor Harold Levander, future US Senator David Durenberger, and future federal judge Robert Renner. The law, which forbade discrimination based on race, color, creed, religion, and national origin, had support from both political parties and passed easily. The inclusion of gay rights was not considered—nor was the category of sex added until 1969. In the 1973 legislative session DFL senate majority leader Nicholas Coleman, on his own and without notice, proposed to amend the law to add people of “homosexual orientation” to those protected. His amendment narrowly passed the senate but was removed in conference with the House of Representatives. However, the categories marital status, status with respect to public assistance, and disability were added that year. The law’s name was also changed to the Minnesota Human Rights Act (MHRA). In the 1975 legislative session Coleman re-introduced the gay rights (“affectional preference” in this version) amendment to the MHRA that had failed in 1973. This time it got a vote first in the House of Representatives, and lost there 68-51. Coleman then withdrew his Senate bill. Factors in this loss were divisions in the gay community and radical demonstrations in the capitol that repelled some legislators. Senator Allan Spear, elected in 1972, worked only behind the scenes on the 1973 and 1975 bills, but he took a more active and public role after coming out as gay in December 1974. He was the first Minnesota legislator to do so. In 1977 Spear took over as chief sponsor of the MHRA gay rights amendment, which was defeated again. By now, conservative religious and anti-gay groups had organized effective opposition to gay rights proposals. Then, in the early 1980s, the HIV/AIDS epidemic added an element of fear and condemnation to the gay community generally. Still, in 1980, voters in Minneapolis elected Karen Clark the first openly lesbian member of the state House of Representatives. In 1983 she and Senator Spear tried again, but their MHRA amendment failed again. No one introduced gay rights legislation in the sessions 1985 through 1989. In 1990, DFL governor Rudy Perpich appointed a Governor’s Task Force on Gay and Lesbian Minnesotans. The resulting report concluded that “gays and lesbians are the targets of considerable discrimination in the State of Minnesota,” including job loss and violence, and recommended that Minnesota “prohibit discrimination against any person because of sexual orientation.” Nevertheless, a gay rights amendment to the MHRA failed in the 1991 legislature. Its proponents brought up a new version in the 1993 session. A new lobbying group, It’s Time Minnesota, had organized broad popular support for it and enlisted labor unions, businesses, universities, and prominent civic groups like the League of Women Voters. Republican Governor Arne Carlson had supported the proposed legislation for years. The bill passed in the senate by 37-30, aided by the Senate’s Republican minority leader, Dean Johnson, who made a passionate speech explaining his support (five Republicans voted for it, thirteen DFLers opposed.) The bill passed easily in the House, 78-55, and was signed into law on April 2, making Minnesota the eighth state to enact such a statute. Another factor in this success was dogged persistence over more than twenty years. The revised, 1993 version of the MHRA prohibited discrimination in employment, labor unions, housing, education, public services, government services, credit, business services, and public accommodations because of “race, color, creed, national origin, sex, marital status, disability...[and] sexual orientation...” The categories age, familial status, and status with regard to public assistance appeared in only some of the prohibitions. The statute’s definition of sexual orientation included transgender people through the language, “having or being perceived as having a self-image or identity not traditionally associated with one’s biological maleness or femaleness.” A subsequent amendment passed in 2023 separated gender identity from sexual orientation.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/1967_levander-signs-MHRA-creating-MDHR-800x534_tcm1061-452210.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/minnesota-human-rights-act"},{"alt":"Toastmaster manufactured in 1921","author":[{"name":"Kara Sorensen","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/kara-sorensen"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"January 18, 2023","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Toastmaster (bread toaster)","postbody":"Motivated by his desire for a reliable cafeteria breakfast at the Stillwater, Minnesota, factory where he worked, Charles P. Strite designed an innovative pop-up bread toaster in 1919. ...","searchtext":"Motivated by his desire for a reliable cafeteria breakfast at the Stillwater, Minnesota, factory where he worked, Charles P. Strite designed an innovative pop-up bread toaster in 1919. After Strite modified his commercial-grade model for home use, the Toastmaster quickly made its way into kitchens nationwide. While employed at a Stillwater factory during World War I, inventor Charles P. Strite turned his skills to a personal matter. The cafeteria frequently delivered burned toast because busy cooks neglected to turn off the toaster in time. Strite set out to solve this problem, and eventually improved upon existing electric toasters in several important ways. His design featured heating elements that simultaneously toasted both sides of the bread, a timer that automatically turned off the heat, and springs that pushed up multiple pieces of perfectly browned toast. Strite applied for a patent, then acquired capital from local investor Glen Waters in 1920 to build the first batch of machines. He shipped 100 hand-made toasters to Childs Restaurant locations nationwide, which soon returned each one for repairs. The buyers were enthusiastic, however, so Strite made the necessary technical adjustments to his product. Harold Genter added additional financial backing, and the new Waters-Genter company began production in Minneapolis. Orders came quickly from restaurants, hotels, and other commercial kitchens, because the Strite Automatic Toaster reliably and evenly toasted each slice of bread in half the usual time, with less effort for employees. Strite soon modified his original design into a smaller, one-slice version for in-home use, and applied for a second patent. The household model featured sleek Art Deco styling and utilized recent plastics innovation in the heat-proof Bakelite handles. A brass Toastmaster label adorned each machine to clearly identify the new brand. Further investment by Iowan Max McGraw in 1927 allowed the company to increase capacity. It moved into a larger production space just down the street at 213–217 North 2nd Street for expanded Toastmaster production, including the home model. By 1933, the Minneapolis factory was running shifts twenty-four hours a day to meet demand. In 1935, Minneapolis’ MacMartin advertising agency created a national ad campaign for the brand, promoting toast as a versatile food item which could be served to family or guests at any time. Hardware stores sold special serving trays that incorporated bread, toppings, and the Toastmaster toaster itself. At that time, a two-slice model sold for $16.00, while a one-slice version was $11.50. In 1938, McGraw Electric transferred all production to Illinois. In the twenty-first century, Toastmaster products continue to be manufactured in the United States and sold for use in home and commercial kitchens.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/1990.179.1.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246052,"name":"Science and Technology","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/toastmaster-bread-toaster"},{"alt":"Minnesota State Hospital for the Insane, 1867","author":[{"name":"Sasha Warren","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/sasha-warren"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"January 03, 2023","eraTag":[{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"St. Peter State Hospital","postbody":"In the 1860s, Minnesota experienced rapid population growth due to immigration. To serve the needs of these new citizens, the state legislature passed an act for the establishment of an ...","searchtext":"In the 1860s, Minnesota experienced rapid population growth due to immigration. To serve the needs of these new citizens, the state legislature passed an act for the establishment of an asylum for the “insane” in St. Peter in 1866. As it filled to capacity and then expanded, it became the primary site for housing mentally ill people considered dangerous or sexually aggressive. Before the 1860s, the territorial legislature had only outlined procedures related to mental illness. First, it promised to provide guardianship for those insane persons whose families could pay a guardianship fee. Second, it decided to confine insane persons who were considered a threat to public order or safety in poor farms, county jails, or poorhouses. Other families and individuals were left to fend for themselves if they needed assistance. This led to the historically common practice of families locking their insane relative in a basement or spare room. By the early 1860s, Minnesota’s jails and poorhouses were already overcrowded. The state began seeking means to segregate unemployed poor people for efficiency’s sake, with the hope of one day rehabilitating a portion of them back into the workforce. In 1862, Governor Alexander Ramsey agreed to pay the superintendent of Mount Pleasant asylum in Iowa a fee to incarcerate the state’s unhoused insane population. Their arrangement came to an end in 1866 when the superintendent officially requested the return of all patents due to overcrowding. This forced the legislature to pass a bill authorizing the establishment of a hospital for the insane in Minnesota that same year. Town leaders across Minnesota responded to the search committee’s call for a suitable site for the hospital. The initial donation to the state, they realized, would attract major state investment in the long term. A 210-acre farm in St. Peter purchased by citizens for $7000 won out due to its open land; attractive landscapes that would soothe troubled minds; the natural protection provided by nearby bluffs; and access to abundant water and wood. Patients returned from Iowa in December 1866 to live in a temporary structure on the St. Peter site until permanent buildings could be built. Construction was a slow and arduous process lasting decades, but patients were gradually transferred to new buildings as they were completed. In November 1880, a fire raged through the North Wing, destroying the building, killing at least twenty-five patients, and resulting in the disappearance of six more. Despite this major setback, construction continued, and all patients were moved into new buildings by January of 1885. St. Peter grew rapidly to keep pace with the demand from families and the state. In 1892, the grounds expanded to encompass over 800 acres. Administrators exploited the hospital||s growing population through the institutional peonage system, which used free patient labor in the name of |||occupational therapy.||| Patient workers made the hospital effectively self-sufficient, capable of feeding the patients and maintaining its buildings. Further institutional costs were cut thanks to extensive patient labor in cutting firewood, carpentry, and cutting ice from the Minnesota River. A few patients found paid work in the local community. Despite cycles of construction, crises of overcrowding burdened the hospital as early as the 1870s. As it built new buildings, the state took the opportunity to segregate different patient groups. Ideally, this would have allowed for increasing treatment specialization according to diagnosis (e.g. alcoholism, “feeble-mindedness,” tuberculosis) and prognosis (chronic or acute). As overcrowding began to progressively affect all Minnesotan institutions throughout the twentieth century, specialized attention and treatments were seldom possible. St. Peter began segregating patients in May 1911, after the construction of the Asylum for the Dangerously Insane. As the name suggests, it was built to house the patients considered too dangerous to stay with the normal population. To that end, the cells were barred, recreation was shorter and more limited, patients were more often confined in straight jackets, and punishments were both more frequent and more severe. Reforms in the 1950s improved the food, added recreational options, and eliminated restraints as a punishment. In 1957, the institution’s name was changed to Minnesota Security Hospital in response to patient protest around the stigmatizing nature of the original name. In 1970, the Security Hospital expanded to include the Intensive Treatment Program for Sexual Aggressives. Although both the Security Hospital and the main hospital (renamed St. Peter Regional Treatment Center by Governor Rudy Perpich in 1985) shrank in response to national and local court cases and changes in policy in the 1980s and 90s, they remain open in 2023.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/MN2.9 SP7.2 p10.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246087,"name":"Health and Medicine","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/st-peter-state-hospital"},{"alt":"The Beatles performing at Metropolitan Stadium","author":[{"name":"Britt Aamodt","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/britt-aamodt"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"December 21, 2022","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Beatles concert in Bloomington, 1965","postbody":"On August 21, 1965, the Beatles played their one and only concert in Minnesota. Beatlemania was in full throat that night at Metropolitan Stadium, where the screaming fans drowned out the ...","searchtext":"On August 21, 1965, the Beatles played their one and only concert in Minnesota. Beatlemania was in full throat that night at Metropolitan Stadium, where the screaming fans drowned out the group’s half-hour set. But the hijinks had only just begun. In an episode straight from the Beatles’ film A Hard Day’s Night, the band||s sleepover at the Minneapolis Leamington Motor Inn involved hotel security chasing fans, a limo driver roped in for off-duty crowd control, a reporter disguised as a waitress, and the police. On August 21, 1965, the Beatles arrived in Minnesota—finally. It had been a year and a half since the Liverpool group’s first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, marking their American debut. John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr had toured the country in 1964 but had got no closer than Milwaukee. When the Beatles’ airplane touched down at the Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport at 4:15 p.m., fans screamed, clawed the chain-link barrier separating them from their idols, and held up handmade signs declaring love for their favorite Fab. And this was only the beginning of the pandemonium that pursued the Beatles in Bloomington and Minneapolis, from airport to concert venue to hotel to their departure at the airport the next day. The Beatles held a press conference in the Minnesota Room of Metropolitan Stadium before the evening concert. Reporters peppered the musicians with predictable and occasionally silly questions like, “How do you sleep at night with that long hair?” The Beatles, who had to go through this at every stop on the tour, took the banter in stride. But they perked up when Ron Butwin and Randy Resnick, employees of B-Sharp Music, a Minneapolis music instrument store, presented lead guitarist George Harrison with a brand-new twelve-string Rickenbacker guitar. “It’s great...You got one for me?” quipped John Lennon, the group’s leader and rhythm guitarist, who had to do without his own free guitar. Days before, on August 15, the Beatles had kicked off their US tour at New York’s Shea Stadium, where they played before a record-setting 55,600 fans. They had become so popular that they had outgrown normal concert venues. With this tour, they became the first music group to play sports stadiums. Raymond “Big Reggie” Colihan, a local concert promoter, took on the daunting task of bringing the biggest act in music to Minnesota’s Metropolitan Stadium, home of the Minnesota Twins and the Vikings. Yet concerns over the chaos, which seemed to go hand-in-hand with the Beatles, led the promoter to undersell the concert. So the group ran through their thirty-minute set to a less-than-full stadium, using a PA system that hadn’t been designed for concerts. Out front, fans crowded round the limousines. They waited to pounce on the lads when they emerged. But the limos were merely decoys used to deflect attention away from the laundry trucks, which secretly conveyed the Beatles to their night’s lodging. That night, the Beatles took over the fifth floor of Minneapolis’s Leamington Motor Inn. Word had leaked, because girls were already crowding entrances and contriving schemes to bypass security. Four teenagers squeezed into garbage cans near the hotel’s kitchen door with hopes of being carried inside. One of the limo drivers found himself enlisted for crowd control duty. He was given a shortened broomstick. Before the more successful intruders could step off the elevators onto the fifth floor, he barred them with the broomstick. Susan Stocking, a young reporter for the Minneapolis Star, had no designs on the Beatles other than getting a story. Her guise as a hotel waitress, complete with uniform and food cart, got her past the guards and into a room with John Lennon, Ringo Star, and George Harrison. Lennon, rather than being annoyed, seemed to welcome this diversion from the boredom of his hotel room. He answered her questions and posed for a photograph with Stocking as waitress pouring him a cup of coffee. After the interview, he saw her out with the words, “Cheerio now, and let me shake your hand like an Englishmun.” Paul McCartney was having a less tranquil evening. Minneapolis police, alerted that the bass player and vocalist might be holed up with a fan, pounded on his door, threatened to arrest him, and made the girl leave, saying they were enforcing the midnight curfew. The Beatles management responded with the threat that the group would never play Minneapolis again. And they never did. The next year, the Beatles, tired of the frenzy, gave up touring to focus on studio recording. The Rickenbacker presented to George Harrison in Minneapolis turned up on the Beatles’ 1965 album Rubber Soul. Harrison played it on his composition “If I Needed Someone.” The guitar was stolen in 1966, and its whereabouts remain unknown.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/N5.25 p102.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/beatles-concert-bloomington-1965"},{"alt":"Sibley Historic Site","author":[{"name":"Eric Hankin-Redmon","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/eric-hankin-redmon"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"December 09, 2022","eraTag":[{"id":186622056203,"name":"1792–1861 (Expansion and Reform)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Sibley Historic Site, Mendota","postbody":"Established by fur trader and politician Henry Hastings Sibley, the Sibley Historic Site was a regional headquarters of the American Fur Company between 1836 and 1842. It sits on a bluff on ...","searchtext":"Established by fur trader and politician Henry Hastings Sibley, the Sibley Historic Site was a regional headquarters of the American Fur Company between 1836 and 1842. It sits on a bluff on the south side of the Minnesota river, just east of Historic Fort Snelling, and is a symbol of the thriving fur trade in nineteenth-century Minnesota. Today, the site contains several original buildings and operates as a museum that offers public tours. The Sibley Historic Site comprises three main buildings: the Sibley House, the Faribault House, and the Dupuis House. Additionally, there are four ancillary buildings: a brick summer kitchen/laundry (built ca. 1854), an ice house (ca. 1843), and an ash house (ca. 1840s) adjacent to the Sibley House; and a garage associated with the Dupuis House. Several buildings constructed in the mid-nineteenth century related to the American Fur Company, including a ferry house, chapel, and various warehouses, no longer exist on the site. Fur traders began coming to Bdote (the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers) in the late eighteenth century. When they arrived, they did business with the Mdewakanton Dakota people who already lived and gathered there. Sibley moved there in 1834 as the regional manager for the American Fur Company’s Dakota trade and built his two-story stone house near the company’s trading post. In February 1836, he contracted stonemason John Muller to construct what is now known as the Sibley House out of local limestone, hand-hewn timber, mud, and grass. After Sibley married his wife, Sarah, in 1843 and their family grew, he expanded the house. A four-room addition was constructed in the late 1840s, and an office and porch addition were built in the 1850s. The house was known as a center of hospitality where Sibley entertained and hosted traders, soldiers, and travelers. It was where first territorial governor Alexander Ramsey proclaimed the existence of Minnesota Territory, and where Sibley helped secure the passage of the act that officially organized the territory in March 1849. Two other homes joined the Sibley House over the years. French Canadian immigrant and fur trader Jean-Baptiste Faribault built his own house next to Sibley’s between 1839 and 1840. It is a two-story, side-gabled house with double chimneys on either side made of yellow limestone from local quarries. Like Sibley, Faribault contracted Muller to construct his house, which he wanted to look similar to Sibley’s own dwelling. He and his wife, Pelagie Ainse Faribault, moved into the house in 1840, and Faribault moved out after her death in 1847. In 1854, Sibley’s former private secretary, Hypolite Dupuis, built his house on the southeast side of the site. From 1853 to 1855, Dupuis served as Dakota County’s first treasurer before becoming president of the Board of Trustees for the town of Mendota in 1855. The fur trade declined throughout the 1850s, and Sibley and his family moved from Mendota to St. Paul in December 1862. From 1868 until the early 1900s, various people and organizations used the site in various ways, including as a Catholic girls’ boarding school and as a summer art school. In 1868, the Sibleys sold their house and property to Bishop Thomas Grace of St. Paul. By the early 1900s, the site had been abandoned. The Minnesota State Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) acquired it from the Archdiocese of Minneapolis and St. Paul in 1910 and formed the Sibley House Association (SHA) with the intention of preserving the Sibley House and operating the property as a history museum. Upon its opening on June 14 that year, the Sibley Site became the first designated historic site in the state. In 1922, DAR restored the Dupuis House, and it restored the Faribault House in 1935. After collecting artifacts concerning early Minnesota history and displaying them in the Sibley and Faribault Houses, the SHA began opening the site for public tours. It also opened the Sibley Tea House in the Dupuis House in 1928, which helped fund the site. The tea house closed in 1970, and the building evolved to become a visitors’ center, administrative offices, a museum store, and artifact storage areas. In 1996, the DAR transferred ownership of the Sibley Site to the State of Minnesota to be operated by the Sibley House Association (SHA) in partnership with the Minnesota Historical Society (MNHS). MNHS became the sole manager in 2004. In 2016, Dakota County Historical Society began to oversee operations as a contracted MNHS partner, with MNHS continuing to provide maintenance, preservation, and collections care.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Sibley_site_press_kit_exterior.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/sibley-historic-site-mendota"},{"alt":"David Madson","author":[{"name":"Noah Barth","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/noah-barth"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"November 29, 2022","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Madson, David Jon (1963–1997)","postbody":"David Madson was a Minneapolis-based architect who worked for a retail marking firm while attending the University of Minnesota to complete his master’s degree in architecture. He designed ...","searchtext":"David Madson was a Minneapolis-based architect who worked for a retail marking firm while attending the University of Minnesota to complete his master’s degree in architecture. He designed an AIDS memorial in the mid-1990s, when few memorials for the disease existed and the epidemic was at its height. He was involved in the local queer and leather communities, frequented gay bars, and attended HIV/AIDS fundraisers. Madson is widely known as the second victim of spree killer Andrew Cunanan, who murdered him in Chisago County, Minnesota, in 1997. David Jon Madson was born in Waterloo, Iowa, on October 16, 1963, to Howard Madson and Carol (Muller) Madson. He grew up throughout Wisconsin with his sisters, Dianne and Nancy, and his brother, Ralph. In high school, he was heavily involved in extracurricular activities, especially musical theater. Madson enrolled at the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD) in the autumn of 1982. He played Marcellus Washburn in The Music Man, and the UMD Statesman declared that his performance “shined” and was “impish and energetic.” For this role, Madson was nominated for the Irene Ryan Acting Competition (an acting scholarship for pre-professionals via the Kennedy Center) for his performance. Madson graduated from UMD in May 1987 with a bachelor’s degree in political science and a minor in communications, and by the fall of 1988, he was living in Minneapolis. Madson took courses through the University College and Institute of Technology for two years prior to being accepted into the School of Architecture at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities in 1990. Though he had begun working towards his master’s degree in architecture, he had also considered working in law. While attending school Madson worked various jobs, including at a law firm, a restaurant, and Saks Fifth Avenue. One of these jobs was at JohnRyan Company, a retail marketing firm he joined in 1996. Madson became a rising architect at the company, where he helped design commercial banking spaces for supermarkets. During this time, Madson was living in the warehouse (now North Loop) district of Minneapolis, first on North Fourth Avenue and then, by 1993, at 280 North Second Street. He frequented iconic Minneapolis spaces, LGBTQ+ ones and not, such as the Gay 90s, the Saloon, Monte Carlo, Cafe Wyrd, and Nye’s. He was a supporter of Design Industries Foundation Fighting AIDS (DIFFA). Madson completed his coursework for his master’s degree in 1995 and continued to develop his thesis, titled “The AIDS Memorial: A Place of Healing.” It argued that the “need for a memorial is rooted in the tripartite relationship of Recognizing (past), Healing (present) and Learning (future).” Madson conceived of a memorial that was both temporary and permanent to address the fact that HIV/AIDS is an ongoing epidemic with an uncertain future that will always leave lasting effects. It had no precedent but was informed by the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt. As Madson explained in the thesis: I remember seeing the quilt in Central Park in 1990; I thought that the miles of fabric would never end. And they didn’t. It became dark before I witnessed the end of day. And when I left, as other visitors arrived with candles, I had only seen a portion of it. At that moment, I felt a sudden sense of being overwhelmed; the quilt bridges a gap between the personal experience and global impact. Madson’s life and architectural career ended abruptly when he became the second murder victim of infamous spree killer Andrew Cunanan. Madson and Cunanan had been friends and sexual partners in the years leading up to 1997, but they had grown distant by the time Cunanan visited Madson that spring. Cunanan began his killing spree when he murdered Jeff Trail on April 27, 1997, in Madson’s apartment at the Harmony Lofts (280 North Second Avenue) in Minneapolis. Cunanan then shot Madson in Chisago County, north of the Twin Cities, on April 29, 1997. Cunanan killed Gianni Versace in Miami Beach, Florida, two months later. Madson was portrayed by Cody Fern in the 2018 TV series The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, created by Ryan Murphy. Articles, shows, news segments, and books that detail Madson’s life often center his victimhood and his affiliation with Gianni Versace and the Cunanan murders. Two pavers memorialize Madson on the north side of the Garden of the Seasons in Loring Park in Minneapolis, and he is buried in Wayside Cemetery in Barron, Wisconsin. The University of Minnesota certified Madson||s thesis after his death and dedicated it to his memory. The school awarded him with a posthumous master’s degree in architecture in May of 1998.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/David_Madson_Find_A_Grave.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/madson-david-jon-1963-1997"},{"alt":"Walker, Judd & Veazie sawmill at Marine Mills, ca. 1880","author":[{"name":"Eric Hankin-Redmon","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/eric-hankin-redmon"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"November 14, 2022","eraTag":[{"id":186622056203,"name":"1792–1861 (Expansion and Reform)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Marine Mill, Marine on St. Croix","postbody":"Marine Mill, the first commercial sawmill in Minnesota, operated in Marine Mills (Marine on St. Croix) along the banks of the St. Croix River from 1839 to 1895. Over a period of about six ...","searchtext":"Marine Mill, the first commercial sawmill in Minnesota, operated in Marine Mills (Marine on St. Croix) along the banks of the St. Croix River from 1839 to 1895. 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 remaining ruins were placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1970 and opened to the public as a park and historic site two years later. The Marine on St. Croix Historic District, created in 1974, includes the mill’s remains. Marine Mill was constructed by David Hone and Lewis Judd, two lumbermen from Marine, Illinois, who came to the St. Croix Valley in 1838 to find a suitable lumbering site. They chose to settle in the area for its proximity to fast-growing white pine trees in the northern St. Croix watershed. Hone and Judd built a small sawmill with a flutter wheel and founded the Marine Lumber Company on August 24, 1839. Over the next three decades, the mill’s lumber production grew enormously. During the winter of 1839–1840, it produced roughly 5,000 board feet of lumber. By 1877, it was producing two million board feet of lumber, 500,000 shingles, and 200,000 laths annually. A large steamboat levee spanned the length of the site. About fourteen men worked at the mill on a daily basis, and a 40-by-28-foot log boarding house on the site housed them. The company demolished the original wood frame sawmill in 1852 and replaced it with a new one that had a forty-foot overshot wheel with a muley saw. It succumbed to fire in 1863. That year, tanner, Vermont native, and early Marine Lumber Company partner Orange Walker became the sole proprietor of the company. In 1868, with Lewis Judd and newcomer William Veazie, Walker formed a new company known as Walker, Judd & Veazie, and a new mill was constructed that year. In the 1870s, the company expanded and was in its heyday, with income reaching $400,000 by 1875. The steamboat landing pier and log boom were also expanded to accommodate increased production. In order to keep up with competitors, the mill was rebuilt yet again in 1873. The company eventually constructed a telephone line to Stillwater for ease of business. By the winter of 1880–1881, Marine Mill produced the highest lumber yield of its existence. At its production peak, the site comprised a 102-by-56-foot board-and-batten sawmill, a wood frame planing mill, a stream drying house, and storage sheds. Additionally, there were areas for stockpiling the large amounts of lumber, laths, shingles, and other products Walker, Judd & Veazie produced. Major setbacks devastated the mill over the years, including increased competition, a national economic depression, tornado damage, log jams, and occasional low water levels that made lumber transport difficult. After Walker, Judd & Veazie went bankrupt in 1885, creditors operated the mill for a while, and the company was sold to Anderson and O’Brien Sawmill Company of Stillwater in 1888. Town residents attempted to keep the mill in operation, but it ceased operations in 1895 after years of inactivity. Another company purchased the mill that year and sold the machinery to other lumbering firms. The various frame buildings were demolished thereafter. After the mill closed, the town’s name was changed from Marine Mills to Marine on St. Croix to reflect the absence of the milling industry. In over a half-century of operation, Marine Mill produced 197,000,000 board feet of lumber. The mill produced lumber used for construction in many towns and cities throughout the state in the late nineteenth century. The Marine Mill site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1970. The Minnesota Historical Society acquired it in 1972. Soon afterward, the site became a park managed by the City of Marine on St Croix with three distinct areas: an upper bluff, rocky cliffs, and a river-level floodplain. The site featured the mill’s ruins, including remnants of the sandstone sawmill and its overshot wheel, along with the planing mill and drying shed foundations. It also contained a stream, walking trails, interpretive signs, a beach, a canoe landing, and an observation deck.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/HD5.5W r9.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/marine-mill-marine-st-croix"},{"alt":"Louise and Bob Brown","author":[{"name":"Paul Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/paul-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"November 01, 2022","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Brown, Bob (1893–1954)","postbody":"Robert Aaron Brown was a prolific St. Paul painter, mostly of watercolors, whose productive years were roughly 1930 to 1950. His works appeared in dozens of exhibits, including solo shows ...","searchtext":"Robert Aaron Brown was a prolific St. Paul painter, mostly of watercolors, whose productive years were roughly 1930 to 1950. His works appeared in dozens of exhibits, including solo shows at the Walker Art Center and the St. Paul Public Library. He painted city scenes (chiefly in St. Paul) and landscapes of the St. Croix and Upper Mississippi valleys. Born and reared in Berlin, Wisconsin, by 1915 Brown had moved to St. Paul and found work as a commercial artist. He served briefly in the US Army during World War I, stationed in Iowa. In 1918 he married Louise Driese of St. Paul, also a commercial artist. The couple toured Europe in the early 1920s, and around that time Brown also studied at the Art Students League in New York City. He and Louise moved in 1930 to Greenwich Village, where Brown failed to make a living as a painter. Back in St. Paul, Brown left his wife and took up with writer Meridel Le Sueur, with whom he lived on occasion, and to whom he remained devoted the rest of his life. His letters to her display both an unquenchable passion and an imaginative use of the English language. “I’d rather be 100% assembled—alert, than rich.” “A word, just slight, is so reassuring of rhythmic ventricle in your excellent turbine.” “The outside caress of the world up and over.” He had three passions: his art, Meridel Le Sueur, and the bottle. Alcoholism sometimes drove him to despair: “Tomb is still, jug is empty, follow’d hallucination in 2 oblivion & nothing but black remorse.” With contemporaries Stanford Fennelle, Clement Haupers, and others, he participated in the Minnesota “regionalist” style of painting promoted by the New Deal’s Federal Art Project (FAP). In 1936 one Bob Brown painting appeared in the New Horizons in American Art exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He had solo shows at the Walker Art Center in 1940, and the St. Paul Public Library in 1941. Local art critics reviewed these shows favorably. John Sherman in the Minneapolis Star Journal wrote that Brown’s work “provides adventure and stimulation,” and that “Bob Brown has a muscular art that has few pictorial cliches.” James Gray of the St. Paul Dispatch found “freshness of insight” and “flashing brilliance of technique.” The Walker Art Center displayed his works in group shows in 1943, 1944, and 1949. He painted large works in support of the Minnesota war effort in the 1940s, and had several works on display at the Minnesota State Sanatorium for Consumptives (Ah-Gwah-Ching) in Walker. Employment by FAP was probably the only steady work Brown had in his adult life. He lived alone in St. Paul’s old Seven Corners neighborhood, patronized the bars, and painted. By the early 1950s he was a well-known street character who sometimes traded paintings for drinks. Brown died of a heart attack while on a walk in his neighborhood, in June 1954. His wife, Louise, whom he never divorced, had him buried at Fort Snelling National Cemetery. She died in 1963. In 1965 the Saint Paul Art Center held a retrospective show of his work. Brown’s works disappeared from view for the next twenty years. Local banks held hundreds as collateral for unpaid loans, until a federal bankruptcy court determined ownership. In the mid-1980s Walter Bush, founder of the Minnesota North Stars hockey team, bought the collection, then placed it in storage again for another twenty years. Most of those works have since been sold to private buyers; some (seventy pieces) were donated to the Minnesota Historical Society, which holds the biggest known collection of his work. No one knows how many works Brown produced or where they all are. Museums around the country, including the Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) in Minneapolis, hold a handful. In 2022 Meridel LeSueur’s daughter, Deborah LeSueur, donated photographic images of nearly 300 Bob Brown works to the Ramsey County Historical Society.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Bob_Brown_passport_photo_from_Family_Search.png","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/brown-bob-1893-1954"},{"alt":"Reconstructed row house at Snake River Fur Post","author":[{"name":"Peter J. DeCarlo","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/peter-j-decarlo"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"October 25, 2022","eraTag":[{"id":186622056203,"name":"1792–1861 (Expansion and Reform)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Snake River Fur Post","postbody":"For a single trading season between the fall of 1804 and the spring of 1805, the Snake River Fur Post was an epicenter of the Upper Mississippi fur trade. The stockaded structure, ...","searchtext":"For a single trading season between the fall of 1804 and the spring of 1805, the Snake River Fur Post was an epicenter of the Upper Mississippi fur trade. The stockaded structure, supervised by veteran trader John Sayer, was a place where employees of the North West Fur Company came together with Ojibwe and Metis hunters and trappers. The Minnesota Historical Society rebuilt the post’s buildings and opened them as a historic site in 1970. The land on which the Snake River Fur Post was built in 1804 was, and still is, Ojibwe homeland. At that time, the Ojibwe had held a powerful position in the fur trade for over 175 years. Their homeland and influence reached from the Great Lakes to the Great Plains in the west, and to the homelands of the Cree and Assiniboine in the north. With the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, the United States laid colonial claim to much of present-day Minnesota. It lacked, however, a real presence in the region, and the Indigenous peoples of the area continued to trade with British companies. Incorporated in 1779 and headquartered in Montreal, the North West Company traded with Ojibwe people living in present-day Canada and the Upper Midwestern United States. Eager to expand its business and compete with the XY Company, the North West Company sent experienced trader John Sayer to the lands of the Snake River band of Ojibwe in 1804. A North West company employee named Joseph Réaume had been trading on the Snake River since 1802, and Sayer had visited the region before. But in 1804, Sayer was ordered to establish a more permanent band-level post to satisfy the Ojibwe living near Ginebig-ziibi (Snake River). Sayer had been working for British fur trade companies since the 1770s in the Fond du Lac District, southwest of Lake Superior. He was a bourgeois, a French term marking his status as a wintering partner and stockholder with the North West Company. Bourgeois were the highest-ranking employees to work directly with Native Americans, and Sayer spent considerable time in Ojibwe communities at Grand Portage and Fond du Lac. The Ojibwe incorporated Sayer into their kinship and cultural practices. They taught him their language and the Indigenous custom of reciprocity, which governed the fur trade. An Ojibwe woman named Obemau-unoqua, daughter of a leader named Mamongazida, married Sayer and started a family. She came from an influential Ojibwe family who lived at Chequamegon (present-day Wisconsin), and her father was a renowned hunter and war leader. Obemau-unoqua also had kinship ties to the Bdewakantunwan Dakota. As the wife of a bourgeois, she held a privileged status, and servants attended to her needs. When Sayer and his party arrived in the area, the local Ojibwe welcomed them. They exchanged gifts, and the Ojibwe recommended that Sayer’s party build a post on the banks of Ginebig-ziibi. The party constructed the Snake River Fur Post from October 9 to November 20, 1804. It included a six-room row house with living quarters, a warehouse, and a trade shop. The rowhouse was enclosed by a stockade with a main gate and a river entrance. Through the winter of 1804–1805, the Ojibwe trapped beaver and hunted other fur-bearing animals. Sayer’s employees spent much of their time hunting, chopping firewood, and visiting the winter lodges of the Ojibwe. Ojibwe people from communities on the Yellow, St. Croix, and Snake rivers, as well as Lake Pokegama, interacted with Sayer’s company. They represented their people’s interests and worked as hunters, trappers, and guides. Some known names of the local Ojibwe were Miqauanance, Kisketawak, Wishaima, and Shagobay. When spring arrived, the Ojibwe brought their furs to Sayer, traded for goods, and settled debts. On April 26, 1805, the North West Company party left the Snake River Fur Post and returned to Fort St. Louis at Fond du Lac. It is unknown if the Snake River Fur Post was used after Sayer’s party departed in 1805. Eventually, the buildings fell into ruin and burned. In 1963, the Minnesota Historical Society conducted field testing at the site on the advice of a local who believed the area to be the former location of the Snake River Fur Post. The tests were positive, and archaeology continued over the next three summers. The Minnesota Historical Society purchased the land, and in 1966 the Minnesota Legislature funded the reconstruction of the post. The historic site opened to the public in 1970.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Snake_River_rowhouse.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246059,"name":"Native Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/snake-river-fur-post"},{"alt":"Charles F. Dight","author":[{"name":"Sasha Warren","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/sasha-warren"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"October 17, 2022","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Dight, Charles Fremont (1856–1938)","postbody":"Charles Fremont Dight grew up believing in the power of medicine to ascertain and correct natural or social problems. After a series of disappointments in politics in the 1910s, he turned ...","searchtext":"Charles Fremont Dight grew up believing in the power of medicine to ascertain and correct natural or social problems. After a series of disappointments in politics in the 1910s, he turned to the burgeoning field of eugenics in the 1920s to realize his dream of a centrally planned economy and population. Dight was born on July 6, 1856, in Mercer, Pennsylvania, where he grew up on a farm with his six siblings. At the age of thirteen, he decided to become a doctor after discovering he had a passionate interest in phrenology and heredity. Dight pursued this goal with singular purpose and drive, obtaining a degree in medicine in just three years from the University of Michigan in 1879 and immediately taking up practice as a health officer in Holton, Michigan. After a brief stint as an assistant back at the university, he left the United States in 1883 for Beirut, Syria (now Lebanon), where he worked as a professor of anatomy and physiology at the American Medical college. Dight returned to the United States in 1889 and settled in Minnesota to accept the position of resident physician at Shattuck School in Faribault. From 1899 on, he taught physiology at Hamline University in St. Paul; lectured on (mental) hygiene and sanitation (1910); and taught pharmacology at the University of Minnesota (1908–1913). Between 1901 and 1933, he was employed part-time as the medical director of the Ministers Life and Casualty Union. Compared to his medical and political pursuits, Dight dedicated only a small portion of his time to personal relationships and hobbies. He married Dr. Mary A. Crawford in 1892, but their union lasted only seven years. He solidified his reputation as a local eccentric after building a house on iron stilts at 39th Avenue South and 48th Street in Minneapolis in 1911. In 1914, Dight made his first forays into politics when he was elected as one of four aldermen on the Socialist Party ticket representing the twelfth ward in Minneapolis. He retired from the Socialist Party in 1917, however, because he disagreed with its increasing radicalism. Some of Dight’s successes were purely symbolic. In 1917, his motion to congratulate Russians on their “recent great advance towards democracy” passed in the city council, and Minneapolis subsequently sent an official commendation to the Minister of Justice, Alexander Kerensky, in Petrograd. Other municipal work was of lasting practical import. Dight had the small “Railway Avenue” (just west of Hiawatha Avenue) renamed in his honor by the Committee on Roads and Bridges after he successfully lobbied to pave Minnehaha Avenue. His most significant early success in public health, and the one that made him the most proud, was the passing of a 1914 ordinance to pasteurize milk for urban consumption. Throughout his life, Dight had tried to combine his then unshakeable conviction that the economic productivity and consumption of populations shaped, and was shaped by, their biological health with his faith in the state. He found the clearest expression of these dogmas in the growing field of eugenics, the scientific doctrine of |||racial improvement||| through the control of human reproduction. Dight enthusiastically signed onto the eugenicist program and was elected as one of twenty-five new members at the tenth annual business meeting of the Eugenics Research Association at Cold Spring Harbor in 1922. Later that year, he published and distributed his first pamphlet on eugenics (“Human Thoroughbreds—Why Not?”) to get the Minnesota legislature to pass a sterilization law. He achieved this goal with the 1925 bill authorizing sterilization of the “feeble-minded, epileptic, and insane” to prevent their reproduction. In 1933, he gave a series of twelve radio talks on the topic over WRHM and wrote to Adolf Hitler commending him on his more far-reaching eugenics laws. Hitler wrote back extending his thanks and an invitation to a conference in Munich. By the end of his life, Dight identified his work in eugenics as the most significant legacy of his life. Accordingly, after setting aside small sums for family members, he stipulated in his will that his manuscripts and writings on eugenics be left to the Minnesota Historical Society along with $2000, while the rest of his property should be invested in the founding of educational groups and resources “to promote biological race betterment.” He requested that these funds go primarily to the University of Minnesota, which accordingly founded the Dight Institute for the Promotion of Human Genetics and the Minnesota Human Genetics League.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Charles_Dight_2.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246087,"name":"Health and Medicine","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/dight-charles-fremont-1856-1938"},{"alt":"Irene Gomez-Bethke","author":[{"name":"Jesse Bethke Gomez","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/jesse-bethke-gomez"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"September 20, 2022","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Gomez-Bethke, Irene (1935–2021)","postbody":"“We are one race—the Human Race.” These are the words of Irene Gomez-Bethke, a daughter of Mexican parents who immigrated to Minnesota. Throughout her life, she played a leadership role in ...","searchtext":"“We are one race—the Human Race.” These are the words of Irene Gomez-Bethke, a daughter of Mexican parents who immigrated to Minnesota. Throughout her life, she played a leadership role in bending the arc of history toward social justice, serving as Minnesota Commissioner of Human Rights, guiding boards and commissions as a volunteer, and co-founding both Centro Cultural Chicano and Instituto de Arte y Cultura. Irene Gomez-Bethke was born in Minneapolis in 1935. Her parents, Jesse Gomez and Maria Gomez, had immigrated from Mexico to Minnesota in 1923. Irene recalled her family’s journey in a speech she gave in 2016: “My parents came from Mexico to Texas, where they met, and both their families were enticed by the sugar beet industry to allegedly what was said to be good paying jobs in Minnesota. They came to Hector, Minnesota, in 1923. What they found was inequity of pay, substandard living conditions, and the experience of working from sun up to sun down. There was no water, and no bathroom facilities in the fields. The housing was deplorable.” Irene’s commitment to social justice began at an early age. At her mother’s request, between 1945 and 1947 she accompanied neighbors to court dates and acted as a translator. “I remember growing up in Minneapolis and my mother asked me to translate for a neighbor who had to go to court. I quickly learned that it was not enough to know Spanish and English, one also needed to know the legal terminology. Because of the differences in Mexico, one is guilty until proven innocent, and here, you are innocent until proven guilty. I remember sharing this with our neighbor as their translator in court, so that they would be treated fairly, and to only answer the question before them. By today’s standards, it seems unreal that a child would be the only means for translation for a defendant.” Irene married Jack Arthur Bethke at St. Joseph’s Church in Minneapolis in 1953. They had six children (Jack, Mary, Julia, Patricia, Anita, and Jesse) and lived in Minneapolis, Brooklyn Park, and New Hope. Gomez-Bethke’s career took off in the 1970s when she worked first as a manager at a KMart, then as food service director at Homeward Bound, and then as an administrative aide to Minneapolis Mayor Donald M. Fraser. At the City of Minneapolis she organized two national conferences: the US Conference of Mayors and the National Endowment for the Humanities. In the same decade she also helped found Centro Cultural Chicano and then Instituto de Arte y Cultura (IAC), of which she was executive director. During her tenure at IAC, she introduced Hispanic Heritage month to Minnesota. Gomez-Bethke served as the chair of the Hispanic Advisory Committee to the Mayor and City Council of Minneapolis two times: first under Albert Hofstede (mayor 1974–1975) and then Donald M. Fraser (mayor 1980–1994). Minnesota Governor Al Que appointed her to the state’s Spanish Speaking Affairs Council during his term in office (1979–1983), and his successor, Rudy Perpich, did the same. In 1982, Perpich appointed Gomez-Bethke as Minnesota’s Commissioner of Human Rights. Commissioner Gomez-Bethke then developed a plan that eliminated a 3,000-case backlog in the Human Rights Department that preceded her appointment. She also recruited and advocated for other state employees of color. In part because of her influence, Perpich appointed the first diverse group of judges in the state’s history, including Judge Alberto Miera (1983) and Judge Isabel Gomez (1984). Gomez-Bethke joined committees and boards of directors representing a variety of local and national organizations, including the United Way of Minneapolis, Centro Legal, the Urban Coalition of Minneapolis, the National Association of Human Rights Workers, the National Board of Directors, and the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis. She was board president of Centro Legal in the mid-1980s. She was guided by her faith, and in particular by her devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe. Archbishop John Roach appointed her to the Deanery Council of the Archdiocese of St. Paul/Minneapolis in the mid-1980s. In 2016, the Latino Law Students Association of Mitchell Hamline Law School held a ceremony honoring Gomez-Bethke with a lifetime achievement award. Thinking back over her career, she recalled, “When Governor Rudy Perpich offered to appoint me to the position of the Human Rights Commissioner for the State of Minnesota, I was very grateful for the opportunity to not only serve the people of Minnesota but also to be a part of his Cabinet. I knew of the governor’s interest to create a more diverse government, and I quickly spoke to the governor about the lack of diverse judges. He was very open to this and he asked me to help recruit diverse candidates, which I did.” Gomez-Bethke passed away on March 21, 2021, survived by her four siblings, her six children, fourteen grandchildren, and twenty-one great grandchildren.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Irene Gomez-Bethke.png","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/gomez-bethke-irene-1935-2021"},{"alt":"Jun Fujita’s cabin","author":[{"name":"Steven R. Anderson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/steven-r-anderson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"September 07, 2022","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Jun Fujita Cabin, Rainy Lake","postbody":"The rustic cabin Jun Fujita built on an island in Rainy Lake in the late 1920s is a rare surviving artifact of the opening of northeastern Minnesota to tourism and recreation. The ...","searchtext":"The rustic cabin Jun Fujita built on an island in Rainy Lake in the late 1920s is a rare surviving artifact of the opening of northeastern Minnesota to tourism and recreation. The remarkable personal history of Fujita, one of the first prominent Japanese Americans in the Midwest, adds to its historical interest. The cabin was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1996. Jun Fujita was born near Hiroshima, Japan, in 1888. He emigrated to Canada as a teenager and worked there as a photographer. By 1915, when US law still allowed immigration by certain Asian groups, he arrived in Chicago, where he spent the rest of his life. Fujita became an accomplished newspaper photographer for the Chicago Daily News and the Chicago Evening Post in the 1910s and 1920s. He took now-famous photographs documenting the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre (a Chicago gangland shooting in 1929); the 1915 capsizing of the SS Eastland in the Chicago River, in which 844 people drowned; and racial violence in Chicago in 1919. He photographed prominent people such as Al Capone, Albert Einstein, and Frank Lloyd Wright. His photographs of flowers are in the collections of several museums. In addition to these accomplishments, Fujita also was a published poet who, while writing in English, used a Japanese style known as tanka. In the 1920s, Fujita met Florence Carr. They lived together until he died in 1963, having married in 1940. In 1928, Carr purchased a four-acre island in Rainy Lake, a 360-square-mile lake that straddles the Minnesota-Ontario border, about thirty-five miles east of International Falls, Minnesota. At various times, the island has been known as Japanese Island* and Wendt Island. Although Carr seldom visited the island after the cabin was constructed, it remained in her name. At the time, Minnesota law limited the ownership of land by persons who were not US citizens and who had not declared their intention to seek citizenship. (Fujita became a US citizen in 1954 through a private act of Congress.) Soon after Carr bought the island, Fujita built his cabin: a single room thirteen by sixteen feet in size framed with cedar poles. The exterior of the wooden siding was originally mustard yellow in color but was eventually painted green, possibly by a later owner. The interior was not painted. Japanese design elements are evident throughout, from the moderate pitch of the roof and the integration of the cabin into the landscape to the emphasis on the outside view. The wooden floor was tongue and groove, and multiple windows provided a connection to the outside. A chimney was constructed out of native rubble by a local tradesman. Fujita later added a screen porch and a seven-by-eight-foot addition. Both the porch and the addition were made of logs. In the 1930s, Fujita visited the island each summer. After he left his newspaper job and started a commercial photography business, one of his clients was a company that made outboard motors, and he photographed its motors near his cabin. Later, conservationists seeking to prevent the construction of additional dams in the area used his photographs to demonstrate its natural beauty. Fujita is not known to have visited the island after Japan and the United States went to war in 1941. He allowed Fred and Edythe Sackett, who owned a nearby island, to use the cabin, and they purchased it in 1956. In 1973, the Sacketts sold the island to Charles and Mary Jane Wendt. The island is within the boundaries of Voyageurs National Park, which was formed in 1975. The National Park Service (NPS) bought the island in 1985, but the Wendts leased the island for a time. As of 2022, the NPS has complete ownership rights. In 1996, Fujita’s cabin was added to the National Register of Historic Places. According to the registration form, the cabin is the only extant example in Voyageurs National Park of recreational cabins built in the early days of tourism in the Rainy Lake area. In 2021, the National Park Service returned the cabin to its 1920s appearance by removing a non-historic outbuilding and a 1980s extension to the cabin and by performing preservation work. As of 2022 the cabin is locked, but members of the public are free to walk on the island. *Editor’s note: The island’s unofficial name in the mid-twentieth century used an abbreviated form of “Japanese.” MNopedia has inserted the full word in its place. The abbreviated form was, and remains, a racist slur harmful to people of Japanese ancestry.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/A_Wallace_National_Park_Service.png","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/jun-fujita-cabin-rainy-lake"},{"alt":"Detail of Aztec City","author":[{"name":"Lizeth Gutierrez","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/lizeth-gutierrez"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"September 01, 2022","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Muralismo in St. Paul","postbody":"Public art created during the late 1960s and early 1970s responded to the destruction of America’s inner cities. Chicanos painted murals in their neighborhoods to express their cultural ...","searchtext":"Public art created during the late 1960s and early 1970s responded to the destruction of America’s inner cities. Chicanos painted murals in their neighborhoods to express their cultural pride, to protest injustice, and to celebrate their aesthetic values. 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. Influenced by the work of Los tres grandes (the three greats: Diego Rivera, José Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros) and post-Mexican Revolution ideologies, the Chicano mural movement claimed the urban sphere as public space for Chicano people. Artists reshaped the visual environment of their barrios (neighborhoods) through historical counter-narratives that celebrated pre-Columbian ethnic pride while centering local communal history. Chicano murals told the story of La Raza (the people) in an empowering way to affirm its ideals and educate barrio residents about alternative histories of protest. National organizations such as the Crusade for Justice, La Raza Unida Party, and the United Farm Workers financed Chicano artists’ work to amplify their own political message. Public art projects recruited lead artists, artists’ collectives, neighborhood activists, and youth volunteers, giving the entire community ownership over murals. They painted in schools, in public parks, on freeway support pillars, and on the walls of local businesses. In this way, they beautified public space at a time when federal urban renewal programs and highways were transforming American cities. The Chicano muralismo movement in St. Paul, similarly, promoted ethnic pride and self-determination in a barrio under redevelopment. When city officials cleared the flood-prone West Side Flats during the early 1960s, they forcibly displaced long-settled Mexican American families to Concord Terrace. To recreate the close-knit community of the Flats, two influential community organizations, Our Lady of Guadalupe Church and Neighborhood House, relocated to Concord Terrace. Chicano artists painted powerful images in public spaces there to celebrate Mexican culture and advocate for the West Side’s Chicano movement, claiming ownership over this new neighborhood. Portrayals included the Aztec and Indigenous heritage of the Mexican American people in localized heroic stories of immigrant working-class livelihood. Gabriel Romo and Jose Estrada were two of the first Chicano artists to paint a Chicano-oriented mural in St. Paul, in 1969. They painted the interior of the Guadalupe Area Project building with a series of Aztec deities to promote ethnic pride and cultural belonging. Unlike the Chicano muralismo movement in other American states, which often relied on an anti-European political message, Chicano murals in St. Paul focused on celebrating cultural traditions. Murals became cultural billboards for the local Mexican American community. Pioneering Chicano artists like Armando Estrella organized a mural program funded by Community Programs in the Arts and Sciences (COMPAS) to cover graffiti that represented exclusionary politics. The commissioned art was displayed to the community during the El Midwest Canto al Pueblo ten-day festival in 1977. By the late 1980s and early 1990s, local murals evolved from an exclusive narrative of Chicano ethnic pride to a more inclusive one. While the area remained an immigrant neighborhood well into the 2000s, it supported a growing population of Puerto Ricans and Cubans as well as other immigrant groups from Latin America, Africa, and Asia. The first non-Chicano-style mural painted in St. Paul’s West Side was “Hunger Has No Color” (1985). Commissioned by the West Side Food Bank and painted by artists (John Acosta, Richard Schletty and Armando Gutierrez) from different ethnicities, the mural brought attention to the worldwide struggle against poverty and showcased the power of diversity. By the late 1990s, Riverview Economic Development Association (REDA), a non-profit association that supported West Side businesses, coined the name “District Del Sol” for the growing commercial center around Concord Street (now Cesar Chavez Street). REDA sponsored beatification projects not only to attract urban tourism but to commercialize the barrio’s marketplace. Some of their initiatives focused on pairing local youth organizations, like Teens Networking Together (TNT), with local artists to restore former murals. Unfortunately, not all murals were successfully restored. Acosta estimates the average lifespan of an outdoor mural to be no longer than ten years. In the twenty-first century, murals continue to brighten the streets of St. Paul. In 2021, Comunidades Latinas Unidas En Servicio (CLUES) commissioned Juan Chawuk, an international artist and Indigenous Maya Tojobal from Chiapas, Mexico, to paint a mural for the organization’s fortieth anniversary inside their St. Paul headquarters.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Aztec_City_Teresa_Boardman_Flickr (1).jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246079,"name":"Cities and Towns","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/muralismo-st-paul"},{"alt":"Pat Bellanger, ca. 1977","author":[{"name":"Emily Poupart","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/emily-poupart"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"August 23, 2022","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Bellanger, Pat (1943–2015)","postbody":"Pat Bellanger was an Ojibwe activist and a cofounder of the American Indian Movement (AIM) who spent over fifty years fighting for Indigenous rights on a national and local level. Though ...","searchtext":"Pat Bellanger was an Ojibwe activist and a cofounder of the American Indian Movement (AIM) who spent over fifty years fighting for Indigenous rights on a national and local level. 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 (1978). Patricia Joyce Bellanger was born on February 13, 1943, and raised with her siblings on the Leech Lake Ojibwe reservation by her parents, Veronica Rice and William Bellanger. Her Ojibwe name was Awanakwe, which means “water woman.” As she grew up in the town of Onigum, the divide between white and Native communities was clear, but her parents warned Bellanger and her siblings against contact with their traditional Ojibwe neighbors: “[W]e were told we couldn’t even look at ‘em when they walked down the street, walked down the road at Onigum: Don’t look at ‘em. Because they were witches, and they had all this power.” Despite this upbringing, Bellanger grew up to become a fierce advocate for Native people after she moved to the Twin Cities to attend the University of Minnesota in the 1960s. It was during this time that she became a founding member of the American Indian Movement (AIM). Although she received less attention than the men who were the public face of AIM actions, like the occupation of Wounded Knee in 1973, Bellanger played an equally crucial role behind the scenes. Much of her work in AIM focused on family and education advocacy in the Twin Cities. In the 1960s and 1970s, US authorities were taking Native children from their families and placing them in foster care, often because the families had difficulties keeping their children in public school—where non-Native students and teachers harassed and discriminated against them. Native children were frequently placed in white families and removed completely from their tribes. When it became apparent that fighting familial displacement wouldn’t solve the root of the problem, Bellanger and fellow AIM members formed Heart of the Earth Survival School (initially called AIM Survival School) in Minneapolis in January of 1972. Heart of the Earth employed parents and members of surrounding Indigenous communities and successfully worked to revitalize culture, even with little funding in its early years. As a survival school—the first of its kind—it provided a safe, welcoming, educational environment for Native students and incorporated traditions into class time. Bellanger worked at the Red School House, a survival school founded in St. Paul in April of 1972, as a math and English teacher. She also wrote articles of incorporation and funding proposals, lobbied for donations of educational supplies, and organized a board of directors. There is no clear record of when Bellanger left her role as an educator, but the Red School House remained open until 1995, and Heart of the Earth until 2008. In 1977, Bellanger spoke at a United Nations conference in Geneva, Switzerland. She charged the US government with experimenting on Indigenous children without the consent of parents; allowing hospitals to provide Indigenous people with placebos instead of treatment; and child snatching—paying white families to adopt Indigeous children removed from their families by force or coercion. Bellanger drew on her own experience with authorities in St. Paul attempting to take away her daughter, Lisa: “When I refused to hand her over, I was forced to sign a paper saying I would never ask the US Bureau of Indian Affairs for any assistance for my child. In other words, she lost all tribal rights, including education and welfare help.” The US government denied these charges, but Bellanger and many others continued to speak out. Congress responded by enacting the Indian Child Welfare Act in 1978, giving tribal governments jurisdiction over children living on reservations. After helping to found Women of All Red Nations (WARN, a Native women’s advocacy organization) in 1974, Bellanger called out uranium mining companies for making Native women infertile, linking areas where mining had occurred on Dakota land to infertility rates in that area. “You must understand,” she explained in a 1979 interview, “that there||s pollution control, environmental controls, in every state of the union. But they allow different, higher radiation levels on reservations because they are federal land, not state controlled. . . It’s genocide, what they are doing.” Bellanger’s continuous, passionate advocacy for Native women and children earned her the name “Grandmother AIM.” In the 1990s and 2000s, she worked as a paralegal in the Twin Cities Legal Aid Society and continued her efforts on a local level by organizing protests and responding to Native health crises. She worked for the Indian Health Board before co-founding the Native American Community Clinic in the Phillips neighborhood of Minneapolis in 2003. On April 2, 2015, Bellanger passed away, survived by her son and daughter as well as six grandchildren.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/07_4_03_IITC7.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246059,"name":"Native Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/bellanger-pat-1943-2015"},{"alt":"Front facade of the St. Paul headquarters of CLUES","author":[{"name":"Jesse Bethke Gomez","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/jesse-bethke-gomez"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 29, 2022","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Comunidades Latinas Unidas En Servicio (CLUES)","postbody":"Comunidades Latinas Unidas En Servicio (CLUES) is the largest Latino-led nonprofit in Minnesota. It formed in 1981 in St. Paul in response to the need for language-appropriate, culturally ...","searchtext":"Comunidades Latinas Unidas En Servicio (CLUES) is the largest Latino-led nonprofit in Minnesota. 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. Throughout the history of CLUES, as the Latino community has grown, the agency’s leaders have identified new opportunities to support Latino children, families, and individuals. The agency began in 1981 under the leadership of its first executive director, Donna Sherlock. Sherlock supervised a staff of three that included two social workers, and CLUES opened its doors as a storefront on Robert Street (between Ninth and Tenth streets) in downtown St. Paul. At the time, the acronym stood for Chicanos Latinos Unidos En Servicio. The agency moved in 1983 from downtown to a leased space on the corner of Plato Boulevard and Robert Street, allowing it to expand its services on the West Side. Rafael Ortega succeeded Sherlock as executive director in 1984 and led CLUES to add services and locations. Over his eleven-year tenure, Ortega expanded services to address employment, education, and chemical health services. He created a new program for seniors, introduced an afterschool program called La Escuelita, and launched a new service center in South Minneapolis. He also added a research component called Hispanic Advocacy and Empowerment through Research (HACER). During the 1990s, the Twin Cities’ Latino community grew twofold, increasing demand for social services. In 1995, the CLUES board of directors appointed Jesse Bethke Gomez its third executive director, and over the next seventeen years the agency more than doubled in size. It conducted its first capital campaign, built its headquarters on the East Side of St. Paul (797 East Seventh Street), and helped both HACER and La Escuelita become their own independent organizations. Construction of the new CLUES headquarters in 2004 was a major milestone that established CLUES as a mature institution. In 2004, CLUES collaborated with the State of Minnesota to support an official state visit by His Excellency Vicente Fox, President of Mexico. Bethke Gomez and CLUES played a key role in organizing the meeting by connecting Mexican consul Carlos M. Sada with Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty. In part because of the success of President Fox’s visit, in 2005 the government of Mexico chose CLUES’ St. Paul location as the site for the Forty-sixth Consulate of Mexico in the United States. CLUES’ board of directors appointed Ruby Lee its president and chief executive officer in 2012. Lee refined the group’s mission, seeking “to advance the social and economic equity and well-being for Latinos by building upon our strengths and cultures, uplifting our community, and activating leadership for systemic change.” Thanks to the efforts of Lee, staff, funders, and the board of directors, CLUES doubled the size of its East Side St. Paul location in 2019. The agency continued to support Latino youth, individuals, and families, and the new 40,000-square-foot building offered more open spaces to foster social capital: a Latino Arts Gallery, a Teen Tech Center, technology and arts classrooms, additional behavioral health clinics, and classrooms that could function as one larger meeting room. In 2022, Lee explained that “CLUES takes a transformational approach within the community. We are trauma informed, holistic, and culturally anchored whereby we work on changing narratives, changing behaviors, and changing systems for the better whereby people feel valued and live thriving lives.” In 2022, CLUES has 150 staff, over 600 volunteers, and thousands of participants who come to connect to resources, community, Latinx art, and cultural traditions. Lee says, “We are proud to provide a sense of belonging and networks of support for our Latinx community, and for people from all walks of life who choose us to connect them to resources and opportunities. Whether at our East Side St. Paul headquarters, or our Minneapolis locations, or our offices in Wilmar or Austin, Minnesota, we are a welcoming home that connects access to opportunities.” Editor’s note: This article uses both “Latino” and the gender-neutral “Latinx” to reflect the evolution of terms since CLUES’ founding in 1981, as well as the diversity of preferences of CLUES’ constituents.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Copy of DSC00222 (2).jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246079,"name":"Cities and Towns","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056210,"name":"Education","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/comunidades-latinas-unidas-en-servicio-clues"},{"alt":"American Crystal Sugar factory, Moorhead","author":[{"name":"Trista Raezer-Stursa","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/trista-raezer-stursa"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 11, 2022","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"American Crystal Sugar Company","postbody":"The American Crystal Sugar Company evolved out of its predecessor, the American Beet Sugar Company, in 1934 to operate factories in Minnesota, Iowa, and Colorado. After the Red River Valley ...","searchtext":"The American Crystal Sugar Company evolved out of its predecessor, the American Beet Sugar Company, in 1934 to operate factories in Minnesota, Iowa, and Colorado. After the Red River Valley Sugarbeet Growers Association bought it in 1973, American Crystal moved its headquarters to Moorhead, Minnesota, and became the first farmer-owned sugar beet cooperative in the United States. Until the late 1700s, Europeans could access sugar only by importing refined sugarcane grown in tropical areas. In 1744, a German chemist discovered a way to produce sugar from sugar beets, a hardy plant found in the Mediterranean region, and by the 1810s, France had over 40 sugar beet factories. In the United States, however, there was little success producing sugar from sugar beets until Henry T. Oxnard decided to try his hand at it. Oxnard built a sugar beet factory in 1890 in Grand Island, Nebraska, using equipment imported from France. After building a second factory in Nebraska, he set his sights on California, and built a plant east of Los Angeles and another one in Ventura County. In 1899 he consolidated his four factories to create the American Beet Sugar Company. After building a factory in Colorado, he moved the company’s headquarters to Denver. While Oxnard was building his empire, the fledgling sugar beet industry was making inroads in Minnesota. Randolph Probstfield in Moorhead was the first recorded person to grow sugar beets in the state. A sugar beet factory was built in St. Louis Park in 1898 and rebuilt in Chaska after burning down in 1905. Carl Wigand, a farmer in Crookston, grew his first crop of sugar beets in 1918 and sent them to be processed at the factory in Chaska. Wigand’s beets, grown in the fertile soil of the Red River Valley, were so impressive that the Minnesota Sugar Company, which operated the Chaska factory, encouraged him and his neighbors to grow more. Henry Zitkowsi, the general chemist for the American Beet Sugar Company, learned about the excellent growing conditions in the Red River Valley, and visited in 1924. Upon his recommendation, the company bought the Minnesota Sugar Company’s factories in Chaska and Iowa, and completed a factory under construction in East Grand Forks. American Beet changed its name to the American Crystal Sugar Company in 1934. The expansion of American Crystal Sugar into the Red River Valley coincided with the introduction of Latino and Chicano migrant workers from Texas to Minnesota. Entire families came up for the sugar beet planting season (April/May–June) and harvest (September/October–November), and American Crystal provided housing. For the laborers, however, the work was hard, and the housing was often dilapidated. During the winter months, they either returned south or settled in the Twin Cities area. During World War II, labor shortages led sugar beet farmers to rely more on migrant labor from Texas, as well as on African Americans from the south, Jamaicans, and German prisoners of war. After demand for sugar increased when war sugar rations ended, American Crystal built a factory in Moorhead in 1948 and one in Crookston in 1954. Although it built a factory in Drayton, North Dakota, in 1965, competition from sugarcane imports led to the closure of many of the company’s factories outside of the Red River Valley during the 1960s, including the first factory Henry Oxnard had built in Nebraska. In the mid-1930s, the Red River Valley Sugarbeet Growers Association (RRVSGA) was formed to represent hundreds of beet growers in the Red River Valley and increase beet acreage. It also advocated for more factories, and lobbied congress on behalf of the farmers. Over the following decades, the relationship between American Crystal and the RRVSGA became contentious. Growers were disgruntled with their contracts, the company’s lack of willingness to grow, and poorly maintained factories and equipment. Al Bloomquist, hired in 1962 to direct the association, became a respected advocate for sugar beet growers. Things came to a head when the Chaska factory was closed in 1971. The RRVSGA made a daring proposal to buy the American Crystal Sugar Company and make it a cooperative. Over 70 percent of the association’s membership voted in favor, and the purchase was finalized in 1973 for $86 million, making American Crystal the first farmer-owned sugar beet cooperative in the country. A new headquarters was built in Moorhead in 1974, and a research center opened in Moorhead in 1977. The company added a factory in Hillsboro, North Dakota, in 1975, but it continued to divest itself of factories outside of the valley, selling its last one in 1982. The company that had started in Nebraska, founded a town in California, and was once headquartered in Colorado was now a part of the heart and soul of the Red River Valley.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Crystal_Sugar003.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246091,"name":"Agriculture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246055,"name":"Labor","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/american-crystal-sugar-company"},{"alt":"Centro Tyrone Guzman","author":[{"name":"Lizeth Gutierrez","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/lizeth-gutierrez"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 05, 2022","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Centro Cultural Chicano, Minneapolis","postbody":"Founded in 1974, Centro Cultural Chicano (known since 2014 as Centro Tyrone Guzman) is the oldest and largest multi-service Latine organization in Minneapolis. Centro’s mission and values ...","searchtext":"Founded in 1974, Centro Cultural Chicano (known since 2014 as Centro Tyrone Guzman) is the oldest and largest multi-service Latine organization in Minneapolis. Centro’s mission and values are grounded in supporting the well-being of Latine families through a holistic approach to education and family engagement. Annually, Centro staff serve around 5,000 participants diverse in Latin American nationality, gender identity, and sexuality, as well as in age groups. Centro Cultural Chicano was founded in 1974 in Minneapolis, on the homeland of Dakota people. Unlike previous Latine organizations in the Twin Cities, which were typically under the control of the Catholic Church, Centro was organized by and on behalf of Chicanos who were actively involved in the Chicano movement. Historians like Vicki L. Ruiz and Rodolfo F. Acuña, as well as educators and activists like Anna Nieto-Gómez, Martha P. Cotera, and Alma García, have defined el movimiento (the movement) as a convergence of multiple protests. It addressed multiple issues, including educational equality, police brutality, farmworker rights, reproductive justice, and the struggle for “homeland” ownership in the southwest United States, also known as Aztlán. Centro’s original founders were Irene Gomez-Bethke, Eulalia “Lolly” Reyes de Smith, Alma Samuel, Maria Gomez, Ramona Arreguin de Rosales, and Marcela L. Trujillo. The intergenerational group came together during the 1960s to share their concerns with police brutality, the lack of educational resources, student attrition rates, and inaccessible health services. The group was formally embraced by the Minneapolis Chicano community in the early 1970s after a conference held at the Spring Hill Conference Center in Wayzata. The conference was organized by Chicanos Vencerán, a grassroots, community-based organization committed to fighting for Latine civil rights. Not long after, Gloria Gallegos, Manuel P. Guzman, and Donn J. Vargas officially incorporated Centro as an organization in the city of Minneapolis on February 5, 1974. Centro’s goal at the time was to provide bilingual social services to over 10,000 Spanish-speaking people of Chicano and/or Hispanic descent in Hennepin County. With the support of Dr. Marcela L. Trujillo, a Chicana professor at the University of Minnesota, Centro received its first grant of $30,000 from the McKnight Foundation in December of 1976. The grant funded the expansion of bilingual and bicultural social services and the leasing of Centro’s first building. In 1981, Centro received funding from the United Way Foundation, allowing staff to further refine their three main programs: social adjustment, family counseling, and chemical dependency. They also developed organizational support for several political organizations in the Twin Cities, like the Minneapolis Hispanic Advisory Council. While Centro maintained a Chicano activist spirit through the 1980s and early 1990s, its programming took a different route in 1996. To better meet the needs of Centro’s growing Central and South American membership, Executive Director Tyrone Guzman reinvented the organization’s mission by anchoring education as a holistic strategy for intergenerational programming. Many Central and South American immigrants to Minnesota were fleeing gang violence, political violence, domestic violence, and/or natural disasters in their home countries. Central and South American immigrants made up 1 percent of Minnesota’s population in 2000, and by 2010, they made up around 2 percent. In 2014, five years after Guzman’s death, Centro officially changed its name to Centro Tyrone Guzman to honor his contributions and celebrate his thirteen years of service as executive director. By then, Centro offered families an early childhood program, a youth program, and an adult and aging program. The early childhood program, called Siembra, used a bilingual Montessori learning method to cultivate an educational environment that values creative choices, hands-on learning, and collaborative play at the preschool level. Raíces, Centro’s youth program, similarly promoted healthy behaviors by mentoring teens as they navigated their educational requirements and familial obligations. The adult and aging program called Wise Elders, on the other hand, focused on the wellbeing of Latine adults. One of Centro’s oldest programs, it connected Latine families with hands-on bilingual resources on Alezheimer’s disease and dementia that were culturally relevant. Centro additionally provided community support services, community engagement amenities, and an information center. After the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Centro created new support services to effectively assist struggling Latine families. It raised $730,000 in less than thirty days to assist 984 families (3,602 individuals) during the height of the pandemic, with $154,228 of those funds covering hot meals, food baskets, diapers, baby formula, car seats, technology, and hygiene products. Centro also partnered with Metro Transit, a public transportation operator in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, to distribute 6,100 deliveries of food and water across sixty-two zip codes, while the remaining $575,175 was used to provide families with rent assistance. Editor’s note: Centro used the word “Latine” in place of the Spanish-language masculine “Latino” to challenge the binary gender system and offer members a more fluid identification category.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/160830_mia350_4828.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246079,"name":"Cities and Towns","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056210,"name":"Education","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/centro-cultural-chicano-minneapolis"},{"alt":"Penumbra Theatre Company, ca. 1990","author":[{"name":"Lily Andrews","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/lily-andrews"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"June 14, 2022","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Penumbra Theatre Company","postbody":"Penumbra Theatre is one of the premier legacy Black theaters in the United States, and one of the few founded during the Black Arts Movement that survived into the twenty-first century. ...","searchtext":"Penumbra Theatre is one of the premier legacy Black theaters in the United States, and one of the few founded during the Black Arts Movement that survived into the twenty-first century. Penumbra||s plays examine universal themes rooted in the daily lives and perspectives of Black folks across a spectrum of African American theater ideologies. Penumbra was born inside of a settlement house in the Rondo neighborhood in St. Paul, and was initially funded by a federal Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA) grant. In 1972, that organization (the Hallie Q. Brown Community Center) moved into the Martin Luther King Community Recreation Center in the Summit–University neighborhood, and in 1976 it hired Shoestring Playhouse trainee Lou Bellamy to run a cultural arts program while he pursued graduate study. He soon formed a professional company—Penumbra— tied to the principles of the Black Arts Movement (BAM), which championed art made by, for, and about Black people. Bellamy welcomed plays and playwrights directly associated with BAM, including Ed Bullins, Steve Carter, and Horace Bond. Several original ensemble members shaped the ethos and aesthetic of the company. These included Claude Purdy and August Wilson, who moved to St. Paul in 1977, as well as Faye M. Price, Horace Bond, Marion McClinton, and Abdul Salaam el Razzac. Additional long-term members joined in the 1980s. Wilson in particular left a major impact on the theater, including its position against colorblind casting and multiculturalism. From its first production, Penumbra offered open rehearsals, child care during performances, and sliding-scale ticket prices. The annual Black Nativity, a musical by Langston Hughes, involved community members and non-actors, the elderly, and children. In its first decade, the theater typically presented plays that centered black masculinity; by the 1990s, however, feminist and womanist productions like for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf, Sally||s Rape, and Jar the Floor pushed women-centric narratives, female directors and playwrights, and experimental aesthetics onto the stage. Laurie Carlos, a frequent director, playwright, and artistic associate, established the Late Nite program to showcase experimental, collaborative, and non-English speaking artists. In the 2000s, Penumbra grew to include adjacent communities, using the stage to examine relationships among communities of color via Slippery When Wet and Grandchildren of the Buffalo Soldiers. Penumbra||s audience often leaned majority white; partly in response, throughout its history the theater staged plays that examined minstrelsy. While Penumbra consistently joined local and national conferences, fairs, and festivals, two programs in particular supported the theater and its commitment to both artist development and community growth: a playwriting development initiative (the Cornerstone Award from 1981–1995 and OKRA from 2007–2012) and the Summer Institute, an art and justice summer camp for local teenagers. Funding—or the lack thereof—shaped Penumbra||s history as much as its plays and playwrights. Wilson said in a 1996 speech that |||Black theater in America is alive, it is vibrant, it is vital…it just isn||t funded,||| and Penumbra||s history gives credence to this claim. The company attempted several times to expand or move its facilities and gain an endowment. In one such attempt, in 1998, Penumbra raised $2.2 of a $2.5 million goal set by the state, and thereby lost a total of $8 million in bonds. (By comparison, the Guthrie Theater received funding for a three-stage expansion costing $125 million). At least in part, the shortfall can be attributed to inequity in the funding community, as well as the racial wealth gap, which privileges white donors. Managing director Chris Widdess focused on increasing individual donor funding from 36 percent of donations in 2005 to 45 percent in 2013, which he hoped would counteract fluctuations in the stock market (where foundations invest). Yet the 2013 recession still forced Penumbra to lay off six staff (Dominic Taylor, artistic associate, continued to volunteer his labor) and cancel the season (at the last moment it was saved) to balance the budget. Penumbra consistently adapted to meet the moment in the 2010s. When it staged August Wilson||s Jitney in 2017, for example, it provided cabs to the polls to encourage voting. But Sarah Bellamy, Lou’s daughter, envisioned taking that commitment further. Three years after she took over as sole artistic director in 2020, she announced the transition to Penumbra Center for Racial Healing following the murder of George Floyd. She said in an interview that she hoped they would continue for another forty years.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Penumbra_Company_ca_1990.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056216,"name":"African Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/penumbra-theatre-company"},{"alt":"Highland Park Water Tower, 2018","author":[{"name":"Eric Hankin-Redmon","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/eric-hankin-redmon"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"June 07, 2022","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Highland Park Water Tower, St. Paul","postbody":"The Highland Park Water Tower, in the St. Paul neighborhood of the same name, was designed by St. Paul City Architect Clarence “Cap” Wigington, the nation’s first Black city architect. As a ...","searchtext":"The Highland Park Water Tower, in the St. Paul neighborhood of the same name, was designed by St. Paul City Architect Clarence “Cap” Wigington, the nation’s first Black city architect. As a Highland Park neighborhood icon, the tower represents City Beautiful ideals through its Mediterranean Revival style. Its contributions to American architectural and engineering history allowed it to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1986. Completed in 1928, the octagonal tower sits at the corner of Snelling Avenue and Highland Parkway, adjacent to the Highland Park National Golf Course and the Charles M. Schulz Ice Arena. Though it ceased to supply water in 2017, it is the only architecturally significant water tower in the city, and a major neighborhood landmark. The plaque at the west entrance lists Frank X. Tewes, who supervised Wigington, as the tower’s architect. Wigington’s initials on project drawings, however, provide evidence that he was its designer. In 1928 he had already designed multiple local schools, as well as the exterior of the St. Paul Auditorium. The tower is in the Mediterranean Revival style—an unusual architectural style for a water tower. It was among the many revival styles that proponents of the City Beautiful movement (1890s–1900s) preferred, as it emphasized constructing beautiful public buildings and structures. At 134 feet tall, the Highland Park Water Tower contains three sections: a base, a shaft, and an observation deck. The base is made of a smoothly dressed, random ashlar Kasota stone, and has two entrances: one on the north side of the structure and one on the west side. The shaft features tan, pressed-face brick, and the observation deck is made of coursed ashlar Bedford stone. The roof is adorned with terra cotta clay tiles and a small cupola. Notable design elements include stone dentils, shields, downspouts, and lion-head relief sculptures adorning all eight sides of the observation level exterior. Work began on the structure in 1927, with the tower costing $69,483 to construct. It was built by the Feyen Construction Company and William Selby. The Wilcox Cut Stone Company supplied the stone, and the St. Paul Foundry Company supplied the steel for the tank. A 151-step circular stairway that leads up to the observation deck surrounds a riveted, steel-plate tank with a capacity of 200,000 gallons. Until it was taken out of service in 2017, the tower served the western part of the city north of West Seventh Street. The water was pumped from a reservoir into the tower and flowed by gravity to about 9,000 homes in its service area. As the city grew, so did water demand, and two underground reservoirs with a combined capacity of 28 million gallons were constructed both north and south of the tower. The Highland Water Tanks, two newer, steel water towers built in 1959 and 1989, are located just northeast of the tower. They have a combined capacity of 2.5 million gallons. In 2014, the south reservoir was decommissioned, and it was demolished in 2021. The tower was designated an American Water Landmark by the American Water Works Association in 1981, and it is one of over 150 such landmarks in North America. In 1986, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places as significant to architectural and engineering history. Around World War II, the Highland Park Water Tower was closed to the public and remained so until 1976. Today, it is maintained by St. Paul Regional Water Services and is open to the public on two special neighborhood occasions: the annual Highland Fest in the summer and observing fall foliage in October. Virtual views from the observation deck offering panoramic views of the Twin Cities are available online.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/600px-Highland_Park_Water_Tower_McGhiever.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056216,"name":"African Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/highland-park-water-tower-st-paul"},{"alt":"Prince Honeycutt outside his barbershop","author":[{"name":"Melissa Hermes","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/melissa-hermes-0"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"May 10, 2022","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Honeycutt, Prince Albert (1852–1924)","postbody":"Born into slavery in 1852, Prince Honeycutt set a course for himself that led from Civil War battlefields in Tennessee to freedom in the North. He settled in Fergus Falls, Minnesota, in ...","searchtext":"Born into slavery in 1852, Prince Honeycutt set a course for himself that led from Civil War battlefields in Tennessee to freedom in the North. He settled in Fergus Falls, Minnesota, in 1872, and his accomplishments there were milestones in the state’s history: the first Black professional baseball player, the first Black firefighter, and the first Black person to run for mayor. In addition, he used his business and leadership skills to assist other Black people moving from the Jim Crow South to rural Minnesota. Prince Albert Honeycutt was born into slavery in Tennessee on December 28, 1852. When Union troops under General William Sherman marched in, Honeycutt got permission from his mother, Sophia Gardner, to march with them. Too young to enlist in the military, Honeycutt served as a camp helper for a white officer named Captain James Compton of the 52nd Illinois Infantry. He remained with Compton throughout the war as one of the many enslaved people known as “contrabands” who actively pursued their own freedom by assisting the Union Army. At war||s end, Honeycutt returned home to tell his mother goodbye before setting out to reunite with Compton. He joined the Compton family when they relocated to the newly organized Minnesota town of Fergus Falls in 1872. After he arrived, Honeycutt immediately became an important member of the community. Local newspapers reported his every action and saying. He organized the first baseball team in Fergus Falls, called the North Star Club, in 1873, and is recognized as the first professional Black baseball player in Minnesota history. In addition to working as a teamster for a flour mill, Honeycutt volunteered with the local fire department in 1874. As one of the first, if not the first, Black firefighters in the state, he was charged with ringing the fire bell to sound the alarm for other firefighters. He was elected fire department steward and represented Fergus Falls at a statewide firemen’s convention held in Ashby in 1890. Honeycutt learned the barbering trade from a fellow Civil War veteran and then opened his own business in downtown Fergus Falls in 1884. An astute entrepreneur well aware of his Scandinavian clientele, Honeycutt is said to have spoken Norwegian to customers. In 1887, he added “an authentic and orthodox Finnish bathing house” to the barbershop. Although Minnesota has never outlawed interracial marriage, Honeycutt’s 1878 marriage to a white woman named Lena Marston created a statewide controversy. Letter writers to newspapers threatened violence. Allies like James Compton, who served as a witness at the wedding ceremony, stood by the couple. They had two children together before Lena died in 1882. One year later, Honeycutt remarried. Friends introduced him to Nancy Brown, who had come with her family to Otter Tail County to homestead. The couple raised their family in a house they owned in Fergus Falls at 612 Summit Avenue East. In addition to May and Albert, from Honeycutt’s first marriage, the couple had two daughters, Rose and Inez. A son named Max died in infancy, and Inez contracted tuberculosis and died at age fourteen. The two eldest daughters were the first Black graduates of Fergus Falls High School. They both attended Moorhead Normal School and became public school teachers. The Honeycutt home was a busy place. The couple was included in the parties and weddings of Fergus Falls, and Prince made an unsuccessful run for mayor of Fergus Falls in 1896. Both Honeycutts testified in a capital murder trial when their servant was killed by her intimate partner. Nancy taught piano lessons and served as a midwife. And when Black visitors came to town, they boarded with the Honeycutts. When eighty-five Black folks from Kentucky arrived in Fergus Falls in April 1898, Honeycutt assisted with their integration into the community as they enrolled children in school, joined churches, found housing, and took jobs. Ads placed in the local newspaper asked employers to contact Prince Honeycutt. A special ceremony took place at the county fairgrounds in 1921 honoring Honeycutt and other “Old Settlers” of Otter Tail County. At about the same time, however, he lost his eyesight, became disabled, and almost lost his home to foreclosure. With the help of concerned residents, a city alderman, and the city attorney, Honeycutt remained in his home. In 1923, the Ku Klux Klan burned a cross in downtown Fergus Falls, not far from the location of his original barbershop. Prince Honeycutt died in 1924 and is buried in Oak Grove Cemetery in Fergus Falls, next to his family members.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/6845HoneycuttBarbershop_cropped_3.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056216,"name":"African Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246054,"name":"Sports and Recreation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/honeycutt-prince-albert-1852-1924"},{"alt":"Lower and  upper Gooseberry Falls","author":[{"name":"Marjorie Savage","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/marjorie-savage"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"May 03, 2022","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Gooseberry Falls State Park","postbody":"One of Minnesota’s most popular nature areas, Gooseberry Falls was the first of eight state parks developed along Lake Superior’s North Shore. Nearly all of its buildings were constructed ...","searchtext":"One of Minnesota’s most popular nature areas, Gooseberry Falls was the first of eight state parks developed along Lake Superior’s North Shore. Nearly all of its buildings were constructed by employees of the Civilian Conservation Corps between 1934 and 1941. The collection of stone and log structures presents a distinctively North Shore interpretation of the National Park Service’s Rustic Style of architecture, complementing the park’s river, waterfalls, woodlands, and lakeshore. The dark, fine-textured basalt rock that characterizes the North Shore of Lake Superior was deposited 1.1 billion years ago as volcanic lava flow. Ice Age glaciers, along with wind, water, and the weight of the lava itself, created a depression that became the cliffs and bed of Lake Superior. The last of the glaciers etched into the basalt to define the course of the Gooseberry River and its waterfalls. An enduring controversy surrounds the name of the Gooseberry River. Some say Ojibwe people named it Shabonimikani-zibi (Place of the Gooseberries) for the gooseberries that grew nearby. Others claim it was named Riviere des Groseilliers to honor Frenchman Medard Chouart, Sieur Des Groseilliers, who explored Lake Superior’s North Shore in 1659–1660 with his brother-in-law, Pierre-Esprit Radisson. (Groseille translates to gooseberry or currant.) The French explanation carries the weight of written history, since the river was labeled with Des Groseilliers’s name on the earliest French map of the area in the late 1600s, some fifty years before the Ojibwe were known to have lived on the North Shore. It is possible, though, that the Ojibwe hunted and fished in the area while completing their migration from North America’s East Coast. Throughout the peak fur trading years (ca. 1679–1847), transportation, commerce, and development largely bypassed the Gooseberry River. In the late nineteenth century, trout fishing was popular in the rivers along the lakeshore, and logging companies started to move into the Gooseberry River area. In 1899 Wisconsin timberland speculators William F. Vilas and John C. Knight purchased a 30,000-acre tract of land, including the Gooseberry River watershed, and leased it to Thomas Nestor of Ashland, Wisconsin. Nestor clear cut the trees, rafting logs across Lake Superior to mills in Wisconsin and Michigan. By the time Nestor’s lease expired in 1909, both Vilas and Knight had died, leaving the property to Vilas’s estate. With the growing popularity of automobiles and tourism during the 1910s and 1920s, adventurous Minnesotans took to the state’s rough, narrow roads to explore the North Shore. In 1925, the Minnesota Department of Highways completed two major projects that drew even greater tourism to Gooseberry Falls. One was rerouting Trunk Highway 1 (later designated Trunk Highway 61), bringing the still-unpaved roadway out from the backwoods to provide visitors with panoramic views of Lake Superior. The second project was the construction of a bridge over the Gooseberry River. The increase of automobile traffic led businessmen from nearby Two Harbors to propose that the Minnesota Legislature purchase 640 acres from the Vilas estate. They envisioned a park encompassing the river’s five waterfalls and extending to the lakeshore. The legislature approved the site as a game refuge in 1933, to be managed jointly by the Department of Highways and the Department of Conservation. In a Depression-era economy, no funds were appropriated for development. A year later, however, the federal government created the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). Administered by the National Park Service (NPS), the CCC was charged with developing an infrastructure of roads, trails, and buildings at the Gooseberry Falls site. Under the NPS’s authority, all major structures were designed in the Rustic Style (sometimes called Parkitecture), reflecting the natural features of a park’s vicinity. At Gooseberry Falls, that meant using local stone and timber, providing a uniquely colorful construction palette. CCC workers quarried red granite near Duluth’s College of St. Scholastica. Blue, brown, and black granite came from East Beaver Bay, north of the park. Sand was brought in from Flood Bay near Two Harbors, and logs were hauled from Cascade River State Park, fifty-five miles north. Workers built more than eighty structures and facilities for the park, including a water tower, shelters, cabins, stone steps, fireplaces, and drinking fountains. The most impressive structure was the Stone Concourse, known as Castle in the Park, a 300-foot retaining wall which provided parking and a viewing area. The park, which now comprises 1,662 acres, offers hiking, camping, picnicking, and lakefront access, but the main attraction continues to be the park’s five waterfalls. Gooseberry Falls is designated as one of the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources’ sixteen “destination parks,” offering modern facilities and naturalist-led interpretive programs, designed for heavy use and attracting visitors from throughout the state. Eighty-eight of the park’s CCC/rustic-style structures were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1989.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Gfp-minnesota-gooseberry-falls-the-full-falls.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/gooseberry-falls-state-park"},{"alt":"Dorsey Willis","author":[{"name":"Michele Pollard","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/michele-pollard"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"April 19, 2022","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Willis, Dorsey (1886–1977)","postbody":"On November 6, 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt dishonorably discharged 167 African American infantrymen from their battalion at Fort Brown when they refused to confess to committing acts ...","searchtext":"On November 6, 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt dishonorably discharged 167 African American infantrymen from their battalion at Fort Brown when they refused to confess to committing acts of violence in Brownsville, Texas, three months earlier. Dorsey Willis, the last surviving member of this battalion, lived in Minneapolis from 1913 until he died in 1977. In 1972, his dishonorable discharge was changed to an honorable one, and with the help of Senator Hubert Humphrey, he was allowed a pension of $25,000. Dorsey William Willis was born in Meridian, Mississippi, on February 11, 1886, to Dochia and Casey Willis Sr.––the oldest of the couple’s eight children. He became a member of Company D, First Battalion, Twenty-Fifth Infantry (colored) in the US Army in January of 1905. Willis’s role in the Brownsville affair on August 13, 1906, was the same as that of every other member of the Twenty-Fifth Infantry. He remained in his barracks while local residents on horseback fired gunshots around their own town, killing one man and wounding a second. These same residents later blamed the infantry for the staged raid and for the subsequent murder of one of the Brownsville residents. “We were the infantry,” Willis recalled in a Minneapolis Tribune interview. “We never had horses. Only the cavalry had horses.” Willis’s recollections and secondary sources reveal what really happened on August 13. Once the soldiers were in the town, tension was high. When some townspeople encountered the infantrymen, they struck or beat them for not adhering to Jim Crow laws. The last straw was an alleged assault of a white Brownsville woman by an African American soldier, who reportedly grabbed her and threw her to the ground. Dorsey explained that “every soldier was present and accounted for” when shots from the raid rang out. But regardless of their statements, the soldiers were sent to Fort Reno, Oklahoma, arrested, and subsequently dishonorably discharged by President Theodore Roosevelt because of what he called their “conspiracy of silence”––their refusal to confess to the alleged part they played in the affair. Following his discharge, Willis remained in Oklahoma, where he met and married Lucille Jordan and started a family. His son Reginald Haines Willis was born there in September 1907, and a year later, his father, Casey Willis, died. Dorsey moved to Kansas in 1910, but he made his way back to Oklahoma in 1912, and he left the state for good in 1913. Willis found himself in Minneapolis in September of 1913 with the same hope as most African American men at the time: to be seen and respected as a citizen of the United States and raise a family outside the reach of Jim Crow. But his dishonorable discharge was a stumbling block to finding gainful employment. Dorsey took jobs shining shoes, sweeping up in barbershops, and working as a doorman in many Minneapolis businesses, among them P. H. Timmins, Arvid N. Swenson, and the Northwest Bank building. “That dishonorable discharge kept me from improving my station,” Willis said in a New York Times interview. At the start of this work in 1913, Willis made ten cents per shoeshine, plus a tip. When he retired in 1971, he made fifty cents per shine. It was on these wages that Dorsey saved money to purchase a home on Minnehaha Avenue South and carve out a life for his family. Dorsey’s son Reginald was supported and respected by the community as a talented guitar player, dancer, and entertainer. The Black community in Minneapolis welcomed the Willises. Dorsey was vested in many local social organizations and was a member of the Minneapolis NAACP chapter. Though his life in the North seemed more settled, he often traveled south to visit sick siblings and attend funerals. Though he was the oldest of his parents’ eight children, at least four of them preceded him in death. His father had died before Dorsey left Oklahoma (1908), but his mother passed away in 1929. It may have been around this time that he split with his first wife. According to the 1930 census, he was single in that year, but the local directory shows him married to Lillian in 1932. He married Olive, his third and final wife, in 1945. As Willis’s distance from the Brownsville affair grew in the late 1950s, he tried to clear his name The response he got from Washington, however, questioned his identity, and without proof, Willis abandoned the effort. It wasn’t until 1972 that Willis’s luck changed. He found out that his discharge had been changed to an honorable one in a Minneapolis Star article (Friday, September 29, 1972). He said he bought about twenty copies just to give them out to people. Senator Hubert Humphrey latched on to the case as a civil rights issue and sought to compensate the Brownsville survivors for the “irreparable harm done” to them. He proposed $40,000 per survivor plus service pensions, which could have totaled up to $55,000. Ultimately, Humphrey’s bill, modeled after one proposed by Augustus Hawkins of California, garnered $25,000 for Willis. The only surviving battalion widow, Louella Conyers, wife of Boyd Conyers, received $10,000. Dorsey Willis died in Minneapolis in August of 1977, at the age of ninety-one.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Croft 1972 2.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056216,"name":"African Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/willis-dorsey-1886-1977"},{"alt":"Front facade of Folsom House","author":[{"name":"Emma Adams","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/emma-adams"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"April 12, 2022","eraTag":[{"id":186622056203,"name":"1792–1861 (Expansion and Reform)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Folsom House, Taylors Falls","postbody":"The Folsom House (272 Government Street, Taylors Falls) is an excellent example of New England Greek Revival architecture in the rural Midwest. Its owner, W. H. C. Folsom, designed it to be ...","searchtext":"The Folsom House (272 Government Street, Taylors Falls) is an excellent example of New England Greek Revival architecture in the rural Midwest. Its owner, W. H. C. Folsom, designed it to be both modest and a showcase of his well-established wealth. Officially finished in 1855, the house alternately follows and departs from national trends in architectural history within Minnesota. William Henry Carman (W. H. C.) Folsom was born in 1817 in New Brunswick, Canada. In the early 1840s he immigrated to Maine, where he met his future wife, Mary Wyman. They married and eventually moved further into the United States, settling in Stillwater, Minnesota. While in Stillwater, Folsom invested in the pivotal industries of the time––most notably the lumber mills of the St. Croix River––and the blossoming real estate opportunities in both Minnesota and Wisconsin. His investments paid off, and he amassed a notable fortune for himself and his wife. In 1849, he also began to get involved in Minnesota’s territorial politics. The Folsoms purchased property in Taylors Falls in 1854, while they were still living in Stillwater. The property was on the gateway of what is now colloquially referred to as the Angel Hill District of Taylors Falls. At the time of Folsom||s purchase, the neighborhood was not yet established. Because of Folsom’s status, however, his family’s move attracted other similarly financed individuals to move to the same area; together, they created the identity of the neighborhood. The property did have a barn built on it at the time of purchase, so the Folsoms moved into it when construction on the house began. They cleared the land of its white pine, milling the lumber in order to build the structure. The house was officially finished in 1855, and the Folsoms moved in. At this time, the family consisted of Mary Folsom, W. H. C. Folsom, and the couple’s sons, Wyman and Frank. The new house had two parlors, a study, a formal dining room, a wood shed, an outdoor kitchen, an indoor kitchen, five bedrooms, and a full basement and attic. Although it was not small by the standards of the day, the home was specifically designed to reflect Folsom||s Methodist beliefs, with extremely simple motifs and decor that were almost entirely the opposite of Victorian trends of the time. Originally, the external walls of the house were white clapboard and green trim; for a brief span of time, however, the outside was painted yellow with green trim. In the mid-nineteenth century, the Angel Hill District of Taylors Falls became an area known for its Greek Revival houses, including Folsom’s. W. H. C.’s political affiliations as a representative in Minnesota’s legislature and a pivotal contributor to the state’s constitution attracted notable figures to the house during the 1860s, including Alexander Ramsey. The house stayed in the family until 1970, when the Folsoms donated it and all of the artifacts inside to the Minnesota Historical Society. It became a public museum in 1972, and in the same year was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In 2022, it continues to operate as a historic house museum managed by the Taylors Falls Historical Society in partnership with the Minnesota Historical Society. It retains much of its original 1850s design, but there are renovations throughout the interior, particularly in the kitchen and the study.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Folsom_House_front_Wikimeda_Commons_McGhiever.jpeg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246079,"name":"Cities and Towns","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/folsom-house-taylors-falls"},{"alt":"Lowry Avenue Bridge lit up in the colors (yellow and blue) of the Ukrainian flag","author":[{"name":"Lizzie Ehrenhalt","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/lizzie-ehrenhalt"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"March 18, 2022","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Ukrainian American Community, Northeast Minneapolis","postbody":"Wards 1 and 3 in Northeast Minneapolis have been the center of the Twin Cities’ Ukrainian community since the late nineteenth century. Vibrant and long-lasting cultural ...","searchtext":"Wards 1 and 3 in Northeast Minneapolis have been the center of the Twin Cities’ Ukrainian community since the late nineteenth century. Vibrant and long-lasting cultural institutions—including churches, Kramarczuk’s Sausage Company, and the Ukrainian American Community Center—have made Ukrainians in Northeast one of the city||s most visible groups of European immigrants, in spite of their relatively small population. The Ukrainian community of Minneapolis dates to the late 1870s, when Ukrainians began to leave eastern Europe to seek opportunities in the United States. Many of the Ukrainian men who arrived found jobs in the northeast part of the city, across the Mississippi River from downtown. The comparatively low cost of living in the area, also called Old St. Anthony, allowed Ukrainian mill laborers to live and start families in the same neighborhood in which they worked. By the 1900s, Northeast Minneapolis had earned a reputation as a welcoming place for Ukrainian immigrants. Word of mouth, family connections, and rail routes all influenced their decision to stay in the city. When Marie Sokol, a young Ukrainian woman en route to Winnipeg, arrived in Minneapolis by train in the early 1910s, she discovered not only a boarding house that would take her in, but her own cousin already living there. As a result, she decided not to continue on to Canada. People like Marie who decided to stay were part of a population boom that supported the founding of Ukrainian businesses, social groups, and churches. Ukrainian Minneapolitans in Northeast established St. Constantine’s Ukrainian Catholic Church in 1913 at the corner of University and Sixth avenues, and the congregation of St. Michael’s Ukrainian Orthodox Church (formed in 1925) moved into a building at 505 Fourth Street in 1926. When Joseph Stalin consolidated his power over the Soviet Union in the 1930s, his agricultural policies created a widespread famine called the Holodomor (death by hunger) that killed millions of Ukrainians. In response, Ukrainian Minnesotans launched cultural diplomacy efforts to organize relief, raise money, and promote awareness among non-Ukrainians. One such effort was led by the Ukrainian National Chorus of the Twin Cities, which put on benefit musical performances at St. Michael’s Church. Nazi occupation and the Holocaust further devastated Ukraine in the 1940s. Refugees found temporary homes in displaced persons camps, but by the end of the war in 1945, many wanted to start new lives. University of Minnesota professor Alexander Granovsky visited the camps in those post-war years and recruited Ukrainians for jobs in the Twin Cities. Hundreds of people––particularly skilled workers like scientists and carpenters—accepted his offer to move to the North Star state. Once they had settled in Northeast Minneapolis, Ukrainians found ways to recreate their cultural traditions in their new home. Marie Sokol (by now married to Anthony Procai and known as Marie Procai) used tools and dyes available in the United States to make pysanky, traditional Ukrainian Easter eggs. In 1947, she and her daughter Luba opened a gift shop in their home that featured them. In part because of their efforts, Ukrainians in Minneapolis revitalized the art of making pysanky, offering them at community bake sales and introducing their children to the practice. At about the same time, husband and wife Wasyl and Anna Kramarczuk arrived in the city with their family from the village of Pidhajci and started a sausage company, Kramarczuk’s, that offered traditional Ukrainian piroshky, meats, and breads. Their business thrived in the 1950s and 1960s and became a mainstay of Minneapolis food culture. Dmytro Mandybur, another former resident of Pidhajci, emerged as a community leader alongside the Kramarczuks. He founded a Ukrainian Credit Union and in 1964 organized a Ukrainian American Community Center (originally called the Ukrainian-American Home) that eventually found a headquarters at 301 Main Street Northeast. When the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, political uncertainty in Ukraine prompted more immigration to Northeast Minneapolis. The trend continued into the twenty-first century, particularly after the Russian Federation invaded and annexed Crimea in 2014. In 2018, on the eighty-fifth anniversary of the Holodomor, Ukrainian Minnesotans held a commemorative event at the Ukrainian American Community Center to recognize survivors of the Soviet-era famine. The event inspired Zina Poletz Gutmanis, a second-generation Ukrainian American born in Minneapolis in 1966, to film oral history interviews that documented the memories of survivors’ relatives. On February 24, 2022, the Russian Federation invaded Ukraine, triggering another humanitarian crisis. Ukrainian Americans in Minneapolis (and St. Paul) once again responded by writing petitions and organizing relief efforts, especially through the project Stand With Ukraine MN.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Lowry_Avenue_Bridge_lit_up_in_Ukrainian_colors_cropped.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246079,"name":"Cities and Towns","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/ukrainian-american-community-northeast-minneapolis"},{"alt":"Laura Linton","author":[{"name":"Marjorie Savage","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/marjorie-savage"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"March 10, 2022","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Linton, Laura Alberta (1853–1915)","postbody":"In 1879, scientists at the University of Minnesota asked chemistry student Laura Linton to analyze rock samples that had been collected along the North Shore of Lake Superior. Her research ...","searchtext":"In 1879, scientists at the University of Minnesota asked chemistry student Laura Linton to analyze rock samples that had been collected along the North Shore of Lake Superior. Her research identified a previously unknown mineral, and her professors named it “lintonite” in recognition of her work. Linton went on to become a chemistry and physics teacher, a research chemist, and, after earning a medical degree at the age of forty-seven, the supervising physician of the women’s ward at Rochester State Hospital. Born in 1853, Laura Alberta Linton was the daughter of Christiana and Joseph Linton. Her parents raised her on farms in Ohio, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania before moving the family in 1868 to a site on the Zumbro River in Minnesota||s Wabasha County. Linton graduated from the Winona Normal School in 1872 and taught at the Cook’s Valley school before enrolling at the University of Minnesota, where she majored in science. During Linton||s senior year of college, two of her professors, Samuel F. Peckham and Christopher W. Hall, recognized Linton’s proficiency in chemistry. They asked her to analyze several small, translucent, greenish pebbles they had collected during a geological survey of northern Minnesota. Her analysis noted that the pebbles were similar to a rare mineral known as thomsonite. The green stones, however, featured a fine-grained construction rather than the crystallized, fibrous structure of thomsonite. She concluded that they were a new discovery. In an article in the American Journal of Science, the professors described the unique characteristics of the mineral and named it lintonite “in honor of Miss Laura A. Linton, a recent graduate of this University, to whose patient effort and skill we are indebted for the analyses given in this paper.” After receiving her bachelor’s degree, Linton taught science in Lake City, Minnesota, for a year before Peckham recruited her to assist him with another research project. In 1880, when American oil companies were examining the potential commercial use of petroleum, the Federal Bureau of the Census hired Peckham to write a report on the country’s oil fields. Linton joined the project and conducted chemical analyses of oil samples, translated foreign language sources into English, and provided illustrations for the book’s charts and graphs. The three-hundred-page report included a detailed history of petroleum, a study of oil distribution around the globe, and an assessment of current and future uses of petroleum. Linton’s next step was attending classes at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Although she likely intended to study for a PhD, she left MIT when she was invited to lead the science department at Lombard University in Galesburg, Illinois. She stayed at Lombard for just a year before returning to Minnesota, where she served as head of the science department at Central High School in Minneapolis for ten years. In 1894, Peckham asked for Linton’s help once again. At a time when bicyclists, farmers, and townspeople were demanding paved streets, there were no standards for rating the quality of materials being used to produce asphalt paving. In his new role as chemist of the Union Oil Company of California, Peckham arranged for Linton to run tests of asphaltum samples and to develop recommendations on production methods of asphalt. Linton’s research on asphalt first took her to Union Oil Company’s laboratory in California. She later moved to Michigan, where she continued the research while enrolling in classes at the University of Michigan. She changed course once again in 1896 when she returned to Minnesota to enroll in the University of Minnesota’s medical school. While taking medical school classes, she also taught physiological chemistry in the College of Medicine. After completing her medical degree in 1900, Linton was hired to oversee the womens’ ward at Rochester State Hospital. Part of her position involved working with the hospital’s Training School of Nursing, where she taught classes in nutrition and food science. Building on the hospital’s theory of work therapy for male patients, in 1901 Linton borrowed ten dollars from the hospital’s funds to purchase yarn, knitting needles, decorative paper, and other materials. The patients made scarves, mittens, paper flowers, and shawls that they sold to hospital staff and visitors, and Linton’s ten-dollar loan was paid back within a month. The project is considered an early example of occupational therapy for institutionalized female patients. By 1912, Linton became the second assistant of the hospital (the third highest position after the superintendent and first assistant). She died in 1915 and is buried in Greenfield Township, Wabasha County. Lintonite is no longer considered a distinct mineral species. It is now classified as a unique form of thomsonite, which is itself part of the zeolite group of minerals. The change in classification came about as mineralogists established an international system for naming minerals during the second half of the twentieth century. Nevertheless, as a rare varietal, lintonite is still sought by Lake Superior rock collectors and is typically set in jewelry as a polished stone.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/por 28307 r1.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246052,"name":"Science and Technology","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/linton-laura-alberta-1853-1915"},{"alt":"Lithograph interpretation of the Battle of Birch Coulee, 1912.","author":[{"name":"Peter J. DeCarlo","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/peter-j-decarlo"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"March 01, 2022","eraTag":[{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"US–Dakota War of 1862","postbody":"Though the war that ranged across southwestern Minnesota in 1862 between settler-colonists and a faction of Dakota people lasted for six weeks, its causes were decades in the making. Its ...","searchtext":"Though the war that ranged across southwestern Minnesota in 1862 between settler-colonists and a faction of Dakota people lasted for six weeks, its causes were decades in the making. Its effects are still felt today. In 1851, after the treaties of Mendota and Traverse des Sioux, the US government removed most of the Dakota people living in Minnesota Territory (their homeland, called Mni Sota Makoce in the Dakota language) to a reservation on either side of the Minnesota River. The Treaty of Washington (1858) confined them to a smaller area south of the river. Being restricted to one place made it hard for Dakota people to practice their traditional lifeways, which involved hunting migratory game and moving their homes seasonally. The terms of the treaties and the work of missionaries focused on forcing them to abandon their culture—in effect, to stop being Dakota. To survive, some adopted European American farming methods, cut their hair, and converted to Christianity. Others resisted assimilation by, for example, continuing to hunt and practice ceremonies. Many assimilated in some ways while resisting in others. Immigrants flooded into southwestern Minnesota Territory in the 1850s, especially eager to claim land near rivers like the Minnesota. The US government, however, failed to fulfill its treaty obligations to the Dakota. It built few schools, offered insufficient education in farming, and charged exorbitant prices for homesteading goods. Many Dakota people used what money they did receive to pay off inflated debts and fraudulent traders. By the summer of 1862, Dakota people on the reservation were in desperate straits—many of them starving. Game was scarce. The corn crop of 1861 had been meager. Annuity payments, which would have covered the cost of food and goods, were late, but traders refused to extend credit. Lower Sioux Agency storekeeper Andrew Myrick told the hungry Dakota to “eat grass or their own dung.” On August 17, the tense situation reached a climax when four Dakota hunters killed five settlers in Acton Township. In the middle of the night, a group of Mdewakanton men persuaded a reluctant Ta Oyate Duta (His Red Nation, also known as Little Crow) to continue the fight against the United States in an all-out war. In response, the Dakota divided into two main factions: the farmers, or “cut hairs,” who argued for peace, and others (particularly young Mdewakanton men) who supported violent resistance. The following day, Ta Oyate Duta’s party attacked the Lower Sioux Agency and homesteads in Brown and Renville Counties. On August 19 it reached New Ulm, where the townspeople erected a defensive barricade after a protracted skirmish. The state’s leaders hurried to organize an army from a population already depleted by recruitment for the Civil War. Governor Alexander Ramsey placed Henry Sibley in charge of US forces that engaged the Dakota in battles at Fort Ridgely (August 20 and 22), New Ulm (August 25), Birch Coulee (September 3–4), and Acton, Forest City, Hutchinson, and Fort Abercrombie (September 3–4). During the six-week conflict, the Dakota participants who chose violent resistance killed more than 600 settlers, including women and children; the number of Dakota casualties is unrecorded. Fewer than 1,000 Dakota, out of a population of more than 7,000, participated. Many saved settlers’ lives; some, like Gabriel Renville, joined a lodge dedicated to peace. At the war’s final engagement, the Battle of Wood Lake (September 23), Sibley’s forces defeated the Dakota. Ta Oyate Duta and other Mdewakanton fled to Dakota Territory or Canada. On September 26, settlers who had been held hostage or protected by different Dakota factions gathered at a site that came to be known as Camp Release. After the war, the US government nullified its treaties with the Dakota, dissolved their reservation, and publicly executed thirty-eight Dakota men in Mankato at the largest mass hanging in the nation’s history. Meanwhile, it removed about 1,600 Dakota non-combatants to a concentration camp at Fort Snelling, where they remained imprisoned during the winter of 1862–1863. Though they had not participated in the war, nearly 2,000 Ho-Chunk people living at Blue Earth, along with the Dakota at the fort, were removed the following spring to a reservation in Dakota Territory and, later, Nebraska. The government allowed a few Dakota who had supported peace to stay, including the family of Wakinyanwaste (Good Thunder), who were close to Episcopal Bishop of Minnesota Henry Benjamin Whipple. The war devastated people throughout south-central Minnesota. Settlers mourned their dead and abandoned claims across southern and western Minnesota. For the Dakota, the grief was deepened by the prospect of exile from their homeland. It wasn’t until the 1880s that exiled families began to return to their relatives who had stayed in Mni Sota Makoce. Together, they built communities at Prairie Island, Shakopee, and the sites of the Upper and Lower Sioux Agencies.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Battle_Birch_Coulee.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246059,"name":"Native Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/us-dakota-war-1862"},{"alt":"Bertha Moller","author":[{"name":"Jane Skinner Peck","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/jane-skinner-peck"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"February 23, 2022","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Moller (Delin), Bertha Berglin, 1888–1951","postbody":"Bertha Berglin Moller (Delin), jailed twice in Washington, DC, for leading a hunger strike, was one of Minnesota’s most passionate and fiery woman suffragists. Following passage of the ...","searchtext":"Bertha Berglin Moller (Delin), jailed twice in Washington, DC, for leading a hunger strike, was one of Minnesota’s most passionate and fiery woman suffragists. Following passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, Moller continued her activism by advocating for the Equal Rights Amendment and women’s labor rights. A modern woman for the 1920s, Moller became a lawyer, divorced, remarried, and supported herself throughout her life. In 1892, at the age of five, Bertha immigrated to Minnesota with her six siblings and her parents, Magnus and Brita Berglin, from Storåsen, in Jämtland, Sweden. Her family began farming in Rock Creek, Pine County, and she attended high school in Rush City. Christened Brita, she used Bertha in the US and attended Duluth Normal School, obtaining a teaching degree. Bertha began teaching in Pinewood, Beltrami County, where she met and married Swedish immigrant Charles Moller in 1910. She continued to teach after her marriage, which was unusual at the time. Bertha’s uncles in Sweden introduced woman suffrage legislation in parliament, which influenced Bertha’s interest in the movement. In 1915, she joined the Minnesota Woman Suffrage Association (MWSA), traveling the state to develop local units and recruit members. She was apparently persuasive, as MWSA President Clara Ueland asked her to convince Minnesota congressmen to support federal suffrage legislation. For fifty years, the main goal of the women’s suffrage movement had been to change legislation on the state level. By 1915, there were fifteen states that had voted for full voting rights for women. Minnesota was not among them. Younger suffragists, including Moller, were frustrated at the slow pace of progress. In response, they shifted their focus to Washington, DC, and advocating for federal legislation with more radical tactics. First, the Congressional Union (CU) was formed, and Moller worked with their Minnesota unit while also working for the MWSA. Alice Paul (head of the CU and the leader of the federal phase of the movement) transformed the CU into the National Woman’s Party in Chicago in 1916. Moller worked for NWP causes for most of her life, and beginning in 1918 she was the secretary of the organization’s Minnesota unit. Inspired by the radical tactics used in England, she went to Washington, DC, to picket for suffrage at the White House with the group of NWP demonstrators known as the Silent Sentinels. She was arrested eleven times, though jailed only twice. During one of those prison sentences, she led a hunger strike. She was the only Minnesota suffragist to take part in the suffrage hunger strikes at the nation’s capital. In June of 1919, Congress voted for the new suffrage amendment, requiring states’ approval. Moller worked for the NWP to convince both presidential candidates to support its ratification. With final approval of two-thirds of states and Congress, the hard-won Nineteenth Amendment for woman suffrage finally became law on August 19, 1920, a year after its ratification in Minnesota. Moller wasted no time in using it as a gateway to her dreams. From there forward, Moller’s life reads more like that of a woman of the 2020s. She entered the University of Minnesota Law School in 1921. Two years later, she transferred to Northwestern University Law School, graduating in 1925. While in law school she studied the legal status of working women. She and her husband had moved to Chicago for her schooling, but they divorced thereafter. Bertha was hired as a lawyer for the city of Chicago, one of few female lawyers who actually found work. Alice Paul drafted and called for federal passage of the Equal Rights Amendment in 1920, and Moller campaigned for that unsuccessfully for the rest of her life. Moller represented the National Woman’s Party at an international industrial convention in Berlin, Germany. In 1930 she was married to Peter Delin, also a Swedish immigrant. Her name change confounded researchers for years. She was hired by the National Labor Relations Board after its formation in 1935. Following Peter’s death in 1940, Bertha traveled the country speaking about the ERA and women’s labor practices. She also worked for the Democratic Party. After Bertha died in San Francisco in 1951, her body was shipped back to Minnesota to be buried with the Berglin family in Forest Lake. Moller is remembered in the Minnesota Woman Suffrage Memorial at the State Capitol in St. Paul.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/MplsPhotos_52168_large.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/moller-delin-bertha-berglin-1888-1951"},{"alt":"Zenon Dance Company performing “Rouge”","author":[{"name":"Lily Andrews","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/lily-andrews"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"February 08, 2022","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Zenon Dance Company","postbody":"Linda Z. Andrews founded Zenon Dance Company in early 1983 as the combination of her two pre-professional troupes, Rezone and Just Jazz Dancers. In its nearly four decades of operation, ...","searchtext":"Linda Z. Andrews founded Zenon Dance Company in early 1983 as the combination of her two pre-professional troupes, Rezone and Just Jazz Dancers. In its nearly four decades of operation, Zenon became one of the premier repertory dance companies in Minneapolis, performing on local, national, and international stages. After Zenon closed its doors in 2019 due to lack of funding, Zenon Dance School continued to operate out of its 1989 headquarters at the Cowles Center for Dance and the Performing Arts. Zenon’s premiere performances happened on April 6–8, 1983, in Studio 6A, on the sixth floor of the Hennepin Center for the Arts. From the beginning, Zenon was a repertory company, meaning that it commissioned two to three new works from choreographers each season while also restaging one to two older pieces. In terms of style, Andrews described Zenon as |||about 85 percent modern and 15 percent jazz.||| Zenon continued to perform each fall and spring, and to celebrate a fall anniversary. The Ordway Music Theater (later renamed the Ordway Center for the Performing Arts) hosted Zenon in the 1980s. Sometimes, it subsidized costs and provided assistance with production and marketing. The young company also took advantage of the O’Shaughnessey spring dance series beginning in 1986 and the Nicollet Island Amphitheater’s summer dance showcase during what many consider to be the heyday of Twin Cities dance. Zenon quickly earned a reputation for its bold movement and uncommon blend of modern and jazz, but also for its decision to pay its dancers a living wage––an uncommon practice in the industry. To cover this cost, the company hired managing and developmental directors (notably Gary Peterson in 1987), organized funding schemes that included pull-tab gambling, and drew from consistent returns on its school. Zenon remained at the mercy of private and public foundations, however, and was soon plagued by funding issues. A financial and creative opportunity arose in 1988 when chemistry sparked with Danny Buraczeski, director of the New York company Jazzdance. Buraczeski moved Jazzdance to Minneapolis and joined Andrews as co-artistic director of the joined companies in 1989. The merger afforded Zenon a three-year matching grant that nearly doubled its annual budget and increased exposure via performance opportunities. The boon of the merger, however, didn||t last long. When Buraczeski and Jazzdance parted ways with Zenon in 1992, the loss of associated grant money caused a temporary downturn in budget, and the company moved performances back into Studio 6A, its original venue. In response to the dissolution of the merger, Zenon made a concerted effort to lay the foundation for artistic success via marketing and development plans in the early 1990s. Additionally, it hired dancers who would be with the company for decades to come, e.g., Greg Waletski and Devin Carey, and also Wynn Fricke, who returned as a favorite local choreographer after nine years with the company. Zenon also began to solidify its practice of showcasing work by international choreographers, like Susana Tambutti and luciana achugar. It scouted US choreographers who became well known: Andrea Miller, Kyle Abraham, Seán Curran, and Colleen Thomas. Zenon collaborated with Minnesota arts organizations over the years, and its dancers and ensemble received Sage Awards and McKnight Artist Fellowships. By 1997, Zenon had graduated from Studio 6A and was performing at the Southern and other professional theaters. Ten years later, it maintained an annual operating budget of $500,000, classifying the modern company as mid-sized. Placing a capstone on their success, Zenon was featured in debut performances at the newly opened Goodale Theater at the Cowles Center in 2011. In an echo of Zenon’s 1980s relationship with the Ordway, the Goodale hosted the company’s subsequent performances at a subsidized rate for several years. However positive, change eventually overwhelmed the company, and after losing annual support from the Jerome, McKnight, and Target foundations, it closed in 2019. Zenon hosted its final performances in the Goodale Theater June 14–16, generating an outpouring of press and acclaim. The central irony of the final performances was that for years, Andrews had called for the construction of a central theater for dance; she achieved that dream, but remained artistic director of a dance company for just eight years afterward. Zenon Dance School and Zone, a performance project of the school featuring local choreographers, continued after the company disbanded.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/5.+BW1A3562.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/zenon-dance-company"},{"alt":"Alonzo J. Whiteman","author":[{"name":"Paul Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/paul-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"January 28, 2022","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Whiteman, Alonzo J. (1860–1921)","postbody":"In Minnesota’s roster of heirs gone bad, Duluth’s Alonzo J. Whiteman ranks high. He followed a youth of wealth, privilege, and education with a young adulthood of dazzling attainment, then ...","searchtext":"In Minnesota’s roster of heirs gone bad, Duluth’s Alonzo J. Whiteman ranks high. He followed a youth of wealth, privilege, and education with a young adulthood of dazzling attainment, then decades of crime. During his career Whiteman achieved legendary renown as a forger and con man. He was written up in newspapers across the country (thirty articles in the New York Times alone), with errors and exaggerations creeping in such that fact and fiction remain difficult to disentangle. He was born into wealth. Whiteman’s father, Reuben, owned a paper mill, the biggest employer in Dansville, New York, and thousands of acres of pine lands in northern Minnesota and Wisconsin. Alonzo graduated from Hamilton College in 1881, then did a year of law school at Columbia. In 1882 his father sent him to Duluth to look after business there. At first he did well. After two years at Bell & Eyler’s Bank he set up his own real estate firm and, in the booming Duluth of the time, made money. In 1883 at age twenty-three he joined Duluth’s exclusive Kitchi Gammi Club (still operating as of 2022). He ran for the legislature in 1884 and lost, but at age twenty-six he was elected to the Minnesota state senate (its youngest member.) By 1888 he was reported to be one of the heaviest speculators in Duluth’s Board of Trade. In 1890 Whiteman built a lakeside mansion at 2732 London Road. Also in 1890 he finished third in a three-way race for Congress, and his decline began. He gambled compulsively and lost. Lawsuits against him multiplied. He engaged in long litigation with his mother and sister over his father’s estate, which consisted of the Dansville paper mill and 13,000 acres of timber lands. At one point, he owed the estate more than $270,000. By 1893 Whiteman had left Duluth (and his wife and son), deeply in debt, for a life of crime. The New York Times called his 1893 arrest in that city, for check forgery, “the end of a brilliant career,” but in fact it marked the beginning. Though Whiteman was a catastrophically bad gambler and businessman, he excelled at crime. As early as 1895 he had made a reputation as one of the most skillful forgers and con men in the country. He also earned a nickname—Jim the Penman— taken from a popular play by that name about a notorious forger. By one account, over the next twenty-five years he was arrested forty-seven times, tried seventeen times, and rarely spent a night behind bars. Whiteman’s basic method was to visit a city (New York and Chicago were favorites), check into a hotel under an assumed name, open bank accounts using forged checks, draw on those checks, and then leave before the checks bounced. Whiteman was a smooth, persuasive talker, and carried himself like the rich man he pretended to be. As one Pinkerton detective wrote, “as a liar he is a phenomenon.” He had a knack for avoiding convictions in court, or getting convictions overturned. In 1902 Whiteman took a break from crime to set himself up as a Methodist preacher in and around Dansville; that career did not last long. He is known to have pulled off swindles in New York, Chicago, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Providence, and San Francisco, and was reported to have operated also in Nashville, Boston, Saratoga, London, Detroit, and Mexico City, even Tasmania. Estimates of Whiteman’s thefts range as high as $1 million, though this may be fanciful. After a caper in Buffalo in 1904, Whiteman was arrested in St. Louis. Then, on the way to trial, he escaped from detectives through a train car window. Caught at last at his mother’s house, he endured eight years in New York prisons, part of that time in the State Hospital for Insane Convicts. His final arrest came in a southern Ohio hamlet, in 1916, for trying to sell stolen bonds. He spent two years in federal prison in Atlanta before finally going straight. Broke again, he lived briefly at the county almshouse near Dansville, then moved to Georgia, where he reportedly worked as a journalist, and died there in 1921. His place of burial is unknown.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Alonzo_Whiteman.jpeg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246060,"name":"Crime and Punishment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/whiteman-alonzo-j-1860-1921"},{"alt":"Brian Coyle, 1989","author":[{"name":"Trista Raezer-Stursa","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/trista-raezer-stursa"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"January 19, 2022","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Coyle, Brian J. (1944–1991)","postbody":"Brian Coyle became the first openly gay person to be elected to the Minneapolis City Council in 1983. In April 1991, he was one of the first public officials in the country to announce that ...","searchtext":"Brian Coyle became the first openly gay person to be elected to the Minneapolis City Council in 1983. In April 1991, he was one of the first public officials in the country to announce that he was HIV-positive. Brian John Coyle was born in Great Falls, Montana, on June 25, 1944, to Bernard “Sparky” and Georgia (Stenersen) Coyle. He grew up in Moorhead, Minnesota, in a politically conservative family, and was a member of “125 Teenagers for Nixon” in high school. After graduating from Moorhead High School in 1961, Coyle moved to Minneapolis to attend the University of Minnesota, where he became politically liberal. He joined the left-wing student activist organization Students for a Democratic Society, joined the Young Democrats, protested the Vietnam War, organized the campus’s first teach-in on the Vietnam War, was involved in the Free University movement, was a senator in the student government, and wrote for the University of Minnesota||s student newspaper, the Minnesota Daily. After graduating from the University of Minnesota in 1967, Coyle moved back to Moorhead to teach humanities at Moorhead State College. The college declined to renew his contract after one year due to his anti-war stance, upsetting many students. A grand jury indicted Coyle twice for evading the draft but acquitted him both times as a conscientious objector. He then moved back to Minneapolis, where he worked as a counselor at the Twin Cities Draft Information Center from 1969 to 1971. In 1970, Coyle co-founded the underground newspaper Hundred Flowers. The newspaper supported feminists, the LGBT community, anti-racism, and anti-war organizing. Coyle publicly came out as gay in the issue published on June 25, 1971. Coyle spent the 1970s involved in anti-Vietnam War activism and local community organization before shifting his focus to becoming a politician. In 1978 he ran as a public-interest independent candidate for the US Senate but lost to Rudy Boschwitz. He next ran unsuccessful campaigns for mayor of Minneapolis in 1979 and for the sixth ward of Minneapolis’s city council in 1981. Coyle was not deterred and won his campaign for the sixth ward in 1983, becoming the first openly gay member of the city council. His campaign platform included affordable housing, renters’ rights, crime prevention, fair taxes, jobs and community development, and human rights for all. During his almost eight years on the city council, Coyle focused on affordable housing, civil and human rights, transportation, the environment, and community development. He participated in multiple projects and committees, including the city council’s Transportation and Property Services Committee, the Minneapolis–St. Paul Family Housing Fund, the Urban Revitalization Action Program, the Project for Pride in Living, the Safety for Everyone Program, the Neighborhood Revitalization Program, and the American Indian Business Development Corporation. He was reelected in 1985 and 1989 and was selected vice president of the city council in 1990. One of Coyle’s biggest achievements was the 1991 passage of Minneapolis’s Domestic Partners Ordinance, which allowed same-sex and different-sex couples to register as domestic partners. This allowed unmarried couples access to rights such as employer benefits and sick and bereavement leave if they worked for the city. He also helped Stevens Square become a National Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places. He made hard choices, such as supporting city ordinances that banned “high-risk sexual conduct” establishments, which included gay bathhouses. His motivation for this was to protect the health of gay men during the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, even though this decision angered some in the LGBTQ community. On April 22, 1991, Coyle became one of the first public officials in the country to announce that he was HIV-positive. He had been diagnosed in 1986, but suspected that he had been exposed to the virus in 1981 or 1982. The announcement was followed by a television special on KSTP-TV, an article in the May issue of Minnesota Monthly, and the publication of excerpts from his personal journals. Only three months after announcing his status, however, Coyle grew so ill he had to be hospitalized. Friends and family cared for him at home, and he died there on August 23, 1991. In 1993, the Brian Coyle Community Center opened, and in 1996, a bronze bust of Coyle sculpted by Debborah Richert was unveiled at City Hall in Minneapolis.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Brian_Coyle_cropped.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/coyle-brian-j-1944-1991"},{"alt":"Labor Day parade, Minneapolis","author":[{"name":"Molly Jessup","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/molly-jessup"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"December 22, 2021","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Minneapolis Flour Mill Strike, 1903","postbody":"In September 1903, workers in the Minneapolis flour milling industry coordinated a strike that halted production in fourteen different mills. The striking workers fought for higher wages ...","searchtext":"In September 1903, workers in the Minneapolis flour milling industry coordinated a strike that halted production in fourteen different mills. The striking workers fought for higher wages and an eight-hour day. Though their effort failed, it marked a turning point in the city’s labor history by spurring mill owners and other business leaders to limit unions through the Citizens Alliance, an anti-worker organization. In summer 1903, flour loaders in Minneapolis negotiated for an eight-hour workday, with no success. On September 23, an estimated 1,300 flour mill employees gathered for a meeting to discuss going on strike. Striking—refusing to work—was their last option. The workers were organized under the American Federation of Labor (AFL), which emphasized arbitration in labor disputes. John M. Finley, president of the International Union of Flour and Cereal Employees, helped organize the flour loaders, who wanted an eight-hour workday at their existing pay rate. Packers and nailers also wanted women flour packers to receive the same wages and hours as their male counterparts to avoid undercutting wages. The workers gave mill owners until 3 o’clock pm on September 23 to agree to arbitration and avert a strike. The mill owners refused to negotiate with workers. They argued that their employees were well compensated and that pay increases would make Minneapolis mills less competitive nationally. One owner said he would shut down his plant indefinitely rather than discuss the pay scale with his workers. The union leadership responded that flour loading was strenuous and difficult to sustain for ten hours, and that injustice done to workers in other parts of the country was “not sufficient grounds for inequalities” in Minneapolis. The strike began on September 24. Mills belonging to Pillsbury-Washburn, Washburn-Crosby, and Northwestern Consolidated Companies were forced to close. Workers threatened small mills with a strike if they took orders from closed mills. The striking employees included an estimated 500 packers and nailers, 375 loaders, and 630 mill-operatives out of 1,934 men employed in the industry. Not all the striking workers belonged to the union; public opinion pressured many non-union men to go on strike. Only the millwrights, machinists, and a few others remained at work. Rather than arbitrate with the workers, the mill owners worked to replace them. They advertised nationally for employees and sent recruiters to New Ulm, Sleepy Eye, and Duluth. Mills promised a free train ticket to Minneapolis, room and board during the strike, and permanent employment. The Pillsbury B Mill hired seventy-five students from the University of Minnesota to work six-hour shifts. To further entice new workers, mill owners organized a commissary department. It included cots and a dining room so that strikebreakers would not need to leave the neighborhood and cross the picket line. Owners barricaded the Mill District and required anyone coming in to have a mill-issued pass. Food vendors brought in provisions under police protection. The striking workers continued to picket and pressure the mills, despite the pushback from mill owners. They received financial assistance from other unions, and there was talk of a sympathetic strike among railway switchmen. By October 6, however, twelve mills were running, and the union did not have enough financial resources to continue supporting the strikers. Union President Finley recommended that workers end the strike and return to work on October 9. Amid rumors that he had sold out to the owners, the striking mill workers rejected his advice and demanded that new officers take charge. The strike was essentially over by mid-October. Some workers were able to regain their jobs. Others, who were identified by owners as key organizers, were not rehired. Still, the 1903 strike united workers across the milling industry and inspired them to push for workplace reform. The 1903 strike cemented the power of the Minneapolis Citizens Alliance, a group of business owners who banded together to limit workers’ rights. At its core was a network of financial power provided by bankers, grain millers, and other business owners. In the wake of the 1903 strike, they sought to prevent workers from forming unions or going on strike. The Citizens Alliance played a significant role in limiting workers’ rights, reaching a critical point during the Minneapolis Teamsters’ Strike of 1934.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/HG2.7 p5.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246055,"name":"Labor","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/minneapolis-flour-mill-strike-1903"},{"alt":"George A. Hormel","author":[{"name":"Anita Talsma Gaul","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/anita-talsma-gaul"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"December 07, 2021","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Hormel, George A. (1860–1946)","postbody":"In 1891, George Hormel established a pork packinghouse, Geo. A. Hormel and Company, in Austin, Minnesota. As a small independent meat packer in an industry dominated by corporate giants, ...","searchtext":"In 1891, George Hormel established a pork packinghouse, Geo. A. Hormel and Company, in Austin, Minnesota. As a small independent meat packer in an industry dominated by corporate giants, Hormel devised a successful business strategy that emphasized quality over quantity and innovation over imitation. By the early twentieth century, his company had become one of the largest independent meatpackers in the Midwest. George Albert Hormel was born in Buffalo, New York, on December 4, 1860, to German immigrants John and Susanna (Decker) Hormel. As a young child he moved with his family to Toledo, Ohio, where his father opened a tannery. The economic depression following the Panic of 1873 made it necessary for young Hormel to quit school and work in order to supplement the family income. He went to Chicago to work in his uncle Jacob “Jay” Decker’s meat market, and it was there that Hormel learned how to process and pack meat. At the age of nineteen he moved to Kansas City, Missouri. After briefly working there as a wool buyer, he returned to Chicago and eventually secured a job as a traveling hide buyer. In 1887, Hormel saw an opportunity to go into business for himself. On a work trip to Austin, Minnesota, he learned that a customer’s meat market had recently burned. The owner rebuilt the shop, but he no longer wanted to operate the market. Hormel borrowed $500 and bought a share in the business. In partnership with the owner’s son Albrecht Friedrich, he then opened the Friedrich and Hormel meat market. The two men dissolved their partnership in 1891, and Hormel used the money to establish his own pork packinghouse on the outskirts of Austin: Geo. A. Hormel and Company. As a small, independent meatpacker, Hormel could not compete with the big Chicago packers: Armour, Swift, Morris, Wilson, and Cudahy. Hormel, however, was in the vanguard of a shift in the industry. Beginning in the late nineteenth century, meatpacking moved away from the centralized model of terminal stockyards and processors in a single location (like Chicago) to a model of decentralized “direct buying.” In this model, small packers located their operations in small cities and purchased livestock directly from farmers, eliminating the need for large terminal stockyards. Hormel was one of the first meatpackers to use the direct buying method, but others soon followed. In order to operate a profitable packinghouse, Hormel devised a business strategy that emphasized quality over quantity and innovation over imitation. Although he was eventually able to expand his line of products, initially he specialized in just one: sausage. The decision to specialize in pork packing was carefully calculated. During his years operating the meat market, Homel had kept careful records of each animal processed, tracking every carcass and the pieces of meat sold from each. He realized pork had the greatest profit potential, since every part of the pig carcass could be used in some way. Sausage increased the profit earned on each hog because it utilized parts of the animal that would otherwise go to waste. At first, Hormel oversaw every aspect of the business and did whatever needed to be done, including buying livestock, butchering animals, grading the meat—even cleaning out the hog pens. But the company grew, and by 1900 it became necessary for Hormel to hang up his meat cleaver and trade in his overalls for a business suit. The company was officially incorporated in 1901. In 1903 Hormel expanded the plant and installed new equipment. The number of hogs slaughtered increased from 42,538 in 1902 to 134,822 in 1905. Although this was still far less than the number of animals processed by the Chicago packers, Hormel was making inroads into the industry. By the outbreak of World War I, Geo. A. Hormel and Company slaughtered over 300,000 hogs annually. The company had become one of the largest independent meatpackers in the Midwest. When Hormel’s son Jay returned from serving in the war, Hormel turned over more control of the daily operations to him, and Jay continued to expand the company. In 1924 it reached a significant milestone in the meatpacking industry when it processed 1 million hogs annually. New product development increased substantially. In 1927, the company introduced the nation’s first canned ham, Hormel® Flavor Sealed Ham. The introduction of new products continued in the following decade: Dinty Moore® Stew and Hormel® Chili in 1935 and what came to be the company’s most famous creation, SPAM®, in 1937. In 1927 Hormel appointed Jay acting president of the company and moved with his wife, Lillian, to Beverly Hills, California. He died there on June 5, 1946, after suffering a stroke. His body was returned to Austin for burial. Editor’s note: Trademarks and specified images are owned by Hormel Foods Corporation, its subsidiaries, and affiliates. © Hormel Foods, LLC","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/George, 1924.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/hormel-george-1860-1946"},{"alt":"Minnesota State Capitol","author":[{"name":"Brian C. Pease","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/brian-c-pease"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"December 01, 2021","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Minnesota’s Third State Capitol","postbody":"On Wabasha Hill, just north of downtown St. Paul, stands Minnesota’s third state capitol building. This active center of state government was built between 1896 and 1905, and was designed ...","searchtext":"On Wabasha Hill, just north of downtown St. Paul, stands Minnesota’s third state capitol building. This active center of state government was built between 1896 and 1905, and was designed by architect Cass Gilbert. Its magnificent architecture, decorative art, and innovative technologies set it apart from every other public building in the state. The process of building a larger and more fireproof building than the second state capitol started in 1893, when legislators appropriated $2 million for construction and the creation of the Board of State Capitol Commissioners to oversee the project. Due to rising labor costs and materials, and sparing no expense for the interior architectural details and decorative art, they increased that amount two additional times. (The total cost came to nearly $4.5 million when the building opened to the public.) The board of seven commissioners oversaw every aspect of the work. This included supervising the expenditures, acquiring property, setting building specifications, selecting the architect and general contractor, choosing the type of stone to use on the exterior, and approving the art and artists. Board members selected Cass Gilbert, a St. Paul architect, to build the new capitol. In addition to creating the overall design, he managed all of the details, selecting the types of stone used, designing furniture for the chambers and public spaces, and working with the artists to determine themes and concepts depicted in the works of art. Erecting a building of the third capitol’s size and stature was one of the great Minnesota success stories in public architecture and construction. Completed by hundreds of workers, the project was a melding of centuries-old construction techniques with modern building technology. Skilled craftsmen worked alongside steam-powered hoists that lifted stone slabs and iron beams into place. On-site stone carvers used traditional tools but also pneumatic chisels to carve details in the stone. In addition, the building was wired for electricity and had its own power plant. As innovative as the technology was, it was overshadowed by the grandeur of the interior spaces. The rotunda’s 142-foot-high soaring dome, with its six-foot wide, ninety-two-light-bulb chandelier, amazed viewers. Workers used stone from Minnesota and other parts of the US, Europe, and Africa in every chamber and public space, including an inlaid north star in the rotunda. Coupled with the architectural elements were works of art from some of America’s most well-known artists. The murals and paintings, which featured allegories and historical events, were intended to promote the virtues of good government and the story of the state’s history, progress, and prosperity at the turn of the twentieth century. This theme carried over to the iconic gold-leafed quadriga located on the roof above the main entrance. Its official title, “Progress of the State,” represents the state’s prosperity. It was installed in 1906, nearly one year after the capitol opened. The new building accommodated most of the state government. The state supreme court, both legislative bodies, and all executive offices made the building their new home, along with state agencies, commissions, and the Minnesota Historical Society. As the state government expanded, space limitations were an ongoing issue. From the 1930s until the 1960s, some of the executive offices and various agencies moved to other buildings built on the capitol complex. Even up to the 1980s, because of space constraints, the ground floor had temporary walls and partitions installed to provide work space for office staff. Work to restore parts of the capitol to their original appearance began in 1985 with the governor’s reception room. That was followed by the Senate chamber (1988), the House of Representatives’ chamber (1989), the quadriga (1994), the Rathskeller (1999) and the third-floor ceiling (2007). After a century of use by all three branches of state government and visits by millions of people, repairing the building became a focal point. Between 2013 and 2017, the capitol underwent a comprehensive repair and restoration. Guided by three key principles— historical integrity, life safety, and modern functionality—this undertaking was allocated $310 million from the state legislature to do the necessary work. This included cleaning and replacing deteriorating Georgia marble on the exterior and replacing the roof. Other work included installing new mechanical and electrical systems, egress staircases, and an elevator. Conservators restored the fine art and repainted the decorative walls and ceilings to match the original 1905 colors and designs. In addition, the removal of office spaces on the third floor and mechanical and storage spaces in the basement opened up new public gathering spaces, meeting rooms, and exhibit areas. Building Dimensions: Length: 434 feet, excluding steps Width: 220 feet, excluding steps Height of dome from ground: 223 feet Height of dome interior (rotunda): 142 feet","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/capitol_front_three_quarter_Hsieh.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/minnesota-s-third-state-capitol"},{"alt":"Charles Malchow","author":[{"name":"Paul Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/paul-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"November 08, 2021","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Malchow, Charles W. (1864–1917)","postbody":"In 1904, Charles W. Malchow was a professor of medicine at Hamline University||s medical school who had studied abroad in Germany and England. He had a happy marriage, a medical practice in ...","searchtext":"In 1904, Charles W. Malchow was a professor of medicine at Hamline University||s medical school who had studied abroad in Germany and England. He had a happy marriage, a medical practice in downtown Minneapolis, and a house near Lake of the Isles. He was young, handsome, successful, and ambitious. Then he went to prison. The seventh of eight children of German immigrants, Charles Malchow left the University of Minnesota’s prep school at age fifteen to help support his widowed and disabled mother. At age twenty-seven he began medical studies at the Minneapolis College of Physicians and Surgeons; he graduated first in his class of twelve in 1894. He practiced medicine briefly in Shakopee and twice did further medical studies in Germany and England. There he encountered the work of Havelock Ellis, who began publishing the six-volume series Studies in the Psychology of Sex in 1897. After returning from Europe, Malchow set up a proctology practice in downtown Minneapolis and started teaching at the Hamline University School of Medicine. In his practice, Malchow observed that many people, especially women, suffered in their lives and marriages from a lack of reliable information about sex. Around the year 1902 Malchow decided to do something about this state of ignorance: write and publish a book about human sexuality. Olly Burton, a medical textbook company representative then based in Minneapolis, agreed to serve as the book’s publisher. The Sexual Life (dedicated to Malchow’s mother, Marie), appeared in 1904, the same year Malchow married Lydia Gluek, a daughter of the Minneapolis Gluek Brewing enterprise. The Sexual Life, over 300 pages, described in straightforward language a wide range of sex practices and problems—contraception, youthful experimentation, same-sex attraction, the physiology and psychology of sexual excitement, sexual pleasure, and sexual frustration. The book took particular aim at encouraging equality of knowledge and enjoyment for women and men. In 1873 Congress had enacted the Comstock Act, which made using the US mail to distribute obscenity (including specifically any information about abortion) a felony. Malchow and Burton knew about the law and inquired of Minneapolis post office officials whether their advertising pamphlet—which described the book in detail—could be sent through the mail. The unhelpful answer merely referred them to the Comstock Act. They took a chance, and mailed 25,000 copies of the pamphlet to doctors, ministers, and lawyers around the country. The book quickly sold 3,000 copies. In August 1904, just two months after Malchow’s marriage, a Minneapolis federal grand jury indicted Malchow and Burton for violating the Comstock Act. Trial began in October before Judge William Lochren, an Irish immigrant, a Civil War hero (he survived the famous charge of the First Minnesota at Gettysburg), and Minnesota’s second federal district judge. Lochren disapproved of The Sexual Life and made his views known to the jury, who quickly convicted both men. The First Amendment played no part in Malchow’s defense—it had not occurred to anyone at the time that the Constitution might protect the publication of explicit sexuality. And under the law of the time, Malchow and Burton were guilty of the crime. Lochren gave both Malchow and Burton eighteen months in prison, later reduced to twelve. While their appeal made its way to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, Malchow’s supporters appealed to President Theodore Roosevelt for a pardon. They failed: Roosevelt wrote that he found The Sexual Life “a hideous and loathsome book.” The Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction in April 1906; Roosevelt declined the pardon in April; Malchow and Burton reported to Stillwater State Prison in May. They were released in March 1907. After his release, Malchow returned briefly to the practice of medicine, but he had nothing more to do with the book, which eventually sold some 100,000 copies. In 1913 he and Lydia moved to Santa Monica, California. Dr. Malchow never practiced medicine again, and died from complications of diabetes in 1917. In 1953 Dr. Alfred Kinsey published Sexual Behavior in the Human Female. That book cited The Sexual Life seven times. The Comstock Act remained the law of the land; but instead of going to prison, Dr. Kinsey appeared on the cover of Time magazine.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/02 PHOTO 2.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246060,"name":"Crime and Punishment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246087,"name":"Health and Medicine","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/malchow-charles-w-1864-1917"},{"alt":"Marshall County Deputy Sheriff Val Johnson","author":[{"name":"Lizzie Ehrenhalt","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/lizzie-ehrenhalt"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"October 21, 2021","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Val Johnson Incident, 1979","postbody":"One of the most credible UFO (unidentified flying object) encounters in American history unfolded in Minnesota in 1979. Marshall County Deputy Sheriff Val Johnson never claimed that he saw ...","searchtext":"One of the most credible UFO (unidentified flying object) encounters in American history unfolded in Minnesota in 1979. Marshall County Deputy Sheriff Val Johnson never claimed that he saw aliens or spaceships—merely that a force he could not identify collided with his car, cracking its windshield and leaving him unconscious. Johnson’s reasonable testimony and the evidence left behind on his vehicle made the event a popular case among those who study unidentified aerial phenomena. On the night of August 27, 1979, Johnson was on patrol in his squad car on a particularly desolate stretch of County Highway 5 in Marshall County, ten miles west of Stephen. At 1:40 am he spotted a light in the sky and turned left onto State Highway 220 to investigate, thinking it might be a plane making an emergency landing. As he drove forward, however, the light abruptly entered the car itself. He heard the sound of glass breaking and then lost consciousness. When Johnson came to, thirty-nine minutes had passed. He had eye pain and a bump on his head, but the car seemed to have suffered worse, sustaining a dented hood, bent antennas, a shattered windshield, a broken headlight, and a broken hazard light. Both Johnson’s wrist watch and the car’s clock had lost fourteen minutes. Whatever impact had cracked the windshield had evidently also sent the vehicle coasting 854 feet along the road before it stopped at a ninety-degree angle to oncoming traffic. Johnson told the dispatcher who responded to his call for help, “Something attacked my car...it wasn’t a vehicle...I don’t know what the hell it was.” A doctor at a hospital in Warren treated Johnson’s eyes, which were injured as if by welder’s burns. The Marshall County Sheriff’s Office, led by Sheriff Dennis Brekke, then carried out an investigation into the incident. The Air Force and the Federal Aviation Agency (FAA) both confirmed that no aircraft had been scheduled to fly or were reported in the area in the early hours of August 27. Brekke also contacted the Center for UFO Studies in Evanston, Illinois, which conducted magnetic testing on the car (with no definitive results). In November, a metal engineer from Honeywell visited the sheriff’s office to perform his own tests and concluded that an electrical “force” or “thing” had caused the damage. Telephone calls flooded into Brekke’s office and Johnson’s home as news of the incident spread. Many callers were eager to share their personal stories of UFO encounters with someone they believed would offer a sympathetic ear. Johnson himself appeared on the television show Good Morning America and told his story on radio shows across the country, but the attention ultimately became a burden for him and his family. Johnson’s wife, Roseanne, admitted to the Minneapolis Star in September that “[i]t’s completely disrupted our family organization...We have a baby and that takes time. We have one to get off to school and the phone keeps ringing.” The family later moved from Oslo, Minnesota, to Eau Claire, Wisconsin. The Val Johnson incident brought national attention to rural northwestern Minnesota and in particular to Warren, the county seat of Marshall County. In 2019 Warren residents celebrated the fortieth anniversary of the deputy’s encounter with a public event featuring live music, an alien costume contest, and a dramatic reenactment of Johnson’s radio call. The Marshall County Historical Society in Warren preserves documentation of the incident as well as its most dramatic evidence: Johnson’s squad car. The damaged windshield, hood, lights, and antennas remain as they appeared in 1979. The museum’s president, Mike Johnson (no relation), told the Grand Forks Herald in 2013 that more visitors come to his institution to see the damaged vehicle (known as the “UFO car”) than any other artifact.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Johnson_2.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246052,"name":"Science and Technology","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/val-johnson-incident-1979"},{"alt":"People||s Lobby members in the senate chamber","author":[{"name":"Zac Farber","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/zac-farber"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"October 14, 2021","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"People||s Pilgrimage, 1937","postbody":"More than 1,000 left-wing protesters gathered at the Minnesota Capitol on April 4, 1937, to support Governor Elmer Benson as he tried to persuade the legislature to pass a $17 million aid ...","searchtext":"More than 1,000 left-wing protesters gathered at the Minnesota Capitol on April 4, 1937, to support Governor Elmer Benson as he tried to persuade the legislature to pass a $17 million aid package for the unemployed. About 200 of the protesters stayed overnight in the senate chamber after someone jimmied open the doors with a knife, and two organizers were later convicted of the gross misdemeanor of preventing senators from assembling. On the afternoon of April 4, 1937, more than 1,000 supporters of Governor Benson gathered at the capitol to insist on a $17 million aid package for the unemployed. The protest was staged by the People’s Lobby, a short-lived branch of the Workers Alliance, and Benson gave a speech bemoaning the resistance of a “reactionary senate” and corporate interests to hiking taxes on the wealthy. By dinnertime most of the demonstrators had dissipated, and the protest would have been a forgettable affair in an era of ascendant left-wing populism were it not for the anonymous activist who used his knife to slip the latch of the senate chamber’s doors. A crowd of about 200 swept into the chamber, according to the Minneapolis Tribune. Overwhelmed, the sergeant-at-arms called the St. Paul police headquarters, which dispatched two detectives and four uniformed officers to the capitol. But there was no attempt to eject the protesters, who expressed their intention to “stay until we get what we want.” Through the night speakers took turns at the lectern and protesters sang songs like “March of the Toilers” and “Leaning on a Shovel” (“We’ve made a lot of lovely things just leaning on a shovel...winding roads and highways straight, wonderful buildings that house the great”). Someone brought in hot dogs, hamburgers, and bottles of milk, and the protesters dined in comfort, reclining in the senators’ chairs, their feet propped on the senators’ desks. “The senate chamber took on the scenery of a tired picnicking group awaiting arrival of the local train,” the Minneapolis Tribune reported, noting the “unshaven” men and the women in gingham dresses “puffing cigarettes” and lounging “on the plush-carpeted steps leading up one side of the rostrum.” None of the later newspaper reports mentioned them stealing or tampering with legislative papers. The protest fizzled out peaceably by morning, but the senate leadership was irate. At the behest of Senator Harry Wing, four organizers of the protest (Harry Mayville, Glen Roberts, Robert Cheska, and Chester Watson) were charged with the gross misdemeanor of preventing the senate from meeting and jailed in lieu of $1,000 bail. The protesters’ invasion of the senate chamber was divisive, with the Minneapolis Tribune opining that it was “an attempt to intimidate the Legislature.” Many observers, however, saw the prosecution of the protest’s leaders as overkill. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) stepped in to defend Cheska and Watson, and Governor Benson said the crackdown on the Workers Alliance leaders was nothing more than “artificial hysteria” and “political bunk.” He even declared that legislators “prefer the perfume of the corporation lawyer to the taste of the farm and factory.” The protest’s aftermath made national news and fed the People’s Lobby movement’s collection of grievances. The leftist activist Dale Kramer wrote a ten-page pamphlet about “how reactionary senators and the Twin Cities press tried to frame the People’s Lobby.” He argued they characterized protesters as an unruly mob by inventing stories of “drinking and carousing” and melodramatically preventing janitors from cleaning up the senate chamber. “There was only too grave a danger that these thousands of common, ordinary—but determined—people would undo the expensive work of the hired lobbyists,” Kramer wrote. The “People’s Pilgrimage” appears to be unique in Minnesota history. Staff at the state’s Legislative Reference Library say they know of no other time when a group of protesters occupied a state legislative chamber.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/J7_9 r1.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246060,"name":"Crime and Punishment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/peoples-pilgrimage-1937"},{"alt":"Joe Huie outside his restaurant","author":[{"name":"Wing Young Huie","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/wing-young-huie"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"September 21, 2021","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Joe Huie’s Café, Duluth","postbody":"Joe Huie’s Café—an iconic Duluth landmark—was a modest eatery that became a community hub between its founding in 1951 and its closing in 1973. Owned by an enterprising Chinese immigrant, ...","searchtext":"Joe Huie’s Café—an iconic Duluth landmark—was a modest eatery that became a community hub between its founding in 1951 and its closing in 1973. Owned by an enterprising Chinese immigrant, the restaurant served classic American Chinese, authentic Chinese, and down-home American food to a broad swath of customers with humor and hospitality. In the storefront window, beneath the neon “chop suey chow mein” sign, was a cardboard sign carefully lettered in bright red paint: OPEN 24 HOURS A DAY BECAUSE WE LOST KEY. Inside, behind the register, stood a Chinese man of indeterminate age with white hair, his posture erect, almost youthful. His sinewy arms were folded and his gaze was intense. A man walked in and asked loudly, “Hey, old man! Where can I get some good Chinese food?” The Chinese man turned and, with a smile of recognition, replied in mock seriousness, “Say, I hear if you go up to the twelfth floor you can get something to eat.” Although the exchange had been made many times before (it was a two-story building), they both laughed. The customer knew that the best place to get some good Chinese food was, of course, right there, at the restaurant wedged in between a bar and a barber shop on Lake Avenue by the name of Joe Huie’s Café. Joe Huie, the man behind the register, had hard-learned values. In 1909, he had stepped off the boat from his native Guangzhou, China, and touched American soil for the first time. He was seventeen, nearly penniless, and didn’t speak any English. He immediately boarded a train to Duluth and washed dishes at the St. Paul Café, owned by relatives. After working fifteen hours a day, he attended an English class taught by a nun for an hour. Rarely did he take a day off. Huie worked for years to save enough money for a restaurant of his own, and in 1951 he bought the Shangri-La Restaurant at 103 Lake Street South. After he reopened it as Joe Huie’s Café, the new business took off. Everything on the menu was fresh, natural, and made from scratch, whether it was egg foo young, more authentic dishes like yetca mein, or liver and onions. The most famous dish was the jumbo butterfly shrimp, which came with a side of fried rice or French fries and gravy. The meals were cheap (fifteen cents for a burger, potatoes, salad, fruit, coffee, and homemade cake), but for those who couldn’t afford it, handouts and eating on credit were common. “If someone came in and had no money,” said one waitress, “Joe would give them a bowl of soup or coffee.” The décor was simple and functional. “It was comfortable, like eating in somebody’s house,” said one customer. At night, however, it became a carnival as patrons lined up after the bars closed, let in one-by-one by a hired policeman. “Let’s go to Joe Huie’s and people watch,” was an oft-uttered phrase. Stories abounded, and whether true or not, they added to its mystique. Even Elvis Presley allegedly ordered late-night takeout after a performance (though his two tour stops in Duluth occurred after the restaurant closed). Over the years, Huie made trips back to China to be with his family. But due to the Chinese Exclusion Act, which restricted the entry of Chinese people into the United States, his family remained in China during most of his years in Duluth before World War II. Although he brought two sons to Duluth in 1949, after liberalization of US immigration law, it wasn’t until 1954 that his wife and two younger children arrived in the United States. A fifth child was born in Duluth the following year. When Huie closed the café in 1973 in order to retire, Duluthians mourned as if an old friend had passed away. Duluth’s residents “lost an institution when they lost Joe Huie’s,” said multimillionaire Jeno Paulucci, founder of the Chinese food brand Chun King. Police Chief Eli Miletich recalled that around 1970, when former Vice President Hubert Humphrey had been in a motorcade going up Lake Avenue, “He saw Joe on the street and immediately stopped, jumped out, hugged him, and talked for a good ten minutes while his aides tugged at his sleeves.”","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/HuieJ_HuieW.jpeg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/joe-huie-s-caf-duluth"},{"alt":"Calvin Griffith memorial","author":[{"name":"Ellie McKinney","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/ellie-mckinney"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"September 14, 2021","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Calvin Griffith Memorial, Minneapolis","postbody":"In September of 2010, the Minnesota Twins unveiled a memorial to highlight Calvin Griffith, their first owner. While Griffith is credited with bringing professional baseball to Minneapolis, ...","searchtext":"In September of 2010, the Minnesota Twins unveiled a memorial to highlight Calvin Griffith, their first owner. While Griffith is credited with bringing professional baseball to Minneapolis, his racist attitudes and actions outweigh his accomplishments. In response to increasing public pressure following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, the memorial was removed in June of 2020. Griffith is remembered for bringing major league sports to the Twin Cities. He took over the Washington Senators from his late uncle and guardian in 1955 and received permission to move the team from Washington, DC, to Minnesota in October of 1960. While the Twins failed to win a World Series title while owned by Griffith, the team found undeniable success in Minnesota, winning several division titles. Griffith developed a reputation as an accessible, outspoken, and gaffe-prone team owner. Reporters vividly highlighted his coarse perspectives and “mangled . . . syntax.” His blunt mannerisms also revealed his attitudes on race. While speaking at the Waseca Lions Club in September of 1978, Griffith made numerous explicitly racist comments about his fans and his players. Most notoriously, while responding to a question regarding why he chose to relocate the Twins to Minnesota, he asserted, “I’ll tell you why we came to Minnesota, it was when I found out you only had 15,000 blacks here. Black people don’t go to ball games, but they’ll fill up a rassling ring and put up such a chant it’ll scare you to death. It’s unbelievable. We came here because you’ve got good, hard-working, white people here.” While the comments at the Lions Club were the most explicit demonstration of Griffith’s racist attitudes, his bigotry was not confined to “off-the-record” events. In fact, in 1962 the Minnesota State Commission on Discrimination filed a complaint against the Twins as the only Major League Baseball (MLB) team still segregating players during spring training and on road trips through the South. With a history and reputation as contentious as Griffith’s, many questioned the Twins’ decision to place a bronze statue of him near Gate 29 at Target Field. Nevertheless, his memorial was unveiled in September, 2010, for the Twins’ inaugural season at Target Field. Sculpted by Twin Cities artist Bill Mack, the life-size sculpture of Griffith showed him with a jacket over his arm and a baseball in hand accompanied by a placard reading, “I love baseball that’s all. Ever since I was a little kid playing on those sandlots in Washington. There’s nothing like being at the game.” His statue was part of a collection of memorials intended to highlight prominent figures in Twins history, including Griffith’s successors, Eloise and Carl Pohlad, and players like Kirby Puckett and Rod Carew. In fact, Griffith’s statue was placed just meters away from the statue honoring Rod Carew, a star player under Griffith who left the team following Griffith’s racist assertions in Waseca. While Carew voiced his support and understanding of the Twins’ decision to erect the memorial, the statue generated controversy and uncertainty among Minnesotans. On April 15, 2015, VICE published an article entitled, “Why the Twins Should Tear Down Their Statue of a Former Owner.” Around the same time, lifelong Twins fan Mike Tucker began what would be referred to as a “one-man boycott” against the team and their decision to maintain the statue. Tucker later created a Facebook group called “MN Twins fans for removal of Calvin Griffith statue at Target Field” that accumulated over 250 members. Responding to the controversy and increasing pressure from the community following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020, the Twins released a statement explaining that the statue had been removed on Juneteenth (June 19), 2020. They stated,“While we acknowledge the prominent role Calvin Griffith played in our history, we cannot remain silent and continue ignoring the racist comments he made in Waseca in 1978.” The team further asserted, “We cannot remove Calvin Griffith from the history of the Minnesota Twins, but we believe removal of this statue is an important and necessary step in our ongoing commitment to provide a Target Field experience where every fan and employee feels safe and welcome.” During the memorial’s removal, the Twins’ owners committed to investing $25 million in racial justice initiatives.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Papahazama_Calvin_Griffith.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246054,"name":"Sports and Recreation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/calvin-griffith-memorial-minneapolis"},{"alt":"Bird’s-eye view of the reconstructed Grand Lodge on Grand Portage Bay","author":[{"name":"Christopher Hommerding","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/christopher-hommerding"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"September 07, 2021","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Grand Portage National Monument","postbody":"The Grand Portage National Monument in far northeastern Minnesota was established in 1960, after the Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa (Ojibwe) ceded nearly 710 acres of their ...","searchtext":"The Grand Portage National Monument in far northeastern Minnesota was established in 1960, after the Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa (Ojibwe) ceded nearly 710 acres of their land to the US government. A unit of the National Park Service (NPS), it consists of the eight-and-a-half-mile Grand Portage trail and two trading depot sites—one on the shoreline of Lake Superior and one inland, at Pigeon River. A partially reconstructed depot sits at the Lake Superior site. The Grand Portage is an ancient overland trail used by Indigenous peoples since at least the start of the first millennium CE. By the middle of the eighteenth century, European fur traders used it and depots at either end to transport people, supplies, and trade goods between the Great Lakes and inland waterways. They abandoned the area in the early nineteenth century. Ojibwe people, however, continued to reside on and near the Grand Portage reservation, which was formed after the ratification of the Treaty of La Pointe in 1854. The site was largely forgotten by white Minnesotans until the 1920s, when interest in Northwoods history, conservation, and tourism grew rapidly. In 1922, Minnesota Historical Society (MNHS) director Solon Buck launched a campaign to preserve the Grand Portage as a state park. In response to a Grand Portage resident who was worried that private property owners were fencing off the trail, Buck sent MNHS field secretary Cecil Shirk and journalist Paul Bliss to retrace it. The subsequent newspaper coverage generated public interest and support. Because the area was tribal land, however, it fell under federal regulation, and a state park was not possible. Efforts to preserve and interpret the Grand Portage received federal backing in the 1930s. From 1933 to 1940, archaeologists, historians, and crews from the Indian Division of the Civilian Conservation Corps cleared the trail and conducted archeological digs. They then reconstructed a Great Hall and stockade at the Lake Superior depot site. In 1936, as a result of this work, the federal government declared the Grand Portage a site of national significance. That same decade, the Grand Portage Band formed a Reservation Tribal Council, as a result of the Indian Reorganization Act in 1934. After World War II, the council joined with white conservationists to urge the federal government to help bring more tourists to the site. Toward that end, the Department of the Interior designated Grand Portage a National Historic Site in 1951. In 1958, the tribal council took the unusual step of ceding 709.97 acres of tribal land to the US government. This allowed the NPS to establish the Grand Portage National Monument two years later. The creation of the monument sparked a second round of archeological studies and reconstructions. Information from these excavations helped builders design more historically accurate reconstructions. In 1966, for instance, the stockade was rebuilt with a more historically accurate gatehouse. In 1969, lightning struck the Great Hall, starting a fire that destroyed the building and its artifacts. Excavations beneath the rubble revealed information incorporated into a new Great Hall, completed in 1974. A kitchen building found behind the Great Hall was built a year later. A canoe warehouse was built outside the stockade in 1973. Despite the early involvement of the tribal council, interpretation at the site was largely focused on European fur traders. Slowly, interpretation at the site shifted to include more Ojibwe community histories. One of the most popular yearly events at the monument, Rendezvous Days, began in 1962. This event is a reenactment of the period during midsummer when fur traders, voyageurs, and Indigenous people convened at Grand Portage to exchange furs and supplies. By 1972, Rendezvous Days coincided with what would become the band’s annual Celebration Pow Wow. In 1992, an “Ojibwe village” was reconstructed outside the stockade walls to interpret seasonal cultural practices of Ojibwe people. In the 1990s, the tribal council advocated for a greater role in site management, and in 1999, the Grand Portage Band and the NPS agreed to co-manage the monument. Together, they moved forward on the construction of a new visitor center, opened in 2007. Known as the Heritage Center, the new building provided more room for interpretative materials, created additional job opportunities for band members, and moved the monument’s offices from Grand Marais to Grand Portage.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/overhead_view_NPS.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246059,"name":"Native Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246053,"name":"Transportation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/grand-portage-national-monument"},{"alt":"Title card of Cologne","author":[{"name":"Jonathon Rusch","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/jonathon-rusch"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"August 17, 2021","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Cologne: From the Diary of Ray and Esther (film)","postbody":"In 1939, a small-town doctor and his wife created a striking amateur film that captured their Minnesota community near the end of the Great Depression. The film is now included in the ...","searchtext":"In 1939, a small-town doctor and his wife created a striking amateur film that captured their Minnesota community near the end of the Great Depression. The film is now included in the Library of Congress’s National Film Registry, which recognizes it as a significant documentary of rural life. In 1937, a young doctor named Raymond (Ray) Dowidat had completed his medical training and accepted a new post in Cologne, a small German American enclave in rural Carver County about forty miles southwest of Minneapolis. Ray moved to the town with his wife, Esther, and their family, and he served the community as a general practitioner for the next two years before returning to Minneapolis. In the summer of 1939, during the family’s final months in Cologne, Ray and Esther created an unconventional souvenir: a short, silent film that documented daily life in their town. Ray had gained an interest in home moviemaking, which was possible in the 1930s because companies like Eastman Kodak were producing 16mm-gauge film stock and cameras specifically for amateur users like him. Although such equipment remained out of reach for many working people in rural areas at the time, Ray’s professional career allowed him to fund his hobby. The Dowidats’ film, called Cologne: From the Diary of Ray and Esther, is under fifteen minutes long, and much of it was edited “in camera”—meaning most shots were filmed sequentially on the same film roll, so little splicing was required later. Despite it being a home movie, Cologne is unusually polished. The Dowidats used a simple but effective framing device to depict town life: scenes unfold through Esther’s diary entries. As Esther reflects on her family’s time in Cologne, close-up shots of her handwritten pages act as intertitles that narrate the film. Her observations introduce footage on a range of topics, from the rural landscape and agriculture to social events and community rituals. After Esther introduces Cologne, the film shows the town’s neat houses, church spires, lumber yard, and surrounding expanse of farmland. Rather than dwell on the trials of the Great Depression, the Dowidats highlight the town’s active economy: Esther’s diary cues up shots of modern farm work, the blacksmith shop, and the local mill. The Catholic church also makes a cameo as a significant local institution; Cologne’s Lutheran church is absent, which is perhaps odd given that Ray’s father was a prominent Lutheran pastor in Minneapolis. The film’s only hint that Cologne was not thriving is a comment that the railroad line passing through the town had ceased making stops there. The Dowidats’ neighbors—whom the film describes as “good natured Germans or Hollanders”—appear in greater numbers in the second half of Cologne. Ray and Esther documented the social life of the town’s residents through unpretentious events like the fire department parade and weekly saloon suppers. The film’s memorable final sequence shows the importance of Cologne’s bars, and Esther comments that “In Cologne, everybody drinks beer.” The film then captures a (staged) brawl, and it is unclear if the Dowidats intended wry humor or slight annoyance at the local drinking culture. Esther’s last diary entry in the film, written as the family prepared to leave Cologne, relates that she has “Some regrets, many memories—pleasant and bitter…” The film then cuts from that ambiguous comment to a final image of the town’s landmark water tower. Most likely, the Dowidats shared their film with only their neighbors, and the family moved on. Although Cologne may strike viewers as a quaint portrait of a typical Midwestern town, the film is a rare and remarkable document of rural life during the final years of the Great Depression. In the 1930s, the federal government sponsored numerous efforts to document the lives of rural people across the United States: the Farm Security Administration photography program is one prominent example that aimed to document Americans’ hardships and spur action. In contrast, the Dowidats were amateur creators and relative insiders in Cologne, and their film sprang from a sincere attachment to a local community that, for most Americans, remained off the beaten path. After the Dowidats’ daughter discovered Cologne in Esther’s attic, she donated the film to the Minnesota Historical Society, which secured a federal grant to preserve it. In 2001, the Librarian of Congress selected Cologne as one of twenty-five films that year for the National Film Registry, an inventory of significant American films. The Dowidats’ modest film then joined a cohort of Classical Hollywood movies and blockbusters like Jaws.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Cologne_title_card.png","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/cologne-diary-ray-and-esther-film"},{"alt":"Superior National Forest overlook","author":[{"name":"Karl Nycklemoe","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/karl-nycklemoe"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"August 10, 2021","eraTag":[],"keydate":"","name":"Superior National Forest","postbody":"Superior National Forest is an iconic part of northeast Minnesota that comprises over three million acres (more than 445,000 of which are surface water) of boreal forest. The forest itself ...","searchtext":"Superior National Forest is an iconic part of northeast Minnesota that comprises over three million acres (more than 445,000 of which are surface water) of boreal forest. The forest itself is part of the vast North Woods, a tourist destination in northern Wisconsin and Minnesota and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCA) is within the forest, which is itself part of the Quetico Superior region that extends into Canada. The topography of the Superior National Forest was carved about 30,000 years ago during the Wisconsinan Glacial Period by the Laurentide Ice Sheet. After thousands of years of glacial expansion and retraction, the ice sheet retreated northward, leaving behind lowland areas that flooded and became many of the lakes in the North Woods. People have lived in the North Woods forest for more than 10,000 years. By the mid-seventeenth century the Dakota, Cree, and Assiniboine lived there, and the migrating Ojibwe established themselves on western Lake Superior by the 1680s. All of them harvested wild rice, used fire to increase agricultural yields of plants such as blueberries, and maintained ecological borderlands (ecotones) to support elk, moose, and deer populations. The French fur trade arrived in 1679 with Sieur du Lhut, and the Ojibwe and the French traded on the shores of Lake Superior throughout the eighteenth century. In the 1850s, the US government, settler-colonists, and logging companies were eager to exploit the North Woods’ timber and mineral resources. Under ecological and economic pressure, due to the wane of the fur trade, the Ojibwe ceded most of what is now the Superior National Forest in 1854 in the Treaty of La Pointe and were promised by the US government annuities, reservations, and retained land-use rights. (Intensive lumbering later eroded their freedom to use the ceded territory through the twentieth century, but the Ojibwe reasserted their treaty rights in the 1980s and 1990s; subsequent court cases upheld their right to hunt, fish, and harvest on ceded land.) During and after the treaty era, deposits of iron ore and myths of gold drew miners and capitalists to the North Woods. Miners and their families founded or expanded settlements, such as Ely, while commercial logging began in earnest in the 1890s. Tourism was advertised for the National Forest as early as 1915, and in 1919 as a primeval wilderness perfect for “the camper, the fisherman, and the canoeist.” As European forestry conservation practices—setting aside tracts of land for future use, suppressing fire, and wilderness tourism—gained ground in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth, large tracts of the North Woods became cut-over wasteland. Some conservationists proposed setting aside forested land. Minnesota’s chief fire warden Christopher C. Andrews, for example, suggested the idea in 1891. Meanwhile, wildlife enthusiasts (like the Canadian W. A. Preston, who was concerned about the looming demise of the moose from poaching) called for the creation of an international reserve. Through shared concern and cross-border communication, three things happened in rapid succession in 1909. First, the state of Minnesota established the Superior Refuge in the northeast for moose and caribou (but allowed for the hunting of wolves and beavers). Second, Theodore Roosevelt declared 644,114 acres the Superior National Forest on February 13. Third, Canada established the Quetico Forest Reserve (Quetico Provincial Park), the Superior Forest’s twin, on April 1. Presidents William H. Taft (1912), Calvin Coolidge (1927), Franklin D. Roosevelt (1936), and John F. Kennedy (1962) further expanded the Superior National Forest. Throughout the twentieth century, environmental activists fought to preserve wilderness within the forest—though not all of it. In 1926, Secretary of Agriculture William Jardine signed off on the establishment of the Superior Roadless Area to provide outdoor wilderness recreation. In 1931, the Shipstead-Nolan Act protected federal shorelines from logging and flooding—inhibiting any future dam plans. Likewise, although only around 40 percent of land within the forest’s boundaries was publicly owned by the 1920s, as cutover property was abandoned in the 1930s and 1940s, the national forest added 60 percent of formerly privately-owned land to public ownership. Infrastructure projects completed by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) in the 1930s facilitated logging inside the forest, as did trucks, chainsaws, and dozers. In 1949, Truman’s Executive Order of an Air Space Reservation over the Roadless Area curtailed air traffic, effectively ending the use of sea planes by resorts in the Roadless Area. Later, the 1964 Wilderness Act created a federal wilderness system and the BWCA, while President Jimmy Carter’s 1978 Public Law 95-495 (BWCA Wilderness Act) permanently ended logging within the Boundary Waters, though not in the rest of the forest.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/SNF_Tony_Flickr.jpeg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/superior-national-forest"},{"alt":"Fear for Pet Costs Her Life","author":[{"name":"Britt Aamodt","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/britt-aamodt"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"August 03, 2021","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Murder of Mary Fridley Price","postbody":"The November 1914 death of Mary Fridley Price made the front page of the Minneapolis Journal: “Woman Killed in Attempt to Save Pet Dog.” Her grieving husband, Fred Price, told police she ...","searchtext":"The November 1914 death of Mary Fridley Price made the front page of the Minneapolis Journal: “Woman Killed in Attempt to Save Pet Dog.” Her grieving husband, Fred Price, told police she had fallen off a Mississippi River bluff in a vain attempt to keep her dog from going over. But by January 1916, that grieving husband was at the center of a sensational murder trial, accused of shoving her off the cliff for her money. On November 28, 1914, Mary Fridley Price, thirty-eight, lay by the rocky shore of the Mississippi River, still dressed in the fine blue tailored suit and furs she had worn to a play that afternoon. It had been the final matinee performance of the comedy-musical The Prince of Pilsen at Minneapolis’s Metropolitan Theatre. Now it was after 6 pm on a chilly fall night. Fridley Price sprawled on her back with a halo of blood around her head. About an hour before, she had shared the roomy backseat of her 1913 Cadillac with Chum, the Cocker Spaniel she loved like the child she didn’t have. Her husband, Frederick T. Price, was at the wheel, with his friend and sometime business partner Charles D. Etchison next to him. Etchison and Price had accompanied Fridley Price to the play. In fact, Etchison had turned up with the tickets that morning and suggested the outing. After the show ended, Price proposed that the three of them motor to St. Paul. Mary, the husband suggested, could collect Chum at the apartment and bring him along. It was during that drive from their Minneapolis apartment near Loring Park to scenic East River Road that the Cadillac’s engine seemed to stall. Price pulled over. Since he and Etchison would be tinkering under the hood for a while, Price said, why shouldn’t Mary take Chum for a walk? Mary Fridley Price’s decision to give her dog some air was her last. Just beyond the parkway’s thin fringe of trees, the land dropped off. Somehow, within minutes of exiting the car, both woman and dog toppled some forty feet. Fridley Price died on the way to the hospital, the fracture to the left side of her skull proving fatal. Chum died later, when police located the severely injured dog and shot him. The police and coroner agreed with Price’s and Etchison’s story: that Chum had bolted through the trees only to find a drop off, and Mary, in an attempt to save him from going over, had lost her footing and gone down with him. Mary Fridley Price had been the granddaughter of Abram Fridley, the Minnesota pioneer and state legislator for whom the town of Fridley was named. Her father, David Fridley, was a wealthy landowner. He was generous with Mary—and suspicious of her traveling salesman husband. Fridley had ensured that during the marriage his daughter had kept her accounts, bonds, and land holdings under her control. With his wife’s death, Fred Price became the administrator of her estate. And he was free to marry Carrie Olson, the stenographer he had been seeing since 1913. David Fridley did not believe his daughter’s death was accidental. With another son-in-law, William Dye, he hired private investigator John P. Hoy, the former Minneapolis police detective who had helped solve the infamous Harry Haywood murder case in 1894. Hoy investigated Price for ten months. The detective made his way to Price’s hometown, Neenah, Wisconsin. There he learned that a local boy who had fallen off a roof and lain unconscious for hours had grown into a teenager who beat a neighbor woman senseless with a stick of wood for the sheer “deviltry” of it. That teenager was Price. Hoy also built a case against Etchison, who, after swooning and praying to God, confessed that his friend had murdered his wife for her money. In January 1916, newspapers from different parts of the country covered Price’s Minneapolis murder trial. Etchison, the state’s star witness, testified that Price had plotted his wife’s murder for months. That night in 1914, he had shoved her off a steep cliff in Minneapolis and thrown her dog after her. Only Fridley Price hadn’t died in the fall. So Price, after nearly an hour of scrambling, found his way down and stove in the semi-conscious woman’s head with a rock. He paid off Etchison for being his witness to the “accident.” Price was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in Stillwater Prison. David Fridley never got over his daughter’s murder. In 1926, he hanged himself. Inmate Price, employed in the prison’s twine-making business, died four years later of pneumonia and complications from diabetes.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/The Death of Mary Fridley Price.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246060,"name":"Crime and Punishment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/murder-mary-fridley-price"},{"alt":"","author":[{"name":"Christopher Hommerding","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/christopher-hommerding"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 27, 2021","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Up and Out of Poverty Now!","postbody":"The Minneapolis chapter of Up and Out of Poverty Now! was a highly visible organization created by and for the houseless community in the early 1990s. Although short-lived, Up and Out ...","searchtext":"The Minneapolis chapter of Up and Out of Poverty Now! was a highly visible organization created by and for the houseless community in the early 1990s. Although short-lived, Up and Out provided a voice for those without permanent housing and helped secure affordable options for those in need by using the radical tactic of occupying publicly owned buildings. People have experienced homelessness in the US since the early colonial period. To assist them, the more fortunate created organizations to provide food, housing, and services. Religious organizations were historically the main providers, but in the 1960s and 1970s, secular nonprofits joined in that work. By the late 1980s, people without housing began to create organizations led by and for their own community members. These new organizations tapped into a long history of marginalized people organizing to support their own communities. This history includes organizations like the Black Panthers, the Brown Berets, and the American Indian Movement. The community-led organization Up and Out of Poverty Now! began in 1989. That year, a broad group of housing advocates attended the Housing Now! Coalition March on Washington for Affordable Housing. The goal was to draw attention to drastic cuts to federal funding for social services and affordable housing. Upwards of 150,000 people participated. Groups had different ideas, however, for tackling the issue of houselessness. Some groups, like the National Union for the Homeless and People United for Economic Justice, criticized others for creating unnecessary bureaucratic barriers and focusing too much on fundraising. Instead, these groups supported the radical approach of occupying vacant homes owned by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). With this tactic as an organizing principle, activists formed Up and Out of Poverty Now! Up and Out opened chapters across the country, including Minneapolis. In April 1990, Minneapolis Up and Out activists occupied the vacant Nicollet Hotel in downtown. By May 1, they had occupied four vacant houses and a former Washburn-Crosby mill building. The tactic of occupation met with resistance from some existing social service providers. HUD officials repeatedly told Up and Out “We’re not giving away any housing,” and they refused to work with activists. They cited an existing policy allowing HUD-owned houses to be leased to established nonprofits for one dollar per year. Most of the houses, however, remained unoccupied. They required thousands of dollars in repairs to meet city code—money that nonprofits usually did not have. Up and Out received a more sympathetic response from Minneapolis leaders. By the end of May 1990, the Minneapolis Community Development Agency (MCDA) gave Up and Out access to a duplex on Columbus Avenue South. The MCDA also agreed to visit a pilot housing program in Philadelphia with Up and Out leaders. Both groups hoped to replicate Philadelphia’s activist-owned housing model in Minneapolis. As part of this deal, Up and Out agreed to vacate the mill building, which the city deemed unsafe for occupation. Starting in July of 1990, Up and Out occupied a former residence for single women, the Kate Dunwoody Residence in downtown. The building was owned by the University of St. Thomas and slated to become offices for the downtown campus. At the urging of activists, the city and St. Thomas agreed to convert the building into a “low-income hotel” instead. Although the plan met with resistance from business leaders who thought the hotel would scare away customers, the Dunwoody building was opened as the Exodus Hotel in early 1991. With success in Minneapolis, protests expanded to other Minnesota cities. By January 1991, activists had occupied a HUD-owned building in St. Paul. They took similar action in Duluth by May. The group met its strongest resistance when it tried to occupy vacant houses in more solidly middle-class portions of Minneapolis. An August 1990 occupation in the Nokomis area of South Minneapolis lasted less than twenty-four hours. The protest angered neighbors, and police worked quickly to remove activists. Accusations of embezzlement caused Up and Out to fade from the public eye by 1995. The effect of their work, however, lived on. As of 2021, the Exodus Hotel continued to operate. The hotel moved from its original building and was under the management of Catholic Charities. In St. Paul, Freedom Place, Inc., which began as an Up and Out occupation, offered affordable transitional sober housing. Several Up and Out leaders continued to advocate for those without permanent housing in Minneapolis and elsewhere. And the tactic of occupying public spaces and vacant properties continued to be used by organizations led by people experiencing houselessness.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/image3.png","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246079,"name":"Cities and Towns","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/and-out-poverty-now"},{"alt":"View of the Rainy River inside Franz Jevne State Park","author":[{"name":"Marjorie Savage","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/marjorie-savage"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 22, 2021","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Franz Jevne State Park","postbody":"Franz Jevne State Park is Minnesota’s smallest state park, consisting of about 120 acres of hardwood forest and wetlands. Stretching along the southern shoreline of the Rainy River in ...","searchtext":"Franz Jevne State Park is Minnesota’s smallest state park, consisting of about 120 acres of hardwood forest and wetlands. Stretching along the southern shoreline of the Rainy River in Koochiching County, the park represents the combination of natural resources and social history that built Minnesota’s far north. It shares a rich culture with the Manitou Burial Mounds, a National Historic Site of Canada, on the river’s northern bank. The geological history of Franz Jevne State Park surfaces in a 2.1-billion-year-old outcrop of bedrock within the park and in the boulders that form the nearby rapids, known as Ginwaajiwanaang (Kay-Nah-Chi-Wah-Nung, The Place of the Long Rapids) in Ojibwe. In English, they’re also called Long Sault Rapids. Archaeological evidence indicates that humans first passed through the Rainy River Basin about 9,700 years ago, after the region’s last glacial ice sheet began its retreat. More consistent habitation began about 2,000 years ago (20 CE) when Native Americans—probably the ancestors of multiple Algonquian groups, including the Cree—began to gather annually along the riverbank to trade, socialize, fish, hunt, and celebrate together from April until October. They dispersed into smaller family groups for the winter. From spring to early summer, the fast-flowing, clear water and rocky riverbed of the rapids provided spawning grounds for lake sturgeon, a staple of the Native American diet along with wild rice and game. These early inhabitants also buried their dead nearby. A series of burial mounds runs along both sides of the Rainy River for ninety miles that includes the Grand Mound Historic Site, about twenty miles southeast of the present-day park. Across the river, the Manitou Burial Mounds are protected at Kay-Nah-Chi-Wah-Nung Historical Centre, a National Historic Site of Canada. The first European to visit the Rainy River Basin is believed to have been the French Canadian Jacques de Noyon, who camped on the shore of the Rainy River during the winter of 1688–1689. Next came fur traders and voyageurs who followed the river to Lake of the Woods and up to Hudson Bay. French Missionaries arrived to Christianize the area’s Native people in the 1730s, and French and then British trading companies established forts along the river to support the fur trade throughout the 1700s. Starting in the 1870s, loggers moved illegally onto the Rainy River’s south bank, followed by squatters and settler-colonists. The river served as the major transportation system, increasingly enduring damage to its banks and contamination of its water caused by log runs, as well as pollution from pulp and paper mills upstream. Meanwhile, the Canadian government removed the Rainy River Ojibwe from their traditional lands to reserves on the north side of the river. One of the early property owners in Koochiching County was Wisconsin native Franz Jevne, who moved to Big Falls in 1908 to open the town’s only law office. Four years later he was elected Koochiching County attorney, a position he held for nearly twenty years. Throughout his career in northern Minnesota, he bought and sold multiple properties, including the river’s southern shoreline along the Long Sault Rapids. In 1961, the US National Park Service conducted a study of the Rainy River, resulting in a recommendation to preserve the river’s shoreline by establishing a 1,300-acre state park. At that time, however, the most scenic and historically significant land within the proposed park was owned by the family of Franz Jevne, and the family was not interested in selling the property. The proposal to create a state park along the Rainy River languished without access to the Jevne property, but in 1966 the Jevne family offered to donate their land to the state of Minnesota. The offer came with a stipulation that it should become a park named for Franz Jevne. Although the site was small compared to other parks, the Minnesota legislature and senate approved the proposal in 1967, and Governor Harold LeVander signed the law creating Franz Jevne State Wayside Park. The word “wayside” was removed from the name two years later when the state park system unified its terminology. In 2015, the Parks and Recreation Division of Minnesota’s Department of Natural Resources established a system-wide recreational plan to guide development for all of the state’s parks and recreation areas. Parks were organized into three categories: destination parks, to offer comprehensive resources and facilities and attract visitors; core parks, to provide well-maintained facilities and basic services; and rustic parks, with limited facilities and self-directed services. A year later, a management plan specific to Franz Jevne State Park outlined recommendations for maintaining a rustic environment that protects the natural and cultural resources of the property. Franz Jevne State Park offers limited and basic amenities, such as wooden picnic tables, fire rings, vault toilets, unpaved trails, and minimal signage. Most visitors come to fish, to camp in one of the drive-in or walk-in sites, and for hiking and birdwatching.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/800px-Franz_Jevne_State_Park_-_Rainy_River,_Minnesota_US-Canada_Border.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246059,"name":"Native Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246054,"name":"Sports and Recreation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/franz-jevne-state-park"},{"alt":"Faithful Indians Monument","author":[{"name":"Tyler N. Taylor","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/tyler-n-taylor"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 13, 2021","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Minnesota Valley Historical Society","postbody":"The Minnesota Valley Historical Society (MVHS) was formed in 1895 under the leadership of Charles D. Gilfillan to determine and mark sites significant to the US–Dakota War of 1862 in ...","searchtext":"The Minnesota Valley Historical Society (MVHS) was formed in 1895 under the leadership of Charles D. Gilfillan to determine and mark sites significant to the US–Dakota War of 1862 in Redwood and Renville counties. MVHS was largely Gilfillan’s project. He founded it, was its principal leader during its most active period, and personally funded significant portions of its work. After his death in 1902, MVHS became much less active, and the group dissolved in 1915. Before Gilfillan founded MVHS, the Minnesota state legislature had appointed him to a commission in charge of erecting a monument to commemorate the Battle of Birch Coulee—a project completed in 1894 in Morton, Minnesota. MVHS was Gilfillan’s effort to extend this work of creating public markers of the US–Dakota War. More specifically, as reported by the New Ulm Review, MVHS sought to mark “the early battle grounds and camping places” that represented Dakota attacks on the Lower Sioux Agency and settler-colonists in the surrounding area, with an emphasis on attacks made on August 18, 1862. The choice to focus on these specific events is explained in Sketches Historical and Descriptive of the Monuments and Tablets Erected by the Minnesota Valley Historical Society in Renville and Redwood Counties, Minnesota, published by MVHS in 1902. MVHS argued that historians consistently overlooked the US–Dakota War due to its concurrence with the US Civil War. Citing the loss of settler-colonist lives (estimated at over 600 over the course of the six-week-long war) and the value of property damage, MVHS claimed the US–Dakota War was “the most formidable and important Indian War in American history.” MVHS carried out the majority of its plans in 1898. In a short period of time, it erected approximately twelve granite historical markers. Six of them pertained to the Dakota attack on the Lower Sioux Agency on August 18, 1862: a small monument marking the grave of J. W. Lynde, who was among the first settler-colonists killed; three markers of the locations of trading houses where the attack began; a monument to US soldiers killed at Redwood Ferry; and a marker of the supposed location of the frame house of Taoyateduta (His Red Nation, also known as Little Crow), dated August 18, 1862. An additional marker at the Lower Sioux Agency identified the location where Henry Sibley’s military commission conducted trials of accused Dakota prisoners.* Four markers on the battlefield of Birch Coulee identified the locations of specific moments during the battle. A lone marker in Redwood County was installed near the Minnesota River at the location of Camp Pope, from which Sibley launched part of the Punitive Expeditions against the Dakota in the summer of 1863. The largest and most famous MVHS monument, erected in 1899, is known as the “Faithful Indians” or “Loyal Indians” monument and stands fifty-two feet tall near the Birch Coulee State Monument. A virtue is inscribed on each of the four sides of the plinth: “Humanity,” “Patriotism,” “Fidelity,” and “Courage.” MVHS’s 1902 publication explains the monument was made “to honor the services of those Indians who have been of eminent service to the whites” during the US–Dakota War. MVHS applied strict criteria to determine which Dakota individuals had been “truly loyal to the whites throughout the entire period of the outbreak,” which excluded mixed-race and/or métis individuals and required them to have saved the life of at least one settler-colonist. Only six individuals were chosen to have their names inscribed, and a significant portion of MVHS’s 1902 publication is dedicated to biographies of the inscribed and analyzing the definition of “truly loyal.” The interpretation that MVHS offered in its 1902 publication and memorialized through its historical markers and monuments presented an incomplete view of the US–Dakota War. Since MVHS aimed to honor the settler-colonist victims of the war, it omitted informative context, including the series of events leading to the war, widespread Dakota opposition, and limited Dakota participation. It also overlooked the noncombatant Native Americans targeted by the concentration camp at Fort Snelling and the Punitive Expeditions, which aimed to expel all remaining Dakota and Ho-Chunk people from Minnesota after the war. *Editor’s note: The MVHS marker mischaracterized the trials organized by Sibley in 1862 as a “Court Martial”; more precisely, the proceedings were convened by a military commission. For debates surrounding the trials’ legitimacy, as well as Sibley’s authority to convene them, see Chomsky, Haymond, and Herbert, cited in the bibliography below.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/MVHS_1.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/minnesota-valley-historical-society"},{"alt":"Flora Dora Girls","author":[{"name":"Alexandra Scholten","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/alexandra-scholten"}],"categoryTag":[],"date":"June 29, 2021","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Drag Performance in Minnesota, 1880–1950","postbody":"Drag performance, historically referred to as “male impersonation” or “female impersonation,” was a popular act in Minnesota theater from the 1880s through the 1920s, reflecting the heyday ...","searchtext":"Drag performance, historically referred to as “male impersonation” or “female impersonation,” was a popular act in Minnesota theater from the 1880s through the 1920s, reflecting the heyday of vaudeville nationally. As vaudeville declined after the 1920s, drag moved to standalone performances in bars and nightclubs, intertwining with Minnesota’s increasingly public queer scene. The shift coincided with drag queens of color gaining visibility and the emergence of drag celebrities—not just as humorous side acts in larger productions, but as artists in their own right and practice. The language used to discuss drag performance was mutable at the turn of the twentieth century. The more contemporary term “drag” applies to people performing gender expressions such as masculinity and femininity through makeup, costume, or mannerisms. Until the mid-twentieth century, however, newspapers referred to drag as “male impersonation” or “female impersonation.” They also used the word “impersonator” both for individuals performing in drag and for people wearing clothes of the supposed opposite sex in their everyday lives. Minneapolis maintained a city ordinance against cross-dressing between 1867 and the mid-1900s, and St. Paul didn’t repeal its 1891 ordinance prohibiting people from wearing “clothes not belonging to their sex” in public until 2003. Theater allowed drag performers to evade these legalities in ways that individuals “cross-dressing” in daily life could not. Mainstream society allowed and accepted drag so long as performers were explicitly donning a costume, maintaining a “fourth wall” between themselves and the audience. It did not make these allowances for individuals “cross-dressing” outside of explicit performance, who were far more subject to policing. The fact that costumes were temporary and restricted to the stage soothed many societal fears. Many travelling performers stopped in Minnesota during tours that crossed the country. Popular “female impersonators” like Julian Eltinge, Karyl Norman, and Paul Vernon performed in venues like the Grand Opera House in St. Paul and the Metropolitan Theater and the Orpheum in Minneapolis. The elitism of the venues reflected the “fashionable society” that attended. But even during this early period of drag, performers were not exclusively men; women performed and received similar acclaim as “male impersonators.” “High-class vaudeville” artists like Mary Marble and Margaret Grayce toured nationally, stopping to perform in Minnesota in 1897 and 1908, respectively. Acts were tailored to the strengths of the performer, and often appeared amid a lineup of variety shows. Wearing a jacket and bowler hat, Marble was noted for singing a comedic number, accompanied by dancers, and Grayce performed in a lineup among acrobats and marionettes. Karyl Norman moved between masculinity and femininity, singing in a “soprano voice” and “magnificent wraps, gowns, robes, and frocks” before changing into a “conventional tuxedo” and baritone. Minnesotans also participated in drag performance, from college and community theater productions to professional performers who toured the United States. Some participated in the performance tradition of the “womanless wedding,” popularized at the turn of the twentieth century, in which an all-male cast made up of community members reenacted a comedic wedding scene by playing roles of both men and women. At the same time that these revues allowed for socially accepted manipulations of class and gender norms, they also served as fundraisers hosted at local schools or churches, such as Fuller Elementary School and First Congregational Church in Minneapolis. They were popular in both urban and rural communities; the performers of “womanless wedding” revues held in Lanesboro, Renville, and Worthington were extensively photographed in costume. Vaudeville and early drag overlapped with blackface minstrelsy during the nineteenth century. They were often part of the same productions, with white performers masquerading in identities that were not their own for the purpose of a comedic caricature. Unlike blackface, not all drag performances employed offensive stereotypes. When drag separated from vaudeville during the 1920s, minstrelsy disappeared from the acts, but anxieties grew around performers blurring the expectations of “male” and “female.” Vaudeville developed a coarse reputation, evident in the critical news articles published as vaudeville’s popularity lessened. As vaudeville declined after 1930, drag performances moved from elite, high-capacity theater venues into smaller nightclubs, particularly in Minneapolis’s Gateway District. The newspapers’ reporting on drag performances shifted along with the location. In 1886, an item reprinted in the Stillwater Messenger described a traveling production that included drag as “chaste and elegant and calculated to suit the tastes of the most refined and cultured lady.” Through the 1920s, newspapers reported on drag with a relatively positive attitude, treating it like other theatrical productions (though “male impersonation” disappeared from Minnesota newspaper reports after 1921). By the 1930s, drag was written up in newspapers more as the cause of police raids than as a performance notice. Police interfered not so much due to the content, but rather because of the interaction between performers and audiences. Police told Variety that acts contained “nothing obscene or immoral in show...but [we’d] like it stopped anyhow.” Once drag moved into nightclubs, there was more interaction between audience and performer, with artists often mingling in-costume with attendees after the show. The increased anxieties around nightclubs that featured drag were multiplied by societal backlash against sexuality, since many of the clubs associated with drag were considered gathering places for Minneapolis’s queer community. In 1935, performers at the Stables nightclub in St. Paul were extradited to Chicago by police after mingling with “male customers” after their act. By 1949, Twin Cities police widely suppressed drag, closing shows and pressuring clubs to end contracts with performers. The Jewel Box Revue, the first integrated and longest-touring drag company in the United States, had a six-month contract with Curly’s Theater Cafe in Minneapolis during 1949. Although the show was wildly popular, Minneapolis police requested the termination of the contract. For the next five years, drag shows were banned from the area to quell the supposed “immorality” of the people who attended them. In spite of the city actively trying to suppress drag in nightclubs, those who were performing diversified. As the 1940s progressed, drag was not exclusive to white performers. Minneapolis’s Clef Club catered to Black patrons and featured Black performers, such as the singer Alma Smith and drag artist Carroll Lee, and the 1950s and 60s brought acclaim to Black drag artists like Stormé DeLarverie, Dodie Daniels, and Don Marshall, featured in the Jewel Box Revue. Drag in Minnesota was available to both straight and queer performers and attendees, and early drag in theaters brought visibility to increasingly public queer life. It also allowed individuals to move outside of strict societal norms, if only temporarily. Drag’s move to nightclubs, moreover, contributed to the growing presence of queer bars in the Twin Cities. Its popularity continued to grow throughout the second half of the twentieth century in bars like the Gay 90’s and the Town House Bar, carving out a Midwestern space for drag queens and kings.","src":"https://www3.mnhs.org/hubfs/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Flora%20Dora%20Girls.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/drag-performance-minnesota-1880-1950"},{"alt":"Shaynowishkung (Chief Bemidji) statue","author":[{"name":"Peter J. DeCarlo","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/peter-j-decarlo"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"June 22, 2021","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Shaynowishkung (Chief Bemidji) Memorial, Bemidji","postbody":"On June 6, 2015, a bronze statue of Shaynowishkung (He Who Rattles, commonly known as Chief Bemidji) was erected in Library Park on the shore of Lake Bemidji. Meant to honor the Ojibwe ...","searchtext":"On June 6, 2015, a bronze statue of Shaynowishkung (He Who Rattles, commonly known as Chief Bemidji) was erected in Library Park on the shore of Lake Bemidji. Meant to honor the Ojibwe man’s life and bring people together, the statue was the result of a six-year community-driven process. Shaynowishkung was an Ojibwe man who lived on the south shore of Lake Bemidji with his family in the mid-nineteenth century. He wore and used zhiishiigwan, rattles that were shaken to ward off negativity. He was not a traditional chief, but a spokesman for about fifty Ojibwe people. When settler-colonists arrived in the area in 1888, Shaynowishkung told them the name of the lake: Bemijigamaag, an Ojibwe word that means “water running crosswise through the lake.” They misunderstood, however, and thought he was giving them his own name. As a result, they called him Chief Bemidji, and some sources state that later on they named the city of Bemidji after him. He was a beloved figure among Ojibwe people and settlers, known for being a peacemaker who brought cultures together. In 1901, near the end of Shaynowishkung’s life, a wooden statue of him carved by a lumberjack was erected in Bemidji. This statue was replaced by a second one in 1952. While some in the community were proud the statue existed, others saw it as an offensive caricature of a Native American man. In 2009, Carolyn Jacobs, chair of the Shared Visions Project, focused on race relations in Bemidji, met with Red Lake Tribal Secretary Kathy “Jody” Beaulieu about how to improve relations between Native Americans and white people. Beaulieu suggested replacing the 1952 statue of Chief Bemidji with a more respectful and accurate one. The idea gained momentum, and a committee formed to create a new statue. Ojibwe people wanted a positive and accurate depiction of Shaynowishkung that would share his integrity and honor with the people of Bemidji and tourists. The committee was made up of about half Native people and half white people representing the City of Bemidji, the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe, the Red Lake Nation, the White Earth Nation, and descendants of Shaynowishkung. The committee met for six years and held public input meetings at Bemidji and the three Ojibwe nations. The public overwhelmingly supported erecting a new statue. After it reached consensus on erecting a new statue, the committee began researching the life of Shaynowishkung. Elaine Fleming, a professor of history at Leech Lake Tribal College, led the effort. The research resulted in the writing of historical plaques to accompany the statue. The plaques were an exercise in truth telling—dispelling myths about Shaynowishkung, humanizing him, and accurately interpreting the colonization and dispossession he experienced as an Ojibwe person. The committee chose sculptor Gareth Curtiss to create the new statue. To ensure the accuracy of his creation, he met with Shaynowishkung’s descendents, referenced the committee’s research, and pored over photos of Shaynowishkung. The bronze-cast statue Curtiss crafted stood nine feet and three inches tall and included details of Shaynowishkung’s mix of Ojibwe and European American clothing, including his zhiishiigwan (rattles), his Diamond Willow cane, his opwaagan (sacred pipe), and his makizinan (moccasins). Some people raised concerns about removing the 1952 statue. Descendants of Shaynowishkung felt pride that their ancestor had been represented in the city and did not want the statue simply destroyed. The old statue went to the Beltrami County History Center, where the first statue was already being held. The new statue was dedicated on June 6, 2015, within a landing area that included pillars with the historical plaques. A crowd estimated at three hundred people attended, including Donald Headbird (Shaynowishkung’s great-great-grandson) and other descendants. Musicians played flutes; the Eyabay drum group from Red Lake performed a flag song and sang an honor song. The Leech Lake Honor Guard posted flags to the south of the statue. Larry Aitken, a Leech Lake spiritual leader, carried out a pipe ceremony and prayer in Ojibwemowin. Shaynowishkung was remembered as a man of integrity and a follower of the Seven Grandfather Teachings. His memory as a peacemaker was evoked to bring healing and respect to the diverse communities of the area. Presenters spoke of the injustice that Shaynowishkung and the Ojibwe people had survived—land loss, assimilation, and occupation by settler-colonists—in the hope that telling the truth about history could lead to understanding and healing.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/ShaynowishkungStatue.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246059,"name":"Native Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/shaynowishkung-chief-bemidji-memorial-bemidji"},{"alt":"Cecil Newman","author":[{"name":"Daniel Bergin","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/daniel-bergin"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"June 15, 2021","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Newman, Cecil (1903–1976)","postbody":"Cecil Newman was a pioneering newspaper publisher and an influential leader in Minnesota. His newspapers, the Minneapolis Spokesman and the St. Paul Recorder, provided news and information ...","searchtext":"Cecil Newman was a pioneering newspaper publisher and an influential leader in Minnesota. His newspapers, the Minneapolis Spokesman and the St. Paul Recorder, provided news and information to readers while advancing civil rights, fair employment, political engagement, and Black pride. Cecil Earl Newman was born in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1903. He transcended the limits of segregated education, becoming the editor of his school paper. As a teen, he delivered African American newspapers as he hoped for a future in the publishing business. In the early 1920s, Newman headed north to distance himself from the reach of southern racism, settling in Minneapolis. Work as a porter in the railroad industry offered him a decent wage. When he applied for work with mainstream newspapers in the Twin Cities, however, he was refused on the basis of race, so he began working with the long-standing Black paper the Northwestern Bulletin. He also wrote as a freelance reporter or “stringer” for notable Black newspapers, including the Chicago Defender. In 1927, he took over as editor of the Twin City Herald, a Black paper based in Minneapolis. After seven years at the Herald, Newman resolved to become the publisher of his own publications, and the summer of 1934 saw the first edition of the Minneapolis Spokesman roll off the presses. Its twin, the St. Paul Recorder, followed. In both papers, Newman pledged to “speak out fearlessly and unceasingly against injustices, discriminations, and all imposed inequities.” Like other Black papers of the era, the Spokesman and the Recorder were filled with local and national news, entertainment, social and church affairs, and other content of interest to African Americans. The early version included a gossip column called “Inquisitive Sal,” comics and cartoons drawn by Black artists, sports coverage, and classified ads aimed at African Americans. Newman also saw speaking to white readers—and white advertisers—as important to furthering equity and inclusion. The Spokesman and the Recorder became training grounds for Black leaders and literary luminaries like Era Bell Thompson, Gordon Parks, and Carl Rowan. Newman’s pledge to utilize the printing press as a clarion for civil rights led to a confrontation with the local beer industry. The 1933 repeal of Prohibition had led to growth for Minnesota’s brewers, and the Spokesman charged that despite the expansion of jobs, these breweries refused to employ a single African American. Newman called for a boycott of local breweries, including Hamm’s and Gluek’s, in the spring of 1935. The effective campaign featured opinion pieces from Newman and front-page editorial cartoons ridiculing the brewers. During World War II, Newman successfully fought for African American access to jobs at local munitions plants, including the Twin Cities Army Ammunition Plant (TCAAP). Two decades later he would push the owner of the newly arrived Minnesota Twins to desegregate spring training lodgings. Newman’s close connection with Minneapolis Mayor Hubert Humphrey began a decades-long alliance with the statesman. When Humphrey and Lyndon Johnson won the White House in 1964, there was an opportunity for Newman to join his old friend on the national stage, according to Newman’s granddaughter Tracey Williams-Dillard. However, he demurred, choosing to stay in South Minneapolis and continue his journalistic and civic leadership in Minnesota, where he gained membership to several fraternal, civic, Civil Rights, and business leadership organizations. Newman’s network wasn’t limited to the Democratic Farmer-Labor Party (DFL). In his lifetime he claimed a connection to every Minnesota governor since the 1920s. He was also close to moderate, business-minded Republicans like Wheelock Whitney Jr., to the chagrin of some progressives in the Black community. In the late 1960s, a rock was thrown through the window of the Spokesman building, allegedly by Black radicals who saw Newman as out of touch (according to reports of the incident). While observing the rise of new and more radical leadership in the Civil Rights movement, and now in his later years, Newman receded into the background of civic and civil rights activity. He died in February of 1976. Activist, youth worker, and community leader Spike Moss eulogized the late publisher with the simple, powerful affirmation, “Cecil Soldiered.” Following the leadership of Newman’s widow (Launa Newman), Tracey Williams-Dillard took the helm of the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder, and it was among a dwindling number of historic Black newspapers that survived into the 2020s. With his decades of journalism, his legacy as one of Minnesota’s great civic and Civil Rights leaders, Cecil Newman could be called, like his paper, Spokesman.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/por 21385 p1.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056216,"name":"African Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/newman-cecil-1903-1976"},{"alt":"Rochester Pride","author":[{"name":"Lizzie Ehrenhalt","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/lizzie-ehrenhalt"}],"categoryTag":[],"date":"May 25, 2021","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Over the Rainbow: Queer and Trans History in Minnesota","postbody":"The identities in the LGBTQIA acronym—lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and asexual—are relatively recent inventions. This might at first suggest that people ...","searchtext":"The identities in the LGBTQIA acronym—lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and asexual—are relatively recent inventions. This might at first suggest that people representing each of those categories did not exist before the development of the terms themselves. But there have always been people in Minnesota, as in the rest of the world, who have lived outside perceived norms of gender and sexuality; the words used to name them have just changed over time. The LGBTQIA history of the North Star state, then, is also a history of language, and of the variations in gender and sexuality that have been (in)visible in different eras. Indigenous Identities Before settler-colonists came to present-day Minnesota, Indigenous people understood variations in gender and sexuality in the contexts of their own languages and lifeways. As a result, the identities they claimed were culturally specific. For the many Native people who claim them today, they still are. Though they overlap in some ways with European American terms like gay and transgender, they are not equivalents of those words, and they exist on their own terms. Dakota and Ojibwe traditions both make room for gender-non-normative and same-sex-oriented people, and they support identities that combine gender identity with sexual orientation. Historically, Dakota men who took on women’s roles were called wiŋkte or wiŋkta, an abbreviation of wiŋyanktehca (ones who act like women). Their ability to blend masculinity and femininity earned them the respect of their relatives. Wiŋkte performed special spiritual and ceremonial work, in which they acted as leaders. Many also served their communities as warriors and through prayer, prophecy, and naming children. A similar identity called šįąge existed among the Ho-Chunk, a related nation with later ties to Minnesota. Ojibwe ikwekaazowag (ones who endeavor to act like women) and ininiikaazowag (ones who endeavor to act like men) had same-sex spouses and were considered sacred. Related Ojibwe words include ogichidaakwe (warrior woman) and agokwa (sometimes translated man-woman; also spelled ayaakwe). An agokwa named Ozaawindib (Yellow Head) wielded military and political power as a leader of the Cass Lake Ojibwe in the early 1800s. She led Ojibwe warriors in battle, negotiated during periods of conflict, and married multiple husbands, including a man named Wenji-dotagaan. (Native people did not use the English phrase Two-Spirit, an umbrella term inspired by traditional identities that crosses boundaries of culture and nation, until the 1990s. See “Queer and Trans Futures,” below.) (In)visible Deviance, 1858–1920 As settler-colonists moved into Minnesota Territory in the 1850s, their binary thinking displaced Indigenous sex and gender systems. They expected people recognized as male at birth to be men, as well as masculine; they expected people labeled female at birth to be women, as well as feminine. Men, meanwhile, were supposed to have sex only with women, and vice versa. But in spite of these expectations, for much of the nineteenth century, settler-colonists assigned few labels to people who transgressed their norms. The modern concepts of gender identity and sexual orientation did not yet exist, so the gender of your romantic partners did not mark you as a “type” of person (straight or gay or bisexual). Neither did the relationship of your assigned sex to your understanding of your gender (transgender or cisgender). Because of this lack of identity labels, it can be hard to find the forerunners of LGBTQIA Minnesotans in the written record. Between 1858 and 1920, however, people who might identify today as trans, queer, and/or intersex are visible in the surviving letters, memoirs, newspaper articles, and court records that describe their behavior without labeling their identities. One crucial incident in trans American history unfolded in Meeker County in 1858, the same year in which Minnesota became a state. During a trial held in the farming colony of Forest City, seven miles outside of Litchfield, a judge considered the case of Joseph Israel Lobdell, a homesteader accused by the Meeker County attorney of “impersonating a man.” Lobdell had been assigned a female sex at birth but had presented himself as a man since 1854. The judge ruled in Lobdell’s favor and cleared him of the criminal charge, pointing out that ancient laws (including the Code of Justinian) had granted women the right to dress as men. After the Lobdell trial, gender variance in Minnesota was visible during the Civil War and the US–Dakota War of 1862, when some female-assigned people presented themselves as men in order to enlist. Some took the opportunity to express their masculinity or personal identifications as men; others merely wanted to fight or to follow family members into battle. Frances Clayton enlisted at St. Paul in 1862 and later claimed to have fought in eighteen battles, including the Battle of Shiloh. Mary McDonald of Sibley County signed up to be an orderly in a regiment of mounted rangers at Fort Snelling in 1862. And Mary W. Dennis, after growing up in Stillwater, joined a Minnesota regiment in 1861. Minnesotans like Clayton, McDonald, and Dennis endured public scrutiny, publicity, and sometimes invasions of privacy for their gender presentation in the 1860s. But they did not face legal challenges or criminal charges, as Lobdell had. That window of freedom narrowed in the decades after the Civil War, when doctors and psychiatrists created a field called sexology— the scientific study of sex. Sexologists in Europe and then the US published studies that linked criminal behavior with sex(ual) and gender variance, leading authorities to police people seen as outside the norm. Minneapolis entered the fray in 1867 when it adopted an ordinance criminalizing cross dressing. This regulation threatened gender-variant people with punishment, but it also made them more visible in the media. In November and December of 1880, Minnesota newspapers followed the case of Leon A. Belmont, a medical student assigned a female sex at birth and accused of “falsely” presenting himself as a man while carrying on romances with two different women in Minneapolis (he married a third woman in Isanti County in 1881). A similar episode played out in St. Paul in 1885 when newspapers reported on Cecelia Regina Gonzaga, an African American assigned a male sex at birth who’d been arrested by police for walking on the city’s streets dressed as a woman. Articles about Belmont and Gonzaga raised the possibility that they were hermaphrodites—an often offensive word used at the time to describe people who might identify today as intersex (not typed as solely male or female in their genitalia, gonads, and/or genes). Like the queer and trans stories with which it intersects, intersex history in this period often involved prejudice and could lead to “corrective” surgery. In 1889, at a farm outside Newport in Washington County, a relief agent discovered a Polish immigrant family abusing a nine-year-old child “of neither sex.” The agent intervened and, according to the St. Paul Globe, took the child to a hospital for “an operation...in hopes of bettering its condition.” Since sodomy was illegal in Minnesota throughout the 1800s, some of the men who had sex with men in this period appear in the written record in court documents. Not every sodomy case points to a real sexual act—some plaintiffs undoubtedly made up stories in order to attack their enemies—but the frequency of the charge shows that Minnesotan men thought of same-sex intercourse as, at least, a viable possibility. Police and the courts processed sodomy cases in, for example, Clay County in 1878; Olmsted County in 1880; Washington County in 1887; Ramsey County in 1883, 1887, and 1889; Dakota County in 1902; and Beltrami County in 1912 and 1913. In the 1889 Ramsey County case, the accused was a Chinese immigrant who operated a laundry business in St. Paul. Newspapers gave special attention to stories that paired sex with alleged violent crime, like the 1905 murder of Johnny Keller by William Williams. Evidence of women who had sex with women in Minnesota before 1920 is less explicit, but still plentiful. State laws did not identify such sex acts as crimes, and some men did not think of them as sex at all. But in the absence of social scrutiny, women still formed bonds with one another that involved romance, intimacy, and sexual fulfillment. These romantic partnerships could last for decades and lead to joint households and co-parenting. Library director Gratia Alta Countryman, for example, lived in Minneapolis with her partner, Marie Todd, for thirty-eight years, beginning in 1902, and the two women raised a son together. While living in Faribault as the wife (and later widow) of the Episcopal Bishop of Minnesota between 1896 and 1910, Evangeline Simpson Whipple wrote letters to her former lover, Rose Cleveland, with whom she eventually reunited. Botanist Eloise Butler and University of Minnesota doctor Ruth Boynton, both of Minneapolis, also had romantic partnerships with women at different stages of their lives. Naming Identities, Building Communities, 1920–1968 Beginning in about 1920, Minnesotans and other Americans began to think of a person’s choice of sexual partners as evidence of an identity that could be named. It happened as sexology filtered down to laypeople, who began using the words “homosexual,” “heterosexual,” and “lesbian.” This shared vocabulary provided new ways for queer and trans people to find each other in the middle decades of the twentieth century, and to build businesses, neighborhoods, and groups based on affinity. By the mid-1920s, the population density of the Twin Cities supported bars, theaters, transit stations, and other public spaces in which queer people could gather. Men seeking sex with other men met at the Hennepin Baths in Minneapolis as early as 1925, and then at bars like the Onyx and the Dugout in the 1930s. In St. Paul, queer men and some women congregated at the Garrick Theater, Bremer Arcade, Coney Island Cafe, Kirmser’s Bar, and the Union Bus Depot. Bars catering more exclusively to women followed in the 1950s, including the Holland Bar and the Jitterbug Inn in Minneapolis and Honey’s Barn in Shoreview, run by community icon Honey Harold. Since many white businesspeople discriminated against customers of color, queer African Americans created spaces of their own—especially parties hosted in private homes in St. Paul’s Rondo neighborhood. As urban communities grew, new opportunities for same-sex relationships and gender variance also arose in rural Minnesota. The state’s core industries of milling, mining, and logging brought together scores of young men, often outside of cities, and confined them in close quarters away from women. These same-sex settings developed unique dynamics. At one logging camp in Koochiching County in the early 1920s, a man in charge of cooking meals routinely wore a dress, an apron, and make-up. The camp’s foreman matter-of-factly described him without objection as “a man who wears women’s clothing.” During the same period, a cook working for the Virginia–Rainy Lake Company in St. Louis County dressed sometimes as a man and sometimes as a woman, again without incident. In similar work settings in Minnesota—the US Army and the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), for example—gender variance and same-sex activity were also not uncommon. In the 1930s, two members of Company 716 at a CCC camp near Tofte (Cook County) appeared in a recreation hall in drag, prompting their co-workers to suggest putting on a drag-based musical show. At Fort Snelling during World War II, men admired attractive new recruits so openly that the post’s induction center became known as a “seduction station.” Others, like conservationist Ernest Oberholtzer, pursued lives outside the norm by creating spaces for themselves. Oberholtzer moved to an island in Rainy Lake in 1922 to pursue a life of self-sufficiency and might have identified as queer, asexual, or a combination of the two if he had lived in the twenty-first century. The concept of sexual orientation empowered people to find each other. At the same time, however, it enabled society to segregate, discipline, and punish the people it had just named. Officials at prisons and reform schools singled out women for extra surveillance when they expressed masculinity or had sexual relationships with each other. In spite of this opposition, prisoners built networks of love and resistance that spanned decades. At the State Reformatory for Women in Shakopee in 1935, staff punished Marie Carey for sending notes to her girlfriend and diagnosed her with a “split personality.” She attempted to escape with another prisoner, Mildred Strain, whom staff had identified as a “sexual pervert.” Beginning in 1941, Strain had a relationship with Edna Larrabee and gave her a gold watch in defiance of prison policy. Larrabee, in turn, earned the disapproval of the prison superintendent and the label “psychopathic deviate” [sic]. She and Beulah Brunelle (Turtle Mountain Ojibwe) escaped from Shakopee together in 1949 and lived as a married couple. “Transsexual,” a forerunner of the word “transgender,” entered widespread use in the 1950s. Used to describe a person who altered their sex characteristics to align with their gender identity, the word offered some gender-non-conforming people a new way to name themselves. The University of Minnesota, meanwhile, emerged in the 1960s as a center of trans medicine. The school’s Transsexual Research Project, launched by Dr. Donald W. Hastings in 1966, followed trans women as they prepared for sex-reassignment surgery (later called gender-confirmation or -affirmation surgery) and gathered data to improve medical treatment. The project empowered many people, like the sisters Lenette and Lauraine Lee, to start new lives. But it was not without its failings. Decades later, participants remembered painful surgical complications and called out Hastings for disrespecting his trans patients. Gay Liberation and HIV/AIDS, 1969–1994 Historians of sexuality credit multiple events—among them the riot at Compton’s Cafeteria in San Francisco (1966), protests at the Black Cat Tavern in Los Angeles (1967), and uprisings at New York City’s Stonewall Inn (1969)—with ushering in an era of gay liberation in the United States. The movement, which attracted mainstream attention in the 1970s, built on the work of organizers who had been active since the 1950s. Many of them embraced the word “gay” and rejected the more clinical-sounding “homosexual” as a relic of the past. They drew inspiration from other 1960s social movements, including the American Indian Movement, women’s liberation, El Movimiento, and Black Power, that aimed to uplift marginalized people through political protest. In Minnesota, a turning point arrived on May 18, 1969, when University of Minnesota graduate students Koreen Phelps and Stephen Ihrig founded Fight Repression of Erotic Expression (FREE) in Minneapolis. It was the first gay rights organization in the state. For three years, the group hosted dances, presented lectures, organized police trainings, and published a newsletter in order to “change the laws, attitudes, and prejudices of uptight, upright heterosexual America.” Students of Carleton College in Northfield brought attention to the movement in the same year by founding the Northfield Gay Liberation Front. Even the phrase “gay pride” caught on in part because of a Minnesotan: Thom Higgins, the writer and FREE activist who later protested anti-gay campaigner Anita Bryant by throwing a pie in her face. Two events put Minnesota at the center of a national conversation about gay rights in the early 1970s. FREE’s president, Jack Baker, departed from other gay liberationists (including many in FREE) by prioritizing marriage as a political issue. When he applied for a marriage license with his boyfriend, Michael McConnell, in 1970, Hennepin County denied the couple’s application. Their subsequent lawsuit led to the 1971 US Supreme Court case Baker v. Nelson, which denied the couple’s constitutional right to marry. State senator Allan Spear attracted additional national attention in 1974 when he identified himself as gay in an interview with the Minneapolis Star. The announcement made him the first openly gay person to serve in a state legislature in the US. Alongside Baker’s activism and Spear’s coming out, Minnesota organizations established in the 1970s brought gay and lesbian issues into state politics. The Minnesota Committee for Gay Rights (MCGR), founded by Steven Endean and Jean-Nickolaus Tretter in Minneapolis, lobbied local businesses for support and pressured politicians to reveal their stances on gay issues. In the social services sector, Gay Community Services and the Gay and Lesbian Community Action Council (GLCAC) tackled similar advocacy issues while coordinating education, counseling, and outreach. GLCAC’s 1988 community needs assessment Out and Counted: A Survey of the Twin Cities Lesbian and Gay Community (also known as the Northstar survey) provided crucial data about the needs of constituents in Minneapolis and St. Paul. At the same time political organizers were agitating for gay liberation, distinctly Minnesotan gay, lesbian, and trans cultures were emerging in bookstores, newspapers, libraries, theaters, and resource centers across the Twin Cities. Among them were Amazon Bookstore (founded in 1970 and fondly satirized as Madwimmin Books in Alison Bechdel’s comic “Dykes to Watch Out For”); the Lesbian Resource Center (1972); At the Foot of the Mountain Theater (1976); Northland Companion/Positively Gay (1978), which evolved into the GLC Voice (1979); A Brother’s Touch (1983); Quatrefoil Library (1986); and Patrick’s Cabaret (1986). Organizers put on the first Twin Cities Pride celebration in 1972, and similar annual events emerged over the next several decades in Duluth–Superior, Rochester, Fargo–Moorhead, Golden Valley, Mankato, Brainerd, and Pine City. The cultural outpouring wasn’t limited to cities. Lesbian feminists, for example, started communal farms in rural areas (e.g., Aitkin County’s Rising Moon) that brought together women from across the Midwest. The bear subculture, meanwhile, built on traditions of male-male intimacy in rural environments like logging camps to celebrate the rugged attractiveness of hairy, working-class, often large men. In parallel, the radical faeries movement found a foothold in Minnesota when queer men established Kawashaway Sanctuary in the north woods. Progress toward liberation, however, was not unbroken. When Minneapolis resident Bruce Brockway started feeling sick in the summer of 1981, he could tell it was more than a run-of-the-mill illness. Brockway, who had founded Positively Gay and organized a task force to settle gay Cuban refugees in Minnesota, had just heard about a mysterious new disease affecting men who had sex with men in cities like New York and San Francisco. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) named the affliction Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome—AIDS—a year later, and identified its cause as a virus that attacked the human immune system, eventually named HIV. A June 1982 diagnosis confirmed Brockway’s fears: he had the first documented case of HIV/AIDS in Minnesota. He responded by founding the Minnesota AIDS Project (MAP), a community organization that began serving HIV-positive Minnesotans. After he died in 1984, others continued his work, including doctors at the state’s HIV/AIDS clinic at St. Paul–Ramsey Medical Center. Volunteers organized the first annual AIDS Trek bike-ride fundraiser through Greater Minnesota in 1986, and in 1989, members of ACT-UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) Minnesota protested in support of sex education at a high school in Mora (Kanabec County). Events that united Minnesotans in collective mourning, such as the NAMES Project Memorial Quilt Display (1988), brought moments of comfort in the midst of an epidemic that continued to devastate local communities through the mid-1990s. Among the thousands lost was Brian Coyle (1944–1991), the Moorhead-raised Minneapolis City Council member who had been one of the first public figures in the nation to share his HIV-positive diagnosis. Queer And Trans Futures, 1994–present Just as gay Baby Boomers had rejected the labels and orthodoxies of their elders in the 1970s, in the 1990s a new generation stepped forward to change the terms of the conversation about sex(ual) and gender variance. At the forefront of the new movement was the word “queer,” a once-derogatory slur now reclaimed by young people frustrated by the limits of “gay” and “lesbian.” It gained visibility in Minnesota in 1994, when Minneapolis organizers followed the lead of AIM Patrol and tasked on-the-street volunteers with protecting community members from police abuse. They called their team of peacekeepers Queer Street Patrol. Queer organizers called attention to groups that the mainstream gay rights movement had failed to support in the 1970s and 1980s, especially because of racism. Queer Native Americans in particular struggled for recognition in a settler-colonial society that insisted on both whiteness and a rigid gender binary. Hoping to unite Native people representing diverse nations, languages, and gender traditions, one group met in Winnipeg in 1990 and settled on |||two spirit|||—a phrase intended to reflect the blend of male/masculine and female/feminine traits in their identities. The term caught on, and by the mid-1990s it was visible in the names of events, organizations, and publications across the US. Minnesota hosted the annual Two Spirit Gathering (a national outgrowth of a 1988 Minneapolis event) multiple times, including once in Onamia in 1997 and again in Sandstone in 2008. In 2005, when Minneapolis-based Yupik artist and activist Anguksuar (Richard LaFortune) started an organization to educate the media about Native gender identities and sexual orientations, he chose the name Two Spirit Press Room. Another Minneapolis resident with whom the Two-Spirit concept resonated was Nicholas Metcalf (Čhetáŋ Zí; Yellow Hawk), a Sičháŋǧu Lakota student originally from South Dakota. Metcalf and a Korean American gay man named Edd Lee collaborated in 1998 to found Minnesota Men of Color, a non-profit that delivered social services to queer and gender-non-conforming populations overlooked by majority-white LGBTQ providers. Across the river, in St. Paul, Phia Xiong and Xeng Lor set up Shades of Yellow (SOY) in 2003 to focus on the needs of queer Hmong Minnesotans. Many Minnesotans addressing racial inequity worked to highlight the T and the B of LGBT at a time when white gays and lesbians were receiving the most attention. Bisexual trans people, who experience biphobia and transphobia at the same time, stood at the front of overlapping movements to center bisexuality and trans identity. The Bisexual Empowerment Conference, A Uniting Supportive Experience (BECAUSE) convened for the first time in Minneapolis in 1992. Organized by a coalition that included members of the Bisexual Connection, a potluck group for bi women active since about 1989, BECAUSE led to the creation in 1999 of the Bisexual Organizing Project (BOP) and intersected with the cable-access TV program BiCities. The case of CeCe McDonald, an African American bi and trans woman who defended herself from a transphobic attack outside a Minneapolis bar in 2011, raised public awareness of the vulnerability of Black trans women in Minnesota. Recognizing the dangers of a trial, McDonald pleaded guilty to second-degree manslaughter in 2012, was sentenced to 41 months imprisonment, and served 19 months. When she was denied gender-affirming health care and held in a men’s prison, supporters instigated an advocacy campaign. McDonald herself became a trans-rights activist, working with public figures like Minnesotan poet/politician Andrea Jenkins. Jenkins, a former Minneapolis City Council policy aide, led the Transgender Oral History Project at the University of Minnesota’s Tretter collection between 2015 and 2018. In 2017, when voters elected her and Phillipe Cunningham to the Minneapolis City Council, they became the first two Black and trans people to hold public office in the US. LGBTQIA Minnesotans and their allies mobilized in 2011 after a senate bill (SF 1308) added a marriage referendum to the 2012 election ballot. The referendum asked voters to respond “yes” or “no” to the question, “Shall the Minnesota Constitution be amended to provide that only a union of one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in Minnesota?” The proposed measure became known as Minnesota Amendment 1. Critics included state representatives Scott Dibble and Karen Clark, a political veteran who in 1993 had succeeded alongside Allan Spear in amending the Minnesota Human Rights Act to protect gender identity and sexual orientation. In part because of Dibble’s and Clark’s advocacy and that of Minnesotans United for All Families (a joint effort of Project 515 and Outfront Minnesota), a majority of voters voted “no” in 2012, and Minnesota became the first and only state to reject a |||same-sex marriage||| ban through the will of voters rather than a court ruling. In 2013, the legislature approved, and the governor signed, a bill that extended the right to marry to same-sex couples. At the start of the 2020s, queer and trans Minnesota youth carried on the work of their elders by rejecting existing language and embracing a more inclusive vocabulary. They called attention to overlooked dimensions of sex(ual) and gender variance by popularizing the words pansexual, non-binary, gender fluid, polysexual, and aromantic. And they consistently connected gender and sexuality with race, recognizing a need for solidarity with movements like Black Lives Matter. At a Lyon County school board meeting in 2020, for example, young people defended the school’s hanging of a rainbow flag with trans-positive and anti-racist stripes in the cafeteria of Marshall Middle School. And in Sherburne County in 2021, students walked out of Becker High School in order to protest racism and homophobia alongside other teens across the state.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/rochester-pride-2012-9_7626514216_o.640x640.jpg","topicsTag":[],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/over-rainbow-queer-and-trans-history-minnesota"},{"alt":"Leif Erikson memorial","author":[{"name":"Tyler N. Taylor","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/tyler-n-taylor"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"May 18, 2021","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Leif Erikson Memorial, St. Paul","postbody":"In October of 1949, the Leif Erikson Memorial was unveiled on the grounds of the Minnesota State Capitol. The memorial was part of the Scandinavian American community’s efforts to credit ...","searchtext":"In October of 1949, the Leif Erikson Memorial was unveiled on the grounds of the Minnesota State Capitol. The memorial was part of the Scandinavian American community’s efforts to credit their ancestors—not Christopher Columbus—with the “discovery” of the Americas. Leif Erikson has long served as a symbol for Minnesota’s Scandinavian American community. According to Icelandic sagas, Erikson led a Norse expedition to North America in 1000 CE and established a settlement likely in present-day Newfoundland, Canada. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Scandinavian Americans across the United States and in Minnesota claimed Erikson as the original “discoverer” of the Americas. As part of their long effort to claim the mantle of discovery from Christopher Columbus and Italian Americans, they often proposed building monuments to Erikson. In 1891, a Leif Erikson Monument Association formed in Minneapolis with the dual purpose of erecting a monument to Erikson and establishing a holiday in his honor. The group was connected with a different Leif Erikson Monument Association in Chicago. Together, the two organizations influenced the decision to create an exhibition on the “Norse Discovery of America” at the 1893 World’s Fair—also known as the World’s Columbian Exposition—that celebrated Columbus’s discovery of the Americas. This association failed to erect a monument in Minnesota. In March of 1931, only seven months before a Christopher Columbus memorial was dedicated on the Minnesota State Capitol grounds, a subsequent Leif Erikson Monument Association formed with the purpose of erecting a memorial to Leif Erikson on a nearby site. The organization was affiliated with the larger Leif Erikson Memorial Association of America and was formed partially in response to the Columbus memorial. The founding of the association coincided with the Minnesota State Legislature’s declaration of Leif Erikson Day on October 9 and Columbus Day on October 12 as official state holidays. Beyond working to erect a statue, the Leif Erikson Monument Association was an active Scandinavian American cultural institution in Minnesota. Its members co-sponsored the Twin Cities’s celebrations of Leif Erikson Day, arranged Scandinavian American cultural events, and hosted Norwegian dignitaries traveling to Minnesota. They selected the Norwegian American sculptor John Karl Daniels to design the memorial. After Daniels had created a model of the proposed statue, the Leif Erikson Monument Association began a fundraising campaign in April 1937 that accompanied a four-day institute at the University of Minnesota on Scandinavian cultures. The featured lecture series discussed Norse voyages to the Americas that predated Columbus. The association announced its primary fundraising effort in October 1939, with the goal of raising $25,000. Workers broke ground on the memorial site on May 27, 1947. The dedication ceremony for the Leif Erikson Memorial was part of the Leif Erikson Day celebration held in St. Paul on October 9, 1949. An estimated 3,000 to 5,000 people attended the thirteen-foot-tall bronze statue’s unveiling on the State Capitol grounds. The event was a broad celebration of U.S.-Norwegian relations. Six months prior, both Norway and the United States had become two of the twelve original members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)—an international military alliance designed to protect member states from potential threats from the Soviet Union. As the only NATO member sharing a border with the Soviet Union, Norway was viewed as particularly vulnerable. A delegation of Norwegian diplomats—including the Norwegian Ambassador to the United States, Wilhelm Morgenstierne, and Norway’s Minister of Defense, Jens C. Hauge—traveled to Minnesota for the unveiling. Their comments at the unveiling and to the press stressed the importance of NATO and Norway’s dependence on American military strength. The dedication proceedings identified Erikson’s purported discovery of North America and the role of Norwegian immigrants in Minnesota as precursors to the United States’s and Norway’s new alliance. To symbolize these connections, Ambassador Morgenstierne presented a Viking broadsword dated between 800 and 1000 C.E. to the president of the Minnesota Historical Society, Bergmann Richards. The sword remains on long-term loan to the Minnesota Historical Society from the people of Norway. The memorial features Erikson facing westward atop a twelve-foot-tall pedestal. Inside the pedestal lies a copy of Voyage to Vineland, an account of Erikson’s journey to North America. The inscription gives Erikson the title “Discoverer of America,” which historians and lawmakers have since criticized as promoting an inaccurate myth that erases Indigenous people. In 2015, legislation was introduced in the Minnesota House of Representatives to change the engraving to read “Leif Erikson Landed in America, 1000 A.D..” The bill did not pass.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/637px-Viking_at_MN_Capitol_1.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/leif-erikson-memorial-st-paul"},{"alt":"August Ruther","author":[{"name":"Ariel Emery Butler","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/ariel-emery-butler"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"May 06, 2021","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Ruther, August (1876–1942)","postbody":"August Ruther, who served in the German army in the 1890s, was charged with poisoning his brother-in-law in Rice County in 1917. Despite any direct evidence, a jury convicted him in eighty ...","searchtext":"August Ruther, who served in the German army in the 1890s, was charged with poisoning his brother-in-law in Rice County in 1917. Despite any direct evidence, a jury convicted him in eighty minutes, in large part due to anti-German nativism during World War I. His sentence was commuted to time served (eighteen years) in 1936. Ruther was born in Mehlkehmen, East Prussia, on May 16, 1876, to August Rutkowsky and Rosina Idzuns. He attended primary school and worked as a farmhand in East Prussia until the German government drafted him into the military for two years in about 1894. After completing his military service, Ruther worked in factories in Germany and then found work as a sailor, traveling on the North, Mediterranean, and Black seas. In 1907, he sailed to New York, intending eventually to get work on a Great Lakes steamer once he learned English. For the next seven years he roamed about the eastern half of the country, working on ships and farms and in other types of manual labor. Ruther took work husking corn in Bridgewater Township, Rice County, Minnesota, in the fall of 1914. There, he met and married Josephine Fiske, whose father had left her a farm. Josephine also had charge of her older brother, August Fiske, who did farm work but was developmentally disabled. August Fiske was found dead at his brother Henry’s farm on September 9, 1917; an autopsy determined that he had ingested paris green, an insecticide. When the Rice County court next convened in November, August Ruther was indicted for first-degree murder. There was no direct evidence that Ruther had killed Fiske, but four factors weighed against him: he did not have the funds to hire a good lawyer; he was an alcoholic at a time when the United States was approaching Prohibition; he was allegedly abusive toward his wife and brother-in-law; and he was a citizen of Germany while the US was fighting World War I. The jury convicted Ruther of Fiske’s murder on February 12, 1918, after deliberating for just 80 minutes. The mandatory sentence was life in prison without parole. Ruther served his sentence at the Minnesota State Prison in Bayport (the city of Stillwater later grew to include the site). There he worked in the prison machine shop, where a piece of flying metal blinded him permanently in one eye in late 1919. Throughout his trial and sentence, Ruther maintained his innocence. He filed eleven applications for clemency with the state Board of Pardons between 1920 and 1935 with the help of the warden’s office and four attorneys. Chief Justice John P. Devaney agreed to read the transcript of Ruther’s trial—more than 500 pages long—in the fall of 1935. Afterward, the three members of the board agreed to commute Ruther’s sentence to time served, upon the condition that he not return to the Rice County area, where there was fear he might harass his former neighbors. Ruther’s attorney, William W. Pye, took him to Chicago in late May 1936, where he worked menial jobs when he was physically able. At that time he was sixty years old and still had trouble with his injured eye. He and Pye filed one more application for pardon in the fall of 1939. Although Ruther had been released from prison, his conviction stayed on his record and made it difficult to obtain work and impossible to gain citizenship. The Board of Pardons denied his twelfth application. Ruther died in Chicago on August 31, 1942, at the age of sixty-six, of a heart attack. He is buried in the Elmwood Cemetery in River Grove, Illinois.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/portrait_112_B_11_12F.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246060,"name":"Crime and Punishment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/ruther-august-1876-1942"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of entrance to Winslow House, St. Anthony. 1860 photo by William H. Jacoby.","author":[{"name":"William D. Green","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/william-d-green"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"April 29, 2021","eraTag":[{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Grey, Emily O. Goodridge (1834–1916)","postbody":"Emily Grey was one of the first African Americans to settle in Old St. Anthony, where she owned and successfully operated her own business as a seamstress. She was active in religious and ...","searchtext":"Emily Grey was one of the first African Americans to settle in Old St. Anthony, where she owned and successfully operated her own business as a seamstress. She was active in religious and civic affairs and popular among Black and white residents alike. Best known for initiating the effort to free an enslaved woman named Eliza Winston in 1860, she weathered mob violence for her efforts. She rebuilt her home and business after the incident and lived in Minneapolis for the remainder of her life. Anticipating trouble on the afternoon of Tuesday, August 21, 1860, a posse of thirty armed men accompanied the Hennepin County sheriff and a Black woman named Emily Grey as they closed in on a cottage on the shore of Lake Harriet (Bde Unma). They were there to deliver a writ of habeas corpus and take Eliza Winston, an enslaved woman, away from her owners so that a judge could consider her case for freedom. Grey, who had helped file the legal complaint that launched the intervention, emerged as an advocate for Winston during the subsequent hearing and its aftermath. It was not a role that was unknown to Grey. A native of Pennsylvania, she had watched as a child and young adult as her father, William Goodridge, a formerly enslaved man who won his freedom in 1821, helped fugitives to escape their masters. He did so openly from the Goodridge home in York, only seventeen miles from the border of slaveholding Maryland. This violated federal law and placed William under the constant threat of being kidnapped and taken South. For Emily, therefore, helping to free Eliza Winston in 1860 was far more than an isolated act. It was her birthright, which she defiantly displayed as she rode with the sheriff’s posse through the streets of St. Anthony and Minneapolis, in full view of men who could retaliate against her and her family. When Winston testified in court, Grey stayed with her, even as a pro-slavery mob gathered outside the building. A judge then ruled in Winston’s favor, recognizing her freedom. Afterward, the mob damaged the Greys’ home, but the family recovered. Grey’s defiance lay just below a refined but friendly demeanor. Rather tall, with a large frame, bluish-grey eyes, and a fair, freckled complexion, Grey moved easily among her Black and white neighbors. She was drawn to St. Anthony’s First Congregational Church, where Reverend Charles Secombe, unique for clergymen of the time, was unrestrained in speaking against the national sin of slavery. Still, during this volatile period, when the sight of African Americans participating in abolitionist gatherings could incite violence even in the North, Grey refrained from joining such activities. In Ralph Toyer Grey, whom she had married in York 1855, Emily found a kindred spirit. A barber like her father, Grey was well-educated, a student of politics and religion, and an effective public speaker—skills that he used to support the local Black community. He had moved from Pennsylvania to start a barbershop in St. Anthony’s Jarrett House in 1855, and Emily had followed him two years later with their young son, William. In 1865, Ralph Grey and other Black barbers argued for an amendment to the Minnesota constitution that would extend suffrage to Black men. The amendment was ratified in 1869, and the Convention of Colored Citizens selected Ralph to read the Emancipation Proclamation at its celebration. The Greys’ circle of friends grew to include such notables as Ida Wells and Frederick Douglass, who stayed with them during his speaking tour of Minnesota. The names the Greys selected for their three youngest children spoke volumes of their racial pride. Toussaint L’Ouverture Grey, their second son and the first Black child born in St. Anthony, was named after the Black Haitian general who had successfully led a revolt of enslaved people against Napoleon. Harriet Martineau Grey was named after the noted British writer who had advocated for the abolition of slavery and criticized the deplorable state of women’s education. And for their third son, the couple chose the name Ralph Banneker Grey in honor of Benjamin Banneker, the Black surveyor, astronomer and mathematician who had helped to plot out Washington, DC, in the 1790s. For the remainder of her life, Emily Grey participated in civic functions both in Minnesota and outstate. She led a campaign to secure an exhibit on the achievements of Black women at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, but organizers declined on account of race. She continued the struggle for recognition and racial dignity until her death in Minneapolis, on January 16, 1916, at age eighty-two.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/5_1.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056216,"name":"African Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/grey-emily-o-goodridge-1834-1916"},{"alt":"Vice President Walter Mondale","author":[{"name":"Samuel Meshbesher","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/samuel-meshbesher"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"April 20, 2021","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Mondale, Walter (1928–2021)","postbody":"One of the most accomplished politicians in Minnesota history, Walter “Fritz” Mondale served as vice president under Jimmy Carter and ran an unsuccessful presidential campaign with running ...","searchtext":"One of the most accomplished politicians in Minnesota history, Walter “Fritz” Mondale served as vice president under Jimmy Carter and ran an unsuccessful presidential campaign with running mate Geraldine Ferraro in 1984. During his long career, he advanced consumer rights as Minnesota||s attorney general, maneuvered civil rights and procedural reform legislation as a US senator, and revitalized the notoriously stagnant vice presidency during the Carter administration. Mondale was born in the small rural community of Ceylon (Martin County) but grew up in Elmore, some thirty miles to the west. The foreclosure of his father’s farms in the 1920s influenced him as a young man, as did progressive politicians like Robert LaFolette, Floyd Olson, and Henrik Shipstead. While enrolled at Macalester College he volunteered as a canvasser for Hubert Humphrey’s mayoral re-election campaign in Minneapolis. Mondale proved a highly capable district organizer for Humphrey’s 1948 US Senate campaign. The GI Bill allowed Mondale to attend the University of Minnesota Law School after serving at Fort Knox during the Korean War. He graduated in 1951, worked at a Minneapolis law firm, and then became the de-facto manager of Governor Orville Freeman’s re-election campaigns. This paid off for Mondale when Freeman’s attorney general abruptly resigned in 1960. At only thirty-two, Mondale was appointed to the second most powerful office in Minnesota. He then positioned himself to make valuable friendships and alliances, most famously with Hubert Humphrey. As attorney general, Mondale focused on consumer rights. After winning a highly publicized charity embezzlement case, he went after out-of-state companies with records of fraud, passing statutes banning misleading sales practices. In 1962, he rallied other state attorneys general behind a Supreme Court case that affirmed the right to a public defender nationwide. Then, when Humphrey became Lyndon Johnson’s vice president in 1964, Mondale was appointed to his vacant senate seat. Though he lacked his predecessor’s oratory skills, Mondale proved himself an expert negotiator and political operator by pushing the controversial Fair Housing Act through the senate as an amendment to the Civil Rights Act of 1968. In the 1970s, he established a reputation as a reformer, supporting legislation for consumer protection, child care, poverty reform, public healthcare, and increased education spending. Nevertheless, he was the only Democrat on the Senate’s conservative-leaning Budget Committee. In 1975, he passed cloture reform, dropping the number of votes needed to end debates on the senate floor from a two-thirds majority to a three-fifths majority and making it harder for individual senators to filibuster bills out of existence without a vote. In 1976, Jimmy Carter selected Mondale as his vice presidential running mate. He brought Northern support and Washington experience to the upstart Georgian’s campaign, impressing audiences with his in-depth understanding of foreign policy. He made it clear to Carter from the start that he wanted to infuse real meaning into the office of the vice president, where political careers traditionally went to die when presidents didn’t (Richard Nixon being the exception). To ensure that he would serve as a real asset to the president, Mondale reviewed every memo Carter did and was free to attend all meetings; he even had an office in the West Wing. The two discussed policy over lunch every Monday. While Mondale’s disagreements did not always translate into change, he never faced the political exile that Humphrey had suffered after privately disagreeing with Johnson over Vietnam. Mondale’s most significant vice presidential achievements were in foreign policy. In 1977, he initiated talks with Israeli Prime Minister Begin and Egyptian President Sadat ahead of the Camp David Accords. Though unsuccessful, Mondale’s negotiations over Black suffrage with South African Prime Minister Vorster helped establish a precedent of more straightforward detente with African nations during the Cold War. In 1979, Mondale rallied international aid for hundreds of thousands of Southeast Asian refugees expelled from their home countries for their ethnicity or for aiding American troops. After Carter||s reelection campaign failed to overtake Ronald Reagan in 1980, Mondale practiced law in Chicago and studied public policy. He ran for president in 1984, selecting Geraldine Ferraro as his running mate. The pair campaigned against Reagan’s economic and military policies while promising to cut the federal deficit and pass the Equal Rights Amendment. In the end, his explicit promise to raise taxes, controversy over Ferraro’s tax returns, and Reagan’s popularity as an incumbent contributed to the worst Democratic loss in decades. In 1992, Mondale served as President Bill Clinton’s ambassador to Japan; in 2002 he ran a close but unsuccessful senatorial race on behalf of the late Paul Wellstone. Beginning in 1986, Mondale worked at the Minneapolis law firm Dorsey and Whitney while lecturing at the University of Minnesota’s Hubert Humphrey School of Public Affairs, where he left an endowed faculty chair. Mondale died at home in Minneapolis on April 19, 2021. He was ninety-three years old.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/msf03328[1].jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/mondale-walter-1928-2021"},{"alt":"Congregation of Brown’s Chapel, Hastings","author":[{"name":"James Curry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/james-curry"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"April 13, 2021","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Burning of Brown’s Chapel AME, Hastings","postbody":"Sometime past midnight on Friday, November 1, 1907, “the ringing of a fire bell rang out,” as reported in the Hastings Democrat. Brown’s Chapel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) was ...","searchtext":"Sometime past midnight on Friday, November 1, 1907, “the ringing of a fire bell rang out,” as reported in the Hastings Democrat. Brown’s Chapel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) was engulfed in flames. The little white frame church that had stood on the corner of Fifth and Sibley Streets had been established by the Black residents of Hasting’s community. Two weeks prior, they had celebrated the fifteenth anniversary of “having a place of their own.||| In the 1880s, most of the Black community of Hastings attended the Methodist Episcopal Church on Vermillion Street. The white members of the congregation, however, did not always welcome them. One particularly disturbing incident involved the christening of the children of James and Ella Curry. During the ceremony, the youngest child of a local white judge shouted a racist epithet as the couple brought their own children down the aisle. Whether this was unusual or the final straw in a series of slights, the incident motivated the Currys to begin organizing other Black community members to create a church of their own. On October 11, 1890, the Currys and some of their neighbors came together to worship at the Fourth Street home of John and Nancy Wallace. Reverend J. C. Anderson of West St. Paul’s AME attended the meeting and recognized the new congregation on behalf of church leaders at the national AME headquarters in Philadelphia. Members subsequently elected James Wallace (son) as their class leader and John Wallace (father) treasurer and James Curry as their secretary. They continued to meet in private homes until late 1891, when they began renting rooms on the upper floor of the Hanson Brothers’ store. At the same time, they actively sought funding from each other to accomplish their goal of procuring a house of worship for their families. In late 1891, an opportunity arose to purchase a twenty-four-by-thirty-six-foot white frame church at the corner of Fifth and Sibley Streets for five hundred dollars. Congregation members pledged what they could afford to meet their goal of raising two hundred dollars for a down payment. Reverend Anderson explained in a letter to the editor of the Hastings Gazette on December 26, 1891, that “experience has taught us the necessity of having a place of our own, where we may become permanently situated and worship God according to the dictates of our own consciences without shame or fear.” A July 16, 1892, article announced that “preparations are taking place for the opening of Brown’s Chapel. There are three services scheduled. The choir of the Methodist Church will sing in the afternoon, and voices from the twin cities are engaged for morning and evening. Reverend J. P. James from Minneapolis, a native Haitian, will preach during the day. The people of Hastings, of whatever religious opinion, are requested and cordially invited to attend.” With financial support and help from both Black and white communities, Brown’s Chapel African Methodist Episcopal became a reality and opened on Sunday, October 17, 1892. For years afterward, it was the center of religious and social activities for Blacks in the area, with many weddings and funerals taking place there. Former Hastings residents visited the church after moving away, demonstrating their lasting ties to the community. Early in the morning on Friday, November 1—Halloween night—an arsonist entered the church through a back window, poured kerosene on the floor, and set a fire.The blaze ruined the floor, charred the pews, blackened the walls and ceilings, and broke the windows. Apart from two initial articles in the Hastings Gazette and Hastings Democrat, neither newspapers nor law enforcement pursued any further investigation into who started the fire, the community’s response, or efforts to raise funds to repair the extensive destruction. Two years following the fire, it was reported that Brown’s Chapel had been sold to Graus Lumber for $300. The Methodist Episcopal Church, where the Curry family had endured racist insults during their children’s christening, continued to operate. In 1925, its pastor served as the chaplain of the local Ku Klux Klan. The Black population of Hastings was 35 in 1900 and decreased substantially every decade thereafter. The death of the city’s last Black resident in 1954 left Hastings effectively all white for the remaining half of the century.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/IMG_2650 (1).jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056216,"name":"African Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246089,"name":"Religion and Belief","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/burning-brown-s-chapel-ame-hastings"},{"alt":"Twine factory floor","author":[{"name":"Emily Shepard","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/emily-shepard"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"March 29, 2021","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Twine Industry at Minnesota State Prison, Stillwater","postbody":"A cornerstone of the prison labor system for almost eighty years, the binder twine factory at the Minnesota State Prison employed thousands of inmates who produced over a billion pounds of ...","searchtext":"A cornerstone of the prison labor system for almost eighty years, the binder twine factory at the Minnesota State Prison employed thousands of inmates who produced over a billion pounds of cordage for regional farmers. The twine-manufacturing industry began at the original facility and continued at a custom-built factory on a new site after the prison moved in 1914. The factory closed in 1970. By the late 1880s, officials at the Minnesota State Prison in Stillwater were desperately searching for an industry to employ the hundreds of incarcerated people within the facility. Numerous scandals of the previous decades resulted in the state legislature’s 1887 crackdown on private industry within the prison. A plan to manufacture binder twine within the prison arose from many factors: farmers’ demands for cheap twine, political pressure to make the prison profitable, and reformers’ desire to provide skills to incarcerated people. In January of 1891, machinery and installation experts arrived in Stillwater from Ireland. A month later, prisoners successfully manufactured the first binder twine on site. Henry Wolfer, the prison’s warden, closely monitored and controlled the upstart operation. Efficiency increased quickly, and by 1892 the prison had sold over one million pounds of binder twine to area farmers. The initial success of the factory rested on the labor of over 130 incarcerated people, supervised by a handful of civilian guards, who were employed in manufacturing the binder twine. Even as incarcerated workers produced more twine, supply remained short of local farmers’ demands. Binder twine was essential for wheat harvesting, in which Minnesota farmers led the world. Prison officials focused intently on increasing production. The factory’s success led the Minnesota State Prison’s twine factory to become a model for similar operations in other midwestern states. By 1897, the twine industry was fully running. Funds from the sale of twine generally enabled the prison to operate at a profit, pleasing prison officials and politicians. A decade later, 225 incarcerated workers at the factory produced over 15 million pounds of twine. At the beginning of the operation, incarcerated workers in the twine factory earned an average of ten cents a day. Working ten hours a day, six days a week was mandatory for all prisoners without a disability. Rules in the factory were strict; silence was enforced. Noisy machinery, however, allowed for some secretive conversations. Therefore, the factory may have been a space of relative freedom for the workers compared to prison cells and silent mealtimes. The four floors and numerous rooms making up the twine factory and warehouses bustled with incarcerated workers engaged in a variety of tasks. First, they unloaded, weighed, and stored the “raw” fiber. Then, they spread it out and fed it to a succession of combing and spinner machines to create large spools of twine. Workers then transported the spools on small carts to the balling machines, which created five-pound balls. They weighed and tested the twine balls and packed them into fifty-pound bales Finally, workers moved the bales to a large warehouse, where they stacked them to the rafters. Accidents in the twine factory and warehouse were frequent. Hospital records document fingers, hands, and legs caught in machinery; falls from ladders; and injuries from falling twine bales. In 1910, twine factory operations began to shift to the new Stillwater State Prison complex, which was constructed to replace the decrepit original facility. A custom-built twine factory and three-story warehouse at the new prison were completed by 1914. In the subsequent decades, inmates continued churning out twine, and farmers snapped up their product. Prison officials were proud of the twine operation and its output. Beginning in the 1920s, twine samples were displayed at the Minnesota State Fair. At this time, incarcerated workers at the twine factory produced over 20 million pounds of twine annually. By the factory’s fiftieth anniversary in 1941, incarcerated workers had produced almost a billion pounds. In 1970, officials closed the twine factory, citing its failure to provide marketable skills to inmates. In 2002, the final chapter of the Stillwater twine factory concluded when a fire started by an arsonist destroyed almost all of the original prison buildings, including the twine factory and warehouse.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/MW4.9 BP7.2S p74.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246060,"name":"Crime and Punishment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246055,"name":"Labor","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/twine-industry-minnesota-state-prison-stillwater"},{"alt":"Front entrance to the Minnesota Music Hall of Fame","author":[{"name":"Robin Gehl","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/robin-gehl"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"March 18, 2021","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Minnesota Music Hall of Fame","postbody":"The Minnesota Music Hall of Fame in New Ulm offers a wide-ranging display of artifacts, mementos, and photos acquired since it recognized its first class of inductees in 1989. It pays ...","searchtext":"The Minnesota Music Hall of Fame in New Ulm offers a wide-ranging display of artifacts, mementos, and photos acquired since it recognized its first class of inductees in 1989. It pays tribute to music performers and artists who shaped Minnesota’s music scene in the mid-twentieth century, with a focus on the polka groups and dance orchestras that were popular around New Ulm at that time. Founded in 1854, before Minnesota attained statehood, the city of New Ulm claims a long tradition of music performance and appreciation. The German immigrants who arrived there particularly favored polka music—a style that often featured a concertina and a tuba, among other instruments, and was frequently labeled “old-time music.” Beginning in the 1920s, as recording and radio technology brought music into people||s homes, a number of talented New Ulm musicians became widely known. In 1949 New Ulm’s own radio station, KNUJ, went on the air and began broadcasting polka music throughout southern Minnesota. By midcentury, due to the popularity of eighteen professional bands with local roots, the city was referred to as the Polka Capital of the Nation. Between 1953 and 1971 it hosted Polka Days, an annual festival that attracted tens of thousands of visitors each July. New Ulm’s rich music history prompted cultural leaders in the late 1980s to establish and host the Minnesota Music Hall of Fame. The Hall of Fame recognizes and honors musicians who “contributed significantly to the Minnesota Music scene in all genres of music.” Each year, its board of directors selects a new class of inductees. The Hall of Fame’s home is the 1936 Moderne-style Public Library and Historical Museum building at 27 North Broadway. Noted New Ulm architect Albert G. Plagens designed the project, constructed with locally made Artstone. The Brown County History Museum occupied the first floor until 1985, when it moved across the street to the 1910 German Renaissance-style building and former Post Office. The Hall of Fame moved to the library’s museum space in 1999. One of the first New Ulm artists to gain notoriety was “Whoopee John” Wilfahrt. He played the concertina in polka bands beginning in the 1920s and reached large audiences through live performance, radio broadcasts, and recordings. Whoopee John’s band performed extensively into the 1950s. The International Polka Association notes that Whoopee John is considered the founder of the New Ulm school of old-time music, and that the National Ballroom Operators Association named his band the leading polka band in the nation in the early 1950s. The Six Fat Dutchmen, based in New Ulm, achieved considerable fame as well. The group was voted the nation’s top polka band several times in the 1950s. Harold Loeffelmacher founded the group in 1932. In spite of their name, the musicians were German rather than Dutch; in American English “Dutch” was often exchanged for “Deutsch,” meaning German. The band toured extensively in the 1940s and 50s and recorded 800 songs with RCA Victor, which branded the group as “nationally known” and the “largest old-time band in America.” After World War II, ballrooms were popular destinations for those looking for entertainment, as well as for touring dance bands. Minnesota was home to nearly one hundred ballrooms. The Hall of Fame contains a display of the names, locations, and historic photos of many of those sites. In New Ulm, George’s Ballroom opened in 1947 and hosted the bands of Lawrence Welk, Glenn Miller, and the Six Fat Dutchmen, among others. One of the rarest and most noteworthy artifacts on display in the Hall of Fame is a poster promoting Buddy Holly’s concert appearance in Mankato, at the Kato Ballroom, on January 25, 1959, the third of the “Winter Dance Party” tour stops. Holly died in a plane crash days later on February 3 in Clear Lake, Iowa. From Minnesota icons such as Bob Dylan, Judy Garland, and Prince to tuba legend Stan Freese, the Andrews Sisters, and Bobby Vee, the Hall of Fame shares snapshots of Minnesota’s music history. Its first class included a nod to New Ulm’s heritage with Whoopee John Wilfahrt along with F. Melius Christiansen, founder of the St. Olaf Choir and Band. Additional honorees in recent decades include Mary Jane Alm, the Blenders, John Holmquist, Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis, Leo Kottke, Lorie Line, the Replacements, Soul Asylum, Sounds of Blackness, the Steele Family Singers, and Mick Sterling. Classical groups and artists include the Minnesota Orchestra, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Minnesota Opera, the Dale Warland Singers, and the Minnesota Chorale; conductors Philip Brunelle and Frank Bencriscutto; and composers Dominick Argento and Libby Larson. As of 2021, there are 179 inductees.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/image7_0.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/minnesota-music-hall-fame"},{"alt":"Brunelle and Larrabee","author":[{"name":"Lizzie Ehrenhalt","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/lizzie-ehrenhalt"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"February 22, 2021","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Escape from Shakopee State Reformatory for Women, 1949","postbody":"Beulah Brunelle (Turtle Mountain Ojibwe) and Edna Larrabee escaped from Shakopee State Reformatory for Women five times between 1946 and 1949. Though most of the breakouts ended in their ...","searchtext":"Beulah Brunelle (Turtle Mountain Ojibwe) and Edna Larrabee escaped from Shakopee State Reformatory for Women five times between 1946 and 1949. Though most of the breakouts ended in their recapture within a few days, their fourth escape, in 1949, led to eight months of freedom and allowed the two women to live together as a couple while traveling around the United States. On April 29, 1946, a judge ordered twenty-five-year-old Edna Larrabee to serve time in Shakopee State Reformatory for committing grand larceny in the second degree (writing bad checks) in St. Paul. It was not her first time in the prison. She had served out a sentence for a separate larceny charge between 1940 and 1942, when she had attracted scrutiny for her “boyish mannerisms” and sexual relationships with other prisoners. Larrabee, staff reported disapprovingly, took “pride in having a problem which she believes is quite unusual” and criticized her parole board for focusing on her sexuality rather than her chances of release. One supervisor noted “she does not feel there was any reason for her being punished in the first place.” When Larrabee began her second term in Shakopee in April 1946 she met Beulah Brunelle, a twenty-one-year-old Ojibwe woman also serving a sentence for grand larceny (in her case, stealing clothes, shoes, and a ring). They escaped together three times over the next two years. After the failure of the third escape on November 22, 1948, Larrabee attempted suicide but survived. The next morning, she tried again. She then turned her frustration on the institution that was confining her, flooding her cell with water from her toilet and using a mattress spring to break a window. Staff responded swiftly by transferring her to St. Peter State Hospital for electroconvulsive therapy (ECT, also known as shock therapy) and a sixty-day psychiatric study. Larrabee’s time at St. Peter led her and Brunelle to escape from Shakopee again. Disguised in overalls and farm jackets, they sneaked into the basement of Sanford Cottage on February 2, 1949, broke open a nailed-shut window, and fled. They hitchhiked west looking for jobs, introducing themselves as a married couple named Mr. and Mrs. Patrick Farrell. Shakopee superintendent Clara Thune guessed that the pair was headed to California. After escaping in 1946 with her then-girlfriend, Larrabee had fled to San Diego. During World War II, moreover, she had worked as an arc welder for the Western Pipe and Steel Company in San Francisco. Thune wrote to four California sheriffs and police chiefs, asking them to look out for the fugitives. She stated that Larrabee was “acquainted with the colony of homo sexuals [sic] in Los Angeles” and likely to show up in that city. Larrabee and Brunelle, however, were headed not to LA but to Sacramento, where Larrabee’s sister Vida took them in. After three months they hitchhiked to Seattle, Washington, and visited Larrabee’s parents; William Larrabee gave his daughter a black 1936 Plymouth coupe. The women then made moves to settle down, renting an apartment and opening a bank account together. To pay their rent, Larrabee ran a gas station and Brunelle sewed for a dress shop. By the late summer they were traveling again and visited a friend from Minneapolis. Afterward, Brunelle brought Larrabee to meet her mother on the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation in North Dakota. The Minneapolis friend, meanwhile, tipped off police, telling them to look for a black Plymouth coupe with a missing hubcap. Police recognized the car in Sioux City, Iowa, on October 3, seized the two women, and returned them to Shakopee. Their eight months of freedom were over. Larrabee and Brunelle escaped together one final time late in 1949 but were found and returned to prison within days. They made no further attempts. By 1952 they were both paroled and starting new lives apart—Larrabee in Washington, Brunelle in Minnesota as the wife of a man named George Venne. Shakopee case files contain one final record of their relationship: a note stating that in 1953, Brunelle left her husband in St. Paul and drove for more than 1,600 miles to Seattle, where she and Larrabee reunited. Editor||s Note: The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is a hotline for individuals in crisis or for those looking to help someone else. To speak with a certified listener, call 1-800-273-8255. You can also contact the Crisis Text Line by texting HELLO to 741741. Trans Lifeline (1-877-565-8860) and the Trevor Project (1-866-488-7386) offer hotlines specifically for queer and trans people.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/MNopedia/MNopedia%202025/Escape%20from%20Shakopee%20State%20Reformatory%20for%20Women/Brunelle%20and%20Larrabee.png","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246060,"name":"Crime and Punishment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246059,"name":"Native Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/escape-shakopee-state-reformatory-women-1949"},{"alt":"Women at the March for Oromia in St. Paul, 2007","author":[{"name":"Teferi Fufa","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/teferi-fufa"}],"categoryTag":[],"date":"February 16, 2021","eraTag":[],"keydate":"","name":"Oromos in Minnesota: The Making of Little Oromia","postbody":"After Kenya, which supports about half a million native Oromos, the state of Minnesota has the largest population of Oromo people outside their homeland in Ethiopia. As a result, Oromo ...","searchtext":"After Kenya, which supports about half a million native Oromos, the state of Minnesota has the largest population of Oromo people outside their homeland in Ethiopia. As a result, Oromo people worldwide know the Twin Cities as Little Oromia. The story of how the area came to earn this name is intertwined with Oromo culture, politics, migration, religious faith, and adaptation to life in the United States in the late twentieth century. Origins The Oromo are the largest ethnic group in Ethiopia, accounting for 40–50 percent of its population. Prior to the 1980s, outsiders knew very little about them, and what they did know came from Abyssinian writers, who called them Galla. The term Galla, of unknown origin, referred to people without religion, culture, or civilization in an Ethiopian context. The Oromo never called themselves Galla, nor were they always part of the nation of Ethiopia. According to historical records, the Oromos have lived in the same general area they now occupy in central and southern Ethiopia since the twelfth century CE. From then until the close of the nineteenth century, they lived as neighbors with Abyssinian kingdoms, with whom they went to war intermittently. As the Oromo did not have a written language, all descriptions of them were composed by outsiders—mainly Abyssinian scribes and their European allies. The Abyssinians stood to benefit from presenting the Oromo, their archenemies, in a bad light. Europeans who visited Abyssinia, therefore, unwittingly propagated Abyssinian prejudices when they wrote about the Oromo. When Europeans divided up Africa among themselves in 1884 and 1885 during what became known as the Scramble for Africa, they exempted Abyssinia since it was a “Christian empire.” They also gave Abyssinia firearms and allowed it to expand its imperial territory. As a result, the Oromo fell under the brutal occupation of Abyssinia and suffered harsh and continuing repression. They lost their freedoms as well as their right to use their lands, to practice their culture, and to speak their language. Ever since, the Oromo have struggled to regain their freedom. The intensification of this struggle in the 1970s and resulting persecution motivated many Oromos to become refugees and flee to new homes, including Minnesota. First Arrivals in Minnesota The first two Oromos to settle in Minnesota arrived in the early 1970s. Tasissa Moti came as a student with his American wife, Geri (a nurse who had been a missionary in Ethiopia) towards the end of August 1972. Teferi Fufa, the author of this article, came by himself to attend college in early September of the same year. Moti studied at a community college in Minneapolis before transferring to the University of Minnesota; Fufa enrolled in Bethel College in Arden Hills and later transferred to the University of Minnesota. In 1974, a military coup d’etat dubbed the “creeping coup” deposed the government of Emperor Haile Selassie. Afterward, the political environment in Ethiopia went from bad to worse as warring parties multiplied. The monarchists sought to regain power. The different nationalist movements wanted freedom for their respective nationalities, and the new military rulers, known as the Dergue, aimed to consolidate power. Amid this chaotic and dangerous time, three more Oromos arrived in Minnesota, each with their own story of escape from the dangers in Ethiopia. All three used their ties with Christian missions in Oromo areas of Ethiopia to escape from varying degrees of political persecution. Although they were students, they did not follow the normal route of Ethiopian students coming to the US. At the time, Haile Selassie’s official government policy limited both the number of Oromos who could be educated and the amount of education they received. Therefore, it was nearly impossible for an Oromo student to get the paperwork necessary to leave the country for the purpose of education. People often ask Oromo refugees, “Why Minnesota? Why not a warmer state?” The truth is, none of these early arrivals had a choice. They were provided an opportunity and they jumped on it. Their missionary contacts—Lutherans in particular—are responsible for drawing them to the North Star state. First Wave of Refugees The fall of Selassie’s government brought a new wave of political violence, and thousands of refugees fled Ethiopia for the neighboring countries of Somalia, Djibouti, and Sudan. By 1980, this new group had begun to flow into the US. Oromos already in Minnesota observed their struggle and organized to help them escape from the horrors of the camps. In 1981 they founded the Oromo Relief Association of North America (ORANA) in the Twin Cities to serve a dual purpose: to help refugees living in the camps and to find American families who could sponsor and resettle as many of them as possible. Refugee resettlement agencies like Lutheran Social Service, Lutheran World Relief, and the International Institute of Minnesota then facilitated their transfer from camps to the homes of sponsor families in the Twin Cities. The cooperation of resettlement agencies opened a more or less direct link between refugee camps in Africa and ORANA in Minnesota. Through this channel, more refugees received sponsors and resettled in the Twin Cities. The harsher political persecution became in Ethiopia, the more refugees fled into the refugee camps, and the worse living conditions became. By 1984, the refugee situation in the Horn of Africa had become a major international humanitarian crisis, and Somalia, Djibouti, and Sudan were all hosting Ethiopian refugees, mostly Oromos. As the 1980s progressed, more Oromo refugees found their way to Minnesota not only from Somalia and Djibouti but also from Sudan. By the middle of the decade there were over 200 Oromos living in the Twin Cities, and more continued to come—some from Africa and others from other American cities. ORANA continued its work by organizing public fundraising events that featured Oromo food, cultural shows, and presentations about Oromo history and the Oromo diaspora. Second Wave of Refugees The socialist government of Mengistu Haile Mariam collapsed in May 1991 when a coalition of guerilla groups (the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front, or EPLF; the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, or TPLF; and the Oromo Liberation Front, or OLF) forced their way into the Ethiopian capital at Addis Ababa. With the mediation of the US government, the EPLF agreed to lead Eritrea into independence from Ethiopia while the TPLF and the OLF formed a transitional government in Ethiopia. Oromo people began to hope that life would return to normal and the years of strife would subside. In 1992, the TPLF forced the OLF out of the government. As OLF leaders left the country, members and supporters faced severe political persecution, including arrest, imprisonment, and mass killings. The unrest led another wave of political refugees to flee Ethiopia, this time mainly for Kenya. By and by, many of them found their way to Minnesota, and by the mid-1990s, the number of Oromos in the Twin Cities had grown exponentially over the previous decade. While there is no census that gives us an accurate figure, an estimate of tens of thousands would not be far from the mark. Organizations In addition to ORANA, which concentrated on providing humanitarian assistance to Oromo refugees, Minneapolis and St. Paul in the 1980s needed an organization that would look after the well being of the local Oromo community. In response to this need, a group called Oromo Community of Minnesota began meeting in the early 1980s in a small building in the Cedar Riverside neighborhood of Minneapolis. As the community grew, the organization strengthened, and today (2020) it manages a center in a former church in St. Paul that provides services to Oromo youth and the elderly. Oromo Minnesotans supporting the arrival of new refugees discovered that Americans knew little about Ethiopia and nothing about the Oromo. To find support, they needed to explain what it meant to be an Oromo in Ethiopia and explain the problems the Oromos faced there. In response, they held public conferences and invited speakers—mainly sympathetic scholars and former missionaries—to speak on Oromo topics. They put on cultural demonstrations and made presentations in churches around the state. In Minneapolis in 1982 they formed the Oromo Support Committee, composed of Oromos and concerned Minnesotans. Some of the members visited refugee camps in Djibouti and Sudan. Through this work, Oromos formed close and lasting friendships with their American neighbors. The activism of the first Oromos in Minnesota became a way of life and contributed to ongoing community activities. As the community grew, it became imperative for Oromos to organize socially and politically—not only to survive and thrive in their adopted homeland, but also to influence what was happening in Ethiopia. The Union of Oromo in North America, which had a strong chapter in Minnesota, closely followed events in Ethiopia and wrote extensively about them in the 1980s. Papers were presented at its annual meetings, and the proceedings were printed. This effort led to the formation in 1990 of the Oromo Studies Association, an academic group committed to the advancement of Oromo scholarship. In the beginning, Bethany Lutheran Church in south Minneapolis provided a supportive and welcoming environment for Oromos to come together for spiritual solace. It did not matter that all five of the early arrivals who came as students were Christians, or that the refugees who came from Djibouti and Somalia, eight in all, were Muslims. At Bethany, they all felt at home. By the 1990s, however, the growing Oromo population needed its own places of worship. Christian Oromos formed a Bible study group in the 1980s that blossomed in 1993 into Our Redeemer Oromo Evangelical Church (OROEC) in Minneapolis. When Muslim Oromos opened Masjid Tawfiq (later renamed the Tawfiq Islamic Center) in Minneapolis in 2004, it was the first Oromo mosque in North America. Integration and Influence The early Oromo refugees and immigrants faced a two-fold challenge of integrating into Minnesota society. On the one hand, they needed to get used to a new environment and thrive. On the other hand, they needed to use their new-found freedom to define themselves as Oromos, fending off the old pejorative term “Galla.” Achieving both of these objectives required them to work closely with established Minnesotans. As stated above, Minnesota churches, particularly Lutheran ones, played an important part in Oromo integration. As the Christian Oromo told their stories, missionary-minded members listened with sympathy. Those who were familiar with Ethiopia tried to reconcile their image of a beautiful nation, with its dignified Emperor, with that of a torturous and repressive empire, and their impression of the “savage” and “heathen” Galla with that of the colonized and oppressed Oromo. After listening to presentations about Oromo people, some Minnesotans responded, “That is what we used to call the Galla.” While older sympathizers helped by sponsoring Oromo refugees, younger activists joined the Oromos in doing advocacy work. They got involved through the Third World Institute, a social justice organization operating out of the Christ Church Newman Center on the campus of the University of Minnesota, and Bread for the World, a Christian group campaigning to end world hunger. The two groups hosted joint presentations that highlighted the plight of the Oromo. In 1982, ORANA applied to participate in the International Institute’s Festival of Nations and was admitted. All participating groups were required to take part in at least three events that ran concurrently throughout the festival’s four-day run. Oromos set up a cultural exhibit booth, served food at the International Café, and performed in a cultural show. With scant manpower, minimal resources, and sheer determination, they stood out as one of the festival’s major attractions. The secret to their success was the full commitment of non-Oromo members of the Oromo Support Committee, who donned Oromo clothes, worked the booths, and answered questions on all four days. While the representatives of other nationalities used the event for fundraising, the Oromo group used it mainly for publicizing the Oromo. After seeing the Oromo cultural show at the event, Maryjane Sounder Samples of Twin Cities Black Journalists (TCBJ) reached out to ORANA and invited its members to appear on the NAACP Forum, a weekly KSTP-TV show. By appearing on this program three times, Oromos further publicized their cause. Oromos extended their campaign to publicize the plight of Oromo refugees beyond public events and raising funds. They approached elected officials and informed them of the political problems in Ethiopia causing the refugees to flee their homes. By doing this, they hoped to encourage US policies toward Ethiopia that would curb political repression and reduce human suffering. Over the decades, Rudy Boschwitz, David Durenberger, Al Franken, Amy Klobuchar, and Tina Smith spoke in the state senate about the situation of Oromos of Minnesota. The highlight of the effort was a hearing on H.R. 128 (a US House resolution calling on Ethiopia to respect human rights) held by Minnesota congressman (later state attorney general) Keith Ellison. Over a thousand Oromos from the Twin Cities converged with hundreds more from across the United States and Canada to observe the hearing on April 19, 2016. The event contributed to the resignation of Ethiopian prime minister Hailemariam Desalegn and his replacement by Abiy Ahmed, who promised reform. In the twenty-first century, two annual events bring together Oromo Minnesotans for fun and festivities. First, the Oromo Sports Federation in North America (OSFANA) holds its annual tournament in the Twin Cities every summer. Oromo youths from Toronto, Washington DC, Seattle, Los Angeles, and other North American cities come together for the one-week event in late July or early August. Like any other sports event, the tournament brings economic benefits to its host cities. In recognition of that contribution, the mayors of Minneapolis and St. Paul both declared the week of the tournament “Oromo Week.” St. Paul was the first to host the tournament, in 2011. The other big event is Irreecha, an old Oromo festival that marks the end of the rainy season and the beginning of the harvesting season. It is often described to Americans as Oromo Thanksgiving. Ethiopia prohibited Oromos from celebrating Irreecha for over a hundred years, but through a long struggle, they regained the right to hold the festival. Violence instigated by government security forces at the October 2016 Irreecha celebration in Ethiopia claimed the lives of scores of people (fifty-five as reported by government officials and 700 as claimed by others). Once a year, during the month of September, Oromos of the Twin Cities gather at Lake Nokomis in Minneapolis to sing, dance, eat, and offer praise and thanks to Waaqaa (God). Participants decked out in their traditional garb attract the attention of passersby. The contribution of Oromos to the Minnesota economy is unquantified but significant. Oromo weddings, graduations, and other social gatherings attract hundreds of participants who spend money inside the state. As shopkeepers and restaurateurs, Oromo business owners create jobs. As the owners of law firms, medical clinics, and transportation companies, they provide essential social services. And as taxi drivers and the employees of diverse private and public institutions, they bolster the labor force. In this economic and cultural impact, Oromo immigrant communities in Minnesota contribute to the well being of their adopted home.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Oromo_1.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056216,"name":"African Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/oromos-minnesota-making-little-oromia"},{"alt":"Tanned muskrat pelts","author":[{"name":"Jon Lurie","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/jon-lurie"}],"categoryTag":[],"date":"January 26, 2021","eraTag":[{"id":186625246048,"name":"1585–1763 (Colonization)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056201,"name":"1754–1800 (Revolution and a New Nation)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056203,"name":"1792–1861 (Expansion and Reform)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Fur Trade in Minnesota","postbody":"The North American fur trade began around 1500 off the coast of Newfoundland and became one of the most powerful industries in US history. In Minnesota country, the Dakota and the Ojibwe ...","searchtext":"The North American fur trade began around 1500 off the coast of Newfoundland and became one of the most powerful industries in US history. In Minnesota country, the Dakota and the Ojibwe traded in alliance with the French from the 1600s until the 1730s, when Ojibwe warriors began to drive the Dakota from their homes in the Mississippi Headwaters region. Afterward, the Dakota continued trading in the south while Montreal traders and their Ojibwe allies established a network of trading posts in the north. For the next 120 years, the fur trade dominated the region’s economy and contributed to the development of a unique multicultural society. The North American fur trade knocked on the door of Mni Sota Makoce (Dakota homelands, present-day Minnesota) in 1679. Sieur du Lhut (Daniel Greysolon), an emissary of the French government, visited the Dakota village at Bde Wakan (Sacred Lake, also known as Mille Lacs) and watched the Ojibwe renew their alliance with their Dakota trading partners. At a peace conference, all three parties—Ojibwe, French, and Dakota—collaborated to open rich and strategically valuable Dakota territory to the fur trade. The Dakota agreed to allow the Ojibwe, who were already powerful players in the business, to live on their lands east of the Mississippi River and to act as middlemen in trades with the French. The French, for their part, had already adopted Native customs of gift giving, ceremony, and reciprocity within kinship networks. The arrangement persisted until 1737, when French interference and shifting alliances with the Cree and Assiniboin led Ojibwe warriors to attack the Dakota villages at Bde Tanka (Big Lake, also known as Lake Pepin). The invasion led to the gradual displacement of Dakota bands from their northern Minnesota homelands and opened the Upper Mississippi—a region abundant with game, wild rice lakes, and beavers—to direct Ojibwe control. With their Ojibwe allies in place, French and British traders developed routes into the former Dakota territories. One used the St. Louis River and six-mile Savannah Portage to access the Mississippi Basin. Another used the Bois Brule and Namekagon Rivers to access the St. Croix River basin. The Dakota, meanwhile, continued trading in the south. In 1784, the British North West Company, a competitor of the powerful Hudson’s Bay Company, disrupted the fur business when it constructed an inland headquarters at Gichi Onigamiing (Ojibwe for “The Great Carrying Place”—Grand Portage). It was the largest fur trade depot in the heart of the continent. Sixteen wooden buildings stood inside its palisade, including a business office, a warehouse for trade goods and furs, food storage buildings, and living quarters for the partners and clerks. From their location at the start of the 8.5-mile route, company employees accessed hundreds of miles of waterways stretching to the Canadian Northwest, later called the Voyageur’s Highway. The North West Company’s traders adopted an aggressive business model. Rather than sit and wait for people with furs to come to them, as was the practice of the Hudson’s Bay Company, they established a network of trading posts throughout the continent and intercepted trappers in the field. This new way of doing things required a backwoods navy of canoe paddlers to deliver trade goods to the posts and transport pelts to market. These hardy, long-distance paddlers were known as voyageurs (French for “travelers”). As competition intensified between the North West Company and the Hudson’s Bay Company, trading posts sprang up across the central continent, until every major tributary in Minnesota had one (or more). Unlike earlier times, when Native trappers were given little value in exchange for their pelts, a tighter market and greater competition created inflation in the trade. Voyageurs delivered high-quality manufactured goods Native people were unable to make themselves: woven cloth and wool blankets replaced animal skins, glass beads adorned ceremonial clothing. Metal tools—axes, kettles, traps, and firearms—became indispensable, as did distilled spirits. By 1800, even the remotest peoples had incorporated European objects into their lives. And it went both ways; the traders adopted Indigenous technology such as moccasins, toboggans, and snowshoes for tackling winter in a harsh climate. Voyageurs paddled hundreds of miles in birchbark canoes, carrying ninety-pound packs as they went. Most of them—short, brawny men—portaged two or more at a time. There were two distinct groups of voyageurs: the “Montreal men” and the “north men.” The Montreal men, called mangeurs de lard (pork eaters) after their rations, ferried trade goods and furs between Montreal and Grand Portage, 1,500 miles one way. The north men plied the Canadian interior, many wintering over in distant territories before returning to Grand Portage the following season laden with furs. For this reason, they were also called hivernants (winterers). Each July, the two groups met at the North West Company Depot on Lake Superior for Rendezvous, the annual mid-summer company meeting and celebration. Hundreds of voyageurs spent the better part of July camped outside the palisade. Food was abundant and liquor flowed freely for those willing to part with wages just received for the past year’s work. Most voyageurs were French Canadians from impoverished backgrounds who saw a couple of tours on the waterways as a path to a better life. This was an ephemeral goal for many voyageurs, who spent more in credit at company stores than they earned. It was not unusual for a young man to get into the trade for a tour or two and find himself paddling and portaging, deep in debt, twenty years later. Some of the voyageurs, indentured servants to the company or to other voyageurs, received no pay. Traders often married Native women from prominent families, so that their relatives would come to them to trade. As a result of generations of intermarriage, large communities of diverse heritage developed. The dynamics of Minnesota’s fur trade shifted again in 1803. The United States, eager to solidify its border with Canada and claim its exclusive right to lucrative land, imposed regulations on British companies. As a result, the North West Company moved its depot from Grand Portage to Fort William, near present-day Thunder Bay, Ontario. With the two big fur companies confined north of the border, the American Fur Company asserted dominance in the Midwest and Great Lakes. By 1823, the American Fur Company controlled the fur trade across most of present-day Minnesota. The company’s headquarters stood at the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers (Bdote), in the shadow of newly constructed Fort Snelling. A series of American Fur Company posts extended up both rivers. When silk overtook fur as the most popular material for hats and clothing in Europe in the 1830s, the profitability of the fur trade declined. As government agents, some former traders exploited their Native kinship ties to negotiate land cessions, enabling the US to seize Native land. The treaties they engineered in the 1850s confined the Ojibwe and Dakota to reservations. At the same time, Indian agents discouraged them from hunting and trapping on lands claimed by immigrants. Among whites, meanwhile, power in the fur trade translated into political power as Minnesota became a territory and then a state. Henry Sibley, who ran the Western Outfit of the American Fur Company starting in 1834, served as the first governor of Minnesota. Although the Minnesota fur trade’s era of national influence ended in 1854, smaller-scale trading continued for decades. In the twenty-first century, the heritage of the voyageur remains embedded in the fabric of the state. Many Minnesotans alive today descend from the métis (Native and European) children of fur traders and Native women. North of the border, some of their relatives belong to the Metis Nation of Canada, a federally recognized First Nation.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/1981.4.139.A-F.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246055,"name":"Labor","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246059,"name":"Native Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/fur-trade-minnesota"},{"alt":"Minnesota Correctional Institution for Women, Shakopee","author":[{"name":"Anna Stitt","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/anna-stitt"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"January 05, 2021","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Minnesota State Reformatory for Women, Shakopee","postbody":"Minnesota Correctional Facility-Shakopee (MCF-Shakopee) is Minnesota’s only state women’s prison. Women reformers pushed for its existence in the 1910s, arguing that women needed a place ...","searchtext":"Minnesota Correctional Facility-Shakopee (MCF-Shakopee) is Minnesota’s only state women’s prison. Women reformers pushed for its existence in the 1910s, arguing that women needed a place away from men where they could receive training instead of punishment. It opened in 1920 as the State Reformatory for Women. Over the next hundred years, it became increasingly crowded, and its focus shifted from “retraining” its prisoners to confining them. In the winter of 1915, prominent social worker Isabel Davis Higbee stood and spoke in front of the Minnesota House of Representatives|| prison committee. It was not her first time at the state capitol. She was asking the legislature to open a reformatory just for women, something she and others had been pushing for more than two decades. At the time, women in Minnesota were typically incarcerated either with men or with girls. Higbee pleaded for a place where women could receive training instead of punishment; at the end of her speech, she collapsed and died on the legislative floor. That year, the legislature voted to build a State Reformatory for Women. The institution approved by the legislature was built in Shakopee. It was made up of cottages and had no fence. It opened in 1920, receiving its first fifteen prisoners from the State Prison at Stillwater. According to the first warden, the first seventy-eight prisoners were convicted of stealing (forty-seven); miscellaneous, including sex delinquency (eighteen); taking life (seven); and marrying someone while already married (six). Nationwide, the reformatory movement was primarily led by upper-class white women. It was focused on “reforming” mostly white sex workers and other low-income women. In line with this thinking, state reformatories for women called their staff “house parents.” Minnesota’s was considered among the best reformatories in its early years, and visitors came from around the world to see its design and programs. By 1970, the State Reformatory had been renamed the Minnesota Correctional Institution for Women, but prisoners were still required to wear dresses to dinner. Critics said staff often treated prisoners as “retarded children rather than as mature women.” In the mid-1970s, the prison’s warden let children stay overnight with their mothers. The average number of women incarcerated at the prison hovered around forty-eight. That would soon change. In 1978, after a series of high-profile crimes committed by Minnesota women, the Shakopee City Council passed a resolution asking the Department of Corrections to put a barbed wire fence around the prison. As US politicians pushed being “tough on crime” and waging a “war on drugs,” Minnesota’s prison population began to rise. “The era of reform has come and gone,” the Minneapolis Star announced in a 1978 story about the Shakopee prison. By 1986, the population was up to eighty-five women. The state moved the prison across the street to a new, larger facility, Minnesota Correctional Facility-Shakopee. By 1994, the prison population had more than doubled to 194 and the state expanded the prison facility. A 1997 Department of Corrections report said Minnesota’s prison sentences were some of the toughest in the US, contributing to the growth. In 2014, the Minnesota legislature allocated money for a fence around Shakopee, pointing to eight escapes in twenty years, including one in 2013. By 2020, “house parents” were called “correctional officers.” MCF-Shakopee allowed incarcerated women to have a birth coach with them while in labor, made possible through the Minnesota Prison Doula Project, but their newborns were taken away soon after delivery. 620 women were incarcerated at the prison in that year.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Shakopee_prison-_December_1978-_by_Stormi_Greener-_Star_Tribune..jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246060,"name":"Crime and Punishment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/minnesota-state-reformatory-women-shakopee"},{"alt":"Iron Man statue on top of the Iron Man Memorial","author":[{"name":"Jennifer Kleinjung","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/jennifer-kleinjung"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"December 22, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Iron Man Memorial, Chisholm","postbody":"The Iron Man Memorial in Chisholm stands at eighty-five feet tall as a monument to the miners of Minnesota’s Iron Range. The nearly thirty-year story of its creation reveals northeastern ...","searchtext":"The Iron Man Memorial in Chisholm stands at eighty-five feet tall as a monument to the miners of Minnesota’s Iron Range. The nearly thirty-year story of its creation reveals northeastern Minnesotans’ commitment to recognizing their history, expanding local heritage tourism, and diversifying their economy beyond the mining industry. The origin of the Iron Man Memorial can be traced back to conversations between World War II veterans (including Veda Ponikvar, publisher of the Chisholm Free Press) and citizens on the home front of the Mesabi Iron Range. Both groups wanted to honor the contributions of the local mining industry to the Allied victory as well as the broader industrial development of the United States. They also sought to memorialize fathers, uncles, and grandfathers who had worked for generations in the area’s open pit and underground mines. In 1958, the Minnesota Museum of Mining in Chisholm submitted a proposal to the Centennial Statehood Commission asking for $21,875 dollars to fund the creation of an iron miner statue. The commission rejected the proposal, and limited finances within the mining museum put the project on hold. The idea and determination of its backers, however, remained. Meanwhile, Minnesota’s mining industry evolved with the commercialization of taconite and the passage of the 1964 Taconite Tax Amendment, which funded regional efforts to diversify the economy, including tourism. It wasn’t until the early 1970s, as the nation prepared to celebrate the country’s bicentennial, that efforts to construct an iron miner memorial were revived. In 1973, Chisholm was the first city in the state to apply for and receive official Bicentennial Community status from the American Revolution Bicentennial Administration. This required the city government to assemble a committee representative of a cross-section of its citizens to plan at least three projects related to bicentennial celebration themes. The idea of an iron miner memorial surfaced again as a project with potential to impact the community beyond 1976 (no direct funding was received from either the state or national bicentennial organizing bodies, however, for the effort). Members of the Iron Ore Miner Memorial Committee reached out to artists across the country sharing their vision for a statue depicting iron miners of the early twentieth century. Miners of this era wore oilskin helmets lit by candles and carried pick axes, shovels, and lunchpails to work. Committee members ultimately hired sculptor Jack E. Anderson of Michigan, whose Shrine of the Snowshoe Priest in L’Anse had the realist style they wanted for the iron man. Anderson titled his prospective work “Emergence of Man Through Steel.” He planned for a monument that would appear to erupt from the ground, with beams of core-ten steel surrounded by six thirty-five-foot diameter circles representing the world. Distinct rocks would represent the Mesabi, Cuyuna, and Vermilion ranges, and visitors would be able to enter the base, which was to resemble the inside of an underground mine drift. Visitors were also to be able to climb a spiral staircase within the statue to a room featuring an Iron Range model train and mining artifacts. Initial estimates for the work were $300,000, and planners aimed to complete the statue by the summer of 1977. As project chair Peter DelGreco explained, the work was intended both to attract tourists and to honor miners. “We’ve got halls of fame for everything,” he noted, “except the working man.” Donations came in all sizes, including, as committee flyers detailed at the time, “$50 from a miner’s widow, $88 in a cigar box from a group of fourth graders at our Lincoln School in Chisholm, and many $1–$2–$5 from people.” Rising material costs and conflicts between Anderson and committee members delayed the monument’s completion. In the 1980s, low-priced ore imports from Brazil and inexpensive steel from Japan sent the US steel industry into a recession, which further crippled local fundraising efforts. Although the Iron Man Committee had raised and spent over $100,000 by this point, it needed to raise $250,000 more before the figure could be cast in steel and completed. A letter sent to Gary Lampaa (incoming commissioner of the IRRB) in November of 1982 referred to the statue as sleeping in the basement garage of the Chisholm Senior Citizens’ Center, waiting to be plastered and cast in his iron work clothes. In 1986, a grant from the IRRRB provided the funding necessary to complete the statue and move it from its original location on the grounds of the mining museum to land across from Ironworld USA (a museum and entertainment complex run by the IRRRB, formerly known as the Iron Range Interpretative [sic] Center). The committee scrapped plans for an elevator, restaurant, information center, and gift shop inside the base of the statue due to lack of funds. A crowd of around 1,500 people attended the memorial’s dedication on July 4, 1987. Minnesota Governor Rudy Perpich spoke of the miners it honored, stating, “through their hard work, they made life better for all of us. They made America what it is today.” The road leading to the statue was also dedicated as Veda Ponikvar Boulevard in recognition of her tireless support of the project. The statue is widely recognized as a Minnesota roadside attraction and serves as an icon of the region, particularly in tourism promotion. It is broadly advertised as the third-tallest free-standing sculpture in the United States, but as Chisholm City Attorney Lou Cianni explained at the 1987 dedication ceremony, “I can name you 100 guys, honorable men who deserve this recognition. It’s not a tourist attraction. It’s a memorial. And it’s probably too small for the people it’s memorializing.”","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Iron_man_Large_version.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246055,"name":"Labor","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/iron-man-memorial-chisholm"},{"alt":"Mi Peru-MN members holding a banner","author":[{"name":"Mi Perú-Minnesota","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/mi-minnesota"},{"name":"Erika Busse-Cárdenas","slug":"/mnopedia/search/index/author/erika-busse-c-rdenas"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"December 15, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Mi Perú-Minnesota","postbody":"Mi Perú-Minnesota (Mi Perú-MN) is a non-profit organization that promotes Peruvian culture through folkloric dances and ethnic events. Founded in Minneapolis in 2017, the group strives to ...","searchtext":"Mi Perú-Minnesota (Mi Perú-MN) is a non-profit organization that promotes Peruvian culture through folkloric dances and ethnic events. Founded in Minneapolis in 2017, the group strives to bridge Peruvian and Minnesotan cultures while contributing to the diversity within Minnesota’s Latine population and society at large. Over the years, it has grown to become a multigenerational and multiethnic group with a presence as one of the primary Peruvian folkloric dance groups in Minnesota. In the late 2000s, a group of Peruvian women living in the Twin Cities formed a Peruvian folkloric dance group called Asi Es Mi Perú (That’s My Peru). Over time, the group dissolved, leaving some of its original members, along with other dancers, to establish a new group. This new organization inherited the previous group’s costumes, funding, and non-profit status. On July 26th, 2017, Mi Perú-Minnesota was created, along with its new mission and vision for the group. Mi Peru-MN members hail from various parts of Peru, from the coast to the Andes mountains to tropical rainforests. They bring with them the cultural backgrounds specific to their Peruvian places of birth or residency. Their diverse experiences provide insight into dances with Indigenous roots as well as those with European and Afro-Peruvian rhythms. Recently, people born in other countries in Latin America have joined the group, further expanding its diversity. Mi Perú-MN held its first official ethnic event on Saturday, July 29, 2017. Friends and family gathered for a potluck at Minnehaha Falls Park in Minneapolis to celebrate Peruvian Independence Day, which is commemorated on July 28. The group performed various folkloric dances while guests enjoyed Peruvian food and kids played games nearby. Over 300 people attended. In the following years, Mi Perú-MN moved its Independence Day celebration to a recreation center in the Twin Cities metro area. This free event, open to the community, provided an opportunity to experience Peruvian culture through dance performances from Mi Perú-MN, as well as live music, cuisine, handicrafts, raffles, and games. This event also offered the public a chance to enjoy other local folkloric dance groups and music. Mi Perú-MN takes pride in performing at all kinds of events throughout the year. These include the International Institute of Minnesota||s Festival of Nations, multicultural school and university events, Independence Day celebrations from other countries, Hispanic Heritage Month celebrations, Latine festivals, religious events, fundraising galas, non-profit organization events, and weddings, among others. Mi Perú-MN often receives donations and payments for its cultural performances. This funding allows the group to purchase new folkloric dance outfits brought directly from Peru, and in doing so to enhance their dance repertoire. In addition, as a non-profit, the group holds meetings and rehearsals in venues available to the public across the Twin Cities metro area, such as recreational centers, community rooms, and classrooms at universities. The group’s events and performances have been featured in local newspapers and other media outlets, showcasing the presence and contributions of Peruvian culture in Minnesota. Each member of Mi Perú-MN balances a full time job and/or family responsibilities with dedicating time and resources to the group. Mi Perú-MN brings together a multigenerational community of women and empowers members to share their passion for dancing as part of an ethnic community. These experiences motivate members to stay engaged and committed to promoting Peruvian folklore in Minnesota.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/1. Main Page Group Photo.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/mi-minnesota"},{"alt":"Dakota cradleboard ornament with quillwork","author":[{"name":"Margaret Vaughan","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/margaret-vaughan"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"December 08, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186622056203,"name":"1792–1861 (Expansion and Reform)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Faribault, Pelagie (1783–1847)","postbody":"Pelagie Faribault was a métis (Native and European) woman who received Wita Tanka (Big Island, also called Pike Island) from her Dakota kin as part of an 1820 treaty with the United States. ...","searchtext":"Pelagie Faribault was a métis (Native and European) woman who received Wita Tanka (Big Island, also called Pike Island) from her Dakota kin as part of an 1820 treaty with the United States. The Faribault family had influence among their Dakota relatives, and Pelagie in particular was known for her acts of generosity. Pelagie Faribault was born in 1783 at Prairie du Chien. Historical records also refer to her as Kinnie Hanse Ainse, Pelagie Hause, Elizabeth Pelagie Ainse Faribault, and Madame Farribault. She was a Métis of Dakota and French descent; although sources disagree, it’s likely that her mother belonged to the Mdewakanton band. Her father, Joseph Ainse, was a French Canadian from Mackinac Island who became fluent in the Dakota language and worked with both the Ojibwe and Dakota as a fur trader and Indian agent. Due to these connections, Pelagie grew up familiar with the lifeways of both sides of her family. Pelagie married twice. While caring for a daughter in her first marriage, she was widowed suddenly, and soon afterward married the French Canadian fur trader Jean-Baptiste Faribault at Inyan Ceyaka Otunwe, a summer planting village of the Mdewakanton Dakota. They married in the Dakota way. During their life together, the couple were often separated while Jean-Baptiste was brokering trades and seeing to other business. Pelagie likely reinforced the importance of Dakota ways with her husband and children. She provided Jean-Baptiste with social connections that paved the way for trade opportunities with her Dakota relatives. She was known to be kind and generous, and she provided hospitality for the friends and neighbors in their social networks. Her own Dakota relatives sometimes visited nearby for extended periods. Pelagie and Jean Baptiste had eight children, including Alexander (born in 1806), Lucie-Anne (1808), Oliver (1815), David-Frederic (1816), Amelia (Emilie) Rene (1820), Marie-Louise (1822), Philippe (1826), and Frederic-Daniel (1829). They lived with their mother at Prairie du Chien (ca. 1806), on the island called Wita Tanka (Big Island, ca. 1819 and 1820), and at Mendota (ca. 1822). The family also sheltered at Winona during the War of 1812. While there, they did not know that Jean-Baptiste had been imprisoned by the British. When the family lived on Wita Tanka, their guests included Colonel Henry Leavenworth (1819) and fur trader Philander Prescott (1820). A treaty signed by the Dakota and the United States at Mni Owe Sni (Coldwater Spring) in 1820 ceded land for the construction of a fort at Bdote, the intersection of the Mni Sota Wakpa (Minnesota River) and the Wakpa Tanka (Mississippi River). At the same time it set aside Wita Tanka, the 320-acre piece of land at the center of Bdote, specifically for Pelagie Faribault. Her Dakota relatives wanted her to have it because she was already living there with her family. In a gesture that symbolized the Dakota value of honoring women, Wita Tanka was put in Pelagie’s name rather than deeded to her husband. Traditional Dakota culture gives women rights to land and home places—not in the sense of “ownership,” but of the privilege to use and share the land and its resources with relatives. At the time, Euro-American men used white privilege and male privilege to control property and land. Due to floods on Wita Tanka, the family moved to Mendota (St. Peter) in 1826 while Jean-Baptiste ran his trading post at Inyan Ceyaka. When he was stabbed in the back and lungs by a customer in 1833, Pelagie traveled thirty-five miles at night from Mendota to Inyan Ceyaka to help him recover. In that same year, her husband purchased a Black woman (her name is unrecorded) to work as an enslaved laborer in the Faribault household. Although it was illegal, slavery was not uncommon at and near Fort Snelling before the 1850s. The terms of an 1837 treaty between the US and the Dakota ignored Pelagie’s ownership of Wita Tanka, and in 1838, advocates of the family asked the US for compensation for the land. One letter of support describes Pelagie as an influential and generous person in the Dakota community. In June 1840, Pelagie and her family moved from a log building into a larger, sandstone and Platteville limestone home at Mendota. The new house included luxuries such as a bar, a ballroom, and a billiard room. It stood 150 yards away from a building occupied by Henry Sibley, a fur trader who worked with Jean-Baptiste. On June 19, 1847, Pelagie died. After her death, her husband and some of her children moved to the site of a trading post on the Inyan Bosdata Wakpa (Cannon River). The town that was built there was named Faribault after her son Alexander. A treasury document created in February of 1858 shows that the United States paid Jean-Baptiste Faribault $12,000 for Wita Tanka in that year, eleven years after Pelagie’s death. Many of Pelagie’s children continued in the fur trade, treaty-making, and other businesses. Facing ill-fortune years later, Alexander died in poverty in 1882. He and Pelagie and other family members are buried at Calvary Cemetery in Faribault.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/1978.56.40.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246059,"name":"Native Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/faribault-pelagie-1783-1847"},{"alt":"Intersection of Sixth and Minnesota Streets, St. Paul","author":[{"name":"Lizzie Ehrenhalt","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/lizzie-ehrenhalt"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"December 03, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Arrest of Cecelia Regina Gonzaga, 1885","postbody":"Cecelia Regina Gonzaga, an African American assigned a male sex at birth, lived in St. Paul for four weeks during the summer of 1885. After a police officer arrested her for wearing women’s ...","searchtext":"Cecelia Regina Gonzaga, an African American assigned a male sex at birth, lived in St. Paul for four weeks during the summer of 1885. After a police officer arrested her for wearing women’s clothes on August 20, he took her into custody and questioned her at the Ramsey County Courthouse. He released her later the same day, but Gonzaga quickly left the city by train and returned to St. Louis. According to her own account, Cecelia Regina Gonzaga was born in Louisiana in about 1855 and assigned a male sex. The surname she later chose for herself, associated with the Italian saint Aloysius de Gonzaga, suggests that she came from a Catholic background (“Cecelia” and “Regina” are also common Catholic names). As a young adult she traveled to Jamaica to work as a missionary under the guidance of a priest. In the 1870s or early 1880s, Gonzaga lived in St. Louis, Missouri. Her gender presentation during this period is unclear, but later patterns suggest that she presented herself alternately as a man and a woman. By July 1885, she had moved 600 miles up the Mississippi River to St. Paul, where she lived first at 81 Sixth Street with Christin Sanders (a widowed Black mother of two from Missouri) and then with a Mrs. Woods at 30 Cedar Street. During her first weeks in the city, Gonzaga dressed as a man. Then, on August 20, she put on a slate-blue dress, drab cotton gloves, a pearl brooch, and a straw hat, and set out for a walk in downtown St. Paul. She carried a crocodile-skin bag. By the time she reached the intersection of Sixth and Robert Streets, other pedestrians had pointed her out to a police officer working his beat around the corner, at the intersection of Fifth and Minnesota. The officer, Jeremiah J. Sullivan, intercepted Gonzaga, charged her with impersonating a woman, and took her to the Ramsey County Courthouse. At the courthouse, police officers interrogated Gonzaga while two newspaper reporters watched. She strenuously defended herself, saying, “I have always earned an honest living, although I have not found life as bright as most people...I have always found it easier making a living doing women’s work than men’s.” She explained that when she dressed as a man she went by the name C. C. Tyler, but in her current clothes she was Cecelia Regina Gonzaga. After an examination, police declared her to be, in the words of one of the reporters, “a hermaphrodite of the most pronounced character.” Nineteenth-century writers used the (often offensive) word “hermaphrodite” to describe a broad range of people. Some of them would identify today as intersex—that is, outside the norm in their genes, gonads, hormones, or genitalia. Others would call themselves transgender, nonbinary, gender fluid, or drag queens. It’s difficult to match Gonzaga to any one of these identities, both because they solidified after 1885 and because there is no clear evidence showing how she thought of herself. Her story, however, is a historical example of gender variance: non-conformity in some facet of gender identity, make-up, or expression. Gender-variant Black people like Gonzaga were doubly vulnerable to surveillance in the late nineteenth century. During the 1880s, cities across the US adopted ordinances that made dressing as the “opposite” sex an arrestable offense. At the same time, the Jim Crow era of discrimination against African Americans in the South accelerated, and even in Northern states, police viewed Black people who took up public space with suspicion. Often, they watched them more closely than their white counterparts. When gender-variant African Americans looked for jobs and homes in cities they put themselves at risk for police abuse twice over—first by being Black and second by being gender non-conforming. The St. Paul Globe and Minneapolis Tribune reporters who described Gonzaga’s arrest did not record any abuse. Because custom entitled people labeled hermaphrodites in the 1880s to wear the clothes of women or men, as they chose, identifying Gonzaga as a hermaphrodite was enough for the St. Paul police. They released her from custody after her examination on the condition that she dress as either a man or a woman, but not both. Gonzaga left the courthouse, but she spent only one more night in St. Paul. On August 21, she boarded a southbound train and returned to St. Louis.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/MR2.9 SP2.1 r106.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056216,"name":"African Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246060,"name":"Crime and Punishment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/arrest-cecelia-regina-gonzaga-1885"},{"alt":"Minnesota State Prison, Stillwater","author":[{"name":"Anna Stitt","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/anna-stitt"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"November 24, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Minnesota State Prison, Stillwater","postbody":"Minnesota Correctional Facility-Stillwater, Minnesota’s oldest prison, was built in Stillwater as the Territorial Prison in 1853. It moved to a location in what is now Bayport between 1910 ...","searchtext":"Minnesota Correctional Facility-Stillwater, Minnesota’s oldest prison, was built in Stillwater as the Territorial Prison in 1853. It moved to a location in what is now Bayport between 1910 and 1914. MCF-Stillwater has been the site of multiple rebellions and also publishes the Prison Mirror, likely the oldest continuously operated prisoner newspaper in the US. When European settlers first colonized the Dakota and Ojibwe land that would become the state of Minnesota, people accused of breaking territorial law were sent to Fort Snelling. Military guards watched them, but they often escaped before they were sentenced. Minnesota Territory’s legislature requested money from the federal government to build a prison in 1849, and Congress approved the request in 1850. Territorial officials chose to build the prison on a marshy piece of land in Stillwater, a settler-colonial St. Croix Valley hub, and the newly completed stone prison received its first prisoners in 1854. It held both men and women. It had six cells, two dungeons for solitary confinement, and a twelve-foot perimeter wall. “Rioting,” “adultery,” and “stealing horses in Indian Country” were among the crimes that landed people in the prison in its early years. Staff punished “unruly conduct” or “disobedience” by putting prisoners in the dungeon and giving them only bread and water. Staff were also permitted to whip prisoners twenty times a day for five days. Escapes were common. The prison||s first warden put prisoners to work for his private manufacturing business. In 1890, the state built its own twine-binding factory inside the prison—a forerunner of the statewide prison industries program later called MINNCOR. The state eventually expanded the prison, but it was damp and infested with roaches and bed bugs. Between 1912 and 1914, prison officials moved everyone into a new facility two miles south in a town now called Bayport, and they closed the old facility down. In 1920, when the state opened a reformatory for women, the Minnesota State Prison at Stillwater became a men’s facility. The 1960s and 1970s saw an increase in upheaval at the prison. Prisoners staged rebellions, from labor strikes and sit-ins to setting sheets on fire. Small groups of prisoners tried to escape. Unions jockeyed to represent prison staff. One union demanded that the legislature investigate the prison administration. As these events unfolded, people across Minnesota debated the purpose and culture of the prison. In 1969, Minnesota’s first commissioner of human rights sued the prison administration over the use of tear gas against a group of mostly Black and Native American prisoners. The prison’s warden said the concerns about racism were an attempt to “incite problems” among prisoners. In 1970, a judge decided that the Department of Human Rights did not have the power to monitor discrimination within the prison. Between the 1980s and 2000s, the number of people incarcerated in Minnesota steadily rose. In 1997, the Minnesota legislature required the Department of Corrections to put more than one prisoner in each cell “to the greatest extent possible.” By 2010, more than five times as many Minnesotans were locked up as in 1981. American Correctional Association (ACA) reviews in 2018 and 2019 found that the Stillwater prison—now called Minnesota Correctional Facility-Stillwater—was too crowded to meet national standards. The ACA found the prison did not have adequate space in shared cells, common space in cell blocks, or plumbing for the number of people incarcerated there. By January 1, 2020, Minnesota’s first prison was one of eleven adult prisons across the state. With a population of 1,529, it held roughly a sixth of the state’s prisoners.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/MW4.9 ST7.2S p34.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246060,"name":"Crime and Punishment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/minnesota-state-prison-stillwater"},{"alt":"Washing tubs, boards, and dolly pins at Historic Fort Snelling","author":[{"name":"Bobbie Scott","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/bobbie-scott"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"November 17, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186622056203,"name":"1792–1861 (Expansion and Reform)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"European American Women at Fort Snelling, 1819–1858","postbody":"When the Fifth Infantry Regiment came west in 1819 to build a fort on the bluff where the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers flow together, some of the soldiers brought their wives and ...","searchtext":"When the Fifth Infantry Regiment came west in 1819 to build a fort on the bluff where the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers flow together, some of the soldiers brought their wives and daughters with them. Women and girls made up around 20 percent of the fort’s population from the time of the first census in 1849 until at least 1900. They included the wives and daughters of officers but also lower-class women (wives and daughters of enlisted men, as well as their servants). The army was divided into two castes: officers and enlisted men. The two groups did not interact casually, and there were even separate hours in the sutler’s store to ensure the two groups wouldn’t come in contact. This division extended to their wives as well; officers’ wives did not socialize with the wives of enlisted men, although they could use them as servants, laundresses, or midwives. Officers’ wives organized the social events that structured life in the officer class at army forts, including parties, balls, and Sunday school classes. Lower-class women at the fort—wives of enlisted men—were working women. They were usually married to non-commissioned officers (corporals and sergeants). These women worked as laundresses for enlisted men, as servants for officers, or as hospital matrons (essentially laundresses for the hospital). The 1825 army regulations stated that women could be hired at a rate of three to a company, and one to a detachment or party of seventeen men. They also stated that laundresses would wash the soldiers’ clothes, and that the soldiers would pay the laundresses at a rate determined by the fort’s Council of Administration, which was made up of officers. Sometimes laundresses were paid by the piece, according to the number of items they washed for each soldier. We don’t know how much the laundresses at Fort Snelling were paid in the 1820s, but we know that at Fort Atkinson in Nebraska during the same time period they were paid fifty cents a month by each soldier whose clothes they washed. If they washed for seventeen soldiers, they could earn $8.50 a month. A sergeant earned eight dollars a month, so laundresses made a major economic contribution to their families. Laundresses also received one food ration per day, straw and firewood, and permission to use the doctor at the post. They were subject to military discipline and could be court martialed (e.g., for talking back to officers or selling liquor to soldiers). Some women worked as servants for officers. Officers were allowed to draw the pay and rations of one private to compensate them for one private servant. As a result, women who were servants for officers received five dollars per month in the 1820s, just like privates in the army. The labor pool at Fort Snelling in the 1820s and 1830s was small. Women servants were either the wives of enlisted men or the women who had fled the Selkirk settlement near modern Winnipeg and settled near the fort. Selkirkers Barbara Ann Shadecker and Olympia (no known last name) both worked for Colonel Josiah Snelling and his wife, Abigail. (The Snellings and other officers and officials, including Lawrence Taliaferro, also had unpaid enslaved people working in their households, especially in the 1820s and 1830s. Two of the most famous were Dred and Harriet Scott.) The 1825 Army regulations allowed two hospital matrons per regiment or one to a post. A hospital matron earned six dollars a month and received one ration a day. We know the name of only one woman who served as a hospital matron in the early years of the fort: Mary Whaley, who gave birth to the youngest of her four children, Daniel, at the fort in 1826. It’s unclear from military records whether her husband, Lester Daniel Whaley, was ever at Fort Snelling, but we know he deserted his family. Another example of desertion comes from around 1850. The September 1850 census for the fort shows a Jeremiah Mahoney, soldier, with wife Eliza and children William and “Maryon.” Military records show that Mahoney was an ordnance sergeant. The census doesn’t list an occupation for Eliza, but she could have been a laundress. She married, or at least had two children by, William Sloan, a surgeon in the army. Her children William and Marian were born in 1843 and 1845. There is no record of a divorce, but in 1848 she married Mahoney in St. Louis. By 1852 she had left him as well and ended up in Santa Fe with her children. She traveled the Santa Fe trail several times and died in Los Angeles in 1905. While we know the basic outlines of the lives of European American women at Fort Snelling, we have yet to discover most of their stories. It remains clear that these women—the wives of officers and enlisted men—survived challenging circumstances far away from the cities of the East.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/laundry copy.jpeg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246055,"name":"Labor","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/european-american-women-fort-snelling-1819-1858"},{"alt":"Horse-drawn","author":[{"name":"Dave Kenney","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/dave-kenney"}],"categoryTag":[],"date":"November 10, 2020","eraTag":[],"keydate":"","name":"Moving through Minnesota: Transportation in the Land of Lakes","postbody":"Humans have always been mobile creatures. Although some claim to prefer sedentary activities, most actually find it difficult to stay in one place for too long. Minnesotans are no different ...","searchtext":"Humans have always been mobile creatures. Although some claim to prefer sedentary activities, most actually find it difficult to stay in one place for too long. Minnesotans are no different in this regard from anyone else. They vary only in the particulars. People have moved into, out of, and within the borders of the land we now call Minnesota for centuries. Their movements—and the ways they have moved—constitute the history of transportation in the state. One way to understand the history of human movement in Minnesota is to consider methods of locomotion. When people move from place to place, something must provide the power that propels them forward. In Minnesota, like nearly everywhere else, the sources of that power fall into three broad categories: human, animal, and machine. Human Power For as long as humans have inhabited the land now known as Minnesota, people have moved from one place to another on foot. The Dakota, and later the Ojibwe, traversed prairies and woodlands by blazing trails and following the paths that animals took to water. They wore moccasins and leggings to protect their feet and limbs during warm months, and snowshoes during the winter. They carried food and other necessities on their backs, and when their cargo was too heavy, they pulled it over land and ice on travois, sleds, and toboggans. Europeans later adopted many foot-travelling techniques and followed many routes established by Minnesota’s Indigenous inhabitants. In recent times, shoe-clad Minnesotans have come to think of walking and hiking more as recreation and less as transportation, although many city- and town-dwelling pedestrians still move between destinations on streets, sidewalks, and skyways. Minnesota’s wealth of lakes, rivers, and wetlands have long provided ideal conditions for human-powered water travel. Plains-dwelling Dakota paddled over long distances in heavy dugouts carved from tree trunks. Forest-dwelling Dakota and the Ojibwe who displaced them relied on lighter, more nimble, birchbark canoes. During the fur trade period of the 1700s and 1800s, French, British, and American travelers incorporated technology perfected by Minnesota’s first inhabitants in their watercraft. Voyageurs working for the Hudson Bay Company, the North West Company, the XY Company, and the American Fur Company transported goods and pelts back and forth across Lake Superior in Montreal canoes, up to thirty-six-feet long. Once inside the Minnesota interior, they paddled and portaged smaller versions, called North canoes, through a vast network of water routes. Today, outdoor enthusiasts paddle those same routes, and many others, in modern canoes made of aluminum, plastic, fiberglass, and Kevlar. Another, more recent, form of human-powered transportation common in Minnesota is the bicycle. The first bicycles, called velocipedes, appeared in the Twin Cities in 1869. The “two-wheeled machines” grew slowly in popularity. But the introduction of the “safety” bicycle, with its lightweight frame and pneumatic tires, sparked a “wheeling” craze. By the late 1890s, the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul were both building dedicated pathways to accommodate the growing volume of bicycle traffic. As new modes of transportation came to dominate urban transportation during the twentieth century, bicyclists found it increasingly difficult and dangerous to maneuver through city streets. But in recent years, bicycling’s exploding popularity—driven in large part by environmental concerns—has sparked the creation of new networks of urban and suburban bicycle paths and a statewide system of bike trails, built largely on abandoned railbeds. Animal Power The first forms of animal-powered transportation in Minnesota date back, again, to the earliest eras of human habitation. The Dakota and Ojibwe both adapted sleds and toboggans for pulling by domesticated dogs. Later, Native and European practitioners of the fur trade traveled long distances in relative comfort by riding inside carioles—simple one-person sleighs, with sides covered in buffalo hide, drawn by dog teams. The skills developed by sled dog drivers during Minnesota’s early history live on today in winter competitions, like Duluth’s annual John Beargrease Sled Dog Marathon. The Dakota were among the many Indigenous people of North America who successfully incorporated the domesticated horse into their cultures. The horse was an integral part of Dakota travel, hunting, and warfare—both as the carrier of single riders and as the hauler of cargo. European settlers likewise depended on horses to aid their advance into Dakota and Ojibwe lands during the 1800s and early 1900s. Horses pulled wagons, carriages, buggies, sleighs, and coaches over prairie trails and stagecoach routes, and through the unpaved streets of cities and towns. During the 1870s and 1880s, they towed the first streetcars in St. Paul and Minneapolis along rail track set in major thoroughfares. Today, many rural Minnesotans continue to keep horses as work and companion animals, while most urban residents encounter them only as the mounts of police officers or the pullers of tourist carriages. Another beast of burden, the ox—a castrated male bovine trained to pull heavy loads—played an important transportation role in Minnesota’s late fur trade era. During the early 1800s, the Métis, people of mixed European and Native American heritage, began leading brigades of ox-drawn contraptions called Red River carts on the difficult back-and-forth journey between the Red River Colony (present-day Winnipeg) and St. Paul. The carts, made entirely of wood, set out carrying bison hides, furs, meat, and pemmican for trade; on return trips, they brought back much-needed supplies like ammunition, tobacco, and seed. Along the way, their wooden wheels and axels rotated without the benefit of lubrication, creating a relentless squeal that could torture ears miles away. Machine Power: By Water Minnesota’s steamboat era began in 1823, when a small Mississippi River stern-wheeler named the Virginia carried supplies and several passengers from St. Louis, Missouri, to Fort Snelling. In the years that followed, a growing fleet of steamboats turned the Upper Mississippi into a major artery for tourists and immigrants moving to Minnesota. During the summer of 1854, seven of those steamers took about one thousand people on a “Grand Excursion” from Rock Island, Illinois, to St. Paul. The event was meant to commemorate the recent completion of the Chicago and Rock Island Railroad and promote western expansion. Soon steamboats were showing up on waterways throughout Minnesota, including the Minnesota River, the Red River, and the chain of lakes stretching southwest from Detroit Lakes. Steamers also enjoyed a long run on Lake Minnetonka. For about five decades, beginning in 1860, steamboats ranging in description from modest to palatial ferried vacationers, day excursionists, and residents to and from docks scattered around the lake. Passenger steamboat travel all but ended during the 1920s, as other forms of transportation—especially the automobile—grew in popularity. By the 1930s, the steamers’ usefulness as cargo haulers was eclipsed by the burgeoning barge industry, which was itself made possible by the introduction of new diesel-powered tugboats and the construction of an extensive lock and dam system. Today barges continue to move millions of tons of commodities annually through the Mississippi River navigation channel overseen by the US Army Corps of Engineers’ St. Paul District. Steam-powered shipping arrived on the upper Great Lakes during the 1870s, after completion of the Duluth Ship Canal. The first steam vessels to dock at Duluth were wooden bulk freighters and steamers. In the 1880s, bulk freight vessels made of iron and steel began to replace the wooden ships. It was during that time that the city’s shipbuilding industry took off. Among the most notable early firms were the Marine Iron and Shipbuilding Company and the American Steel Barge Company, which pioneered the design and construction of the whaleback, a unique cargo ship with a rounded deck. Duluth’s shipping industry focused initially on moving grain brought to port by rail. By the 1890s, it was shipping out millions of tons of iron ore from the recently industrialized Mesabi Iron Range. During those early years, Great Lakes steamers also carried passengers—many of them immigrants—to Duluth. By the turn of the twentieth century, the passengers were mostly vacationers on cruise ships. During World War I, the shipyards of Duluth and its twin port of Superior, Wisconsin, produced dozens of steam-powered warships. During World War II, they turned out even more diesel-powered vessels under military contract. With the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway in 1959, Duluth became a truly global port capable of accommodating huge oceangoing cargo ships. Today, it continues to handle millions of tons of cargo each year—mostly iron ore and coal. Machine Power: By Rail The nation’s growing network of railroads stretched nearly to Minnesota by the late 1850s, but the Civil War dashed all hopes that the “iron horse” would proliferate quickly across the new state. In 1862, Minnesota’s first steam-powered locomotive, the William Crooks, made its pioneer run from St. Paul to St. Anthony on a line that was meant to stretch to St. Cloud. It took four years for the grandly named St. Paul and Pacific Railroad (SP&P) to reach its destination. After that, though, Minnesota’s web of railroads expanded rapidly, carrying passengers and freight to locations near and far. By 1873, nearly all of the state’s pioneer mainlines were complete. Most of them radiated out from St. Paul and Minneapolis, but several bypassed the Twin Cities. Three stretched westward across the southern part of the state, and another, the Northern Pacific, connected Duluth with Moorhead and points beyond. The addition of multiple branch lines during the late 1870s and 1880s turned Minnesota’s rail system into an integrated network. This was also a period of consolidation in the industry, and few personified the railroad consolidation trend better than Minnesota’s James J. Hill. Known widely as the “Empire Builder,” Hill began buying bankrupt railroads during the 1870s. He upgraded his lines, added to them, and eventually combined them into a transcontinental powerhouse called the Great Northern Railway. He also acquired the Northern Pacific in 1896. Hill remained Minnesota’s dominant railroad personality well into the 1900s, but he had plenty of competitors, including the millers of Minneapolis, who established their own railroad, the Soo Line, to carry wheat and flour to eastern markets. By the 1920s, the railroads’ transportation dominance was beginning to wane. Over the next several decades, they lost much of their passenger business to automobiles and aircraft. Their share of intercity freight declined in the face of competition from trucks and pipelines. Railroads in Minnesota and elsewhere responded by eliminating local passenger service, abandoning branch lines, and switching to more efficient diesel locomotives. Today Minnesota’s rail network is dominated by four “Class I” freight carriers: BNSF, Union Pacific, Canadian National, and Canadian Pacific. Passenger service is provided by AMTRAK’s Empire Builder line. Many city leaders considered the coal-fired steam locomotives that powered Minnesota’s railroad revolution to be too noisy and dirty for use in urban settings, but they did not necessarily object to other types of machine-powered rail systems. In 1888 and 1889, the two companies that ran Minneapolis’s and St. Paul’s plodding horse car system experimented briefly with cable cars powered by steam generators. But within a year, they began switching over to a more promising solution: electric streetcars. (Other Minnesota cities, including Stillwater, East Grand Forks, Moorhead, Mankato, Duluth, Winona, St. Cloud, Breckenridge, and Hibbing, would eventually do the same.) The trolleys, as they were known, were powered by electricity fed to them by overhead wires. By 1892, Thomas Lowry’s newly merged and incorporated Twin City Rapid Transit Company (TCRT), had converted nearly all its routes to electric operation. Over the next six decades, TCRT’s electric streetcars carried hundreds of millions of passengers over a system that fanned out as far as Stillwater, White Bear Lake, and Lake Minnetonka. But declining ridership prompted by the automobile’s growing popularity eventually led TCRT to replace the streetcars with buses. The last streetcar made its final run in 1954. Fifty years later, in 2004, a new form of electric rail transit—light rail—made its debut with the opening of a line linking downtown Minneapolis with Fort Snelling. The light rail system, operated by Metro Transit, has since expanded to include an additional line between Minneapolis and St. Paul, with another line planned between Minneapolis and Burnsville. Metro Transit also operates a commuter rail line, the Northstar Line, between Minneapolis and Big Lake. Machine Power: By Road Minnesota’s first self-propelled road vehicle, a steam-driven “prairie motor” assembled by Joseph R. Brown of Henderson, never got very far after making its initial run down Henderson’s Main Street in 1860. In the three decades that followed, several other enterprising Minnesotans experimented with steam contraptions built on the frames of wagons, carts, and bicycles, but their efforts generated little besides curiosity. It wasn’t until the 1890s that the first vehicles powered by gasoline engines started appearing in the state. It didn’t take long after that for the automobile to become Minnesotans’ favorite mode of personal transportation. By 1908, there were about 7,000 automobiles registered in the state. Five years later, there were more than 42,000. The growing popularity of the automobile helped spur massive public investments in transportation infrastructure. In the 1910s, the state’s “Good Roads” movement, which was originally led by bicyclists, began focusing on the need to make better roads and bridges for autos. In 1921, Minnesota’s newly created Department of Highways began the long process of constructing, improving, and maintaining a system of trunk highways throughout the state. The agency’s responsibilities expanded with the passage of the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1944 (for improving secondary rural and urban roads) and the establishment of the National System of Interstate and Defense Highways in 1956. In 1976, the Highway Department merged into the new Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT), which eventually grew to oversee all modes of transportation in the state. The build-out of the state’s road and bridge system both reflected and encouraged Minnesotans’ growing dependence on cars and trucks. Today, there are more than five million motor vehicles registered in Minnesota, with trucks (including pickups, vans, and sports utility vehicles) outnumbering cars by fifty percent. Despite the efforts of many early entrepreneurs—including, most notoriously, Sam Pandolfo, the disgraced promoter of St. Cloud’s ill-fated Pan Motor Company—Minnesota never established itself as a major force in automobile manufacturing. Its primary claim to auto-making fame was the succession of Ford Motor Company manufacturing plants that operated in Minneapolis and St. Paul for nearly a century. The longest-lasting of those plants, the production facility in St. Paul’s Highland Park neighborhood, produced its final vehicle—a Ford Ranger pickup truck—in 2011. The improved road system that helped the automobile become Minnesota’s dominant form of transportation also encouraged the development of another type of wheeled conveyance: the passenger bus. In 1914, a former mineworker and failed automobile dealer named Carl Wickman began using an unsold, seven-seat Hupmobile to shuttle miners to work and back in the Iron Range town of Hibbing. His one-man operation quickly expanded. He took on partners, acquired new buses, and added routes. By 1917, his Mesaba Transportation Company was the dominant bus operation on the range. Then, through a series of mergers, acquisitions, and divestments, Wickman and his partners incorporated a new company, Northland Transportation. That company, in turn, became an essential component of what would eventually be the world’s largest intercity passenger carrier: the Greyhound Corporation. To this day, Greyhound continues to call Hibbing its “birthplace.” For many years, bus transportation in Minnesota was limited almost exclusively to the type of intercity service Greyhound provided, but that all changed in the 1950s, when Twin City Rapid Transit, the predecessor of Metro Transit, replaced its streetcars with buses. Today public transit systems run buses not only in larger cities like Minneapolis, St. Paul, Duluth, and Rochester, but also in smaller communities like Fosston, Morris, Granite Falls, St. Peter, LaCrescent, and, appropriately, Hibbing. Machine Power: By Air Minnesota aviation history dates back to the first decade of the twentieth century, not long after Wilbur and Orville Wright made their historic first flight in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. The Wright brothers’ breakthrough inspired several inventive Minnesotans to design flying machines of their own, but their contraptions were mostly whimsical flights of fancy. It wasn’t until the 1910s that the state recorded any truly notable aeronautical advances. In 1911, pilot Hugh Robinson took off (just barely) from Lake Calhoun (Bde Maka Ska) in a pontoon airship, on his way to New Orleans, Louisiana. He made it only to Rock Island, Illinois. Two years later, another local daredevil, Alexander T. Heine, flew a circle around the Hennepin County Courthouse in what was billed as the first Minnesota-built flying machine. Commercial aviation took off in the state during the 1920s, when St. Paul businessman L. H. Britt convinced investors in Detroit, Michigan, to back his idea for an airline that would carry mail—and a few passengers—on a route connecting the Twin Cities and Chicago. He called the new venture Northwest Airlines. In the eight decades that followed, Twin Cities-based Northwest grew into one the world’s most successful airlines, with routes stretching across the United States, and to Asia and Europe. In 2008, it was acquired by Delta Airlines, which continues to use the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport (formerly Wold-Chamberlain Field) as a major hub. Although Northwest was a dominant force in Minnesota for the better part of a century, it was just part of the state’s aviation story. Several other airlines, including North Central and Sun Country, have called Minnesota home. A handful of Minnesota-based manufacturers, including Pietenpol Airplanes of Cherry Grove, Bellanca Aircraft of Alexandria, and Cirrus Aircraft of Duluth, have produced a variety of small aircraft over the years. And perhaps most notably, Charles Lindbergh of Little Falls transfixed the world by making a non-stop flight across the Atlantic Ocean in a single-engine airplane in 1927. Recent Trends Most of the transportation modes that developed over the years in Minnesota are still with us today, but we sometimes use them differently than our predecessors. Many city residents have abandoned car ownership in favor of public transportation and “app-based” ride providers like Lyft and Uber. Bike share services like Nice Ride and scooter-share companies like Lime provide urban commuters with additional options. Cities are reconfiguring their streets to better accommodate cyclists and pedestrians. And a growing network of MNPass express lanes now makes it possible for solo motorists to shorten their commute times—if they’re willing to pay for the privilege.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/HE2.3 r29.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246053,"name":"Transportation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/moving-through-minnesota-transportation-land-lakes"},{"alt":"Polish immigrants in front of their farmhouse","author":[{"name":"John Radzilowski","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/john-radzilowski"}],"categoryTag":[],"date":"November 03, 2020","eraTag":[],"keydate":"","name":"Polish Immigration to Minnesota","postbody":"Polish immigrants and their descendants settled in Minnesota in both urban and rural communities. They came to the state in several distinct waves from the 1850s to 2004. Early Polish ...","searchtext":"Polish immigrants and their descendants settled in Minnesota in both urban and rural communities. They came to the state in several distinct waves from the 1850s to 2004. Early Polish immigrants were mainly farmers and industrial laborers, but their descendants and later waves of immigrants from Poland hold a wide range of occupations. They have made numerous and varied contributions to the economy and culture of Minnesota. Polish Americans are an enduring presence in a state popularly known for its Scandinavian and German populations. Poles first came to Minnesota Territory in the 1840s, and Polish migration to the state continued in waves until the 1990s and 2000s. By 2010, Minnesotans claiming Polish ancestry numbered over 260,000, or about 1 in every 20 residents. Poles settled throughout the state, with large concentrations in the Twin Cities, Winona, Duluth, and central Minnesota. Although the earliest Polish immigrants were most likely to be farmers and laborers, Poles in Minnesota have made many contributions in the professions, academia, the arts, and business, and remain a vibrant part of the state’s cultural and ethnic history. Origins The Polish immigrants to Minnesota came from a land at the heart of many of the modern era’s fiercest political conflicts. Poland is located between Germany to the west, Russia to the east, and the Baltic Sea to the north. In the early 1600s, Poland was one of the largest countries in Europe. It had a unique constitutional monarchy with a strong parliament that allowed for an unusual degree of ethnic and religious diversity. In addition to ethnic Poles, the country was, until World War II, home to one of the world’s largest Jewish communities, as well as many Germans, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Lithuanians, Scots, Rusyns, Tatars, and others. By the 1700s, the Polish Commonwealth fell into political decay under the influence of foreign powers such as Russia. Despite efforts at the internal reform, between 1772 and 1795 Poland was partitioned between Russia, Prussia, and Austria and ceased to exist as an independent country. Throughout the nineteenth century, a series of unsuccessful revolts sought to restore the nation’s independence, resulting in increased repression and social and economic upheaval. Poles who settled in Minnesota in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries came with an experience of having been colonized by powerful neighbors who often placed severe restrictions on Polish cultural and religious expression. The first significant groups of Poles to come to Minnesota arrived from Prussian (later German) occupied regions of western Poland, such as Silesia, Poznan, and Pomerania. These regions were the most economically advanced sectors of Poland, but the largely Catholic Poles from the German partition were also subject to a systematic campaign of Germanization and attacks on their Catholic faith. A second group of Poles came from Austrian-controlled region of southern Poland, called Galicia, which included the northern section of the Carpathian Mountains. Galicia was the most economically backward region of Poland (and one of Europe’s poorest areas) but enjoyed a higher degree of cultural autonomy. Poles also arrived from the Russian partition of Poland, the largest of the three sectors. Although this region was a gateway for Russian trade with Europe, it was the scene of three major revolts against Tsarist rule, and its population endured widespread repression. Large-scale migration of Poles began in the 1850s from parts of Prussia/Germany and continued through the 1890s. By the late 1870s, even more Poles began coming to the US from Austria-Hungary, and they were joined by migrants from Russia by the late 1880s. By the turn of the twentieth century, a flood of Polish migration reached American shores, peaking in the years before World War I. Poland regained her independence at the end of World War I, which coincided with increasing American restrictions on immigration from eastern and southern Europe. In 1939, Poland was invaded by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. The country’s centuries-old Jewish population was nearly wiped out, and millions of Polish Christians were murdered or driven into exile. Following World War II, Poland again became a colonial subject—this time of the Soviet Union, which imposed communism by force. Many Polish refugees from Nazism and communism came to the US and to Minnesota during the Cold War years. Following the collapse of communism in Poland in 1989, economic migrants from Poland once again sought opportunity in America, with some finding homes in Minnesota. As economic conditions at home gradually improved, and after Poland entered the European Union in 2004, Polish immigration to the USA (and Minnesota) declined to a steady trickle. Early Communities The first Pole to come to what would become Minnesota may have arrived as early as late the 1840s or early 1850s. Groups of political refugees who fled the failed November Insurrection against Russian rule in 1830/31 or the Revolutions of 1848 ended up in St. Louis or Illinois and may have journeyed north by steamboat to St. Paul. By 1858, a group of Poles from the Kashubian region near the Baltic coast settled in Winona, creating Minnesota’s first Polish community. Polish settlement grew slowly but steadily over the next two decades. In the 1860s, Poles from Silesia settled in Wright County, near Delano, as well as in Morrison and McLeod Counties. By the 1870s, a small network of Polish communities had formed in rural central and southern Minnesota, created and sustained through chain migration. Most of these immigrants came from specific regions and even villages and arrived in Minnesota communities inhabited by neighbors and relatives. Polish immigrants who settled in Wells (Faribault County) came from the Silesian village of Syców. Silesian and Kaszubian communities in Minnesota retained a distinct regional identity, including dialect and customs. Silesians were often bilingual in Polish and German and spoke a local Silesian dialect. These communities often retained closer links to other Silesian or Kashubian settlements than to larger and more mixed Polish urban communities. Beginning in the 1880s, a different type of settlement pattern brought Polish immigrants to rural Minnesota: planned “colonies.” As Poles flooded into urban centers such as Chicago, many leaders of the growing Polish community worried that factory work and the rough-and-tumble environment of burgeoning cities would weaken the morals and culture of immigrants coming from rural villages. Fraternal societies, such as the Polish National Alliance (PNA) and the Polish Roman Catholic Union of America (PRCUA), initiated efforts to resettle their compatriots from cities to rural areas. Touting the advantages of farm life, leaders of the PNA and other groups worked with railroad companies and Minnesota’s Catholic bishops to found a series of planned communities in Minnesota. Wilno (Lincoln County) began in 1882 and was promoted by PNA leaders and by the editors of the newspaper Gazeta Chicagoska (Chicago Gazette). The majority of settlers came from Chicago and LaSalle, Illinois, with a few from Pennsylvania, Nebraska, and other areas of Minnesota. Other planned settlements for Poles in the state included Sturgeon Lake (Pine County), and a series of small parishes in Kittison, Roseau, and Marshall counties. Polish immigrants also began to settle Minnesota’s urban landscape. In 1872, Czechs and Poles jointly founded St. Stanislaus parish in St. Paul, but the two groups soon separated, and Poles formed their first parish in the Twin Cities with the creation of St. Adalbert in Frogtown in 1881. Poles were attracted to the city’s growing economy, which needed a steady stream of workers. Poles found jobs in meatpacking, light industry, and railroads, and Polish settlement expanded to East St. Paul as well. Within a few years, Polish immigrants also found homes in Minneapolis—particularly Northeast Minneapolis, with its growing milling industry. Holy Cross parish, founded in 1886, would become the largest Polish parish in the Twin Cities, spinning off four daughter parishes by World War I. Duluth also attracted a growing number of Polish immigrants who came to work as industrial laborers as well as on the city’s waterfront. Prior to World War I, Poles established over fifty communities in outstate Minnesota in addition to large urban concentrations in Northeast and North Minneapolis and Frogtown and East St. Paul. They established almost fifty Polish Roman Catholic parishes along with several Polish National Catholic churches and one Missouri Synod Lutheran congregation. Poles in the Twin Cities, Duluth, and Iron Range towns like Virginia were primarily industrial laborers, though some held higher-skilled positions in manufacturing. In smaller, rural communities Poles were almost exclusively farmers. Winona proved something of an exception, where the Kashubian community combined wage labor in the city’s mills and small factories with farming. Rural communities were dominated by families with roots in German-occupied western Poland, though a few places, such as Sturgeon Lake, drew immigrants from the Russian-held sector as well. Early Polish arrivals in Winona, St. Paul, and Duluth were also from western Poland, but neighborhoods such as East St. Paul and Northeast Minneapolis attracted the majority of their Polish residents from Russian-controlled eastern regions of Poland and especially the Austrian-ruled highland regions of southern Poland. Family and Community Emigration from Poland was based on the need to sustain families. Early settlers in rural communities often came as family units, which in some cases included extended families, often a husband and wife with one or more children. Later immigrants and especially those who took jobs in Minnesota industries were more likely to come as single men or women, sometimes in peer groups from the same village or region. The typical wage-labor immigrant was a single male who came to earn as much money as possible through working long hours. Many intended to (and did) return to Europe after earning funds sufficient to pay off family debts or marry and start a family. Groups of single women also immigrated for wage labor, but during the early stages of immigration men usually outnumbered women. Polish immigrants to Minnesota created families and culture that acted as a compromise between the life they had known in Europe and new realities in America. Home villages with their support networks of extended, multi-generational families were far away. Immigrant families, and especially immigrant women, had to recreate familiar cultural markers in a new and often difficult environment without the benefit of that network. In doing so, they created a new hybrid Polish culture in Minnesota and made their new communities a place they could call home. The key to Polish community life in Minnesota was the establishment of a Roman Catholic parish. While Poland had been a land of many cultures and faiths, the process of immigration fueled the creation of separate identities. While many Jews came from the historic lands of Poland, only a handful identified as Poles, and thus they developed their own community institution as did the many Ukrainians, Rusyns, and Lithuanians who arrived in Minnesota. However, this process was gradual and not always straightforward. Immigrants from the Carpathian mountain regions included Poles, Slovaks, and Rusyns, and these groups often had much in common, including mutually comprehensible dialects. In Northeast Minneapolis Slovak immigrants attended the Polish parish of Holy Cross until the establishment of a separate Slovak parish of Saints Cyril and Methodius. For the new immigrants, parishes were places of spiritual sustenance and much more. As centers of community life, they took on numerous cultural, social, economic, and political roles. Parishes were the focus of Polish immigrants’ most profound hopes and bitterest rivalries. For new arrivals living on the margins of American society, founding and sustaining parishes called for tremendous mobilization of human and material resources. Polish communities in Minnesota were filled with men and women working on small farms from sunrise to sunset or ten- to twelve-hour shifts in mills or factories, so the building of beautiful churches filled with color, music, and light reflected their aspirations to rise above their material circumstances and served as the stone and mortar roots that bound them to their new homeland. They contracted architects like Minneapolis’ Victor Cordella, an immigrant of mixed Polish-Italian ancestry, to create churches that blended east-central European and American elements into a new architectural synthesis. Parishes were centers of community organization. Polish immigrants were “joiners” who created hundreds of formal and informal groups. In addition to faith-based organizations such as rosary and altar societies and sodalities for men and women, parishes sponsored fraternal self-help organizations that provided death benefit insurance and participated in a range of cultural and religious activities. Even a small parish like St. Adalbert in Silver Lake sponsored three separate Polish men’s groups who dressed in historical garb to commemorate important patriotic anniversaries. Polish parishes also hosted bands and choirs, libraries and literary societies, theatrical groups, building and loan associations, sports teams, and numerous informal groups dedicated to a wide range of activities and interests. Many fraternal societies belonged to one of the national Polish fraternal organizations, such as the PNA, PRCUA, Polish Women’s Alliance, or Polish Union. Minnesota also had its own Polish fraternal: the Polish White Eagle Association, based in Minneapolis with a dozen local societies around the state. By the 1970s, while parishes remained important centers of community life for Minnesota Polonia, a gradual movement of second- and third-generation Poles beyond the original neighborhood boundaries meant communities were less spatially defined and more based on individual interest and affiliation. Old organizations declined in membership while new organizations emerged. Groups like the Polish American Cultural Institute of Minnesota (PACIM) and the Polish Genealogical Society of Minnesota served an increasingly suburbanized English-speaking community, while Adam Mickiewicz Saturday School in Minneapolis taught Polish language and culture to the children of recent immigrants. Immigration from Post-war Poland At the end of World War II, the Soviet Union placed a communist proxy regime in power in Poland. The war had caused immense death and devastation to Poland, and hundreds of thousands found themselves as refugees in western Europe. Many were former concentration camp survivors, victims of Nazi slave labor, or veterans of the Polish armed forces that had fought alongside the Allies. Facing persecution by the communists, many chose to stay in the West. Groups of these “displaced persons,” or DPs, made their way to the .S, and some came to Minnesota by the early 1950s. The majority settled in the Twin Cities, although individuals and families found homes throughout the state. Although small in number compared to those who had come to the state in the first waves of immigration, members of the new cohort were often well educated and active in the cause of Polish independence. Small numbers of Polish immigrants continued to come to Minnesota in the 1960s and 1970s. After the election of Pope John Paul II in 1978 and the rise of the Solidarity free trade union movement, the communist regime cracked down on dissidents, and a new group of political refugees left Poland in the mid 1980s. Many were educated professionals, and Minnesota’s strong economy attracted a number of these refugees who found positions in higher education and as engineers for companies such as 3M and Honeywell. The collapse of the communist dictatorship in Poland and neighboring countries between 1989 and 1991 opened the way for a new group of economic immigrants as well. Although cities like New York and Chicago attracted the largest number of Polish newcomers, Minnesota’s economy and family connections with previously arrived Polish Americans ensured a modest stream of Poles. This migration continued throughout the 1990s, though as Poland’s economy improved and migration to EU countries like England and Ireland became a possibility, the number of Polish immigrants declined. Between Poland and Minnesota Polish cultural life in America and in Minnesota began as a careful compromise between values brought from Europe prior to World War I and the new environment immigrants and their descendants encountered in North America. The result was a distinctly hybrid culture that often emphasized folk arts, including dance, which were accessible to Polish Americans but translated well to Americans beyond the Polish community. Waves of post-war emigres viewed this hybrid as too Americanized and emphasized elements of culture contemporary to the Poland they had left. In both approaches, Poles made important contributions to the cultural richness of the Northstar state. Authors such as poet Wiktoria Janda and short story writer Monika Krawczyk wrote in English, but with a distinctly Polish American voice. Both women were leaders of the Polanie Club, a women’s organization that ran a highly successful publishing operation focused on making Polish customs accessible to Americans. The group’s cookbook, Treasured Polish Recipes for Americans, remained in print for fifty years. Among the many Poles who have made notable contributions to Minnesota art, Stanisław Skrowaczewski (d. 2017) was perhaps the best known. He served as conductor of the Minnesota Orchestra from 1960 to 1979, and as conductor laureate thereafter, and his interpretations of the work of Anton Bruckner are considered among the best in contemporary classical music. Although no longer concentrated in geographically-defined communities, Minnesota’s Polish Americans continue to find ways to express and celebrate their culture and heritage. In 2009, the first annual PolishFest was held in Minneapolis, featuring music, food, crafts, and art. The Polish American Medical Society of Minnesota began in 2017 to bring together Poles working in the healthcare field, and PACIM created a literary fund to help introduce contemporary Polish authors to Minnesota. Since the creation of the first Polish community in 1858, Polish immigrants and their descendants find new and diverse ways to make Minnesota home.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Poles_03_IHRCA.jpg","topicsTag":[],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/polish-immigration-minnesota"},{"alt":"Minnesota tourism brochure","author":[{"name":"Mark Haidet","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/mark-haidet"}],"categoryTag":[],"date":"October 21, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186622056203,"name":"1792–1861 (Expansion and Reform)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Tourism in Minnesota, 1835–1940","postbody":"Minnesota’s scenic beauty, more than 11,000 lakes, and favorable summer climate have attracted tourists for nearly 200 years. The tourism industry flourished between World War I and 1930, ...","searchtext":"Minnesota’s scenic beauty, more than 11,000 lakes, and favorable summer climate have attracted tourists for nearly 200 years. The tourism industry flourished between World War I and 1930, when Minnesota developed its reputation as the Land of 10,000 Lakes and one of the nation’s premier summer vacation destinations. In 1835, artist George Catlin traveled from St. Louis to Fort Snelling by steamboat. He described the trip as “the Fashionable Tour”—one that provided travelers a “fair sample” of the “Far West.” During the 1840s several panoramas (large unwinding rolls of painted canvas) of the Upper Mississippi toured the East, and steamboat companies began advertising “pleasure excursions” to the Falls of St. Anthony (Owamniyomni). In June 1854, former President Millard Fillmore led 1,200 prominent Easterners on “the Grand Excursion” celebrating the completion of the first railroad to reach the Mississippi River. Excursionists traveled by train to Rock Island, Illinois, before taking five steamboats to St. Paul, where they visited the Falls of St. Anthony and Fort Snelling. In the 1850s, Minnesota became a summer haven for wealthy Southerners seeking to escape the heat and diseases that plagued the South. Accompanied by enslaved people, many stayed at the Winslow House, an elegant five-story resort hotel that opened on the east side of St. Anthony Falls in 1857. The Winslow House closed in 1861 with the outbreak of the Civil War. Following the war, railroads supplanted steamboats as the primary means of tourist transportation and promoted Minnesota as a summer resort destination. Lake Minnetonka, White Bear Lake, and Alexandria developed as resort destinations. Lake Minnetonka was “The Queen of Minnesota’s Resorts.” Several dozen lodging facilities opened on the lake in the 1870s and 1880s, including three grand hotels built between 1879 and 1882: the Lake Park Hotel (Excelsior), the Hotel St. Louis (Northome), and the Lafayette Hotel (Minnetonka Beach). The grandest was the 300-room Lafayette Hotel designed by Leroy S. Buffington for James J. Hill and his St. Paul, Minneapolis and Manitoba Railroad. Wealthy tourists, many from the South, enjoyed fishing, picnicking, steamboat excursions, daily concerts, lawn and indoor games, and socializing on hotel verandas. Lake Minnetonka’s tourism industry declined following the financial Panic of 1893. By the end of World War I, only six resorts were still operating. Around the turn of the twentieth century, outdoorsmen discovered Minnesota’s lake country. Many early resorts began when settlers were called on to host parties of fishermen. The Ruttger family is Minnesota’s most noteworthy example. In the late 1890s, Joseph and Josephine Ruttger, homesteaders on Bay Lake, began providing boats, sleeping accommodations, and meals to anglers who arrived at the Deerwood train station. As their reputation spread, the Ruttgers and their four sons embraced the tourism industry. During the 1930s the family operated five Minnesota resorts. As of 2020, Ruttger’s Bay Lake Lodge is the oldest Minnesota resort operated by its founding family. Three key developments fueled the growth of Minnesota’s tourism industry in the early Twentieth Century: increased leisure time for the middle class, the automobile, and a Back to Nature Movement that encouraged city-dwellers to escape into wilderness settings. The creation of the Minnesota National Forest (name changed to Chippewa in 1928) and Superior National Forest in 1908 and 1909 helped foster Minnesota’s reputation as a North Woods destination. Government officials, regional boosters, Good Roads enthusiasts, resort pioneers, and real estate developers recognized that tourism presented a sustainable alternative to northern Minnesota’s declining lumber industry and unsuccessful attempts to farm the Cutover. The automobile transformed American life during the first decades of the century. Between 1910 and 1930 the number of registered automobiles in America increased from 500,000 to twenty-six million. The automobile encouraged a sense of adventure and spread the advantages of tourism from society’s elite to the middle class. Auto trips and auto-camping became a popular pastime, and Minnesota communities eager to attract tourists opened municipal campgrounds. Before the creation of national and state highway systems in the 1920s, Good Roads enthusiasts “blazed” named highways. Many out-of-state tourists arrived by way of two famous national trails: the Jefferson Highway (New Orleans to Winnipeg) and the Yellowstone Trail (Boston to Seattle). In 1921, Minnesota had twenty-eight registered automobile trails. Road construction opened northern Minnesota to recreational development, and by 1930, Minnesota boasted 2,600 miles of paved roads, up from 183 in 1921. Prior to World War I, railroads played the leading role in promoting Minnesota as a summer vacationland. When the federal government nationalized railroads during the war, railroads ceased advertising the state’s recreational opportunities. Civic organizations and tourism boosters led by Patrick H. McGarry, a resort owner and state senator from Walker, filled the void by creating the Ten Thousand Lakes of Minnesota Association in 1917. Funded by contributions from more than fifty communities, the association undertook a national campaign in 1918, placing ads in major Midwest newspapers and in a dozen national magazines. In 1919, the state legislature created the Land and Lakes Attraction Board. Its annual appropriation of $15,000 (later increased to $50,000) helped fund the association’s annual advertising campaign. The Ten Thousand Lakes Association enticed Americans to visit “The Land of 10,000 Lakes” until it disbanded in 1933, when the State Tourist Bureau in the Department of Conservation took the lead in advertising Minnesota. The Minnesota Arrowhead Association (created in 1924) and the Paul Bunyan Playground Association (1935) marketed their respective regions. Tourism exploded following World War I. The number of out-of-state tourists increased from approximately 17,000 in 1917 to nearly one-and-a half million in 1930. Spending by out-of-state tourists grew from approximately $937,000 in 1917 to an estimated eighty-seven million dollars in 1929. The number of resorts increased from about 200 in 1917 to 1,275 in 1931 and then to more than 2,500 in 1940. Many resorts simply consisted of a few housekeeping cabins; others took on the classic configuration of a rustic lodge/dining hall with sleeping cabins. In the late 1910s and 1920s many larger resorts, especially in the Brainerd area, began offering recreational activities for the entire family, including golf, boating, tennis, swimming with waterwheels and waterslides, dancing, children’s programs, and gambling. Ruttger’s Bay Lake Lodge added a nine-hole golf course in 1921, a log dining hall in 1922, and the Green Lantern Dance Hall in 1925. In the 1910s and 1920s, real estate developers—many from the Twin Cities—platted lakeshore properties for cabin sites. They often built resorts to entertain potential buyers. The Baker-Seaton Realty Company built Grand View Lodge (later listed on the National Register of Historic Places) in 1921 as part of its Gull Lake Park development. In 1920, Thorpe Brothers platted lakeshore on Itasca County’s Deer Lake, built Pinehurst Lodge, and marketed its development in Tulsa, Oklahoma, selling lots and building cabins on what became known as Oklahoma Hill. By the 1930s, Minnesota promoted itself as “The Summer Playground of the Nation.” As an important part of the state’s economy, tourism provided employment for thousands of area residents, cash markets for area farmers, business for local merchants, and tax revenues for state and local governments.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/2-19-j.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246054,"name":"Sports and Recreation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/tourism-minnesota-1835-1940"},{"alt":"Knute Nelson Memorial (front view)","author":[{"name":"Tyler N. Taylor","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/tyler-n-taylor"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"October 20, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Knute Nelson Memorial, St. Paul","postbody":"In December of 1928, the Knute Nelson Memorial was unveiled on the grounds of the Minnesota State Capitol. The memorial celebrates the impact of Norwegian immigration in Minnesota by ...","searchtext":"In December of 1928, the Knute Nelson Memorial was unveiled on the grounds of the Minnesota State Capitol. The memorial celebrates the impact of Norwegian immigration in Minnesota by portraying Nelson as a Norwegian American hero. Knute Nelson was born in Norway in 1843, immigrated to the United States as a small child, and moved to Minnesota as a young lawyer. He served as Minnesota’s first foreign-born governor (1893–1895) and as a United States congressman (1883–1889) and a senator (1895–1923). He is well known for the Nelson Act of 1889, which forcibly relocated Ojibwe people in Minnesota to the White Earth Reservation. At the time of his death in 1923, Nelson was an important figure for Norwegian immigrant communities in Minnesota. Upon his death, Nelson’s colleagues in the US Senate and the Minnesota government worked to establish and preserve his legacy as an example of the ideal immigrant story. Their remembrances described Nelson as both quintessentially Norwegian and quintessentially American. The rags-to-riches narrative that emerged emphasized his military service for the Union in the Civil War and his subsequent public service career, while preserving his identity as Norwegian. Nelson became a symbol of Norwegian Americans in Minnesota in part because of his awareness of his ethnic identity. The height of Nelson’s political career occurred at a time when the formation of a unique Norwegian American ethnic identity clashed with a widespread belief that immigrants must assimilate or “Americanize.” Nelson was skilled at navigating this landscape, and could foreground either his ethnic or his American identity depending on what was politically expedient. He worked to establish Norwegians and other Northern European immigrants as productive contributors to American society and culture. Like other Nordic Americans at that time, however, Nelson believed that Eastern Europeans should be subject to immigration restrictions. The image of himself that Nelson cultivated—both fully Norwegian and fully American, a promoter of Norewegians as a desirable immigrant population—is reflected in the history of the Knute Nelson Memorial. The governor of Minnesota at the time of Nelson’s death was personally invested in preserving this legacy. That governor, J. A. O. Preus, was a Norwegian American who served as a clerk for Senator Nelson, and in 1924 he appointed a committee to raise funds for the commission of a Knute Nelson Memorial to be erected on the Capitol grounds. The committee worked with local organizations and advertised in newspapers throughout Minnesota to solicit donations. Their goal was to raise $50,000 through small donations that came from every part of the state in order to establish Nelson as widely respected. This campaign was met at times with criticism similar to that Nelson himself faced. For instance, the Houston County Chief lambasted the committee’s proposal for overemphasizing Nelson’s Norwegian roots, saying the memorial “should be erected to Knute Nelson the American, and not to Knute Nelson the Norwegian.” Indeed, Nelson’s ethnic identity was central to the project. In 1927, the committee commissioned the sculptor John Karl Daniels, another Norwegian American, to construct the memorial. Daniels’s design features Nelson standing on a plinth that is flanked by representations of his dual identities. One side portrays Nelson as an immigrant child standing with his Norwegian mother, and the other side portrays Nelson as a Civil War soldier. The Knute Nelson Memorial was unveiled in December of 1928—just over four and a half years after his death. A modest ceremony in the chambers of the Minnesota House of Representatives marked the memorial’s dedication. The Knute Nelson Memorial emphasizes his immigrant story and does not address the controversial aspects of his legacy. This includes the Nelson Act of 1889 and his support of allotment policies that dispossessed Ojibwe people in Minnesota of their homelands. In a meeting of the Capitol Area Architectural and Planning Board on November 18, 2019, Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan (White Earth Ojibwe) argued that the presence of the Nelson Memorial interferes with the experience of the capitol, due to the harm he caused to Native Americans in Minnesota. On March 13, 2020, prominent environmental activist Winona LaDuke (also White Earth Ojibwe) said the Nelson Memorial is “reminding us of an era of exploitation of Native people,” and suggested the construction of a memorial for an Indigenous leader of Minnesota.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Knute_Nelson_memorial.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/knute-nelson-memorial-st-paul"},{"alt":"Hyman Berman at age ninety","author":[{"name":"Jay Weiner","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/jay-weiner"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"October 15, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Berman, Hyman (1925–2015)","postbody":"Hyman Berman was a University of Minnesota history professor and a popular public historian known widely for his contributions to the Almanac public affairs program on Twin Cities PBS. ...","searchtext":"Hyman Berman was a University of Minnesota history professor and a popular public historian known widely for his contributions to the Almanac public affairs program on Twin Cities PBS. Although his earliest scholarship focused on labor history, upon arriving in Minnesota in 1961 Berman wrote extensively about Minnesota’s immigrant history, the state’s political parties, and the Jewish experience in Minnesota. The son of Polish, Jewish immigrants, Hyman Berman was born on February 20, 1925, in New York, and spoke Yiddish almost exclusively until he was five years old. His father, David, was a labor activist in the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union. David was kicked out of the union for his criticism of its leadership. Berman’s mother, Yetta, identified herself as being even more left-wing than her husband. As a child, Berman was influenced by Communist Party-affiliated organizations, most notably Camp Kinderland, a summer camp for the children of socialist-leaning parents. Berman eventually became a counselor at the camp, a stint that earned him a mention by an informer to the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in 1955. After serving in the US Army during World War II and graduating from New York’s City College, Berman became disillusioned with the Communist Party. That distance was triggered by his realization of the repression of the Stalin regime, particularly its virulent antisemitism. Berman’s progressive views evolved into a dyed-in-the-wool New Deal Democrat position with strong support for labor unions and, once he arrived in Minnesota, a deep affection for and connection with the Democratic Farmer-Labor Party. Berman was married to Betty Silbering, a Holocaust survivor and librarian, in 1950. They had three children. One, a daughter, died in 1971 at age seven, something Berman called “the heaviest personal psychological blow I’ve ever received in my life.” After earning his PhD from Columbia University—his dissertation was about the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union—Berman taught briefly in New York-area colleges and at Michigan State University before joining the University of Minnesota’s history department in the fall of 1961. Soon after, he became part of a team of University scholars who embedded themselves on the Iron Range to study the lives and cultures of the region’s immigrant populations. During this period, Berman befriended an aspiring politician from Hibbing, dentist Rudy Perpich. That friendship led Berman to become an advisor to Perpich as the politician’s career progressed from two terms in the state senate to two terms as Minnesota’s governor. Berman’s expertise in American labor history allowed him to create an international niche, teaching and lecturing about US worker history in, among other places, India, Israel, Germany, and China. He also was a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1967 and 1968. Known for his compelling and entertaining classroom lectures, Berman amplified his knowledge and showmanship via radio and television. He often appeared as a commentator on election nights to place current events into an understandable historic context. TPT’s Almanac was his most frequent stage, but he also narrated a handful of public television documentaries, was a frequent guest on Minnesota Public Radio, and wrote regular opinion pieces in the St. Paul Pioneer Press. An active University of Minnesota citizen, Berman worked to form a professors’ union (an effort that failed), served regularly on key faculty governance committees, helped establish curricula in African American, Latino, and women’s studies, and advocated for philanthropy to the U of M. His high profile often placed Berman at the center of news himself, such as when in 1977 he was appointed by Perpich to be a member of the committee to select Minnesota’s first woman Supreme Court justice, Rosalie Wahl. Berman also crossed paths with, and befriended, a wide range of elected officials, such as Wendell Anderson, Hubert Humphrey, Harold Stassen, and Paul Wellstone. Berman retired from the University in 2004, but he remained in public view via Almanac and media interviews for another decade. He died on November 29, 2015, at the age of ninety after a brief illness. He is buried in Temple Israel’s Memorial Park cemetery in South Minneapolis.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Hy October 2015 two months before he died, credit to Terry Gydesen.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056210,"name":"Education","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/berman-hyman-1925-2015"},{"alt":"Deposit in the Bank of St. Paul","author":[{"name":"Louis D. Johnston","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/louis-d-johnston"}],"categoryTag":[],"date":"October 09, 2020","eraTag":[],"keydate":"","name":"Exchange, Industry, and Adaptation: Economics in Minnesota","postbody":"The economy of Minnesota has changed dramatically over hundreds of years. In that time, it has shifted away from natural resource development and the production of agricultural products and ...","searchtext":"The economy of Minnesota has changed dramatically over hundreds of years. In that time, it has shifted away from natural resource development and the production of agricultural products and evolved into a broad-based system built on a foundation of natural resources, physical capital, and human ingenuity. The story of Minnesota’s economy is vast, so this essay focuses on trends and key developments. It links to other MNopedia entries that allow readers to explore specific topics in greater depth. The omission of particular industries or businesses is not a judgement about their importance for Minnesota’s economic development but a choice made to keep the length of the article manageable. Indigenous Economies of Subsistence and Exchange Trading systems connected Indigenous nations across North America long before European settlement. The peoples living in what is now Minnesota, an area well connected by extensive waterways, participated in this system. Cowrie shells from the Gulf of Mexico, dentalium shells from the West Coast, copper from the Great Lakes, and obsidian were all used. Pipestone from a quarry in southwestern Minnesota was traded across the continent. The economies of both the Dakota and Ojibwe people were based on seasonal cycles of hunting, fishing, planting, gathering, and harvesting. In both groups, families cultivated maize, squash, and beans in small plots near their summer villages. They traveled to customary locations through the spring, summer, and fall to make maple sugar, gather nuts, berries, and other plants, and harvest wild rice. Hunting and fishing was carried out in all seasons, but especially fall. Bands split up in winter to live in small family groups in sheltered woods. Perhaps because both peoples had access to plant and animal resources, there is no tradition of exchange of food items between them. A gendered division of labor played important roles in these economies. In both Dakota and Ojibwe bands, women’s responsibilities included gathering and preparing food, tanning hides, making clothing, constructing tipis (Dakota) and wigwams (Ojibwe), and caring for children. Men’s duties involved land clearing; hunting, fishing, and trapping; and defending the group from attack. As in most societies, men’s and women’s work was complementary. One scholar of Ojibwe life goes further, stating that due to the importance of food production the women in these communities were the primary managers of these economies. The French first began trading with Ojibwe people of the Great Lakes in the 1600s. The Ojibwe bands became middlemen, supplying the Dakota with desirable trade goods: blankets, metal pots and knives, guns and ammunition, and traps. But when Ojibwe traders also traded weapons to the Cree, who were traditional enemies of the Dakota, the arrangement fell apart. By the mid-1700s, the Dakota had established direct trading relationships with the French in the southern reaches of the Dakota homeland. Both Dakota and Ojibwe communities also supplied fur traders with wild rice, their main foodstuff, in exchange for trade goods. The European fur trade of the eighteenth century built on, and over time altered, Indigenous economies. Traders advanced guns and traps on credit in the fall, and families settled up at the end of the season. Ojibwe and Dakota societies incorporated new goods in ways that were consonant with their traditions and ways of life. Kinship networks formed important links in these trading systems. Trade involves trust, and trade with relatives carries stronger expectations for mutual support and care. In the eighteenth century, for example, Dakota and Ojibwe people created temporary kinship relationships with Europeans in order to carry out transactions. Over time, European, and later American, men in the trade entered into marriages with Dakota and Ojibwe women following Indigenous rather than Christian traditions—“according to the custom of the country”—in order to form permanent kinship bonds. The descendants of these marriages created permanent links between Indigenous and European economies and communities and fostered trade. In the Red River Valley, people of mixed ancestry (métis) evolved into a separate Métis Nation, with a distinct culture and language. Métis traders, along with others, transported furs and goods between settlement at what is now Winnipeg and the growing entrepôt of St. Paul. The two areas were linked by a network of trails along the Red River Valley created by ox-driven vehicles known as Red River carts. When hunting became more difficult in the 1830s and later, traders continued to extend credit, knowing that eventually, Dakota and Ojibwe leaders would be forced to sign treaties surrendering land to settle the people’s debts. The fur trade became the Indian trade. With the signing of a series of treaties, the Dakota and the Ojibwe were forced to give up the land and move to reservations. Families kept up traditional practices of hunting and gathering, to supplement the crops they raised and the inadequate rations provided by the government. (The settler-colonists taking the land around the reservations also hunted and gathered extensively, in order to survive bad crop years.) Most Dakota were removed from the state after the US–Dakota War of 1862. Ojibwe men and women found work as agricultural laborers and lumberjacks; they also continued to sell wild rice, maple sugar, berries, and other goods. Dakota and Ojibwe families continued to meet and trade at annual gatherings like the White Earth Powwow. In one remarkable example of exchange, a Dakota person might exchange a horse for an intricately beaded bandolier bag made by an Ojibwe woman. Logging, Agriculture, and Transportation Before 1920 Logging and lumber milling proved to be even more important than fur trading to Minnesota’s future prospects. Scholars estimate that before Europeans arrived, forests covered 70percent of Minnesota’s land area. Local, regional, and national urban growth generated high demand for lumber, and over the nineteenth century, Minnesota’s white pine forests supplied much of it. The industry began in the 1830s with small-scale logging and milling operations. These tended to be owner-operated businesses—small groups of men using hand tools for felling trees and water-powered sawmills for processing timber into lumber. Felled timber travelled down rivers to be processed into lumber near construction areas. In the 1850s, entrepreneurs started harnessing the waterpower of St. Anthony Falls (Owamniyomni) to build larger and larger sawmills to meet the growing demand for lumber in St. Paul, St. Anthony, and, eventually, Minneapolis. From the 1870s to the 1890s, lumber mills grew even larger in scale. Eventually, the advent of steam-powered technology cut the ties between milling and water power, allowing sawmills to locate wherever it was convenient. This led to an almost complete destruction of forest resources during the last quarter of the century, especially in northeastern Minnesota, and led lumber barons such as Frederick Weyerhaeuser to move their operations from the Midwest to the Pacific Northwest. Euro-American agriculture spread throughout Minnesota starting in the 1840s through the small, family-owned and -operated enterprises of settler-colonists from the eastern United States along with immigrants from abroad. Mechanization of harvesting and planting in the 1860s allowed families to cultivate larger farms and allocate higher percentages of their land to raising crops and cattle for sale in regional and national markets. Wheat was the key cash crop, leading to a budding infrastructure of mills, bankers, and brokers throughout southeastern Minnesota to bring the harvest to market. This system spread north and west as farming moved from the southeastern part of the state, eventually reaching the Red River Valley in the 1870s. Expanding transportation networks facilitated closer ties between farmers and these markets, for better or worse. Steamboats were a key element in the state’s transportation system from the 1840s through the 1870s. Starting in the 1840s, steamboats connected St. Paul with ports downriver. Merchandise delivered to St. Paul could be loaded on Red River carts for delivery to northern Minnesota or transferred to steamers operating on the Minnesota River between St. Paul and Mankato. By the 1870s, steamboats operated on the Red River as well as Lake Superior. By the mid-1860s, St. Paul was connected by rail with Milwaukee, Chicago, and other eastern cities. Railroads started to supplant steamboats for long-distance transportation in the late 1860s, and during the 1870s the rail network within Minnesota exploded, connecting virtually every town with the rest of the state. Over the course of the next forty years, the railroads became one of the largest industries in Minnesota. The Northern Pacific, the Great Northern, the Soo Line, and dozens of other railways built thousands of miles of track along with depots, repair shops, and offices throughout the state and employed thousands of people in dozens of occupations. Businessmen such as James J. Hill built fortunes integrating agriculture, manufacturing, and mining into an interdependent economic system through the development of the railway network. Manufacturing, Services, and Mining Before 1920 Manufacturing in Minnesota originally focused on processing timber into lumber and grain into a variety of products. For instance, flour milling began in the 1850s at a variety of places around the state, but quickly started to consolidate in larger towns during the 1860s. Minneapolis became the center of the upper-Midwest milling industry in the 1870 and then the national leader from the 1880s through World War I. Distillers and brewers like Theodore Hamm and Moorhead Brewing Company developed throughout the state as a way of adding economic value to corn, barley, and wheat. Meatpacking followed a path similar to flour milling and brewing. Regional stockyards formed in the 1870s and 1880s throughout the state so that local ranchers and swineherds could drive cattle and pigs to market. These regional operations were then connected by rail with larger operations, with South St. Paul and Austin emerging as focal points for the industry in the 1890s and early 1900s. Swift and Armour, both based in Chicago, set up collection stockyards and processing plants in South St. Paul, while George A. Hormel developed his own operations in Austin. The growth of these industries led, in turn, to the growth of related industries and services. Blacksmith and machine shops grew in small and large towns to build and repair equipment. Tanners processed the hides generated in animal processing to provide raw leather for making harnesses for horses and mules, leather belting for industrial equipment, and shoes and boots for Minnesotans. Tailors, milliners, and dressmakers produced clothing and hats using cloth made both in Minnesota and imported from around the world (including silk brought in from Asia via the Great Northern Railway.) Furriers used pelts from animals trapped throughout the region to create coats and hats for Minnesota’s cold winters. Occupations in transportation and milling were particularly dangerous, which led to a unique Minneapolis industry: the design and production of artificial limbs. Railroad injuries and industrial accidents often led to amputations and, when combined with childhood diseases such as polio and increasing dangers posed by mechanized farm equipment, the upper Midwest provided an ample market for braces and artificial limbs. The Minneapolis economy had the materials (lumber, leather) and the mechanical know-how to meet these needs. Banking, insurance, and a variety of financial services developed to meet the demands of businesses and households throughout the state. Banks, in particular, like Northwestern National in Minneapolis (founded in 1872), were chartered by both the federal and state government. This led to a patchwork of regulations that allowed bankers to invest in a wide variety of enterprises both in their own areas and beyond. Insurance companies specialized in an assortment of lines to meet the needs of Minnesota enterprises such as farm insurance, fire and accident coverage, and transportation policies for both maritime and railroad businesses. Iron ore mining began on the Vermilion Range in the 1880s using underground mining technologies that had previously been used in iron, copper, and coal mining. This gave Minnesota mining companies a foothold in the national market for iron ore. The industry grew massively starting in the 1890s due to the exploitation of iron ore deposits in the Mesabi Range. The Merritt family built mines, a railroad, and docks between 1890 and 1893 to extract and ship their ore, until the financial panic of 1893 found them unable to pay their debts. They sold their holdings to John D. Rockefeller in 1894, but he owned no steel mills and had no expertise in mining. The sale led to an arrangement among Rockefeller, the steel baron Andrew Carnegie, and a Pittsburgh businessman named Henry Oliver to develop the Mesabi Range. The Oliver Mining Iron Company mined the ore, Rockefeller-owned railroads and ore boats transported the ore to Carnegie’s mills, and Carnegie Steel processed the ore into the steel products demanded throughout the US and the world. The Cuyuna Range came on line in 1907, and Minnesota’s Iron Range formed the center of American iron ore production for years to come. All of these endeavors in manufacturing, mining, transportation, and agriculture required increasing supplies of labor. Immigrants, particularly from Europe, provided much of the brains and brawn that powered this growth. Norwegian and Swedish immigrants filled the labor markets of the Twin Cities along with the farms of southern Minnesota and the Red River Valley. Forty-three different immigrant groups met the insatiable demand for mine workers, mechanics, grocers, teachers, and all of the other jobs needed to create what became the economy of Minnesota’s Iron Range. Growing Pains and New Directions: 1920–1950 Up to World War I, Minnesota’s economic ecosystem led average incomes to rise relative to the national average. After World War I, however, Minnesota’s average income fell behind the nation’s and remained there for the next fifty years. In the early 1900s, and especially after World War I, Minnesota agriculture adjusted to changing circumstances. Wheat production moved from the northern plains of the Dakotas and Minnesota to the high plains of eastern Colorado, western Nebraska, and Kansas. Minnesota’s farmers responded by raising new crops and animals. Corn production increased both in absolute terms and as a percentage of total crop production as farmers adopted new pest control techniques and new seed varieties, especially hybrid corn. Soybean cultivation grew dramatically, first as a forage crop for livestock and then for human consumption. Dairying rivaled the production of cattle and hogs shortly before World War I and surpassed them in the 1920s. Minnesota’s manufacturers shifted from processing commodities (such as timber to lumber and wheat to flour) to creating products that used processed commodities as inputs and generated higher incomes and profits. For example, companies such as the Weyerhaeuser Timber Company began producing paper and a variety of paper-based packaging products and diversified away from harvesting timber and milling lumber. Flour millers evolved into packaged food companies. Washburn-Crosby Company (later General Mills), created consumer products such as Bisquick and Wheaties and brands such as Betty Crocker, while continuing to produce flour. Companies such as Minnesota Valley Canning Company (more famously known as Green Giant) transformed fresh vegetables that were subject to spoilage into shelf-stable products that could be transported all over the country. Meat processors such as Hormel moved from slaughtering and meatpacking to manufacturing meat products such as SPAM. The movement from processing raw materials to using raw materials as an input to higher value-added products shared a key resource: the application of private research and development to create new goods. Washburn-Crosby, Pillsbury, and Hormel, to name three companies, started their own research laboratories to develop new production processes and products. Research and development led to new manufacturing industries as well. Honeywell, the company that made Honeywell thermostats , evolved between the 1880s and the 19030s out of a succession of businesses tinkering, research, and patents, all with the goal of controlling the temperature in a home or office. This led to expertise in the more general field of industrial controls, which became the core of Honeywell’s business from the 1930s onward. 3M began as the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company in 1902. Its goal was to produce sandpaper for industrial uses by tapping mineral deposits in northeastern Minnesota. The mines turned out to be useless for this purpose, but with further research and development, 3M eventually developed a product that was attractive in the woodworking industries. It then hit its stride in the burgeoning automobile industry of the 1920s. 3M’s experience working with General Motors and other car companies led to perhaps their most famous product: Scotch Tape, originally developed to separate different colors in two-tone paint jobs. Starting in the 1940s, Minnesota’s manufacturers and mining industry added two other elements to innovate in new directions. First, government- and university-funded research and development provided new technologies that private companies could adopt, improve, and apply to new markets. Second, government demand for goods and services, both direct and indirect, provided the impetus for companies to both produce new products and produce them using mass production methods. An example of public-private research and development was the invention of the taconite production process. World War II put heavy demands on high-quality iron ore and rapidly depleted the Mesabi and Cuyuna ranges of their best deposits. For many years, however, geologists and miners knew that a lower-quality ore, taconite, was abundant, but could not be used directly in the blast furnaces of the 1940s. Edward W. Davis, a professor at the University of Minnesota, started working on a method of processing taconite into pellets that could be used in conventional blast furnaces in 1913. Over the next 30 years he refined the process, and by the late 1940s US Steel was ready to commercialize taconite as a substitute for raw ore. This led to the creation of an entirely new industry in the 1950s and 1960s based on the foundation of the original iron ore of the 1900s and 1910s. Becoming “Above Average”: 1950 to the Present The growing pains of moving from an economy based on processing raw materials, such as grains and timber, to producing innovative consumer and industrial goods paid off after World War II. The combination of private and public research along with growing public and private demand pushed Minnesota’s manufacturing into areas that generated higher and higher value added and Minnesota’s average income grew from 15 percent below the national average at the end of World War II to 5 percent above it by 1980. Agriculture continued to change in the decades after World War II. In particular, the development of chemical fertilizers and new varieties of seeds increased yields per acre more rapidly than ever. At the same time, domestic demand for raw and processed agricultural products grew more slowly. This had two important effects. First, American farmers started exporting a growing percent of their production, which tied Minnesota’s economy more tightly to the global economy. This meant that Minnesota’s farmers not only had to deal with market conditions within the United States, they now had to compete with producers throughout the world. This led to booms and busts in the agricultural economy, including the farm crisis that swept across Minnesota from the late 1970s through the 1980s. Second, Minnesota companies worked to accelerate a process that began long before World War II: adding value to raw materials through processing and manufacturing new products based on agriculture’s bounty. Corporations such as Cargill, General Mills, International Multifoods, and Hormel became integrated food companies, producing everything to flour to packaged and canned foods to owning restaurant chains. Pillsbury, for instance, created what became the Pillsbury Bake-Off Contest in 1949 to promote the use of its products in American kitchens and, eventually, throughout the world. The biggest factor in Minnesota’s postwar boom was the development of Minnesota’s computer industry. Five firms (Engineering Research Associates, Univac, Honeywell, Control Data, and IBM-Rochester) created an industry centered on the Twin Cities but which benefited the entire state. The five anchor firms worked with specialist firms that provided services, such as design and specialist manufacturing, and ancillary industries that supplied products and expertise. These companies were headquartered or had facilities in communities such as Alexandria, Hutchinson, Rochester, and a variety of other places throughout the state. On top of all of this, Minnesota’s computer industry originally specialized in producing equipment for the Defense Department and national intelligence agencies such as the National Security Administration. This allowed Minnesota to partake in the Cold War defense-spending bonanza of the 1950s and 1960s and put the state in a position to reap the benefits of the non-defense expansion of federal, state, and local government computer demands, as well as the growing private-sector demand for computing equipment. Over the next two decades, these firms created a web of subcontractors and connections with educational institutions such as the University of Minnesota that became one of the first high-tech regions of the digital era. This business environment generated both high-paying jobs and encouraged entrepreneurial-minded employees to create their own firms that could supply products and services to the original companies. It also served to develop a stock of highly educated residents who could work in a variety of industries. Both of these factors helped keep Minnesota’s income above the national average when the center of the computer industry shifted during the 1980s from the large, high-end machines designed and built in Minnesota to the personal computers of Silicon Valley in California. The technical expertise and entrepreneurial abilities accumulated in the 1960s and 1970s remained in Minnesota and found new outlets in both retailing and manufacturing. The Target Corporation’s growth derived in part from its proximity to Minnesota’s computer industry. Dayton’s created a discount retailer, Target, in 1962, and managed the business in part through the use of computerized inventory systems which led them to purchase equipment from IBM in Rochester and to hire a growing number of people trained in computer programming and associated fields. As Target grew during the 1970s and 1980s, the need to create increasingly sophisticated management information systems grew as well and the Twin Cities were well-positioned to supply the necessary talent. Best Buy and Supervalu took advantage of these same trends to join Target as Fortune 500 companies in the 1990s. Medtronic Corporation similarly benefited from the environment created and nurtured by Minnesota’s computer industry. Control Data, in particular, pioneered the use of transistorized components in computing equipment and Medtronic could tap into this expertise, both in terms of hardware and brainpower, to develop wearable, and eventually implantable, medical devices in the 1970s and 1980s. By the early twenty-first century, Medtronic’s success along with the resources of the Mayo Clinic and the University of Minnesota Medical School led to the development of a thriving medical technology industry in Minnesota. The Future In the 1980s, Governor Rudy Perpich touted Minnesota as “the brainpower state.” This is, ultimately, the story of Minnesota’s economy. Brains, and brawn, drove Minnesota’s economy from one grounded in natural resources and agricultural products to a broad-based system of agriculture, manufacturing, and services. We cannot predict exactly how Minnesota’s economy will change in the coming years, but it is certain that its fate ultimately rests with the brainpower of its citizens and the new ideas they will give birth to in the years to come.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/YR1941.58.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/exchange-industry-and-adaptation-economics-minnesota"},{"alt":"Flag pole on Victory Memorial Drive","author":[{"name":"Christopher Hommerding","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/christopher-hommerding"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"October 08, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Victory Memorial Drive, Robbinsdale and Minneapolis","postbody":"Dedicated in 1921, the 3.8-mile Victory Memorial Drive in Robbinsdale and North Minneapolis is part of the Minneapolis Park System’s Grand Rounds, a fifty-mile circuit of the city’s parks ...","searchtext":"Dedicated in 1921, the 3.8-mile Victory Memorial Drive in Robbinsdale and North Minneapolis is part of the Minneapolis Park System’s Grand Rounds, a fifty-mile circuit of the city’s parks and parkways. It features over 500 memorial trees and markers as well as a central monument and flagpole. This parkway section was named in honor of the Allied victory in Europe and in memory of the 568 Hennepin County residents who died while serving in the armed forces during World War I. After the creation of the Minneapolis Park Board in 1883, board president Charles M. Loring hired well-known landscape architect Horace W. S. Cleveland. Cleveland called for the construction of a system of large city parks connected by parkways—a recommendation that became a guiding principle for the Park Board. Plans for Glenwood–Camden Parkway began in 1909 when the Park Board expanded Glenwood Park (now Theodore Wirth Park) at the western edge of the city||s border with Golden Valley. It then purchased land for Camden Park (now Webber Park) in North Minneapolis. Board superintendent Theodore Wirth planned a parkway to connect the two parks that would incorporate a stretch of land inside Robbinsdale on the western side of Xerxes Avenue after 44th Avenue. Between 1910 and 1911, the Park Board acquired 170 acres of land. Construction began in 1913. Crews working south to north built the parkway from Sixteenth Avenue North to Lowry Avenue between 1913 and 1916. In 1917, when the US entered World War I, construction stopped. Construction resumed after the war ended on November 11, 1918, a date known as the Armistice. The parkway to Lowry Avenue was completed and opened for traffic in 1920. This portion of the Glenwood–Camden parkway was named Theodore Wirth Parkway in 1938. The Armistice also meant that construction north of Lowry Avenue could finally begin. The war, however, had changed the Park Board’s plans. Retired Board president Charles Loring wanted to create a memorial to servicemen and women killed during the war. He donated money for trees to be planted and maintained along the parkway north of Lowry Avenue. The Park Board planted 568 Moline elm trees as memorials to the 568 Hennepin County servicemen and women who died during the war. Workers arranged them in parallel rows in a wide, grassy median between the north and southbound lanes of the parkway. A wooden cross or Star of David was placed next to each tree. Where the roadway turns to the east at Forty-Fifth Avenue North within Robbinsdale||s city limits, the Park Board installed a wooden flagpole. The newly named Victory Memorial Drive was officially dedicated in June of 1921 during a ceremony attended by over 30,000 spectators. The northwest corner of Minneapolis and the eastern edge of Robbinsdale were mostly farmland in the 1920s, allowing the Park Board to construct a wide, flat, straight roadway. The design created a solemn space for the memorial trees but also catered to the growing popularity of the automobile. Earlier parkways, like those at Minnehaha Falls and around the chain of lakes, were built for horse-drawn carriages. These earlier roads were much narrower and generally conformed to the contours of the landscape. Shortly after the 1921 dedication, the Park Board began to make updates. In 1923 the wooden flagpole was replaced with a bronze one atop a red granite base. By 1928, Minnesota winters had claimed most of the 568 Moline Elm trees, and they were replaced with hardier elms. At the same time, the wooden crosses and Stars of David were replaced with bronze markers. These were embedded in concrete in 1953. A new monument was added to Victory Memorial Drive in 1930 when the Grand Army of the Republic dedicated a statue of Abraham Lincoln to their Civil War comrades. The statue, a replica of an Augustus Saint-Gaudens original in Chicago’s Lincoln Park, was installed directly across the parkway from the flagpole. As the Twin Cities grew rapidly after World War II, increased automobile traffic became a concern of regional planners. In 1959, planners suggested converting Victory Memorial Drive into a county highway. With opposition from the Park Board and the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the plan was scrapped. Victory Memorial Drive could not escape biological threats, however. In the 1970s most of the stately elms along the parkway succumbed to Dutch Elm Disease and were replaced by hackberry trees. In 2009 Victory Memorial Drive underwent a major renovation when the red granite flagpole base was replaced with a monument of Lake Superior green granite. The Park Board also added flower beds and new trees: a mix of spruce, maples, cedars, birch, and crab apples. The new features were rededicated in 2011. In November of 2018 Victory Memorial Drive was the site of a ceremony marking the 100-year anniversary of the Armistice.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/30845674401_794c267dd9_b.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/victory-memorial-drive-minneapolis"},{"alt":"Clayton Jackson McGhie Memorial","author":[{"name":"William Convery","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/william-convery"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"October 06, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Clayton Jackson McGhie Memorial, Duluth","postbody":"On June 15, 1920, a mob of 10,000 people oversaw the lynching of three African American circus workers falsely accused of rape in downtown Duluth. In the face of community silence after the ...","searchtext":"On June 15, 1920, a mob of 10,000 people oversaw the lynching of three African American circus workers falsely accused of rape in downtown Duluth. In the face of community silence after the event, the lynchings faded from public memory. Efforts to acknowledge the lynchings, remember the victims, and begin community healing led to the identification of the three workers’ graves in 1991 and the creation of a memorial plaza in Duluth in 2003. The Clayton Jackson McGhie Memorial, located at East First Street and North Second Avenue East in Duluth, recalls the victims of the lynchings of June 15, 1920. Angered at the reported rape of a local white woman, a mob of white people seized traveling circus workers Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson, and Isaac McGhie from the city jail. After a mock trial, the mob hung the three men from a lamppost in downtown Duluth. Officials buried their bodies in unmarked graves at a local cemetery. Three of the approximately 10,000 participants received rioting convictions; no one ever stood trial for the murders. The Duluth lynchings took place during an era of white supremacy, legal discrimination, and extreme violence against people of color. According to the Equal Justice Institute (EJI), there were 4,084 documented lynchings of African Americans in the South between 1877 and 1950, with an additional 341 occurring in Northern states. Although ten-year averages for lynchings dropped steadily between 1890 and 1930, advocates of white supremacy rigorously enforced Jim Crow and miscegenation laws and turned the Ku Klux Klan into a national movement. The Duluth lynchings made national headlines but, in time, the event gradually disappeared from public memory. Those few who still remembered, wrote historian William D. Green, “treat it, like all dirty little secrets, as something best left unspoken.” In 1979, local author Michael Fedo shed light on Duluth’s “dirty little secret” with a detailed history of the lynchings. Reprinted in 1993 as The Lynchings in Duluth, Fedo’s history restored the all-but-forgotten murders to the public conscience. Starting in 1990, local residents determined to keep the memories alive began holding “Day of Remembrance” vigils at the lynching site. The following year, University of Minnesota Duluth professor Craig Grau located the gravesites of Clayton, Jackson, and McGhie. The Duluth chapter of the NAACP sponsored the installation of new headstones in October 1991. In addition to the victims’ names, dates of birth, and dates of death, each stone displayed the phrase, “Deterred But Not Defeated.” Annual vigils continued through the 1990s, as residents considered other ways to remember the victims. In 2000, local reporter Heidi Bakk-Hansen and Henry Banks, the leader of a Duluth family resource center, co-founded a grassroots group to install a memorial plaque. The group evolved into the CJM (Clayton Jackson McGhie) Memorial Board, a nonprofit dedicated to awarding scholarships to high school seniors in the Duluth/Superior region and teaching the public about the lynchings. Together with the City of Duluth Public Arts Commission, the board requested proposals for a memorial near the lynching site. The memorial, the board hoped, would inspire public discussions and foster community healing. In February 2003, the commission awarded the project to local artist Carla Stetson and writer Anthony Peyton Porter. Officials broke ground the following May. Using local high school students as models, Stetson created a life-size sculpture that celebrated Clayton, Jackson, and McGhie as individuals. “[W]hen the young men were lynched, they were depersonalized,||| she said. |||The idea of them being individual people with real feelings and their life in front of them—all of that was taken away.||| Stetson’s design placed the sculptures along an open plaza, surrounded by quotes from poets, philosophers, and civil rights activists. The plaza was finished in October 2003 at a cost of $267,000. The plaza became the focal point for both centennial remembrances and public protests in 2020. On May 31, unknown vandals spray painted anti-police messages in the plaza in the wake of the killing of Minneapolis resident George Floyd while in police custody. Just two weeks later, more than 1,000 people, including Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison, attended a memorial at the site on June 15.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/memorial_flickr_4.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056216,"name":"African Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/clayton-jackson-mcghie-memorial-duluth"},{"alt":"“Charles A. Lindbergh—The Boy and the Man”","author":[{"name":"Melissa Peterson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/melissa-peterson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"September 24, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Charles A. Lindbergh Memorial, St. Paul","postbody":"On May 24, 1985, the sculpture “Charles Lindbergh—The Boy and The Man” by Paul T. Granlund was dedicated in front of a crowd of approximately 1,000 people on the grounds of the Minnesota ...","searchtext":"On May 24, 1985, the sculpture “Charles Lindbergh—The Boy and The Man” by Paul T. Granlund was dedicated in front of a crowd of approximately 1,000 people on the grounds of the Minnesota State Capitol. Commissioned by the Lindbergh Fund and the Minnesota Historical Society, it honored the aviator’s 1927 transatlantic flight and his childhood roots in Minnesota. It did not address Lindbergh’s support of American isolationism and antisemitism leading up to World War II—additional dimensions of his complex legacy. In August 1984, the Minnesota Historical Society (MNHS) made an agreement with sculptor Paul T. Granlund to create a sculpture of Charles A. Lindbergh in honor of his 1927 transatlantic flight. Extant sources do not show who first proposed the idea, but contributors included the Charles A. Lindbergh Fund, then headquartered in Minnesota; MNHS Director Russell Fridley (who had developed a friendship with Lindbergh during the development of Lindbergh’s childhood home as a historic site); and former Minnesota governor Elmer L. Andersen. Funds were raised through individual donations to the Minnesota Historical Society to cover the $65,000 commission fee plus the costs of final installation. The committee requested that the sculpture be installed on the grounds of the Minnesota State Capitol, and the Capitol Area Architectural and Planning Board (CAAPB) approved its choice. At the time of his commission, Paul T. Granlund was the sculptor-in-residence at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, where he specialized in a sculptural process called lost-wax bronze casting. In considering how to capture the aviator, Granlund said, “What these resources revealed to me was that while Lindbergh’s heroic flight was epic in character his boyhood years in Little Falls had a lyric quality. I decided to combine the lyric and the epic qualities in a double portrait of Lindbergh the boy and the man.” On Saturday, May 25, 1985, Granlund’s sculpture of Lindbergh, titled “Charles Lindbergh—The Boy and The Man” was unveiled on the grounds of the Minnesota State Capitol as part of Lindbergh Heritage Week. Approximately 1,000 people present attended the dedication, including Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Reeve Lindbergh Brown, and Elizabeth Brown—Charles Lindbergh’s wife, daughter, and granddaughter. When asked for her reaction to the sculpture, Anne Morrow Lindbergh responded, “It’s a beautiful piece, very much alive. He’s there. His spirit is there...I don’t always see my husband in the pieces of sculpture that have been done, but he’s there—the spirit of the man is in it.” The Associated Press image of Anne Lindbergh holding the hand of the sculpture depicting her husband appeared in newspapers across the nation. The sculpture and the quotes surrounding it are intended to honor Lindbergh’s contributions to aviation. Two years later, coinciding with the sixtieth anniversary of Lindbergh’s transatlantic flight, two additional castings of Granlund’s sculpture were dedicated. In May 1987, a sculpture was dedicated at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, as a gift from the Charles A. Lindbergh Fund and the State of Minnesota to the people of France. In September, a sculpture was dedicated in San Diego to recognize that the Spirit of St. Louis was built in that city. While most reactions to the sculpture were positive, some were concerned with its place of honor in light of Lindbergh’s antisemitic comments leading up to World War II. A letter to the editor of the Minneapolis Star and Tribune published in 1987 stated, “I am disappointed that the Minnesota Department of Development has chosen to spend $50,000 of state money on the “Lindbergh—Man and Boy” [sic] statue in Paris. The link between the statue in Paris and tourism in Minnesota will be tenuous, at best...I am further offended that the state is willing to spend our money to honor a man who once said: ‘The greatest danger of Jewish power lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and our government.’ Charles Lindbergh was not ‘the world’s greatest hero.’ He was a human being with faults who was courageous in his successful crossing of the Atlantic Ocean.” In June of 2020, the toppling of a memorial to Christopher Columbus installed on the Capitol grounds renewed conversations about the appropriateness of other monuments on the site, including “The Boy and the Man.” Steve Hunegs, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas, stated in July, “There are many different Charles Lindberghs, he’s a complicated personality. The Jewish view of Lindbergh is profoundly disturbed over all these years by his rhetoric in favor of America First.” Editor||s note: This article uses the unhyphenated spelling |||antisemitism||| instead of the more common |||anti-Semitism||| in response to the recommendations of the Anti-Defamation League, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, among others.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/lindbergh_cliff_flickr.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246053,"name":"Transportation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/charles-lindbergh-memorial-st-paul"},{"alt":"Brown Berets marching with flags","author":[{"name":"Jimmy Patiño","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/jimmy-pati-o"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"September 22, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Brown Berets in Minnesota","postbody":"The Brown Berets in Minnesota were a chapter of a national Chicano organization founded in Los Angeles in 1968. They emerged from the Mexican American barrio of Westside St. Paul and came ...","searchtext":"The Brown Berets in Minnesota were a chapter of a national Chicano organization founded in Los Angeles in 1968. They emerged from the Mexican American barrio of Westside St. Paul and came together in 1969. Members took pride in their ethnic and racial identities as Chicanos while focusing on outreach to prevent Mexican American youth from engaging in criminalized activities. The Chicano Movement was a set of radical ideas and pragmatic actions initiated by Mexican Americans across the US during the Civil Rights era. It sought to end racism and oppression through organizing, supporting neighborhood institutions, and making decisions based on local needs. In 1968, the Brown Berets in St. Paul took these ideas and applied them through youth-oriented community service and engagement with education, labor, and housing concerns based in the city’s West Side, the largest Mexican American barrio in the state. Founded in Los Angeles a year earlier, the first Brown Beret chapter had sought to address the 120 years in which “the Chicano has suffered at the hands of the Gringo establishment.” Its document “Birth of a New Symbol,” used by St. Paul youth activists, details how the Brown Berets were established “To Serve To Observe and To Protect,” noting how “the Chicano” is “discriminated against in the schools, housing, employment and every other phase of life.” The St. Paul Brown Berets focused on the local concerns of West Side neighborhood residents, especially Mexican youth. There were about fifty-five members at the group’s peak in the early 1970s (not including associates or advisors, who were often community elders). Since they tended to recruit from local West Side schools, their members were young, ranging from twelve to twenty-seven years old. Prominent members included Rudolph Saucedo, Gilbert de la O, Rose Zarate, Pete Zarate, James McKnight, and Lolo Castillo. While men seemed to dominate leadership and membership, women were an integral part of the organization even as their roles went largely unrecognized. In addition to Mexican Americans, there were “a few” Native American members and one Euro-American member. The St. Paul Berets worked with a number of organizations in the Mexican American community. These included a social service group called Neighborhood House and a neighborhood clinic, referred to as La Clínca. From about 1969 to 1973 they helped organize youth-oriented and cultural events, including the Arts and Crafts Festival and an annual Christmas party at Neighborhood House. That event, which distributed donations like toys for children, was especially important to West Side residents, most of whom were Mexican Catholics. The Berets ran a camping trip to Camp Owendigo in Woodbury, where they led a program for about fifty youth from the multiethnic West Side at a cost working-class families could afford. They helped establish a department of Chicano Studies at the University of Minnesota, advocated for migrant workers, and cultivated cultural pride. In addition to providing juvenile delinquency intervention and education related to job-skill development, they organized tutoring and youth programs. These youth- and working-class-focused goals—ensuring survival, mobility, and basic rights—contrasted with the ways the Berets were stigmatized as an extremist and criminal group by police, school leaders, and some of the more reactionary white and Mexican American community members of the previous generation. Some teachers and school leaders discouraged students from interacting with the Berets, and local newspapers conveyed a general fear and distrust. Some depicted them as a street gang. Local police frequently harassed and pulled over Brown Beret members, a practice that intensified an already common experience for many Mexican Americans. This repression led to the St. Paul Brown Berets’ decline, which began in 1973. By then, many members were involved in other West Side and Chicano Movement organizations. As the decade progressed, they continued to build power and to expand opportunities for the Mexican American and broader Latino/a/x community in the Twin Cities.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/GT5 3 p70 bw.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/brown-berets-minnesota"},{"alt":"Theatre de la Jeune Lune lobby","author":[{"name":"Jacob Marcott","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/jacob-marcott"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"September 17, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Theatre de la Jeune Lune","postbody":"Theatre de la Jeune Lune was a theater company formed in 1978 in Paris by Dominique Serrand, Barbra Berlovitz, and Vincent Gracieux, all of whom studied at the École Internationale de ...","searchtext":"Theatre de la Jeune Lune was a theater company formed in 1978 in Paris by Dominique Serrand, Barbra Berlovitz, and Vincent Gracieux, all of whom studied at the École Internationale de Théâtre with Jacques Lecoq. In 1985 it moved to Minneapolis, where it grew to include actor and co-artistic director Steven Epp. The company was renowned for its ensemble work and experimental plays and won a Tony Award for best regional theater in 2005. After the economic recession of 2008, it found itself in debt and was forced to close. From the Guthrie to Mixed Blood, the Twin Cities have been home to a vibrant theater scene since the 1960s. One contributor to that reputation, Theatre de la Jeune Lune, was founded in 1978 by Dominique Serrand, Barbra Berlovitz, and Vincent Gracieux. They came together in Paris, where they had studied at the École Internationale de Théâtre with Jacques Lecoq. In English, the company’s name means Theater of the New Moon, a phrase inspired by the Bertolt Brecht poem “Looking for the New and the Old.” In a program for the company’s production of Deception, Serrand wrote that the company was “always looking to reinvent our art for our audience and ourselves.” Even while it was based in Paris, Theatre de la Jeune Lune toured cities in the United States—especially Minneapolis, Berlovitz’s hometown. With this exposure and the company’s experimental nature, it did not take long for Jeune Lune to gain attention. Steve Epp, who became a co-artistic director in 1983, remembered going to the company’s second show in Minneapolis and deciding “they were the new, hot thing in town.” Seeing it made him think, “That’s it...that’s theater.” Theatre de la Jeune Lune expanded under Epp’s leadership. It moved to Minneapolis in 1985 and continued to experiment with theatrical forms. “We kept evolving, and that really is why we kept lasting,” said Epp. In this era, the company was known for its physicality, producing shows with minimal text. One of Jeune Lune’s first productions was Yang Zen Frogs, a vaudeville act set in a café where anything could happen. “We had no idea what we were making,” Epp recalled. “We were just doing stuff that we had never done before that we weren’t seeing anybody else doing at that time...it became an enormous hit.” The next step in Jeune Lune’s evolution was the purchase of a permanent performance space. This enabled the company to experiment with more dialogue-heavy shows, such as Children of Paradise (its premiere in the First Street space). “It was the biggest show we had ever done at that point…and it got us a lot of national attention,” said Epp. Theatre de la Jeune Lune continued to evolve, eventually staging operas like Don Juan Giovanni and The Magic Flute. It drew national attention in 2005, when it received a Regional Theatre Tony Award. In spite of critical acclaim for Theatre de la Jeune Lune, the company struggled economically. “It always felt like we were living in peril, financially,” Epp recalled. The company found itself with massive debt that continued to grow. The public speculated that the expense of the permanent space was to blame, but according to Epp, the company “owned the building, which kept us alive.” It survived in this era by staging minimalist, relatively inexpensive shows. In the mid-2000s, Jeune Lune staff organized a capital campaign to ease their debt, but they found little support while competing with similar fundraising campaigns by other theater companies. Many members left to work elsewhere, and in 2008, Jeune Lune declared bankruptcy and closed. In the 2020s, Theatre de la Jeune Lune is remembered by theater goers around the world, especially in Minneapolis. A few years after it closed, Serrand, Epp, and Nathan Keepers founded a new venture: The Moving Company.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/800px-Theatre_de_la_Jeune_Lune-Minnesota_Fringe-20070806.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/theatre-de-la-jeune-lune"},{"alt":"Gathering at Lake Harriet","author":[{"name":"Robin Gehl","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/robin-gehl"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"September 15, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Lake Harriet Bandshell Park","postbody":"When a streetcar line first reached the shores of Lake Harriet (Bde Unma) in Minneapolis in the 1880s, it triggered decades of building projects designed to accommodate visitors who could ...","searchtext":"When a streetcar line first reached the shores of Lake Harriet (Bde Unma) in Minneapolis in the 1880s, it triggered decades of building projects designed to accommodate visitors who could reach the site easily from other Twin Cities locations. Beginning in 1888, five successive structures occupied the northwest corner of the lake—the most recent being the fanciful Milo Thompson-designed bandshell, which opened in 1986. Mdewakanton Dakota people have lived near the lakes in present-day South Minneapolis for hundreds of years. The second-largest, just south of Bde Maka Ska, is called Bde Unma, meaning the “other” lake. Settler colonists began referring to it as Lake Harriet in the 1820s to recognize Harriet Lovejoy Leavenworth, the wife of Fort Snelling commandant Colonel Henry Leavenworth. The area around the 344-acre body of water remained undeveloped for most of the nineteenth century, and the rugged beauty of its wooded shores and steep banks attracted foreign tourists. The naturalist and writer Henry David Thoreau visited in 1861. In 1883 the voters of Minneapolis and the Minnesota state legislature approved the establishment of the Minneapolis Parks Board, which began to operate as a branch of city government. Board president Charles Loring then hired noted landscape architect Horace Cleveland to design a master plan for the city. Cleveland recommended that the board quickly acquire land with natural appeal for parkland, ahead of housing developers. Over the next several years, board members negotiated with land owners William King, Henry Beard, and others to acquire the area around Lake Harriet. The Minneapolis Street Railway began service to the lake in the late 1880s, bringing hundreds of new visitors. In 1888 the company’s president, Thomas Lowry, built a wooden pavilion at the lake’s northwest corner to be used as a “summer garden and amusement hall.” The architectural firm Long and Kees, designers of Minneapolis City Hall, designed the structure. Built on Lowry’s land between the railway tracks and park property, it held a main refreshment room that seated 500 and an auditorium for 1,500. One side faced the train platform while the other curved around the lake for 350 feet. For the grand opening in June 1888, the Danz Military Band performed. Just three years later, in June 1891, the building burned down due to a fire that started in the kitchen. The Minneapolis Street Railway Company quickly made plans to build a new pavilion on the lakeshore, and it secured a ten-year lease from the Park Board to build and operate it. Smaller than the first, at 75 by 150 feet, the new structure opened in August 1891. Minneapolis architect Harry Wild Jones designed the pagoda-styled, two-story building and covered it with patterned wooden shingles. A dining room occupied the lower level, and the upper level provided covered seating for concerts. Musicians performed on a floating bandstand, allowing visitors on both levels of the pavilion to hear the music. In 1891, Jones designed and built nearby women’s and men’s restroom buildings in the same style as the pavilion. Two years later, he added amphitheater-style seating on the lakeside, bringing the capacity to more than 6,000 guests. Ten years later disaster struck again, and a fire destroyed the pavilion. The Park Board selected Jones to design a third pavilion, which opened in June 1904. He chose the Classic Revival style popularized by the 1893 Colombian Exposition in Chicago. The structure measured 200 by 200 feet and supported two wings that extended over the lake. The lower level of one wing held dressings rooms and the other a café. Between the wings steps, led into the water to a fenced swimming area. Two thousand seats filled an open rooftop garden where concerts took place. The first conductor of the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, Emil Oberhoffer, led the summer band at Lake Harriet. By 1923, however, the roof of the pavilion was declared unsafe, and rooftop concerts ended. In July 1925 the building collapsed during a severe windstorm. The Park Board spent two years debating the replacement structure. They ultimately hired the architectural firm Downs and Eads to design a modest, “temporary” bandstand. It opened in 1927 and, at eighty feet by thirty feet, stood to the east of the previous pavilion. It presented concerts for fifty-eight years. In the early 1980s a public relations campaign raised money and awareness for repairing the 1927 bandstand. Ultimately, plans and funding emerged for a new structure. Historians suggested a structure that would complement the 1892 shingle-style restroom buildings built at the time of the “pagoda” pavilion built by Harry Jones. Architect Milo Thompson of the firm Bentz-Thompson-Rietow designed the soaring bandshell to evoke his style. The bandshell was completed in 1986 and won numerous design awards, and its image has achieved iconic status as a depiction of summer in Minneapolis. The Minneapolis Heritage Preservation Commission recognized the historic status of the 1892 restrooms in 1980. As of 2020, the original structures remain standing.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/MH5.9 MP4.1H p26.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/lake-harriet-bandshell-park"},{"alt":"Dominick Argento","author":[{"name":"Robin Gehl","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/robin-gehl"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"September 11, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"1958","name":"Argento, Dominick (1927–2019)","postbody":"Though he originally hoped to accept a position on the East or West Coast, American musician-composer Dominick Argento began his career in 1958 at the University of Minnesota, where he ...","searchtext":"Though he originally hoped to accept a position on the East or West Coast, American musician-composer Dominick Argento began his career in 1958 at the University of Minnesota, where he taught composition and theory. He spent the next sixty years as Minnesota’s resident composer, crafting works for nearly every Minnesota performing group and gaining international acclaim. Born in York, Pennsylvania, on October 27, 1927, to Sicilian immigrants, Dominick Argento demonstrated an early interest in music. He regularly visited his local public library and read biographies and writings of famous musicians, such as George Gershwin, Igor Stravinsky, and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. He taught himself music theory and analysis and began taking piano lessons at sixteen—a relatively late age for a budding young musician. He progressed rapidly, though, and hoped to become a professional pianist when he entered college several years later. Drafted into the Army in 1945, Argento served in North Africa as a cryptographer. In 1947 he entered Peabody Conservatory, in Baltimore, on the GI bill. At Peabody Argento’s harmony teacher, Nicolas Nabokov, suggested that he focus on composition rather than piano performance. Awed that Nabokov was a close friend of Stravinksy, Argento agreed and continued his studies with Nabokov. A few years later, Nabokov encouraged Argento to apply for a Fulbright grant to study in Florence, Italy. He received it in 1951. As Argento was completing his undergraduate studies at Peabody, he needed a soprano singer to perform in his senior recital of original works. A friend told him about a talented young soprano, Carolyn Bailey, from Argento’s own hometown of York. She sang his song cycle Songs about Spring, and he accompanied her on piano. Three years later, in 1954, they married, and for many years she would sing the premiere of everything he composed for soprano and advise him on vocal matters. After earning his bachelor of music degree in 1951, Argento returned to Peabody for his master of music degree, completing it in 1954. For his PhD work, he studied at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, and completed his degree there in 1957. Throughout his years at Peabody and Eastman and during time abroad, he studied with a prominent list of mid-twentieth-century contemporary composers, including Henry Cowell, Richard Rodgers, Alan Hovhaness, Howard Hanson, and Luigi Dallapiccola. After an academic year in Florence, this time on a Guggenheim Fellowship, Argento and Carolyn returned to the US jobless. In September of 1958, Argento received a call from the University of Minnesota; someone at Eastman had recommended him for an open music theory teaching position. He loaded his car that day and arrived in Minneapolis in the mid-afternoon on the first day of classes. Argento moved to a metropolitan area with a vibrant arts scene. He shared in his memoir that “I used to joke that we didn’t really unpack our bags those first couple of years in Minnesota, hoping and praying that a position would materialize on the East or West Coast, certain that remaining in Minneapolis would be artistic suicide for a promising young composer. Gradually that fear evaporated. In time it became clear that the community was very supportive of the arts.” Argento recognized the high artistic quality of the Minneapolis Symphony (later called the Minnesota Orchestra) conducted by Antal Doráti, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and the Civic Orchestra of Minneapolis. The Walker Art Center hosted many modern music events and would soon help sponsor a small opera company (later the Minnesota Opera). In 1963, Sir Tyrone Guthrie established a theater (the Guthrie Theater), and Argento composed music for early productions. Additional supporters of Argento’s works included the Schubert Club, the Dale Warland Singers, the Fargo–Moorhead Symphony, Philip Brunelle’s Plymouth Music Series (later VocalEssence), and many individuals. He recognized by his fourth year at the university that Minneapolis would be his home for the rest of his life. If other schools offered him positions, he resolved, he would turn them down—a resolution he kept. Most of Argento’s compositions—primarily song cycles and operas— feature the human voice. When he composed vocal works, he noted that the words must come first in his process, believing that “The very tone, texture, color and speed of the music are dependent on the text.” His operas received national and international acclaim and included Postcard from Morocco (1971), The Voyage of Edgar Allan Poe (1976), Casanova’s Homecoming (1984), and The Dream of Valentino (1993). Among numerous awards, he earned the Pulitzer Prize in 1975 for his song cycle From the Diary of Virginia Woolf and, in 2004, a Grammy Award for his song cycle Casa Guidi.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Argento.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/argento-dominick-1927-2019"},{"alt":"Aerial view of Prairie Home Cemetery","author":[{"name":"Trista Raezer-Stursa","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/trista-raezer-stursa"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"September 08, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Prairie Home Cemetery, Moorhead","postbody":"Prairie Home Cemetery, founded in 1875, is the oldest cemetery in Moorhead. Many of the city||s settler colonists, such as Randolph M. Probstfield and Solomon G. Comstock, are buried there. ...","searchtext":"Prairie Home Cemetery, founded in 1875, is the oldest cemetery in Moorhead. Many of the city||s settler colonists, such as Randolph M. Probstfield and Solomon G. Comstock, are buried there. It inspired the name of Garrison Keillor’s famous National Public Radio (NPR) program A Prairie Home Companion. In 1871 the Northern Pacific Railroad reached the Red River, which is the border between North Dakota and Minnesota. The communities that quickly sprang up on either side of the river were named Fargo and Moorhead. Presbyterian reverend Oscar H. Elmer was sent as a missionary to Moorhead to start a church, which held its first service in October 1871. As Moorhead became established, the need for a cemetery logically followed. Reverend Elmer’s brother, John, came to visit from the East Coast in 1874 but drowned in the Red River. His body was discovered on June 1, 1874, and he was buried in a temporary location marked by a rope between two trees. Elmer was unable to transport his brother’s body back East. This is probably what motivated him and six other prominent Moorhead residents to found a cemetery. The Lake Superior and Puget Sound Company agreed to sell a five-acre plot for one dollar for a cemetery, though the land was not officially deeded until 1876. On April 27, 1875, the Prairie Home Cemetery Association was officially incorporated. The seven founders were Reverend Elmer, Solomon G. Comstock, James H. Sharp, John Kurtz, Niles Peterson, W. B. Nickels, and William H. White. At the time that Prairie Home Cemetery was founded, it was situated well out of town and surrounded by farmland. The first recorded burial there was typhoid victim Bernard Berg on May 19, 1875. Plots were sold for five dollars. Space quickly became an issue in the small graveyard. Since plots were purchased by families, available area ran out before the land filled with graves. At only five acres, it was smaller than most rural cemeteries, and all plots were sold by 1882. In 1884, land was purchased north of Moorhead on the banks of the Red River for another cemetery. This land was purchased from Catherine and George Hodges at forty dollars an acre. Their two-year-old daughter, Catherine, had been one of the first burials in Prairie Home Cemetery in 1875. This second cemetery was named Riverside Cemetery. In the 1920s the Riverside Cemetery Association and the Prairie Home Cemetery Association merged. Since plots were sold so cheaply, there were no funds to maintain Prairie Home. People were expected to look after their families’ plots, but this didn’t always happen. On occasion, efforts were made to make the cemetery more aesthetically appealing, such as when fences around family plots were banned. The cemetery was not able to hire a caretaker until 1902. Prairie Home Cemetery served as inspiration for Garrison Keillor when he needed a name for his variety radio program. In 1971, Keillor was in Moorhead to give a reading at Moorhead State University. When he went on a walk the next day, he saw the sign for Prairie Home Cemetery. The name stuck with him, but he knew he couldn’t use the word “cemetery” in his radio program’s name. He decided on the word “companion” to honor the group of friends he spent time with during his trip to Moorhead. Thus, his radio program became A Prairie Home Companion. In 1992 much-needed renovation work was done at the cemetery. Alleyways were filled in to allow for more graves. Due to Moorhead’s growth since 1875, the cemetery is now surrounded by homes and Concordia College, and is situated more towards the center of Moorhead.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/rs001663.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246079,"name":"Cities and Towns","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/prairie-home-cemetery-moorhead"},{"alt":"Charles Schulz with a drawing of Charlie Brown","author":[{"name":"Yuan Ding","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/yuan-ding"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"August 27, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Schulz, Charles Monroe (1922–2000)","postbody":"Charles Schulz was a cartoonist best known as the creator of Peanuts, the syndicated comic strip that featured the characters Snoopy and Charlie Brown and expanded into a franchise that ...","searchtext":"Charles Schulz was a cartoonist best known as the creator of Peanuts, the syndicated comic strip that featured the characters Snoopy and Charlie Brown and expanded into a franchise that included TV shows, movies, and toys. By the time of Schulz’s death, Peanuts was reaching readers in twenty-one languages across some 2,600 newspapers in seventy-five countries. Altogether, Schulz produced more than 18,000 strips over nearly fifty years. Born on November 26, 1922, in Minneapolis, Charles Monroe Schulz was the only child of German immigrant Carl Schulz and Dena Halverson Schulz. Apart from two years spent in Needles, California, Charles grew up in the Twin Cities. Having read the Sunday funnies every week with his father from an early age, Charles became enchanted by the art of cartooning. In 1937, the young aspiring cartoonist published a sketch of the Schulz family dog, Spike, in Robert Ripley’s popular Believe It or Not! newspaper feature. In 1940, at the end of his senior year at St. Paul’s Central High School, Schulz enrolled in a correspondence course at the Federal School of Applied Cartooning (later renamed the Art Instruction Schools) in Minneapolis. While working odd jobs, he drew sketches and submitted them for publication. Schulz gave up drawing when he was drafted into the US Army in the fall of 1942. He was trained to operate a machine gun at Fort Campbell in Kentucky, where he rose to the rank of staff sergeant before being deployed to Europe in February 1945. World War II ended months later, and Schulz received the Combat Infantryman Badge for fighting in active combat against the Nazis before being discharged on January 6, 1946. Upon returning to St. Paul in 1946, Schulz was hired to do lettering for Timeless Topix, a Catholic comic magazine. From 1947 to the early 1950s, he was an instructor at the Art Instruction Schools. In early 1947, Schulz finally had his debut of a weekly panel, titled Li’l Folks, in the St. Paul Pioneer Press. Published under the byline of “Sparky” (the artist’s nickname as a child) the cartoon introduced early versions of the characters of Charlie Brown, a long-suffering everyman type, and his pet dog, Snoopy. The first fifteen strips of Li’l Folks ran in the Saturday Evening Post between 1948 and 1950. In 1950, Li||l Folks was bought by United Feature Syndicate and retitled Peanuts. The first Peanuts strip debuted on October 2, 1950, in seven newspapers nationwide, including the Minneapolis Tribune. It featured a group of three-to-five-year-old characters, inspired by Schulz’s own childhood in the Twin Cities. As cultural historian M. Thomas Inge puts it, the main character, Charlie Brown, comes out of a narrative tradition that celebrates inadequate heroes, such as those in James Thurber’s cartoons; Charlie Chaplin’s Tramp character; and Buster Keaton’s screen persona. The character of Snoopy, a beagle hound based on Schulz’s childhood family pet, is often portrayed as harboring frustrated dreams of grandeur, and wiser than the children. Other characters include Sally, Charlie Brown’s little sister; his surly and contrary friend Lucy; her younger brother, Linus; and his friend Schroeder. Collections of Peanuts were published in book form starting in 1952. The first television special using Peanuts characters, A Charlie Brown Christmas, appeared in 1965, with many television specials following. In addition, the musical You||re a Good Man, Charlie Brown has been produced numerous times since its premiere in 1967. The popularity of Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and the other characters resulted in the international marketing of products featuring Peanuts characters as early as 1950. Schulz retired from drawing in January 2000, shortly before his death. Since then, Peanuts has returned to syndication, starting with strips originally drawn in 1974. Among his accomplishments are four full-length films, forty books, and thirty TV specials. As of 2020, the Peanuts comic strip has appeared in more than 30,000 newspapers in forty languages in seventy-five countries, reaching 350 million readers daily. Throughout his career, Schulz won many accolades, including a number of Peabody and Emmy Awards. He received Honorary LHDs from Anderson College in Indiana and St. Mary||s College in California, as well as a Congressional Gold Medal posthumously. In late September of 2015, on the sixty-fifth anniversary of Peanuts’ October 1950 debut, Schulz was inducted into the California Hall of Fame.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/1280px-Charles_Schulz_NYWTS.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/schulz-charles-monroe-1922-2000"},{"alt":"Sarah Burger Stearns","author":[{"name":"Hannah Dyson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/hannah-dyson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"August 25, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Stearns, Sarah Burger (1836–1904)","postbody":"Sarah Burger Stearns was a committed reformer dedicated to the cause of women’s rights. She founded one of Minnesota’s first suffrage organizations, the Rochester Woman Suffrage ...","searchtext":"Sarah Burger Stearns was a committed reformer dedicated to the cause of women’s rights. She founded one of Minnesota’s first suffrage organizations, the Rochester Woman Suffrage Association, in her home city of Rochester. In 1881, she was elected the first president of the Minnesota Woman Suffrage Association (MWSA). Although she resigned in 1883 due to ill health, Stearns stayed involved in the suffrage cause throughout the 1880s and into the 1890s. Sarah Burger Stearns was born on November 30, 1836, in New York City. She grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, after her parents moved there in 1845. She became involved in the fight for women’s rights in her teenage years, when she served as the president of a literary society for girls and edited her high school’s newspaper. Her first article for the paper, in fact, addressed the University of Michigan’s refusal to enroll women. In 1858, Burger and other young women petitioned the university to allow women to enroll. When their petition failed, Burger instead attended the State Normal School. She graduated with high honors and became a teacher. In 1863, Burger married Ozora Stearns, a lieutenant in the Union army during the Civil War. He left for battle shortly after their marriage, and Stearns taught at the Young Ladies’ Seminary in Monroe, Michigan. Stearns involved herself with providing aid throughout the war and visited hospitals, where she “learned the details of the work, as well as the necessities required there.” She also gave lectures on topics ranging from war aid to dress reform for women. At the close of the Civil War, Stearns and her husband moved to Rochester, Minnesota, where Ozora served as Olmsted county attorney and then mayor of Rochester. Stearns immediately involved herself with suffrage work. She gave a speech during Fourth of July celebrations in 1866 about women’s suffrage and wrote about various women’s topics in newspapers like the Rochester Post. Stearns befriended and worked closely with Mary Jackman Colburn, a suffragist who lived in Champlin. Together, they petitioned to speak before the Minnesota legislature on a constitutional amendment that would grant women the right to vote by removing the word “male” from the constitution||s reference to voting rights. In 1868, the legislature voted on the proposed amendment but failed to adopt it. Undeterred, Stearns continued forward. In 1869, she founded one of Minnesota’s first suffrage organizations in Rochester. When she and her husband moved to Duluth in 1872, she continued her work there and founded the Duluth Woman Suffrage Club. Throughout the 1870s and ’80s, Stearns and other suffragists continued to appeal to the state legislature for an amendment to the Minnesota constitution, but these efforts narrowly failed several times. In one instance, the amendment passed both the House and the Senate but was then vetoed by Governor Horace Austin. Stearns also worked with other Minnesota suffragists to found more suffrage clubs around the state. Beyond suffrage, Stearns dedicated herself to various social reforms. She made housing available for women and children in need of shelter and food—an effort that evolved into the Duluth Children’s Home. In 1875, when women were granted the right to vote in, and to run in, school board elections, Stearns ran and served on Duluth’s school board for three years. She also made an unsuccessful bid for school inspector in 1878. Like many other suffragists, she supported the temperance movement; she was the secretary for Duluth’s chapter of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. For Stearns and other Minnesota suffragists, the need for a state association to unite the movement became clear, and in 1881 the Minnesota Woman Suffrage Association (MWSA) was formed in Hastings. Stearns was elected the association’s first president and served for two years before resigning in 1883 due to health issues. When Ozora Stearns developed health issues of his own in 1895, the couple moved to California, although they still returned to Duluth in the summer months. Sarah Stearns continued her work advocating for equal suffrage until her death in 1904.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Portrait_of_Sarah_Burger_Stearns_Duluth_Minnesota (1).jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/stearns-sarah-burger-1836-1904"},{"alt":"Mabeth Hurd Paige","author":[{"name":"Hannah Dyson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/hannah-dyson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"August 20, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Paige, Mabeth Hurd (1870–1961)","postbody":"In 1922, Mabeth Hurd Paige became one of the first four women to be elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives. Before the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, she was a public ...","searchtext":"In 1922, Mabeth Hurd Paige became one of the first four women to be elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives. Before the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, she was a public speaker and an advocate for women’s suffrage and helped found the Minnesota branch of the League of Women Voters. Paige also studied both art and law, and was admitted to the bar. She was involved in charity and volunteer work that she continued until her death in 1961. Mabeth Hurd Paige was born in 1870 in Newburyport, Massachusetts. She lived there through high school and attended Newburyport schools. She continued her education at the University of Nebraska for a year before deciding to pursue an education in art, after which she attended the Normal Art School in Boston as well as the Académie Julian in Paris. Hurd had a brief career in art and teaching before she married James Paige, a law professor at the University of Minnesota, in 1895. Paige began her studies at the University of Minnesota’s College of Law. After receiving her degree, she was accepted to the bar, but she never practiced law. She and her husband had one child together: a daughter, named Elizabeth, born in 1902. Paige was an active member of the Minneapolis community in charity and religious causes. She served as a member of the Budget Committee of the Minneapolis Council of Social Agencies, which distributed money to various charities in the area. She was also the president of the Woman’s Christian Association, which provided assistance to single working women in the city. At the same time, Paige participated in suffrage work in Minneapolis. She was a frequent speaker at meetings and conventions on suffrage issues both within Minnesota and across the United States. She played an instrumental role in the creation of the Minnesota branch of the League of Women Voters and worked as the chairwoman of the Fifth Ward in Minneapolis. At the same time, she traveled around the country and helped other states, such as Montana, establish their own branches. On January 21, 1922, Paige filed as a candidate and announced her intention to run for the Minnesota House of Representatives. Although she admitted that she was reluctant to run, she explained that she sought office because she believed that women should participate more in politics after winning the right to vote. In a statement outlining her campaign, Paige said, “I have no special program, but I am as much interested in good general laws as in welfare legislation, to which I have given some special attention.” Paige identified as a Republican. Paige’s campaign consisted of speaking engagements and ads printed in newspapers. She spoke before organizations such as the Republican Women’s Club and the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. She experienced early success, including in the June primaries. 1922 proved to be a busy year for Paige, as she also attended the Pan-American Conference of Women in Baltimore. Paige won the election for representative of Minnesota’s thirtieth district on November 7, 1922. She was one of the four women elected to the House of Representatives, the other three being Myrtle Agnes Cain, Sue Metzger Dickey Hough, and Hannah Jensen Kempfer. Her term started on January 2, 1923. During her twenty-two years as a representative, Paige consistently served on the civil administration, public welfare, education, university and state schools, and public domain committees. She supported bills that aimed to limit predatory lending practices, protect natural resources, improve working conditions, and improve care provided by hospitals. Paige retired from the Minnesota House of Representatives in 1944. At the time of her retirement, she expressed dismay that so few women had been elected to public office. After retirement, she returned to charity work. She died in 1961. Mabeth Paige Hall, a housing club for single women professionals (later known as Paige Hall Apartments), was built in 1928 at 727 Fifth Avenue South and named in honor of her work for women||s housing. During her lifetime, Paige was also honored by the Junior Chamber of Commerce as one of the “Hundred Living Great Minnesotans.”","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/por 11827 r4.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/paige-mabeth-hurd-1870-1961"},{"alt":"Grand Opera House, St. Paul (exterior)","author":[{"name":"Janet Meyer","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/janet-meyer"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"August 18, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Grand Opera House, St. Paul","postbody":"The St. Paul Grand Opera House, built in 1883, was considered by many to be the most beautiful opera house in the Twin Cities area. Built as a replacement for the original St. Paul Opera ...","searchtext":"The St. Paul Grand Opera House, built in 1883, was considered by many to be the most beautiful opera house in the Twin Cities area. Built as a replacement for the original St. Paul Opera House, the Grand Opera House included new interior design features, electric lighting, and safety enhancements. These upgrades, along with improved railroads, made the venue a desired destination for national touring companies and faithful St. Paul audiences alike. William F. Davidson (1825–1887), a riverboat owner and St. Paul philanthropist, was one of several developers who built entertainment venues in St. Paul in the late 1800s. Davidson’s projects included the original St. Paul Opera House in 1867 and the St. Paul Grand Opera House in 1883. As the railroads expanded in the mid-1880s, theatrical companies began to make frequent regional tours. Opera houses opened in many towns in Minnesota and across the Midwest. St. Paul newspapers called for a larger theater to accommodate additional seating for patrons and large scenery sets. The original “first-class” opera house in St. Paul, which had been built in 1867, was not adequate to attract the best entertainers. The new Grand Opera House was completed and ready to open by October 15, 1883. Dignitaries attended the opening performance, including Governor Lucius Hubbard, Brigadier General Alfred Terry, and Mayor Christopher O’Brien. Speeches were given by Mayor O’Brien, Colonel J. H. Davidson, and Emma Abbott. As was customary at the time, each lady in the audience received a souvenir program in a small white pasteboard box inscribed with gold letters. Star performer and prima donna Emma Abbott and the Grand English Opera Company performed Verdi’s Il Trovatore on opening night. Throughout the opening week they performed a different opera each night. Miss Abbott and her company honored many similar requests to perform at dedication ceremonies for opera houses across the country. Located just behind the original opera house, the new building had a seating capacity of 2,200. The interior was colorful, with decorations and frescoes, and there were twenty-five sets of scenery. The building was equipped with steam heating and sanitary restrooms. The stage was on the ground floor instead of the second floor (as it had been in the first opera house and in similar buildings). The main floor stage and an abundant water supply were both important safety improvements. L. N. (Louis Napoleon) Scott (1858–1929) was chosen by Davidson to manage the new opera house. A young man when he started, Scott earned a reputation for dedication. Through his work as a manager and part-owner of several theaters, he was also an important part of a group of Midwest theater managers. Scott went on to manage the Metropolitan Opera House (St. Paul) and other local theaters until his death in 1929. The original St. Paul Opera House was located on Wabasha between Third and Fourth Streets. After the new house opened, the older house was remodeled into stores and offices. By 1903, the original structure was repurposed as the Bethel Hotel, a hotel for homeless men, women, and families. With a prime downtown location, over the years the building served other purposes, including hosting plays, musical concerts, lectures, church services, and club meetings. The Opera House had two major updates. In February 1884, 270 electric light bulbs were installed to replace the gas light fixtures. These bulbs were powered by two generators in the basement. A few years later, in August 1888, $10,000 was invested for a complete remodel of the interior. Changes were also made to comply with new fire laws. On the morning of January 21, 1889, a fire within the building destroyed the structure beyond repair. No definite cause was determined. It may have started with the steam-heating system or electric generators in the basement; it may have been caused by sparks from crossed electrical lines. The financial loss was estimated at $100,000 with approximately $66,000 insurance coverage. Scott made quick arrangements to continue scheduled performances at the old Market Hall theater. After a remodel, this became known as the Newmarket Theatre.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/MR2.9 SP3.1G p15.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/grand-opera-house-st-paul"},{"alt":"Hannah Kempfer","author":[{"name":"Melissa Hermes","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/melissa-hermes-0"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"August 12, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Kempfer, Hannah Jensen (1880–1943)","postbody":"Hannah Jensen Kempfer was the first woman from rural Minnesota elected to the state legislature. She brought her personal knowledge of farming, education, child welfare, business, and ...","searchtext":"Hannah Jensen Kempfer was the first woman from rural Minnesota elected to the state legislature. She brought her personal knowledge of farming, education, child welfare, business, and natural resources to the House, serving nine terms in the Minnesota legislature between 1922 and 1942. Johannah Jensen was born in 1880 on the ship where her single mother, Josephine Anderson, worked. Anderson put her into foster care in Stavanger, Norway. Two years later, Johannah’s foster parents, Ole and Martha Jensen, had a biological son named John. Relatives living in Minnesota wrote letters to the Jensens telling them about homestead land, and the family immigrated from Norway to Minnesota around 1885. They eventually settled near Erhard, in Otter Tail County. Ole Jensen never made a success of farming and developed health problems. His wife and children worked for other families, washing clothes and doing chores. It was a difficult life of poverty. Johannah was determined to get an education. To earn and save money for school books, she sold wood and wore homemade wooden shoes. A teacher shortened her name to Hannah to “Americanize” it. When her family needed to repay a loan, Hannah went to find work in Fergus Falls. She was only twelve years old. From then on, Jensen supported herself. She found work anywhere she could while attending school. After graduating from Fergus Falls High School, she passed the state teacher exam. Not yet eighteen, she began teaching in one-room schools in Friberg Township. In 1903, she married a local farmer named Charles Kempfer. They never had children but became foster parents. In addition to teaching, Hannah Kempfer wrote for Wheelock’s Weekly, a newspaper read throughout Otter Tail County. Using the pen name “K. J. H.”, she promoted her community as well as her own successes. In one article, she described creating a school lunch program by encouraging students to prepare and eat hot meals in her classroom. Kempfer gained recognition countywide as a community organizer. Her work helped families affected by tragedies and communities struck by natural disasters. When a tornado nearly destroyed Fergus Falls in 1919, she organized relief efforts by Otter Tail County farmers. Her students knit for the Red Cross during World War I. And when the Minnesota Public Health Association organized officers in each county, Kempfer served as the officer for her township. Kempfer’s farming experience brought her further into the public eye. She belonged to the Otter Tail County Holstein Breeders Association, most of whose members were male. Money she received from a Great Northern Railway contest went back into the community to start the Edwards Better Farming Club for children, a precursor to 4-H clubs. In 1920, a county farm display she created won second place at the Minnesota State Fair. After the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, Kempfer ran for a seat in the legislature representing House District 50. She had the support of suffragists as well as business leaders and local politicians. She refused party endorsements and ran as an Independent. She campaigned around the district in her Model T Ford, seeking the farm vote. She was nominated on June 22, 1922, and elected on November 11, 1922. Kempfer drew on her childhood experiences to advocate for women and children. One of the first bills she submitted after taking office defended the rights of children born to single mothers. At a time when talking about sex outside of marriage was taboo, Kempfer spoke openly on the floor of the Minnesota legislature about the circumstances of her own birth. The bill passed. In 1925 Kempfer voted in favor of a constitutional amendment regulating the labor of children under age eighteen; the bill subsequently failed to pass in the Minnesota legislature. In 1935, she introduced a bill giving state money to a Mother’s Pension Fund. Kempfer’s colleagues in the legislature respected her honesty and diligence. In 1925, they named her honorary Speaker of the House—the first such distinction for a woman lawmaker in Minnesota. When suffragist Clara Ueland died in 1927, Hannah was selected to represent the legislature at her funeral. Kempfer was a voice for farmers and conservationists. She served on and chaired the Fish and Game committee during her nine terms in office. One law she supported added license fees for hunters that repaid farmers for crop damage; a fishing license fee she proposed in 1928 was adopted and provided money for state hatcheries. In 1925, she and fellow lawmaker Mabeth Hurd Paige sponsored a bill to protect the showy lady’s slipper, Minnesota’s state flower. Kempfer retired to her farm in 1942. She passed away in 1943.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/41492dpi600.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/kempfer-hannah-jensen-1880-1943"},{"alt":"Myrtle Cain","author":[{"name":"Elizabeth Loetscher","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/elizabeth-loetscher"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"August 11, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Cain, Myrtle Agnes (1894–1980)","postbody":"Known as the “flapper legislator,” Myrtle Agnes Cain was a lifelong women’s rights activist and labor organizer. When she was elected to the Minnesota House in 1922, she and three other ...","searchtext":"Known as the “flapper legislator,” Myrtle Agnes Cain was a lifelong women’s rights activist and labor organizer. When she was elected to the Minnesota House in 1922, she and three other women became the state’s first female legislators. Cain was born in 1894 in Minneapolis. Her father, a boilermaker active in the Railroad Brotherhood union, shaped her interest in labor organizing from an early age. In line with her family’s Irish-Catholic roots, Cain attended St. Anthony of Padua High School in addition to Minneapolis public schools. While still a student, Cain began shaping the community-building skills that would come to define her career. While working a part-time gig with a union of telephone workers in 1918, she won better wages and working conditions for employees after leading a lengthy strike. Riding that victory, she headed a branch of the Women’s Trade Union League and landed a women’s outreach position with the American Federation of Labor. As an established women’s rights activist at the height of the suffrage movement, Cain was drawn to fight for the right to vote. After befriending Alice Paul, the founder of the National Woman’s Party, she joined a Minnesota chapter of the organization. The party’s comparatively forceful approach to the suffrage fight resonated with Cain’s own radical outlook. Cain and her fellow suffragists celebrated the fruits of their labor in 1920, when the Nineteenth Amendment was finally ratified. Yet Cain sought to amplify her voice even further and soon launched a congressional campaign. Armed with an impressive resume, Cain beat out three other candidates by 500 votes to win a seat in the Minnesota House. She took office in 1923—not long after she cast her first vote. Cain was known not only for being one of the youngest legislators in office, but also for belonging to its first generation of women representatives. Despite serving just one term in the House, Cain compiled an extensive legislative record. One of her proudest accomplishments was the passage of a bill that banned people from disguising their identities in public. The bill, which aimed to prevent Ku Klux Klan members from gathering, was the first of its kind and inspired fifteen other states to adopt similar legislation. Cain also fought to strengthen women’s rights. Her bill titled “Granting Equal Rights, Privileges, and Immunities to Both Sexes,” which was the first of its kind that demanded equal rights for women in Minnesota, proved to be too radical for its time. After a busy two-year term, Cain lost her reelection bid to a male opponent by a handful of votes. Yet she did not let the defeat stop her political career. She soon moved to Washington, DC, where she spent four years living at National Woman’s Party headquarters and lobbying for women’s rights. She completed her East Coast tour with a stint in New York City, where she coordinated programming for the American Women’s Association and brushed shoulders with a host of celebrities. Cain’s father’s death pulled her back home to Minneapolis. The Great Depression struck the country soon after, and Cain quickly jumped into action. She started small by coordinating deliveries to kids whose families couldn’t afford milk. Then, after observing overloaded and under-resourced city agencies fail to help everyone in need, Cain took matters into her own hands. As director of the City Wide Direct Relief Committee, Cain quickly connected Minneapolis residents to vital resources like food, clothing, housing, and heat. During World War II, Cain pushed for equal pay for women at the Twin Cities Army Ammunition Plant (TCAAP), where she worked as public relations director. When the war ended and spurred housing shortages in Minneapolis, then-mayor Hubert Humphrey appointed Cain to serve as a housing consultant. As an active Farmer-Labor Party supporter, Cain often corresponded with other high-profile politicians, like Walter Mondale and Eugene McCarthy. She was also a uniting influence when the divided Farmer-Labor and Democratic parties merged in 1944. Though active on many political fronts, Cain never abandoned her passion for women’s rights work. She began working on an equal rights bill in 1948 in close collaboration with activist Arvonne Fraser. When the feminist movement picked up in the 1960s and inspired a new generation of women to fight for the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), Cain was a mentor to many. She happily watched from the crowd when the state finally passed the bill in 1973, acknowledging that the legislation was long overdue. Not long afterwards, in 1980, Cain died at her home in Minneapolis. Along with twenty-four other women, she is honored at the Minnesota Woman Suffrage Memorial near the state capitol for her commitment to strengthening women’s rights and workplace opportunities.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Myrtle Cain_1.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/cain-myrtle-agnes-1894-1980"},{"alt":"Suffragists present a petition","author":[{"name":"Elizabeth Loetscher","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/elizabeth-loetscher"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"August 06, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"National Woman’s Party in Minnesota","postbody":"The National Woman’s Party (NWP) was a suffrage organization that emphasized civil disobedience and direct action in its fight for the right to vote. Minneapolis activist Jane Bliss Potter ...","searchtext":"The National Woman’s Party (NWP) was a suffrage organization that emphasized civil disobedience and direct action in its fight for the right to vote. Minneapolis activist Jane Bliss Potter led the founding of its Minnesota chapter in 1915. Though its forceful approach frustrated some, the NWP lent a transformative sense of urgency and focus to Minnesota’s suffrage movement. The origins of the NWP lie in an earlier group called the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage (CU), founded by women’s rights activists Alice Paul and Lucy Burns in 1913. Paul modeled its philosophy on the militant tactics of suffragists she had met while studying in England, where they were called suffragettes. Her approach upset members of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), from which she split in 1914. In Minnesota, suffrage supporters encountered similar tensions. More traditional suffragists like Clara Ueland, president of the Minnesota Woman Suffrage Association (MWSA), initially supported the Minnesota chapter of the CU but distanced themselves when the group used controversial tactics like picketing. Other Minnesota women, however, were restless with the Nineteenth Amendment’s slow climb towards ratification. One of those women was Minneapolis activist Jane Bliss Potter, who created a Minnesota branch of the CU in 1915. Another was Sarah Tarleton Colvin, a nurse and community organizer who had moved to St. Paul in 1897. Like Paul, Colvin was tired of dawdling, and she readily accepted Paul’s methods when she encountered the CU in Washington, DC. In 1916, when the CU reorganized as the National Woman’s Party (NWP), Colvin joined the “Suffrage Special” train tour through the western United States. The excitement followed her home to Minnesota, where she and Myrtle Agnes Cain joined the group’s Minnesota chapter. The Minnesota NWP boasted members that Colvin described as enthusiastic, articulate, and remarkably devoted to the movement. Women from the Minnesota NWP traveled to Washington, DC, in January 1917 to participate in national protests involving the first-ever picketing of the White House. Their demonstrations continued into 1919. The NWP suffragists engaging in these non-violent, legal protests—including seven Minnesota women—were harassed, jailed, and at times force-fed for demanding the right to vote. Colvin was arrested twice in 1919, once for burning President Woodrow Wilson in effigy. She protested her two five-day sentences with a hunger strike. Bertha Moller, the Minnesota chapter’s secretary, was arrested eleven times during the demonstrations. NWP members, now numbering 800, also carried out smaller-scale protests in Minnesota. In 1918, NWP officials announced a boycott of Liberty Bonds. According to Colvin, the party had little interest in giving money to “short-sighted, incompetent men.” Frustrated with the government, they refused to affiliate themselves with either the Democratic or Republican Party. They continued to do so in the midst of a worsening influenza epidemic, during which calls for civic unity intensified. In 1919, members refrained from buying Christmas presents for their families and instead donated the funds to the suffrage cause. Though the NWP was driven to win the vote, its tactics and priorities clashed at times with other Minnesota suffrage groups. The more conservative MWSA publicly disapproved of the picketing campaign, stressing the need for “constructive” methods, and criticized its Liberty Bond boycott as a barrier to the war effort. Like other white suffragists in Minnesota and in other states, many members of the NWP marginalized Black women within the movement and often ignored the extra challenges faced by women of color fighting for their own voting rights. Despite the rifts and inequalities that pervaded the movement, suffragists won the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. At its annual conference in 1921, the NWP invited major suffrage organizations to celebrate their accomplishments and brainstorm future plans. Colvin was excited to enact meaningful changes with her newly won vote, like addressing income inequality and passing an equal rights bill. Yet she was deflated by the many suffragists who believed their work was over. After returning to Minnesota, she ended her involvement with the NWP. Myrtle Cain worked for the national NWP after 1923 to help advocate for the Equal Rights Amendment, but Minnesota’s branch never fully regained the momentum of its suffrage days. Many of its members continued to organize for women’s rights and use their vote to create change in their communities. The NWP, which still exists nationally, is remembered as a particularly ambitious and outspoken voice in Minnesota’s suffrage movement.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Moller with NM senator_1918_LOC.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/national-woman-s-party-minnesota"},{"alt":"Nina Clifford’s brothel at 147 South Washington Avenue in St. Paul, down the street from Ida Dorsey’s brothel at 151 South Washington Avenue. Photograph by A. F. Raymond, 1937.","author":[{"name":"Alexandra Scholten","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/alexandra-scholten"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"August 04, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Clifford, Nina (1851–1929)","postbody":"Nina Clifford, a child of immigrants who evolved into the “richest woman of the underworld,” made a name for herself as an affluent sex worker who contributed to the buildup of St. Paul’s ...","searchtext":"Nina Clifford, a child of immigrants who evolved into the “richest woman of the underworld,” made a name for herself as an affluent sex worker who contributed to the buildup of St. Paul’s downtown Red Light District in the late 1800s. She invited other women to establish their businesses nearby while police sanctioned an environment in which vice could thrive. In spite of a lack of preserved records, standing buildings, and extant photographs related to her business, Nina Clifford remains a legendary madam of St. Paul. Nina Clifford was born Johanna Crow (also referred to as ”Hannah”) in 1851 in Chatham, Ontario (Canada), the daughter of Irish or German immigrants. Shortly thereafter, her family moved to Detroit, where she later met and married Conrad Steinbrecher. Crow took the opportunity to move to St. Paul after being widowed, buying two lots on Washington Street along the Mississippi River in 1887 and adopting the name Nina Clifford. No. 145 served as her personal residence, while No. 147—down the street from the police station and city morgue—was established as the location for a brothel, run by Clifford herself. A year later, Clifford commissioned the building of a luxurious two-story establishment on the lot for $12,000. Many sex workers operating during the nineteenth century cloaked themselves under the guise of working in “cigar stores” or as dressmakers. Clifford was relatively upfront about the operations at 147 Washington Street, since she operated her brothel within the city’s vice districts. St. Paul districts were not as established as those in Minneapolis but were concentrated downtown between Cedar Street and Sibley Street and “under the hill” near Eagle Street. From 1865 to 1883, prostitution, which was illegal under both city and state law, was regulated in St. Paul through regular monthly arrests and fining madams. After 1883, when Clifford was operating her brothel, madams appeared before courts only to be fined. The O’Connor Layover Agreement, established by St. Paul police chief John J. O’Connor in 1900, allowed criminals to reside in St. Paul so long as they did not commit crimes within the city itself. Vice, including prostitution, gambling, and alcohol sales, was not subject to O’Connor’s ban on crime, and it thrived within St. Paul. By 1895, Clifford operated the largest brothel in the Washington Red Light District, with eleven women operating as sex workers (referred to as “sports”), two maids, and a cook. In 1900, six other addresses on Washington Street were operating as brothels, with an average of 6.5 sex workers per establishment. Five years later, Clifford added a housekeeper, a musician, and a porter to the live-in staff. Clifford brought other madams (like Ida Dorsey, who purchased Clifford’s building at 151 South Washington Street), into her district, and was paid accordingly. Clifford funneled the money received in affiliation with other madams towards city officials to protect their businesses. In 1914, she garnered attention for paying city police to turn a blind eye towards her operations. Named the “richest woman in the underworld” and credited with having “business shrewdness above the average,” Clifford operated her brothel at 147 Washington Street until her death on July 14, 1929, while she was visiting family in Detroit. In the 1930s, her building, as well as many others on the street, were demolished. The crystal chandelier that hung in either Clifford’s home or her brothel was purported to have been moved and installed in the St. Paul mayor’s private offices after her buildings were demolished in the 1930s. There was alleged to be tunnels linking Clifford’s brothel to the Minnesota Club, located on the corner of Fourth Street and Washington Street. The legend was intensified by a portrait club members thought was of Clifford that they hung on a wall. This myth of the Minnesota Club connection was debunked during a 1997 excavation of the brothel site, during which no tunnels were found. The Science Museum of Minnesota was built there in the following year. Gossip around Clifford’s brothel and the Minnesota Club illuminates the type of customers she attracted: men of a high socioeconomic class, established and involved in the community. In the twenty-first century, Clifford’s notoriety survives on lore and continued storytelling rather than on remaining physical artifacts from her life.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Image4.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/clifford-nina-1851-1929"},{"alt":"Gordon Parks","author":[{"name":"Yuan Ding","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/yuan-ding"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 30, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Parks, Gordon (1912–2006)","postbody":"Gordon Parks was a world-renowned photographer, musician, film director, composer, author, and social justice activist. Best known for his documentary photojournalism that explored the ...","searchtext":"Gordon Parks was a world-renowned photographer, musician, film director, composer, author, and social justice activist. Best known for his documentary photojournalism that explored the impact of poverty and racial discrimination on communities of color, Parks’ photography appeared in many news and fashion publications, including Vogue and Life. He was the first African American to write, produce, and direct major motion pictures. Gordon Roger Alexander Buchanan Parks was born to Sarah and Andrew Jackson Parks on November 30, 1912, in Fort Scott, Kansas. The youngest of fifteen children, Parks grew up in a community plagued by poverty and racial violence. Following the death of his mother in 1928, the sixteen-year-old Parks moved to St. Paul, Minnesota, to live with his older sister. He then enrolled in Mechanic Arts High School and found a job bussing tables. Soon after, however, he had a fight with his ill-tempered brother-in-law and was kicked out. Parks found himself homeless in his first Minnesota winter. In his autobiography, A Choice of Weapons, Parks wrote about riding trolleys between Minneapolis and St. Paul to keep warm at night. After several weeks of starvation, Parks almost resorted to robbery. It was only when he reminded himself of his mother’s teachings and high expectations for him that he stopped himself. Eventually, he found a job playing piano at a Minneapolis brothel and managed to stay off the streets. Parks had to look for housing and work several times over before his father, sisters, and brother finally joined him a few months later. Parks managed to stay in school throughout this period. In 1929, he enrolled in Central High School, only to drop out a few months later due to the start of the Great Depression. He spent the next few years struggling to make ends meet and briefly toured with Larry Funk’s orchestra as its only Black musician. In 1937, Parks was waiting tables on a train when he came across images of Depression-era migrant workers taken by Farm Security Administration (FSA) photographers. He was inspired to buy a camera at a pawn shop and became a self-taught photographer. In 1940, he was hired to shoot for Frank Murphy’s department stores in St. Paul; the same year, he and his wife Sally moved to Chicago. In 1942, Parks won a photography award that landed him a job at the FSA in Washington, DC. After the FSA disbanded, he worked for the Office of War Information (OWI) and the Standard Oil Photography Project. With an eye for the beauty in the mundane and a natural attunement to human suffering, Parks developed a style that would make him one the most celebrated photographers of his time. He started freelancing for Glamour, Ebony, and Vogue, and produced fashion photography that captured the motion of models and garments. In 1948, his photographic essay on a Harlem gang leader earned him a job as the first African American photographer at Life, where he worked until 1972. Parks’s photography and writing provided invaluable documentation of the nation’s economic upheavals and struggles towards racial equality. In addition to being a celebrated photographer, Parks was also a successful composer, writer, and filmmaker. In 1969, he adapted his bestselling novel The Learning Tree into a film and composed the score for it. His next film, Shaft (1971), was a critical and box-office success, inspiring many sequels. Parks published numerous books, including memoirs, novels, poetry, and books on photographic technique. In 1989 he produced, directed, and composed the music for a ballet production, Martin, dedicated to the late Martin Luther King, Jr. Throughout his career, Parks won countless awards, including a Photographer of the Year award from the American Society of Magazine Photographers, a Notable Book Award from the American Library Association, and an Emmy. He was inducted into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame, the NAACP Hall of Fame, and the International Photography Hall of Fame. In addition to over twenty honorary doctorates, he received the Governor’s Medal of Honor from the state of Kansas and the Congress of Racial Equality Lifetime Achievement Award.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/448px-Gordon_Parks_2000.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056216,"name":"African Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/parks-gordon-1912-2006"},{"alt":"Members of WARM","author":[{"name":"Heather Carroll","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/heather-carroll"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 27, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"WARM: A Women’s Collective Art Space","postbody":"In 1976, the doors opened to a new art gallery—the first in Minnesota dedicated exclusively to women artists. During its fifteen years of operation, WARM: A Women’s Collective Art Space ...","searchtext":"In 1976, the doors opened to a new art gallery—the first in Minnesota dedicated exclusively to women artists. During its fifteen years of operation, WARM: A Women’s Collective Art Space (often referred to as the WARM Gallery) was at the center of women’s visual arts programming in the Twin Cities. Informed by second-wave feminism and in step with the national Women’s Art Movement, the WARM Gallery built a new arts community focused on promoting equality. It gave women artists the professional experiences necessary to compete in the art world and provided public access to women’s art, history, and theory. The Women’s Art Registry of Minnesota (WARM) began in 1973 as a group dedicated to increasing public access to art made by women and creating opportunities for women artists. Membership was fee-based and open to any woman artist in the state. In its earliest years, WARM achieved its goals in two ways. First, the group arranged art exhibits at galleries, colleges, and public spaces. Second, it formed a slide registry. This registry functioned like a library of images of the members’ artworks and was made available to curators, collectors, educators, and the general public. Users could browse through the slides in person, request copies by mail, or see projections at monthly curated viewings. Because of these activities, word spread quickly about the group, and WARM’s membership and supportive community grew. Opening a gallery space was a natural extension of the group’s goals. By January 1976, a lease for a street-level space in the Wyman Building in Minneapolis (414 First Avenue North) was signed, and renovations began. Thirty-seven WARM members became WARM Gallery collective members. They put in hundreds of hours of work to convert the space from a dark, dingy garment workshop to a pristine, white-walled exhibition space. WARM: A Women’s Collective Art Space opened to the public on April 10, 1976, with an exhibition of the members’ artwork and a celebration that drew more than 1,500 visitors. Renowned feminist artist Miriam Shapiro attended. When interviewed for a Minneapolis Star Tribune article, Shapiro praised the gallery, saying “that it is the most elegant of the five such collective art galleries in the United States and that it is very professional.” The gallery functioned as a base of operations for WARM’s activities. They included meetings, slide registration, performances, lectures, parties, classes, and collaborations with outside artists, museums, galleries, theaters, and arts organizations. During the gallery’s first ten years, members launched a slide- and tape-rental program featuring the scholarly and historical work of members and collaborators. They curated an invitational gallery featuring works by Joan Snyder, Harmony Hammond, and many others, and organized an outside exhibition program that promoted the work of members throughout Minnesota and beyond. Other achievements included a feminist art journal with over 5000 subscribers; an acclaimed mentor program; a feminist art lecture series with speakers like Grace Hartigan, Bettye Saar and Alice Neel; and a national conference, The Contemporary Woman in Visual Arts, with over 400 scholars and artists. These ambitious activities were coordinated exclusively by WARM members and gallery members and were partially or fully funded by grants and outside donors. Often, grants came with stipulations that funds could not be used for day-to-day operating costs. The WARM Gallery’s operation costs were therefore funded primarily by its collective membership. Because members rejected the commercial gallery model, sales of artworks went directly to the artists. Other income came from journal subscriptions, multiple levels of memberships, and outside donors. Around 1987, gallery membership changed as many of its founders left to pursue other opportunities and the next generation of artists joined. This shift, coupled with a growing operational debt and funding shortfalls, led to the closing of the gallery space in 1991. WARM continued, however, as a members-only group. It changed its name to The Women’s Art Resources of Minnesota and focused on the mentor program and outside exhibitions.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Warm Gallery -1981 5th anniversary .jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/warm-women-s-collective-art-space"},{"alt":"Gravestones awaiting installation outside Fergus Falls State Hospital","author":[{"name":"Sasha Warren","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/sasha-warren"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 23, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Remembering With Dignity","postbody":"Over the course of their history, Minnesota’s state hospitals were home to tens of thousands of people with disabilities or diagnoses of psychiatric conditions. Around 13,000 of those who ...","searchtext":"Over the course of their history, Minnesota’s state hospitals were home to tens of thousands of people with disabilities or diagnoses of psychiatric conditions. Around 13,000 of those who died at these institutions were buried in cemeteries with only numbers to identify them. Remembering With Dignity is a group formed from members of Advocating Change Together and other self-advocacy organizations in 1994 with the goal of installing new gravestones in these cemeteries marked with names and dates in order to restore personhood to those denied it in the past. In December of 1866, St. Peter Asylum for the Insane (later renamed St. Peter State Hospital) became Minnesota’s first institution built to hold the state’s “lunatics.” Less than one year later, the first inmate died. She and many others of the first deceased were buried in the city’s cemeteries. However, this soon became unviable, and St. Peter began burying the dead in a separate hospital graveyard. Minnesota’s other state institutions followed St. Peter’s lead and buried their dead in separate graveyards. Wealthier families of some patients were able to either pay for a headstone or to have their loved one buried at another cemetery of their choosing. The 13,000 whose families could not afford this or who had no known family were buried at the hospital’s expense in plats with either a single number representing the order in which they died or nothing at all. By the mid-1990s, when most of the state hospitals closed, some of these grave markers had deteriorated beyond the point of recognition or had been destroyed by vandals. Most of Anoka State Hospital’s first 145 wooden grave markers were destroyed by rot or grass fires. At Hastings State Hospital, this deterioration was so extensive that the site was unrecognizable as a cemetery by the 1980s, despite numerous efforts at repair by local volunteers. In 1994, a group of disability self-advocates with the support of Advocating Change Together and other disability rights organizations based in the Twin Cities formed an organization called Remembering With Dignity. By checking available graveyard plats against state hospital obituary and burial records at the Minnesota Historical Society, they were able to create approximate indexes of who was buried in the cemeteries and when. In their view, recovering these biographical details is the first step to restoring a sense of personhood and dignity to those who died in institutions. In February 1996, Remembering With Dignity made a first attempt to procure an official state apology for the forced labor, medical experimentation, sterilizations, shock treatments, and lobotomies endured by patients in Minnesota’s state hospitals. Senator Linda Berglin and Representative Betty McCollum, who sponsored the resolutions of apology, withdrew them after the Health and Human Services Committee removed all references to the cemeteries out of fear an apology might make the state liable for future action and funding commitments. The group received state funding for the first time in 1997, which allowed it to order granite headstones with names and birth and death dates to accompany the numbered slabs. In 1999, it held its first dedication ceremony in Faribault in honor of the individuals buried there. This was the first of a number of dedications of new grave markers at Hastings, St. Peter, Anoka, Willmar, Cambridge, Owatonna, Moose Lake, and Rochester. In addition, Remembering with Dignity has hosted art and music shows to call attention to the unacknowledged personhood of patients and inmates of state institutions. In 2010, Remembering With Dignity helped draft a new apology resolution sponsored by Representative Karen Clark that was approved and signed in June by Governor Tim Pawlenty. This was celebrated as a landmark in the acknowledgement of mistreatment and the human rights of disabled people in the state. However, enthusiasm was tempered for many by the fact that the apology coincided with extensive budget cuts to disability and mental health services. As of 2020, Remembering With Dignity has installed approximately 8,000 gravestones in Minnesota’s state hospital cemeteries, leaving about 5,000 awaiting proper identification.","src":"https://www3.mnhs.org/hubfs/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Gravestones%20awaiting%20installation%20outside%20Fergus%20Falls%20State%20Hospital.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246087,"name":"Health and Medicine","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/remembering-dignity"},{"alt":"","author":[{"name":"Jessica Milgroom","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/jessica-milgroom"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 20, 2020","eraTag":[],"keydate":"","name":"Wild Rice and the Ojibwe","postbody":"Wild rice is a food of great historical, spiritual, and cultural importance for Ojibwe people. After colonization disrupted their traditional food system, however, they could no longer ...","searchtext":"Wild rice is a food of great historical, spiritual, and cultural importance for Ojibwe people. After colonization disrupted their traditional food system, however, they could no longer depend on stores of wild rice for food all year round. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, this traditional staple was appropriated by white entrepreneurs and marketed as a gourmet commodity. Native and non-Native people alike began to harvest rice to sell it for cash, threatening the health of the natural stands of the crop. This lucrative market paved the way for domestication of the plant, and farmers began cultivating it in paddies in the late 1960s. In the twenty-first century, many Ojibwe and other Native people are fighting to sustain the hand-harvested wild rice tradition and to protect wild rice beds. Ojibwe people arrived in present-day Minnesota in the 1600s after a long migration from the east coast of the United States that lasted many centuries. Together with their Anishinaabe kin, the Potawatomi and Odawa, they followed a vision that told them to search for their homeland in a place “where the food floats on water.” The Ojibwe recognized this as the wild rice they found growing around Lake Superior (Gichigami), and they settled on the sacred site of what is known today as Madeline Island (Mooningwaanekaaning). In the Ojibwe language, wild rice (Zizania palustris) is called manoomin, which is related by analogy to a word (minomin) meaning ||good berry.||” It is a highly nutritious wild grain that is gathered from lakes and waterways by canoe in late August and early September, during the wild rice moon (manoominike giizis). Before contact with Europeans and as late as the early twentieth century, Ojibwe people depended on wild rice as a crucial part of their diet, together with berries, fish, meat, vegetables, and maple sugar. They moved their camps throughout the year, depending on the activities of seasonal food gathering. In autumn, families moved to a location close to a lake with a promising stand of wild rice and stayed there for the duration of the season. Men hunted and fished while women harvested rice, preparing food for their families to eat throughout the following winter, spring, and summer. TRADITIONAL HARVESTING METHODS Ojibwe people harvested wild rice, and continue to harvest it today, in pairs, with one person pushing or paddling a canoe and the other knocking rice into it with sticks (bawa||iganaakoog). When the wild rice is ripe, the grains fall easily into a canoe, and the grains that fall into the water lodge themselves into the mud, then grow into the following year’s stands of rice. Freshly harvested manoomin is called “green” rice. When processed in the traditional way, it is parched (roasted) over a fire, then threshed by being stepped or danced on. This motion, called jigging, loosens and removes the fibrous outer covering of the grain. Finally, to separate the hulls from the grain, wild rice is “winnowed” or “fanned”—tossed up in the air with birch bark trays (nooshkaachinaaganan) so that the hulls are blown away and only the edible grain is left behind. The work that goes into preparing wild rice for eating and storage was traditionally carried out collectively. Women marked the areas designated for particular families by binding a number of heads together. This ensured that everyone in the community got the rice they needed, and it also made harvesting easier. Taking care of the natural world that sustains us forms a central part of the Ojibwe people’s way of seeing the world. Traditional wild rice harvesting practices reflect this, protecting wild rice beds for the long-term wellbeing of the ecosystem as well as the community. Designated elders would, and on reservations still do, carefully monitor lakes to prevent premature or excessive harvests, “opening” and “closing” lakes to ricing as necessary, and leaving some mature grains unharvested for re-seeding. LOSS OF A TRADITIONAL FOOD SYSTEM As far back as the early fur trade in the mid-1600s, some Ojibwe families traded wild rice for goods. For the most part, however, they collected it for household consumption or trade between tribes. Processing wild rice is a labor-intensive activity, and families harvested only as much as they could process. Colonization, land loss, the establishment of reservations, and dependence on government food and payments separated Ojibwe people from their way of life and—with some exceptions—threatened their traditional food system. As people stopped eating their traditional diets in the mid-twentieth century, major health problems like diabetes emerged. Harvesting practices also changed as they lost access to the lakes and rivers in which wild rice grew, and as they adapted to the changing world around them. Men began to harvest wild rice together with women, gathering it in aluminum canoes rather than birch bark ones and processing it with machines. Until the 1950s, Ojibwe people remained the primary ricers. Ojibwe people both on and off reservations faced a period of difficulty after World War II. Traditional lifeways could no longer sustain family needs, and jobs were difficult to find. Many people moved to cities; others suffered from poverty on their reservations. At the same time, the North American wild rice market shifted as a new marketing model began to demand products in large quantities to be sold across the nation. The price of wild rice rose as it gained in popularity, and both Natives and non-Natives began to harvest the crop for cash rather than for home consumption. Inexperienced non-Native harvesters used methods that began to put wild rice beds in danger. Technology, including parching, thrashing, and fanning machines, was further developed to process the rice with more ease. Processing plants were set up across the state—primarily, but not exclusively, by white people. As the national market for wild rice grew, more people became interested in figuring out how to cultivate it as a crop, like paddy rice. This led to domestication efforts at the University of Minnesota and the expansion of many acres of paddy rice in both Minnesota and California. Wild rice was made the Minnesota state grain in 1977. Unfortunately, however, the cheaper production costs of cultivated wild rice drove down demand for hand-harvested wild rice, leaving Ojibwe people without this source of income. RESTORATION AND REGULATION As far back as the 1930s, the health of wild rice beds has been a serious concern. In 1939 Minnesota passed a law outlawing mechanized harvest and limiting how and when wild rice could be harvested. Since then, it has enacted other protective policies, including limiting the number of hours in the day during which it is permissible to rice and limiting the length of the canoe used for ricing. In the 1990s, wild rice was identified as an endangered food. The plant is sensitive to water levels altered by dams as well as road construction, pollution, poor harvesting practices, invasive species, genetic engineering (genetic contamination of the wild rice from the paddies), and climate change. In response to these threats, Ojibwe and other Native people organized. For example, in 1994, the Fond du Lac and Bois Forte bands developed a “Wild Rice Restoration Plan for the St. Louis River Watershed” designed to restore lost stands of the crop and manage its harvest. In the same decade, the company Native Harvest (part of the White Earth Land Recovery Project) began to sell hand-harvested wild rice, and multiple bands formed reservation wild-rice committees to manage harvests. In the 2020s, Ojibwe people continue to defend and protect this vital plant and the cultural, health, and spiritual importance that it holds. Individuals as well as tribes organize ricing camps to teach traditional practices of ricing, parching, and finishing. Others are actively fighting against the Enbridge Line 3 oil pipeline replacement project that would cross wild rice habitat, or collaborating in a movement for Native food sovereignty.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Wild_rice_harvest_on_Mud_Lake,_Cass_County,_Minnesota,_September_2015.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246059,"name":"Native Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/wild-rice-and-ojibwe"},{"alt":"A student and teacher at the Heart of the Earth Survival School","author":[{"name":"Jon Lurie","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/jon-lurie"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 14, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Heart of the Earth Survival School","postbody":"In 1970, the American Indian Movement (AIM) declared its intention to open a school for Native youth living in Minneapolis. AIM had identified the urgent need for Indigenous children to be ...","searchtext":"In 1970, the American Indian Movement (AIM) declared its intention to open a school for Native youth living in Minneapolis. AIM had identified the urgent need for Indigenous children to be educated within their own communities. Two years later, Heart of the Earth Survival School opened its doors, providing hope to Native families whose children had endured the racial abuse prevalent in the Minneapolis public schools. In the 1960s and early 70s, due in part to discrimination experienced within the public schools, the dropout rate among Native students in the Twin Cities hovered between 60 and 80 percent. This led to an even greater crisis: the widespread removal of “truant” children from their homes by the social welfare agencies of Ramsey and Hennepin Counties. Most of these young people, in violation of international law, were placed outside of Native communities, with white foster parents. According to the United Nations, taking children from their families and placing them in outside communities is a form of genocide. Whether the social workers did this to arrest the transmission of Native culture or not, the effect of these removals was deeply damaging. In 1970, AIM announced its aspiration to end the practice. Its plan was to open a “survival school,” an alternative to public and Bureau of Indian Affairs schools that would place Indigenous culture at the center of its curriculum. AIM, which had formed just two years prior, lacked the resources to open a school; it would not be long, however, before necessity forced it to act. In 1971, Patricia and Jerry Roy, whose three sons attended Minneapolis Public Schools, approached AIM, desperate for help. The White Earth Ojibwe family was under siege by Hennepin County Social Services, who claimed the boys were truant. The Roys had made the decision to homeschool after their sons were repeatedly victimized at school. The boys reported having their long hair pulled and being called derogatory names. They refused the school officials’ order to cut their hair. AIM leaders Dennis Banks and Clyde Bellecourt agreed to accompany the Roys to a court appearance. Banks and Bellecourt furiously challenged Judge Lindsay Arthur to stop stealing Native children from their homes. Arthur had heard of the AIM leaders, and during a discussion in his chambers, he admitted he was sympathetic to their plight, but said he had no choice but to remove truant children. After a heated argument, Arthur agreed to send Native kids to AIM, so long as it could provide them an alternative to public school. In January 1972, AIM members did just that when they welcomed eight students, including the three Roy boys, to AIM Survival School. Opened in AIM’s Minneapolis office without a penny spent, the school was austere in the extreme. Students from that first class recall a basement classroom with a single bare lightbulb, cockroaches crawling on the walls, and a toilet that wouldn’t stop flushing. There was one old blackboard, a single piece of chalk, and one pencil for the students to share. What the school lacked in resources, it made up for in vision. Unlike the public schools, which taught a Euro-centric perspective, Heart of the Earth’s vision included the restoration of vanishing knowledge like fishing and hunting skills, wild rice gathering, maple syrup harvesting, and Indigenous languages. AIM Survival School||s educational approach was largely forged by Ona Kingbird, a young, traditional Anishinaabe who infused the survival school with Indigenous curricula. For eighteen months Kingbird worked without pay, until the school located the funding to pay her. The school||s funding came from the last place AIM expected to find it. In the summer of 1972, the Congress of the United States passed the Indian Education Act, providing federal funds for American Indian and Alaska Native education. The act was a boon for school, as it allotted funding for each student at the struggling school. It continued to develop in 1974 and changed its named to Heart of the Earth Survival School. As its ranks swelled with children referred by the courts, the school was forced to move twelve times in its first three years. Government regulators continually shut down Heart of the Earth for infrastructure deficiencies, such as a shortage of windows, lack of a playground, and insufficient bathroom facilities. In 1975, Heart of the Earth finally found a permanent home when it purchased the campus of United Methodist Church in Minneapolis’ Dinkytown neighborhood. Heart of the Earth developed its own traditions, providing a cultural and spiritual framework for its students. Every Monday morning, for example, the entire community would gather to pray and sing around the drum. The ceremony was repeated every Friday before the students went home for the weekend. By at least one metric, the school was a resounding success: over its thirty-five years of existence, Heart of the Earth graduated more Native students than the Minneapolis Public Schools combined. In 2008 Heart of the Earth’s executive director, Joel Pourier, was investigated for fraud, and the school was forced to close. Pourier eventually pleaded guilty to embezzling nearly $1.4 million and was sentenced to a ten-year prison term.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/229760_2_of_2_cropped.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056210,"name":"Education","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246059,"name":"Native Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/heart-earth-survival-school"},{"alt":"Minneapolis Institute of Art","author":[{"name":"Tracy Harris","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/tracy-harris"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 10, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia)","postbody":"When the Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) opened in 1915 it exhibited 450 pieces of art, most of them on loan. In the twenty-first century it is an encyclopedic art museum, boasting a ...","searchtext":"When the Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) opened in 1915 it exhibited 450 pieces of art, most of them on loan. In the twenty-first century it is an encyclopedic art museum, boasting a collection of more than 89,000 objects that spans 20,000 years and six continents; special exhibitions on topics that have ranged from Star Wars to Martin Luther; and a presence in the community that reflects more than a century of local support for the arts. Mia was an outgrowth of the Minneapolis Society of Fine Arts (MSFA), which was founded in 1883 and maintained a small gallery on the top floor of the Minneapolis Public Library. At an MSFA dinner on January 10, 1911, financier DeWitt Clinton Morrison announced that he would donate ten acres of land so the society could build a museum, provided they could raise $500,000 for the building. MFSA President William Dunwoody immediately pledged $100,000, and a pledging frenzy ensued. Within ninety minutes, dinner guests had pledged another $250,000. The rest of the money was raised within the month. The Minneapolis Institute of Arts (|||Arts||| included a final |||s||| until 2015) opened on January 8, 1915, in a neoclassical building designed by the New York firm McKim, Mead and White. A columned portico provided entry on East Twenty-Fourth Street. Accessibility was a paramount value: the museum offered free admission three days a week and complimentary wheelchairs. Attendance that first year exceeded nearly 148,000. As befits an institution that opened in the Minnesota winter, support for the new museum snowballed. Dunwoody, who died in 1914, bequeathed $1 million in his will. Morrison’s daughter, Ethel Van Derlip, left the museum $500,000 in 1921; businessman James Ford Bell began donating American silver in 1932; and flour magnate Alfred F. Pillsbury bequeathed his entire Asian collection in 1950. By the turn of the twenty-first century, major donors included Target Corporation and Bruce and Ruth Dayton. Mia began building its collection at once. In addition to donations, major acquisitions have included an intact Egyptian mummy and coffin case (1916); Rembrandt’s Lucretia (1934); and, in 1992, the Jade Mountain, at 640 pounds the largest piece of imperial carved jade outside of China. In 1998 Mia opened twenty-two galleries of Asian art, including an entire seventeenth-century (Ming Dynasty) reception hall. It was purchased in China, then dismantled piece by piece—from floor tiles to carved wooden ceiling—before being crated, shipped, and reassembled at the museum. The room, and the scholar’s study that Mia acquired at the same time, showcase the museum’s outstanding collection of Chinese furniture and form the centerpiece of an Asian art collection that is among the finest in the country. As Mia’s collections have expanded, so has its physical space. An auditorium, galleries, and office space were added in 1927. Major change came in 1974, when the MSFA realized its goal of creating unified space for its three constituent organizations: the Children’s Theater Company, Minneapolis College of Art and Design, and Mia. The project, designed by Japanese architect Kenzō Tange, included a complete renovation of Mia’s existing building and two new wings, doubling Mia’s exhibition and education space. The new design also directly connected the museum to the Children’s Theater Company with a joint entrance on Third Avenue South. More galleries were added in 1998. In 2006 the museum opened its largest addition to date, the Target Wing, designed by Michael Graves. This added 40 percent more exhibition space, primarily for modern and non-Western art. The Target Wing also increased by 80 percent the space available for the Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program (MAEP), an artist-run curatorial department. The program mounts several exhibitions per year of work by Minnesota artists and represents a unique partnership between a museum and its local artistic community. Accessibility has remained a cornerstone of Mia’s mission. In 1989 the museum dropped its admission fee (then two dollars) for all but special exhibitions. In addition to MAEP, Mia has presented exhibitions by local Hmong, Somali, and Native American artists. Blockbuster exhibitions draw huge crowds. A 2018–2019 exhibition of undersea finds from ancient Egypt attracted 154,000 visitors. Overall attendance at the museum reached almost 780,000 in fiscal year 2019. Mia’s collection continues to grow in the twenty-first century with recent loans and bequests from, respectively, Myron Kunin and Mary Griggs Burke, both in 2015.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Minneapolis_Institute_of_Art_Wikimedia_Commons (1).jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/minneapolis-institute-art-mia"},{"alt":"Sue M. Dickey Hough","author":[{"name":"Linda A. Cameron","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/linda-cameron"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 08, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Hough, Sue Metzger Dickey (ca. 1882–1980)","postbody":"One of the first four women elected to the Minnesota legislature in 1922, Sue Metzger Dickey Hough campaigned for gun control, strict capital punishment, and mandatory automobile insurance, ...","searchtext":"One of the first four women elected to the Minnesota legislature in 1922, Sue Metzger Dickey Hough campaigned for gun control, strict capital punishment, and mandatory automobile insurance, among other issues. After four unsuccessful bids for re-election, Hough turned her attention to club work and other causes, including animal welfare and civic engagement. Sue Metzger Dickey, born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in the early 1880s, joined a family with a tradition of public service. Her grandfather and an uncle served in both the Pennsylvania legislature and the US Congress. The family moved to Minnesota about 1884. Sue attended Minneapolis Central High School, graduating in 1902. Before her marriage, she sold real estate under the name S. M. Dickey Lands. In 1912, she married Frank L. Hough Jr. and the couple moved to Chicago. When her marriage failed, she returned to Minneapolis in 1916 and resumed her real estate business. Following the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, Hough and nine other women filed to run for state office in the 1922 election. Four women won seats in the Minnesota House of Representatives for the 1923 legislative session: Hough, Mabeth Hurd Paige, and Myrtle Agnes Cain, all of Minneapolis, and Hannah Jensen Kempfer of Otter Tail County. During her tenure as a lawmaker, Hough was appointed to six legislative committees, including Cities of the First Class, Crime Prevention, and Motor Vehicles and Motor Tax Laws. She co-authored a total of twenty-nine bills, with most reflecting her committee assignments. Hough and her female colleagues co-sponsored two bills relating to child welfare, in particular the rights of illegitimate children. Unlike her female colleagues, Hough became a vocal advocate for such controversial issues as gun control and capital punishment. She co-authored two gun control bills, proposing a permit requirement for carrying a weapon and penalties for non-compliance. Neither bill passed. Described in the local press as “one of the ardent advocates of hanging,” Hough co-authored two capital punishment bills and engaged in heated arguments with the bills’ opponents. Senator John C. Sweet, Hough’s fellow Republican from Hennepin County, was especially critical: “I have met only one woman in the whole state who favored the death penalty. That woman is a stateswoman, who seeks the bubble, reputation, on the steps of the gibbet.” Hough responded on the House floor that she would continue to follow her conscience in fulfilling her public duties, in spite of such criticism. Both bills died in committee. Perhaps less controversial, Hough co-authored two bills requiring owners of motor vehicles to carry liability, accident, and indemnity insurance or provide a fidelity bond to protect those injured through negligence. The bills also required proof of such insurance when registering a vehicle or obtaining a license. Hough’s legislative career came to an end with the close of the 1923 session. She made four unsuccessful bids for re-election: in 1924, 1926, 1930, and 1934. In 1939, she took a job with the Minnesota Department of Public Welfare, and remained there until 1953. An active clubwoman, Hough often spoke on legislative matters at club meetings. She had memberships in the Fifth District Minnesota Federation of Women’s Clubs, a citizenship club, the Housewives’ League of Minneapolis, and others. After leaving the legislature, she turned her attention to campaigning for conservative candidates and became an activist on civic and animal rights issues. She led protests of a state-mandated anti-rabies dog-muzzling law in 1928 and 1938. From 1949 into the early 1950s, Hough participated in a campaign to repeal a state law permitting the use of unclaimed impounded animals in University of Minnesota research experiments. She later served as second vice president of the Minnesota Society for the Prevention of Cruelty (Animal Humane Society). In the 1960s, while in her eighties, Hough continued to speak out on controversial civic issues. She spoke out against a new city charter that she believed would grant the mayor too much power. She opposed the construction of a “Southwest Diagonal” freeway. She protested against a proposed civil rights ordinance that would permit African Americans to move into previously restricted white neighborhoods. Hough passed away on December 28, 1980. She is buried in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/MplsPhotos_5710_full.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/hough-sue-metzger-dickey-ca-1882-1980"},{"alt":"Cover of the Prison Mirror","author":[{"name":"Sasha Warren","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/sasha-warren"}],"categoryTag":[],"date":"July 06, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Inmate Publications at State Institutions","postbody":"At the end of the nineteenth century, inmates at the Minnesota State Prison in Stillwater began publishing a newsletter written and edited by fellow prisoners. For the first time in US ...","searchtext":"At the end of the nineteenth century, inmates at the Minnesota State Prison in Stillwater began publishing a newsletter written and edited by fellow prisoners. For the first time in US history, inmates at a state institution created a regular periodical that was fully their own at every level of production. They used it to discuss news, share their literary and artistic works, and organize for institutional change. Called the Prison Mirror, the newsletter served as a model for similar publications produced by inmates at nearly all of Minnesota’s state hospitals, correctional facilities, and state schools. In 1876, three members of the infamous James–Younger Gang pleaded guilty to charges stemming from a failed bank robbery in Northfield, Minnesota. They each received life sentences of hard labor at Minnesota State Prison in Stillwater. A former newspaper editor named Lew P. Shoonmaker, who was also incarcerated at Stillwater, later approached one of the gang members (Cole Younger) who was working as a librarian and convinced him to help start a publication for prisoners. Thanks to donations from the rest of the gang, and months of pleading with the warden, the first issue of the Prison Mirror was published in August 1887. In their opening remarks, members of the editorial team declared that the newsletter would serve as an outlet for prisoner writing and journalism. It featured poetry, advice, and news columns. They also promised that all profits from subscription fees would go towards either keeping the paper running or funding the prison library. This publication became the model for dozens of newsletters and journals produced by inmates (all inhabitants of state institutions were called “inmates” until the 1970s) of nearly every state prison, hospital, and school. Like the Prison Mirror, these publications set out to create a vehicle for inmates to communicate with one another; to build up writing, editorial, design, and printing skills; or simply to express themselves. Almost all included some mixture of the elements included in the Prison Mirror: news, art, poetry, stories, jokes, puzzles, and advice. As time progressed, the various publications diverged from the model set by the Prison Mirror and forged their own path. The Reformatory Pillar, of St. Cloud’s Minnesota State Reformatory, was generally more literary and religious, with the longest sections reserved for short stories, poetry, and Christian moral tales. Some institutions had two or more publications, each with their own style and character. At Rochester State Hospital, the newsletter R.U.S.H. was the outlet for journalistic writing, while the Elm Leaf published more creative works, such as poetry and stories. These newsletters are a window into the routines and intimate lives of people living in Minnesota’s state institutions. Faribault State Hospital’s Voice of the Women and Men, for instance, published personal recollections of interesting events, like a circus that performed for residents. The poems and stories provide insight into the experience of being institutionalized, while the journalism helps to articulate the main concerns of inmates at the time. The newsletters also served as a platform for inmates to share their artistic work. Usually, the cover art was designed by inmates. In some publications, a section was reserved for drawings. More often, drawings were incorporated into the margins of the texts, used as a frame, or even printed lightly as the background. Censorship has always been present. Every publication required approval from the warden or the superintendent. In some cases, the content or style of a newsletter suddenly changed after a head editor or a superintendent stepped down. At first, the Elm Leaf published many articles on Christianity. After its first editor stepped down in 1958, it featured more journalistic columns. Some inmates expressed hope that their writing would help to move them closer to their release, which could have also resulted in self-censorship. Some editorial groups were more exclusive and required writers to attend meetings before being allowed to publish. Hastings State Hospital’s Hospitality required writers to join the Hospitality Club in order to participate. Faribault State Hospital’s publications were produced by specific writing and recreation classes. Others accepted submissions from anyone interested. It is impossible to know in each case what role censorship or favoritism played. The newsletters reflect the racial and gendered attitudes or prejudices of their editors and writers. Hospitality published cover art and featured stories with stereotyped images of Native American, Asian, and Black people on multiple occasions. The Reformatory Pillar published an article in 1905 arguing for the benefits of slavery. In contrast, newsletters that more often had Black and Native American authors and editors, like Shakopee’s Reflector, Red Wing’s Winged’ition, and Stillwater’s Prison Mirror regularly featured author submissions discussing experiences of racism in confinement. Many publications helped facilitate political or legal organizing campaigns, however small they may have been. Flight Deck, a patient newsletter produced at Hastings State Hospital, successfully advocated for creating new patient organizing groups to stake more of a claim in their treatment and conditions. Sometimes, demands for more space or new types of entertainment were printed. The Prison Mirror and the Reflector, the newsletter produced by inmates of the Women’s State Reformatory in Shakopee, informed (and continues to inform) prisoners about their rights while incarcerated. The publications also help keep them and their struggles visible to both other prisoners and the outside world. In addition to providing entertainment and informative content, the publications also allowed inmates to communicate with one another. These exchanges were so widespread by the 1930s that letters came into the bigger Minnesotan inmate publications from as far away as Australia and China. The most common forms of communication were reviews of other institutional publications, which often involved comparing works about daily life to those at their own facilities. Sometimes, an article from another institution would be republished. The first issue of the inmate publication from Fergus Falls State Hospital, published in 1933, was without a title. Within a month, readers from the Prison Mirror suggested the title the Weekly Pulse, which was adopted for the second issue. The speed of the acceptance demonstrates the network’s wide reach. These communications sometimes resulted in the spread of shared concepts. “Joy-flinging” (a term meaning “to spread positivity even in difficult circumstances”) originated in East Coast sanitariums and, by the 1920s, was used regularly in the Pine Knot, the newsletter for residents of the Minnesota State Sanatorium in Cass County. The publications exchange had another effect: showing people living in different state institutions that they shared common experiences. Numerous writers in prisons attest to the feeling that they are perceived as “insane,” while others in psychiatric facilities refer to their confinement as “prison.”","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/prison mirror 1_ black history month.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246060,"name":"Crime and Punishment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246087,"name":"Health and Medicine","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/inmate-publications-state-institutions"},{"alt":"Exterior of Finstad’s Auto-Marine Shop","author":[{"name":"Marjorie Savage","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/marjorie-savage"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 01, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Finstad’s Auto-Marine Shop, Ranier","postbody":"George Finstad repaired and maintained boats for fishermen, residents, and vacationers for more than fifty years at his auto-marine shop on the south shore of Rainy Lake. In 2020, it stands ...","searchtext":"George Finstad repaired and maintained boats for fishermen, residents, and vacationers for more than fifty years at his auto-marine shop on the south shore of Rainy Lake. In 2020, it stands as a reminder of the transportation history and tourist economy of Ranier, Minnesota, as they developed during the early twentieth century. The gable-roofed, concrete-block building was constructed in 1911 by Jim DiOnne, a gunmaker and automobile dealer. Double doors at the front of the building allowed cars to be pulled inside for repairs. At the back of the building, another set of double doors provided access from the lake. The shop featured a belt-driven central machinery system that ran a drill, lathe, and other equipment. Living quarters were on the second floor. In 1922, DiOnne hired George Finstad, a World War I veteran and native of Buyck, Minnesota. Under DiOnne’s guidance, Finstad fine-tuned his machinist and mechanical skills for two years before buying the business in partnership with his brother. He later bought out his brother||s share. He discontinued the shop’s work on guns and autos to focus on maintaining recreational and commercial fishing boats, as well as selling and repairing boat motors and parts. George’s wife, Clara, handled the shop’s bookkeeping. In the years following World War I, outdoor recreation was becoming increasingly popular and accessible. As Minnesota’s transportation systems improved and automobiles became more reliable and affordable, wilderness campers and fishermen arrived in Ranier by car or on the Duluth, Winnipeg, and Pacific Railway. They launched their boats and canoes from the town dock and headed to campsites on the islands and peninsulas scattered throughout American and Canadian waters. In lakes dotted with rocks and strewn with fallen logs, damage to boats and motors was a constant hazard. Finstad’s lakeside shop offered convenient, reliable service. Rainy Lake became a fashionable destination in the 1920s and 30s as a summer escape from the heat and smog of industrial cities across the Midwest. A number of wealthy tycoons built imposing homes on the lake’s islands. The social scene included Minneapolis grain moguls from the Pillsbury and Bell families; William Hapgood, owner of an Indiana cannery; and Major Horace Roberts, president of the Gordon Van Tine Company in Davenport, Iowa, manufacturer of prefabricated homes. Finstad tended to their Chris-Crafts, Hacker-Crafts, and Gar Woods, the wooden speed boats of the era. Larger yachts also sailed Rainy Lake, including the James Ford Bell family’s forty-four-foot cruiser, the Loafden, and Major Roberts’ fifty-foot Virginia. The arrival of any new yacht was a civic spectacle in Ranier, with crowds gathering at Finstad’s shop to watch the launch. Boats arrived by truck or train, packed in custom-made cradles that protected them during shipping. Finstad loaded the yachts onto his “marine railroad,” a track that shuttled the boats down a two-block slope into Rainy Lake. Each fall, Finstad used the marine railway to pull the yachts out of the water. He wrapped them with canvas tarps and stored them on the cradles that had protected them during shipping. Over the winter he repaired, resealed, and readied the boats for relaunching in the spring. Rainy Lake’s summer population was lively throughout the 1920s and 30s, but during World War II, the lake grew quiet. Finstad spent the war years maintaining and repairing equipment at the papermill in nearby International Falls. Following the war, Rainy Lake’s wealthy families gradually withdrew from their summer homes. Outhouses and lake-drawn water systems seemed uncomfortably rustic in a prosperous convenience society. Many of the elegant yachts were sold or transported to lakes closer to the Twin Cities or permanent moors in southern states. The Virginia and the Loafden were both moved to Lake Minnetonka. Aluminum and fiberglass boats and canoes gained popularity in the post-war years. The new boats were less expensive and easier to transport and store at home than wooden boats. Although Finstad’s winter storage business declined, his Johnson Outboard Motors franchise covered a large territory between Rainy Lake and Kabetogama and provided a steady income. He continued selling and repairing motors and fixing boats until his death in 1975. Clara kept the shop running until 1992. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Finstad shop 3.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246053,"name":"Transportation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/finstad-s-auto-marine-shop-ranier"},{"alt":"Two Valley Grove churches","author":[{"name":"Jeff M. Sauve","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/jeff-m-sauve"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"June 26, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Valley Grove Church, Wheeling Township","postbody":"In 1862, the Valley Grove Lutheran congregation erected a church made from local quarried limestone in Wheeling Township. By 1894, it had outgrown the original building and built a wooden ...","searchtext":"In 1862, the Valley Grove Lutheran congregation erected a church made from local quarried limestone in Wheeling Township. By 1894, it had outgrown the original building and built a wooden Gothic Revival edifice seventy-five feet away. Although the congregation disbanded in 1973, the remaining picturesque site and its structures were placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. Valley Grove Church traces its beginnings to the mid-1850s, when Norwegian immigrants in the Wheeling Township settlement of Tyske (or German) Grove (later called Valley Grove), Rice County, first held religious services in their log homes and in the open air. As early as 1860, meetings were held to discuss erecting a church three miles northwest of Nerstrand. The land’s owner, Fingal Fingalson, would not commit to selling. According to lore, “One day Ole Rudningen happened to meet him, so he asked him outright if the land was for sale or not. Fingalson said it was, so to close the deal then and there, Ole reached in his pocket and took out fifty cents—the only money he had, and paid it to close the deal.” One of the limestone quarries near Hidden Falls, located in the Big Woods, provided the stone for the Valley Grove Church site, a short distance away. Construction was completed in 1862. Situated on a hilltop, facing west, the rectangular church with a gable roof measures fifty-five feet by thirty-five feet by twenty feet high and cost $1200. Simple in design, the building has four regularly spaced windows on the north and south walls. Originally, the cupola was painted Cottage Red and the shutters Essex Green. From 1862 to 1867, Valley Grove operated as an independent congregation until joining the Norwegian Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, or what was commonly known then as the Norwegian Synod. The following year the church was officially dedicated on October 18, 1868. In 1874, a church bell weighing 1,433 pounds was purchased for $568 from the Troy Bell Foundry, Troy, New York. By 1894, the burgeoning congregation had outgrown the stone church. Members who lived in Nerstrand lobbied for a church to be built in the village limits. To appease the congregation, two identical white wood-frame churches with high steeples were erected; one in Nerstrand (later named Grace Lutheran Church) and the other, known as the Valley Grove “West” Lutheran Church, facing east, seventy-five feet away from the old stone church. In 1949, the two churches of the Valley Grove Congregation (town and country) officially divided and became independent of each other. Both churches remained in the same parish. The juxtaposition of the old limestone church and the new church perched on the grassy knoll created a dramatic panorama. The total cost to build both the West Church and Grace Lutheran Church was $2,975. The former was dedicated on November 8, 1894. Its white clapboard, Gothic-inspired look boasted ornamental pinnacles and pointed arches. Again, local quarried rock was utilized for the foundation. Like the stone church, plumbing was not installed. The bell was transferred from the stone church and placed in the steeple of the new church. The following year, in 1895, the former church was transformed into a guild hall managed by its Ladies’ Aid Society. The ceiling was lowered and a kitchen was built in the rear of the building. By the early 1970s, the congregation’s numbers had declined considerably. The few remaining members made the hard decision on April 17, 1972, to disband the following year. In May 1975, the West Church and grounds were officially transferred to the Society for the Preservation of the Valley Grove Church Building (later known as the Valley Grove Preservation Society). The old stone church and cemetery were transferred to the Valley Grove–Grace Cemetery Association. In 1982, the Valley Grove Church site was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. As of 2020, the Valley Grove Preservation Society seeks to maintain the two historic churches, a cemetery, and surrounding grounds, including restoration of a fifty-acre oak savanna. As a place to gather, Valley Grove continues to host weddings, funerals, an annual candlelight Christmas Eve service, and other social functions, such as the annual Valley Grove Country social held every fall.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Valley Grove Churches, Nerstrand, Minn., 2019.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246089,"name":"Religion and Belief","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/valley-grove-church-wheeling-township"},{"alt":"Charles Thompson Memorial Hall","author":[{"name":"Sasha Warren","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/sasha-warren"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"June 24, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Charles Thompson Memorial Hall, St. Paul","postbody":"In the early twentieth century, few meeting and event spaces in Minnesota were designed to be accessible to the state’s deaf, deafblind, and hard-of-hearing community. In 1916, Margaret ...","searchtext":"In the early twentieth century, few meeting and event spaces in Minnesota were designed to be accessible to the state’s deaf, deafblind, and hard-of-hearing community. In 1916, Margaret Brooks Thompson hired deaf architect Olof Hanson to design the Charles Thompson Memorial Hall in St. Paul in memory of her husband. It was the first social club designed exclusively for the deaf in the United States. The Charles Thompson Memorial Hall’s origins can be traced back to the Fourth Convention of the Minnesota Association of the Deaf at the Minnesota Institute for Defectives (Deaf, Blind and Feeble-minded) in Faribault, Minnesota, in 1896. It was there that Charles Thompson, the son of a wealthy St. Paul banker, met and fell in love with Margaret Brooks, the daughter of Scottish immigrants to rural Minnesota. Soon after, they married and set up permanent residence in St. Paul, with a lake home in Alexandria. Sharing a passion for fostering more social interaction for deaf people, the Thompsons transformed their numerous properties in and around the Twin Cities into bustling hubs for deaf and hard-of-hearing Minnesotans to meet, camp, or eat together. Their home in Alexandria on Lake Darling attracted so many deaf campers that they had permanent cabins built on the property. Charles passed away in 1915. Margaret decided to honor his legacy by using her inherited wealth to hire a well-known deaf architect named Olof Hanson to specially design a clubhouse for Minnesota’s deaf community. At the dedication ceremony in 1916, Margaret laid the cornerstone before a crowd of 500 people. She also announced that she would be placing the building and a $45,000 trust fund in the hands of a board of trustees. By doing so, she ensured that the club would always remain free to use for all of the deaf people of Minnesota, regardless of religious or political affiliation. Along with a large assembly hall, the building featured a bowling alley, a social hall, a maplewood dance floor, and a children’s play area. It was outfitted with large windows and ceilings to maximize lighting so that American Sign Language (ASL) signs could be seen clearly and easily. On some nights, new films with closed-captioning would be projected onto a curtain on a stage. (The Minnesota Association of the Deaf has frequently taken advantage of the space since 1917 to hold their biennial conventions.) In 1957, the Memorial Hall began circulating its official newsletter, The Thompson Hall Newsletter, which became the Minnesota Deaf Newsletter in 2002. Along with event listings and other news about the social space, the newsletter offered updates on the Minnesota School for the Deaf in Faribault, the local deaf sports teams, the Minnesota Association of the Deaf, and other news or updates of importance for the deaf, deafblind, and hard-of-hearing community. The clubhouse has reached several historical milestones in the twenty-first century. The Charles Thompson Memorial Hall was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2011, and members celebrated the 100th anniversary of their prized social club in 2016. Members have struggled at times to maintain their space, to keep it accessible to all, and to attract younger members. Despite these difficulties, the Charles Thompson Memorial Hall still stands as a testament to over a century of the collective labors of deaf, deafblind, and hard-of-hearing Minnesotans.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Charles_Thompson_Memorial_Hall_1916.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246054,"name":"Sports and Recreation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/charles-thompson-memorial-hall-st-paul"},{"alt":"Overhead view of Voyageurs National Park","author":[{"name":"Karl Nycklemoe","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/karl-nycklemoe"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"June 22, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Voyageurs National Park","postbody":"Voyageurs National Park is located on the Minnesota–Ontario international border and is Minnesota’s only national park. Established in 1975, it is a 341-square-mile network of lakes and ...","searchtext":"Voyageurs National Park is located on the Minnesota–Ontario international border and is Minnesota’s only national park. Established in 1975, it is a 341-square-mile network of lakes and streams surrounding the Kabetogama Peninsula. Though the region has been home to various Indigenous nations for countless generations, the park is named for the predominantly French Canadian voyageurs (travelers) who transported furs and other trade goods between hubs like Montreal and points further west. The overall topography of Voyageurs was formed most recently by the last glaciation period, which ended around 10,000 years ago. As glaciers scoured the earth, they melted, eroded the land, and filled the region with water. Water is a major feature of the present-day park, 40 percent of which is made up of lakes; 70 percent of the remaining land mass is boreal forest. The four largest lakes are Rainy Lake (Gojiji-zaaga||igan), Kabetogama Lake (Gaa-biitoogamaag-zaaga||igan), Namakan Lake, and Sand Point Lake, all of which are part of the Arctic watershed of Hudson Bay. Wolves, moose, beavers, and other iconic Upper Midwestern animals live in the park. When French fur trader Jacques de Noyon and his party canoed into the region in 1688, seeking to learn about the area’s resources, Cree, Monsoni, and Ojibwe people were already living there. It became a part of a major route over which voyageurs moved animal furs to Montreal and trade goods to the Canadian northwest territory. By the 1760s, the Bois Forte Ojibwe had become the primary Indigenous group in the Voyageurs National Park region. For another century, Ojibwe families lived in the area, trading furs for manufactured goods that they integrated into traditional lifeways. But after Minnesota became a state in 1858, American entrepreneurs wanted to exploit the area’s timber and mineral resources. In 1866, the Bois Forte Ojibwe signed a treaty that transferred two million acres of their homeland (between present-day Lake Vermillion and the Canadian border) to the United States. They continued, however, to live on and harvest the natural resources of their original territory. In the 1870s, homesteaders began to move into the region, with land surveys occurring between 1880 and 1901. In the 1890s, the immigrants were carrying out logging, commercial fishing, and agriculture and welcoming tourists. There was also a short-lived gold rush on Little American Island in Rainy Lake. Lumber barons, most notably Edward Wellington Backus, had a profound impact on the forest composition and water levels of the region. Logging of valuable white and red pine essentially deforested some areas, except for the pines on the shoreline. Likewise, Backus constructed a dam at International Falls in 1910 and two more dams at Kettle Falls and Squirrel Falls in 1914. These dams powered sawmills and paper mills in the region, and as of 2020, they still control the water levels of the park. In 1962 Governor Elmer Andersen traveled to the Kabetogama Peninsula with staff of the National Park Service (NPS) and other Minnesota officials, and the subsequent report of that trip was the first public indication of state and federal interest in creating Voyageurs National Park. A proposal for the park was written in 1963 and revised in 1964 to exclude the lands between Namakan Lake and Crane Lake due to pressure from the US Forest Service. The proposed park was a divisive subject. Local residents were opposed to its creation because they saw it as encroachment by the federal government that would limit logging and hunting in the area and decrease taxable property. Ultimately, legislation authorizing the establishment of the park was passed by the US Congress in December of 1970 and signed by President Richard Nixon in 1971. State and local governments donated land holdings to the park, allowing its formal establishment in 1975. Private lands in the park were purchased as well, but this was and remains a contentious issue, since many landowners felt pressure to sell. As of 2020, over 900 acres of land within the boundaries remain privately owned. After the establishment of the park, the NPS began planning and constructing trails, boating sites, and other amenities. The park has also been used for scientific research and conservation. In 1992, a wildlife protection zone was established for the gray wolf. Over 220 Indigenous pre-contact sites have been identified within the park, some of which are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/1280px-Voyageurs_National_Park_VOYA9516.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/voyageurs-national-park"},{"alt":"Soldiers and Sailors Memorial","author":[{"name":"Peter J. DeCarlo","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/peter-j-decarlo"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"June 19, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Soldiers and Sailors Memorial, St. Paul","postbody":"Designed to commemorate people who served in the US military during the Civil War, the Soldiers and Sailors Monument in St. Paul (sometimes called the Josias King Memorial) was erected in ...","searchtext":"Designed to commemorate people who served in the US military during the Civil War, the Soldiers and Sailors Monument in St. Paul (sometimes called the Josias King Memorial) was erected in 1903. Crowning the monument is a statue of Josias R. King, who is widely regarded as the first US volunteer in the Civil War. King also participated in violent campaigns to punish Dakota people after the US–Dakota War of 1862, known as the Punitive Expeditions. These included the Massacre of White Stone Hill, in which the US military killed hundreds of Native men, women, and children. King||s participation in the massacre has complicated his presence in the monument. The effort to erect a monument honoring Minnesotans’ service in the Civil War began immediately after the First Battle of Bull Run. As the war continued and the US-Dakota War of 1862 engulfed much of the state, however, the project stalled. Members of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) took up the work again over thirty years later, when St. Paul Acker Post 21 passed a resolution to erect a monument on Summit Hill. Then, in 1897, after a GAR encampment was held in St. Paul, the conversation widened. GAR members brainstormed ideas about how to memorialize the Civil War. Realizing that the new state capitol would provide space to remember the war, they focused on a complementary monument. Women of the GAR, supported by the Schubert Club, formed a soldiers’ monument committee and started raising funds. In 1903, Joseph J. McCardy, a member of Acker Post 21, spearheaded the final drive to erect the monument. He appointed his own committee, raised funds, and planned the unveiling of the monument. His control of the event offended members of Garfield Post 8, the other GAR group in St. Paul, who had begun a dialogue about a monument the year before. Women of the GAR were also offended. A crowd estimated at 4,000 attended the monument unveiling at Summit Park. Members of Acker Post and a few from Garfield led the ceremony. Minnesota National Guardsmen, Sons of Veterans, Phillipine and Spanish-American War veterans, and military units from Fort Snelling participated in a parade. Due to cold weather and snow, the statue of King had not yet been set atop the monument shaft. After the parade and a thirteen-gun salute, King and Susan Doran, the daughter of a Civil War veteran, unveiled the statue. The face of the statue was sculpted by John K. Daniels, and the body is a cast of a generic US soldier. The shaft is made of Vermont granite. Henry A. Castle, a Civil War veteran, GAR member, and former politician, spoke at the event. St. Paul Mayor Robert A. Smith accepted the monument on behalf of the city. The unveiling, like the monument, honored US soldiers and sailors who had fought and died to preserve the union and abolish slavery. King was specifically honored, and a unit he had served in, the First Minnesota Volunteer Infantry Regiment, was singled out for praise. King’s service in the Punitive Expeditions, however, was not mentioned, and the US-Dakota War of 1862, intimately intertwined with Minnesota’s Civil War history, was not spoken of that day. The speakers also said the monument stood as a testament to the imperial power of the United States and Christian civilization. Garfield Post continued to criticize the monument after its unveiling. In 1906, it was moved to allow for the realignment of Summit Avenue and the construction of the St. Paul Cathedral. Occasional commemorative events held by Civil War veterans, the descendants of veterans, and Civil War re-enactors took place at the monument over the decades. The monument itself stood untouched for over a century. The histories of the monument, King, and especially King’s involvement in the Punitive Expeditions were largely forgotten. Lighting was installed at the base of the monument in 2013. In 2016, the Minnesota Historical Society awarded Public Art St. Paul $60,000 to restore it. Additional money was raised, and restoration was completed in 2017. Amid the memorial debate, a Native American activist and a Minnesota historian brought to light King’s participation in the Massacre of Whitestone Hill. They argued that King’s presence on the monument indirectly celebrates state violence against Native Americans without naming it—a failure that erases Native people’s experiences. As of 2020, the monument stands on St. Paul city property and is owned and maintained by the city.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/IMG_4322.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/soldiers-and-sailors-memorial-st-paul"},{"alt":"Columbus Memorial","author":[{"name":"Peter J. DeCarlo","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/peter-j-decarlo"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"June 18, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Christopher Columbus Memorial, St. Paul","postbody":"Italian Americans erected a Christopher Columbus memorial on the grounds of the Minnesota State Capitol in 1931 to mark Columbus as the first white man to set foot in the Americas. Though ...","searchtext":"Italian Americans erected a Christopher Columbus memorial on the grounds of the Minnesota State Capitol in 1931 to mark Columbus as the first white man to set foot in the Americas. Though they intended to celebrate the achievement of a fellow Italian during a time of anti-Italian bigotry, the memorial they installed promoted white supremacist myths of discovery and erased Native Americans from history. It made no comment on the atrocities committed by Columbus against Native people. Native Americans and their allies protested the memorial’s existence for decades, and in 2020, a group that included self-identified members of the American Indian Movement (AIM) tore it down. Between 1880 and 1920, over 4 million Italian immigrants entered the United States. Few came to Minnesota, and the state’s Italian-born population peaked in 1910 at 9,688. When they arrived, they faced a racial ideology of Anglo-Saxon, Germanic, and Nordic superiority. Italian Americans were seen as “in between” white and non-white, enduring what some historians have called “soft racism.” In a nativist response, the US government passed the Johnson Reed Act in 1924. The act severely limited immigration, particularly from Italy. In the next few years, Italian Americans throughout the US erected Columbus memorials, and the Minnesota effort followed in that tradition. After members of the Italian Progressive Club of Duluth proposed the idea at a 1927 meeting, it was endorsed by the Minnesota Federation of Italian-American Clubs, and a resolution to create a monument was drafted at the Columbus Day Banquet held in Hibbing that year. The unanimously adopted resolution made it clear that the monument was about Italian pride and unity. But it also tried to establish Italians as white American citizens. The effort to erect a monument to Columbus spread to cities across the Iron Range, to St. Paul and Minneapolis, and to communities with small Italian American populations across Minnesota. Italian Americans formed a Columbus Memorial Association and raised $50,000 by public subscription from the Italians of Minnesota. The association wanted the state government to accept the monument as a gift and legitimize the effort. At the same time, leaders of the Italian American community petitioned their legislators to establish Columbus Day as a state holiday. Ultimately, the state legislature approved the Columbus Day bill on April 14, 1931, and accepted the Columbus Memorial as a gift to the state. The statue was designed by Carlo (Charles) Brioschi and the plinth by State Architect Clarence H. Johnston. The unveiling of the Columbus Memorial was a grand affair, with over 24,000 people in attendance. Italian Americans from the Midwest, local Minnesotans, and political officials from across the nation came to St. Paul. The main messages of the program were that Columbus had discovered America and Italians would be accepted as white. The existence of Native Americans went virtually unmentioned. Afterward, the memorial became a symbol of genocide and erasure for many Native people. Some people of Scandinavian heritage opposed the memorial, citing Leif Erickson as the first white discoverer of America. In 1949 they erected a monument to the Norseman on the opposite side of the capitol grounds. The Columbus Memorial sat quietly for decades, and the association that created it continued to meet. The 500th anniversary of Columbus’ landfall brought new attention to the memorial in 1992, and the association added a plaque to the plinth. Native Americans in St. Paul and across the country denounced celebrations of Columbus; in June the memorial was splashed with red paint. In 2015, the debate over Columbus reignited as monuments to white supremacy, mainly Confederate ones, were vandalized, torn down, and removed. Protests were held at the St. Paul memorial and thousands of people signed online petitions aimed at removing it or replacing it. St. Paul, Minneapolis, and the State of Minnesota proclaimed Indigenous Peoples Day in ensuing years, but the memorial survived. On June 10, 2020, in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in South Minneapolis, a group including people who identified as part of AIM tore down the Columbus statue. Though they did not condone the destruction of public property, Governor Tim Walz and Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan acknowledged that the memorial’s presence pained many citizens. Flanagan said she was not sad to see the statue go. Other elected officials and members of the public, meanwhile, pushed for the statue to be restored and reinterpreted. As of July 2, the Minnesota Historical Society and the Capitol Area Architectural and Planning Board (CAAPB) were discussing next steps. Editor||s note: This article describes a developing situation and will be updated as circumstances change.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/IMG_9855.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246059,"name":"Native Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/christopher-columbus-memorial-st-paul"},{"alt":"Seven of the Minnesota Eight","author":[{"name":"Paul Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/paul-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"June 12, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Minnesota Eight","postbody":"Around midnight on July 10, 1970, four teams of two or three people each broke into Selective Service offices in Little Falls, Alexandria, Winona, and Wabasha, intending to destroy as many ...","searchtext":"Around midnight on July 10, 1970, four teams of two or three people each broke into Selective Service offices in Little Falls, Alexandria, Winona, and Wabasha, intending to destroy as many military draft files as possible—acts of protest against the war in Vietnam. They mostly failed. Eight of them were arrested and charged with federal crimes. They became known as the Minnesota Eight. Resistance to the war in Vietnam, in Minnesota and elsewhere, took many forms. One of them was destruction of files in the offices of the Selective Service system (a draft eligibility agency). It is ironic that in Minnesota the least successful of such actions—that of the Minnesota Eight—is the best remembered. The first draft-board raid in the state, and possibly the first nationwide, took place in Elk River when Barry Bondhus poured two buckets of human excrement into the Selective Service files there in February of 1966. He was sentenced to eighteen months in prison. In the next three years similar acts took place in Chicago, Milwaukee, and Indianapolis, where hundreds and sometimes thousands of files were destroyed. In January 1970, Brian Wells burned 2,400 files at the Nicollet County Selective Service office in St. Peter and received a sentence of up to six years of federal supervision. By far the most successful such action took place in St. Paul and Minneapolis the weekend of February 28, 1970, when anti-war activists destroyed thousands of files held in the St. Paul central post office and an office building in downtown Minneapolis. No one was ever arrested for these crimes. After this, another group began planning break-ins in greater Minnesota. On July 10, 1970, it went into action. Chuck Turchick, Bill Tilton, and Cliff Ulen went to Alexandria; Don Olson, Peter Simmons, and Brad Beneke went to Winona; and Francis Kroncke and Michael Therriault went to Little Falls. Another team headed for Wabasha, while a fifth cancelled its action. Around midnight the raiders all broke into the Selective Service offices, prepared to destroy files. They concentrated on those of citizens designated 1-A—that is, subject to call-up at any time. In Alexandria, Little Falls, and Winona, FBI agents were waiting. The men, soon known as the Minnesota Eight, were arrested without incident. The Wabasha team succeeded in destroying files, and no arrests in that case were ever made. The men were charged with the federal crime of interference with the Selective Service. They and their lawyers made the trials, like the raids, political acts aimed at informing and persuading the public of the evils of the war in Vietnam. There were three trials: two before Judge Edward Devitt, the third before Philip Neville. Rancor broke out before the first trial even began. At Brian Wells’s trial Brad Beneke called Devitt “a pompous ass.” Devitt sent him to jail for ten days. At his arraignment, Turchick said he could not expect mercy from a court that “jails people because they refuse to kill.” At the first two trials (Turchick and Tilton, then Olson, Simmons, and Beneke), Devitt positioned armed sentries in the courthouse and kept many defense supporters out of his courtroom. Some supporters refused to stand for the judge and were ejected. A bomb threat and then a jury-misconduct mistrial marred the second trial. All five defendants were quickly convicted. The third trial, before Judge Neville, was completely different. He kept an open courtroom, used no armed guards, and allowed the defense to bring witness after witness to condemn the war in Vietnam. But in the end Neville ordered the jury to disregard all such evidence; Therriault and Kroncke were also quickly convicted. Rancor resurfaced at sentencing. Tilton called Judge Devitt “a good German” who was “helping fascism come into this country.” Devitt told the defendants that they were worse than ordinary criminals because their conduct struck “at the very foundation of government.” Five of the seven got the maximum sentence of five years in federal prison; the two youngest, Beneke and Simmons, received indeterminate terms. All of their appeals were denied. They served between 14 and 20 months, mostly in medium security prisons, and were released in July 1973. Cliff Ulen, the lone defendant to plead guilty, got no prison time.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/nlmgb2.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/minnesota-eight"},{"alt":"Tosten E. Bonde Farmhouse","author":[{"name":"Jeff M. Sauve","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/jeff-m-sauve"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"June 09, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Tosten E. Bonde Farmhouse","postbody":"The Tosten E. Bonde Farmhouse, built of locally quarried limestone in 1875, is one of the oldest structures of its kind in Wheeling Township, Rice County. The Bonde family emigrated from ...","searchtext":"The Tosten E. Bonde Farmhouse, built of locally quarried limestone in 1875, is one of the oldest structures of its kind in Wheeling Township, Rice County. The Bonde family emigrated from Norway to Minnesota in 1849 and homesteaded land in 1855. The private home was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. In 1849, Einer and Berit Bonde emigrated from Vang, Valdres, Norway, with their two sons, Tosten and Halvor. Berit’s daughter, Kari, from a previous marriage, and her husband, Thomas Veblen, had immigrated to the United States two years earlier in 1847. The Veblens were the parents of famed sociologist and economist Thorstein Veblen. According to family history, the Bondes “dreamed of following Kari’s footsteps to the new world.” The Bonde family lived in Port Washington, Wisconsin, before moving to Winneshiek County, Iowa, in the spring of 1854. The following year, on June 9, the family settled on 160 acres in section 11 of Wheeling Township in Minnesota Territory. In 1866, the Veblens moved from Mount Vernon, Wisconsin, to a farm in Wheeling Township, Minnesota. The rural community of primarily Norwegian settler-colonists was composed of respected farmers and civic leaders, including Halvor Quie and Osmund Osmundson, founder of Nerstrand. From 1855 to 1875, the family resided in a log home. In 1865, Tosten, who was described as a “very able young man,” purchased the farm from his father. His brother Halvor, a Civil War veteran, had settled in Swift County, Minnesota. Two years later, Tosten married Ingebor Hougen on April 3, 1867. They had eleven children, born between 1868 and 1887. Tosten’s family lived with his parents until the stone house was completed in the summer of 1875. His father, Einer, passed away on August 27, 1875, and Berit died on March 12, 1877. In a diary started in 1888, Tosten Bonde noted the improvements to the farm site: a barn was added in 1870, the stone farmhouse in 1875, a machinery shed in 1883, a granary in 1886, and a milkhouse in 1887. The two-and-a-half-story, L-shaped farmhouse was built on a small rise and constructed of locally quarried limestone from the Nerstrand and Faribault area. Situated near a well-traveled highway approximately one mile from Nerstrand, the gabled farmhouse became a focal landmark in rural Rice County after its completion in 1875. The farmstead, which is still owned by Bonde family descendants in 2020, is in many respects a “living” document to rural agricultural heritage and practices by a single family dating back to Minnesota’s territorial days. Tosten’s diary offers glimpses into late-nineteenth-century farm life with entries like: “The year, 1887, was very dry and the chinch bug destroyed all the wheat and part of the oats. The hay crop was very short.” In his entry for April 12, 1891, he wrote: “Horses are sick from distemper.” The family history noted that Oscar, a son, remarked they cured the horses by “burning rubbers and had the horses inhale the fumes.” The family history also tells of tragedy within the farmhouse’s stone walls. When an epidemic of black measles occurred in late March and early April of 1882, three sons died in one week: Edward, who was fourteen, Ingebrit, who was six, and Albert, who was barely a year old, fell victim to the disease. According to family lore, when Ingebor worked in her garden, “she would look to Valley Grove Cemetery and long for her little ones buried there on the distant hill.” In 1890, Tosten was elected to the Minnesota State Legislature; he was reelected the following year. By early 1895, he developed stomach cancer, and he passed away at his home on October 14, 1897. The fifty-four-year-old was survived by his wife and seven children. One obituary noted he was “a good citizen and highly esteemed and respected in the community.” In February 1981, Britta Bloomberg’s submission for the Minnesota Historical Properties Inventory Form stated, “The Bonde Farmhouse is significant both for its association with a prominent immigrant family and for its notable limestone construction and outstanding integrity.” In April 1982, the private home was placed on the National Register of Historic Places.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Tosten E. Bonde Farmhouse, 2019. Nerstrand, Minn.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/tosten-e-bonde-farmhouse"},{"alt":"Viewing area at the International Wolf Center","author":[{"name":"Linda A. Cameron","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/linda-cameron"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"June 08, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"International Wolf Center, Ely","postbody":"The International Wolf Center in Ely opened in 1989 with a mission of sharing unbiased educational information about wolves, their place in the ecosystem, and their interaction with humans. ...","searchtext":"The International Wolf Center in Ely opened in 1989 with a mission of sharing unbiased educational information about wolves, their place in the ecosystem, and their interaction with humans. The center’s staff members conduct research and promote wolf population management to ensure the species’ long-term survival. Congress passed the Endangered Species Act (ESA) in 1966 to protect native animal species facing possible extinction. The 1973 amendment to the act created the classifications of “endangered” and “threatened.” The US Secretary of the Interior added the eastern timber wolf, a subspecies of gray wolf, to the list of endangered species in 1967. Minnesota’s wolf population, estimated by the state Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to have been as high as 4,000 to 8,000 wolves before European settlement, had dwindled to just 350 to 700 individuals in 1964. By 1976, the population had grown to 1,000 to 1,200 wolves. Two years later, the US Fish and Wildlife Service reclassified Minnesota’s wolves from endangered to threatened status. That year, researchers estimated that the gray wolf’s range covered 23,398 square miles of northern Minnesota in three recognized zones. The secretary of the Department of the Interior designated these zones as critical habitat. As the wolf population rebounded, the Science Museum of Minnesota, working with an advisory committee that included wolf researcher Dr. David L. Mech, Native Americans, and others, created Wolves and Humans. This educational exhibit toured the country for nine years before returning to Minnesota. Wolf researchers wanted a permanent home for the exhibit, and began to plan for an international wolf center with a core mission of unbiased education about wolves. With the largest wolf population in the lower forty-eight states, Minnesota seemed the natural choice for the location of the wolf center. The selection committee named four possible cities: Ely, Duluth, Grand Rapids, and International Falls. The committee chose Ely because of its close proximity to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and wolf habitat zones. Plans for the new wolf center focused on Vermilion Community College, with a separate exhibit space nearby. Funding for the center came from state and private sources. The International Wolf Center, featuring the Wolves and Humans exhibit and four gray wolf pups, opened to the public in its temporary location in May 1989. In June 1993, the wolf center moved to its permanent location in the refurbished Voyageurs Visitor Center in Ely. Nearly 60,000 people visited the center in its first year. The $3 million, 17,000-square-foot facility featured classrooms, a theatre, a library, and a museum store. In 1998, the center expanded with a 3,260-square-foot addition. It included a 120-seat wolf viewing area and additional laboratory, classroom, and storage space. The center’s ambassador wolves, all born in captivity and raised from pups at the center, roam a 1.2-acre enclosure. Older wolves are retired from display, and blog posts keep the public updated on their status. Visitors observe the wolf pack from the viewing area and enjoy educational presentations by wildlife biologists. Center staff and board members organize an international symposium every four years and offer webinars on wolf behavior and management. A quarterly magazine, International Wolf, features articles on wolf conservation and management from around the globe. Programs range from day trips to week-long educational experiences that include wildlife photography workshops, hiking, snowshoeing, dog sledding, and radio tracking of wolves. In 2019, the center opened the Discover Wolves! exhibit. Many learning opportunities are available to students, including an online course curriculum and WolfLink video conferencing sessions. A free program, Wolves at Our Door, is offered in parks, nature centers, and public libraries. In 2007, wolf center staff collaborated with the Minnesota Zoo and St. Paul-based Eduweb to create WolfQuest, an award-winning, 3-D interactive video game that gives players the opportunity to |||live the life of a wild wolf.” The 2007–2008 wolf census showed a stable population of gray wolves in Minnesota of nearly 3,000 animals. In 2018, an estimated 2,655 wolves roamed the state’s northern habitat zones. The success of conservation efforts and the state DNR’s commitment to wolf management led the US Fish and Wildlife Service to propose the delisting of the gray wolf in the Great Lakes area from the ESA in 2019.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/interior 2017 copy.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/international-wolf-center-ely"},{"alt":"1965 Minnesota Twins","author":[{"name":"David Sandager","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/david-sandager"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"June 03, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Minnesota Twins","postbody":"The Minnesota Twins—the first franchise from Minnesota to compete in Major League Baseball (MLB)—made their debut in the 1961 season. They have appeared in three World Series (1965, 1987, ...","searchtext":"The Minnesota Twins—the first franchise from Minnesota to compete in Major League Baseball (MLB)—made their debut in the 1961 season. They have appeared in three World Series (1965, 1987, and 1991) and won two World Series titles (1987 and 1991). Calvin Griffith, the owner of the Washington (DC) Senators, received permission to move his baseball franchise to the Twin Cities on October 26, 1960. The relocated ballclub was named the Minnesota Twins in honor of the Twin Cities (Minneapolis and St. Paul), and the team competed in its inaugural MLB season in 1961 as a member of the American League. The team’s first logo featured two figures, christened “Minnie” and “Paul,” shaking hands across the Mississippi River. In a nod to Minnesota’s Minor League teams, Minnie sported a jersey with the Minneapolis Millers’ “M,” while Paul wore a jersey featuring the “STP” of the St. Paul Saints. Though they finished seventh out of ten American League teams in the 1961 season, the Twins improved as the decade progressed. Led by manager Sam Mele, they finished first in the American League in 1965 with a record of 102-60 and squared off in the World Series against the National League champions, the Los Angeles Dodgers. The series went to a deciding Game Seven, played at Metropolitan Stadium, which featured the Twins’ Jim Kaat dueling with Dodgers pitcher and future Hall of Famer Sandy Koufax. The Twins fell to the Dodgers by a final score of 2-0 and would have to wait for over two decades for their next World Series appearance. Over the next two decades, despite the efforts of Harmon Killebrew, Rod Carew, Tony Oliva and a young Bert Blyleven, the Twins reached the postseason only twice, in 1969 and 1970. In the 1980s the team cultivated promising young talents, like Bloomington native Kent Hrbek, Frank Viola, Gary Gaetti, Tom Brunansky, Kirby Puckett, and Greg Gagne. The organization changed ownership for the first time in 1984, when businessman Carl Pohlad purchased the Twins baseball club from Calvin Griffth for close to $44 million. The 1987 season saw the Twins, led by thirty-six-year-old manager Tom Kelly, finish with an AL West record of 85-77 behind their young core of homegrown talent and a recently returned Bert Blyleven. Having won their first pennant, they advanced to the World Series, where they faced the St. Louis Cardinals. The Twins seized their first World Series title in a decisive 4-2 Game Seven victory on October 25, 1987, in front of 55,376 spectators at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome. The Twins returned to the World Series in 1991 in improbable fashion after finishing dead last in the American League in the 1990 season. They found success by way of dominant starting pitching from the trio of Kevin Tapani, Scott Erickson, and St. Paul native Jack Morris; offense was provided by free agent signee Chili Davis along with Shane Mack, Kirby Puckett, and 1991 Rookie of the Year Chuck Knoblauch. In what is considered by many to be one of the all-time-greatest World Series, the Twins defeated the Atlanta Braves in a best-of-seven series, in which three games were decided in extra innings. Game Seven featured a pitching contest between two Hall of Famers, the Braves’ John Smoltz and the Twins’ Jack Morris, and Minnesota won 1-0 in the tenth inning on Gene Larkin’s walk-off single. The Twins’ success in the early 1990s was followed by eight consecutive losing seasons, and by 2001, rumors swirled that the club would be contracted (dissolved). Despite the uncertainty of their future, the 2001 Twins managed a winning record in Tom Kelly’s last season as manager, and then made their first postseason appearance since 1991 during the 2002 season. From 2002 to 2004, under a new manager (Rod Gardenhire) and a core of players including Brad Radke, Torii Hunter, Johan Santana, Doug Mientkiewicz, and Corey Koskie, the Twins won back-to-back-to-back American League Central titles. They failed, however, to advance past the American League Championship Series. The winning streak of the early 2000s helped the club to avoid contraction, and the Twins continued to succeed throughout the decade—thanks in large part to the efforts of 2009 MVP (and St. Paul native) Joe Mauer and 2006 MVP Justin Morneau. They reached the postseason in the 2006, 2009, and 2010 seasons, and moved into their third home, Target Field in Minneapolis, at the start of the 2010 season. They struggled after 2011, losing more than 100 games in the 2016 season. In 2019, however, the team hired Rocco Baldelli as manager, finished with an AL Central record of 101-61, and reached the postseason. Editor’s note: This article focuses on the Minnesota Twins iteration of the franchise (1961–present), and does not reflect the pre-Twins statistics and accomplishments of the Washington Senators (1901–1961).","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/GV3.11P a4.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246054,"name":"Sports and Recreation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/minnesota-twins"},{"alt":"Maude Kegg at Mille Lacs","author":[{"name":"Carissa Thomas","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/carissa-thomas"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"May 29, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Kegg, Maude (1904–1996)","postbody":"In 1904, along Portage Lake, in a birch-bark-and-cattail wigwam, a baby named Naawakamigookwe (Middle of the Earth Woman, also called Maude) was born to Agwadaashiins (Nancy Pine) and ...","searchtext":"In 1904, along Portage Lake, in a birch-bark-and-cattail wigwam, a baby named Naawakamigookwe (Middle of the Earth Woman, also called Maude) was born to Agwadaashiins (Nancy Pine) and Gwayoonh (Charles Mitchell). She took her first breath in the traditional Ojibwe home of her family. It was the beginning of a life guided by cultural traditions, continuous adaptation to a fast-changing world, and an inherent skill for interpreting her people’s culture and history. The exact date of Maude’s birth is unknown because her family did not measure time according to the Western European calendar system. Later in life, she chose August 26 for a birthday because she recalled her family saying that she was born during the wild rice harvest. When her mother died, while she was still an infant, her grandmother became an important caregiver and teacher. The Mitchell family, like other Ojibwe people in the early twentieth century, were adapting to a changing world. During the winter, they lived in a farmhouse northwest of Mille Lacs. By 1911 Maude was attending school in a one-room schoolhouse, which she enjoyed. Although she was the only Native American in her school, she never experienced bullying from the other children. Along with most of her classmates, she completed school through the eighth grade. Unlike her classmates, however, she continued to receive an Indigenous education from her community and family. Although Maude spent each winter (Biboon) living in a farmhouse and attending a school, she spent the rest of the year following the traditional Ojibwe seasonal cycles. In the spring (Ziigwan), she and her family moved to a sugar bush camp along Misi-zaaga||igan (Grand Lake, or Mille Lacs). There, they harvested sap from maple trees and processed it into maple sugar. They also returned to their farmhouse to plant gardens and harvest berries along the Gichi-ziibi (Mississippi River). In the summer (Niibin), Maude learned how to prepare fish caught from the lake, and to maintain the gardens that provided both food and medicine. When the fall season (Dagwaagin) arrived, her family moved to the relatively small Rice Lake, which was filled with manoomin, or wild rice. Maude learned to set up the ricing camp by making birch bark homes and creating areas for parching, threshing, and winnowing the wild rice. Maude experienced common childhood illnesses like chicken pox, measles, and mumps, but she always recovered. There were no Western-medicine doctors in her area. Ojibwe medicine men treated her and others in the community using the traditional, sacred medicine practiced during the ceremonies of the Midewiwin, or Grand Medicine Society. Maude later remembered that although the medicine men treated Native people with frequent success, those same treatments rarely worked on the white people in the area. Midewiwin became an important part of Maude’s life, and in 1917, she met Martin Kegg, another Mille Lacs Band member, at a Midewiwin ceremony. She married him in 1920 in a traditional Ojibwe ceremony; two years later, the couple had a Christian church wedding. In the 1920s, Maude traveled with the owners of the Mille Lacs Indian Trading Post to various Ojibwe communities, including Leech Lake and White Earth, to help them buy craft items and serve as a translator. By 1930, she moved to Vineland Bay on Mille Lacs, where she started selling bead chains, moccasins, and other work to the trading post. As an artist, Maude is widely known for her traditional beadwork, rugs, and basswood-fiber dolls. In 1929 the owners of the trading post opened an on-site museum. Maude aided in the construction of the museum’s main attraction, the Four Seasons Room. She began working as a tour guide, interpreting her people’s culture and history for visitors. When the owners of the trading post and museum donated their collections to the Minnesota Historical Society (MNHS) in 1959, Maude continued her cultural interpretation as a MNHS employee. Outside of this work, she and her husband and children continued the traditional labor of the Ojibwe seasonal cycles. In the 1970s, Maude became concerned that Ojibwe people were forgetting their history and culture. Inspired to make a change, she set out on a mission to lift her memories from her mind and record them on paper. She enlisted the help of scholarly writers and produced several books: When I Was A Little Girl (1976), At The End of the Trail (1978), What My Grandmother Told Me (1983), and Portage Lake (1991). On January 6, 1996, Maude Kegg took her last breath and joined her ancestors.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/E97 1K p19.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246059,"name":"Native Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/kegg-maude-1904-1996"},{"alt":"Sigurd F. Olson, ca. 1949.","author":[{"name":"Karl Nycklemoe","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/karl-nycklemoe"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"May 28, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Olson, Sigurd F. (1899–1982)","postbody":"Sigurd Ferdinand Olson was a prominent American conservationist in the twentieth century who is remembered for his work to preserve the northeast Minnesota wilderness. His career can be ...","searchtext":"Sigurd Ferdinand Olson was a prominent American conservationist in the twentieth century who is remembered for his work to preserve the northeast Minnesota wilderness. His career can be separated into two parts: the first as an educator and wilderness canoe guide, and the second as an author and national leader in conservation. He wrote and published eight books. His first book, The Singing Wilderness (1956), is perhaps his best-known work. Sigurd Olson was born in Chicago, Illinois, on April 4, 1899, to Swedish immigrants Lawrence Olson, a Baptist minister, and Ida May Cederholm. While Sigurd was young, his family moved to Sister Bay on Wisconsin’s Door Peninsula. The Olson family later moved to Prentice, Wisconsin, a few years later, and finally to Ashland, Wisconsin, where Sigurd graduated from high school. As a child, he developed a passion for nature and the outdoors. Olson’s education continued at Northland College in Ashland and culminated at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1920. He earned a bachelor of science degree in agriculture, but biology and geology also sparked his interest. He met Elizabeth Dorothy Uhrenholdt at Northland College, and they married in 1921. After college, Olson taught in northern Minnesota and then returned to the University of Wisconsin-Madison for graduate work in geology. Deciding against a career in mining, and with his first child on the way, he left the university in 1922 and moved his family to Ely, Minnesota. Although Olson traveled for his work, he always considered Ely and the Quetico-Superior Region as his home. In Ely, Olson taught high school biology and was a faculty member of the biology department at Ely Community College (now Vermillion Community College). In the summer, he worked as a wilderness canoe guide and outfitter. The move to Ely also marked the beginning of Olson’s career as a conservationist. He opposed the construction of roads and dams in the Quetico-Superior Region. His advocacy aided in obtaining a proclamation by Secretary of Agriculture William Jardine that restricted road building. He also promoted the passage of the Shipstead-Newton-Nolan Act of 1930, which helped to preserve the Quetico-Superior region by limiting logging and prohibiting the alteration of water levels. Olson entered the graduate program at the University of Illinois in Champaign in 1931, earning a master’s degree in zoology the following year. His thesis focused on the timber wolf, an animal he had studied since the mid-1920s. Upon graduation, he returned to Ely and began to teach full time at the Junior College. He became dean of the college in 1936. After World War II, Olson went to England and Germany to teach biology and geology to American soldiers in Europe. Olson resigned from his career in education in 1947 to focus on writing and conservation. His advocacy for restricting the flight of aircraft over the Quetico-Superior area in the late 1940s gained national attention. Thanks to his efforts, an executive order issued in 1949 and legislation passed in 1951 set regulations for air and water transportation in the region. Beyond advocacy, Olson served as a consultant for the Izaak Walton League of America, and as a member and leader of the National Parks Association and the Wilderness Society. He acted as a consultant to Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall, assisted in the drafting of the 1964 Wilderness Act, and served as an advisor to the National Park Service. Olson published his first book, The Singing Wilderness (1956), at the age of fifty-seven. He published eight books in his lifetime, and several more have been published posthumously. Throughout his career, Olson received environmental awards, including the Founder’s Award from the Izaak Walton League and the John Muir Award from the Sierra Club. Institutions such as the University of Minnesota and Carleton College conferred honorary degrees on him. Not all recognition was positive, however. For example, an effigy of Olson was hanged in Ely in 1977 during the debates on the wilderness status of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA). Olson’s conservation efforts in the Quetico-Superior region aided in the establishment of Voyageurs National Park (the name is credited to Olson) and the designation of the BWCA as a wilderness area in 1978. Sigurd Olson died in Ely, Minnesota, on January 13, 1982, while snowshoeing near his home.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/por 11941 r1_1.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/olson-sigurd-f-1899-1982"},{"alt":"Minnesota AIDS Project Pledgewalk","author":[{"name":"Myra Billund-Phibbs","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/myra-billund-phibbs"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"May 26, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Minnesota AIDS Project (MAP)","postbody":"Founded at the beginning of the HIV/AIDS crisis in Minnesota by a small group of gay volunteers, the Minnesota AIDS Project (MAP) provided education, prevention resources, and services for ...","searchtext":"Founded at the beginning of the HIV/AIDS crisis in Minnesota by a small group of gay volunteers, the Minnesota AIDS Project (MAP) provided education, prevention resources, and services for HIV-positive people and people with AIDS during the tumultuous early years of the epidemic. Organized on a grassroots level within the communities most affected by the virus, MAP became a model for successful community responses to public health crises. Its activities led directly and indirectly to a huge expansion of services and organizations serving HIV-positive people and people with AIDS in Minnesota and beyond. In 1982, mere months after the initial appearance of AIDS in New York, the outspoken gay activist Bruce Brockway became the first Minnesotan to be diagnosed with the disease. Within months, Brockway and a handful of other volunteers formed what became the Minnesota AIDS Project (MAP) in an attempt to respond to the devastation wreaked by the disease in Minneapolis’ gay community. In addition to Brockaway, original participants included Bill Runyon, Ford Campbell, Morris Floyd, Jon Whyte, Tom Wilson Weinberg, Brian Malloy, Eric Engstrom, Roy Schimdt, and Dennis Kearney. With their friends and lovers becoming sick and dying suddenly, and faced with stigma and public hysteria, they cared for their loved ones themselves. They also attempted to prevent the spread of what was eventually identified as HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. In its early years, MAP was a ragtag effort, staffed entirely by volunteers and driven by their passion. It drew strength from the militancy of the gay liberation movement of the 1970s and a belief in community support in the face of a frightening and mysterious epidemic. The organization operated out of volunteers’ homes, and began its work by opening a hotline. Volunteers answered callers’ questions about symptoms, explained how to care for people with HIV/AIDS, and gave out information on friendly health and social services in Minneapolis. MAP’s work took a two-pronged approach: preventing the spread of HIV and caring for those already living with the virus. MAP volunteers provided palliative care to the dying and emotional support to their loved ones, responded to people in crisis, and founded a “buddy” system. Volunteers appointed as buddies accompanied people with HIV/AIDS to appointments and staved off the loneliness that often came with the stigmatizing diagnosis. In addition, the group was on the forefront of HIV prevention, giving seminars on safe-sex practices and devising an array of creative methods to spread the message far and wide. Things changed drastically for MAP in 1985, when it began to get large grants from state and county health departments, enabling it to move into an official space, hire its first staff, and broaden its work. Prevention efforts ramped up; MAP did extensive outreach in the gay male community, specifically the bars and bathhouses that were considered central to the disease’s spread, while also educating countless mainstream organizations. Along with being a main provider of safe-sex education, MAP remained a central force for support and advocacy for people with HIV/AIDS even as other organizations appeared in the mid-1980s. In a span of three years, it founded a housing program, an annual Pledgewalk for AIDS that served as both a celebration of life and an acknowledgment of collective grief, and a Life Enhancement Program for people with HIV/AIDS. To paraphrase a MAP volunteer in the late 1980s, the organization sought to pull back the “curtain of doom” that HIV/AIDS created, and foster connection, love, and joy among those directly and indirectly impacted by the disease. Beginning in the early 1990s, changes in the landscape of the epidemic led to a shift in MAP’s role, ending its status as the central hub of the community response to HIV/AIDS. After thirty-five years of operation, MAP merged with the Rainbow Health Initiative to form JustUs Health in 2018. Faced with a perplexing, terrifying illness ravaging an already small, marginalized community, the founders, volunteers, and staff of the Minnesota AIDS Project came up with a bold grassroots response, using compassion, mutual support, and the power of education, agitation, and insurrection to fight for themselves and their loved ones. In the 2020s, much of the LGBTQIA+ advocacy and public health infrastructure in Minnesota can be traced back to the seeds planted in those small meetings in the spring of 1983.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/27.png","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246087,"name":"Health and Medicine","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/minnesota-aids-project-map"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Minnesota soldiers on guard around Manila.","author":[{"name":"Jack K. Johnson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/jack-k-johnson"}],"categoryTag":[],"date":"May 19, 2020","eraTag":[],"keydate":"","name":"At Home and Abroad: Minnesota at War","postbody":"While it was being fought, World War I (1914–1918) was dubbed “the war to end all wars.” Yet within the span of a single generation came World War II, a far bigger and bloodier conflict. Is ...","searchtext":"While it was being fought, World War I (1914–1918) was dubbed “the war to end all wars.” Yet within the span of a single generation came World War II, a far bigger and bloodier conflict. Is war an inevitable consequence of our imperfect human condition? We may never know, but this is certain: more often than not, in Minnesota as in the rest of the United States, the tides of history have been driven by war or its threat, shaping who we are as a nation and a people. The Dakota and Ojibwe Dakota people in present-day Minnesota—their homeland—developed a sophisticated warrior culture long before the arrival of Europeans. From an early age, every male child learned the skills and mindset needed to become a warrior, a protector of and provider for the people. Upon reaching manhood, he took his place in the village as a scout, hunter, and peacekeeper as well as a fighter. The Ojibwe had a strong warrior tradition of their own. Ojibwe men were duty-bound to hunt, fish, and fight tenaciously in order to provide for and defend their people. These two warrior traditions collided in the mid-1600s, when the Ojibwe began migrating westward from the Sault Ste. Marie region of Upper Michigan. They had acquired European trade goods from French fur traders, including knives, metal pots, wool blankets, and muskets. All of these offered significant advantages over traditional technologies. Because the Dakota, too, wanted access to trade goods, they forged an alliance in 1679 with the Ojibwe, opening their lands east of the Mississippi River to the Ojibwe. In return, the Ojibwe traded with the Dakota, exchanging French trade goods for furs. It worked to everyone’s benefit until the French began trading with other Native nations that were traditional enemies to the Dakota. A Dakota attack on French traders in 1736 brought it all to an end. The Ojibwe sided with the French. On-again, off-again warfare between the Dakota and Ojibwe ensued for the next hundred years. Raids, skirmishes, attacks, and counter-attacks—sometimes to control territory and sometimes to avenge wrongs by individuals of the opposing side—alternated with periods of harmony and truce. Momentous battles, however, such as those at Kathio/Mille Lacs in 1750 and at the Crow Wing River in 1768, eventually enabled the Ojibwe to permanently inhabit much of northern Minnesota—once the exclusive domain of the Dakotas. A series of treaties in the mid-1800s forced the Dakota and Ojibwe people onto reservations while opening much of present-day Minnesota to European settlement. This not only ended their intertribal warfare, it brought enormous changes to their way of life and set the stage for possible war with a powerful new adversary: the US government. Fort Snelling and Statehood The army played a central role in Minnesota’s formation as a state. The first permanent US settlement within the state’s current borders was at Fort Snelling, located at the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers. The Dakota people who lived there called it Bdote. Lieutenant Zebulon Pike, traveling under military authority, selected the fort’s site in 1805, but construction didn’t get underway until 1819. By 1825, Fort Snelling had become the hub of the Upper Mississippi, the northwestern terminus of a string of strategically situated army forts intended to assert American control of the region and provide for its defense. The fort’s soldiers enforced laws, built the first sawmill, grew crops, hosted visitors, and supported the work of Indian agents like Lawrence Taliaferro, who represented the US government to Indigenous nations. Open warfare never came to the area, but by its very presence, the fort spurred settlement, offering protection for traders, missionaries, and farmers. By the time Minnesota became a state in 1858, the army had added three new wilderness outposts, each of which established a government presence. Fort Ripley (1849–1877), on the upper Mississippi in central Minnesota, briefly supplanted Fort Snelling as the most distant on the nation’s northwestern frontier. Next came Fort Ridgely (1853–1867) on the Minnesota River and Fort Abercrombie (1857–1877) on the Red River. Each served its fleeting purpose, notably during conflicts with the Dakota, and was then shuttered. Constitutional law mandated that states organize citizen militias to augment a national army and navy. Minnesota formed a territorial militia in 1850, but it existed only on paper until the late 1850s, when communities began organizing uniformed volunteer militia companies of their own. The Pioneer Guard of St. Paul, founded in 1856, was the first. The Minnesota National Guard traces its roots to these early companies. War on Two Fronts: Civil War (1861–65) and the US–Dakota War of 1862 In April 1861, Americans found themselves at war with each other when Confederate bombardment forced the surrender of Fort Sumter, a US garrison in Charleston, South Carolina’s harbor. For the next four years, the American Civil War severed the country in order to resolve two fundamental issues: whether slavery should be allowed to continue, and whether the United States should be preserved as one indivisible nation or as a loosely allied group of separate sovereign states. Minnesota was the first state to volunteer troops for the Union effort and eventually fielded twenty-two different volunteer organizations. These units played important roles in nearly every major campaign. The charge of the First Minnesota Infantry at the Battle of Gettysburg, however, was particularly crucial. It saved the Union position on Cemetery Ridge and possibly the larger battle itself, earning the soldiers of that regiment lasting recognition for their sacrifice and courage. The war profoundly affected the destiny of the nation. It preserved the Union and abolished slavery, but the war was felt in innumerable ways within the state. Over 24,000 Minnesotans—nearly 10 percent of the state’s total population—fought in the Civil War by the time it ended in spring 1865. Of these, over 600 were killed in battle, and three times that number died of accidents or disease, leaving loved ones back home to grieve and cope. Because the South had seceded, Congress finally passed the Homestead Act in 1862, providing land grants that attracted thousands of newcomers to Minnesota and helped boost the population from 172,000 to 250,000 during the war years. The war also hiked demand for wheat and lumber, stimulating two Minnesota industries that soon became central to the state’s economy. While Union and Confederate armies clashed elsewhere, another war broke out on the Minnesota prairie. Dakota people, deprived of traditional hunting grounds and confined to a reservation on the Minnesota River, were suffering from hunger and delayed annuity payments. A band of Mdewakanton men led by Ta Oyate Duta (His Red Nation, also known as Little Crow) struck back, attacking settler-colonists, Indian agencies, a company of soldiers, the town of New Ulm, and Forts Ridgely and Abercrombie. Whites throughout the Minnesota River valley and upland prairies fled their farms; citizens formed militias; and villages hastily constructed stockades. Minnesota Volunteer Infantry soldiers at Fort Snelling, awaiting orders to go south, departed instead to fight the Dakota. A mixed force of militia and volunteer infantry under the command of Henry Sibley defeated them after a six-week campaign. About 500 white civilians, ninety-three soldiers, and an unknown number of Dakota militants were killed. Retribution was quick. Over 300 Dakota warriors were tried and convicted of rape or murder, 264 were imprisoned, and thirty-eight were hung en masse in Mankato. Others fled westward. Minnesota banished the tribe and interned 1600 Dakota women, children, and older men in a disease-ridden fenced encampment below Fort Snelling before relocating them the following spring to a reservation in Dakota Territory. For the next two years, immense punitive expeditions pursued the escaping Dakota and their Yankton, Yanktonai, and Teton (Lakota) relatives as far west as the Yellowstone River, commencing warfare that lasted into the 1880s. Gaining an Empire: War with Spain (1898) and in the Philippines (1899–1902) As the nineteenth century drew to a close, the US all but dismembered what remained of Spain’s colonial empire. Eager for an empire of its own, the US vowed to end misrule in Cuba, a Spanish colony since the days of Columbus. Congress declared war against Spain in April 1898 and, as expected, victory came quickly. Cuba gained independence, but the US gained Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines, where Filipinos were already fighting a war for independence and self-government. As during the Civil War, the federal government asked states to organize regiments of volunteers. Minnesota provided four infantry regiments, but only one—the Thirteenth Minnesota—saw foreign service. It went to the Philippines, aided in the Battle of Manila, and then fought against Filipino insurrectos who resisted America’s takeover of their country. The fight moved into the countryside north of Manila, a breeding ground for diseases like dysentery and malaria, before the regiment finally returned home in October 1899 to cheering crowds. The Third US Infantry, a Regular Army regiment stationed at Fort Snelling, initially fought in Cuba. It returned home briefly and then shipped out to the Philippines, where it, too, fought Filipino guerillas until the insurgency ended in 1902. Altogether, about 9,000 Minnesotans served during the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars; 222 died, most of them from disease. Although the US gained status as a world power, the war exposed military deficiencies that led to the modernization of its armed forces and greater federal control of the National Guard, which hitherto had functioned largely as a group of state armies. Down There and Over There: Border Service (1916–1917) and World War I (1914–18) Mounting attacks by Mexican revolutionaries on American border towns prompted President Woodrow Wilson to send the army into Mexico and to call up the National Guard to defend the border in 1916. After being brought to its full strength of 4,380 men, the Minnesota National Guard was sent to Camp Llano Grande, near Mercedes, Texas, where guardsmen trained and patrolled along the Rio Grande. Their border service was uneventful, but it prepared them for the bigger challenge soon to come. Nationalism, military alliances, economic rivalry, and political pride had meanwhile thrust Europe into war in 1914. America declared war on Germany in April 1917 when efforts to stay neutral failed. Amid patriotic fervor, Minnesotans enlisted by the thousands and were soon joined by draftees. The Minnesota National Guard embarked for Camp Cody, New Mexico, to become part of a new Thirty-fourth Division, although its artillery regiment, re-designated as the 151st Field Artillery, went to the Forty-second “Rainbow” Division. A Minnesota Home Guard was organized to temporarily replace its National Guard. Most Minnesota draftees were sent to Camp Dodge, Iowa, where they were assigned to different units. Fort Snelling trained officers and became a processing center for inductees. Minnesota citizens also mobilized. The Minnesota Commission of Public Safety declared the conflict to be “everybody’s war” and used its powerful authority to ensure an all-out, unified effort on the home front. But there was a dark side, too. Congress passed laws making disloyalty illegal, and the Commission heartily enforced them. It silenced dissent, vilified German immigrants, and encouraged neighbors to root out “slackers” and “enemy sympathizers” by reporting on one another. America’s timely infusion of troops and resources tipped the balance, bringing Allied victory in November 1918. By then, Minnesota had sent 118,500 residents into the armed services, with 57,400 of them overseas in France. The 151st Field Artillery—nicknamed the “Gopher Gunners”—was the only truly Minnesota combat unit to see action on the front, where it fought with great distinction. It received a tumultuous welcome upon returning home in May 1919. Sadly, 2,133 Minnesota servicemen didn’t live to make it home; of these, 60 percent died from disease, most stemming from the 1918 flu pandemic. The war not only demonstrated the lethal power of new weaponry, it also forever changed the social and political landscape. Monarchies fell. New countries were born. The US emerged as a superpower. America’s economy (especially agriculture) thrived and manufacturing capacity grew, aiding unionism. Women’s involvement in the war effort helped them achieve suffrage in 1920. But the terrible war also bred disillusionment, undermining the international ideals espoused by President Wilson, and the nation reverted to isolationism. The army stagnated in the 1920s and 1930s, although Minnesota did open a new training site in 1931 for its National Guard at Camp Ripley. War on a Massive Scale: World War II (1939–45) World War II was immense—the largest, most destructive war ever fought. Fifty-seven nations entered into a global struggle that began when Japan invaded China in 1937, grew when Nazi Germany seized most of Europe and North Africa between 1939 and 1941, and exploded world-wide with entry by the US in December 1941. In response, America mobilized as never before. Minnesota’s reservists and National Guard had already been on active duty for nearly a year and were among the first to engage the enemy. A St. Paul Naval Reserve unit aboard the USS Ward fired the first shot against the Japanese when it sank a Japanese mini-sub at the entrance to Pearl Harbor at dawn on December 7. The Thirty-fourth Infantry Division, a Minnesota-based National Guard unit, became the first US division to ship overseas to Europe, where it fought doggedly in North Africa and Italy, acquiring the nickname “Red Bulls.” It amassed more days in combat than any other US division. Members of the Thirty-fourth Division’s tank company from Brainerd, re-designated as Company A of the 194th Tank Battalion, were sent to the Philippines, fought at Bataan, participated in the death march, and spent over three years as prisoners of war. Half the unit did not survive. War permeated daily life on the home front. Minnesota’s iron mines and farms provided prodigious raw material and food, while its factories worked around the clock to produce everything from cargo ships to canteen covers. For the first time, women and people of color joined the mainstream workforce in large numbers. After a 1942 executive order relocated Japanese Americans to concentration camps, organizers of a Japanese language school in San Francisco transplanted their project to Minnesota. It reopened at Scott County’s Camp Savage as the Military Intelligence Service Language School (MISLS) before outgrowing that site and moving to Fort Snelling in 1944. Final victory came in August 1945. Over 304,500 Minnesotans served in the Armed Forces during World War II, and 9,797 died in the line of duty. For the first time in a major war, battle claimed more lives than disease and other causes. Post-War Consequences: Onset of the Cold War, the Korean War (1950–53), and Defensive Measures World War II and its aftermath changed Minnesota in fundamental ways, bringing middle-class prosperity, a baby boom, mobility, sprawling suburbs, an automobile culture, and whole new industries that grew directly from military research and development. The postwar years also brought the Cold War and a perilous nuclear arms race. America’s wartime ally, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), became its adversary, pitting authoritarian communism against democracy and capitalism. Winston Churchill coined the phrase “Iron Curtain” to describe the divide. Tensions escalated further when the USSR successfully tested its own atomic bomb in 1949. A policy of containment promised military and economic assistance to nations under threat of a communist takeover. Soviet-trained troops from North Korea tested America’s resolve to stop the spread of communism in 1950 when they swept across the boundary into South Korea. President Truman rushed in American troops, augmented by the UN, to stop the advance. Communist China soon entered the fray, and open warfare continued until July 1953 when a truce was finally agreed upon, cementing the original division of North from South. Most of the Minnesota National Guard was activated for two years during the Korean War, as were the state’s reserve units. Many Minnesota veterans of World War II were recalled to active duty, while others enlisted or were drafted. Nearly 95,000 Minnesotans served in uniform during the three-year fight in Korea, and 725 lost their lives or were missing in action. From the early 1950s to the mid-70s, every Minnesotan lived under the real threat of nuclear attack by Russian bombers. Basement areas in most public buildings were designated as fallout shelters, marked with black-and-yellow civil defense signs. School children practiced “duck and cover” drills. Air-raid test sirens blared periodically. Less well known is Minnesota’s role in the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD). Air Force and Air National Guard fighter squadrons based in Duluth, flying jets routinely armed with nuclear-tipped missiles, stood ready to engage hostile aircraft at a moment’s notice. Bomarc anti-aircraft missiles designed to bust up Soviet bomber formations were located at Knife River, ready to thwart attacks against Duluth’s ore docks, steel plant, air base, and port facilities. Four Nike-Hercules anti-aircraft missile batteries ringed the Twin Cities, while a broad network of manned radar stations (six in Minnesota) delivered airspace surveillance monitored from a bomb-proof headquarters in Duluth. The Cold War was peppered with tense incidents, close calls, and brinkmanship. At times, Minnesotans huddled around television sets, watching events unfold that could, through a miscalculation by either side, spark nuclear war. The Berlin Crisis of 1961 and the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 stand out as especially dangerous confrontations. Upheaval over Vietnam (1965–75) When France ended its colonial rule of Vietnam in 1954, armies of the communist-run North began fighting with the anti-communist South. The United States, worried that a communist victory would spread to other Southeast Asian countries, began funneling massive aid, including military advisors, to the South Vietnamese in the early 1960s. The South, however, beset by growing internal strife, prompted President Lyndon Johnson to “get tough” by committing American ground forces, augmented by tactical air support and bombing. By 1969, the US had 540,000 troops in Vietnam, but the North’s army and Viet Cong guerillas displayed unforeseen tenacity. Despite official proclamations of success, the war dragged grimly on. An anti-war movement erupted at home, gathering momentum as combat deaths mounted. For some Minnesotans, support for the war was a patriotic duty; others viewed it as politically and morally wrong, pitting father against son, neighbor against neighbor. By spring 1968, the tide of public opinion turned decidedly against the war. Protests on streets and campuses sometimes turned violent. Anger over the draft, racism, and poverty intensified the discord. The US finally withdrew its troops in 1973, leaving the South Vietnamese Army to finish the fight, but it all came to an ignominious end when Saigon, the South’s beleaguered capital, fell to the communists in 1975. Approximately 68,000 Minnesotans served in Vietnam. Of these, 1,007 died and many more suffered physical and psychological wounds that never fully healed. Major Post-Vietnam Changes and the End of the Cold War Conscription, in effect since 1940, became a festering bone of contention during the Vietnam War because it was fought mostly by youthful draftees. In 1973, Congress eliminated it in favor of an all-volunteer force. Minnesota men who didn’t want to be drafted breathed a sigh of relief. The size of the standing army was reduced—with higher pay for those who enlisted—but its global responsibilities remained. To compensate, a “total force” doctrine integrated reserve components more completely with their active duty counterparts. The 1970s also marked a watershed for women in the military. As a result of the women’s rights movement and elimination of the draft, Minnesota women now joined with men in the regular ranks. Separate women’s branches, such as the Women’s Army Corps (WAC), were eliminated. Tensions between the USSR and the US ebbed and flowed after Vietnam, but in the mid-1980s the USSR’s economic system became unsustainable. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev implemented pivotal internal reforms and a policy of rapprochement with the West. Minnesotans saw the results first-hand in June 1990 when Gorbachev made a whirlwind visit to the state to promote goodwill and business investment in his country. By then, the Soviets had lost control in Eastern Europe. Finally, in 1991, the Soviet Union itself collapsed from within, ending a Cold War that had lasted more than forty years. Persian Gulf War (1990–91) Strapped for cash, Iraq attacked and “annexed” its tiny but wealthy neighbor, Kuwait, in 1990. After a massive buildup, coalition forces led by the US ousted the invaders and liberated Kuwait. The swift, decisive victory seemed to exorcise the stigma of Vietnam. Over 694,000 American service members deployed to the Persian Gulf—the largest concentration of American forces since World War II—with 148 (seven from Minnesota) killed in action. It was the first combat operation to include women and, unlike Vietnam, it made heavy use of the reserves. About 2,875 members of Minnesota-based National Guard and Reserve units were activated. Yellow ribbons and parades greeted them all when they returned home. From then on, however, deployments for Minnesota’s part-time civilian-soldiers became the “new normal.” Terrorism and Radical Islam: Ongoing Conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq Long-standing troubles in the Middle East took a new turn in 1979 when Islamic fundamentalists overthrew the shah of Iran and later seized the American embassy in Tehran. Embassy personnel were held hostage for more than a year. The incident emboldened Islamic hardliners throughout the region, prompting a chain of events that Americans still grapple with. Since then, an ever-evolving stream of violence has been committed by militant jihadists intent on imposing their version of ultra-conservative theocracy in places like Lebanon, Yemen, Libya, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, and Syria. Anti-Americanism was a common thread. The 1990s saw a resurgence of ethnic and tribal conflict in the Balkans and Africa, but the US went to war in Afghanistan and Iraq. The September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon jolted the nation. Horrified by the scale of the attacks and loss of life, Americans also recognized this as an assault on Western values. President George W. Bush declared a “War on Terror,” beefed up homeland security, and sent troops into Afghanistan to find the perpetrators: Osama bin Laden and fellow al-Qaeda leaders. Bin Laden was eventually found (years later, in Pakistan) but American forces remain engaged in Afghanistan, attempting to keep Taliban insurgents at bay while aiding Afghan security forces. In a controversial move in 2003, an American-led coalition invaded Iraq and toppled the brutal dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. Plans to create a more democratically-inclined Iraq faltered, unleashing sectarian violence that snowballed until more troops and counterinsurgency measures tamped down some of the chaos. Aiding at the peak of this effort for sixteen months were 2,600 members of the Minnesota National Guard’s First Brigade Combat Team. American combat forces were withdrawn from Iraq in 2010, but several thousand remain stationed nearby in advisory and support roles. Suicide bombers, improvised explosive devices (IEDs), and enemy fire took the lives of 260 Minnesotans in Afghanistan and Iraq between 2001 and 2018, with no certain end in sight. In the meantime, Minnesotans have inured themselves to pervasive electronic surveillance, bag checks, and other security measures designed to reduce their vulnerability to homeland terrorism. Looking Backward and to the Future Over the years, beginning with the Civil War, more than 630,000 Minnesotans took up arms and headed off to war. They performed honorably, but not without sacrifice. More than 16,500 of them never got the chance to come back home. Tenfold more were wounded or scarred in other ways by their wartime experience; still more family members shared in their pain. It is a sobering fact that a major new war arose about every twenty years or so to confront the people of Minnesota, one for each succeeding generation. Such history casts a solemn shadow. We are moved by the uncommon courage and indomitable human spirit revealed in times of war, but we must be mindful of the horrors as well. Our remembrance of these events needs to include the hope that perhaps someday we can keep history from repeating itself.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/battle_maila.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/home-and-abroad-minnesota-war"},{"alt":"Front view of the Kensington Runestone","author":[{"name":"Paul Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/paul-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"May 15, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Kensington Runestone","postbody":"The Kensington Runestone is a gravestone-sized slab of hard, gray sandstone called graywacke into which Scandinavian runes are cut. It stands on display in Alexandria, Minnesota, as a ...","searchtext":"The Kensington Runestone is a gravestone-sized slab of hard, gray sandstone called graywacke into which Scandinavian runes are cut. It stands on display in Alexandria, Minnesota, as a unique record of either Norse exploration of North America or Minnesota’s most brilliant and durable hoax. Minnesota historian Theodore Blegen wrote in 1968 that “few questions in American history have stirred so much curiosity or provoked such extended discussions” as the Kensington Runestone. There are two uncontested facts. Swedish immigrant Olof Ohman came to Douglas County, Minnesota, in 1879. While clearing land on his farm near Kensington in the fall of 1898, he turned up a slab of rock with symbols carved on the side and underside. These markings were later identified as Scandinavian runic writing. The generally accepted translation of those runes reads: “We are 8 Goths [Swedes] and 22 Norwegians on an exploration journey from Vinland through the West. We had camp by a lake with 2 skerries [small rocky islands] one day’s journey north from this stone. We were out and fished one day. After we came home we found 10 of our men red with blood and dead. AVM [Ave Virgo Maria, or Hail, Virgin Mary] save us from evil. We have 10 of our party by the sea to look after our ships, 14 days’ journey from this island. Year 1362.” If the inscription is genuine it places Norse seafarers deep in the North American continent 130 years before Columbus reached the West Indies, and tells a story otherwise unknown. The details of the stone’s geology, discovery, carving, and weathering, and the personality, education, writings, and possessions of its finder have been dissected, analyzed, and debated for more than a century. There are four main controversies over the stone’s authenticity. The first controversy centers on the plausibility of the story. For the party’s ships to lie fourteen days’ journey from Alexandria, the only possible route is south from Hudson Bay. That distance is nearly 800 miles by direct line, longer by river and portage—a distance difficult to manage in fourteen days. The route is “through the west” from a “Vinland” whose location in 1362, if any, is unknown. No other record of this expedition has been found. Why would explorers who had just suffered a massacre stop to carve—in well-crafted, even, and orderly characters—a stone inscription? The writing and language of the text are questionable. Experts first analyzed the runic writing in 1899. They dismissed it as a fake, citing too many discrepancies in form and vocabulary from the known languages of fourteenth-century Scandinavia. Most experts since then have agreed. The condition of the rock has also raised doubts. Though graywacke is a hard sandstone, had it been exposed to wind and rain for hundreds of years, as is supposed, the inscribed areas would show telltale weathering whose age could be estimated. A 2003 analysis conducted by Scott F. Wolter concluded that the inscriptions were more than 200 years old. This remains highly contested. Finally, who was responsible for the alleged hoax? If the inscription is a fake, it must have been done by someone with knowledge of old Scandinavian language and runes, the ability to carve in stone, and the nerve to carry out the prank. The most likely perpetrator was Olof Ohman. Ohman had little education but owned a small library that included information about runes. His friend, former pastor Sven Fogelblad, may have had knowledge of runes and, like Ohman, may have sought to try to fool academics, whom both men reportedly disliked. Ohman never admitted to a 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. The slab has been examined in Europe and displayed at the Smithsonian Institution and the 1965 New York World’s Fair. Expert opinion favors the conclusion that the inscription is not authentic, but the majority view asks the question: if a hoax, then who, how, when, and why? Definitive answers have so far proved beyond reach.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/MD6.7K r16.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/kensington-runestone"},{"alt":"The Hull-Rust-Mahoning mine in Hibbing, Minnesota, is the largest open-pit iron mine in Minnesota. As of 2020, material is still mined from the complex by Hibbing Taconite, or HibTac. Photograph by Wikimedia Commons user Chipcity, August 7, 2010. CC BY-SA 3.0.","author":[{"name":"Alex Tieberg","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/alex-tieberg"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"May 13, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Mesabi Iron Range","postbody":"The Mesabi Iron Range wasn’t the first iron range to be mined in Minnesota, but it has arguably been the most prolific. Since the 1890s, the Mesabi has produced iron ore that boosted the ...","searchtext":"The Mesabi Iron Range wasn’t the first iron range to be mined in Minnesota, but it has arguably been the most prolific. Since the 1890s, the Mesabi has produced iron ore that boosted the national economy, contributed to the Allied victory in World War II, and cultivated a multiethnic regional culture in northeast Minnesota. The Mesabi Iron Range’s history as a mining district begins well before ore was unearthed. More than two billion years ago, an era of mountain building known as the Algoman orogeny occurred. High mountains were built in northern Minnesota and, later, a large shallow sea covered much of the upper midwest. This waterbody eroded the iron-rich rock of the mountain range, and the resulting sediment settled to the bottom of the sea. As the sea dried up and oxygen was produced in the atmosphere, the iron sediment was compacted by layers of silt that formed iron and taconite deposits throughout the Mesabi. The iron formation is called the Biwabik Iron Formation, and the long ridge is the Giants Range Batholith, which is all that is left of the high peaks of the Algoman Mountains. The term Mesabi comes from the Ojibwe name for the Giants Range Batholith: Misaabe Wajiw, or Big Man Mountain. While it is documented that the Ojibwe were aware of iron ore on the nearby Vermilion Range, it is difficult to determine if they knew of the more obscured iron deposits on the Mesabi Range. Nevertheless, the Misaabe Wajiw is an important place for the Ojibwe, as the long ridge is said to be the body of a sleeping giant that forms part of a Thunderbird’s tail. The Thunderbird (binesi) is regarded as one of the most powerful spiritual beings of the Ojibwe. The Mesabi Range was visited by Europeans and white Americans well before it was found to be one of the world’s largest iron ore deposits. Although they noted the hills of the Mesabi as early as 1810, it wasn’t until 1866 that Henry Eames and Christian Wieland of Ontonagon, Michigan, recognized the presence of iron ore. Wieland, optimistic about what he observed, helped organize the Ontonagon Syndicate to mine the area. However, the syndicate failed to materialize and produce any ore. Even though Eames and Wieland found that the Mesabi Range had ore, few prospectors pursued it. The ore on the Vermilion Iron Range just to the north of the Mesabi was more accessible. However, the Merritt family from Duluth spent countless hours prospecting on the Mesabi. Their efforts paid off in 1890 when they encountered a large hematite ore deposit near current-day Mountain Iron. Soon after, the Merritt family began mining, and the Mesabi Range was opened for operations. Since the Mesabi Range was so remote, heavy investment was necessary to transport the ore to steel-processing facilities. The Merritt family understood this challenge, so they formed the Duluth, Missabe and Northern Railroad (DMNR) in 1891 (later part of the Duluth, Missabe and Iron Range Railway). While this facilitated the Merritts’ first successful shipment of ore, in 1892, it was also the family’s financial undoing. Soon after the DMNR was formed, other railroads were built by competitors. Because they didn’t have the capital to improve the DMNR, the Merritt family sought investment from other sources. After many complicated financial transactions, the DMNR and the Merritt mines were consolidated into one company managed by power broker John D. Rockefeller. The Merritt family was pushed out of Minnesota’s mining industry in 1894. Rockefeller didn’t control the Mesabi without competition, though. Because Rockefeller didn’t own steel mills but financier Andrew Carnegie did, Rockefeller would have to sell his ore to Carnegie at some point in production. Also competing with Rockefeller and Carnegie, industrialist Henry Oliver of the Oliver Iron Mining Company controlled multiple mines on valuable deposits. To maximize everyone’s profits, they made a deal: Oliver would mine the ore, Rockefeller would transport it via railroad to the ore docks, and Carnegie would ship it to the steel mills. This agreement was eventually formalized into the world’s first billion dollar corporation, United States Steel. Developments on the early Mesabi Iron Range shaped its cultural legacy. Two early strikes—in 1907 and 1916—catalyzed a long heritage of organized labor. The 1907 strikers were generally unsuccessful, but the 1916 strikers received some raised wages and improved working conditions. In the modern taconite industry, all but one of the operating mines are union-based. Immigration, too, has played a major role on the Mesabi Range. Mining jobs attracted migrants from different parts of the United States and Scandinavia, but during and after the 1907 strike, Eastern and Southern European immigrants arrived to work in the mines—some as “scabs” to replace striking miners. The multiethnic character of the region is still visible, especially in cuisine. Dishes like Cornish pasties, Italian porketta, and Slovenian potica are served in Iron Range restaurants and are commonly found in family cookbooks. National industrial developments and World War II assured that there was demand for Minnesota’s ore. However, after the war, reserves of natural ore were mostly depleted. Faced with the possibility of a total industrial decline in the region, scientists and engineers—especially Dr. Edward W. Davis of the University of Minnesota—began developing methods to mine and process taconite, a low-grade iron ore that was plentiful throughout the Range. However, since it was weaker than natural ore, it required much more processing, which made it more costly to produce. To remedy this, Davis and Iron Range lawmakers sought to change the way taconite mines were taxed. This effort was successful, and the Taconite Amendment of 1964 passed a statewide referendum with 86 percent of Minnesota voters approving the plan. The first taconite plant was Reserve Mining Company in Babbitt, soon followed by Erie Mining Company in Hoyt Lakes. Both Babbitt and Hoyt Lakes were built for their respective taconite facilities as full-service company towns with modern amenities developed out of dense forest. After the Taconite Amendment passed, other mining companies invested in taconite production plants and opened facilities, including Eveleth Taconite (EVTAC) in 1964, and both Minntac and Butler Taconite in 1967. The massive investments pumped into these plants signaled a transition in the Mesabi Range’s primary export that still allowed the region to retain its mining heritage. The steel industry faced global challenges in the 1980s, which led to layoffs, idling, and automation on the Mesabi. Of the taconite mines that were in operation at the Iron Range’s peak, as of 2020, two have permanently closed and all have been idled at various points ever since. The taconite mines employ fewer people than they did at peak operations, which has had major effects on the communities and schools throughout the region. In 2020, the Virginia and Eveleth-Gilbert school districts voted to consolidate, which had already occurred in many other Iron Range school districts, but Virginia and Eveleth-Gilbert were two of the Iron Range’s largest school districts before consolidation plans were proposed. Even with school consolidation and diminishing populations, the Mesabi Iron Range has continued to mine taconite, and copper-nickel mining may start in the near future. While the Range is still enduring a long transformation, the mining industry has left an indelible mark on the region’s economy, landscape, and regional culture.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Mesabi_Trail_2010_023.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246055,"name":"Labor","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/mesabi-iron-range"},{"alt":"Metropolitan Sports Center, ca. 1967. The complex, nicknamed the Met Center, was located near the Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington. The North Stars hockey team played there for their entire career in Minnesota.","author":[{"name":"Alex Tieberg","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/alex-tieberg"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"May 11, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Metropolitan Sports Center (Met Center), Bloomington","postbody":"The Metropolitan Sports Center, or Met Center, was built to house the new Minnesota North Stars NHL team in 1966 and 1967. The facility, in Bloomington, was adjacent to the Metropolitan ...","searchtext":"The Metropolitan Sports Center, or Met Center, was built to house the new Minnesota North Stars NHL team in 1966 and 1967. The facility, in Bloomington, was adjacent to the Metropolitan Stadium—once home to the Twins and Vikings. After the North Stars left the state, the Met Center was demolished. When the Minnesota North Stars were announced as an NHL expansion team on February 9, 1966, the conditions of the bid included construction of a new arena that could hold 12,500 spectators—the minimum allowed by the NHL. Since the largest arena in the Twin Cities had a capacity of 8,500, Walter Bush Jr. and eight other businessmen who organized Minnesota’s bid offered the Metropolitan Sports Commission a plan for a future arena. The bid organizers would build an arena on land owned by the Commission and pay rent. The location, near the Commission-owned Metropolitan Stadium, would create a professional sports hub in Bloomington. The Commission agreed to these terms and construction started on October 3, 1966. On October 21, 1967, the Minnesota North Stars played their home opener against the California Golden (later Oakland) Seals. As spectators arrived—12,951 by the end of the night—seats were still being installed in the arena. The game ended with a North Stars win. A few months later, however, visitors to the Met Center witnessed tragedy as the only NHL player to die as a direct result of his injuries, Bill Masterson, fatally hit his head on the ice during a North Stars game. The Met Center was considered one of the best NHL arenas in its time, and it set standards for future facilities. Since the team played in Minnesota during the winter, Met Center management arranged to have tow trucks parked outside during hockey games to jumpstart cars. Soon after, other cold-climate NHL arenas followed their lead. The signature multi-colored seats were innovative and, according to North Stars coach Lou Nanne, made it look like there were more spectators in the arena on television on low attendance nights. In addition, the Met Center was the first NHL arena to sell advertising space on the rink sideboards, which is now standard in arenas across the United States. The Met Center also hosted other events, including basketball games played by the American Basketball Association’s Minnesota Muskies. The Muskies’ first game was the day after the North Stars’ debut, on October 21, 1967. The Muskies, however, quickly left Minnesota after one season at the Met Center. Concerts held at the Met Center included shows by Elvis Presley, Led Zeppelin, Fleetwood Mac, LL Cool J, and Minnesota’s own Prince. The first concert was on December 16, 1967 featuring Sergio Mendes, and the last was Frank Sinatra on January 24, 1992. The most tickets sold for a concert at the Met Center was for a Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton collaboration on April 25, 1986 with 17,922 sold. As the Minnesota Twins and Vikings left the Metropolitan Stadium for the Metrodome in downtown Minneapolis, the North Stars soon became the last major professional sports team in the Twin Cities to be housed in Bloomington. Norm Green, a Canadian investor, purchased the North Stars in 1990. He sought to renovate the Met Center and connect it to the new Mall of America, built on the site of the old Met Stadium, but the Metropolitan Sports Facilities Commission (MSFC) denied Green’s proposal. When the Twins and Vikings moved to downtown Minneapolis, Green shifted his focus towards existing facilities in St. Paul and Minneapolis. Green, dismayed by the lack of support for his Met Center plan and disappointed with offers from existing facilities, decided to uproot the North Stars and head to Dallas. He announced this decision on March 10, 1993 in the midst of the North Stars’ season. The last North Stars game at the Met Center was on April 13, 1993—a loss to the North Stars’ Midwest rival, the Chicago Blackhawks. Unable to find a new tenant for the arena, the MSFC tore down the Met Center on December 13, 1994. The land was used as an overflow lot for the Mall of America until furniture company IKEA opened a store in 2004.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/MH5.9 BL4 p28.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246054,"name":"Sports and Recreation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/metropolitan-sports-center-met-center-bloomington"},{"alt":"J. Otis Powell‽, ca. 2014. Photograph by Eric Lorberer.","author":[{"name":"Yuan Ding","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/yuan-ding"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"May 06, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Powell‽, J. Otis (1955–2017)","postbody":"James Otis Powell (a.k.a. J. Otis Powell‽) was an influential Minnesota-based American spoken word poet. He was the founding producer of the award-winning Write On Radio! show at KFAI-FM in ...","searchtext":"James Otis Powell (a.k.a. J. Otis Powell‽) was an influential Minnesota-based American spoken word poet. He was the founding producer of the award-winning Write On Radio! show at KFAI-FM in Minneapolis, an advisor for the Minnesota Spoken Word Association, a curator for Intermedia Arts, and a program director for the Loft Literary Center. He was also the recipient of numerous awards, including the Loft Creative Nonfiction Award, Jerome Foundation mid-career-artists grants, a Jerome Foundation travel-and-study grant, the Intermedia Arts Interdisciplinary McKnight fellowship, and the 2017 Sally Award at the Ordway Theater. The MN Spoken Word Association awarded Powell‽ its Urban Griot Innovator Award and inducted him into the MN Spoken Word Association Hall of Fame in 2009. J. Otis Powell‽ was born on November 25, 1955, in Huntsville, Alabama, to a single mother, nurse, and minister, Rev. Susan Slaughter. His maternal grandparents were Riley Slaughter Sr. and Sudellar Jackson Slaughter. According to the preface to his chapbook, Pieces of Sky, Powell‽ grew up steeped in the oral gospel tradition. His maternal great grandmother, Caroline Jackson, was an illiterate formerly enslaved woman who managed to memorize enough Bible passages to correct Powell when he read to her. His maternal grandfather, Rev. Riley Slaughter Sr., was a gospel preacher, and his maternal grandmother was known regionally as a prayer warrior. His mother, Susan, was one of the few women ministers in the United Methodist Church in north Alabama. According to his account of his early life in an interview with Rain Taxi, Powell‽ started acting in kindergarten and started writing in junior high school. He graduated as a telecommunications (television production) major with a minor in philosophy at Alabama A&M, a historically black college. After college, he moved around the country before coming to the Twin Cities in 1987 as a teaching volunteer. He later studied creative writing with Gloria Anzaldúa and performance poetry with Quincy Troupe and Alexs Pate. He also studied and performed with Amiri Baraka. A strong believer in self-authorship, Powell‽ had put an exclamation point behind his name for many years. Later, he changed that to an interrobang (‽), a combination of an exclamation point and a question mark. A jazz musician and spoken word poet, Powell‽ appeared in and released several CDs and films, including a DVD titled News as Abstract Truth, Unsentimental with Rene Ford, This Cat Is Out (in association with The New Day Blues Band), Words Will Heal The Wound, Theology: Love & Revolution (1996), and Balm! (2012). Powell‽’s first poetry collection, My Tongue Has No Bone (2001), featuring art by Janice Lee Porter, was published by Porter Publishing. His chapbook, Pieces of Sky (2014), was released by Rain Taxi. A collection of prose and quintets, Pieces of Sky offers a behind-the-scenes look at Powell‽’s novel-in-progress, Bottomless Sky. His final book, Waiting for a Spaceship, was published by SPOUT Press in June of 2017, a few months prior to his sudden death. Powell‽ was also a co-editor of Blues Vision, a poetry anthology published jointly by the Minnesota Humanities Center and Minnesota Historical Society Press in February 2015. Powell‽ is known for his deep knowledge of African American aesthetics and his counter-cultural stance. His poetry is rooted in Afro-centric lore and culture, and informed by the oral tradition in literature and music, as well as the Black Arts Movement. Despite being a vocal proponent for cultural production that depicts the African American experience, Powell‽ also resisted being pigeonholed by the limits of “geography or race or class,” insisting on being “a citizen of the universe,” according to the same Rain Taxi interview. Highlighting the value of music and art production on the margins of mainstream culture, he calls for criticism to reflect and validate the experience and expression of Indigenous and minority populations. Powell‽ died on Monday, August 28, 2017.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/powell_cropped.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056216,"name":"African Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/powell-j-otis-1955-2017-1"},{"alt":"Harry Shepherd, 1906. Photo from the Appeal, August 18, 1906.","author":[{"name":"Ann Frisina","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/ann-frisina"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"May 04, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Shepherd, Harry (ca. 1854–?)","postbody":"Harry Shepherd, an African American photographer who lived and worked in St. Paul between 1880 and 1905, became one of the most successful photographers in the city. Shepherd’s work earned ...","searchtext":"Harry Shepherd, an African American photographer who lived and worked in St. Paul between 1880 and 1905, became one of the most successful photographers in the city. Shepherd’s work earned awards and an opportunity to provide photographs for the American Negro Exhibit at the 1900 Paris Exposition. Politically active, he took part in the National Afro-American Council (NAAC), and ran for Fourth Ward alderman in 1902. Harry Shepherd, born ca. 1856 in Salem, Virginia, came to Minnesota in about 1877. He worked as a news boy on a steamboat before becoming the first African American photographer in Minnesota to own a photographic studio. Shepherd||s first studio, the People||s Photography Gallery, was located at 93 East Seventh Street, St Paul. Shepherd went on to open and sell at least four studios in the city, including People||s Photography Gallery, the Annex (later the Swanson Gallery), the Elite Gallery, and the Shepherd Photographic Company. Shepherd won two gold medals at the Minnesota State Fair and two gold medals from the Minnesota State Agricultural Society. Shepherd’s surviving photographs show that he specialized in portraits of both African and white Americans. One of his best-known portraits includes Mary E. Schwandt Schmidt (Mrs. William) and Snana Good Thunder (Maggie Brass). It illustrates that, while communities were segregated, his gold medals, quality of work, and fair pricing drew patrons into his studio. Shepherd was politically active in his community. He held meetings in his studio for the National Afro-American Council (NAAC), an organization established in 1898 to address critical issues for African Americans, and served on the membership committee. He attended the NAAC convention in Philadelphia in 1901 as a delegate of the Business Men’s Club of St. Paul and Minneapolis and succeeded in persuading the council to hold its next convention in Minnesota In 1902, Shepherd ran for Fourth Ward alderman, an elected member of the municipal council. The St. Paul Globe reported that he refused to take direction from the Republican Party. As a result, the Republican Fourth Ward Club voted to endorse a white candidate whom they persuaded to run for alderman. Shepherd argued that the party should not endorse one candidate, but allow all candidates into the primary to let the voters decide. At a Republican ratification meeting, Shepherd protested his treatment as a black man running for alderman. The Globe reported that Shepherd “promised to fight to the bitter end the men of his party who opposed him because of his color.” These inflammatory statements by Shepherd reflected his determination to fight racial discrimination. In February 1900, Shepherd won the appointment of official photographer for the Afro-American exhibit at the Paris Exposition, created by Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Thomas J. Calloway. Earning a salary of four dollars per day for expenses plus a per-photograph fee, he traveled the southern states, taking pictures of African American businesses, agriculture, homes, and individuals. About a month later, he lost the appointment for encouraging southern blacks “to combine against the United States in the event of war with foreign powers,||| a charge he didn’t deny. Newspapers wrote inflammatory descriptions of Shepherd, labeling him an anarchist. In 1904, Shepherd’s wife of eighteen years, Margaret (or Margett), sued for divorce on the grounds of “cruel and inhuman treatment.” She wanted “an absolute divorce,” with alimony payments of fifteen dollars, plus $100 in legal fees. The following year, Shepherd sold his photography studio “for a large sum” and his half-share in the Sangre Chemical Company for $5,000 cash. He moved to Chicago and established another successful photography company at 3018 State Street. In 1909, Shepherd relocated to Seattle, Washington, where he incorporated a monthly newspaper, The Bertillon Eye. Ever the entrepreneur, he landed a contract to sell shares in a Klondike gold mining venture begun by G. W. Cormack. By 1912, he reportedly became the general manager of the International Biographic Finger Print, a magazine published in Los Angeles, California. Little is known of Shepherd’s life beyond that time, including the date of his death.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Photo of Harry.png","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056216,"name":"African Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/shepherd-harry-ca-1854"},{"alt":"The cover of The Five Star Minstrel Book (Northwestern Press, 1938), which is meant to act as a guide for anyone wanting to organize a blackface minstrel show.","author":[{"name":"Luz Ramirez Cruz","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/luz-ramirez-cruz"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"April 29, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Blackface Minstrelsy in Minnesota","postbody":"Blackface minstrelsy was born out of New England in the early nineteenth century and reached the peak of its national popularity in the mid-1800s. The performances put on by blackface ...","searchtext":"Blackface minstrelsy was born out of New England in the early nineteenth century and reached the peak of its national popularity in the mid-1800s. The performances put on by blackface actors electrified audiences across the country, who were typically white people. Their reception in Minnesota was no different. Blackface in the US gained popularity sometime between the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It is often defined as a form of theatrical makeup employed by non-African people, primarily white people, to create a caricature of the appearance of African Americans. In the 1830s these caricatures evolved into full-fledged productions, known as minstrel shows, that combined blackface with comedy, music, variety acts, and dancing. The crude, vulgar, and racist humor of blackface minstrelsy spiked in popularity among white audiences in the 1850s, just as the country was in violent racial turmoil and on the verge of civil war. It depicted enslaved Africans on plantations and characterized them as lazy, unintelligent, hypersexual, and conniving. In the long run, blackface minstrelsy embedded these stereotypes into American popular thought, and by the mid-1800s, it was the most popular form of entertainment in the US. Many scholars and historians assert that blackface minstrelsy was the first original form of popular American entertainment. Contrary to popular belief, blackface minstrelsy began in the Northern states, and some of its most influential performers and creative minds were born and raised Northerners. Famed songwriter Stephen Foster, born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1826, wrote many songs made popular by blackface minstrels, such as “Camptown Races.” George M. Cohan, born in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1878, and widely considered the father of American musical comedy, wrote material for minstrel shows. Often, the white people writing songs and comic monologues for these shows employed what the industry came to call a “negro dialect,” which was more about a deliberately foolish misuse of language than depicting actual nineteenth-century African American Vernacular English. Early blackface minstrel shows depended solely on the imagination of white people, whose skewed perceptions of African American life created blackface characters. Blackface caricatures took many forms; some of the most common were the “Mammy” figure, the “Uncle Tom,” the “tragic mulatto,” the “sambo” and the “black buck.” One such example, published by Joseph E. Frank in Minneapolis in 1903, is a song titled “Mammy’s Little Coal Black Coon,” in which an African American mother sings her son to sleep: “Hush-a-bye go to sleep ma baby / Mammy’s little coal black boy / Yes I know youse black and mighty shady / But you am yo mammy’s only joy...” These lyrics reflect how disconnected blackface could be from the experiences of Black people themselves. The advent of the traveling minstrel troupe allowed this entertainment to move westward. Blackface minstrels toured the same circuits as opera companies and circuses and performed at venues ranging from high-class theaters in emerging cities to small-town tavern stages. Troupes eventually came to Minnesota where, as in the Eastern US, the shows were an instant hit. At the turn of the twentieth century, blackface minstrel performances were incorporated into vaudeville acts. They featured in some of Minnesota’s most famous theaters, such as the Orpheum (St. Paul), the Pence Opera House (Minneapolis), and the Academy of Music (Minneapolis). Blackface minstrels also made it onto the midway at the Minnesota State Fair. Performances took place across the state, reaching Crookston, Alexandria, and Stephen, but the most famous minstrels performed in Minneapolis and St. Paul. Despite their national popularity, not everyone was a fan of the shows. The prominent African-American-owned and -operated newspaper the Appeal openly criticized not only minstrel shows but the people of color who participated in them. An editorial in the June 12, 1915, edition stated that The Appeal has always opposed minstrel shows and has recently called attention to the misrepresentations of the colored people, often given in public schools and churches by white people. If the colored people … wish to make an effective protest against prejudice breeding programs of every kind, they must stop burlesquing themselves and ‘come clean.|| While blackface minstrelsy was mostly performed by white people, some African Americans and other racial minorities also participated in shows. They came to be known as “colored minstrels” and claimed an “authenticity” in their acts that white minstrels could not deliver. Although blatantly racist, this type of performance was initially the only avenue by which racial minorities could make careers for themselves after decades of social and legal exclusion from the entertainment industry. Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, Jimmy Bland, Billy Kersands, Hattie McDaniel, and Wallace King achieved fame that rivaled white performers||. As the industry branched out of blackface performance, so did the opportunities that people of color could access. As mentioned by the Appeal, blackface minstrel shows were hosted in churches and schools, and for the purpose of charitable fundraising. Organizations of high esteem such as the Elks Lodge, the American Institute of Banking, the Roosevelt Club, and the Fraternal Order of the Eagles produced well-attended shows. For example, in 1939, the Louis Agassiz School Parent Teacher Association (PTA) in Minneapolis hired Jessie M. Miller to produce a minstrel show. Miller claimed to specialize in minstrel show productions, and her services helped the Louis Agassiz PTA achieve a net profit of $67.94, effectively earning back more than 100 percent of its investment. In 2020, this amount equals $1,257.85 in net profit. By the 1930s, as new forms of entertainment like radio began to take center stage, live blackface minstrelsy was less common, but its racist iconography could be seen everywhere—including in Hollywood movies. Caricatures of African Americans were regularly used in advertisements and comic strips in newspapers such as the Minneapolis Journal and the St. Paul Daily News, and they were reminiscent of blackface performers. Blackface minstrelsy was more than a type of comedy performance; it influenced virtually every aspect of popular American culture, and it was praised as such. One 1926 promotional pamphlet called blackface comedy “clean, wholesome, and rollicking fun.” Another pamphlet, for a St. Paul Elks Lodge minstrel show, had fifteen advertisements for members running for public office in Minnesota, including judges and councilmen, along with “compliments” from St. Paul Mayor Laurence C. Hodgson and a county sheriff. Blackface was socially acceptable across all levels of society. While the most famous blackface minstrels were men, women often participated in productions. Tim McMahon’s Minstrel Maids and Watermelon Girls, an all-female blackface minstrel troupe, starred in a vaudeville production at the Orpheum in 1905 and 1906. They later performed at the Unique Theater in Minneapolis until 1910. A performance at the St. Paul Winter Carnival in 1916 featured fourteen people, five of whom were women, in “Africa costumes.” Minnesota-born Judy Garland also performed in blackface for two separate films in the 1930s. Blackface minstrelsy’s popularity and acceptance fell sharply in the 1950s with the growing influence of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Civil Rights movement. Scholars argue that although much has been done to erase blackface from the public eye, it has not disappeared completely; rather, it has evolved in such a way that it is almost unrecognizable from its original form. Many point to the phenomenon dubbed “blackfishing” as the new blackface, in which individuals, most notably social media influencers, use make-up to appear Black or non-white to gain fame and make money.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Five Star Minstrel Book 1938.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/blackface-minstrelsy-minnesota"},{"alt":"Campaign poster for gubernatorial candidate Wendell Anderson, 1970.","author":[{"name":"Paul Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/paul-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"April 27, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Legislative Redistricting, 1959–1993","postbody":"By the late 1950s Minnesota’s legislative districts—last configured in 1913—had become alarmingly imbalanced. Though the state constitution required the districts to be drawn “in proportion ...","searchtext":"By the late 1950s Minnesota’s legislative districts—last configured in 1913—had become alarmingly imbalanced. Though the state constitution required the districts to be drawn “in proportion to population,” the populations of House districts ranged from 7,290 residents to 107,246, and Senate districts from 16,878 to 153,455. It would take fourteen years, three federal lawsuits, three special sessions of the legislature, three governor’s vetoes, one trip to the Minnesota Supreme Court, and one to the US Supreme Court to fix the problem, and then temporarily. Twenty years and one more governor’s veto later, the US Supreme Court intervened again. After statehood in 1858 Minnesota’s legislature altered legislative districts in 1860, 1866, 1871, 1881, 1889, 1897, and 1913, but then stopped doing so. Between the census of 1910 (the basis for the 1913 redistricting) and the census of 1950, Minnesota’s population increased from just over two million to almost three million. The state became much more urban and suburban, but the urban and suburban areas gained no representation in the legislature. In March 1958 citizens from the Twin Cities area sued the state, arguing that demographic changes had made the 1913 districts unconstitutional. On July 10, 1958, a panel of three federal judges ruled that the huge population differences between many house and senate districts violated the US Constitution. In its 1959 session the Minnesota legislature re-drew legislative lines, effective 1962. In 1962 the US Supreme Court, in Baker v. Carr, made the first in a series of decisions asserting federal constitutional power over state legislative districts. These cases became known as establishing the “one person, one vote” principle. In June 1964 another set of Minnesota’s urban and suburban citizens brought a new lawsuit, challenging the 1959 reapportionment. The population range remained vast—from 24,428 to 110,520 in Senate districts, 8,343 to 56,076 in House districts. In December of 1964 another three-judge panel of federal judges ruled the 1959 districts unconstitutional and gave the legislature until 1966 to re-draw the lines. In the 1965 session the legislature, dominated by representatives of rural areas, passed a redistricting statute. Democratic Farmer-Labor (DFL) Governor Karl Rolvaag vetoed it, calling it a “blatant, calculated, political gerrymander.” Senator Lloyd Duxbury of Winona County challenged that veto in state court. On November 26, 1965, the Minnesota Supreme Court, by a 4-3 vote, upheld the veto. As 1966 began Minnesota faced a November election with no lawful legislative districts in place. The plaintiffs in the federal lawsuit then asked the three-judge panel to begin the process of designing the districts itself. On January 14 the court declined: ”There is adequate opportunity for the Governor and Legislature to do the job in timely fashion. They should do so.” Governor Karl Rolvaag then called a special session of the legislature. On May 9 it passed another redistricting bill. Governor Rolvaag vetoed that one also. Finally, on May 20, the legislature approved still another redistricting bill, which became law, approved by Governor Rolvaag, on May 24. A year after completion of the 1970 census came another lawsuit. The 1971 legislature passed a redistricting bill, but Governor Wendell Anderson vetoed it on November 1. Early in 1972 still another three-judge panel (the third) declared the 1966 legislative districts unconstitutional and took the unusual step of ordering radical changes in the legislature; along with new lines it ordered the legislature reduced in size to thirty-five Senate districts and 105 House districts. On April 29, with the 1972 elections looming, the US Supreme Court ruled that the lower court had gone too far, and sent the case back. That court acted quickly to restore the Legislature to sixty-seven Senate seats and 134 House seats (from 135), the seats in each chamber varying by a population range of only 1.8 percent. The 1990 census prompted competing lawsuits in both state and federal court. While they were pending the legislature passed a new redistricting bill, which Governor Arne Carlson vetoed. Then the state court and the federal court issued competing redistricting plans. The US Supreme Court resolved the conflict by ruling, on February 23, 1993, in favor of the state court plan. Redistricting after the 2000 and 2010 censuses has been less contentious.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/J2 1970 b1.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/legislative-redistricting-1959-1993"},{"alt":"Teacher and students, Morris Indian School, ca. 1895. Included are B. LeVivash, Joe Northrup, and Joe Siehy. Photograph by R. E. Brandmo.","author":[{"name":"Annette Atkins","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/annette-atkins"}],"categoryTag":[],"date":"April 23, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186625246048,"name":"1585–1763 (Colonization)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056201,"name":"1754–1800 (Revolution and a New Nation)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056203,"name":"1792–1861 (Expansion and Reform)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":203519472229,"name":"Pre-1585 (Before European Contact)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Learning in the Land of Lakes: Minnesota’s Education History","postbody":"The founders of the United States—anxious about the fragile republican experiment they’d embarked on—knew that the nation needed an educated citizenry. They did not know, however, how to ...","searchtext":"The founders of the United States—anxious about the fragile republican experiment they’d embarked on—knew that the nation needed an educated citizenry. They did not know, however, how to get there. The American decision to educate its citizens at public expense was an idea as radical as the revolution itself. The story of public education in Minnesota, then, tells about the aspiration, invention, and development of a great national idea into a state-wide practice and about women’s key role in carrying out that great idea. Local school districts have historically funded and operated schools, within increasing state laws and standards. Parochial schools, privately funded and operated, have grown up alongside public ones, and the definition of “citizenry” has steadily widened. The definition of education has similarly expanded and changed. The role of the federal government has gradually increased. Teachers, parents, citizens, politicians, reformers, and unions have all contributed to changes that have lengthened Minnesota’s school year from ninety to 174 days and expanded the definition of “educable.” Public alternatives—magnet and charter schools, for example—have emerged to respond to public education deficiencies. Inequalities plague the public school system nonetheless. Especially troubling are racial disparities in achievement. Why Public Education? Even before the Constitution’s ratification, the 1787 and 1789 Northwest Ordinances declared: “being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.” They allocated public lands for school support. Beyond these basics, the federal government gave education to the states to invent and develop. Like the federal ordinances, the 1849 Minnesota Territorial School Code and the 1857 state constitution declared public schools necessary for “good government” and for “the stability of a republican government.” State law established a “general and uniform system of public schools.” It also banned state support of schools that taught any “particular Christian or other religious sect.” It offered (limited) funding from public lands, general tax funds, and proceeds from liquor-license fees and criminal fines. Legislators gave to county/township commissioners authority to establish school districts, hire and fire teachers, set the school calendar, and hold meetings of the school board. They also put funding responsibility on the local governments. The state kept—and has increased—supervisory responsibility through oversight officers and groups: the Superintendent of Public Instruction (appointed in 1858), the High School Board (created in 1878), the Public School Commission (1914), the Department of Education (1919), the Board of Teaching (1973), and the Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board (2017). The 1858 statutes governing state schools ran to about four pages. The 1953 statutes weighed in at 152 pages, and in 1996 at nearly 500. The 2018 statutes took up more still. Schools reflect the values, interests, fears, and hopes of the communities that create and sustain them. Therefore, as communities—and the larger society—change, so do their schools. Early communities asked schools to create good citizens. Later they asked schools to prepare children for an industrializing society, for a more technological one, and, more recently, for a more diverse one. Schools are asked to socialize students, to teach sex and driver’s and vocational ed, to show how to resist drugs, and to demonstrate how to duck and cover to avoid shooters. Duluth’s Denfield High School defines its job as making students “leaders for life.” Stewartville schools aspire “to develop the full potential of all learners.” The St. Cloud schools want to help students “to be successful in today’s and tomorrow’s society.” Each school writes its own statement. Both state and federal governments ask—and fund—schools to be agents of social change. The state offered special funding to desegregate (St. Paul in 1869), to lengthen the school year (1885, 1898), to consolidate (1911, 1947), to educate students with special needs (1915, 1957, etc.), to encourage gifted and talented children (2006), and to reach preschoolers (2017). When variations in property taxes, taxable property, and local decisions resulted in grossly unequal schools (not the constitutionally mandated “uniform” school system), the state revamped funding through Governor Wendell Anderson’s 1971 “|||Minnesota Miracle|||.” By 2018, the state provided 67 percent of school funding. By 2019, the federal government’s funding share had increased to 5 percent. The Hatch Act (1887) and the Smith-Lever Act (1914) funded agricultural education and home economics. Following the 1957 USSR Sputnik launch, the National Defense Education Act supported education in languages, mathematics, and science. Lyndon Johnson’s 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act and its amended “titles” target funds for schools with low income students, for breakfast and lunch programs, for the Headstart program, and for bilingual education. They also set aside money to satisfy requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act (2002) and the Every Student Succeeds Act (2015), an extension of 1965’s Strengthening Career and Technical Education Act. Non-public Education The state was never the sole educator. Long before a state of Minnesota existed, Native people established a system of education that passed ceremonies, values, and oral history from one generation to the next. The doctor and writer Ohiyesa (Charles Eastman) recounted in his autobiography that his elders taught him to listen, to honor the earth, and to be a Dakota man during his childhood in the 1860s. In her book Night Flying Woman, Ignatia Broker told of how her Oona (great-great-grandmother) learned from her elders in the same decade how to read her dreams, to listen to nature, and to be an Ojibwe woman. The Euro-Americans who arrived in Minnesota in the mid-nineteenth century brought with them a more formal definition of education centered around Christianity. The missionaries Samuel and Gideon Pond, for example, Connecticut-born and then born-again into evangelical Christianity, arrived at St. Peter’s (St. Paul) in 1834. They learned Dakota, invented an alphabet, wrote a catechism, translated the Bible into Dakota, built a school at Bde Maka Ska, and set to educating native people in European and Christian ways. From 1871 through the 1960s, Native American children were sent to boarding schools, including those at White Earth, Red Lake, Cross Lake, Morris, Vermilion Lake, Cass/Leech Lake, Pipestone, St. John’s and St. Mary’s, and Flandreau (in South Dakota). Though these schools offered students food and training in Euro-American skills, they also suppressed Native languages and lifeways and separated children from their parents. They broke the chain of traditional, intergenerational Native education—and many families’ hearts. Many ethnic and social and religious groups have been willing to forgo government to protect their languages and culture. The St. Paul Lutheran Elementary School (1861–2018) was designed to strengthen religious commitments. New Ulm German Americans founded Dr. Martin Luther College (1884) to train teachers, and Norwegian Americans created the Lutheran Normal School (1898) to train theirs. The Danebod in Tyler aimed to keep Danish culture alive (1888). Beginning in 1860, Episcopal Bishop Henry Whipple ran Shattuck School (for boys) and St. Mary’s Hall (for daughters of clergy) in Faribault. Also associated with the Episcopal Church was the Breck School, which opened in Wilder in 1886 for the children of farmers and moved to St. Paul in 1916. Much later, in 1972, the American Indian Movement created the Heart of the Earth Survival School in Minneapolis to encourage Native youth to reclaim their identities and cultures. The Sisters of St. Joseph, a Catholic order, opened St. Joseph’s Academy in St. Paul in 1851. Benedictine sisters opened their St. Joseph’s Academy in German Stearns county in 1880. By then, Archbishop John Ireland had already founded a Catholic Industrial School for Boys in Clontarf (1877). In 1883, the First Vatican Council demanded that parents send their children to Catholic schools and depended on thousands of Catholic sister teachers. Some of Minnesota’s wealthier families founded private, college-prep, single-sex schools: Blake School for boys (1907), Graham Hall for girls (1900, renamed Northrop Collegiate School in 1914), and High Croft Country Day School (1958). They all merged into Blake Schools in 1974 In St. Paul, too, Summit School and St. Paul Academy founded as single sex schools merged in 1969. Enrollment in all of Minnesota’s private schools peaked in 1960 at about 20 percent. By 2018, enrollment had declined to 7 percent. By operating without public funds, they contributed unintentionally but substantially to the quality of public education in Minnesota. High Schools And One-Room School Houses The original state legislation said nothing about high schools, which aimed at college preparation. But as the United States urbanized and spawned a growing middle class, the state’s interest grew. In 1878, it established a High School Board, then reorganized it in 1881. In 1893 it appointed an inspector of high schools. By 1902, Minnesota boasted of 506 common schools (119 graded, 387 semi-graded and one-room) and 141 high schools. St. Paul Central High School, in its broad outlines, tells the story of Minnesota’s urban high schools. It opened in 1867 with one teacher and a dozen students, offering natural philosophy, math, Greek, Latin, history, and grammar. The first two students—one male and one female—graduated in 1870. The rat-infested school building prompted a city council proposal to raise money, which the voters rejected. The day before a second referendum in 1881, students played hooky to campaign door to door. They succeeded. Suggesting an expanded vision of high school, the school board put a manual training school in the new building. St. Paul Central moved again in 1911 to a site at Marshall and Lexington avenues. Central added athletics in the 1890s, then organized sports teams (including girls’ basketball, 1901–1909; revived in the 1970s), extracurricular clubs, and a student council (1921). By the 1920s, it looked much like a “modern” high school. In 1970, however, it came under a state order to desegregate. Wanting to avoid the bussing solution being attempted elsewhere in the US, Central instead tried to attract a more mixed student body. It remodeled its campus and added a theater, recording studio, and swimming pool. Its remodeled curriculum offered an International Baccalaureate, a strong arts program, and Black history. Over the next fifty years enrollment climbed to 1700 students: 35 percent African American or of African-origin, 38 percent white, 22 percent Asian, 5 percent Latino, and 1 percent Native American. The Mille Lacs County schools tell a story of rural education in Minnesota. Just after World War II, the state had roughly 5,000 one- or two-room schools (more than half with fewer than twenty students). State education officials worried about the quality and the cost of so many schools, as well as a chronic shortage of well-trained teachers. In 1947 they launched a program to improve rural and small-town education by consolidating schools and eliminating one-room schoolhouses. Many in Mille Lacs resisted, and they defeated the first consolidation proposal. They liked what local schools already offered in terms of local cohesion, identity, and proximity. They feared the loss of local autonomy and perhaps even the towns themselves. Practically, they argued that rural roads were too dangerous to move their children such long distances. They resisted in this way for twenty-four years before crumbling buildings, too-strained budgets, and improved roads resulted in the consolidation of fifty-nine districts into four. Between 1947 and 1990, the state consolidated 8,000 school districts into 435; by 2019, there were 327. In 2020, one-room schoolhouses have disappeared, except the Angle Inlet School on Lake of the Woods in the Warroad School District. Educational Reforms Reformers of many kinds have tried to make schools better, more accountable, more efficient, or some other “more.” The Post-Secondary Enrollment Options program (1985), for example, allowed high schoolers in Minnesota to enroll in college classes. Open enrollment (1987) permitted students to cross district boundaries. Magnet schools have specialized in, for example, language immersion, the arts, STEM, the International Baccalaureate program, and Native American studies. They also aim to attract students of common interests (with the added, hoped-for benefit of voluntary racial integration). Parents number among the most avid reformers of education in Minnesota, though neither state nor federal legislation specifies a role for parents other than their voting for township-board and school-board members (a vote that women gained in Minnesota in 1875). Women formed “Mothers Clubs”—the first one in St. Paul in 1894, out of which emerged the Minnesota Parent–Teacher Association by 1922. The charter school movement arose in the 1970s in part to give parents more control over their children’s educations. Charter schools are publicly funded but outside of school district control. Minnesota’s first, the City Academy in St. Paul, was founded in 1992. By 2018, more than 150 operated in the state. Their advocates champion the charter schools’ flexibility to innovate and to focus on particular students or outcomes. Their critics—including teachers’ unions and some school boards—fear that they are the backdoor to privatized public education. Teachers Nineteenth-century New England reformer Horace Mann largely invented the American common school: a free, public, non-sectarian, graded institution for boys and girls (together), with trained teachers. Young, ambitious, single, and coming of age in the bubbling cauldron that was Jacksonian America, young women provided the foundation of the new public-school system throughout the North, including Minnesota. Harriet Bishop, the first to arrive in Minnesota, opened her Mann-ian school in St. Paul in 1847. Nearly 500 other women, recruited through the Board of National Popular Education (run by Catharine Beecher, sister of Harriet Beecher Stowe), helped create Minnesota’s public-school system. Some districts—especially urban ones—hired as many of these trained “outsiders” as possible. Others—especially sparsely populated ones—were happy with young females who could read and write. America’s audacious plan to educate everybody required a huge labor force. Women’s domination of the teaching corps was not inevitable, but the dynamics of nineteenth-century gender roles, America’s chronic labor shortage, the part-time and seasonal school calendar, and low salaries paved the way for generations of women teachers. The State Superintendent of Education in 1861 reported that 74 percent of the state’s public school teachers were female. They received thirteen dollars per month, men twenty-one dollars. A few women advanced. By 1910 they held 24 percent of county superintendencies. In 2017–2018, female teachers made up 76 percent of the teaching corps; women superintendents had dropped to about 15 percent. Unions Unions emerged in the late nineteenth century to increase the standing of teachers in a system that devalued them. Federal and state legislation viewed teachers as hired hands, local authorities as temporary laborers. They often fired women teachers when they married. Beecher’s view—and a commonly held idea—of teaching as a natural extension of women’s domestic roles further disempowered them. In 1916, Chicago teachers founded the American Federation of Teachers, affiliated with the American Federation of Labor, under the leadership of Samuel Gompers. Within it, they focused on salaries, working conditions, and workplace control. Widespread American distrust of unions, state prohibitions, and the active opposition of school boards kept membership low until after World War II. In 1946, when the St Paul School Board proposed a teacher pay cut, a shorter school year, and elimination of kindergarten, about two thirds of St. Paul teachers walked out in the nation’s first teachers’ strike (which was illegal). Led by Irish-born Mary McGough (a forty-six-year-old veteran teacher/principal), by the St. Paul Federation of Women Teachers, Local 23, and by the Federation of Men Teachers, Local 43, the teachers stayed out for over a month. Mayor Hubert Humphrey averted a similar strike in Minneapolis when he helped orchestrate a pay raise. Another Minneapolis strike, in 1970—still illegal—led to the passage of the Public Employees Labor Relations Act in 1971. The resulting law upheld the rights of public employees, including teachers, to bargain collectively. The two St. Paul federations merged in 1957 to become the Minnesota Federation of Teachers. In 1998, that group joined with the older Minnesota Education Association (founded in 1861) to form Education Minnesota. In 2019, teachers of color made up only 4 percent of the state’s teaching staff. The in-school population of people of color, meanwhile, increased to 31 percent between 2018 and 2019. The Coalition to Increase Teachers of Color and American Indian Teachers in Minnesota (founded in 2015) is working hard to increase that to 8 percent teachers of color. The need for an increased pool of teachers of color is indicated in part by the achievement gap in Minnesota’s public schools, which remains remarkably stubborn and resistant to change. Teacher Training Concern about teacher training led the 1858 Minnesota legislature to fund Normal (teacher training) Schools in Winona, Mankato, and St. Cloud. It added schools in Moorhead, Duluth, and Bemidji by 1913. The funding was irregular and the normal schools educated only some teachers. In response, St. Cloud Normal School head David Kiehle (also the State Superintendent of Education, 1881–1893, and the holder of a University of Minnesota chair in pedagogy) developed summer training institutes. The University of Minnesota added a Department of Education in 1905. In 1904, 40 percent of elementary school teachers had a high school diploma; by 1926, that figure had risen to over 90 percent. Concern about teacher qualifications and inconsistency across school districts led to the standardization of teacher licensure. Early legislation required teachers be qualified in “Reading, spelling, writing, arithmetic, grammar, United States history, composition, geography, physiology, civil government . . . .” It put the judging of the teachers’ abilities, however, into the hands of district examiners “who could not themselves procure a certificate of ability,” according to the 1860 State Superintendent of Education. Since then, licensure has gradually tightened. The state introduced a county-level examiner, then a common examination, then a more rigorous exam, then state certification, then specific educational experiences, then greater scrutiny (and reporting) on those experiences, more specificity, and revised examinations. Contemporary licensure is the province of the Minnesota Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board. Legislation did allow exemptions from the board’s certification, but a systematic push for alternate forms of licensure was mounted in the 2010s. Teach for America, for example, which started up in Minnesota in 1990, aimed to fast-track aspiring teachers—especially teachers of color—into under-resourced schools. About 4 percent of teachers qualify for these exceptions. School Days Nineteenth-century teachers presided over twelve-week school terms. Then, in 1899, the state offered additional funds to urban schools whose terms ran to eighteen weeks and to rural schools for sixteen. In 1913, a few of Florence Weber’s’ forty-two fourth-grade students in Sauk Rapids attended for all eighteen weeks of the fall term. More attended only half that time. To help offset familial pressure to pull kids out of school, the state passed both compulsory attendance and truancy laws starting in 1919. By 2019, the state required 425 hours of education for kindergarten students and 1,020 for high school students (with a special provision for e-learning days to offset snow days). Students One radical aspect of American education has been its definition of who’s entitled to it. When most schools in western Europe were gender-segregated and -typed or closed to girls entirely, American public schools included both boys and girls. Minnesota early on included students with special needs: it created the Minnesota State Academy for the Deaf (1863), for the Blind (1866), for Dependent and Neglected Children (1886). Then it added special services for children with speech impairments or mental limitations. In 1915, twenty-five teachers worked in “special education,” and by 1955, thirty Minnesota counties had special education programs. Legislation in 1957 then directed school districts to educate “educable” children. By 1965, every county had instituted some form of special education, employing over 4,000 teachers. In 2018, over 10,000 teachers worked in special education. After 2013 public schools increasingly integrated—mainstreamed—special-education students into regular classrooms. In 1776, Americans could anticipate three months of formal education in their lifetimes. Contemporary Americans can expect twelve years. The enormity of this transformation—the vision it required, the constant work it demanded, and the investment it represented—has been one of the great accomplishments of the United States, of the states, and of Minnesota. It remains, however, a revolution in progress.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/L3.2 r82.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056210,"name":"Education","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/learning-land-lakes-minnesota-s-education-history"},{"alt":"Colored Engraving of Ginseng by Jacob Bigelow (1786-1879).[From WikiCommons] American medical botany being a collection of the native medicinal plants of the United States, containing their botanical history and chemical analysis, and properties and uses in medicine, diet and the arts by Jacob Bigelow,1786/7-1879. Publication in Boston by Cummings and Hilliard,1817-1820.”","author":[{"name":"Jeff M. Sauve","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/jeff-m-sauve"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"April 22, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186625246048,"name":"1585–1763 (Colonization)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056201,"name":"1754–1800 (Revolution and a New Nation)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056203,"name":"1792–1861 (Expansion and Reform)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":203519472229,"name":"Pre-1585 (Before European Contact)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Ginseng Boom in Rice County, 1858–1859","postbody":"The demand for American ginseng (panax quinquefolius), which grew abundantly in the “Big Woods,” reached its peak in 1859. Following a nationwide economic panic in 1857, and near crop ...","searchtext":"The demand for American ginseng (panax quinquefolius), which grew abundantly in the “Big Woods,” reached its peak in 1859. Following a nationwide economic panic in 1857, and near crop failure for Rice County in 1858, many locals found themselves in dire circumstances. Enticed by ginseng’s profitability and local abundance, settler-colonists were quickly overcome by “ginseng fever,” which led many to dig up as much of the aromatic green root as they could. However, it was not long before excessive exploitation depleted easily accessed ginseng and the rising grain market encouraged farmers to work the land again. Indigenous people of North America have the longest relationship with American ginseng. Various tribes have used the versatile root in a variety of medicines to treat asthma, body sores, digestive troubles, and fever; to staunch wounds; to increase fertility; and much more. In 1939, Huron Smith documented Ojibwe harvesting practices for ginseng which were sustainable. Beginning in 1784, ginseng was being exported from the US to China for its medicinal qualities. Found growing in the shade of deciduous trees, like sugar maple and basswood, its fleshy taper root, when dried, is amber colored. The root possesses a sweet taste similar to that of licorice, accompanied by a slight bitterness. Settler-colonists dubbed the plant “sang,” and those who sought the wild root were “sangers.” The typical tools of the trade were a long narrow-bladed hoe, which could remove a young root in a single stroke, and a gunny sack for collecting. The twenty-inch-tall plant features five ovate leaflets arranged palmately. Ginseng’s particular tinge of green provides easy identification. For the sanger, the challenges included the hot summer sun, wood ticks, mosquitoes, and, on occasion, becoming lost in the lush forest known as the “Big Woods.” The last sizable remnant of the woods that retains the character of the broadleaf deciduous forest is Nerstrand Big Woods State Park, situated in Rice County. The considerable appeal of hunting ginseng came from the cash paid for it (hard currency was scarce after the financial crash of 1857). Northfielder Evelyn Sloan Wood (1830–1923) recalled, “So great was the poverty of the old settlers in this vicinity that frequently they did not know where their next meal was to come from.” Prices soared on food staples such as flour (sold at eleven dollars per barrel); butter (sold at one dollar per pound); and eggs (sold at one dollar per dozen). Considering that a good wage laboring in the fields yielded no more than a dollar per day, foraging for ginseng proved to be a great alternative. On average, buyers paid, in gold or silver, six to eight cents per pound [fresh?] and twenty-five to thirty cents per pound dried. When unearthed, most roots weighed less than several ounces, but older roots could measure half a pound. When the Minnesota ginseng market opened in the fall of 1858, the search for the commodity was pursued with abandon across the state. One buyer in Faribault reportedly purchased $20,000 worth of ginseng before the season ended. By spring of 1859, word had spread throughout Minnesota about the quick riches gained by grubbing ginseng. Anyone capable of searching, hoeing, or toting a sack of ginseng hurried to the Big Woods. Multiple stories circulated about how individuals and families were averaging less than five dollars a day while a select few averaged double up to ten dollars a day harvesting ginseng. Frank AnDyke (1855–1941), formerly of Cannon City, recalled his experiences at age four when he father took him into the woods, “I earned seventy-five cents in two days, and I thought I was rich.” A Mr. Whitney, who operated a pay station in Faribault, purchased six tons of ginseng in one week alone in early June. A month later, on July 16, 1859, The Wabasha County Herald stated that the supply of ginseng in the Big Woods was practically exhausted and demand had fallen off rapidly. By then, approximately 22,000 pounds of the root had been shipped from Faribault, and statewide the number by the end of the year reached 203,000 pounds. Mixed arguments emerged to explain the sharp decline in the market. Some pointed to the rapid and relentless harvesting that depleted naturally growing ginseng while others speculated that massive exports of ginseng to the East had oversaturated the market. In any case, the ginseng cash crop limped through July of 1859 before the market completely bottomed out.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Ginseng Colored Engraving.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/ginseng-boom-rice-county-1858-1859"},{"alt":"Rowan in Washington, DC, ca .1997. Shared under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND-2.0) license.Rowan in Washington, DC, ca .1997. Shared under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND-2.0) license.","author":[{"name":"Yuan Ding","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/yuan-ding"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"April 20, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Rowan, Carl Thomas (1925–2000)","postbody":"Carl Thomas Rowan was a prominent American journalist, author, and government official. A liberal commentator and champion for civil rights, Rowan published books and a variety of news ...","searchtext":"Carl Thomas Rowan was a prominent American journalist, author, and government official. A liberal commentator and champion for civil rights, Rowan published books and a variety of news columns syndicated across the US. He was one of the first commissioned black officers in the US Navy, and became the highest-ranking black government official of his time. Born on August 11, 1925, to Thomas David and Johnnie Bradford Rowan, in Ravenscroft, Tennessee, Carl Rowan grew up in McMinnville, Tennessee. Like many Southern black youths in the Jim Crow segregated South, Rowan worked menial jobs for the white community and experienced constant racial discrimination. Rowan graduated from McMinnville’s all-black Bernard High School in 1942, as class president and valedictorian. He briefly worked in a tuberculosis hospital before enrolling in the all-black Tennessee Agricultural and Industrial State College (later renamed Tennessee State University) in the fall of 1942. In his freshman year, Rowan passed an exam for the US Navy commission, and became one of the first fifteen African Americans in the history of the US Navy to become a commissioned officer in 1944. Rowen left the Navy in 1946. Thanks to the GI Bill of Rights, he was able to enroll in Oberlin College and receive a bachelor||s degree in mathematics in 1947. He went on to earn a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Minnesota in 1948. While in school, he wrote for a number of African American newspapers, including the Baltimore Afro-American, the Minneapolis Spokesman, and the St. Paul Recorder. After graduation, Rowen beat all odds to get hired as a copy editor at the then-all-white Minneapolis Tribune (later, after a merger, renamed the Star-Tribune). He became the paper’s first black general assignment reporter in 1950, one of the first few nationwide. In 1952, he published his first book, South of Freedom, depicting the African American experience in the Jim Crow segregated South. During his tenure at the Minneapolis Tribune, Rowen was assigned to cover the civil rights battles in the South. His article series on the court cases leading up to the landmark “Brown vs. Board of Education” Supreme Court ruling against segregation in public schools won him the prestigious Sigma Delta Chi Journalism Award for the best general reporting in 1954. He went on to win this award for an unprecedented three consecutive years. In 1954, Rowan was invited to participate in an educational exchange program sponsored by the US Department of State, delivering lectures on the role of a free press in a democratic society in India, Pakistan, and Southeast Asia. In 1961 he left the Tribune for Washington, DC, to serve as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs with the US Department of State (1961–63) in the administration of John F. Kennedy. He was thirty-six years old. He went on to serve as ambassador to Finland (1963–64) and Director of the United States Information Agency (1964–65) in the Johnson administration, which in 1964 made him the highest-ranking black American in the US government. As director of the USIA, Rowan was tasked to aid the US war effort in Vietnam, which attracted some criticism. In 1965, Rowan resigned from the USIA and took a lucrative offer writing a national column for the Chicago Sun-Times Syndicate (also known as the Field Newspaper Service Syndicate) that was syndicated to sixty newspapers across the nation. He also did radio commentaries three times a week. Race was a prominent theme of his columns and commentaries. His autobiography, Breaking Barriers, came out in 1991. An advocate for strict handgun control laws, Rowan found himself in the center of controversy when he shot and wounded a teenage intruder in his home, using an unregistered firearm. He was arrested and tried, but the jury deadlocked and the case was declared a mistrial. In 1999 Rowan retired from his position as a syndicated columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times. He passed away on September 24, 2000, in Washington, DC. In his obituary, the New York Times called Rowan “the crusading journalist, best-selling author and defender of affirmative action.”","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Carl_Rowan-ca.1997.png","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056216,"name":"African Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/rowan-carl-thomas-1925-2000"},{"alt":"Jim_Northrup_2010","author":[{"name":"Yuan Ding","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/yuan-ding"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"April 15, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Northrup, James Warren (1943–2016)","postbody":"James Warren Northrup was an award-winning Ojibwe author, columnist, playwright, poet, performer, political commentator, and Vietnam War veteran. He wrote extensively on combat life as a ...","searchtext":"James Warren Northrup was an award-winning Ojibwe author, columnist, playwright, poet, performer, political commentator, and Vietnam War veteran. He wrote extensively on combat life as a marine in the Vietnam War as well as daily life on the Fond du Lac Indian Reservation. At six years old, Northrup was sent, together with his sister, to the federally run Pipestone Indian School (Pipestone, Minnesota). It had been established as part of a movement in the late nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries to assimilate Native American children into mainstream Euro-American culture at boarding schools. Suffering from homesickness and physically abused by both teachers and students, Northrup tried to run away from Pipestone, making it nine miles before being caught. While forced to speak only English at school, Northrup resisted assimilation by regularly exchanging letters with his family on the reservation. After four years in Pipestone, Northrup attended a public school in Minneapolis from fifth through seventh grades. He was then sent to the Brainerd Indian Training School, a Christian boarding school in South Dakota run by the Wesleyan Methodist Church. In 1961, Northrup became the first Native American graduate of Carlton High School in Carlton, Minnesota. After high school, Northrup enlisted in the US Marine Corps. In 1965, he joined the Indian Company, Third Battalion, Ninth Marines for a thirteen-month tour in Vietnam, during which time he developed post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), then an unknown condition. After his tour ended, Northrup worked as a deputy with the Carlton County Sheriff||s Office, and as a patrolman for the Waukegan Police Department in Illinois. He traveled around the country for a decade before finally returning to the reservation in 1976. Looking back on his decade away from home, Northrup believed that the trauma of war kept him from immediately returning: “I didn||t want to bring the stink of war back with me.” Upon returning to Sawyer, Minnesota, Northrup set up home in a tipi on the north side of Perch Lake, where he lived off and on for six years. In 1986, he married Patricia Dow, and the couple raised eight children together. From 1989, Northrup wrote a syndicated column, “Fond du Lac Follies,” distributed every month in national Native American newspapers such as the Circle, the Native American Press, and News from Indian Country. “Fond du Lac Follies” was named best column at the 1999 Native American Journalists Association convention. Northrup’s first book, Walking the Rez Road (1993), a collection of short stories and poems in English and Ojibwe, won the Midwest Book Achievement Award, the Minnesota Book Award, and the Northeastern Minnesota Book Award. Through the point of view of the fictional protagonist Luke Warmwater, Northrup reflects on the trauma of war and the quiet desperation of life on a reservation. PTSD support groups within the US Department of Veterans Affairs use some of the poems from Northrup’s book, including |||Shrinking Away||| and |||Wahbegan,||| in group discussions. His second book, The Rez Road Follies: Canoes, Casinos, Computers, and Birch Bark Baskets (1997), explores in greater depth many taboo topics, including suicides, Agent Orange, and the effect of casinos on Native life. Despite the sensitive nature of his subject matter, Northrup writes with cutting wit and dark humor. In addition to writing several books and a successful syndicated column, Northrup also contributed to a number of anthologies, mentored Minnesota local writers, wrote several plays, and appeared in numerous films, including the 1997 award-winning video “Jim Northrup: With Reservations.” He also gave radio commentaries on the Superior Radio Network, National Public Radio, Fresh Air Radio, and the BBC Scotland. Northrup passed away on August 1, 2016, due to complications from kidney cancer. He was seventy-three.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/MNopedia/MNopedia%202025/Jim_Northrup_2010.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246059,"name":"Native Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/northrup-james-warren-1943-2016"},{"alt":"Osmund Osmundson, ca. 1910","author":[{"name":"Jeff M. Sauve","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/jeff-m-sauve"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"April 08, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Osmundson, Osmund O. (1826–1914)","postbody":"Osmund Osmundson, founder of Nerstrand, Minnesota, played a prominent role in a variety of local affairs, including business, civics, and education. He was one of several men who ...","searchtext":"Osmund Osmundson, founder of Nerstrand, Minnesota, played a prominent role in a variety of local affairs, including business, civics, and education. He was one of several men who incorporated St. Olaf College in 1874. Built in 1880, his spacious brick house in Nerstrand was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. Osmund Osmundson was born on March 31, 1826, in Nerstrand (meaning “near-the-strand”), Rogaland, Norway. As a young man, he became a carpenter and later went to sea for five years. In 1850, Osmundson immigrated to the United States and made his way to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, via steamboat. He first lived in Rock County for one year before moving to Walworth County, where he settled for two years. In 1853, he set out for California to prospect for gold in Nevada County. Three years later, in the fall of 1856, Osmundson moved back to the Midwest and settled on section fourteen in Wheeling Township in Rice County, Minnesota, where he established his farm site. In 1857, he married Anna Benson. Together, they raised eight children, two of whom survived their parents. The couple resided in a log cabin until 1861, when they built a frame house. By 1867, the state farming community took notice of Osmundson’s high yield of wheat. On a three-and-a-half-acre plot, he yielded 204 bushels, netting $100 per acre—a record that stood for decades. As a leading citizen in Rice County, Osmundson was twice elected to the state legislature representing the Republican Party: in 1872 and in 1873. While in office, he served on the Insurance Committee and the Indian Affairs Committee, which he chaired in 1873. Osmundson also twice held the position of county commissioner. In the ensuing years, the prosperous Osmundson was instrumental in developing the Norwegian American community of Rice County. On November 6, 1874, he was one of the five co-signers of the articles of incorporation that formed St. Olaf College in Northfield. As an original member of the college’s board of trustees, Osmundson served as a board member for the next six years. His work helped move the newly-formed school from its downtown location at the corner of Third and Union Street to its permanent location one mile west and situated on a hill commonly referred to as “Manitou Heights.” Osmundson’s vision of developing the village of Nerstrand started with the purchase of 240 acres in section eleven in the northeastern part of Wheeling Township. There, he constructed a general store in 1877. The following year, a US Post Office began operating out of his store. The naming of the post office was suggested by Osmundson in honor of his hometown in Norway. By 1880, Nerstrand had grown to support a blacksmith, a merchant, a shoemaker, a mason, and a carpenter. In the same year, Osmundson established the Citizens Bank of Northfield and completed building a sprawling, two-story, gabled red-brick house with an ornate balustrade front porch (located at 420 Kielmeyer Avenue in Nerstrand). The private home, lived in by at least three generations of Osmundsons, was placed on the National Register of Historic Places on April 6, 1982. The structure remains significant for its connections to early commerce and settlement in Rice County, and to Osmundson himself. Nerstrand was platted in 1885 when the Minnesota and Northwestern Railroad, later renamed the Chicago Great Western, laid track through the village and established a depot. Osmundson, a strong advocate of temperance, insisted that none of the town lots were to be sold to alcohol vendors. Osmundson’s store, then located at the foot of Main Street, was on the railroad right-of-way and was relocated to Second Street. Because of its proximity to the rich agricultural land and abundance of trading in the area, the village grew rapidly. Osmundson remained in Nerstrand for the remainder of his life, witnessing the steady growth of the village he had settled in decades earlier. He passed away at the age of 88, on August 2, 1914. At the time of Osmundson’s death, his estate was valued at $55,000—a sizable sum in its day. He was remembered as a kind and sympathetic man with an unassuming nature.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Osmund Osmundson.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/osmundson-osmund-o-1826-1914"},{"alt":"Members and staff of the Minnesota Board of Control in Faribault, 1936. Fourteenth from the left in the bottom row is Mildred Thomson.","author":[{"name":"Sasha Warren","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/sasha-warren"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"April 06, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"1925","name":"Eugenics in Minnesota","postbody":"Eugenics, meaning “good stock,” is a scientific doctrine of race. It aims to produce what are considered good racial traits and eliminate those deemed harmful or defective, with the goal of ...","searchtext":"Eugenics, meaning “good stock,” is a scientific doctrine of race. It aims to produce what are considered good racial traits and eliminate those deemed harmful or defective, with the goal of reaching an ideal of purity. To the people eugenics policies targeted, it said that their physical or mental differences made them deficient or immoral. It further implied that, due to characteristics deemed “undesirable” or low IQ-test scores, their lives were not worth living. Eugenics was developed and named by Francis Galton in England in the 1880s. Inspired by his relative Charles Darwin’s comments on variation in populations and Gregor Mendel’s genetic research on the inherited traits of peas, Galton posited that human beings could be selectively bred to cultivate traits deemed beneficial and eliminate those deemed defective. After the UK, the United States was the first country to show broad professional and legislative support for eugenics. This popularity arose from studies on “degenerate” families funded by the national Eugenics Record Office based in Cold Spring Harbor, New York. These studies were intended to prove that physical differences, supposed mental inferiority, and the propensity to crime were hereditary traits passed on in families. One such study, undertaken by Dr. Arthur C. Roger, the superintendent of the School for the Feebleminded from 1885–1917, helped pave the way to eugenics policy in Minnesota. (“Feebleminded” was a term used at the time for people of “deficient intelligence.”) In 1911, he received support from the Eugenics Record Office to produce a report on his pupils. In this report, he claimed to be studying the “feebleminded” population of a fictitious town. He concluded that “uncontrolled reproduction” was responsible for the poverty and criminality of the residents. In 1917, the Child Welfare Commission issued a report that recommended revisions of then current laws concerning children and resulted in the passing of thirty-five new laws. It underlined the state’s duty to involuntarily commit “feebleminded,” neglected, dependent, or “delinquent” children. This decisive legislation empowered county probate judges to commit children and any person considered “Feeble Minded, Inebriate, or Insane” without the consent of parents or guardians. Probate judges, in collaboration with Mildred Thomson, the director of the control board’s Bureau for the Feebleminded and Epileptic from 1924–1959, used IQ scores, physical health, family relations, home environment, school or work records, and appearance to make their decisions. They were supposed to have two independent physicians present to help them make their decision. They could dispense with them, however, if the suspected person was considered “obviously feebleminded.” Since atypical behavior and lower economic class were considered symptoms of “feeblemindedness,” the overwhelming majority of those committed were working-class women. Many of them did not fit standard definitions of normality. An unmarried woman who gave birth, for instance, could be labeled as feebleminded, as could an immigrant for whom English was a second language who failed the English-language IQ test. The psychologist Frederick Kuhlmann, director of Faribault School for the Feebleminded in 1910, promoted IQ testing as a tool for assigning levels of defectiveness. He also helped develop special education classes in Minnesota’s public schools in the interest of segregating student populations. Later, he pushed for a statewide census of the feebleminded, which, despite Governor Floyd B. Olson’s support, was not carried out. Charles Fremont Dight, Minnesota’s most avid and consistent supporter of eugenics, dominated the field until his death in 1938. Dight was a respected professor of medicine and politics before his involvement in the eugenics movement. Prior to coming to Minnesota, he was trained in medicine at the University of Michigan and took on a post as a professor of anatomy and physiology in Beirut between 1883 and 1889. After serving as a resident physician at Shattuck School in Faribault in 1889, he later returned to the Twin Cities and began working at Hamline University in 1899, where he taught until 1907. In the interim, he also held positions at the University of Minnesota and the Ministers’ Life and Casualty Union. Dight was consistently interested in social reform and utopian politics, and was elected alderman from the twelfth ward in Minneapolis in 1914. His most lasting legacy lies with the Minnesota Eugenics Society, which he founded in 1923. He served as president until his death in 1938. The main function of the society was to educate the public on heredity in an effort to encourage the reproduction of the “fit” (those with desirable traits). It also published reports and lobbied for policy that would curtail the reproduction of the “unfit” (those with traits considered undesirable) through sterilization, segregation, or limitations placed on marriages. Dight was the most tireless of the eugenics crusaders. He published hundreds of articles and editorials in the 1920s and 30s and gave dozens of talks over radio and at universities on race betterment and the elimination of social ills and crime through better breeding. In his writing, he often compared the reproduction of the human race to selective breeding techniques used in agriculture. After years of effort on the part of Dight and his Eugenics Society, the Minnesota legislature passed a law authorizing sterilization of the “feebleminded” and the “insane” in 1925. Unlike most other states, Minnesota required the consent of the person being operated on or their guardian. However, in cases of people deemed incompetent, as most of those called feebleminded and insane were, the state was endowed with the ability to make this choice in the absence of a parent or guardian. Between 1925 and 1945, at least 2,204 people were sterilized. This number is uncertain since Minnesota, unlike other states, did not have a central eugenics board that kept track of all sterilizations. 77 percent of known sterilizations were performed on women. Eugenics enjoyed wide approval in the general public and in professional circles in Minnesota for decades. Dight Avenue in Minneapolis is named after Charles Dight. Respected figures like Dr. Charles Mayo (one of the founders of the Mayo Clinic) and Charles Lindbergh were longtime supporters of eugenic sentiments and the practice of sterilizing the “unfit.” Zealots like Dight were interested in curing society’s ills through science in an effort to achieve a racial utopia devoid of any “degenerate” traits. The state, meanwhile, was caught between two opposing interests. On the one hand, officials believed sterilization could reduce welfare costs and prevent overcrowding in the state schools and hospitals. On the other, the large inmate populations of these institutions could provide cheap labor. Several high-profile stories in the 1940s damaged eugenics’ image and slowly swayed the public against sterilization.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Board of Control.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246087,"name":"Health and Medicine","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/eugenics-minnesota"},{"alt":"The Rum River side and enclosed porch of the Woodbury House, 1993. Photographer unknown. Anoka County Historical Society, Object ID# 3000.4.32-B. Used with the permission of Anoka County Historical Society.","author":[{"name":"Anoka County Historical Society","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/anoka-county-historical-society"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"April 01, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Woodbury House, Anoka","postbody":"The Woodbury House is the second-oldest extant house in the city of Anoka. It served as a home to several families from the time of construction until the mid-2000s. It was added to the ...","searchtext":"The Woodbury House is the second-oldest extant house in the city of Anoka. It served as a home to several families from the time of construction until the mid-2000s. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. In 2020, it is owned by the City of Anoka and leased to the Mad Hatter Tea Room restaurant. Built in 1857 and “located on the crest of a hill overlooking the confluence of the Rum and Mississippi Rivers,” the Woodbury House combines both Greek Revival and Federalist Revival styles in its architecture. Dr. Samuel Shaw, a successful New York medical practitioner, moved his family to Minnesota in 1852 to take advantage of the state||s reputed healthful climate. With his father, Neal, and brothers Edward and Judson, he bought 160 acres of land on the west side of the Rum River. As noted in the National Register application, it was |||surveyed, platted, and filed as Shaw||s Addition to the Original Town of Anoka.||| Dr. Shaw built his square, two-story house on a hill above the confluence of the Rum and Mississippi Rivers. Constructed of local pine over a stone foundation, the house combined both Greek and Federalist Revival architectural styles. It featured a fanlight transom and sidelights, and twelve-over-twelve windows that allowed plenty of light to enter the house. Larger and more elegant that most other homes in Anoka at the time, it embodied the wealth and eastern origins of the Shaws. The Shaws sold the house in 1860 to another easterner, Dwight Woodbury, and moved to Chicago. Woodbury was involved in politics and a number of businesses in the area. In 1863, Dwight served in the Minnesota House of Representatives and his Anoka home became the scene of many social and political gatherings. Dwight remained the head of the household until his death in 1884. His daughter Mary inherited the house in 1884. Mary and her husband Irving Caswell had one son who grew up playing on the grounds of the house. Mary enlarged the house in 1900, adding a one-story “L”-shaped structure that continued its Revivalist theme. In 1911, the Caswells made another change to the property by enclosing it with a stone fence built with rock from the Rum River bed. An elegant gateway for carriages and automobiles and another for pedestrians opened onto Ferry Street. By 1936, the house and its grounds became too much for the Caswells to care for. They sold the property to Charles E. Kiewel, who used the property as a summer home. Charles grew up in Little Falls, Minnesota, where he became involved with farming, banking, and brewing beer. By the 1930s, he was the president of the Minneapolis Brewing Company, which made Grain Belt beer. The Kiewels modernized the house in 1937. They added a servants|| wing and garage, and expanded and screened in the porch. They updated the electrical system and installed a brewery-style refrigerator with six doors, powered by a motor in the basement. Charles took special pride in keeping up the rolling lawns around the house and the old Native American trail that ran along the top of the bluff. Dr. Victor Johnston, an optometrist in Anoka, and his wife, Fern, purchased the property in the 1957. They moved into the historic house with an eye toward preserving it and saw it as a good place to raise their daughter, Barbara. In 1979, the Johnstons submitted the paperwork to list the house on the National Register of Historic Places using the name “Woodbury House,” though many people in Anoka still referred to it as the Caswell house. About this time, the exterior of the house received a facelift with new siding and a change of the trim color from green to gray. In 1985, the Johnstons sold the house to John and Jill Weaver. Neither family made significant changes to the house, working only to maintain and preserve its history. Following the death of her husband, Jill sold the house to a developer who created ambitious plans to build a condo thirty-five feet from the historic home only to be thwarted by the recession of 2008. After a series of foreclosures and bank ownerships, the City of Anoka purchased the property for $330,000 in 2013 and leased it to the owners of the Mad Hatter Tea Room. Extensive remodeling took place within the interior, but the exterior remains unchanged.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/3000.4.32-B.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/woodbury-house-anoka"},{"alt":"St. Louis River, 2018. Photograph by Jon Lurie used with the permission of Jon Lurie.","author":[{"name":"Jon Lurie","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/jon-lurie"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"March 30, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186625246048,"name":"1585–1763 (Colonization)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056201,"name":"1754–1800 (Revolution and a New Nation)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056203,"name":"1792–1861 (Expansion and Reform)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":203519472229,"name":"Pre-1585 (Before European Contact)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Northwest Trail","postbody":"For untold generations, Indigenous people traversed North America’s interlocking waterways by canoe. When moving between drainage systems, it was necessary for them to bridge the high ...","searchtext":"For untold generations, Indigenous people traversed North America’s interlocking waterways by canoe. When moving between drainage systems, it was necessary for them to bridge the high ground that kept the waters separated. This meant carrying, or “portaging,” canoes and belongings between watersheds. One of the most important portage routes in Minnesota, known today as the Northwest Trail, connected the Mississippi River to Lake Superior. Eastbound travelers, beginning the 120-mile route at Sandy Lake, paddled several miles up the West Savanna River to its headwaters. They proceeded on foot, crossing six miles of swamps and hills on the Savanna Portage, until reaching the East Savanna River. A short downstream paddle led to its confluence with the St. Louis River, seventy-two miles above its mouth at Lake Superior. The journey down the river was hazardous, marked by raging rapids and cascades, as the water plummets 650 feet in elevation. Downstream from present-day Cloquet, travelers were forced onto a series of lengthy and precipitous trails: Knife Portage (one mile), Women’s Portage (one-half mile), and Grand Portage (seven miles). From the bottom of the Grand Portage, it was a ten-mile paddle to the mouth of the St. Louis. Travelers could continue for hundreds of miles, down the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River to the Atlantic Ocean. Westbound travelers followed the route in reverse, facing steep uphill trails and swift opposing currents. From Sandy Lake, travelers could proceed in many directions, including south to the Gulf of Mexico and north to Hudson Bay. Europeans first arrived at the mouth of the St. Louis River in 1666. Father Claude Allouez, commissioned by the French government to map Lake Superior, encountered a group of Dakota at Fond du Lac who spoke of their villages on Sandy Lake. Allouez’s map contains a note which would guide future travelers to the Mississippi basin: “[This River] goes to the Nadouessi (Dakota), sixty leagues to the west.” Thirteen years after the Allouez expedition (1679), Sieur du Lhut, an emissary of the French government, traveled the Northwest Trail to meet with the Dakota at Sandy Lake. His journey over the trail was the first to be recorded by a European. In the 1730s the expanding French fur trade disrupted traditionally peaceful relations between Indigenous people in the Great Lakes region. Canoes laden with Anishinaabe warriors from many Lake Superior villages gathered in 1737 at Fond du Lac near the mouth of the river known in Ojibwe as Gichi Gami Zibi (Great Lake River). Under the leadership of war chief Bayaaswaa (Biauswah), the warriors traveled up the river, intent on attacking the Dakota villages at Sandy Lake. Their goals: to control the Northwest Trail and to claim the Mississippi River Headwaters, a region known for its abundance of game, wild rice lakes, and beaver. As they marched up the Grand Portage, a single-file line of warriors stretched as far as the eye could see. Overpowered by the Anishinaabe’s powerful weapons, the Dakota retreated from Sandy Lake. This invasion precipitated the eventual displacement of Dakota bands from their northern Minnesota homelands. With their Anishinaabe allies in place, British fur traders established the Northwest Trail as a commercial route in 1765. Seven pauses, or resting places, were made along the portage trails of the St. Louis River to accommodate voyageurs, men whose job it was to transport beaver pelts to market. The voyageurs on the Northwest Trail faced a grueling task. Each worker commonly carried a bale or two of furs, one of which weighed up to ninety pounds. He would drop his load at the next pause, and then run back to the previous pause to pick up another load. In ideal conditions, the St. Louis River portages could be crossed in three to five days. Upon reaching the six-mile Savanna Portage, the process would repeat, taking up to seven days to complete. Because of the hardships involved, the Northwest Trail became known by voyageurs across the continent as the most wretched of portage routes. In 1847, with the dissolution of the American Fur Company, the Northwest Trail ceased as a commercial route. A combination of changing fashion trends in Europe and the scarcity of beaver in the region contributed to the company’s demise. Twenty-three years later, in 1870, the Lake Superior and Mississippi Railroad, built along the north bank of the St. Louis River, replaced canoe travel along the Northwest Trail.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/St. Louis River_1.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246059,"name":"Native Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246053,"name":"Transportation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/northwest-trail"},{"alt":"Official logo for the 40th International Eelpout Festival in Walker, Minnesota, held February 21–24, 2019. Holding location: International Eelpout Festival, used with permission.","author":[{"name":"Linda A. Cameron","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/linda-cameron"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"March 25, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"International Eelpout Festival, Walker","postbody":"The International Eelpout Festival in Walker began in 1980 as a way to bring tourists to northern Minnesota during the long winter months. Centered on what is considered the state’s ugliest ...","searchtext":"The International Eelpout Festival in Walker began in 1980 as a way to bring tourists to northern Minnesota during the long winter months. Centered on what is considered the state’s ugliest fish, it grew into an annual four-day festival that has attracted national attention and thousands of visitors. In 1979, Don and Debbie Overcash, owners of Walker Drug, and Ken Bresley of the Tackle Box bait shop came up with the idea of an International Eelpout Festival to encourage winter tourism in Walker, Minnesota. When the idea was rejected by the Chamber of Commerce, each invested $1 and began planning the first festival. The eelpout (Lota lota), or burbot, is a variety of cod. It is a slimy, eel-like bottom-feeder that dwells in cold northern lakes and rivers. Its reputation for ugliness has prompted news reporters to give it such uncomplimentary names as the “Ish of Fish,” and “Minnesota’s Slimiest Tough Guy”—an unlikely inspiration for a town festival. Unlike most Minnesota fish species, it spawns in the winter and goes dormant in summer, so it is easiest to catch in late winter. In January 1980, an estimated 800 people turned out on frozen Leech Lake for the first International Eelpout Festival to compete for the trophy awarded for the largest eelpout caught. Organizers offered a consolation prize for the largest walleye (generally considered a prized catch but jokingly referred to as a “rough fish” during the competition) caught during the two-day festival. Teams with names like the Walker ‘Pout Scouts, Cod Camp, and the Norwegian Eelpout Team competed for the Chase on the Lake eelpout trophy. Festival buttons helped to finance the event entitled holders to be entered into a prize drawing. The Walker Pilot-Independent newspaper issued its first International Eelpout Festival souvenir section, filled with tongue-in-cheek articles and eelpout trivia. The following year, an estimated 2,250 to 2,400 anglers landed a total of 306 eelpout. Festival attendees participated in Eelpout bowling and enjoyed a fireworks display. In 1983, the festival moved to February. Participants paid an entry fee of four dollars. Anyone beating the state eelpout record of fourteen pounds and one ounce had a chance to win a car, though the record held and the prize went unclaimed. The event’s popularity increased each year. Beginning in 1984, the festival ran three days and featured new events, such as a five-mile footrace called the Eelpout Peel-Out. To help promote the festival, the organizers held contests for official “International Eelpout” prints and stamps in 1987 and 1988. Minnesota wildlife artists Les C. Kouba and James Meger submitted the winning entries. By the mid-1990s, the festival boasted grand prizes of a new fish house, a trip to Mexico, and a new, four-wheel, all-terrain vehicle. In 1997, festival officials shipped some of the eelpout caught to the Mall of America for display in the mall’s Underwater World. Events included a Polar Plunge into the icy waters of Leech Lake. By the 2010s, the festival extended to four days and featured such events as snowmobile races, eelpout curling, eelpout rugby, an eelpout fish fry, and concerts. Over the years, the festival has reached national audiences through a variety of television programs. Jay Leno of “The Tonight Show” did a feature on the 2011 Eelpout Festival. Animal Planet’s “Off the Hook: Extreme Catches” series featured a program in 2013 titled “Land of 10,000 Iceholes.” In 2018, public television cooking show host Lidia Bastianich filmed a program segment at the festival, sharing the tip that eelpout, for all their ugliness, are tasty fish. These programs highlighted the festival legend that kissing an eelpout brings good luck for the coming year. Global warming has occasionally put a damper on the ice fishing festival. In 2016 and 2017, the Cass County sheriff banned cars and trucks from driving onto Leech Lake during the hours of the festival due to thin ice, though participants could haul fish houses onto the ice before the event. An attempt to move the festival to Lake Bemidji in Beltrami County in 2017 failed, and it continued as an annual event on Leech Lake, with attendance reaching an estimated 15,000 people each year. 2019 marked the International Eelpout Festival’s fortieth anniversary, but due to rising costs and safety concerns, the festival was canceled in 2020.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Eelpout Logo 2019.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246054,"name":"Sports and Recreation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/international-eelpout-festival-walker"},{"alt":"Exterior side view of the Thorstein Veblen home, Nerstrand, Minnesota, ca. 2011.","author":[{"name":"Jeff M. Sauve","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/jeff-m-sauve"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"March 23, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Thorstein Veblen Farmstead","postbody":"The Thorstein Veblen Farmstead is a historic landmark in Nerstrand, Minnesota. From 1866 until 1888, it was the primary home of Thorstein Veblen (1857–1929), a son of Norwegian immigrants ...","searchtext":"The Thorstein Veblen Farmstead is a historic landmark in Nerstrand, Minnesota. From 1866 until 1888, it was the primary home of Thorstein Veblen (1857–1929), a son of Norwegian immigrants who would become a world-renowned economist and social scientist. His most famous work, The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), introduced the term “conspicuous consumption.” The ten-acre farmstead was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975, and designated a National Historical Landmark in 1981. In 1847, Thomas and Kari Veblen emigrated from Vang, Valdres, Norway, to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Over the next eighteen years, the Veblens lived in various locations in Ozaukee, Sheboygan, and Manitowoc counties in Wisconsin. Upon visiting Kari||s mother and stepfather—Berit and Tosten Bonde—and her three brothers in 1863, Thomas and Kari became interested in moving to Wheeling Township, Rice County, Minnesota, as well. In July 1865, the family—consisting of seven children, including eight-year-old Thorstein—made their way from Wisconsin to Minnesota. They temporarily settled on a ninety-acre farm site with a log house in Wheeling Township. The year before, in 1864, Thomas Veblen had also purchased a fertile, unimproved 200-acre parcel with the intent of establishing the family’s primary farmstead in the area. From the fall of 1865 through the winter of 1866, limestone was quarried and hauled from the Big Woods nearby. Over the course of the spring and summer months in 1866, Veblen built a sixteen-inch-thick stone foundation on his 200-acre tract. He erected a temporary roof with an attic for storage. The basement dwelling, approximately 725 square feet, contained room partitions, a fireplace, a cook stove, and a well to draw water. The rooms were cozy and crowded with ten inhabitants that included a newborn (John Edward Veblen) and an elderly widowed Norwegian immigrant woman—an acquaintance only—who slept on a cot in the corner. By the fall of 1867, the shell of the frame house was erected and ready for occupancy. Veblen, a skilled carpenter and cabinet maker, fashioned a spacious 1,869 square-foot, six-bedroom house with Greek Revival details, white clapboard siding, and symmetrical rectangular window and door placements. The exterior held the appearance of an American home, but traditional Norwegian elements were present, including a stairway leading to the exterior second-floor porch and rooms grouped around main-level and second-floor parlors. By 1870, the farmhouse had assumed its final form. Locally sourced butternut, maple, and pine from the Big Woods served for interior wainscoting, trim and flooring. The main level||s maple flooring was thought to be the first hardwood floor in the Nerstrand area. When the house was under construction, Thomas’ son Thorstein used a lath nail and hammered his initials, “TBV,” into a stud in a second-floor interior wall. For Thorstein, the attic in particular proved the space where, as William C. Melton, former chief economist of American Express Financial Services and one-time owner of the Veblen farmstead, stated, “he really became an economist.” From adolescence to post-PhD work at Yale University, Thorstein sought the attic as a solitary escape, and later a place to convalesce. Here, in its quiet recesses, Thorstein, a voracious reader, immersed himself in any and all literature that he had scoured from the community. From the outside looking up, piles of books filled the attic, and only the top of Thorstein’s head was visible at the garret window. One of his brothers wryly remarked, “He read and loafed, and the next day he loafed and read.” By 1893, with their children no longer living at home, the Veblens sold the farmstead. As generations of subsequent owners lived and worked the property, the place slowly fell into disrepair by 1970, and was abandoned soon after. Between the 1970s and 1990s, two non-profits, the Veblen Preservation Project, Inc. (1977–1992), and the Veblen Farmstead, Inc. (1992–1999), operated by William C. Melton, greatly aided in preservation and restoration efforts. The ten-acre farmstead was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975, and designated a National Historical Landmark in 1981. The home was fully renovated by 1994, in time for a Veblen family reunion held on site. As of 2020, the farmstead boasts a flower and guesthouse business named Historic Veblen Farm.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Veblen home exterior side view, ca. 2011. Nerstrand, MInn.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/thorstein-veblen-farmstead"},{"alt":"Oscar C. Howard with pecan pies, ca. 1950s. From “Cafeteria and Industrial Catering Business” in the Oscar C. Howard papers (P1842), Manuscripts Collection, Minnesota Historical Society.","author":[{"name":"Kara Sorensen","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/kara-sorensen"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"March 18, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Howard, Oscar C. (1914–2003)","postbody":"To sum up the broad scope of Oscar C. Howard’s life, one could say simply that he fed Minnesota— literally. The trained chef moved from managing large industrial cafeterias to owning ...","searchtext":"To sum up the broad scope of Oscar C. Howard’s life, one could say simply that he fed Minnesota— literally. The trained chef moved from managing large industrial cafeterias to owning successful catering businesses, which culminated in the development of the Meals on Wheels program. Many others were nourished in a more figurative sense through Howard’s teaching, mentorship, preaching, and philanthropy. Along the way, he broke through countless racial barriers, both official and unspoken. After working to support himself through high school in his home state of Georgia, Howard began studies in commercial dietetics at Alabama’s Tuskegee Institute in 1937, only to be interrupted by the United States’ entry into World War II. Drafted by the Army, he served first as a military policeman in Harlem. Transferred to Governor’s Island, New York, and then to New Orleans’ Camp Plauche, Howard trained other soldiers in cooking and baking. He would later credit his famous Southern pecan pie recipe to his time in New Orleans. Following the war’s end, Howard completed his bachelor’s degree at Tuskegee, and the school hired him as an instructor and executive chef. Several personal and professional challenges followed this triumph, however, including the failure of his first catering business. He persevered, eventually accepting a position to open and run a large corporate cafeteria in Georgia. That experience led to an opportunity in Minnesota, where he would live for the remainder of his life. The Twin Cities Arsenal in New Brighton hired Howard in 1950 as it resumed operations to support the Korean War. He trained and managed a cafeteria staff of 100 to feed 15,000 workers over three shifts. In the evenings, he launched a small catering business, cooking pies and soup at home and delivering them from his own 1940 Chevrolet. With a reputation for excellent food and service, Howard’s Industrial Catering Company eventually grew into a full-time venture. Based in North Minneapolis, it served many local companies, including Reinhard Brothers, Coast to Coast, and Northwestern Bell, as well as at weddings and other social events. In order to facilitate the hot delivery of food to multiple facilities, Howard developed portable, insulated food shelves. He patented these devices in a range of sizes, and, as a side business, sold the carriers through kitchen-supply retailers and at industry trade shows. While establishing himself as a chef and business owner, Howard often faced discrimination. This ranged from being turned down for jobs for which he was clearly qualified, to an inability to receive bank loans or food supplies on credit to develop his business. Rather than focusing on these roadblocks, Howard worked tirelessly to chart his own course. He also understood the positive benefit of his presence within a variety of organizations, both on his merits as a successful businessman, and as an African American in previously all-white groups. The Tuskegee ethic of using one’s success to help others was manifested throughout Howard’s life. Despite the low profit margins, he signed a federal contract in 1970 to feed schoolchildren in low-income Minneapolis neighborhoods. The project appealed to him, recalling the poverty of his own youth. Using knowledge gained through that venture and over years of delivering meals to a variety of customers, he began providing a low-cost, nutritious, daily in-home meal to senior citizens. This grew into the Meals on Wheels program in Minnesota, which would later be replicated throughout the country. The endeavor shifted later from the business realm to management by counties and social service agencies. Howard frequently spoke to young people on themes of goals and responsibilities. He especially concerned himself with helping African Americans develop their skills and understand what it took to be successful. In 1971, he helped to found the Metropolitan Economic Development Association, which supported minority entrepreneurs with loans, education, and mentoring. After selling his catering businesses in the early 1980s, Howard turned his focus entirely to philanthropy and public service, serving on boards for the Bank of Minneapolis, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, the Dunwoody Institute, and others. A longtime member and deacon at Zion Baptist Church, following his ordination as a minister, he helped found Kwanzaa Community Presbyterian Church in North Minneapolis. He died in 2003, at the age of eighty-nine.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Chef with pies P1842.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056216,"name":"African Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/howard-oscar-c-1914-2003"},{"alt":"View of the Hinckley main street the morning after the fire, 1894.","author":[{"name":"Mary Laine","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/mary-laine"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"March 16, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Great Hinckley Fire, 1894","postbody":"On September 3, 1894, a headline of the Minneapolis Tribune screamed, “A Cyclone of Wind and Fire: Northern Minnesota and Wisconsin Bathed in a Sea of Flame and Hundreds of Human Lives are ...","searchtext":"On September 3, 1894, a headline of the Minneapolis Tribune screamed, “A Cyclone of Wind and Fire: Northern Minnesota and Wisconsin Bathed in a Sea of Flame and Hundreds of Human Lives are Sacrificed to the Insatiable Greed of the Red Demon as He Stalks through the Pine Forest on His Mission of Death.” In just four hours on September 1, the red demon destroyed between 250 and 480 square miles, resulting in massive destruction and at least 413 deaths. The fire zone lay within Pine County, which was named for its majestic white pine forests. In 1894, Hinckley was a booming lumber town that lay halfway between St. Paul and Duluth. With a population of about 1500 during the logging season, it had many shops and homes, an opera house, and a new brick school. The Eastern Minnesota and St. Paul and Duluth railroads ran through Hinckley. Although it was named the Hinckley fire, the fire zone extended from Quamba, Brook Park (Pokegama) and Mission Creek to the south of Hinckley and north to Sandstone, Groningen (Miller), Askov (Partridge), and Finlayson. 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.” This was the “slash” that remained after the land was logged; it was an excellent fire fuel in the dry, hot summer. Fires, often caused by sparks from passing trains, burned in the area all summer long, and residents complained about sore eyes due to the constant smoky air. Until September 1, the fires had been suppressed. The Hinckley fire began as two separate fires—one south of Mission Creek and the other south of Brook Park. No lives were lost in Mission Creek, but all buildings burned except a log cabin. Seventy-three people survived by taking refuge in a potato field while enduring ash and intense heat. Twenty-three people in Brook Park died when the fire roared through at 2 p.m. The entire town was lost, including the new schoolhouse. Survivors said that the fire made a rumbling sound as it reached the town with its superheated air and wind-driven fire balls. The fires merged together south of Hinckley, and witnesses described it as a tornado of fire or firestorm. The volunteer fire department deployed its new steam fire engine but abandoned the fight when the fire overcame them and burned through the hose. Some residents had left town on the noon train; many others started packing their belongings to escape either by the afternoon trains or by wagon. By 3:30 p.m., people began a desperate run to save their lives. One hundred people reached the shallow water of a gravel pit and survived by submerging themselves while enduring intense heat and fire. Another hundred died of suffocation in a swamp. Many suffocated while taking refuge in root cellars and wells or died when the fire overcame them. Eighty Sandstone citizens died in the fire, and many survivors took refuge in the cold Kettle River. At least twenty-three Ojibwe people died in their hunting camp on the eastern shore of Mille Lacs. The fire had melted their rifles and shotguns. At about 4:00 p.m., evacuation by train began. The Eastern Minnesota train left Hinckley with about four hundred fire refugees added to its existing passengers. Witnesses reported people on fire running after it as it left. Near Sandstone, the train crossed the burning bridge over the Kettle River just minutes before it collapsed. The St. Paul and Duluth Railway train left Hinckley with over 300 refugees. Hit by an explosion, the train caught on fire but managed to reach Skunk Lake where the people took refuge in the water. The trains’ engineers (James Root, William Best, and Edward Barry) and crews were honored as heroes. Many survivors had severe burns, and some died of their injuries. Many had eyes swollen shut and were unable to see. Heavy wool clothing saved one young woman, since it did not burn as easily as cotton. Many communities provided immediate relief and shelter for the survivors, including Pine City, Mora, Duluth, and Superior. On September 3, a state fire relief commission was appointed to manage the recovery. Contributions were received from around the world, including 500 pairs of shoes from the Montgomery Ward Company.","src":"https://www3.mnhs.org/hubfs/Mnopedia%20Blogs/View%20of%20the%20Hinckley%20main%20street%20the%20morning%20after%20the%20fire%2c%201894..jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/great-hinckley-fire-1894"},{"alt":"Thorstein Veblen, 1901","author":[{"name":"Jeff M. Sauve","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/jeff-m-sauve"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"March 11, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Veblen, Thorstein Bunde (1857–1929)","postbody":"Economist and social scientist Thorstein Veblen has been called one of America’s most original and creative thinkers. His highly acclaimed treatise The Theory of the Leisure Class: An ...","searchtext":"Economist and social scientist Thorstein Veblen has been called one of America’s most original and creative thinkers. His highly acclaimed treatise The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions (1899) introduced the term “conspicuous consumption.” Veblen’s body of work remains seminal reading in understanding the modern consumer society and criticisms of capitalism. Thorstein Bunde Veblen was born on July 30, 1857, in Cato Township, Manitowoc County, Wisconsin. He was the sixth of twelve children born to his parents, Thomas and Kari Bunde, who had emigrated in 1847 from Vang, Valdres, Norway. In the summer of 1865, the family moved to Nerstrand, Wheeling Township, Rice County, Minnesota. In 1874, when Veblen was seventeen, his father sent him without consultation to the preparatory school at Carleton College in Northfield. Thomas Veblen, a strong believer in education, had built a house near campus for his children while they attended school. All told, eight Veblen children matriculated at Carleton, including Emily (1855–1953), who graduated in 1881. She is considered the first Norwegian American woman to earn a college degree in the United States. At Carleton, Thorstein Veblen was viewed as cynical and something of a misfit with a rebellious nature. His brilliance was obvious, but not readily appreciated by others at Carleton. However, a young instructor and future renowned economist, John Bates Clark (1847–1938), took an interest in Veblen and encouraged the study of economics. Veblen matriculated with ease in both the preparatory and college departments. He completed the required college course work in three years instead of the standard four years, graduating in 1880. In pursuit of an academic career between 1880 and 1891, Veblen pinballed between achieving further education, staff appointments, health concerns, and marriage. Following graduation from Carleton, he taught for one year at Monona Academy in Madison, Wisconsin. When the academy closed its doors in 1881, Veblen was out of a job. In the same year he briefly pursued graduate studies at Johns Hopkins University. After failing to obtain a scholarship, Veblen transferred to Yale University. In 1884 he graduated from Yale with a PhD in philosophy. Following graduation, he earnestly tried to secure a teaching position without success. Despondent, Veblen returned home to the family farm in Nerstrand. Veblen told his family that he suffered from malaria and needed time to recover. A dispirited malaise characterized his life until 1888, when he married fellow Carleton College classmate Ellen Rolfe (Class of 1881). A younger brother of Thorstein’s wryly remarked of this period, “He read and loafed, and the next day he loafed and read.” After their marriage, the couple moved to a farm in Stacyville, Mitchell County, Iowa. The farm was gifted to them by her uncle, a Santa Fe Railroad magnate named W. B. Strong. A critical moment for Veblen occurred upon reading the popular utopian novel Looking Backward: 2000–1887 (1888) by Edward Bellamy. Deriving inspiration from the book, and with prodding by his wife, Veblen entered graduate school in 1891 at Cornell University to study economics. While at Cornell, Veblen was mentored by James Laurence Laughlin (1850–1933). When Laughlin took a position in 1892 as the head of the economics department at the newly established University of Chicago, he asked his protégé, Veblen, to join him. In the next fourteen years while at Chicago, Veblen firmly established himself with the publication of The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), which introduced the term “conspicuous consumption.” Upon the book’s release, a fashionable conversation subject entered the American lexicon, one known as “Veblenism.” From 1906 to 1926, Veblen held teaching posts at Stanford University, the University of Missouri, and the New School for Social Research in New York City. His often-strained marriage ended in divorce in 1911. Veblen remarried Anne Fessenden Bradley in 1914. She died in 1920. He passed away in California on August 3, 1929, at the age of seventy-two. To his credit, Veblen authored ten books, several of which remain in print, and over 150 articles. Although in Veblen’s lifetime he was often scrutinized as unorthodox with roguish ideas, his theories remain integral in contemporary conversation.","src":"https://www3.mnhs.org/hubfs/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Thorstein%20Veblen%2c%201901.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246055,"name":"Labor","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/veblen-thorstein-bunde-1857-1929"},{"alt":"League of Women Voters swearing in new members or registering women to vote, ca. 1923.","author":[{"name":"Linda A. Cameron","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/linda-cameron"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"March 09, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in Minnesota","postbody":"Minnesota’s suffragists worked tirelessly to win the vote beginning in the late 1850s, when Mary Colburn delivered what is believed to be the state’s first women’s rights speech. After a ...","searchtext":"Minnesota’s suffragists worked tirelessly to win the vote beginning in the late 1850s, when Mary Colburn delivered what is believed to be the state’s first women’s rights speech. After a long struggle, the dream of equal suffrage took a big leap forward on September 8, 1919, when the state legislature voted to ratify the woman suffrage amendment, making Minnesota the fifteenth state to do so. Governor J. A. A. Burnquist opened the 1919 Minnesota legislative session on January 8 with his inaugural address, expressing his desire to send a memorial to the US Senate in support of the federal woman suffrage amendment. The US House of Representatives had passed the amendment the previous January. The majority of Minnesota suffrage supporters, following the lead of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, clearly favored seeking the federal amendment. They recognized the difficulty of getting such a controversial state constitutional amendment passed by public vote, though a small number of suffragists continued to push for a state amendment. On January 9, Representative Charles H. Warner of Aitkin introduced a state constitutional suffrage bill. The House passed the bill ninety-six to thirty but it failed in the Senate by a margin of nineteen votes. Senators Frank L. Cliff of Ortonville and James E. Madigan of Maple Lake sponsored a similar bill in the senate that never reached a vote. In response to the governor’s address, Representative Theodore Christianson, Jr. of Dawson introduced a concurrent resolution to Congress to approve the federal woman suffrage amendment on January 13. The House of Representatives adopted the resolution on January 22 by a vote of 100 to 28. The senate passed the resolution the next day with a vote of forty-nine to seven. Governor J. A. A. Burnquist signed it two days later. In spite of this effort, the US Senate voted down the federal suffrage amendment by just one vote on February 10. Perhaps anticipating this, Representative Christianson introduced a bill on January 23 granting women the right to vote for presidential electors, regardless of the outcome of the federal suffrage amendment. The bill did not give women the right to vote for state, county, or municipal offices, which would only come with full federal suffrage. Both bodies of the legislature passed the bill. The state senate considered two other pieces of legislation pertaining to female voting rights. One bill proposed extending woman suffrage to primary elections. A second bill offered women “the right to vote for certain offices and on certain propositions and matters pertaining to women.” Both bills were postponed indefinitely. On May 21, the US House of Representatives passed the Nineteenth Amendment resolution a second time by a vote of 304 to 90. The US Senate followed suit on June 4, with a vote of fifty-six to twenty-five. Suffragists nationwide turned their efforts to lobbying state governments to gain the three-fifths majority of states needed for federal ratification. In Minnesota, supporters met on the steps of the state capitol on June 9 to celebrate the the congressional victory and to encourage state lawmakers to meet in a special session to ratify the amendment. An estimated 1,500 women braved pouring rain to attend the event, which featured parades and speeches by Governor Burnquist, Maria Sanford, Senator Ole Sageng, and others. Governor Burnquist was reluctant to call a special session for the suffrage amendment until he felt assured that enough states were committed to meet the thirty-six-state approval requirement. By early August, he was confident of success and called for a special session to begin September 8. On the first day of the special session, both the House and Senate passed the suffrage bill by a total vote of 180 to 11, ratifying the Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution. Jubilant suffragists held a parade to the capitol where they served a chicken dinner to thank legislators for their support, followed by a women’s banquet at the St. Paul Hotel. Suffrage leaders witnessed the governor’s signing of the bill on September 12. It would be nearly a year before federal ratification of the amendment took place. Though it technically allowed all women to vote, barriers like literacy tests and poll taxes continued to keep many women of color disenfranchised in the decades to come.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/J7.12 r2.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/ratification-nineteenth-amendment-minnesota"},{"alt":"Anna Arnold Hedgeman, ca. 1950s. Used with the permission of Hamline University.","author":[{"name":"Tina Burnside","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/tina-burnside"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"March 04, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Hedgeman, Anna Arnold (1899–1990)","postbody":"With a career spanning fifty years, Anna Arnold Hedgeman was an educator, civil rights advocate, and writer. In 1963, she was the only woman on the planning committee for the March on ...","searchtext":"With a career spanning fifty years, Anna Arnold Hedgeman was an educator, civil rights advocate, and writer. In 1963, she was the only woman on the planning committee for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Anna Arnold Hedgeman was born in 1899 in Marshalltown, Iowa. Her family later moved to Anoka, where they were the only African American family. Hedgeman’s father stressed religion, education, and hard work. In 1918, Hedgeman graduated from high school and was the first African American to attend Hamline University. In 1922, she was the first African American to graduate from Hamline. In college, she attended a lecture by W. E. B. Du Bois and was inspired to be a teacher. However, after graduation, Hedgeman was unable to find a teaching job in St. Paul public schools because she was black. She accepted a teaching position at a historically black school: Rust College in Holly Springs, Mississippi. Hedgeman’s experience in the South was a rude awakening to racism. Her first encounter with the South’s Jim Crow segregation laws occurred on her train ride to Mississippi. From St. Paul to Chicago, Hedgeman rode in the dining car, which was open to blacks and whites. However, the conductor told her that when the train reached Cairo, Illinois, she had to sit in the “colored” car behind the train’s engine, which was dirty and overcrowded, and she was banned from the dining car. Hedgeman taught at Rust College for two years. Upon her return to Minnesota, she was still unable to find a teaching job because of discrimination, so she changed careers. In 1924, Hedgeman became an executive director of the black branch of the YWCA in Springfield, Ohio. The Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) at the time maintained segregated facilities for blacks and whites. From 1924 to 1938, Hedgeman worked in several positions with the YWCA in Ohio, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania. In 1933, she married Merritt A. Hedgeman, an opera and folk musician. In 1944, Hedgeman was appointed executive director of the National Council for a Permanent Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC), where she led the fight against employment discrimination and lobbied for a permanent FEPC agency. From 1954 to 1958, she served in the cabinet of New York Mayor Robert F. Wagner, Jr., where she was the first black woman to hold such a position. Hedgeman left after becoming frustrated with gender discrimination and the mayor’s inaction on progressive housing policies. In 1959, she was an associate editor and columnist for the New York Age newspaper. In 1960, she unsuccessfully ran for congress, and in 1965 for city council president (both in New York City). In 1963, A. Philip Randolph, Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Bayard Rustin organized the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The planning committee consisted of the “Big Six” —leaders from civil rights organizations, which included King, Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC); Randolph, Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters; Roy Wilkins, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP); James Farmer, Congress of Racial Equality (CORE); John Lewis, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC); and Whitney Young, Urban League. Hedgeman was the only woman on the committee. She urged the men to include women in the planning, but they ignored her. Women were also not included as speakers at the march, but instead, Randolph planned to say a few words about women activists. Hedgeman was furious, so at the next meeting, she read a statement to the men: “In light of the role of the Negro women in the struggle for freedom and especially in light of the extra burden they have carried because of the castration of the Negro man in this culture, it is incredible that no woman should appear as a speaker at the historic March on Washington Meeting at the Lincoln Memorial.” Hedgeman suggested Myrlie Evers or Diane Nash as speakers. The committee selected Evers, but she was stuck in traffic, so Daisy Bates spoke. Despite these struggles, the march was a success, and Hedgeman organized 40,000 people from the National Council of Churches to participate. Hedgeman was a founding member of the National Organization for Women (NOW) in 1966. She also published two memoirs and continued advocating for African Americans and women until the mid-1980s when her health declined. Hedgeman died at age ninety in 1990 in New York. Hamline University dedicated The Hedgeman Center for Student Diversity Initiatives and Programs in her honor.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/1c89bc-20180329-hedgeman.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056216,"name":"African Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/hedgeman-anna-arnold-1899-1990"},{"alt":"Nut Goodie candy bar. Photo by Wikimedia Commons user Evan-Amos, December 12 ,2010.","author":[{"name":"Linda A. Cameron","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/linda-cameron"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"March 02, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Pearson’s Nut Goodie Candy Bar","postbody":"The Pearson’s Candy Company has produced some of Minnesota’s best-loved candies since its founding in 1909. The milk chocolate-coated Nut Goodie, introduced in 1912, has survived several ...","searchtext":"The Pearson’s Candy Company has produced some of Minnesota’s best-loved candies since its founding in 1909. The milk chocolate-coated Nut Goodie, introduced in 1912, has survived several changes in company ownership and a temporary departure from its original recipe to remain a regional favorite. The Pearson brothers, P. Edward, John Albert, and Oscar F., began a candy-making business at 108 Western Avenue in Minneapolis in 1909. The Pearson’s Candy Company began to manufacture what would become one of their most successful products, the Nut Goodie, in 1912. The Nut Goodie bar featured a maple cream center surrounded by milk chocolate-covered Virginia peanuts. It sold for a nickel. The company flourished during the Great Depression, though by 1936, an ad for the Nut Goodie bar showed that the price had dropped to three cents each. In the meantime, Pearson’s introduced another key product, the Salted Nut Roll. Pearson’s Candy Company moved its operations to 411 Broadway Street in downtown St. Paul in 1952. Shortly after the move, the Pearson brothers purchased the Trudeau Candy Company, bringing Mint Patties and the Seven Up Bar under the Pearson’s label. The company’s sales reached $6 million in 1958 —a substantial profit at a time when the Nut Goodie sold for just a dime. The success prompted a move to a new, 85,000 square-foot facility at 2140 West Seventh Street in St. Paul that was capable of producing thousands of Nut Goodies and other candy items each week. The Nut Goodie’s annual revenues in the mid-1960s totaled nearly $3 million. The Pearson family sold the company to the New York-based International Telephone and Telegraph/Continental Baking (ITTCB) in 1969. ITTCB continued to produce the traditional product lines, but altered the original Nut Goodie recipe in response to higher production costs and perceived consumer preferences. Ten years later, the Confections Group of Chicago purchased Pearson’s. The new owners replaced the Nut Goodie’s familiar red, green, and white wrapper with new packaging in brown, red, yellow, and white in an effort to modernize the brand. The changes met with customer disapproval and sales began to fall. By 1981, annual profits from the Nut Goodie had dropped to about $200,000. Pearson’s employees Larry Hassler and Judith Johnston purchased the company three years later. With a goal of producing a quality product, Pearson’s returned to the traditional Nut Goodie recipe and packaging. Sales increased, in spite of a price increase to fifty cents per bar. The candy’s regional popularity prompted another Minnesota company, Kemps Dairy, to create an ice cream flavor featuring the Nut Goodie. They introduced Pearson’s Nut Goodie Ice Cream in March 1987 as one of four new Candy Bar Ice Cream flavors. Pearson’s later introduced Nut Goodie Nibbles, a bite-sized version of the Nut Goodie bar. In 1996, a “Mr. Fixit” column in the Minneapolis Tribune reported that Minnesota had no official state candy. An Edina resident suggested the Nut Goodie as the obvious choice. A state representative sponsored a bill during the following legislative session for a state candy, but she nominated licorice produced by a company in her district instead of the venerable Nut Goodie. It failed to pass. Pearson’s Candy Company celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2009. Hassler sold the company in 2011 to Brynwood Partners in Connecticut. The following year, the Nut Goodie reached the 100-year mark with a big anniversary celebration that included the introduction of a new flavor, the Sea Salt Caramel Nut Goodie. In 2018, Spell Capital Partners of Minneapolis acquired Pearson’s, bringing the company’s ownership back to Minnesota. At the time, the company reported profits of $89 million. The original Nut Goodie continues to be a regional favorite. Minnesotans living out of state stock up on the treat when visiting their home state. For those deprived of easy access to the candy, a recipe for a homemade version is in wide circulation online. The candy’s fan base even extends to the microbrewery crowd. The Tin Whiskers Brewing Company of St. Paul created the award-winning Nut Goodie Porter as a limited release in 2018 in collaboration with Pearson’s Candy Company.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Nut-Goodie-Bar_Wikimedia.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/pearson-s-nut-goodie-candy-bar"},{"alt":"Elaine and Fred Roleff camping on the Gunflint Trail. Photograph by William F. Roleff, 1935.","author":[{"name":"Laura Cossette","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/laura-cossette"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"February 26, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186625246048,"name":"1585–1763 (Colonization)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056201,"name":"1754–1800 (Revolution and a New Nation)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056203,"name":"1792–1861 (Expansion and Reform)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":203519472229,"name":"Pre-1585 (Before European Contact)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Gunflint Trail","postbody":"The Gunflint Trail is a nationally designated scenic byway, also known as Cook County Road Twelve. It starts in Grand Marais and runs fifty-seven miles northwest to Trail’s End Campground ...","searchtext":"The Gunflint Trail is a nationally designated scenic byway, also known as Cook County Road Twelve. It starts in Grand Marais and runs fifty-seven miles northwest to Trail’s End Campground near Saganaga Lake on the border with Canada. The trail, which cuts through parts of the Superior National Forest and the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, is a popular destination for fishing, camping, canoeing, hiking, and other outdoor recreation. Indigenous peoples have inhabited the northeastern area of Minnesota for thousands of years. By the mid-1700s, Ojibwe people were living in the region, and French fur traders from Montreal had begun to trade with them. Lakes and streams provided transport routes for them to traverse by canoe. Travelling by foot, snowshoe, or sled was possible, but less ideal. Local lore suggests the Ojibwe had developed a footpath—the forerunner of the trail—beginning at Biiwaanag Zaaga’igan (Gunflint Lake) and extending at least to Gichi Biitoobig (Grand Marais) by 1800. Around this time, the area got its name from the flint, or chips of chert, that French traders would gather for their flintlock firearms at the lakeshore where the path began. In 1875, Henry Mayhew, a fur trader, prospector, land speculator, and entrepreneur, hired a crew of Ojibwe men to construct a narrow wagon road between two of his trading posts. The road started at Grand Marais and continued for twenty-four miles, turning sharply northeast at Hungry Jack Lake. It ended at Rove Lake—the site of Mayhew’s second trading post. Rocks, roots, brush, and stumps made the early trail nearly impassable except in winter. Mayhew reported finding iron ore deposits at the west end of Gunflint Lake in 1886, which attracted investors from the state capital. The American Realty Company was then incorporated and purchased large tracts of land. In the early 1890s, construction of Paulson Mine began a few miles southwest of Gunflint Lake. Motivated by the potential economic development that mining would bring to the region, the Cook County Board of Commissioners approved funds for an extension of the Gunflint Road from milepost 24 to Gunflint Lake in 1891. This majority of this new road construction took place between 1891 and 1893. By 1893, the logs and underbrush had been cleared out and the road was ten feet wide and forty-four miles long, allowing decent travel by wagon from Grand Marais to Gunflint Lake. However, Paulson Mine was abandoned soon after due to financial malfeasance and the poor quantity and quality of ore produced there. During the 1920s, improvements were made to the road with funds from both the county and local business owners. The first resort along the Gunflint Trail was established in 1920, on Greenwood Lake. In 1926, Charlie Boostram opened Clearwater Lodge, a two-story structure built with native white pine logs. In the late 1930s, the Civilian Conservation Corps built the last twenty miles of the Gunflint Trail from the Cross Bridge to Seagull Lake. By 1953, the first thirty-five miles were paved, and by 1979, the entire length of the trail was paved. 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.” The land surrounding the trail is approximately 70 percent forest, 25 percent lakes and rivers, and 5 percent dwellings and road. Seven miles from Grand Marais, a grove of old-growth White Pines, left undisturbed by the logging industry, welcomes visitors to the northern wilderness. On July 4th, 1999, a storm with ninety-mile-per-hour winds downed trees over 500,000 acres in the Boundary Waters, forcing the Gunflint Trail to close down at the peak of the tourist season. In 2007, the Ham Lake fire consumed over 75,000 acres in northeastern Minnesota and Canada, impacting parts of the Gunflint Trail. It caused more than $100 million in property damage and $11 million in firefighting costs. In the twenty-first century, the Gunflint Trail remains a premiere destination for ecotourism. Popular activities include fishing, canoeing, wilderness camping, hiking, wildlife watching, blueberry picking, and other forms of outdoor recreation. Along the road are resorts, bed and breakfasts, canoe outfitters, cabin rentals, and guide services. The Chik-Wauk Museum and Nature Center is located near the very end of the trail. Clearwater Lodge was added to the National Register of Historic Places; as of 2020, it is still operating.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/GV4.23 p14.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246059,"name":"Native Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/gunflint-trail-0"},{"alt":"Heman L. Ticknor House","author":[{"name":"Anoka County Historical Society","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/anoka-county-historical-society"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"February 24, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Heman L. Ticknor House","postbody":"A Gothic Revival-style house built in 1867 at 1625 Third Avenue in Anoka served as a residence for four generations of the Heman Ticknor family. In 1996, the home began to operate as a bed ...","searchtext":"A Gothic Revival-style house built in 1867 at 1625 Third Avenue in Anoka served as a residence for four generations of the Heman Ticknor family. In 1996, the home began to operate as a bed and breakfast. The first generation of Ticknors was among the original settler-colonists of Anoka who arrived and built the river town in the mid-nineteenth century. The family opened a dry goods store in 1855 before converting it into a cigar-manufacturing business in 1860. Building upon this success, Heman Ticknor expanded the businesses to include a drug store, which he opened in 1864. In 1867, Ticknor built a new home for himself and his new wife, Ann (Sweeney) Greenwald. The floor plan of the structure, built in the Gothic Revival style, was in the shape of a “T,” with the front entrance overlooking the confluence of the Rum and Mississippi Rivers. Its Gothic elements included gables, elaborate bargeboards, and arched windows in the front façade. The coupled installed three fireplaces, one built with locally manufactured brick. Shortly before Heman Ticknor’s death in 1897, his daughter, Zale, and son-in-law, John Niles, took up residence in the house. Later, they added their own unique architectural updates. John practiced law as an attorney while Zale worked within Anoka’s well-known women’s organization, the Philolectian Society, to establish a city library. The couple’s plans included dividing the existing structure into three sections. The front section, which faced west, switched places with the rear section, while the center portion remained intact. These subtle but significant changes gave the house a fashionable new Third Avenue South address—highly desirable in 1901. Historians believe that changing the address acted as a major factor in the remodel work. Other architectural changes included the addition of a tower section with Queen Anne and neoclassical elements. A full front porch was added, along with Corinthian columns, a projecting bay window, and a porte cochere, or covered area for vehicles to pull up to the house. In 1913, the house passed to the next generation: Natalie Niles, daughter of John and Zale, who married Arthur Lee Smith. The couple raised their son, Ticknor Niles Smith, in the house. In 1938, after Ticknor went away to college, the Smiths added one and a half stories to the back of the house. The couple further modified the interior, dividing it into three sections for apartments. In 1977, Ticknor Smith sold the residence out of the family, at which point further renovations and extensive interior remodeling transformed the house into a duplex. In that same year, the house was nominated for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places. It achieved that recognition in 1980. By 1996, the famed house had assumed a new role as a bed and breakfast. Once again, it underwent substantial remodeling, this time by its latest owners, Lynne and Terry Rickert, who created four separate rooms to accommodate guests. Exterior renovations did not result in any major changes to the structure. Editor’s note: This article contains content adapted from a National Register of Historic Places nomination file—a public-domain text.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/1920px-Heman_L._Ticknor_House.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/heman-l-ticknor-house"},{"alt":"Nerstrand Big Woods State Park’s Hidden Falls, date unknown. Prairie Creek flows over the broad limestone ledge. The pool below the falls was at one time a favorite swimming spot. Used with the permission of Rice County Historical Society.","author":[{"name":"Jeff M. Sauve","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/jeff-m-sauve"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"February 20, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186625246048,"name":"1585–1763 (Colonization)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":203519472229,"name":"Pre-1585 (Before European Contact)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"March 28, 1945","name":"Creation of Nerstrand Big Woods State Park, 1945","postbody":"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.” On March 28, ...","searchtext":"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.” On March 28, 1945, the bill establishing the Nerstrand Woods State Park was approved by the legislature. It was signed by Governor Edward J. Thye on April 2. Dakota people called the immense woods that stretched across what are now southern Minnesota and western Wisconsin “Ċaŋṡoke,” or Thick Woods. When the French arrived in the 1600s, they named the over 3,000 square miles of timbered hardwoods “Bois Grand,” or Big Woods. In Minnesota, the forest began with the pineries of the northeast and extended like a long, irregular belt to the grasslands of the southwest. The woods measured 100 miles long and, at places, nearly forty miles wide. As German and Norwegian settler-colonists arrived in the Nerstrand area starting in the mid-1850s, they readily appreciated the woods for its supply of timber and fuelwood and set aside two sections. Parcels of small woodlots, from two to thirty acres, were acquired by 170 families. They understood the need to preserve the tract for future long-term use, and refused to sell to loggers intent on stripping the timber. By the early 1930s repeated logging in adjacent sections prompted conservation-minded citizens to act. The conservationists included botanists from Northfield||s St. Olaf and Carleton Colleges, who regularly took classes to study local vegetation in a never-pastured environment. Abundant wildflowers included 100 varieties, including the unique, pink-flowered dwarf trout lily (Erythronium propullans), endemic only to Minnesota. In 1934, a Wisconsin logging company’s plan to clear-cut an area rallied numerous organizations to act. On September 14, representatives from twenty-seven organizations appeared before the State Conservation Commission, urging purchase of the two untouched sections in order to establish a state park. The commission favorably agreed, but offered no funds to support the recommendation, and referred the matter over to the State Emergency Relief Administration (SERA). In the next few years, various plans were floated but failed to secure the tract for such uses as a Transient Relief Administration Camp and a Civilian Conservation Corps camp. During this time, the “Save Nerstrand Woods Association” organized and lobbied by various means, including print, radio, and public appearances. An interesting development occurred in December 1938, when the state commissioner of conservation recognized the Robinson–Patman Act of 1936. The act allowed the state government and federal government to exchange lands (to the mutual advantage of both without expenditure of funds). The following year, in 1939, bills were introduced in both Minnesota houses authorizing the Department of Conservation to acquire the land for a state park. The bills failed to pass. Advocates were undeterred, and another bill was introduced in 1941, but once again failed. However, the legislature adopted the measure presented by the Robinson–Patman Act to seek a way to turn the Nerstrand Woods into a state park. Although the state lacked funds to outright purchase the stand, the US Forest Service (USFS) favored the land-exchange plan. The national forestry commissioner set aside $25,000 for the purchase of a portion of Nerstrand Woods with the intent of exchanging the track for tax-forfeited state land within the boundaries of the Chippewa National Forest and Superior National Forest in Lake County. Appraisals for the land exchange were completed by November 1941 and approved the following month. In April 1942, the State Land Exchange Commission gave its approval of optioning from owners sixty-eight parcels in Nerstrand Woods. The agreement stated that the USFS would pay for the optioned parcels. By February 1945, another bill appeared before the legislature seeking to establish the Nerstrand Woods State Park. Of the 460 total acres originally designated for the state park (renamed Nerstrand Big Woods State Park in 1992), 100 acres were set aside for park purposes. The remainder 360 acres fell under the University Forestry School for experimental and scientific purposes. The bill was approved on March 28, 1945, and signed by the governor on April 2.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Nerstrand Big Woods State Park Hidden Falls.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/creation-nerstrand-big-woods-state-park-1945"},{"alt":"Swedish Evangelical Lutheran (Our Savior’s Lutheran Church), Ham Lake, July 1990. Photographer unknown. Anoka County Historical Society, Object ID# 232.1.02.","author":[{"name":"Anoka County Historical Society","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/anoka-county-historical-society"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"February 18, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Swedish Evangelical Lutheran Church, Ham Lake","postbody":"Originally built in 1872, the Evangelical Lutheran Church (also known as Our Savior’s Lutheran Church) in Ham Lake has gained several additions, most notably in 1947. In 2020, although the ...","searchtext":"Originally built in 1872, the Evangelical Lutheran Church (also known as Our Savior’s Lutheran Church) in Ham Lake has gained several additions, most notably in 1947. In 2020, although the congregation generally meets in another space, the building is still preserved in its original state, and is used for special services throughout the year. The Swedish Evangelical Lutheran Church and the cemetery that surrounds it are located in the north-central portion of the city of Ham Lake. Its restrained, late Victorian-style design is typical of churches built in the Upper Midwest during the late nineteenth century. The congregation hired architect Per August Gustafson to design the building in 1872. It was built on land donated by Johan and Fredrika Magnuson following the deaths of their daughters, Alida and Emilia, from typhoid fever. The Magnusons first buried the two girls at the family’s farm, but later disinterred them and reburied them in the church’s cemetery. The simple rectangular structure, made of locally logged pinewood, rests upon a stone foundation. Gothic-arched, stained-glass windows provide decoration around the central hall. Initially, this section of the church faced west, but with the help from a team of horses, the congregation later moved it to face north. The altar and pulpit were both built by Per August Gustafson with materials supplied by Reed and Sherwood Sash and Door Company of Anoka. Although the members completed the church structure, it initially lacked a designated pastor to lead the people who gathered there. Until that time, the congregation relied upon one of the other pastors from the nearby city of Anoka. In 1891, an enclosed front entryway and bell tower were constructed on the church||s front façade. Popular elements of the Victorian style used to build this entryway included exposed stick work and a shingled spire on the bell tower. A final modification was added in 1947, when the congregation added a one-story, gabled rear wing to provide an extra space for a Sunday School room and sacristy. In 1964, the congregation moved to another facility but kept the structure intact. In 2020, members use the church for special occasions, including Christmas morning, the Sunday morning before Memorial Day (celebrated as Founders|| Day), and Wednesday evenings at 6:30 p.m. throughout the summer. These services, and the building’s upkeep, occur under the guidance of the congregation of Our Savior’s Lutheran Church of East Bethel, which owns the structure. In 1979, the church received recognition on the list of National Register of Historic places due in part to its reflection of the changing architectural styles of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/232.1.02.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246089,"name":"Religion and Belief","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/swedish-evangelical-lutheran-church-ham-lake"},{"alt":"Sparre Round Barn (Nowthen, Minnesota), undated. Photographer unidentified. Barn Anoka County Historical Society, Object ID# P2066.A10-001. Used with the permission of Anoka County Historical Society.","author":[{"name":"Anoka County Historical Society","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/anoka-county-historical-society"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"February 12, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Sparre Round Barn","postbody":"Located near Nowthen Boulevard in the city of Nowthen, just off of Bass Lake, the barn used by Erick Sparre in the early twentieth century has a unique circular shape that allowed its owner ...","searchtext":"Located near Nowthen Boulevard in the city of Nowthen, just off of Bass Lake, the barn used by Erick Sparre in the early twentieth century has a unique circular shape that allowed its owner to maximize storage space, lower construction costs, and increase efficiency. As of 2020, it is the best-preserved dairy barn in Anoka County. Erick Sparre Jr. emigrated to the United States from Sweden with his parents in 1885. He hired local architect Ernest Marsh to design and construct a barn for his farm in 1917, amid a changing world of unstable politics and mechanization. In 1922, while the barn was still under construction, Sparre hosted a well-attended Farmer-Labor Party meeting in the structure. Marsh completed the project two years later, and Sparre’s barn was fully operational. In subsequent years, Sparre won prizes for his farm’s produce, including corn, early Ohio potatoes, and three varieties of apples. This barn is built on a tile basement, and its walls are sheathed in siding. A wooden silo, with a polygonal roof, is attached to the western facade. The barn’s two-story interior is composed of two circles on the first story: the outer circle contains space for cleaning stanchions, and the inner circle contains the stanchions themselves, as well as feeding space for cattle. The second story of the barn was used to store fodder and tools. The benefits of the post-and-beam construction of a round barn include a greater volume-to-surface ratio that requires less construction material to enclose the same volume. Farmers could realize a 34–58 percent savings in cost of building material and more open space. They could also store feed in the center of the building, making it easier and more efficient to tend livestock. This scheme, however, had the potential to create toxic fumes from the silage. Sparre used the barn between 1924 and the 1940s—the heyday of Anoka County’s dairy businesses. The building was added to the National Historic Register on January 10, 1980. Editor’s note: This article is adapted from a National Register of Historical Places nomination form—a public-domain text.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/P2066.A10-001.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/sparre-round-barn"},{"alt":"Worker monitoring a machine inside the 3M plant in New Ulm, July 1974. Public domain. From the records of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), 1944–2006, National Archives record group 412.","author":[{"name":"Alex Tieberg","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/alex-tieberg"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"February 10, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"August 11, 1916","name":"3M (Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company)","postbody":"From its early beginnings on Lake Superior’s North Shore to its legacy of innovative manufacturing in St. Paul, 3M—formerly known as the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company—has ...","searchtext":"From its early beginnings on Lake Superior’s North Shore to its legacy of innovative manufacturing in St. Paul, 3M—formerly known as the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company—has introduced both consumer and industrial products that have been successfully marketed worldwide. 3M was founded in 1902 in Two Harbors, Minnesota. Prospectors were attracted to the reported wealth of minerals in northern Minnesota due to the rich deposits of iron ore found in the region. 3M’s founders sought to mine corundum, a material used in sandpaper. However, they found that their deposit contained the mineral anorthosite rather than corundum, and the mining plans were abandoned. After this setback, the company moved to nearby Duluth, where it sought to manufacture abrasive products. Lucius Ordway Jr. made huge investments in 3M and eventually encouraged the company to move its factory to St. Paul. While Ordway’s constant “angel” investments rescued 3M from financial failure, new personnel were hired to invigorate the company and build relationships with customers. William McKnight, a bookkeeper at the company who later became president in 1929, spearheaded efforts to emphasize quality control. He also hired Archibald Bush to lead sales of 3M’s products. In 1916, 3M turned its first profit after creating its first unique product: Three-M-ite abrasive cloth. Following this long-awaited success, the company returned its first dividend to its shareholders. In St. Paul, 3M management fostered a culture of innovation and scientific discovery. To encourage employees to develop new products, the company instituted a “15 percent rule,” which allowed scientists to spend 15 percent of their working hours on independent projects. Many of 3M’s most recognizable products were developed through independent study at 3M’s facilities. These include Sasheen ribbon, a decorating ribbon, and Tartan Track and Turf, the first artificial running track and turf ever developed. Another innovative 3M institution was the 3M Technical Forum, created in 1951. The forum was designed to allow technical employees of the company to collaborate, educate, and learn from other employees who often worked on wildly different products. While the two most notable 3M consumer products are likely Scotch Tape and Post-it Notes, there are many other products that 3M has pioneered—some even by accident. In 1953, lab technicians Patsy Sherman and Joan Mullen were working on fluorochemical rubber particles when Mullen accidentally dropped a beaker of the fluid on her shoes. Finding it impossible to get the fluid off of Mullen’s shoes, Sherman found that this was an opportunity she could develop further. A few years later, Scotchgard fabric protector was introduced, and Sherman continued to improve the still-popular product throughout her career. 3M’s developments had far-reaching impacts on various industries, including office supplies and entertainment. 3M’s Thermo-Fax was the first photocopier produced, debuting in 1950. While more advanced photocopiers have since been developed, the Thermo-Fax revolutionized office productivity and communication. 3M also produced more than just masking tape in their Scotch Tape product line—Scotch Sound and Video Magnetic Recording Tapes both allowed music and television shows, respectively, to be pre-recorded rather than produced live. In the 1980s, 3M was even honored with Emmy and Academy Awards for their developments in magnetic film for videotapes and improvements in film soundtracks. As 3M expanded into more industries, the company sought to enter the global market in the 1950s. 3M and its competitors created a joint corporation that could compete with foreign corporations, but this venture was soon dismantled due to anti-trust laws. 3M used components left over from that operation to streamline their own international network, and throughout the 1950s, 3M opened operations in twelve different countries. In the next decade, 3M opened operations in twenty-three more countries—at least one on every continent except Antarctica. This early and sustained expansion allowed 3M to strengthen its footing in a global market, and it helped make 3M one of America’s largest corporations. While Scotch Tape and Post-it Notes might be 3M’s most recognizable products, the company has developed solutions for many different purposes and industries. Reflective street signs, specialized stoplights, Thinsulate thermal insulation, and Scotch-Brite cleaning pads are just a few of the many more innovations that have helped turn this fledgling mining company into a Fortune 500 global corporation.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/558370.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/3m-minnesota-mining-and-manufacturing-company"},{"alt":"This December 1977 Special Edition of the Hold That Line newsletter is titled Powerline News, Elrosa, MN. Some of its articles encourage a moratorium on construction and a science court evaluation others address size of power lines and encourage continued protest. Names mentioned include Randy Fischer, John Tripp, Steffen Pederson, Rudy Perpich, and Ira Emmons. Hold That Line was the newsletter of the local movement to protest the construction of a direct-current power line across rural Minnesota by","author":[{"name":"Steven R. Anderson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/steven-r-anderson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"February 05, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Power Line Controversy","postbody":"The construction of a high-voltage power line across west-central Minnesota in the 1970s created a dispute about land use and energy needs that pitted farmers against large utilities and ...","searchtext":"The construction of a high-voltage power line across west-central Minnesota in the 1970s created a dispute about land use and energy needs that pitted farmers against large utilities and governmental agencies. The farmers began their opposition to the line by appearing at governmental hearings and in court proceedings. When those methods proved unsuccessful, protesters employed more confrontational methods. Cooperative Power Association (CPA) and United Power Association (UPA) were utilities that distributed electricity to rural electrical cooperatives, which sold the electricity to consumers in about two-thirds of Minnesota. In the early 1970s, CPA and UPA determined that they needed more sources of electricity to meet the growing demands of their members. CPA and UPA decided to buy power generated by a Coal Creek Station to be built near Underwood, North Dakota, next to a coal mine. The electricity would be transmitted by a high-voltage line that crossed Minnesota from Traverse County to Wright County. From Wright County, the power would be transmitted to local cooperatives. CPA and UPA planned a 400-kilovolt (kV) direct-current line more than 400 miles long, about 170 miles of which would be in Minnesota. The line would be supported by towers about 180 feet high with about four towers per mile. Because of the rural nature of the route, the power line would inevitably affect farmland. In some places, the line would go along property boundaries, but in others, the line would cut diagonally across fields under cultivation. Organized opposition to the project began in Pope and Grant Counties. In the summer and fall of 1974, residents appeared at meetings of county planning commissions and boards that were considering the requests of CPA and UPA for permits to build the power line. In the face of citizen opposition to the power line, the counties denied or deferred the permit requests. Farmers who spoke at these meetings objected to being forced to allow what they considered to be large, ugly structures to mar the land they had farmed for many years. More concretely, they complained that the power line’s planners overstated the need for electricity, the towers would interfere with irrigation systems, and the wires would make aerial spraying dangerous. Some opponents of the line also expressed fears that such a high voltage could have adverse health effects on livestock and humans. For example, it was argued, the line could create excessive ozone or ion levels as well as a risk of shock to people working under the line. After several counties began considering the requests for construction permits, the Minnesota Environmental Quality Council (MEQC) assumed jurisdiction of the power-line approval process pursuant to a then-new Minnesota Power Plan Siting Act, taking the matter out of the hands of local authorities. After holding public hearings, the MEQC rejected the allegations of harmful health effects and ruled that construction of the power line could proceed. This decision and a related decision of the Minnesota Energy Agency were upheld by a three-judge panel and the Minnesota Supreme Court. Opponents of the power line did not confine their efforts to the legal system. They lobbied legislators and organized rallies near the route of the power line and at the state capitol. Protesters interfered with construction work by, among things, blocking surveyors from entering fields and damaging construction equipment. In Pope County, a guard watching construction materials was injured by gun shots determined to have been fired by opponents of the power line. The small sheriffs’ departments of several affected counties said they were unable to control the situation and requested state help. In January 1978, Governor Rudy Perpich ordered that 175 state troopers be made available to control protests in Pope County. Arrests and violent confrontations ensued, including an incident in which protesters sprayed ammonium fertilizer on state troopers. Once the towers and lines were installed, they became targets of vandalism. At least 9,500 insulators were shot out. Vandals found that they could cause towers to fall to the ground by cutting tower legs. From August 1978 through August 1983, sixteen towers were toppled. The power line began commercial operation on August 1, 1979. Opposition activities declined but did not immediately end. Litigation about the power line continued into the 1980s.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Poster_Pope County.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/power-line-controversy"},{"alt":"Nerstrand Railway Station (998_b-9, Great Western Railroad), ca. 1935. Used with the permission of Rice County Historical Society.","author":[{"name":"Jeff M. Sauve","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/jeff-m-sauve"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"February 03, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Nerstrand Railway Station","postbody":"From 1885 to 1982, the Minnesota and Northwestern Railroad significantly impacted the village of Nerstrand. For this rural, agricultural community in Rice County, the establishment of a ...","searchtext":"From 1885 to 1982, the Minnesota and Northwestern Railroad significantly impacted the village of Nerstrand. For this rural, agricultural community in Rice County, the establishment of a station in September 1885 not only transformed the un-platted settlement into a quintessential “railroad town,” but also strongly aided in its population growth and development for decades to come. A. B. Stickney, president of the Minnesota and Northwestern Railroad (M&NW), envisioned building a “granger railroad” in the early 1880s. The line, he planned, would haul agricultural commodities from the stations on the line that serviced local farmers to regional cities like Minneapolis, St. Paul, Omaha, and Chicago. Construction of Stickney’s new road commenced in late August 1884 with the initial grading of the 110-mile eighteen-station M&NW line extending from St. Paul to Mona, Iowa. On average, a company of 150 men laid two miles of track per day in suitable weather. According to newspaper reports, the track-laying crew started on May 13, 1885, at Cascade (renamed Randolph), fourteen miles north of Nerstrand. When the crew arrived in Nerstrand in the following days, some of the men boarded at the spacious home of Osmund Osmundson, an early pioneer and the town’s founder. In addition, thirty-five mules used to build the line were stabled there. Osmundson had emigrated from Nedstrand, Norway, in 1850, making his way westward by 1853, when he prospected for gold in California. After striking gold, he migrated in 1856 to Wheeling Township, Rice County, Minnesota, where he lived as a farmer and businessman for the remainder of his life. With foresight, Osmundson sought to build a community on a 240-acre parcel he had purchased years earlier. In 1877, he opened a general store at the foot of Main Street with hope of the railroad coming through in the near future. In 1878, he secured a US post office and named the village in honor of his hometown in Norway with a slightly anglicized name. With M&NW’s right-of-way through Nerstrand, Osmundson’s store was moved slightly to the west to make way for the tracks. By June 3, the rails reached as far as Kenyon, six miles south of Nerstrand. For the remainder of the month, progress on the rail was steady and unhindered. By the first week of July, crews had reached the end of the road. Over the course of the next three months, the M&NW issued the official timetable for running the trains, fares between stations, and erections of depots. On September 14, 1885, the Nerstrand station was completed, along with two grain houses on the east side of the tracks. The first recorded train service from Nerstrand occurred on September 23. Passenger and freight service occurred four times daily (two from the north and two from the south). Soon after the Nerstrand station was established, the town of Nerstrand was officially platted. A hotel was then built to accommodate the growing number of visitors. Several businesses opened, and the railroad was recognized as the main lifeline to the community. Rail service provided passenger, freight, and mail delivery. Farmers embraced the opportunity to quickly sell their goods, particularly dairy products. For many years, the railroad company maintained a loading station from which milk was shipped to the Twin Cities. The train, known as the “Milk Shake,” picked up milk as early as seven a.m. The train, on a strict schedule, did not wait for the farmers who from miles around had left their homes by horse-drawn wagons in the pre-dawn hours. Through seasonal elements like heavy snow and drifts or rainstorms and muddy roads, they found their way into Nerstrand by lantern light. The demise of the Nerstrand station began on September 30, 1965, when passenger service stopped. In September 1982, the last freight train came to Nerstrand. The tracks were subsequently removed. However, because the elevator had beforehand ordered two cars of fertilizer, the railroad had to re-lay some of the tracks to complete the delivery. Ultimately, the train had to “back out” from the elevator as no tracks were available to go forward.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/998_B-9 Nerstrand Great Western Rail Road Depot - 1500 pxl long edge.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246079,"name":"Cities and Towns","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246053,"name":"Transportation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/nerstrand-railway-station"},{"alt":"Shulman at his desk as editor of the University of Minnesota’s humor magazine Ski-U-Mah, ca. 1941. From a 1941 issue of Ski-U-Mah, available on microfilm at the Minnesota Historical Society.","author":[{"name":"Paul Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/paul-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"January 30, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Shulman, Max (1919–1988)","postbody":"Born and raised in St. Paul, educated there and at the University of Minnesota, Max Shulman published seven successful novels and two collections of short stories, wrote or co-wrote three ...","searchtext":"Born and raised in St. Paul, educated there and at the University of Minnesota, Max Shulman published seven successful novels and two collections of short stories, wrote or co-wrote three Broadway plays and five Hollywood movies, and produced two popular TV series, most famously The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. Shulman was born on the old Jewish West Side of St. Paul, the son of Abraham and Bessie (Karchmar) Shulman, recent immigrants from Belarus. His childhood was not comfortable; his father, a house painter, rarely worked during the 1930s, and Shulman wrote later that his mother blamed his father for the Depression. He grew up at 701 Selby in the then heavily Jewish Selby–Dale neighborhood, attended public schools, and graduated twenty-sixth in his class of 665 from St. Paul’s Central High School in 1936. He went on to the University of Minnesota, where he majored in journalism (he graduated in 1942); wrote a humor column, “Sauce for the Gander,” for the Minnesota Daily; and wrote for, then edited, the university’s monthly humor magazine, Ski-U-Mah. An editor from the Doubleday publishing company happened upon his work and urged him to try a novel. Thus at age twenty-four Shulman brought forth a best-seller, Barefoot Boy With Cheek, a collection of funny names and gags, its thin plot and frantic action set at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. The hero is Asa Hearthrug from Whistlestop, Minnesota; he pursues two women—campus radical Yetta Samovar and beautiful sorority sister Noblesse Oblige. His football-star fraternity brother is Eino Fflliikkiinnenn. From the University of Minnesota Shulman went into the army, where he produced two more comic novels: The Feather Merchants (1944) and The Zebra Derby (1946). A Time magazine reviewer called Shulman’s writing “an aimless gaggle of giggles,” but the novels sold well. He moved to New York, where Barefoot Boy became a Broadway musical starring Red Buttons and Nancy Walker. In the 1950s Shulman produced two more novels, Sleep Till Noon (1950) and Rally Round The Flag, Boys (1958), and another Broadway play—The Tender Trap, starring Robert Preston and Kim Hunter. He also wrote movies: Confidentially Connie, with Van Johnson and Janet Leigh; Half a Hero, with Red Skelton; and The Affairs of Dobie Gillis, with Debbie Reynolds, Bobby Van, and Bob Fosse. Rally Round The Flag became a movie also, starring Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward (though Shulman did not write the screenplay), as did The Tender Trap, with Frank Sinatra and Debbie Reynolds. Another play, How Now, Dow Jones, had a short Broadway run in 1967, and another novel, Anyone Got a Match?, came out in 1964. Shulman eventually moved to southern California and into television. Shulman’s first short story collection, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, appeared in 1951. Though the TV series based on the stories appears to be set in California, all of the original Dobie Gillis stories take place at the University of Minnesota. Dobie is usually from St. Paul, but sometimes from Blue Earth or Koochiching County. Shulman produced the TV series and wrote about a quarter of the episodes. Later, Shulman wrote the movie House Calls (1978), starring Walter Matthau and Glenda Jackson. It too became a TV series. Though Shulman grew up in a Jewish household and neighborhood, nothing Jewish appeared in his work until his last novel, Potatoes Are Cheaper (1971). There the hero, Morris Katz, is a kind of Jewish Dobie Gillis, who lives at 701 Selby Avenue in St. Paul with a fictional family identical to Shulman’s real one. Morris, girl-crazy like Dobie, pursues a Jewish girl, homely but rich, and a Catholic girl, pretty but poor. Shulman later said that Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint freed him to bring Jewishness into his writing. Many critics consider Potatoes Are Cheaper his best novel. In 2020, Shulman||s books are out of print on paper, but available as e-books. The movies—except possibly House Calls—have also fallen out of popularity. We do not know how many books Shulman sold, but it seems likely that, among writers born and raised in St. Paul, only F. Scott Fitzgerald has sold more. Fitzgerald sold more books; Shulman produced more laughs.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Max at Ski-U-Mah office.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/shulman-max-1919-1988"},{"alt":"S. Edward Hall of St. Paul sitting for a portrait. ca. 1940.","author":[{"name":"Eric Hankin-Redmon","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/eric-hankin-redmon"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"January 27, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Hall, S. Edward (1878–1975)","postbody":"S. Edward Hall was a prominent African American barber and advocate for the African American community, both in St. Paul and nationally. An active Republican, Hall was a four-time state ...","searchtext":"S. Edward Hall was a prominent African American barber and advocate for the African American community, both in St. Paul and nationally. An active Republican, Hall was a four-time state presidential elector and a member of several political committees and social organizations. His work for his community and success as a businessman are important components of the history of African Americans in St. Paul and, specifically, the Rondo neighborhood. Stephen Edward “Ed” Hall was a businessman and civil rights activist in St. Paul. He was born on January 26, 1878, in Batavia, Illinois, one of five children of John and Julia Hall. He had two brothers and two sisters and lived in Springfield, Illinois, before moving to St. Paul in 1900. He then began working for black barber W. V. Howard at the corner of Fourth and Jackson streets in St. Paul. In 1906, Hall married his wife, Harriet “Hattie” Garrison. That same year, he and his brother Orrington (Orrie) opened a barbershop in St. Paul on Fifth and Wabasha Streets in downtown. This first shop was inside the Pittsburgh Building (later renamed the St. Paul Building). In 1947, Hall moved it shop to a building at the southwest corner of Selby and Victoria Avenues, in the historically black Rondo neighborhood. Some of the first services for new African Americans in the Twin Cities seeking employment were located at barbershops and beauty parlors, which were places of support within the African American community. Both Ed and Orrie Hall catered to white customers at their barbershop, many of them prominent politicians and businessmen. The Hall brothers used the connections they fostered to circulate job openings to blacks in the community. Hall helped new black transplants, many of whom received introduction cards upon arrival at Union Depot. By 1915, the weekly newspaper The Helper, with assistance from St. James African Methodist Episcopal Church, began printing an advertisement for Hall’s services. The Helper received its notices from “tipsters,” who informed the paper of new job openings. Even after Hall helped establish the Urban League, he was listed as the manager of the men’s department of employment services in The Helper. This shows that blacks continued to use Hall as a source of referral after the establishment of formal employment services. The Hall brothers saw the need for increased employment services, so Ed Hall, along with Father S. J. Gilligan and Dr. J. W. Crump, founded the St. Paul Urban League. They did so to the chagrin of many white business associations, which feared that such a useful asset to the community would encourage more African Americans to migrate to the state. Founded in 1923, the St. Paul Urban League was the result of Hall’s, Gilligan’s, and Crump’s recognition of a need for a formal employment and social services for African American St. Paulites. The three founders went to the community chest for financial assistance, and they contacted the National Urban League to meet regulations for funding. Hall spearheaded an Urban League community recreation project, leading to the establishment of the Hallie Q. Brown House (later renamed the Hallie Q. Brown Community Center), where he was a lifelong member. Besides being a successful advocate for African American rights and a respected businessman, Hall was active in politics, specifically within the state and national Republican Party. He was appointed to the Mayor’s Advisory Board in 1922, to the General Unemployment Council in 1931; the Republican State Central Committee appointed him the Director for the Organization of Black Voters in Ramsey County. At the national level, Hall was a Republican presidential elector for four elections between 1932 and 1948. In the 1930s, he went to Washington, DC, and lobbied for the end of military segregation based on race. Hall’s personal and professional affiliations were numerous. He was executive secretary of the Master Barber’s Association, a member of the National Negro Business League, and a president emeritus and honorary board member of the Urban League of St. Paul until his death on October 26, 1975. He was a member of Pilgrim Baptist Church in St. Paul. In 1991, Hall’s house, located at 996 Iglehart Avenue, was listed in the National Register of Historic Places. It was a modest, two story, vernacular-style house in the heart of the Summit-University (Rondo) neighborhood in St. Paul. In 2011, after the Minnesota Historic Preservation Office and the St. Paul Heritage Preservation Commission failed to report its historic significance, the house was demolished. Its demise was the impetus of the 2016 St. Paul African American Historic and Cultural Context, an extensive study and inventory of the city’s African American historic resources and sites.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/99414.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056216,"name":"African Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/hall-s-edward-1878-1975"},{"alt":"Exterior of Nerstrand City Hall. Photograph by Jeff M. Sauve, May 2019. Used with the permission of Jeff M. Sauve.","author":[{"name":"Jeff M. Sauve","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/jeff-m-sauve"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"January 23, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Nerstrand City Hall","postbody":"The Nerstrand City Hall, built in 1908, is one of Rice County’s most architecturally significant municipal buildings. Since its construction, the structure has been integral to the ...","searchtext":"The Nerstrand City Hall, built in 1908, is one of Rice County’s most architecturally significant municipal buildings. Since its construction, the structure has been integral to the community||s affairs. In 1982, it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. Leading up to the construction of Nerstrand||s City Hall in brick, several factors played a part in determining the materials used and facilities required. When the Minnesota and Northwestern Railroad (later renamed the Chicago Great Western) arrived in 1885, the village of Nerstrand grew quickly. The vast majority of its commercial and residential properties were built of wood—with a far greater risk for fire hazards. By 1897, the community was incorporated, and a village hall, also made of wood, was erected. The issue of fire protection was addressed by Nerstrand in May 1901, when a steam engine and 700 feet of hose were purchased for $1800. The following spring, in 1902, a fire department was formed. Two years later, in the early morning hours of June 2, 1904, the largest fire in Nerstrand’s early history destroyed three wooden buildings in the town’s center. Firefighters intervened quickly and saved adjacent buildings and several people residing upstairs. As a result, a fire-limit ordinance was enacted the following month to curtail potential incidents of property and casualty loss. The ordinance called for all future structures in the business district to consist of brick or stone, with firewalls of the same material. In addition, the village council approved the appointment of a fire warden. The warden’s duties included examining the construction and conditions of chimneys, fireplaces, stove pipes, boilers, and apparatus used in and about each building. By April 1907, the city hall building was deemed inadequate. The village council appointed two committees (site and building) to investigate erecting a new, modern city hall. The lot adjacent to the current city hall was purchased for $300, and St. Paul architects Thori, Alban & Fisher were engaged. A contract was let on July 18, 1907, to a Faribault contractor, A. F. Kuehl, at $4,340. The building was completed on December 11, 1908. The symmetrical, red brick, two-story edifice is capped with a central bell tower. Originally, the building was free standing, with windows capturing sunlight on all sides. The lower floor housed the council room, fire equipment, library, and jail. During World War II, the metal from the jail was removed for a scrap metal drive. However, as of 2019, the bars from the jail cell remain in the outside windows. The upper-floor assembly room, with a stage, addressed the need for community recreation and social events. Concerts, lectures, dances, school programs, movies, basketball, medicine shows, and church suppers were held there. The exterior entrance bears a cut stone panel that reads “City Hall.” By the 1990s, only a decade after the building was added to the National Register of Historic Places (April 6, 1982), it had fallen into disuse and disrepair. The Office of the Mayor had vacated the premises years before, as the building did not meet the needs of the city. Consequently, rental space was made available. However, the building continued to be used on a limited basis as a library, polling place station, and meeting space for the fire and first responders. The upstairs assembly room had largely been unused since the 1970s; the Fire Department had relied upon its 1960s addition to the east side of the building. In 1995, a group called Citizens for the Preservation of Nerstrand City Hall was organized with the goal of raising funds for the building’s restoration. Northfield architect Steve Edwins was enlisted to prepare a comprehensive study. His November 1995 document “Historic Structures Report and Restoration Plan, City Hall, Nerstrand, Minnesota” provided the foundation to seek future supporting grants. In 2000, final renovation plans were submitted for bid. Pro Con Professional Contractors of Faribault was awarded the contract, and renovation started in the spring of 2001. It was completed the following spring (the upstairs space was not included in the restoration plans). Funds were obtained from a USDA Rural Development Loan and grants from the Minnesota Historical Society. The addition of an elevator made the building handicap accessible. Many of the original light fixtures were retained. The improvements also included a fully renovated first floor featuring a new city hall office, a council meeting room, a Fire and First Responder office, storage, a children’s library, and a community meeting hall.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Nerstrand City Hall. Exterior, May 2019.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246079,"name":"Cities and Towns","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/nerstrand-city-hall"},{"alt":"Aerial view of Anoka State Hospital, 1937.","author":[{"name":"Carrie Hatler","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/carrie-hatler"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"January 21, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"October 31, 1949","name":"Anoka State Hospital","postbody":"When the fourth state hospital for the insane at Anoka opened in 1900, it became the first state transfer hospital for patients considered incurably insane. The hospital was the first in ...","searchtext":"When the fourth state hospital for the insane at Anoka opened in 1900, it became the first state transfer hospital for patients considered incurably insane. The hospital was the first in Minnesota to be built according to the cottage plan to reduce the institutional feel for its chronic patients. It remains one of the finest examples of the cottage plan in Minnesota. Overcrowding of Minnesota||s mental institutions was a chronic issue around the turn of the twentieth century. Three asylums were already operating in Rochester, Fergus Falls, and St. Peter when planning began for the fourth. A commission formed in 1895 to find a site for the first state transfer hospital for the incurably insane. The commission chose a roughly 650-acre site along the Rum River in Anoka. Building began in June 1899, with plans designed by the state architect for the Board of Control, Clarence H. Johnston, Sr. The first 100 patients transferred to Anoka were all men. They arrived at the asylum on March 14, 1900, and were housed in a wing of the central administrative building. Overcrowding led to the construction of another wing two years later. Further expansion of the facility began in 1905. Several more cottages were added, along with farm and service buildings. By 1917, ten cottages, an auditorium, and a new administration building formed around a semi-circle completed the facility. A tunnel system linked the complex and nearby service buildings. The design allowed room for fifty patients in each cottage and increased the capacity of the hospital to 900 patients. By the 1930s, the majority of the population at the asylum was female. Ten cottages housed female patients, while male patients lived in the two wings of the original administration building. The influx of patients allowed the state hospital to become self-sufficient. Staff encouraged residents to work and hold jobs as part of their therapy. All the food used for meals was grown and harvested on a large farmstead staffed by patients. Women were offered training in hairstyling and sewing to care for their personal needs. Other chores assigned to patients were laundry, cooking, cleaning, and some maintenance jobs. As the population at the Anoka hospital swelled to over 1,300 patients in the 1940s, buildings became overcrowded and hospital staff was overwhelmed. In part to address this issue, Anoka introduced new drug therapies and medical treatments that helped reduce the number of mentally ill under the state||s care. The changes supported the contemporary belief that proper treatment could control or even cure mental illness. The prevailing hope was that patients could return to their families and reduce the state||s responsibility for their long-term care. Public attitudes toward the care of the state||s mentally ill began changing near the end of the decade. A report published in 1948 by the Unitarian Committee on Mental Hospitals criticized conditions at the seven state asylums. It concluded that hospitals were grossly underfunded, understaffed, and overcrowded. A series of articles published in the Minneapolis Tribune corroborating the Unitarian committee findings caught the attention of Governor Luther W. Youngdahl. In response, he appointed a task force to improve conditions for the state||s mentally ill patients. Their recommendations led to significant changes in the state||s approach to mental health care. To emphasize his dedication to the issue, the governor called a press conference at the Anoka State Hospital on Halloween night, 1949. In front of more than 1,000 spectators, he set fire to 671 straitjackets and restraints used on patients. Youngdahl stood next to the fire and pledged to liberate patients |||from barbarous devices and the approach which these devices symbolized.||| He went on to dedicate the power of the state||s resources to helping patients get well and return to their lives. Between 1960 and 1970, the population at Anoka dropped from 1,085 patients to 476 with the introduction of community-based outpatient and transitional care. Anoka began offering outpatient care programs for adults and adolescents, as well as adding chemical dependency treatment programs. The remaining patients were moved into a new, secure treatment facility in 1999. Volunteers renovated three of the empty cottages into housing for veterans in 2017, and a fourth in 2019. As of 2020, the Anoka County department of corrections continues to use the remaining buildings.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/MNopedia/MNopedia%202026/Assorted%20rescans/10667474_resized.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246087,"name":"Health and Medicine","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/anoka-state-hospital"},{"alt":"The Wheatley Aires, a men’s singing group, sing in front of an audience at Phyllis Wheatley Community Center (809 Aldrich Avenue North) with a pianist accompanying. ca. 1950.","author":[{"name":"Eric Hankin-Redmon","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/eric-hankin-redmon"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"January 15, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Near North African American Community, Minneapolis","postbody":"The Near North community of Minneapolis—made up of the neighborhoods of Harrison, Hawthorne, Jordan, Near North, Sumner-Glenwood, and Willard-Hay—has had a major African American presence ...","searchtext":"The Near North community of Minneapolis—made up of the neighborhoods of Harrison, Hawthorne, Jordan, Near North, Sumner-Glenwood, and Willard-Hay—has had a major African American presence since the early 1900s. Distinguished by its own businesses, organizations, and culture, it remains a hub of African American Minnesotan life in the twenty-first century. Minneapolis’s Near North Side has always been a haven for marginalized communities, mostly for its affordable housing and proximity to downtown. In the early twentieth century, much of the Twin Cities’ Jewish population resided in the Near North neighborhood, especially along Plymouth Avenue and what is now the Olson Memorial Highway. Restrictive covenants written into real estate deeds limited blacks to certain areas of Minneapolis. During World War I, many began moving from longtime-settled neighborhoods, such as Seven Corners near the University of Minnesota, the South Side, and the North Side. The Sumner Field public housing project, completed at 1101 Olson Memorial Highway in 1938, was segregated, but its white Jewish and black residents generally interacted peacefully. When blacks arrived in the Twin Cities, they often did not have access to the same community-based agencies as whites, so black churches, social organizations, and barber and beauty shops provided support. One such place, the Phyllis Wheatley Settlement House, opened in 1924 as a recreation center for African American children. African American activist and writer Ethel Ray Nance also became associated with the Wheatley House. Black business began to thrive, too. In the 1940s and 1950s, barber Sylvester Young and his five brothers owned several shops in Minneapolis and St. Paul, with some located in Near North. Harry Davis Sr., an activist and former boxer, was one of the first black executives in the state. He helped establish the Minneapolis Urban Coalition and was the first black Minneapolis mayoral candidate in 1971. By 1960, a large portion of Minneapolis’s African Americans lived in Near North, making it one of the city’s largest black communities. For example, the Glenwood area, excluding the public housing projects, was 55 percent black.The longtime Jewish community began to disperse around this time, mostly to suburbs like St. Louis Park. In 1966, Syl Davis founded The Way, a community youth center. The Way was one of the few resources of its kind that was organized and used mostly by African Americans. The community center provided a space for black youth to have a sense of community and belonging, and it became The New Way in 1975. The center turned into a hotspot of the music genre known as the Minneapolis Sound in the 1970s and 1980s. In 1967, racially charged civil unrest broke out along Plymouth Avenue. This unrest was the result of ongoing racial discrimination and frustration about Near North being neglected by the city. The widening of Olson Memorial Highway bisected Near North, affecting the vitality of local businesses on the south side of the street. The arrival of a federal highway, Interstate 94, in the 1970s further cut off the North Side from downtown. In the 1970s and 1980s, blacks began moving to other parts of the metro area, including nearby suburbs, and Near North’s population decreased. In the 1980s, the neighborhood became known for its rising crime rates. A variety of people migrated into the neighborhood, including young white professionals and Mexican and Southeast Asian immigrants. In 1995, the class-action lawsuit Hollman v. Cisneros determined that poor, mostly minority families had been concentrated in a seventy-three-acre site within the Near North Community. This led to the demolition of hundreds of public housing units and to the construction of the Heritage Park development in 2000. While many stayed in the area, many more were displaced and moved to nearby neighborhoods or nearby inner-ring suburbs, notably Brooklyn Center. In November 2015, Minneapolis police, after some conflict, fatally shot black North Minneapolitan Jamar Clark. The event was a continuation of a national trend of police brutality against blacks and sparked a series of protests throughout the region and nation. In 2018, the Minneapolis African American Heritage Museum and Gallery opened on the corner of Penn Avenue and Plymouth Avenue North. Its goal is to preserve the history of Minnesota African Americans, and to showcase the community’s achievements.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/N5.4 p94_0.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056216,"name":"African Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/near-north-african-american-community-minneapolis"},{"alt":"The Shaw-Hammons House (302 Fremont Street, Anoka), ca. 2013. Photographer unknown. Used with the permission of Anoka County Historical Society.","author":[{"name":"Anoka County Historical Society","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/anoka-county-historical-society"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"January 13, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Shaw–Hammons House","postbody":"The Shaw-Hammons House (later known as the DeGraff–Follrath House) consists of two sections completed in 1854 and 1870, respectively. It is both a well-preserved example of Greek revival ...","searchtext":"The Shaw-Hammons House (later known as the DeGraff–Follrath House) consists of two sections completed in 1854 and 1870, respectively. It is both a well-preserved example of Greek revival style and a link to the Anoka lumbermen, financiers, speculators, bankers, and politicians who dominated Minnesota in its territorial period. In 1854, Neil Shaw purchased and platted 160 acres of land in present-day Anoka County with his three sons. They built the family home as an addition to an existing building, used as a store, built as early as 1852, but the Shaw family did not use the structure as a home until 1854. They elaborated on the simple wood and clapboard siding of the original store by adding elements of Greek Revival-style architecture in the formal design. Crowned with a slightly pitched roof, the eaves feature a detailed classical cornice; the returns at the gable ends, the shuttered front windows, and the entrance resume the symmetry and grace of its style. Shaw used the east section of his house as one of Anoka’s original store fronts from the 1850s into the 1870s. Between 1854 and 1860, however, other businessmen held title to the property, including Antoine Robert, Henry Rice, Samuel Shaw, Neal Shaw, William Woodbury, and Sumner Farnham. One of Anoka’s more prominent citizens, a transplanted attorney from Maine named Weston Hammons, purchased the home in 1870. That same year, Hammons added to the west section, creating a two-and-a-half-story structure with a full basement, which came to be considered the main house. Additional modifications involved remodeling the front façade, including the veranda, with turned posts and decorative spandrels (the spaces between arches). The interior of this section contains two parlors and a closet on the first floor, as well as two bedrooms, two closets, and a bath on the second floor. Hammons later expanded his business interests into the local lumber industry and to Anoka’s Boot and Shoe Manufacturing Company, which endured as one of Anoka’s most significant enterprises during the 1880s. In 1883, Justice W. DeGraff, a railroad contractor and engineer, purchased the house for his wife and daughter. His only child, Marie, soon developed a keen interest in gardening and flowers. When she inherited the home from her parents, she expanded the property’s garden. Under her care, the south side of the narrow lot along the house became a prolific producer of brightly colored flowers and plants, many of which Marie bred herself. To supplement her income, Marie gave piano lessons to the local children and was recognized as an accomplished artist. When Marie moved to a senior care facility in 1965, the house changed hands once again, this time to Darwin Follrath and his wife. The couple restored the home to its original 1870 configuration, and on February 11, 1980, the home received an official listing on the National Register of Historic Places. After the Follraths sold the home to a development company, it fell into disrepair. The developers considered it too far gone to restore and attempted to demolish it in order to make way for a condominium, though city zoning and preservation ordinances prohibited it. With those plans effectively cancelled and the home listed on the “most endangered” list compiled by the Preservation Alliance of Minnesota, the developers sold the home to Kurt Glaser, a private citizen whose time, money, and efforts eventually revived it to its original 1870 luster. Editor’s note: This article contains content adapted from a National Historic Register nomination file—a public-domain text.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Shaw-Hammons_House_2013.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/shaw-hammons-house"},{"alt":"Remodeled Nerstrand Meat Market, ca. 1900. Pictured are (left to right): Lewis Roth, William Roth, and an unidentified man.","author":[{"name":"Jeff M. Sauve","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/jeff-m-sauve"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"January 08, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Nerstrand Meats and Catering","postbody":"In 1890, Adam Roth and his son, William E., established a butcher business in Nerstrand (Rice County) that grew to specialize in smoked and grilled meats—particularly bologna and wieners. ...","searchtext":"In 1890, Adam Roth and his son, William E., established a butcher business in Nerstrand (Rice County) that grew to specialize in smoked and grilled meats—particularly bologna and wieners. In 2019 the family-owned enterprise, Nerstrand Meats and Catering, celebrated 129 years of continuous operation. The business traces its roots to the establishment of the Nerstrand railway station by the Minnesota and Northwestern Railroad (later renamed the Chicago Great Western) in September 1885. Soon after, the Nerstrand Hotel was erected to accommodate the influx of daily and overnight passengers. By 1888, a Miss Anne Marie Olson (later Mrs. Thorstein Midtling) served as the hotel’s housekeeper. To feed her customers, Olson engaged Adam Roth, a resident of Wheeling Township since 1856, to butcher a cow, of which she took one-half for her needs; he peddled the remainder to the community. This relationship continued with success, and by 1890, Roth was joined by his son to form Adam Roth & Son. As their pioneer business of supplying locally sourced butchered meats to the Nerstrand area grew, the Roths started selling sausages. Working with John Brandenburg, an experienced butcher from Kenyon, the men experimented with different spices and hand crafted their well-known bologna and wiener recipes. The closely guarded recipes have been passed down from generation to generation. By late April 1892, the Roths opened a twenty-foot-by-twenty-foot wood-frame meat market with an adjoining slaughterhouse. Workers were paid fifty cents a day, and ring bologna sold for ten cents per ring or twenty-five cents for three rings. In December, the Roths erected a twelve-foot-by-twelve-foot icehouse to help preserve meat. A horse-drawn sleigh was sent to gather chunks of ice cut from a creek in the Big Woods. Sawdust was used as an insulator, slowing the melting of the ice while it was stored. With the death of Adam Roth in 1909, the shop became known as the W. E. Roth Meat Market. William was assisted by his younger brother, Louis H., who worked as a meat cutter into his eighties. By 1914, Roth razed the wood building and replaced it with one made of brick. By the 1940s, William’s grandson, Neil Heggedahl, had joined the business and learned the family trade. In April 1947, the three men started custom butchering and processing for the surrounding area. They put in 184 lockers to rent to their customers, keeping in mind that few homes at the time had freezers. By the 1950s, William had died, and Louis had retired. Clyde Heggedahl joined his brother in assuming ownership of the business. In the ensuing years, the brothers were wholesaling their bologna to area stores in Farmington, Faribault, Dennison, Northfield, and Kenyon, making up to 600 pounds each week. In 1967, the Wholesale Meat Act required the purchase of only federally inspected meat. The restriction forced the brothers to forgo the wholesale business, limiting sales strictly to the Nerstrand store, which focused on specialty meats. In November 1978, Clyde and Mary Heggedahl assumed sole ownership of the store. Before long they discontinued butchering and concentrated on their expanding catering services. Renamed Nerstrand Meats and Catering, the store purchased its USDA- inspected meats from a supplier. In 1984, the Nerstrand Booster Club created Bologna Days, held annually in August. The event not only served as a promotion for the store, but also for the Nerstrand community. The bologna-eating contest proved particularly popular every year; for instance, the 1989 winner ate 3.17 pounds. In 1994, Bologna Days held its last gathering, and the US Post Office offered a Bologna Days Pictorial Cancellation. During the 2000s, the catering side of the business expanded by purchasing two trailers with grills and a third for smoked items. In 2015, the business was honored for its 125 years of continuous operation, which made it the oldest in Nerstrand and one of the oldest in Rice County. Online ordering and social media were introduced to enhance sales. The following year, Clyde Heggedahl died. His widow, seventy-one-year-old Mary Heggedahl, who had worked at the store since the age of sixteen, assumed sole ownership.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Remodeled Nerstrand Meat Market. L-R_ Lewis Roth, William Roth, and unidentified man. C. 1900.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/nerstrand-meats-and-catering"},{"alt":"The Minnesota North Stars hockey team in action against the New York Islanders, 1981. The North Stars played in their first Stanley Cup finals against the New York Islanders in that year and lost the series 4-1.","author":[{"name":"Alex Tieberg","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/alex-tieberg"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"January 06, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Minnesota North Stars","postbody":"The Minnesota North Stars were one of the teams created during the National Hockey League’s first expansion in 1966, which finally brought an NHL team to the “state of hockey.” Their ...","searchtext":"The Minnesota North Stars were one of the teams created during the National Hockey League’s first expansion in 1966, which finally brought an NHL team to the “state of hockey.” Their twenty-nine-year residency in the state produced two trips to the Stanley Cup finals, but their sudden departure to Dallas in 1993 shocked fans throughout Minnesota. After the NHL announced that they would expand from six teams to twelve in 1965, a group of investors put together a bid for a franchise. Although the sports market in Minneapolis-St. Paul was smaller than others, the NHL chose Minnesota on February 9, 1966. As a condition of their successful bid, investors were required to build an arena that could hold at least 12,500 spectators. This led to construction of Bloomington’s Metropolitan Sports Center, which was built in just over a year. The North Stars played their first game on the road against the St. Louis Blues on October 11, 1967. It ended in a tie. On October 21, the North Stars hosted their first home game against the California/Oakland Seals—which ended with the North Stars’ first win. However, tragedy soon struck the team. Bill Masterson, a center, hit his head in a legal check on January 13, 1968, at the Met Center. His injury was severe, and he died of his injuries two days later in a hospital. His death is the only direct death resulting from gameplay in the NHL. It precipitated regulations for mandatory helmets, though they weren’t required until 1979. Even with this tragedy, the North Stars ended their inaugural season with a trip to the playoffs, losing to St. Louis in the semifinals. The decade that followed was less successful. The team’s second season ended with the North Stars in last place for the entire league. In 1978, Lou Nanne became the team’s general manager, and the Cleveland Barons merged with the North Stars, bringing new ownership and players to the team. On January 7, 1980, the North Stars played the Philadelphia Flyers in front of a record crowd at the Met Center. At that time, the Flyers held the record for the longest winning streak in the NHL—that is, until the North Stars beat them 7-1. This momentum led to a successful postseason, but the team lost to the Flyers and were denied their Stanley Cup debut. The following season, however, was their chance: the North Stars met the New York Islanders in the Stanley Cup Finals. While they lost the series to the Islanders 4-1, their 1980-81 season was proof that the North Stars were a formidable franchise. In 1987, Lou Nanne hired Minnesota hockey legend Herb Brooks to coach the team, but he was unable to relight the spark of his 1980 Olympic “Miracle on Ice.” The North Stars ended the season in last place, Brooks wasn’t rehired, and Nanne resigned as GM. In 1990, the team was eventually sold to Norm Green, a Canadian investor. With new coaching and personnel, the North Stars had another successful year in 1991, reaching the Stanley Cup finals once again. However, the Pittsburgh Penguins beat them in a 4-2 series—denying the North Stars Stanley Cup glory. When the Metropolitan Sports Facilities Commission denied Norm Green the opportunity to improve the Met Center and connect it to the new Mall of America, he decided he would find another city to house the North Stars. On March 10, 1993, in the midst of the season, he announced that the team would move to Dallas for the 1993–94 season. As the North Stars’ tenure in Minnesota came to a sudden close, they lost their last game at the Met Center on April 13, 1993, against the Chicago Blackhawks and lost their last game ever against Detroit a few days later. The Met Center was demolished in December 1994 and Minnesota was left without an NHL team. Fans blamed Norm Green—under the moniker “Norm Greed”—for harming Minnesota’s proud hockey tradition. However, the state wouldn’t be without an NHL team for long. The NHL expanded again, and the Minnesota Wild debuted in 2000.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/GV3.73P p15.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246054,"name":"Sports and Recreation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/minnesota-north-stars"},{"alt":"The Rum River Inn restaurant and bar (former Riverside Hotel), St. Francis, Minnesota, May 4, 2008. Photograph by Wikimedia Commons user Elkman. CC BY-SA 3.0.","author":[{"name":"Anoka County Historical Society","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/anoka-county-historical-society"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"January 03, 2020","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Riverside Hotel, St. Francis","postbody":"The former Riverside Hotel at 3631 Bridge Street in St. Francis is the only surviving commercial building dating to the milling boomtown’s original settlement. It was built in about 1860, ...","searchtext":"The former Riverside Hotel at 3631 Bridge Street in St. Francis is the only surviving commercial building dating to the milling boomtown’s original settlement. It was built in about 1860, during the heyday of the local lumber industry that urbanized present-day Anoka County. In 1855, Dwight Woodbury immigrated west to Anoka to join his son, Albert, who had preceded him. Dwight would go on to build the Woodbury House in Anoka, but he first made his mark in St. Francis. Members of the Woodbury family platted both cities and built dams and sawmills at both locations. Woodbury built a house overlooking the Rum River for himself and his family in about 1860. The two-story, Victorian Gothic structure has clapboard siding with a gable of the front façade, which makes an “L” shape. According to the National Register of Historic Places nomination form submitted in 1979, “the original architectural design features are limited to the semi-circular windows in the east gable end and in the front projecting gable” and brick now covers a portion of the building façade. After Dwight Woodbury’s death in 1884, his son, John Woodbury, moved to St. Francis. In 1891, he built a large mill in town to mill all types of flour, then expanded the family home and began to rent rooms to seasonal workers at his mill. Its number of residents peaked at the turn of the twentieth century, which corresponded with the period of highest demand for industrial laborers’ housing. The era also marked the heyday of St. Francis, when local industries included Shaddick Creamery, St. Francis Mill, St. Francis Starch Factory, and the St. Francis Canning factory. It was during this time the home took on the name of Riverside Inn. Contemporary newspaper advertisements indicate that different owners ran the hotel after 1900, with a J. H. Space the proprietor in 1906, and an Alex Simpson advertising his new ownership at another time. The inn continued to provide lodging to workers until the mill’s closure in 1923. The Riverside Hotel/Rum River Inn was added to the National Register of Historic Places in December of 1979. Editor’s note: This article contains content quoted as well as adapted from a National Register of Historic Places nomination file—a public-domain text.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Riverside_Hotel_Wikimedia.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246079,"name":"Cities and Towns","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/riverside-hotel-st-francis"},{"alt":"Photograph of the Ramsey District #28 School House after it was repurposed as the Ramsey Town Hall. Photographer unknown, ca. 1970s.","author":[{"name":"Anoka County Historical Society","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/anoka-county-historical-society"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"December 30, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"District 28 School / Ramsey Town Hall","postbody":"Originally built in 1892, the Ramsey School House served Anoka County’s School District #28 until the mid-twentieth century, when the schools in the county were consolidated. The building ...","searchtext":"Originally built in 1892, the Ramsey School House served Anoka County’s School District #28 until the mid-twentieth century, when the schools in the county were consolidated. The building was then repurposed as the Ramsey Town Hall. The one-story buff brick building was built in 1892 on land once owned by A. E. Pitman in School District #28. It replaced a structure adjacent to the Peter McArdele property, located along Highway 47. Using bricks manufactured at Kelsey Brickyard (in operation 1880–1897), builders created a footprint measuring thirty by twenty-five feet with details that evoked the sturdy craftsmanship of the end of the nineteenth century. Concrete eventually replaced the brick staircase and created a “belt” around the foundation to preserve the brick from further deterioration caused by dampness. The single-door entrance faces the highway (originally it consisted of double doors) and has a pair of double windows on either side. These received a cap of decorative segmented brick, creating an arch. The three windows on the remaining sides of the building feature a smaller arch built of the same material. During the spring and summer months, teachers and students in the schoolhouse used half window screens to cool the interior. Architects and preservationists inspecting the structure could not determine whether a circular window atop the entrance served as an ornamental addition, or a more the practical purpose of ventilating a crawl space. The current asphalt shingles protect the roof where cedar wood shakes once did. The schoolhouse’s footprint consisted of an entryway, two cloakrooms—one for boys, the other girls—and a classroom. Pressed metal decorated the ceiling while simple plaster walls lined with a wainscot made of beaded wood kept the interior from looking uncluttered. Wall-bracketed kerosene lamps with reflectors once illuminated the interior, reflecting off the hardwood floor. During the winter months, a wood-fired stove in the center of classroom provided heat. Modernization of the schoolhouse occurred in stages, beginning with the wood stove that was replaced at the end of World War I by a gravity furnace and floor registers that circulated warm air. This adjustment required workers to dig a basement and to install electricity. Kerosene lamps with reflectors gave way to opalescent glass lighting, which later evolved into fluorescent lighting. One of the cloakrooms was converted into a kitchen. A water heater and plumbing were installed, the hardwood flooring took on an epoxy veneer, and some of the windows at the rear of the structure were bricked over. In the mid-twentieth century, population growth in Anoka County prompted the consolidation of students in large facilities rather than one-room schoolhouses, and the District 28 building was no longer used as a school. Instead, it was repurposed as Ramsey’s town hall. A lot with sixteen spaces was paved to accommodate visitor parking. An inspection carried out on April 19, 1978, cited weaknesses in the building’s foundation and recommended that it be rehabilitated and restored to its original form. This would have required removing all modern features, including the kitchen, furnace, and electricity, as well as all cosmetic improvements to the interior and exterior. It would have also called for reverting to the cedar shingles originally used. Inspectors recommended conducting oral history interviews with former students as well as a a campaign to gather period photographs of both the exterior and interior. Ramsey Schoolhouse / Ramsey Town Hall was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on December 27, 1979. Analysis conducted by preservationists in 1980 reiterated the problems associated with its proximity to Highway 47, the parking lot, and the water table, which threatened the structure’s foundation. One suggested solution involved using private funding to rehabilitate the structure. Another called for moving the building to a new location, such as a city park, where it could be restored and used as a public meeting place. The review committee, however, recognized that such a move might result in the loss of the building’s designation as a historic site. As a result, the only changes made were roof repairs, carried out in 1983. As of 2019, Ramsey Town Hall remains at its original location. It is one of the few remaining structures built with bricks from the former Kelsey Brickyard. Editor’s note: This articles incorporates content taken from a National Register of Historic Places nomination file—a public-domain text.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/314.1.01.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056210,"name":"Education","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/district-28-school-ramsey-town-hall"},{"alt":"The Lady Warriors (a basketball team representing Cedar-Riverside, a neighborhood in Minneapolis) pose with the University of Minnesota mascot Goldy Gopher and Minnesota Lynx mascot Prowl during project recognition at a Minnesota Lynx WNBA game, August 30, 2015.","author":[{"name":"Joel Rippel","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/joel-rippel"}],"categoryTag":[],"date":"December 26, 2019","eraTag":[],"keydate":"","name":"Gophers, Vikings, and Saints: Highlights from the History of Minnesota Sports","postbody":"In an eleven-month span between May 1991 and April 1992, the Twin Cities metropolitan area played host to five major national sports championships: the NHL Stanley Cup Finals, Golf’s US ...","searchtext":"In an eleven-month span between May 1991 and April 1992, the Twin Cities metropolitan area played host to five major national sports championships: the NHL Stanley Cup Finals, Golf’s US Open, the World Series, the Super Bowl, and the NCAA men’s basketball Final Four. This series of events put Minnesota in the national sports spotlight. Even before that unprecedented stretch, however, Minnesota had been a leader in sports. The first known team sport to be played in Minnesota was traditional Native lacrosse. Oral histories from Dakota, Ojibwe, and other local tribes tell stories of lacrosse games played in present-day Minnesota as early as the 1600s—long before Europeans arrived. One documented series of games was played near Fort Snelling in July of 1835. Curling and baseball also appeared in Minnesota before statehood. Since the 1860s, Minnesota has led national conversations about fishing and hunting regulations as well as conservation. It was one of the first states where professional boxing developed, and where basketball and golf got started in the 1890s. In the early twentieth century, a Minnesota horse named Dan Patch dominated harness racing and set records while touring the country in a private railcar. In the decades that followed, Minnesotans continued to take up sporting activities—particularly baseball, golf, hockey, basketball, and outdoor recreation. Looking at each of these individually reveals periods of national leadership as well as local stories, trends, and athletes that make Minnesota’s history of sports and recreation unique. Baseball The Minnesota Twins brought major-league baseball to Minnesota in 1961. The sport’s arrival in Minnesota, however, pre-dated the Twins by more than a century. In August of 1857, nine months before Minnesota was granted statehood, the first baseball game in state history was played in Nininger, a village on the Mississippi River west of Hastings. Teams from Minneapolis and St. Paul first played each other in 1865, and two years later, a team from St. Paul (the North Star club) won the first state tournament. Amateur baseball in Minnesota grew in popularity, and by 1950, there were 799 amateur teams in the state. Minneapolis and St. Paul fielded teams in the semi-professional League Alliance in 1877, and fully professional teams from the two cities first faced each other in 1884. That season saw Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Stillwater field teams in the Northwestern League. In 1902, Minneapolis and St. Paul joined the newly formed, eight-team American Association. For the next fifty-nine seasons, the Minneapolis Millers and St. Paul Saints were bitter rivals, with each team capturing nine league titles. The Millers’ and Saints’ demise came following the 1960 season. In October of 1960, the American League (AL) gave Calvin Griffith permission to move the Washington Senators franchise to Minnesota. The franchise was renamed the Minnesota Twins and began play at Metropolitan Stadium (which opened in 1956 in suburban Bloomington with the hope of luring major-league baseball to the state) in 1961. The Twins were initially a hit in Minnesota, leading the American League in overall attendance between 1961 and 1970. They won the 1965 AL pennant on their way to the franchise’s first World Series appearance, at which they fell to the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Twins continued to have success and won AL West Division titles in 1969 and 1970. The Twins moved into the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in downtown Minneapolis in 1982 and won World Series Championships in 1987 and 1991. But after eight consecutive losing seasons (from 1993 to 2000), Major League Baseball considered “contracting” the Twins franchise in 2001. The Twins survived the threat and, beginning in 2002, reached the postseason in six of the next nine seasons. In 2010, the Twins moved into Target Field in downtown Minneapolis. Several Twins players have been inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, including Rod Carew, Harmon Killebrew, Kirby Puckett, and Dave Winfield. In 1993, the St. Paul Saints franchise rebooted as a minor-league team. They began playing at Lowertown’s CHS Field after its construction in 2015 and won the Independent League title in 2019. Golf In the early 1890s, golf was practically unheard of outside of the East Coast. The members of St. Paul’s Town and Country Club changed that when they opened a nine-hole golf course on the banks of the Mississippi River in June of 1893. The course—the first one west of New Jersey and the second-oldest continuously played course in the United States—opened eighteen months before the United States Golf Association (USGA), golf’s national governing body, was formed. In 1899, Minnesota gained a second club when the Minikahda Club opened in Minneapolis. It became the first Minnesota club to host to a national event when it hosted to the US Open in 1916. In 1926, Minnesota native Les Bolstad became the youngest golfer (age eighteen) to win the US Amateur Public Links Championship. Bolstad, considered by many players to be one of the best teachers in amateur golf history, was the golf coach at the University of Minnesota for thirty years. Three years after Bolstad became the first Minnesotan to win a national golf event, Harrison “Jimmy” Johnston, an investment banker from St. Paul, became the first Minnesotan to win the men’s US Amateur. (Only one other Minnesotan—John Harris in 1993—has won the men’s US Amateur.) Patty Berg, who was born in Minneapolis, started golfing in 1932 at the age of fourteen. Six years later she won the women’s US Amateur. Berg turned professional in 1940 after winning twenty-nine amateur tournaments, and in 1946 she became the first Minnesotan to win the US Women’s Open. In 1951, she was one of the founding members of the Ladies Professional Golf Association. After that she won fifty-one tournaments, including fifteen “major” tournaments. Her fifteen major wins are still an LPGA record. Minnesota became the first state to play host to each of the thirteen championships sponsored by the USGA and has also played host to the four major international competitions: the Curtis Cup, the Ryder Cup, the Solheim Cup, and the Walker Cup. Hockey Hockey in Minnesota dates to the mid-1890s. In the winter of 1894–95, a hockey club was formed at the University of Minnesota, and in mid-February of 1895, the University team played a team from Winnipeg in Minneapolis. Winnipeg won 11-3 in one of the first international hockey games ever played in the United States. Over the next ten years, hockey spread in Minnesota. The town of Eveleth, on northern Minnesota’s Iron Range, fielded its first team in 1903. The town eventually opened two indoor arenas—the first in state history—between 1919 and 1921. Eveleth High School fielded its first hockey team in 1920, twenty-five years before the first boys’ state high school hockey tournament. In 1922, the town formed a semi-pro team. Because of its hockey tradition, Eveleth was a natural choice to become the home to the United States Hockey Hall of Fame, which opened in 1973. After the induction of the class of 2019, there are 183 individual members (and four teams) in the Hall. More than one-fourth (forty-nine) are from Minnesota; twelve are Eveleth natives. Professional hockey first came to Minnesota in 1926, when teams from Duluth, Minneapolis, and St. Paul played in the American Hockey Association. Over the next forty years, Minneapolis and St. Paul fielded teams in several professional minor leagues. In 1967, the National Hockey League expanded with six new teams, one of which was the Minnesota North Stars. The North Stars played their home games in the Metropolitan Sports Center in Bloomington, across the parking lot from Metropolitan Stadium. They twice reached the NHL’s Stanley Cup finals, in 1981 and 1991. In 1993, after having its proposal to remodel Metropolitan Sports Center turned down, the team announced it was moving to Dallas. For five seasons, from 1972–77, Minnesota had two major-league hockey teams. The Fighting Saints, of the World Hockey Association, played their home games at the St. Paul Civic Center. The team folded in 1977 because of financial issues. After the North Stars relocated to Dallas in 1993, several existing NHL franchises entertained the idea of relocating to Minnesota. Ultimately, in June of 1997, the NHL awarded an expansion team to Minnesota. The Minnesota Wild began play in the 2000–01 season. Minnesota was a natural leader in hockey for girls and women. In the fall of 1993, eight high schools fielded girls’ hockey teams. Following the 1993–94 season, the Minnesota State High School League sanctioned girls’ hockey as a varsity sport. In November of 1994, 24 teams began the first “official” girls’ high school hockey season. That season culminated in February of 1995 with the first state girls’ hockey tournament–the first in the nation. In the fall of 1995, Augsburg College became the first Minnesota college to field a varsity women’s hockey team. The University of Minnesota fielded its first varsity team in the 1997–98 season. Basketball After Dr. James Naismith invented basketball in Massachusetts in 1891, it was introduced to some Minnesota college students when a former roommate of Naismith, Max Exner, brought the game to Carleton College in Northfield in 1893. The game quickly caught on in Minnesota. In February of 1895, the first basketball game between two Minnesota college teams was played at Hamline University in St. Paul. The game was between Hamline and the University of Minnesota Agricultural College. The University of Minnesota fielded its first men’s basketball team in January of 1896. In 1897, Dr. L. J. Cooke was named the Gophers’ coach and become one of the first full-time college basketball coaches in the country. Over the first twenty-five years of the twentieth century, the Gophers were one of the top teams in the country. Cooke, who coached the Gophers until 1924, led them to the conference title in the Big Ten Conference’s inaugural basketball season (1905–06) and a co-championship in 1906–07. The Gophers were named the Helms Athletic Foundation National Champions in 1901–02 and 1918–19. The first Minnesota high school boys’ basketball state tournament was held in April of 1913 at Carleton College in Northfield. Carleton sponsored the tournament until 1916, when the Minnesota State High School Athletic Association was formed and took oversight of high school activities in the state. In 1923, the tournament was moved to Minneapolis. After the University of Minnesota opened its fieldhouse (later renamed Williams Arena) in 1928, the state tournament grew in popularity. By the mid-twentieth century, the tournament was the best-attended eight-team state tournament in the nation. In 1947, a group of Minneapolis businessmen decided to bring professional basketball to Minneapolis. They purchased the Detroit franchise that had played the 1946–47 season in the National Basketball League and moved it to Minneapolis. For a reported purchase price of $15,000, the group got a franchise that would become the National Basketball Association’s first dynasty. The franchise got lucky when it was able to acquire George Mikan early in the 1947–48 season. The future Naismith Basketball Hall of Famer would lead the Lakers to six league championships in its first seven seasons in Minneapolis. The Lakers have been credited for helping integrate the National Basketball Association because of a series of games they played with the Harlem Globetrotters. The teams met seven times between 1948 and 1952, and the series drew more than 20,000 fans to the games in Chicago. When the Lakers defeated the Globetrotters in Chicago in February 1950 and in Minneapolis in March 1950, they were the only losses in a 141-game span for the Globetrotters. Following the 1959–60 season, the Lakers franchise moved to Los Angeles. Except for two seasons—Minnesota had a franchise in the American Basketball Association in the 1967–68 and 1968–69 seasons –the state was without a professional basketball team for the next twenty-nine years. In April of 1987, the NBA awarded an expansion franchise to Minnesota, and the Minnesota Timberwolves began play in the 1989–90 season. The Timberwolves played their first season in the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome and set the league’s all-time single-season attendance record before moving into the Target Center for the 1990–91 season. After basketball was introduced in Minnesota in the 1890s, it quickly became popular with women. A women’s basketball association was formed at the University of Minnesota in 1897, and three years later, the University of Minnesota fielded a varsity team. It lapsed later in the decade and did not reform until the 1960s. As many as 200 high schools fielded girls’ basketball teams during the first thirty years of the twentieth century. But girls’ basketball stopped in the state stopped around 1940. In 1968, the Minnesota State High School League adopted a bylaw for girls’ interscholastic activities. In 1974, the first “official” girls’ state basketball tournament was held. Women’s professional basketball came to Minnesota in 1978 when the Women’s Professional Basketball League was formed. The Minnesota Fillies were members of the league for three years before folding due to financial issues in 1981. In 1998, the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) was formed and Minnesota was awarded a franchise—the Minnesota Lynx—which began play in 1999. The Lynx eventually became one of the league’s most successful franchises, winning four league titles in a seven-year period in the 2010s. Football The state’s first football team was formed by Shattuck Academy in Faribault in 1878. The University of Minnesota fielded its first varsity football team in 1882, and the first high school football team formed in 1890. Minnesota’s first experience with professional football arrived in 1892, almost seventy years before the debut of the Minnesota Vikings. Minneapolis native William W. “Pudge” Heffelfinger became the first professional football player when he was paid $500 (more than $14,000 in 2019 dollars) to play for the Allegheny (Pennsylvania) Athletic Association team. In 1921, the Minneapolis Marines joined the American Pro Football Association, which had formed in 1920 and was the forerunner of the National Football League. The Marines were members of the league through the 1924 season before ceasing operations. In 1929, the team was reformed and renamed the Red Jackets. Following the 1930 season, the team folded. A second Minnesota team, the Duluth Kelleys, were members of the NFL from 1923 to 1925. The team changed its name to the Duluth Eskimos in 1926, after Ole Haugsrud assumed control of the franchise’s finances. In 1929 Haugsrud sold the franchise to a group from New Jersey. As part of the sales agreement, the NFL promised Haugsrud a stake in the next NFL franchise in Minnesota. In 1960, Haugsrud was part of the ownership group that was awarded the expansion franchise that became the Vikings. The Vikings made the NFL playoffs for the first time in 1968. Following the 1969 season, they reached the Super Bowl for the first time—the first of four Super Bowl berths (each ended in a loss) in a seven-year span. The Vikings played their first twenty-one seasons at Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington before moving into the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in downtown Minneapolis in 1982. They played the 2014 and 2015 seasons at TCF Bank Stadium on the University of Minnesota campus while a new football stadium, US Bank Stadium, was being built on the former site of the Metrodome. US Bank Stadium opened in 2016. Recreational Sports Indigenous people have fished, hunted, canoed, and hiked in present-day Minnesota for both survival and recreation for thousands of years. When settler-colonists moved to the North Star State in the 1800s, they took up the same activities, many of them water based. Minnesota is known as the “Land of 10,000 Lakes,” but according to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, it contains 11,842 bodies of water of more than ten acres. In the late nineteenth century and the first years of the twentieth century, there were no limits for Minnesota anglers. In 1874, a commission convened by Governor C. K. Davis named a commission to study the issue of fishing and the commission’s report cited the need for laws to govern fishing in the state. The first bag limit was set in 1905 at twenty-five fish (of any combination of species) per day. Over the first half of the twentieth century bag limits were set for individual species, and the state began issuing fishing licenses in 1927 (the cost was $1). The state issued its first big-game hunting laws in 1858; the first deer hunting season was established between September 1 and January 31 of that year. By 1887, deer hunting was limited to the month of November, and the first big-game license was established in 1899 (the cost was 25 cents for state residents). The first wildlife conservation group in the state was formed in 1906 in Jackson County (in southern Minnesota) when three dozen hunters reached an agreement to monitor their duck hunting on North Heron Lake. Five years later, the state appointed Carlos Avery as the first leader of the Game and Fish department. In October 1924, the state held its first pheasant hunting season. The state legislature created the Minnesota Department of Conservation in 1931. The new department merged the departments of forestry, game and fish, drainage and waters, and lands and timber. A division of state parks and a tourist bureau were added to the department. In 1971, the name of the department was changed to the Department of Natural Resources (DNR). In 1951, the state began a wildlife management program. According to the DNR the state now has 1,500 public wildlife management areas, which provide 1.3 million acres of habitat for hunters. In recent studies, Minnesota ranked fourth among the fifty states in number of anglers, fourth in overall number of boat registrations and fourth in number of deer hunters. In 2016, Minnesota had over 834,000 boat registrations—the most per capita of any US state. In 1959, the first year of registrations, 158,000 boats were registered. According to the DNR, in 2017, Minnesota had 1.7 million anglers, hunters and trappers. According to Explore Minnesota, about 10 percent of Minnesota||s 1.5 million license-holding anglers go ice fishing during the winter. The largest ice-fishing contest in the world is held each January on Gull Lake’s Hole-in-the-Day Bay. An estimated 10,000 anglers take part. Minnesota has more than 500 hiking trails, with the Superior Hiking Trail, a 310-mile footpath overlooking Lake Superior, considered the crown jewel of the state’s hiking trails. For winter enthusiasts, Minnesota has more than 2,000 miles of cross-country ski trails. Snowmobiling as a recreational sport had its beginnings in Minnesota in the mid-1950s when a Roseau, Minnesota, trio made the first modern snowmobiles. The company became Polaris Industries. In 1922, Ralph Samuelson, an eighteen-year old from Lake City, Minnesota, went water skiing on Lake Pepin. He is credited with “inventing” water skiing.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Collection I.503.7 dig.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246054,"name":"Sports and Recreation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/gophers-vikings-and-saints-highlights-history-minnesota-sports"},{"alt":"Porter Kelsey House, 14853 North Seventh Avenue, Andover, Minnesota. Photograph by Wikimedia Commons user McGhiever, May 15, 2016.","author":[{"name":"Anoka County Historical Society","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/anoka-county-historical-society"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"December 23, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Porter Kelsey House","postbody":"The Porter Kelsey house was built in Andover in 1887 from materials produced by the owner’s own brickyard. In 2020, it is one of few structures built with Kelsey Brickyard brick that still ...","searchtext":"The Porter Kelsey house was built in Andover in 1887 from materials produced by the owner’s own brickyard. In 2020, it is one of few structures built with Kelsey Brickyard brick that still stands in Anoka County. The Kelsey Brick Company produced high quality buff-colored brick beginning in 1879. The majority of the brick manufactured there was shipped by rail from Anoka to the Twin Cities and used in the construction of buildings such as the Minneapolis City Hall (interior walls only). Locally, the brick was used in the construction of the Anoka County Courthouse, county schools and churches, the city of Anoka’s commercial buildings, and the smokestack of Anoka’s Washburn Sawmill. In the early-to-mid 1880s, Porter Kelsey, his family, and his brickyard employees lived in a rambling frame house near the brickyard site. It stood on the west shore of Round Lake, two miles northeast of Anoka, among stands of pine and maple trees. By 1887, his business was prospering, and Kelsey made plans to build a grander home in place of the existing building. Most houses built during the nineteenth century in rural Anoka County are relatively small, constructed of locally logged pine or oak, composed of two intersecting one-and-one-half story gable ended sections, and void of exterior ornamentation. The Porter Kelsey house, by contrast, is unusually large (it has over twenty rooms) and elaborately decorated. Although it is not a |||pure||| example of any one architectural style, it features Italianate design elements, including, on the interior an |||L||| plan, wide eaves with coupled brackets, a truncated hipped roof, a rectangular balustrade atop the roof, and a veranda surmounted by a balustraded balcony. Its external Italianate features are etched glass doors, carved woodwork, decorative hardware, and lighting fixtures (converted from kerosene to electricity) all dating to the turn of the twentieth century. In later years, the family modernized the kitchen, rearranged rooms, and added supporting columns to the archways between two rooms. The Panic of 1893, coupled with the loss of a long-sought-after spur line running from Anoka to the brickyard, put Kelsey’s company out of business. In 1897, he sold his brick-making machinery, and the brickyard||s buildings were torn down. Members of the Kelsey family continued to live in the house until 1955. The Charley Hartfiel family completed an interior restoration of the house in the late 1970s, and it was added to the National Register of Historic places on December 26, 1979. Editor’s note: This article incorporates content from a National Register of Historic Places nomination file—a public-domain text.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Porter_Kelsey_House_Wikimedia.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246055,"name":"Labor","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/porter-kelsey-house"},{"alt":"St. Paul Police Deputy James S. Griffin sitting at his desk, ca. 1960s. From box 1 of the James S. Griffin papers (P1679), Manuscripts Collection, Minnesota Historical Society.","author":[{"name":"Ianna Oatis, Renee Boney-Jett, and Acoma Gaither","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/ianna-oatis-renee-boney-jett-and-acoma-gaither"}],"categoryTag":[],"date":"December 18, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Race and Policing in the Twin Cities","postbody":"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 ...","searchtext":"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. The northern US, as well as the South, was a dangerous place to be Black at the turn of the twentieth century. In the Twin Cities, instances of police brutality and racial profiling were reported in the Western Appeal and the Appeal beginning in the 1880s and 1890s. New cases emerged in the 1910s and the 1920s in the Minneapolis Messenger and the Twin City Star. Victims, however, could not always afford to be candid in public, even with Black newspapers like these. John McHie, who told his family that he had been beaten by Minneapolis police in 1918, reported a version of the incident to the Twin City Star that concealed police involvement. As far as can be documented, the first Black police officer in Minnesota was James H. Burrell, who worked at the Rondo sub-station in St. Paul beginning in 1892. Lewis Liverpool, James Loomis, Charles Grisim, Abraham Yeiser, William Lewis, and Joseph Black followed his example in the next decade. These officers faced ongoing discrimination in the early twentieth century during both recruitment and assignments, which required them to patrol areas with the fewest socio-economic and educational advantages. As Twin Cities police departments became larger and more sophisticated in the 1920s, there were increasing reports of brutality against those arrested. As Minnesota’s Black population grew, racist hiring practices and more brutality cases led to increased calls for reform. City leaders, however, remained unresponsive. After January 1921, there were no Black officers appointed to the St. Paul Police Department until 1937. In 1939, a civil service exam was posted for a patrolman position. When the St. Paul Urban League protested that only one Black officer had been appointed over the last eighteen years, the commissioner responded that since 1936, department policy had been that no one would be passed over or shown preference. Furthermore, he stated that he would not overlook anyone just to appoint a Black to the job. With this promise, the Urban League held classes at the Hallie Q. Brown Community Center to help Black candidates pass the exam. Community leaders organized a recruitment drive, over thirty Black candidates were included, and 1500 people took the test. It was the largest recruitment turnout in the history of the St. Paul Police Department to date. An unwritten discriminatory rule used by police departments nationwide in the 1930s and 40s prevented Black officers from working motorcycle or squad car duty with white officers. Black and white officers worked together only on special assignment, in jails, or in the patrol wagons. In response, churches, the Black press, the Urban League, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) took the lead during the 1940s and 50s to shape civil rights legislation and build alliances among African American communities, including those in the Twin Cities. The 1960s and 1970s saw a sharp rise in social movements organized by people of color, including the Black Panther Party, the American Indian Movement, and the National Organization of Brown Berets. Racially motivated police violence spurred community members to establish citizen-led patrols to “serve and protect” people who felt mistreated, unheard, and underserved by law enforcement. Dan Pothier helped established the Black Patrols to serve the North Minneapolis area. After the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, the Black Patrols became incorporated into the Citizens’ Patrol Corps unit, also known as the Soul Force. The combined patrols served the North and South Minneapolis neighborhoods until 1968. Also in 1968, the American Indian Movement (AIM) created its own citizen patrol to protect the East Franklin Avenue area and act as a barrier between the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) and the surrounding community. The patrol was under the direction of the AIM board, whose members included Clyde Bellecourt and Dennis Banks. Recognized by both neighborhood residents and the MPD for bringing change to the East Franklin area, the patrol continued through 1975 and reformed briefly in 1987. The momentum of activism in the 1960s and 1970s continued through the 1980s and 1990s, when more steps were taken to improve relations between the police and communities of color—with more governmental action. In 1981, a multicultural task force was created to examine malpractice cases within the St. Paul and Minneapolis Police Departments. They were also tasked with fostering relations between communities of color and police officers and improving police practices. The task force’s chairman, Curman L. Gains, was a former deputy commissioner of human rights and the principal of Como High School in St. Paul. Administrative aid Irene Gomez-Bethke, a Latina community leader, extensively documented the group’s activity. The Chicano/Latino Task Force was created in 1993 by Commissioner David Beaulieu as a new branch of the Minnesota Department of Human Rights. It was responsible for reporting racial discrimination and recommending solutions. Around the same time, the community-based organization Inter-Race, commissioned by the MPD, created trainings for their officers. Its “Police Training Workshops,” co-hosted by Vivian Jenkins Nelson, brought together Minneapolis citizens and police officers to discuss issues plaguing the community. Instead of adopting these ideas, however, MPD hired an outside consultant from Detroit, without ties to the community, to create the trainings. The Twin Cities witnessed an influx of Somali immigrants in the mid-1990s as a result of the civil war in Somalia. Since arriving in Minnesota, Somali people have had both positive and negative interactions with Twin Cities police. The Somali community and police have a history of joining together to create healthy and productive relations. In the late 1990s, the police joined Somali leaders to focus on lowering crime in the Somali community. The Minneapolis and St. Paul police held monthly meetings with Somali elders, created crime prevention workshops, and even hired their first Somali police officer. Policing in the Somali community, however, was not always positive. In 2013, two non-Muslim St. Paul police officers were photographed wearing a hijab. On February 3, a photo surfaced on Twitter of officer Robert Buth dressed as a Somali Target employee in a red hijab. On February 6, a photo appeared of Buth and an unidentified officer dressed in orange hijabs and blackface. These photos clearly mocked hijab-wearing Somali women. On February 5, an article surfaced in the Star Tribune denouncing the photo, and the situation appeared to be isolated from the beliefs of the St. Paul Police Department. Two instances of police violence that occurred in the Twin Cities metro area in the 2010s led to national discussions of race and policing. On July 6th, 2016, St. Anthony police officer Jeronimo Yanez shot and killed Philando Castile after pulling over his car. Yanez shot Castile after Castile notified him that he had a gun but was not reaching for it. Yanez was acquitted, yet he was one of the first Minnesotan officers in modern history to have charges brought against him so quickly. Just over a year later, on July 15, 2017, a Somali American Minneapolis police officer named Mohamed Noor shot and killed Justine Damond while responding to a 911 call (Damond had called to report a possible incident of rape near her home in South Minneapolis). A jury convicted him of third-degree murder on April 30, 2019—a decision that the Somali American Police Association claimed stemmed from racial bias.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Capture.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246060,"name":"Crime and Punishment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/race-and-policing-twin-cities"},{"alt":"US Forest Service entrance sign for Civilian Conservation Corps Camp Rabideau, Company 708, in the Chippewa National Forest. Photograph by the US Forest Service, Eastern Region, August 26, 2006. Public domain.","author":[{"name":"John D. Eggers","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/john-d-eggers"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"December 16, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Civilian Conservation Corps Camp Rabideau F-50","postbody":"Camp Rabideau is a Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) site established as part of the “New Deal” in 1933 to help alleviate unemployment during the Depression. Located in Beltrami County, it ...","searchtext":"Camp Rabideau is a Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) site established as part of the “New Deal” in 1933 to help alleviate unemployment during the Depression. Located in Beltrami County, it operated until 1942. It later became a satellite campus for University of Illinois forestry and engineering students; a Native American learning center; and an educational center for Chippewa National Forest visitors. President Franklin D. Roosevelt introduced his “New Deal” during the Great Depression as a plan to improve the economy and put Americans back to work. The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), established in 1933, provided more than 3 million young men with opportunities to work in forestry and soil and water conservation. To qualify for the CCC you had to be an unemployed, unmarried man and a US citizen between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five. You had to enlist for a minimum of six months, and many re-enlisted after their first term. The income earned by the workers helped keep many families from starving. They were paid thirty dollars a month and had vocational education opportunities. From the thirty-dollar stipend, recruits sent twenty-five dollars home to their families. The government provided room, board, clothing, and tools. By 1935, the CCC program had established 2,650 camps throughout the United States. From 1935 to 1941, a total of 166 camps were located in Minnesota, with an average of fifty-one camps active at any given time. Camp Rabideau F-50, located just south of Blackduck on Beltrami County Highway 39 in the Chippewa National Forest, opened in 1935. The camp sat on a 112-acre tract that was purchased in 1934. CCC Company 3749 of Bennett Springs, Missouri, arrived in 1935 to build it. The original layout included barracks and officers’ quarters, a mess hall, a recreation hall, a hospital, and an education building, among others. Because the structures were not built to be permanent, only thirteen of the twenty-five original buildings remain standing as of 2019. Company 708 of Bena took over the camp in January 1936. Overall, an estimated 300 men spent time working at Camp Rabideau, with most coming from Northern Minnesota. Due to CCC segregation policies, there were no African Americans at this camp. Young Native American men participated in separate camps through the CCC Indian Division program. The CCC program gave the men on-the-job vocational training. The work projects conducted by the men of Company 708 included surveying, building roads and structures, planting trees, and wildlife management in the Chippewa National Forest. In their limited free time, the men took advantage of evening education classes and participation in recreational activities such as the Audubon Club and playing basketball. The company stayed there until the program ended in 1941, when Congress discontinued funding the CCC due to the need to finance World War II. The camp stood vacant until 1945, when the University of Illinois–Urbana leased it for civil engineering and forestry education programs. The lease agreement required that the students work on projects to modernize camp facilities. They updated the electrical and sanitation systems, stabilized ceilings, converted buildings to apartments for staff, and updated the heating from wood burning to oil stoves. The university’s program continued for twenty-seven years, ending in 1973 when the lease expired. The camp became the Rabideau Conservation Academy and Learning Center in 2010. The Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe sponsored the creation of the camp, which provided young adults and children with opportunities to learn with a focus on job training and higher education. In 2019, Rabideau serves as an educational center for the National Park Service (NPS) and is open to the public. Guided tours are available from May through September. The education building and picnic site can be reserved for meetings or special tours. Camp Rabideau was named a National Historic Landmark on February 17, 2006. It remains one of the best-preserved of the nation||s many CCC camps, with restoration an ongoing project.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/29011783116_7043a278f0_o.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056210,"name":"Education","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/civilian-conservation-corps-camp-rabideau-f-50"},{"alt":"Main Street, Red Lake Falls","author":[{"name":"Donna Myhrer","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/donna-myhrer"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"December 11, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Red Lake County Courthouse Fire, 1909","postbody":"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 ...","searchtext":"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. In 1904 the US federal government purchased a large piece of reservation land from the Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians. This nearly doubled the size of what was then Red Lake County, added to the land surrounding Thief River Falls at the north end of the county, and opened the area to homesteading and settler-colonists. Red Lake Falls, at the southern end of the county, had been acknowledged as the county seat since the county was formed in 1896. After the 1904 expansion, the people of Thief River Falls believed that they would receive enough votes for their city to become the county seat if the matter could be placed on the ballot in a local election. With this goal in mind, Thief River Falls residents circulated a petition in 1905 to put the county seat question to a county-wide vote. The petition, with more than 2,000 signatures, succeeded only in creating further rancor between the residents of Red Lake Falls and Thief River Falls. This led to two years of legal arguments regarding the validity of the county seat removal petition and, ultimately, its theft from the auditor’s safe. The county board, by a three to two margin, refused to place the county seat location question on the ballot from 1905 until 1909. By 1909, after losing a series of court cases over five years, Thief River Falls residents realized that success through the election process wasn||t likely, so city leaders formed an alternate plan to “secede” and start a new county. They knew that a Minnesota state statute allowed the question of a new county to be placed on the ballot by the governor. This gave Thief River Falls’ ambition to become a county seat a good chance to succeed. In a last-ditch effort to persuade area farmers to vote for keeping the county together, the city of Red Lake Falls decided to construct a large, rather extravagant courthouse near downtown to replace the older, rented, wood-frame building. It was believed that farmers were likely to behave frugally and would not spend local taxes to build a second courthouse in another city. The new courthouse was estimated to cost $35,000. The first attempt to finance the building was made when the county board tried to use about $4,000 from the county “road and ditch” fund to excavate the basement for the new building. This failed when the governor ordered the money to be returned to its rightful purpose. Plan B would have created a bond issue to get the money. This also failed. The county board discovered that it could legally float a bond issue to build a new courthouse under only one of two circumstances: a unanimous vote by the county board to approve the bond issue, or if no courthouse currently existed. With county board members divided over where the county seat should be located, the project reached a stalemate. It took a suspicious fire to resolve the issue. No one knows for sure what caused the courthouse fire on Friday evening, April 23, 1909. The old wooden building burned to the ground, but all the furniture and records were suspiciously saved. The newspapers of the day gave conflicting accounts. The Red Lake Falls Gazette and Red Lake Falls Courier blamed a crack in the chimney for allowing the flames to get into the walls. The Thief River Falls News and Thief River Falls Press implied suspicions of foul play without using the word “arson.” The St. Hilaire Spectator and the Plummer Pioneer didn’t place any blame. In 1910 a new courthouse was built with funds from a bond issue. The building was preserved and eventually placed on the National Register of Historic Places in May 1983, but the county itself did not fare so well. In November 1910, voters created Pennington County, its area carved out of part of Red Lake County. Thief River Falls became its county seat.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/MR4.9 RL r21.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/red-lake-county-courthouse-fire-1909"},{"alt":"Front view of the governor’s residence","author":[{"name":"Linda A. Cameron","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/linda-cameron"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"December 09, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Minnesota Governor’s Residence","postbody":"Minnesota’s governors did not have an official residence until 1965, when the daughters of lumber magnate Horace Irvine donated their family home to the state. Over the years, the house on ...","searchtext":"Minnesota’s governors did not have an official residence until 1965, when the daughters of lumber magnate Horace Irvine donated their family home to the state. Over the years, the house on Summit Avenue has provided Minnesota’s First Families with a comfortable home and has served as a ceremonial building for visiting dignitaries and the public alike, though not without controversy. The effort to provide Minnesota’s governors with an official residence began in the 1940s, when the tax-forfeited home of Oliver Crosby, inventor and founder of American Hoist and Derrick, was repeatedly offered to the state. The legislature ultimately refused. Its members believed that the public would resent the governor living in such luxury during the post-World War II housing shortage. Rural legislators especially opposed the idea of an official residence. The Minnesota governor’s residence at 1006 Summit Avenue in St. Paul began as the home of the Horace Irvine family. Irvine purchased the lot in 1910 for $7,000 and hired architect William Channing Whitney to design the approximately 16,000-square-foot Tudor-style house. When completed, the house cost $50,000. The Irvines took up residence in 1912. Following the deaths of their parents, daughters Olivia Irvine Dodge and Clotilde (Coco) Irvine Moles deeded to the state of Minnesota on August 31, 1965. Governor Karl Rolvaag and family moved into the home on October 1. A mad scramble ensued to furnish the home in anticipation of a reception for their first state guest, Crown Prince Harald of Norway, just four days later. Each successive governor’s family has added its own touches to the residence. In 1969, First Lady Iantha LeVander (wife of Governor Harold LeVander) formed a committee of women to raise funds for a sculpture for a Vietnam Memorial Garden on the property. The committee held a competition for the artwork with a budget of no more than $10,000. It awarded the $5,000 prize to Paul Granlund for his sculpture Man-Nam. The finished piece, dedicated on September 27 the following year, remains a prominent feature on the grounds. Governor Wendell Anderson and First Lady Mary Anderson remodeled the third floor into a family kitchen. Gretchen Quie established a First Lady’s portrait gallery in the lower level conference room. Governor Arne Carlson and First Lady Susan Carlson added a Peace Officers Memorial plaque in 1997 in honor of Timothy Bowe, a state trooper killed in the line of duty after leaving the governor’s security staff. Open houses and public tours at the residence have become popular events. The Andersons welcomed 11,000 people at the first open house, held on July 4, 1973. The Quies held drawings with the winners given the opportunity to spend a night at the residence with the governor’s family. The state legislature established the Governor’s Residence Council in 1980 to oversee the maintenance of the residence. The council includes both private citizens and state officials. To assist with raising funds in support of maintaining and furnishing the building, First Lady Gretchen Quie founded the 1006 Summit Avenue Society in 1982. The state-owned property at 1006 Summit Avenue has not escaped controversy. Some Minnesotans have criticized the perceived “lavish lifestyle” of the governors’ families. In 1989, First Lady Lola Perpich went on the defensive by suggesting that the state sell the house and give the proceeds to the poor. In 2001, Governor Jesse Ventura asked the legislature for $4 million to either restore the residence or demolish it to make way for a new residence. The estimated value of the property at that time was $3.5 million. Governor Ventura closed the residence in April the following year after the legislature cut $175,000 from his personal security budget. The residence operates with a full-time residence manager, assistant manager, housekeeper, chef, and groundskeeper, all appointed by the governor. The property is protected by a twenty-four hour security detail. Over the years, the governor’s residence has hosted a wide range of visitors, including aviator Charles Lindbergh, Soviet official Mikhail Gorbachev, the families of Minnesota’s military men and women, and members of Minnesota’s sports teams. The Irvine house celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2012. To mark the event, the 1006 Summit Avenue Society and Governor’s Residence Council co-sponsored public tours throughout the summer.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/3927925904_301c5b723b_c_Sieger.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/minnesota-governor-s-residence"},{"alt":"Virginia and Rainy Lake Lumber Camp 39, about one mile north of Echo Lake, ca. 1916. Visible are the root house (in the foreground, next to the office) and the filling shack. Photograph Collection, Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul","author":[{"name":"William Millikan","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/william-millikan"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"December 04, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"1910","name":"Destruction of Bois Forte Ojibwe Homeland, 1891–1929","postbody":"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 ...","searchtext":"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. On April 7, 1866, the Bois Forte Ojibwe signed a treaty that transferred two million acres of their homeland (between Lake Vermillion and the Canadian border) to the United States. They continued, however, to live on and harvest the natural resources of their original territory. In 1892, Congress extended the provisions of the Timber and Stone Act to Minnesota, allowing any individual to purchase 160 acres of white pine for only $2.50 an acre. Citizens of Tower and Duluth realized that the best tracts would be worth ten times that, and a flood of land speculation swept the area. Wirt Cook, a Duluth timber speculator, organized expeditions to the Bois Forte area to select the best white pine. He and other lumbermen fronted the $400 price for 160 acres. In a scheme later denounced as bribery by the Duluth Evening Herald, they then paid entry men and women $50 to $100 for each timber and stone patent, and within ten years, lumbermen had patented hundreds of claims. But with no means of bringing the timber to market, they remained absentee landlords, and most of the Bois Forte Ojibwe continued to subsist on their ancestral lands. Duluth land agent Charles H. Maginnis realized that he could buy land certificates given to Spanish American War veterans as a bonus for service. He could then sell these soldiers’ additional homesteads (SAHs) cheaply and easily. He carefully selected his pine lands in townships that had already attracted the attention of lumbermen; to the north and northeast of Pelican Lake, he used over 450 SAHs to patent Bois Forte lands. Maginnis sold much of his land to Cook and to timber dealers Turrish and Daniels. In August of 1901 Cook decided to begin harvesting his vast timber holdings north of Virginia. Turrish and Daniels, meanwhile, incorporated the Virginia and Rainy Lake Railroad (V&RL) and began laying track north towards the forest. To process the logs into lumber they also constructed a lumber mill on Silver Lake in Virginia. The mill would turn out 300,000 board feet of pine a day. A year later Cook formed a partnership with St. Croix lumberman William O’Brien. Their Minnesota Land and Construction Company expanded the Virginia mill and started cutting pine on their holdings. In 1905 they incorporated the Virginia and Rainy Lake Company, and the railroad crept into the southern part of the forest. Lumber companies associated with the Frederick Weyerhaeuser cartel were also buying timber lands in the area. Many of the SAHs patented by Maginnis were sold and resold until they were purchased by the Weyerhaeuser cartel. By 1909, Weyerhaeuser companies had bought up nearly a quarter of Maginnis’s Bois Forte SAHs. Lumberman Edward Hines of Chicago then proposed a consolidation of all the timber interests north and northeast of Pelican Lake. He and the Weyerhaeuser companies combined with Cook to expand the Virginia and Rainy Lake Company. Hines provided the cash to double the size of the Virginia mill while Cook and Weyerhaeuser contributed close to 2 million dollars of timber. With the railroad running north of Pelican Lake and the largest white pine lumber mill in the world ready to process over a million board feet of logs a day, the Bois Forte forests were under attack. Although the 1866 treaty had reserved 55,211 acres for the Bois Forte Ojibwe at Nett Lake, as late as 1910, they still occupied 100 percent of their homeland. The Virginia and Rainy Lake Company completed its logging headquarters at Cusson on land originally homesteaded by Jacob Kieffer. Logging Superintendent Frank Gilmore quickly set up the first logging camp on land patented by Maginnis with Missouri militiaman James R. Laurance’s SAH. Edward Hines, now president of the company, decided to clear cut all timber wherever it was logged. Within two years, his crews had cut 18 million board feet. Meanwhile, hunters on the company’s payroll depleted wild game to feed the loggers. By the late 1910s, the Bois Forte land was stripped of timber, and dams built to facilitate logging had destroyed the vast wild rice beds of the Rainy Lake watershed. Gradually, the local Ojibwe moved to the Nett Lake reservation; V&RL continued logging until 1929.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/HD5.1V p2_0.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246059,"name":"Native Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/destruction-bois-forte-ojibwe-homeland-1891-1929"},{"alt":"Halvor H. Quie, ca. 1910.","author":[{"name":"Jeff M. Sauve","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/jeff-m-sauve"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"December 02, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Quie, Halvor Halvorson (1834–1919)","postbody":"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 ...","searchtext":"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. Halvor Quie (originally spelled Kvi) was born on August 11, 1834, in Flå, Buskerud, Norway. In 1845, at age eleven, his family sold its small farm and immigrated to the United States, joining other Norwegian settler-colonists at the Muskego settlement near Milwaukee, Wisconsin. As a farmhand, Quie hired himself out to neighboring New England transplants, learning to speak their tongue and, in due time, to read it. By 1855, the Quies migrated to Wheeling Township, Rice County, Minnesota, acquiring 160 acres on three adjoining homesteads. With his English fluency, Quie served as an interpreter for fellow Norwegians in their newly established community. To further his formal education, Quie enrolled in the Hamline Institute (later Hamline University), then located in Red Wing. Quie’s tenure at Hamline was short lived. When he had studied there for less than a term, his father demanded that he return to the farm to assist with the fall harvest. Back at home and somewhat dejected from leaving school, Quie immersed himself in reading, particularly Harriet Beecher’s Stowe’s national bestseller Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852). The anti-slavery novel moved him and proved to be “an epiphany moment” in his life, according to his grandson, Al Quie (Minnesota’s thirty-fifth governor). Afterward, young Quie viewed himself as an abolitionist and fully supported President Abraham Lincoln’s call to end slavery. When he spotted a recruiting advertisement placed by Captain William Russell in the December 25, 1861, issue of the Northfield Telegraph, Quie answered the call. The twenty-seven-year-old Quie recruited his relatives and neighbors to enlist with him. His cousins Truls (thirty) and Fingal (nineteen) Fingalson, nephew Jens T. Dahle (twenty-two), and friends Arthur A. Flom (twenty-two), Christopher Hanson (twenty-five), and Andrew Lockrem (twenty-five) were mustered in between January 20 and 22, 1862, at thirteen dollars per month. Their basic training took place at Fort Snelling. On May 3, they departed by train for Washington as “Company L” of the First Regiment of United States Sharpshooters. Between the months of June and mid-September 1862, Quie engaged in eleven battles and skirmishes, including the Battle of Hanover Court House, the Battle of Fair Oaks, and the Siege of Richmond. At the Battle of Malvern Hill, Quie suffered sunstroke and narrowly avoided being captured. In his last encounter with the Confederacy, at the Battle of Antietam on September 17, he was shot in the left heel. According to a published family history, “due to unsanitary conditions in the overcrowded wards, gangrene set in” once the bullet was removed. Doctors recommended amputation, but Quie flatly refused to comply. With patience, his foot healed over time. On January 8, 1863, Quie, on crutches, mustered out and returned to Minnesota. Unable to work his farm as a result of his wound, Quie was hired in the fall by the local school board to teach a term in District Number 43. The following spring, Quie, who no longer needed crutches, returned to farming. On December 13, 1864, he married neighbor Anne Finseth. Together they had seven children. By October 1874, Quie, the Reverend Bernt J. Muus, and other local Norwegian Americans sought to establish a Christian secondary school with the prospect of it becoming a college one day. St. Olaf’s School, founded on November 6, opened in Northfield on January 8, 1875, with thirty-seven students enrolled. In the years to come, Quie’s continued financial contributions helped develop St. Olaf College (as it became known in 1889) into a growing and respected institution. He also served on the college’s Board of Trustees from 1896 to 1903. Late in life, Quie’s eyesight and hearing failed, so he retired from farming. Wishing to be released from worldly cares and possessions, Quie divided his property among his children, save only his military pension. He died on September 14, 1919, and was buried three days later at Valley Grove Lutheran Church in Nerstrand, Minnesota. Draped over his wood coffin was the American flag.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Halvor H. Quie ca. 1910.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056210,"name":"Education","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246089,"name":"Religion and Belief","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/quie-halvor-halvorson-1834-1919"},{"alt":"A worker pours salt on a barberry bush in Minnesota, ca. 1925. Applying salt to kill a bush’s roots was the main method of destroying them before the widespread use of herbicides in the 1950s.","author":[{"name":"Paul D. Peterson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/paul-d-peterson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"November 25, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Barberry Eradication Program, 1918–1980","postbody":"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 ...","searchtext":"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. The common barberry is an introduced plant species that was once grown as a popular ornamental bush throughout the northern half of the US. It was a problem because of its association with stem rust disease, the most serious threat to wheat. Stem rust disease is caused by a microscopic fungus that lives part of its life on the barberry bush before infecting wheat. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, stem rust outbreaks were common in the north-central US. This was especially problematic for Minnesota, where large-scale wheat farming in the western part of the state had led to the development of the world’s leading flour milling industry, in Minneapolis. The city’s flour mills depended on a consistent supply of wheat that was increasingly threatened by stem rust disease. A huge stem rust epidemic in 1916 and unprecedented wheat losses brought calls for action. Within a year, the United States had entered World War I, and with the 1916 wheat losses so striking, concerns arose over possible food shortages during wartime. This “war emergency” atmosphere drove efforts to protect American food production, with wheat a top priority. Aware of the barberry’s connection to these devastating wheat losses, proponents of eradication successfully advocated for the total removal of the bush via compulsory laws throughout the northern wheat-growing region of the US. Elvin Charles Stakman, the world’s leading authority on stem rust disease and a professor at the University of Minnesota, played the leading role in pushing for barberry eradication. The Barberry Eradication Program officially began in Minnesota on March 19, 1918, with the passage of Legislative Order No. 28, which condemned the bush and called for its destruction. The state eradication headquarters was located at the University of Minnesota Farm in St. Paul. Wartime emotions ran high, and eradication authorities stressed the patriotic duty of all citizens to help locate and destroy barberry. They sent out informational circulars, posters, and barberry specimens to public institutions, county agricultural agents, local associations, and clubs as well as newspapers. Even school children were seen as vital assets in the campaign. Instructional materials went out to all schools and local scout troops. This novel public campaign originated in Minnesota before spreading out to the other participating states. Although the public paid an important role in the eradication effort over the first couple of decades, over time, paid field crews took over the job of locating and removing bushes. This was especially the case during the Great Depression of the early 1930s. With so many people out of work, large-scale government work relief programs provided employment opportunities. The Barberry Eradication Program took advantage of this opportunity and hired large crews. Not surprisingly, with the expanded effort, this was the period of time when most barberry bushes were located and destroyed. In 1979, the United States Department of Agriculture ended the cooperative Barberry Eradication Program in Minnesota. By that date, more than one million barberry bushes had been destroyed on over 9,000 properties from eighty-seven counties in the state. Perhaps the largest effort ever to remove an introduced plant species, the Barberry Eradication Program had helped reduce stem rust of wheat to a minor problem in the United States.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Image 9.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246091,"name":"Agriculture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/barberry-eradication-program-1918-1980"},{"alt":"A promotional item produced by Hamm’s Brewing Company ca. 1950. This clock shows a cabin scene that embodies the essence of Hamm’s early advertising campaign around the “cool refreshment of Minnesota’s vacationland.”","author":[{"name":"Alex Tieberg","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/alex-tieberg"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"November 20, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Theodore Hamm Brewing Company","postbody":"The Theodore Hamm Brewing Company, one of Minnesota’s most iconic breweries, began brewing beer in about 1865 as Excelsior Brewery in St. Paul. Hamm’s was brewed in Minnesota for well over ...","searchtext":"The Theodore Hamm Brewing Company, one of Minnesota’s most iconic breweries, began brewing beer in about 1865 as Excelsior Brewery in St. Paul. Hamm’s was brewed in Minnesota for well over a century, and its brief national profile was bolstered by both its iconic animated bear and its Minnesota-centric slogan: “From the land of sky-blue waters.” Theodore Hamm acquired the Pittsburgh Brewery in St. Paul from Andrew Keller around 1865. The complex of buildings, which he renamed Excelsior Brewery, stood on the bluffs above the Phelan Creek Valley, near Swede Hollow. Excelsior grew over the next twenty years to become the second largest brewery in the state in 1886. As the brewery’s output expanded beyond its existing facilities, Theodore Hamm hired architect August Maritzen to build a large complex of brewery buildings. Maritzen’s design was ornate and decorative, and the facilities opened to the public in September of 1894. The Theodore Hamm Brewing Company was officially incorporated a few years later, in 1896. Jacob Schmidt, who had known Theodore Hamm in Baden, Germany, was an early brewmaster at Hamm’s before starting his own competing brewery in St. Paul. Theodore Hamm died in 1903, leaving his son William and grandson William Jr. to run the brewery. Hamm’s relatives managed the brewery for a sizeable portion of its lifetime—including the Prohibition era, which decimated the Minnesota brewing industry. In 1919, before Prohibition, there were sixty breweries in Minnesota. In 1933, there were only six, Hamm’s included. By then its business leaders had become public figures, and William Jr. was kidnapped by members of the Barker–Karpis gang in 1933. He was returned safely after a $100,000 ransom was paid, but no one from the Barker–Karpis gang was ever charged with a crime. After Prohibition and World War II, Hamm’s was well positioned to expand. In 1945 it hired Campbell-Mithun, a Minneapolis-based advertising agency, to create a marketing campaign that would build a national profile. Meanwhile, the company acquired breweries throughout the United States that could distribute their beer in different markets. In 1953, Hamm’s purchased the Rainier Brewery in San Francisco, followed by Acme in Los Angeles, Gunther in Baltimore, and Gulf Brewing Company in Houston. The Hamm’s bear made his first appearance in a 1953 television commercial. These commercials often featured the klutzy animated bear in the woods or playing a sport with other woodland creatures. A jingle, beginning “From the land of sky-blue waters/From the land of pines, lofty balsams/Comes the beer refreshing/Hamm’s, the beer refreshing,” was played to the beat of the Hamm’s bear stomping on the ground or rolling a log down the river. While it may seem inappropriate for an animated character to advertise an alcoholic beverage, the commercials were popular among viewers. In 1959, a Hamm’s commercial was selected as one of the top ten advertisements by a marketing organization, and the bear appeared on various products and advertisements for the brewery. Even though Hamm’s expanded its market with new national breweries and had a successful marketing campaign with a recognizable character, the brewery struggled to operate nationwide. In 1968, Hamm’s was acquired by Heublein, a food and beverage corporation in Connecticut. In 1975, Heublein sold Hamm’s to Olympia Brewing, which was soon acquired by Pabst. Pabst, in exchange for a brewery in Tampa, then sold the St. Paul facility to Stroh’s in 1984. Hamm’s production was moved to Milwaukee, and the St. Paul facility produced Stroh’s until 1997, when it was closed for good. In 1999, Pabst transferred the Hamm’s trademark to Miller, who has continued to market the beer through the 2010s. Hamm’s has grown as a Miller brand because of its low price and unique marketing towards loyal fans—sometimes referred to as “Hammpions.” Even though the Hamm’s bear has long been absent from advertisements, the character is still strongly associated with the label and his depiction on brewing memorabilia is sought after by collectors. The brewery facilities in Saint Paul—abandoned and dilapidated for many years—are partially owned in 2019 by a real estate developing company. They house a microbrewery, a distillery, and a trapeze facility, among other businesses.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/1996.372.1.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/theodore-hamm-brewing-company"},{"alt":"gadier General Martinus Stenseth, ca. 1950.","author":[{"name":"Solveig Kitchell","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/solveig-kitchell"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"November 18, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Stenseth, Martinus, 1890–1979","postbody":"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 ...","searchtext":"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. Martinus Stenseth was born to Karl H. and Karoline Amalie Stenseth, Norwegian immigrant farmers, in Norman County in 1890. His first eight years of school were at District 37 Heiberg School. His first job was in Twin Valley||s thriving lumber industry as a log driver, riding logs down the Wild Rice River to Ada. He often fell into the river but soon became adept at staying on the logs. Childhood illnesses interrupted Stenseth’s schooling. When he became sick, his parents sent him to the McFadden School of Physical Culture in Chicago to build up his strength and improve his health. He returned to Minnesota in 1915 to teach physical education at the Northwest School of Agriculture in Crookston. He joined the National Guard in 1916, and the federal government called his unit into service on the Mexican border later that year. Following officer training, Stenseth transferred to the Air Corps. He studied at Ohio State and Pittsburgh Universities, and had flight training in France. During the war he became one of two men from Minnesota to earn the title “Flying Ace” for shooting down eight enemy planes. His assignments after World War I took him to Poland, the Philippines, and Latvia. When World War II began, the army transferred Stenseth, by now elevated to the rank of lieutenant colonel, to Las Vegas. There, he developed the Las Vegas Army Gunnery School and founded and commanded Nellis Air Force Base in 1941. In part for these accomplishments, he received a promotion to full colonel in January 1942. Following a second promotion, this time to Brigadier General, the following April, Stenseth commanded other gunnery schools. A transfer took him to a base in Iceland in 1945, where he served as commanding general. He took on additional posts in Nebraska and Texas before retiring in June 1950. During his forty-two years of service, Stenseth earned the Distinguished Service Cross with an oak leaf cluster and the Silver Star. The army dedicated the Operations Building at the Air Warfare Center on Nellis Air Force Base to him in 1980. He is the only soldier from the Twin Valley area to attain such advanced military status. Stenseth never broke his connection to small town life. He often flew his small plane home to Twin Valley to attend family functions, landing in a pasture near town. He died on June 23, 1979 in Las Vegas, Nevada, and was buried in Twin Valley.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Stenseth_find_a_grave.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/stenseth-martinus-1890-1979"},{"alt":"Ernest Oberholtzer, 1940","author":[{"name":"Christopher Hommerding","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/christopher-hommerding"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"November 13, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"1930","name":"Oberholtzer, Ernest (1884–1977)","postbody":"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 ...","searchtext":"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 Voyageurs National Park and the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. Ernest Carl Oberholtzer was born in February of 1884 in Davenport, Iowa. His parents divorced when he was five years old, and he was raised by his mother and maternal grandparents in an upper middle-class home in Davenport. As a child, Oberholtzer was interested in the outdoors, reading, and playing the violin. He began playing violin at eleven and continued to play throughout his life. At seventeen, Oberholtzer contracted rheumatic fever, which left him with a weakened heart for many years. The condition shaped how he approached his future, embracing physical endeavors and nature as healthy and restorative. In the fall of 1903, Oberholtzer began college at Harvard. He earned a bachelor’s degree in 1907 but could not decide what to do next. As a result, he spent the next few years alternating between trips to Europe and canoe trips into the Minnesotan and Canadian wilderness. In the summer of 1909, Oberholtzer had his so-called “3,000-mile summer.” His goal was to travel the major canoe routes of the Rainy Lake watershed. With the expert help of an Ojibwe man named Dedaabaswewidang (He Who Echoes Far Off, also known as Billy Magee), Oberholtzer did just that. As a result, Oberholtzer became an authority on the Quetico-Superior region. In 1912, Oberholtzer and Magee went on a second major canoe trip, this time to northern Canada and the subarctic Barrens. The two men canoed 2,000 miles through northern Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and the Northwest Territories on their way to Hudson’s Bay. The area was home to a variety of Indigenous peoples, including Ojibwe, Cree, Dene, and Inuit groups, but the route was not well known to whites. Like many white people at the time, Oberholtzer believed (incorrectly) that Indigenous people were disappearing just as the wilderness was disappearing. This led him to try to be an amateur anthropologist and collect the stories of Ojibwe people. After his 1912 trip, he returned to Rainy Lake to undertake this work. Although unable to make a living as an anthropologist, he continued to learn from the Ojibwe people living in the Rainy Lake area throughout his life. In 1915, Oberholtzer became part of a business venture in the Rainy Lake area called Deer Island, Incorporated. The business sought to raise crops and wild animals and provide campgrounds and guiding services to tourists. It lasted only seven years. When it dissolved in 1922, Oberholtzer became owner of some of the Rainy Lake islands the business had owned. One of these, called Mallard Island, was where, over the next three decades, Oberholtzer would construct a series of cabins for himself, his mother, and guests. Despite having close platonic relationships with men and women, Oberholtzer never married. When asked why, he reportedly replied that he was “born in the wilderness” and preferred to be self-sufficient. Some historians believe that, if he were alive today, he might identify somewhere on the spectrum of queer identities—as possibly gay, bisexual, or asexual. Mallard Island and the Rainy Lake Watershed were threatened in 1925, when lumber baron Edward Wellington Backus proposed building seven new dams at the western end of the lake. If built, the dams would have raised the water level, flooding Mallard Island and much of the watershed shoreline. Oberholtzer and others formed the Quetico–Superior Council to oppose the dams. Oberholtzer was named president of the council and lobbied the federal government to protect the watershed. Many individuals lent their support, including Sewell Tyng, a fellow Harvard graduate, and Frances Andrews. Fellow conservationist Sigurd Olson also aided the effort. After several years of difficult work, Herbert Hoover signed the Shipstead-Newton-Nolan Act into law in 1930. The act prevented logging and the alteration of lake levels on federal land in the Rainy Lake watershed. This law effectively stopped Backus from building his dams. Oberholtzer continued to live on or near Mallard Island until 1973, when he entered a nursing home. In the latter years of his life, parts of the watershed became well-known Minnesota Wilderness areas. The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness was created in 1964, and Voyageurs National Park was established in 1975. In 1977, Oberholtzer died at the age of ninety-three. Mallard Island and many of Oberholtzer’s possessions are preserved by the Oberholtzer Foundation.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/MNopedia/MNopedia%202026/Assorted%20rescans/10752169.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/oberholtzer-ernest-1884-1977"},{"alt":"Map of the Interstate 94 corridor, 1965. From Alan A. Altshuler’s The City Planning Process: A Political Analysis (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1965). Used with the permission of Cornell University Press.","author":[{"name":"Tom Beer","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/tom-beer"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"November 12, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Neighborhood Resistance to I-94, 1953–1965","postbody":"In the 1950s, planned construction of Interstate Highway 94 (I-94) threatened to fracture four Twin Cities neighborhoods: Rondo, Prospect Park, Merriam Park, and Seward. Although each ...","searchtext":"In the 1950s, planned construction of Interstate Highway 94 (I-94) threatened to fracture four Twin Cities neighborhoods: Rondo, Prospect Park, Merriam Park, and Seward. Although each community responded differently and achieved different results, all were models of persistence and resistance. In 1920, the St. Paul city engineer mapped the St. Anthony Avenue corridor, which cut into four neighborhoods, as a potential path for a road linking Minneapolis and St. Paul. By 1940, with civic organizations’ endorsements, the Minnesota Department of Highways (MDH) approved this route with a river crossing at Twenty-Sixth Street in Minneapolis. In 1956, Federal Interstate Highway Act funds enabled the MDH to acquire land and begin construction. When construction began, Twin Cities newspapers provided freeway news to unaware local residents. Urban neighborhoods that pushed back faced powerful forces—especially MDH, which had a reputation for effective planning and timely building. In 1959 state legislation stripped localities of veto power over highway projects, a blow to neighborhoods. With construction already started, the four affected neighborhoods challenged officials to negotiate freeway changes. The largest African American neighborhood in St. Paul was Rondo. Vibrant, racially integrated, and bounded by Rice Street, Lexington, University and Selby Avenues, it supported home ownership and local businesses. In 1953, neighbors learned their elementary school would fall to the freeway. Reverend Floyd Massey (representing Pilgrim Baptist Church) and Timothy Howard, spokesmen for the Rondo–St. Anthony Improvement Association, negotiated with city and state officials to block an elevated freeway section between Western and Lexington Avenues. Nevertheless, 600 Rondo families, many of them working class, lost their homes. Leaders tried to convince city officials to support a fair housing ordinance but failed. Lack of political clout, along with racial and class bias, left Rondo vulnerable. Five miles to the west, Prospect Park in Minneapolis was also in the freeway’s path. MDH plans threatened 100 Prospect Park homes, Glendale Housing project, and Luxton Park. Alerted in 1956, residents supported a freeway route with a crossing into Minneapolis at Twenty-Sixth Street. Leader Norma Olson, middle-class volunteers Ann Munt, Jere Purple, and their neighbors gained access to the governor. The Prospect Park–East River Road Association lobbied to divert the freeway to the railroad spur at Twenty-Sixth Street, but University Avenue and downtown Minneapolis businesses prevailed with the more direct MDH route through Prospect Park that crossed the river at Dartmouth Avenue. Some route adjustments saved the housing project and park, but the neighborhood was cut in two. Between Rondo and Prospect Park lay Merriam Park. Professional, white, middle-class, and Catholic, residents had formed the Merriam Park Residential Association (MPRA) in 1959. Under the leadership of Monsignor Francis Gilligan and Doug Kelm, the MPRA mobilized a sustained and effective pressure campaign. With connections to the Archdiocese and elected officials, the MPRA challenged city, state, and federal highway bureaucrats with insider and outsider tactics, including direct action and lobbying, to block an elevated freeway between Snelling and Cleveland Avenues and contest exits at Prior and Cretin Avenues. Testifying with other community organizations at a hearing in 1960, the MPRA held back its support for the Twenty-Sixth Street river crossing, demanding its own freeway design changes be met first. Seward in South Minneapolis lay across the river from Prospect Park. In 1959, the city proposed a comprehensive plan for Seward that led the Seward Elementary PTA to lobby for a new Seward school, neighborhood park, and school playground. The coming freeway cut off nearby Riverside Park to residents and students. Clergy, teachers, and residents challenged plans to build a large supermarket and take homes on Franklin Avenue. By 1965, the Seward Neighborhood Group (SNG), successor to the PTA, gained Matthews Park, a new playground and new Seward Elementary school. The SNG settled for senior housing and smaller businesses along Franklin Avenue, but 35 percent of neighborhood was cleared by renewal during the freeway fight. The struggles of each of the four neighborhoods benefited others. In the coming decades, community organizations and coalitions stopped freeway expansions in St. Paul and Northeast Minneapolis. Environmental laws passed in 1969 gave new tools of resistance to residents. While Rondo suffered grievous losses, its struggle foreshadowed 1969 fair housing laws. Although Prospect Park’s lobbying fell short, it found allies for future freeway fights. Merriam Park’s creativity and engagement of powerful politicians and institutions were emulated, and Seward’s efforts highlighted community development and resources needed by an aging neighborhood.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Book HT 168 M5 A8 1965 page 47.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056216,"name":"African Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246079,"name":"Cities and Towns","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246053,"name":"Transportation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/neighborhood-resistance-i-94-1953-1965"},{"alt":"Henry G. Leathers House","author":[{"name":"Anoka County Historical Society","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/anoka-county-historical-society"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"November 06, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Henry G. Leathers House","postbody":"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 ...","searchtext":"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. Henry G. Leathers was born on December 11, 1858, in Oak Grove Township, and opened a dry goods store there in 1882. He sold everything from soup to blasting powder, and even peddled whiskey from a barrel in the basement. He traded firewood in exchange for his merchandise and extended credit to his neighbors until they could harvest and sell their crops. On September 19, 1888, he married Rose Barden. Over the next four decades, Henry served the community in numerous roles: as a registered pharmacist, a school board member, the president of the Commercial Club, a charter member of the Modern Woodmen and Workmen’s (MWA) Lodge, the president of the St. Francis Starch Company, and the manager of the Creamery and Canning Company. The construction of St. Francis’ Methodist Church was due, in large part, to his and his family’s efforts. Beginning in 1904, Henry served as the town’s postmaster. He became the community’s first car dealer in 1918, selling both Fords and gasoline from an open tank in the front yard of his home. Henry and Rose had two children, Robert and Blanche, who remained in the St. Francis community after becoming adults. After Henry died, in 1932, Robert took over from his father as postmaster and remained in that position until 1969. The rear of the house was the first section constructed in about 1883 and consists of a two-story rectangular building with an attached one story addition. Originally, this served as both a residence for the family as well as a store where they conducted their business. In 1890, the family moved the structure closer to the Rum River and added a section to its front west side. This front façade, made up of three bays and a two-and-a-half-story conical tower, is flanked by gabled two-and-a-half-story bays. Each of the front gables features elaborate fretwork, and a colonnaded veranda adds a classical element. Pilaster strips appear at each corner of the house. The interior contains a front entrance, two parlors, and a dining room on the first floor, as well as two bedrooms, a bath, and a formal landing make up the second floor. As of 2019, the home’s turn-of-the-century woodwork and hardware remain intact. Editor’s note: This article contains public-domain text adapted from a National Register of Historic Places nomination form.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/H._G._Leathers_House.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/henry-g-leathers-house"},{"alt":"John’s Bar and Funhouse (2500 Marshall Street Northeast, Minneapolis), April 2, 1953. Photograph by the Minneapolis Star Tribune.","author":[{"name":"Paul Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/paul-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"November 04, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"John’s Bar and Funhouse Prostitution Scandal, 1952–1956","postbody":"In early 1953 Minnesota’s new US Attorney, George MacKinnon, began an attack on organized interstate prostitution in the Upper Midwest, centered in Minnesota on John’s Bar and Funhouse in ...","searchtext":"In early 1953 Minnesota’s new US Attorney, George MacKinnon, began an attack on organized interstate prostitution in the Upper Midwest, centered in Minnesota on John’s Bar and Funhouse in Northeast Minneapolis. When the campaign ended in mid-1956, John’s Bar had lost its license, and 110 men and women had been convicted of violating the Mann Act. In December 1951 the FBI announced a campaign against organized interstate prostitution in the Upper Midwest. When George MacKinnon took over as US Attorney for Minnesota in 1953, he took aim at what he saw as a prostitution enterprise that stretched from Chicago to Sioux Falls and beyond. Its nexus was a Northeast Minneapolis saloon called John’s Bar and Funhouse, operated by brothers Frank and John Gawron. On August 13, 1952, Minneapolis police raided a house at 428 Groveland Avenue, Minneapolis, and arrested three young sex workers: Darlene Morrison, Phyllis Bennett, and Gloria Jordell. These three—convicted of morals offenses—would soon prove key figures in taking down John’s Bar. The February 1953 federal grand jury brought a host of indictments against people associated with John’s Bar. The first to stand trial were Minneapolis men Austin “Ozzie” Hatch and Harry Long, on March 31. Prostitution itself was and is a crime under state, not federal, law. But the Mann Act (1910) made taking a woman across state lines, or arranging to do so for immoral purposes, a federal offense. The star witnesses were Jordell and Bennet, who testified that the two men—their pimps—had arranged in Minneapolis for them to be prostituted in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. The jury believed them and the men were convicted in federal district court in Minneapolis. Testimony in that case persuaded three more to plead guilty. They were Daisy “Dee” Wheeler, owner of a profitable (reportedly $250,000 a year) brothel in Chicago; Frances Elliot, its business manager; and John Gawron, who admitted to managing the Minneapolis hub of the operation. Judge Gunnar Nordbye sentenced Wheeler to four years in prison, Elliot to three, and Gawron to two-and-a-half. Blows had now been struck against the LaCrosse, Chicago, and Minneapolis outposts. Next came Sioux Falls. The defendants were three men from Minneapolis, Clifford Moore, Frank Batsell, and George Sutton, and a woman from Sioux Falls, Frances Cwach. Jordell was the star witness again. She testified that the men had arranged and paid for her to travel to Sioux Falls as a temporary worker in Cwach’s brothel, known as Frances Rooms. The defendants all acknowledged their involvement in the sex trade. Cwach admitted that she had run her brothel in Sioux Falls without problem from 1939 to 1952. But they all testified that Jordell had done everything on her own. The jury believed the prosecution, and all were sent to prison. Frank Batsell then faced his second trial in the spring of 1953, this time for driving Gloria Jordell from Minneapolis to Duluth. No acts of prostitution took place; when they got to Duluth they found the situation “too hot” and returned to Minneapolis. But on the way to Duluth they had encountered bad roads, so Batsell detoured briefly into Wisconsin; he crossed state lines. That was enough to constitute a crime under the Mann Act, and Batsell was convicted again. Next up was Rudolph Mast. Jordell and Morrison testified that Mast had picked them up at the Saddle Bar on Hennepin Avenue in Minneapolis and told them they could make good money in Superior, Wisconsin. He arranged, so they said, for them to travel to Superior and lodge in a hotel, and gave them the address of Sally’s Place, a brothel in Superior. What’s more, they said, Mast promised them protection—he was a Superior police officer. Once again, no acts of prostitution took place; there was “nothing doing” in the port city. Mast, for his part, said that he had taken the women to Superior to get them honest work at Sally’s Place, which he had no idea was a brothel. The jury did not believe him, and he got eighteen months in prison. With Mast, MacKinnon and his prosecutor, Alex Dim, had secured over twenty convictions and guilty pleas, resulting in over fifty years of prison terms in a span of nine months. The owners of the brothels in Sioux Falls and Chicago, and their Minneapolis middleman, all went to prison. The prosecutions continued, and by mid-1956 110 men and women had been convicted, and John’s Bar lost its liquor license.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/MH5.9 MP3.1J r12.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246060,"name":"Crime and Punishment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/john-s-bar-and-funhouse-prostitution-scandal-1952-1956"},{"alt":"United States Steel’s Extaca plant, 1960. The Oliver Mining Division of USS built the Extaca plant to accompany the Pilotac plant in the development of feasible taconite processing methods.","author":[{"name":"Alex Tieberg","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/alex-tieberg"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"October 30, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Commercialization of Taconite","postbody":"Though taconite was identified as an iron-bearing rock on the Iron Ranges of northern Minnesota long before the 1950s, it wasn’t until then that it was extracted, processed, and shipped to ...","searchtext":"Though taconite was identified as an iron-bearing rock on the Iron Ranges of northern Minnesota long before the 1950s, it wasn’t until then that it was extracted, processed, and shipped to steel mills on the Great Lakes. As natural ore reserves were diminished, taconite became an alternative source of iron that allowed the Iron Range to continue mining operations in a changing global economy. The word taconite is derived from the Taconic Mountains of New England, with “taconic” coming from an Eastern Algonquian language—probably Mohican or Lenape. Newton Horace Winchell, Minnesota’s state geologist, created the name in 1892 after he noticed that the rocks in New England looked like the rocks plentiful throughout the Iron Range in Minnesota. The geological structure of taconite, however, is different from the rocks of the Taconics. Taconite has a very low iron content—at best, only 32.5 percent of the rock is iron ore. Since there were many accessible deposits of natural ore with iron contents closer to 60 percent of the rock, taconite was at first passed over in favor of ore that could be shipped directly to smelters without processing. Taconite was officially documented on the Mesabi Iron Range years before mineable natural ore was found near Mountain Iron. In 1870, prospectors Christian Wieland and Peter Mitchell traveled to the Mesabi Range and found a massive deposit of taconite near current-day Babbitt. They bought the land and incorporated the Mesaba Iron Company in 1882. After the Merritt brothers began mining natural ore on other parts of the Mesabi, Mesaba Iron faded into obscurity until the Mesabi Syndicate was formed in 1915. A key member of the Mesabi Syndicate was Edward W. Davis—a researcher at the University of Minnesota’s Mines Experiment Station, which was founded in 1914. Researchers at the Minnesota Experiment Station found that the iron in taconite can be accessed by grinding the rock into fine particles and then running them through magnets to separate the iron from the waste rock. Using this information, Davis and the Mesabi Syndicate made an existing camp, the Sulphur Camp, as their headquarters. The Syndicate mined the taconite and tested it to see if it could consolidate the iron into pieces suitable for smelting. The first product they created was called sinter, which was a rock-like product that had higher iron content than raw taconite. This research led to the incorporation of the Mesabi Iron Company in 1919, which opened the first commercial taconite facility on the Iron Range. The Mesabi Iron Company was largely unsuccessful. The sinter product couldn’t compete with the natural ore mined elsewhere on the Mesabi Range. In 1924, only two years after shipping its first load of sinter, the Mesabi Iron Company suspended mining. The cost of processing the ore was too high and their main customer—the Ford Motor Company—was dissatisfied with the low-iron product. In the years that followed, heightened production for the war effort depleted natural ore reserves. The Mines Experiment Station continued to refine the process for taconite production, introducing methods that reduced lost iron in waste rock. As taconite became a viable replacement for natural ore mining, advocates throughout the state pushed for favorable taxation for taconite mining. In 1964, the Minnesota Legislature passed a bill and a statewide referendum was approved, placing the taconite amendment into the Minnesota Constitution. The first taconite mine was run by the Reserve Mining Company, which shipped its first load in 1955. The pit was located near Babbitt, and the processing facilities were on Lake Superior. Reserve Mining faced controversy when fishermen and conservationists questioned whether depositing tailings into Lake Superior was healthy for fish and humans. This led to a lawsuit that gave the new Environmental Protection Agency regulatory powers in the 1970s. In the 1980s, the steel industry slowed its production due to global competition. As a result, taconite plants on the Mesabi Range idled, plants were sold to competitors, and some closed for good. Even with a changing steel industry, however, taconite continued to play a major role in sustaining the Iron Range economy.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/HD3.27 p16.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/commercialization-taconite"},{"alt":"placeholder","author":[{"name":"Minnesota Historical Society","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/minnesota-historical-society"}],"categoryTag":[],"date":"October 29, 2019","eraTag":[],"keydate":"","name":"January 28, 1987","postbody":"Minnesota Governor Rudy Perpich files a lawsuit against the US Department of Defense arguing against the deployment of Minnesota National Guard troops for |||training exercises||| in Honduras ...","searchtext":"Minnesota Governor Rudy Perpich files a lawsuit against the US Department of Defense arguing against the deployment of Minnesota National Guard troops for |||training exercises||| in Honduras during peacetime. On June 11, 1990, the US Supreme Court rules against Perpich and asserts the federal government||s constitutional right to deploy state national guard troops without the governor||s consent or the declaration of a national emergency.","src":"https://23704355.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/23704355/MNOpedia_theme_2025/Images/placeholder-img.svg","topicsTag":[],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/january-28-1987"},{"alt":"Anoka’s Jackson Hotel, built in the 1870s and then rebuilt by Charles G. Jackson in 1884 after a fire. Photo by Wikimedia Commons user McGhiever, July 2, 2013.","author":[{"name":"Anoka County Historical Society","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/anoka-county-historical-society"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"October 28, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Jackson Hotel","postbody":"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 ...","searchtext":"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. Swedish immigrant Charles G. Jackson arrived in the United States in 1866 and settled in Michigan. Soon afterward he moved to St. Paul, Minnesota, where he married Lettie Everson in 1876. A year later, he and Lettie relocated to Anoka and bought the Anoka House—the city’s oldest hotel. It quickly became popular with loggers and other laborers working in and around Anoka County. As Anoka industrialized, the hotel attracted new guests, including entrepreneurs, entertainers, and tourists. A fire destroyed Jackson’s original hotel along with several adjacent buildings on August 16, 1884. Within a month, a new hotel rose from the ashes and was fully completed by the year’s end. It is this second structure, bearing his name etched near the building’s peak, which remains standing in the twenty-first century. During the reconstruction, Jackson added a two-story brick barn to the property. In 1885, he built a two-story brick addition to the east of the original section and then, in 1888, a three-story addition to the west. The renovated basement extended under the center and east sections of the building. In 1896, Jackson and his eldest son and manager, J. F. Jackson, made further upgrades to the hotel by adding a sewer line that ran from the hotel to the Rum River “in order to provide every sanitary convenience.” They removed bathrooms from the lobby to make for a larger and more pleasant area and added new toilets and baths to the basement. By 1904, they had built a slightly larger, matching addition on the east side of the building that featured private bathrooms. By this point, the three sections facing Jackson Street were nearly symmetrical, with small differences in dimensions and patterns. The bay windows were capped by two identical copper-topped cupolas. For decades, the Jackson Hotel stood at the heart of Anoka’s commercial district as a vital part of Anoka’s ability to host farmers, loggers, traveling salesmen, campaigning politicians, itinerant photographers, entertainers, and tourists. Under the management of the Jackson family, the hotel earned a reputation as the leading hotel in the city and one of the best in Minnesota. Its staff provided fine cuisine and hospitality, adopting the motto, “Nothing is too good for our guests.” The Jackson Hotel attracted weekend tourists to Anoka as well as civic and business groups from the greater Twin City metro area, who used it as a banquet facility and small convention center. According to a family memory, the dining room could seat up to 200 people for dinner. Beyond hotel services, the Jackson also featured a cigar store, pool and billiard tables, a waiting room for ladies, a smoking room, and a confectionary. In 1894, an optician from Minneapolis set up his practice in the Jackson. After operating for ninety years, the Jackson Hotel was sold in 1975 to a private developer. Afterward, several rooms were converted into apartments for year-around residents. On December 8, 1978, the building was added to the National Register of Historic Places. Editor’s note: This article contains public-domain text adapted from a National Register of Historic Places nomination file.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/800px-Jackson_Hotel_Wikimedia.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246079,"name":"Cities and Towns","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/jackson-hotel"},{"alt":"Aging bus operated by Twin City Lines, ca. 1960s. Photo by the St. Paul Pioneer Press used with permission.","author":[{"name":"Steven Dornfeld","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/steven-dornfeld"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"October 23, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Twin City Lines Strike, 1969","postbody":"In 1969, members of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1005 called a strike against Twin City Lines (TCL), the metropolitan area’s largest privately owned bus company. Most union members and ...","searchtext":"In 1969, members of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1005 called a strike against Twin City Lines (TCL), the metropolitan area’s largest privately owned bus company. Most union members and patrons probably didn’t realize it at the time, but that strike would prove to be a critical turning point for Twin Cities public transit. It would provide the opportunity for public acquisition of the company and dramatic service improvements. In the late 1960s, TCL was on a downward slide. It was the victim of an aging fleet, increasing fares, and declining ridership. The strike came at the start of the 1969 Christmas shopping season, when the two downtowns still were centers of retailing. As the twenty-five-day strike dragged on, Governor Harold LeVander came under increasing pressure from downtown retailers to intervene. For years, the forces had been building for public ownership of the bus company. Its owners recognized that there were more lucrative investments than transit. Union leaders thought a public body would be easier to negotiate with than TCL’s owners. Downtown retailers and employers were desperate for a reliable transit system to serve their employees and customers. And then, Congress provided an additional incentive. In 1964, it passed legislation authorizing $375 million in grants for mass transportation. Disenchantment with the region’s bus service had been building for years. After multiple failures, transit advocates in 1967 secured legislation creating a nine-member Metropolitan Transit Commission (MTC). The legislation granted the commission broad powers to acquire and improve existing transit facilities. But the measure may have had an additional supporter behind the scenes—the owners of Minnesota Enterprises Inc. (MEI), the bus company’s corporate parent. They had lost interest in running the struggling bus company. And who else would buy it other than a public entity? While the MTC attempted negotiations with MEI, the agency returned to the legislature in 1969 seeking authority to acquire the bus company through “quick-take” condemnation. This process would allow the agency to take control of the bus system as soon as a court-appointed panel set the price, even if the owners appealed that amount in the courts. While MEI likely opposed the idea, the condemnation provision was enacted into law. While pursuing condemnation powers, the MTC also opposed the company’s request from the state Public Service Commission (PSC) for a 5-cent increase in TCL’s 25-cent bus fare. The company had proposed the increase in December 1968. The MTC argued that the bus company already was making a “reasonable profit.” They also argued that TCL was diverting transit revenues to its corporate parent and negatively affecting its financial results. After twenty-seven days of hearings, the PSC granted the nickel fare increase on October 31, 1969. But the commission also criticized the company’s accounting and financial practices. Meanwhile, the bus company and its union had been pressing up against an October 31 deadline—the expiration of their contract. The union sought an immediate salary increase of 51 cents an hour, raising the pay of drivers to four dollars an hour and mechanics to $4.16 an hour. The parties failed to reach agreement, and the union went on strike November 17. On December 11, LeVander summoned the parties to “find out why the strike has not been settled…” During a marathon meeting, David Durenberger, LeVander’s top aide, shuttled back and forth between the company, union, and MTC. Late in the night, the company agreed to an 11-cent hourly raise. The MTC agreed to condemn TCL and to provide another 29-cent raise upon acquisition. The MTC quickly used its condemnation powers to acquire the company and took possession on September 18, 1970. Thanks to the work of the its staff and consultants, the MTC already had in hand a thirteen-point improvement plan. It also had a federal commitment of $9.7 million to help fund the acquisition and the first-phase improvements. The first buses rolled out of their garages at 5 a.m., sporting new decals with a large white “T” (for transit). The most significant feature of the MTC’s improvement plan was the purchase of ninety-three new, air-conditioned buses a year for five years. The purchases reduced the average age of the fleet from fourteen years to six years and afforded riders much-improved service. Editor’s note: This article contains text adapted from “1969 Bus Strike: Twin Cities Mass Transit Turning Point” (Minnesota History 66, no. 7 (Fall 2019): 274–284), used here with the permission of both the publisher and the author.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/21-A.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246055,"name":"Labor","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246053,"name":"Transportation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/twin-city-lines-strike-1969"},{"alt":"Colonial Hall and Masonic Lodge No. 30","author":[{"name":"Anoka County Historical Society","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/anoka-county-historical-society"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"October 17, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Colonial Hall and Masonic Lodge No. 30, Anoka","postbody":"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, ...","searchtext":"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. Dominating the structure visually from the front is the home’s semi-circle portico, which is flanked by symmetrical windows on both floors. Four Corinthian-style columns originally supported the portico, but in 2019, only two remain. Fluted pilaster strips decorate these columns, which are capped by Corinthian capitals. The eaves of the hipped roof are dentillated, giving the appearance of a classical cornice. Though two chimneys continue the symmetry, when the house was built, only the north chimney functioned; the southern chimney merely served a decorative function and balanced the design. The circular theme of the portico is mirrored by a round window on the south side of the second floor, a wooden spiral staircase, and rounded interior corners within the dining room. The home served a dual purpose for its owners: the married physicians Flora and Alanson Aldrich. The couple used it as a residence as well as a site for their separate offices, which occupied the north side on the main floor. The patients used a separate entrance. Alanson Aldrich specialized in otolaryngology (the medical study of the ear, nose, and throat) and earned an international reputation as an innovator in his field. Although he maintained an office in Colonial Hall, his main practice was in Minneapolis. He was a member of the Hennepin County Medical Society, the State Medical Society, and the American Medical Association. He was also an active member of the Masons. Flora Aldrich specialized in women’s and children’s health and maintained her practice in Anoka while also serving as a charter member of Anoka’s Philolectian Society. Following the Aldrichs|| deaths, the local Masonic lodge (no. 30) stepped forward and purchased the house. In 1922, it built a lodge hall next to the Aldrich home and added a passageway connecting all levels of the two structures. Emulating its neighbor, the lodge also evokes the Greek Revival style with its symmetry, a round window at its peak, and an elegantly appointed entrance with pediment and columns. Under the lodge’s ownership, the house served as a caretaker’s apartment and a real estate office. During World War II, the government used it as a recruiting office, while the school across the street frequently borrowed the lodge’s basement for gym class. In 1971, an agreement between the lodge and the Anoka County Historical Society (ACHS) repurposed Colonial Hall into a museum. For the next thirty years, the building housed the collections and administrative offices of ACHS. In 2019, visitors to Colonial Hall and Masonic Lodge No. 30 can enjoy the architectural significance that earned the two buildings a place on the National Register of Historic Places in 2005. Colonial Hall is also featured on the Ghosts of Anoka Walking Tour each year during the Halloween season. Editor’s note: This article contains public-domain text adapted from a National Register of Historic Places nomination file.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Colonial_Hall_and_Masonic_Lodge_No_30.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/colonial-hall-and-masonic-lodge-no-30-anoka"},{"alt":"Oliver Mining Company steam-powered shovel near Hibbing, 1919. A shovel removes overburden, the rock and soil that covers the ore body, so that miners can access the ore from the open pit.","author":[{"name":"Alex Tieberg","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/alex-tieberg"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"October 14, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Oliver Iron Mining Company","postbody":"The Oliver Iron Mining Company was one of the most prominent mining companies in the early decades of the Mesabi Iron Range. As a division of United States Steel, Oliver dwarfed its ...","searchtext":"The Oliver Iron Mining Company was one of the most prominent mining companies in the early decades of the Mesabi Iron Range. As a division of United States Steel, Oliver dwarfed its competitors—in 1920, it operated 128 mines across the region, while its largest competitor operated only sixty-five. After the Merritt brothers began shipping iron ore from their Mountain Iron mine in 1892, Henry Oliver, a Pittsburgh businessman, traveled to the Iron Range to consider investing in the fledgling industry. Impressed by what he saw, Oliver offered to purchase one of the ore deposits for $75,000 and 65 cents per ton of ore mined. The Merritts sold Oliver the deposit, and Oliver Iron Mining Company was born. Many early mines on the Mesabi were controlled by East Coast financiers. John D. Rockefeller bought the Merritt brothers’ holdings in February 1894. That April, Andrew Carnegie loaned Oliver $500,000 for half of Oliver’s stock so he could compete with Rockefeller. Since Carnegie owned steel mills but Rockefeller didn’t, Rockefeller had virtually no other options than to sell his ore to Carnegie. As a result, the three men reached a compromise in 1896: Oliver would mine the ore, Rockefeller’s railroad system would transport the product, and Carnegie would transform it into steel. This agreement was finalized in 1901, and United States Steel (USS) was incorporated as the largest corporation in the world. Oliver mines were originally clustered on the eastern end of the Mesabi. In 1900, however, investors Chester Congdon and Guilford G. Hartley acquired mineral leases on the western end of the Range near the town of Nashwauk. The ore in this area was sandier than the ore mined on the eastern end, so it needed processing in order to be used in a steel mill. This processing is called concentration because ore is concentrated into a higher-grade product. Because of the high costs associated with processing, the businessmen approached Oliver Iron Mining Company with an investment opportunity. In 1904, Oliver invested $10 million in a concentration plant that would serve this area, which the corporation referred to as the “Canisteo District.” The plant, called the Trout Lake Concentrator, transformed the region, helping existing towns like Bovey and Calumet grow. In addition, the towns of Coleraine, Marble, and Taconite were directly built by Oliver to house workers in the newly developing region. In 1907, miners organized themselves into unions because they felt that mining companies—including Oliver—weren’t treating them fairly. A majority did not speak English and were therefore vulnerable to exploitation. When Oliver didn’t respond to a list of union demands presented that July, nearly 16,000 miners across the Mesabi went on strike. To continue operations, Oliver brought in new workers directly from Europe. When production recovered as a result, the strike collapsed and many miners returned to work—although some were blacklisted by the mining companies and never worked in a mine again. Nine years later, in 1916, miners once again went on strike. This time, Oliver hired armed guards, and in June, a dispute between strikers and guards broke out in Virginia. A picketer, John Alar, was killed and subsequently became a martyr for the cause. As the strike continued into late July, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn—a well-known American labor organizer—spoke to strikers and encouraged them to persevere, but many soon returned to work in August, effectively ending the strike. As natural ore reserves diminished due to war effort production, Oliver turned to ore that required more processing than the rich ore that Oliver originally purchased from the Merritt brothers. While the Trout Lake Concentrator was still in operation in the Canisteo District, Oliver built the Pilotac and Extaca plants near Virginia. Pilotac was built to research methods for concentrating taconite ore, and Extaca was built to agglomerate, or combine, taconite concentrate into a high-iron product that could be used in steel mills. Millions of dollars were invested in taconite plants throughout the Iron Range, and taconite became the chief rock mined in the region. As the Iron Range transitioned to taconite mining, United States Steel dropped the Oliver name in place of Minnesota Ore Operations.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/165-WW-220A-8.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246055,"name":"Labor","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/oliver-iron-mining-company"},{"alt":": Demonstration, led by 15 Now Minnesota, for higher pay and better working conditions at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, December 2014. Used with the permission of 15 Now Minnesota; photographer unknown. Photograph by Ginger Jentzen; used with the permission of Ginger Jentzen.","author":[{"name":"Randy Croce","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/randy-croce"}],"categoryTag":[],"date":"October 08, 2019","eraTag":[],"keydate":"","name":"Labor and Labor Organizing in Minnesota","postbody":"Since statehood, Minnesota workers have joined together to improve and protect their livelihoods, rights, and voices in the workplace. Labor organizations, especially unions, have stood up ...","searchtext":"Since statehood, Minnesota workers have joined together to improve and protect their livelihoods, rights, and voices in the workplace. Labor organizations, especially unions, have stood up for members’ interests with employers. They have participated in politics to influence society for the benefit of all working people. Minnesota labor has experienced successes and setbacks, times of positive relations with businesses and government, and times of hostility. Minnesotans have been national innovators in labor strategies and organizational forms. Early Minnesota Labor Organizations Throughout history, people in Minnesota have made a living in a variety of ways, including subsistence farming, hunting and gathering, trade, and managing businesses. This article focuses on the circumstances and activism of commercial farmers and people working for wages. The model for American unions came together in the late 1850s. The organization had a centralized national body with regional or particular workplace “locals” maintained by members’ dues. Members elected leaders to negotiate with employers and see that agreements were honored. Unions also reserved funds to support members in case of a strike. St. Paul tailors went on the state’s first recorded strike in 1854, though its outcome and the group’s longevity are unknown. The city’s printers formed the state’s first ongoing union in 1856. They joined the National Typographers Union in 1858 and gained newspaper owners’ recognition, inspiring locals to start in other Minnesota cities. In the 1860s, members of Minnesota’s ethnic groups, such as Germans, Finns, and Jews, joined working men’s societies and mutual benefit associations to provide insurance for accidents, sickness, and death, and to find jobs for members. These organizations’ halls, like the Jewish Labor Lyceum and Workmen’s Circle in Minneapolis, became hubs of community and political activity. Unions also served as social centers. In the early 1900s, Casiville Bullard and his fellow bricklayers had regular Sunday picnics together, and many unions held dances. Every Labor Day from 1900 to 1910, 30,000 people gathered for a parade through St. Paul and a picnic on Harriet Island. Federations Unions found it necessary to form associations to counter the power of employer groups, such as the national oil and steel trusts. Unions also needed to coordinate efforts, share resources, and settle disagreements about which workers each union would represent. The overlapping histories of four primary federations provide an overview of Minnesota labor’s changing circumstances, goals, obstacles, and opportunities. St. Paul union leaders founded the state’s first federation, the Workingmen’s Association Number One of the United States, in 1873. Members, including both wage earners and employers, lobbied for laws and public building projects. The organization’s president became a leader in the Knights of Labor. The Knights of Labor was founded in Philadelphia as a secret organization in 1869. It became a national alliance, open to women and African Americans, though it backed legislation barring Chinese immigration. Members included small business owners as well as workers. The Knights opposed business monopolies, banks, liquor retailers, and lawyers, whom the alliance viewed as controlling money and restricting opportunities for other Americans. The Knights supported cooperatives to give workers and local communities more power over their livelihoods. The first Minnesota branch was founded in 1878 in Minneapolis. Assemblies in St. Paul, Duluth, and other Minnesota cities got started during the 1880s. Knights of Labor Minnesota membership reached 10,000 by 1886, and the federation nominated candidates for state office. Few of the Knights’ candidates were elected. Many of the alliance’s goals, however, were taken up by later activists, adopted by other political parties, and eventually enacted. A state labor bureau was in place by the 1890s. Child labor, however, did not end until 1909, and the eight-hour day did not become law until 1938. While the Knights avoided striking, they backed three successful railroad walkouts. Eugene Debs led the 1894 strike by Great Northern Railroad workers who won concessions from St. Paul’s “Empire Builder,” James J. Hill. Police and military troops defeated following strikes. The railways had monopoly control over shipping costs, reducing producers’ and workers’ incomes. The companies were thus a focus of farmer, labor, and progressive political activists’ rage and calls for reform until the 1930s. The American Federation of Labor (AFL) gradually displaced the Knights of Labor. The AFL was founded in 1886 by twenty-five national craft unions, including printers, machinists, and building trades. It represented “skilled” trades that had their roots in medieval European guilds. The Minnesota state AFL was established in 1890. The national AFL leadership emphasized pay and working conditions over broader social issues. Minnesota’s AFL, however, advocated for state inspections of mines and factories, free textbooks for all children, and state ownership of railroad, telegraph, and telephone systems. Most of the Minnesota building trade unions were chartered by the AFL between the 1880s and the early 1900s. Tradesmen, like bricklayers and carpenters, earned enough to build or buy homes. Unorganized laborers, men and women alike, earned much less. Rejecting the AFL’s structure and political orientation, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) was founded in 1905 with the goal of overthrowing capitalism by joining all workers into “one big union.” The IWW rejected nativism. Many organizers and members were foreign-born. To represent otherwise unorganized farm workers, the IWW founded the Agricultural Workers Organization, which grew to more than 20,000 members by 2016. The IWW was active in Minnesota’s 1916 Mesabi Iron Range and 1916 and 1917 timber workers’ strikes. These walkouts and other actions were violently defeated by company security agents, police, and sometimes state militia, though working conditions did improve after these conflicts. The IWW lost strength after arrests and deportations following World War I, though the organization||s ideas continue to influence labor activists. In the IWW spirit, meatpacking workers in Austin, together with restaurant, department store, and other workers, formed the International Union of All Workers in 1933. The union won the nation’s first sit-down strike at the Hormel plant. The victory inspired labor activists throughout Minnesota, Iowa, and Nebraska. During the Great Depression, the AFL mainly represented higher paid workers with expertise in a particular trade and was generally hostile to “unskilled workers.” This orientation alienated activists seeking to unite workers doing a variety of jobs, like those in mines and factories. One faction broke away from the AFL in 1935 to become the Congress of Industrial Unions (CIO). CIO organizers collaborated with workers, including women and people of color, in workplaces that most federations had ignored. The timber workers’ union of northern Minnesota joined the CIO and won two strikes in 1937. Employees at the Ford plant in St. Paul joined the CIO’s United Auto Workers fight to unionize auto manufacturing. The nation’s largest wave of strikes occurred in 1946. Business supporters in Congress reacted by restricting unions’ tactics and power through policies and legislation, especially the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947. The law banned such effective union tactics as sympathy strikes and mandated financial and political reporting. It also permitted states to pass “right-to-work” laws that allowed employees to opt out of joining and paying dues to their workplace unions (a legislative trend Minnesota has resisted). To meet these challenges, the two national federations merged into the AFL-CIO in 1955. Some unions were independent of federations, like the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. Founded in 1919, it was not recognized by the AFL until 1937. Frank Boyd of St. Paul was a leader in the union, which advanced both the economic rights and civil rights of African American workers. Labor Media And The Arts The arts have played an important role in reflecting and reinforcing worker’s experience and identities. Labor halls, such as the Socialist Opera House in Virginia and the Mesaba Co-op Park near Hibbing, presented plays and musical performances. The federal Works Progress Administration supported many types of artists and writers to collect and tell workers’ stories in print and in plays. Music has been a unifying and inspiring force in marches and on picket lines. (“Solidarity Forever,” the IWW song written by Ralph Chaplin in 1915, is still sung at union gatherings and actions.) Media, especially newspapers, have also been critical to the labor movement in Minnesota. Labor federation publications report otherwise neglected union-related news. They promote working people’s perspectives on issues of the day in an environment of indifference or open hostility toward unions by commercial publications. Websites and social media have become important means of internal and external communication. The Business-labor Balance Shifts The widespread unemployment and poverty of the Great Depression called into question the political and economic dominance of employers. Unions and other worker organizations, which had been suppressed in the 1910s and 1920s, gained power during the 1930s and 1940s. Minnesota’s Farmer-Labor Party elected candidates from 1922 until its merger with the Democrats in 1944. Earlier administrations sent troops to suppress strikes. Farmer-Labor Governors Floyd B. Olson and Elmer Benson participated personally to settle strikes through negotiations. Benson even opened the Duluth Armory to shelter striking timber workers. The Citizens Alliance had prevented union organizing in Duluth and Minneapolis by rewarding businesses that opposed unions and threatening to boycott and withhold credit from companies that negotiated with workers. The Teamsters union challenged the alliance’s grip in Minneapolis through a successful coal drivers’ strike in the early months of 1934 and the bloody truckers’ strike the following spring. National Labor Relations Act The scale and violence of the Minneapolis strike, together with labor battles in San Francisco, California, and Toledo, Ohio, pushed Congress to pass the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) in 1935. The NLRA established the national legal framework for recognizing unions and collective bargaining between employers and unions that exists today. The National Labor Relations Board was established to oversee union elections and enforce rules against unfair labor practices by employers or unions. This legal support, together with the CIO’s inclusive organizing approach, led to labor gains. By 1964, unions represented thirty-seven percent of Minnesota’s workers—an all-time high. NLRA protections did not cover independent contractors and supervisors. It also excluded agricultural, domestic, and public workers. Not until much later did people in these jobs gain collective bargaining power. Agriculture Farmers, like Nellie Stone Johnson||s father, William Allen, brought food into town to feed striking workers in the 1930s. He could identify with their fight. Frustrated with underpayments for his milk by commercial processors, Allen was a leader in forming a cooperative creamery in Minneapolis. Since the mid-1800s, farmers founded producer cooperatives to eliminate the middlemen and earn more for their work. Farmers also organized groups like the Grange and Nonpartisan League to influence public policy. The League spread to Minnesota and laid the groundwork for the Farmer-Labor Party. After World War I, land values and prices for farm products fell. Unable to pay mortgages and loans, many farm families faced an agricultural depression and foreclosure. The Farmers’ Holiday Association grew out of the Farmers Union in 1932. Members took collective action to boost prices by holding back or destroying farm produce. They also held rallies and “penny auctions” to counteract foreclosures. Left out of NLRB protections, laborers on farms have been vulnerable to exploitation. Minnesota passed laws to include farm workers under minimum wage, overtime, and other protections. Workers isolated on farms and dependent on employers for a place to live, however, often didn’t know their rights or couldn’t assert them. In 1999, migrant farm workers and allies formed Centro Campesino, (Farmworkers Center) in Owatonna to provide education about migrant workers’ rights and develop leaders. The center’s members challenge wage theft and poor working conditions by individual employers and lobby for laws and enforcement. Public Employees Minnesotans working for state, county, and city governments began organizing in the 1860s. They became national leaders in gaining recognition of their unions and securing better pay and working conditions for public employees. In 1861, educators founded the organization that became the Minnesota Education Association (MEA). The Minnesota Federation of Teachers (MFT) and the MEA successfully advocated for teaching standards and such school improvements as libraries. They lacked the ability to negotiate legally binding agreements to improve teachers’ pay and workplace rights. Frustrated with deteriorating classrooms and a lack of such basic materials as textbooks, St. Paul teachers staged the nation’s first teachers’ strike in 1946. The walkout gained national attention and embarrassed public officials into negotiating with the strikers. Though the strike was illegal, the teachers won many of their goals and kept their jobs. Minneapolis teachers walked off the job in 1970, spurring passage of the 1971 Minnesota Public Employment Labor Relations Act (PELRA). One of the nation’s strongest government workers’ labor laws, it provides for the right to bargain and to strike. On September 1, 1998, the MFT and MEA merged to become one of the state’s largest unions and the first state union to be affiliated with both of the major national teachers’ labor organizations. Minnesota water, clerical, and other public workers began organizing in 1919 to fight party patronage hiring practices. The locals merged into the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) in the 1930s. Minnesota AFSCME Councils and the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees (MAPE) have led several statewide strikes, beginning in 1981. The unions have successfully lobbied for public services and improvements to facilities where they work. Labor Advances The Minnesota labor movement achieved many legislative gains in the 1970s. A state minimum wage law was enacted. The state Occupational Safety and Health Act (MNOSHA) was passed in 1973 to supplement the 1970 federal OSHA. One of the most celebrated strikes in Minnesota history began in 1977 when eight women in Willmar went on the first bank strike in American history, seeking fair treatment in pay and promotions. The “Willmar 8” did not gain union recognition and most lost their jobs. Yet their nearly two-year-long walkout inspired women across the country and brought about changes in hiring and promotion practices in banking and other industries. Anti-union Trends Ronald Reagan fired striking members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) in 1981 and permanently replaced them, citing a seldomly used law. The PATCO firing marked a shift in federal policies toward unions that triggered more aggressive anti-union practices by private employers. Unions facing permanent loss of members’ jobs found strikes to be a less useful bargaining tool. Appointment of more business-friendly members to the National Labor Relations Board made it more difficult to stop employers’ anti-union practices and to win union recognition elections. Union membership declined steadily to a low of 14 percent in Minnesota by 2012. In 1986, Local P9 lost a long strike at the Austin Hormel plant. The loss accelerated the erosion of middle-class livelihoods that meatpacking industry workers won since 1933. In 2006, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested more than 230 undocumented workers from the Swift meatpacking plant in Worthington. Unions aided the workers’ families. Later that year, unionists were among 40,000 people who marched in St. Paul, the largest rally in Minnesota history, to call for immigrant rights. Hotel and Restaurant Employees (HERE) protests in St. Paul stopped the deportation of undocumented Holiday Inn Express union negotiators in 1999. The action prompted the AFL-CIO to shift from its anti-immigrant position to active support of undocumented workers. Labor Adapts And Innovates Workers evolved alternative tactics and organizations in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries to adapt to harsher labor–management relations and more restrictive NLRB rulings. For example, some employers avoided costs by classifying workers as “independent contractors,” not covered by the NLRA and state labor laws. Corporations contracted out jobs like cleaning and security to subcontractors, who had to bid against one another. The practice allowed larger companies to pay less for services and distance themselves from the budget-squeezed subcontractors’ treatment of employees. Pay dropped and conditions worsened for many subcontracted jobs in the Twin Cities. To address this “race to the bottom” dynamic, the Workers Interfaith Network began the workers’ center that became Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en la Lucha (Center of Workers United in Struggle) in 2007. CTUL recovered more than two million dollars in unpaid wages and damages from individual employers. The group sought systemic change through rallies, walkouts, a hunger strike, lobbying, and negotiating with the larger companies who contracted with CTUL members’ employers in big-box stores. In 2014, after four years of protests and meetings with CTUL and worker members, Target adopted a Responsible Contractor Policy for subcontractors—the first such agreement in the country’s cleaning industry. It provided for the right to organize without retaliation. Workers went on to join Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 26 and bargain contracts with the majority of Twin Cities retail janitorial companies. By foregoing the difficult NLRB process required to authorize a union and bargain with an employer, worker centers like CTUL have had more flexibility in dealing with businesses. In 2013, the Minnesota AFL-CIO helped start the Greater Minnesota Workers Center in St. Cloud, which notably serves East African and other immigrant packinghouse workers. Independent and part-time workers have created mutual aid organizations to counter the power imbalance between individuals and large companies. These groups, such as the Freelancers Union, empower members by sharing information and resources. Traditional unions have also developed new strategies and revived old tactics. HERE Local 17 revived the sit-down strike in local hotels, sparking more widespread civil disobedience in Minnesota labor campaigns. Workers at Jimmy John’s sandwich shops renewed the IWW model to organize in the high-turnover fast-food sector. They faced intense employer antagonism and lost a 2010 election by just two votes. In 2014, SEIU Healthcare Minnesota won the largest union election in state history to represent 26,000 personal care attendants (PCAs) who provide in-home health services. The victory provided a way for PCAs, usually working in isolation, to bargain together with the state about pay and conditions. The 15 Now coalition adopted a model used in Seattle to raise area wages by focusing initially on the regional airport. The Twin Cities group built on the momentum of airport gains and a growing national movement to win a fifteen-dollar-an-hour minimum wage in Minneapolis in 2017, the first in the Midwest. St. Paul followed in 2018. The 2018 Janus US Supreme Court decision ended dues requirements for all government employees in the country. The ruling was expected to be a big blow to labor, as public workers are more highly unionized than those in private jobs. In Minnesota, 54 percent of government employees were union members versus 9 percent of the private labor force, as of 2017. After intensified organizing efforts, however, the number of dues-paying public union members did not drop significantly, and AFSCME’s membership increased in Minnesota by 2019. Employer practices and government policies continue to change, both challenging and boosting the ability of labor organizations to represent their members. Workers continue to find ways to have a voice in their workplaces and in society.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/15 Now Minnesota.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246055,"name":"Labor","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/labor-and-labor-organizing-minnesota"},{"alt":"Whitewater State Park, May 22, 2009. Photo by Wikimedia Commons user McGhiever. CC BY-SA 3.0","author":[{"name":"Paul Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/paul-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"October 07, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Whitewater State Park","postbody":"Whitewater is the sixth Minnesota state park, authorized by the legislature in 1919, and the first in the Driftless Area of dramatic bluffs, ravines, and promontories in the southeastern ...","searchtext":"Whitewater is the sixth Minnesota state park, authorized by the legislature in 1919, and the first in the Driftless Area of dramatic bluffs, ravines, and promontories in the southeastern corner of the state. Beneath the rolling farm country of southeastern Minnesota lies a great sheet of limestone created over 500 million years ago in the shallow sea that then covered much of North America. Numberless tiny shellfish lived there and died, fell to the sea floor, and were slowly buried and compressed into the rock today called Oneota dolomite. Beneath that lies an even older sheet of rock called Jordan sandstone. When the sea receded, new processes took over: the growth of plant and animal life on the surface (and with that the buildup of soil) and erosion, chiefly by water. The last ice age, which ended about 12,000 years ago, released flows of water that cut the vast gorge of the Mississippi, leaving the tall bluffs seen from Red Wing south, and the many ravines, ridges, and cliffs to the west. One of the smaller rivers thus created was the Whitewater, which arises a little west of St. Charles, Minnesota, and flows northeast about seventeen miles to join the Mississippi. People marveled at the beauty of this landscape, and anglers delighted in the bountiful trout found in the Whitewater River, which has cut so deeply through the dolomite that in places the underlying tan and yellow beds of Jordan sandstone are easily seen. In 1917 southeast Minnesota legislators got a bill passed appropriating $10,000 for a state park in the area, but Governor J. A. A. Burnquist vetoed it on the grounds that the money could not be spared in wartime. In response, L. A. Warming of St. Charles published at his own expense a book of eighty-eight photographs of the Whitewater valley, The Paradise of Minnesota, to raise money and awareness in support of the park. The legislature authorized $10,000 for it in the next session, and this time Governor Burnquist consented. The park’s official creation thus dates from 1919, though no land was purchased until 1921. By 1926, despite few roads and minimal park facilities, 40,000 visitors came. In 1928 the state built a golf course in the park, with sand greens, mainly to serve patrons from nearby St. Charles. During the Great Depression the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and Works Progress Administration (WPA) installed a complex of shops and dormitories, and brought in hundreds of otherwise unemployed men. They built a dam that formed the swimming beach, bridges, cabins, picnic shelters, drinking fountains, and a water and sewage system, and trails, much of which remains in use. During World War II the War Department used the former WPA facilities—augmented by a ten-foot, barbed-wire-topped fence—for German prisoners of war. In the springs and summers of 1944 and 1945, possibly as many as 259 prisoners were held at Whitewater, working at Lakeside Canning Company in nearby Plainview, and on local farms. A tornado in May 1953 destroyed almost all of the Depression-era shops and dormitories and the prison camp. All improvements in the park have struggled against the same force that created it—erosion. Powerful floods in 1974, 1975, 1978, and 2007 washed out buildings, bridges, and campgrounds so that park facilities have had to be rebuilt again and again. The 1974 flood was so powerful that it took down a beautiful three-arch limestone bridge built by the WPA. One of the steady themes of Whitewater State Park is the great human effort required to preserve a natural area. These efforts extend far beyond the park’s boundaries. Catastrophic flooding on the Whitewater outside of the park in 1938 led to the creation of Minnesota’s first conservation district, and with it measures to reduce flooding by reforming nearby farming practices. This work led to the creation in 1989 of the Whitewater River Watershed Project, which includes parts of Wabasha, Winona, and Olmsted Counties, and the 27,000 acre Whitewater Wildlife Management Area. In 2019, the park includes 148 drive-in camping sites, almost half of them electrified, two group campsites, five camper cabins, a swimming beach, thirteen miles of trails, an interpretive center, and a store.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/800px-Whitewater_State_Park.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/whitewater-state-park"},{"alt":"Dr. Russell Heim, 1934.","author":[{"name":"Paul Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/paul-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"October 02, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"1952","name":"Downfall of Russell Heim, 1947–1952","postbody":"In 1952 Russell Heim (1886–1960) was a practicing physician and, after 1942, Hennepin County’s elected coroner. The Minneapolis Star called his narcotics prosecution “one of the most ...","searchtext":"In 1952 Russell Heim (1886–1960) was a practicing physician and, after 1942, Hennepin County’s elected coroner. The Minneapolis Star called his narcotics prosecution “one of the most sensational trials of a public official…in the history of Minnesota federal courts.” Hennepin County coroner was a part-time position that involved performing autopsies and supervising the morgue. Even before his arrest in September 1952 Russell Heim’s performance in office had provoked headlines. A Hennepin County grand jury in 1947 blasted him for “careless, wasteful, and indifferent” management. Among other things, he allowed supposedly full-time employees to work other full-time jobs, while other employees got full-time salaries for very little work. Heim called the charges an uninformed smear, and nothing came of them. But law enforcement was already watching him—not for his official work but in his private medical practice. Federal drug agents had become curious about the unusual number of prescriptions for morphine and other narcotics that Heim issued from his 12 West Lake Street office. A criminal investigation began in May of 1952. On September 19, 1952, a federal grand jury in Minneapolis indicted Heim on 229 counts of violating federal narcotics distribution laws. Trial came on just one month later. It lasted six days and included nearly 100 witnesses, including Heim. The crucial witnesses produced by Assistant U.S. Attorney William Essling were several drug addicts, some legitimate patients of Heim’s, and dozens of pharmacists. The drug addicts testified that Heim had been their long-time source. One of them was Heim’s medical office assistant, who testified that Heim paid her partly in cash, partly in drugs. Several of Heim’s patients testified that they had never received narcotics from him, though records showed he had issued many morphine prescriptions in their names. Some twenty-nine pharmacists from fifteen stores scattered around Minneapolis testified that Heim typically both wrote morphine prescriptions and picked them up in person. The former president of the Hennepin County Medical Association told the jury that over the two-year period covered by the indictment Heim had prescribed an unusual amount of the opioid dolophine as well as 1,640 tablets of morphine. A typical physician would have prescribed a bare fraction of that amount in such a period. The prosecution’s theory of the case was simple: Heim ran a business consisting of writing false narcotics prescriptions, then selling the drugs at a hefty markup. The most remarkable thing about the trial was that though Dr. Heim insisted that he was innocent, he admitted almost all of the facts. In a way, he had to, because he had given an apparently candid interview to federal narcotics agents in June. Trial lawyers tried to get this statement excluded from evidence, but failed. Heim admitted writing all 229 of the narcotics prescriptions charged against him, but asserted that they were all legitimate, and that he was the best judge of the pain medication his patients needed. He did not seem to have an explanation for why he, rather than his patients, retrieved the drugs from the pharmacies. Narcotics agents had been watching Heim for five years. They had visited him in his office and warned him about the number of known addicts hanging around. And yet, his narcotics license had been renewed several times. At trial Heim’s lawyers argued that this amounted to governmental consent: because Heim acted openly, they maintained, he had no intent to commit a crime. (But one of the narcotics agents testified that Heim told him, “I’ve been expecting you. I have been writing prescriptions in the names of patients and I suppose that’s wrong.”) The jury agreed and convicted Heim on all 229 counts. Judge Gunnar Nordbye also agreed, dismissed all defense arguments, and sentenced Heim to four years in prison. “I can honestly say I never smuggled or trafficked in any illegal narcotics,” Heim said after sentence. Prison did not satisfy the federal government. The next year it seized his car. After Heim came out of prison in April of 1954, the government continued its pursuit, seeking payment of $18,650 income taxes it said was unpaid from his narcotics income. When Heim failed to pay it all, the IRS pursued his now ex-wife and held her liable for nearly $3,000. Russell Heim died, living alone in a nursing home, on August 26, 1960.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/por 24978 r1.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246060,"name":"Crime and Punishment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246087,"name":"Health and Medicine","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/downfall-russell-heim-1947-1952"},{"alt":"Pamana Dance Troupe","author":[{"name":"John Shier","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/john-shier"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"September 30, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"1972","name":"Cultural Society of Filipino Americans of Minnesota (CSFA)","postbody":"The Cultural Society of Filipino Americans of Minnesota (CSFA) was founded on September 17, 1972, when forty-two Minnesotans signed its constitution and by-laws. They adopted as their ...","searchtext":"The Cultural Society of Filipino Americans of Minnesota (CSFA) was founded on September 17, 1972, when forty-two Minnesotans signed its constitution and by-laws. They adopted as their mission the preservation and sharing of Filipino customs, culture, and traditions. To realize that mission, they organize dance performances, social gatherings that offer traditional Filipino fare, educational opportunities, fundraising efforts, and disaster relief events through their own Disaster Relief Fund. Filipino immigration to the United States began in the 1940s, with most people coming as laborers. However, nearly all of the original stateside Filipino immigrants in the 1960s and 70s came to the US through working visas. Many were doctors, engineers, nurses, and other professionals. Most of them came to the West Coast, East Coast, and Hawaii; very few came to Minnesota. The ones who did faced the challenges of adjusting to a new place, adjusting to American culture, and surviving the cold climate as soon as their airplanes touched down on the tarmac. Seeing snow fall for the first time was an emotional event that some have called “mesmerizing.” Many of these newcomers gathered to participate in CSFA||s first in election, held in Minneapolis, as well as its first induction ceremony, held in Robbinsdale. Compared to those who came in the 1970s, the Filipino immigrants of subsequent decades were more diverse in their career paths, economic status, and education. In response, the CSFA cultivated an “all are welcome” vibe. Many second-generation Filipino Minnesotans did not know how to speak their native tongue, which created a verbal culture “lost in translation.” First-generation adults also needed to fulfill a psychic need to recreate a “village” in which to raise their families. Thus, the CSFA adjusted its cultural preservation work to serve multiple demographics. The CSFA has many programs for its members to pick from. Philippine Day, a public event, brings dozens of vendors and presenters to Maplewood Aldrich Arena for on-stage performances of singing, dancing, modern and traditional fashion, and martial arts. There are vendors of traditional Filipino food, international shipping services, Filipino organizational outreaches, and clothing. Tagalog classes teach the national language, bridging cultural gaps between American-born children and spouses. Pasko sa Nayon brings the special feeling of how Christmas is done in the Philippines. There, children travel across entire neighborhoods while caroling to receive coins—much the same way American kids go trick-or-treating on Halloween for candy. The Filipino dance showcase called Pamana, which occurs once every four years, is the CSFA’s premier event. Being an archipelago of islands, the Philippines has regionally distinct cultures. Natives of each region have regional pride and appreciate individual recognition. In accordance, the dances of Pamana are divided into four sections: the Cordillera suite; the Sarimanok suite; the Abanico suite; and the Sa Nayon suite. The Cordillera suite depicts the rituals and pageantry of the mountain tribes of the northern Philippines. It is characterized by the pounding rhythms of drums as well as intricately woven loin cloths, headgear, and skirts. The Sarimanok suite depicts royal weddings, war dances, and the rituals of the Philippines’ Muslim minority. It culminates in an iconic crossed long-stick dance that implies impending danger, even to the dancers’ feet. The Abanico suite highlights the elite, aristocratic class that ruled the Philippines during the Spanish colonial era (1521–1898). It features languid, candle-lit waltzes, Castilian-influenced costumes (including Maria Clara dresses with flared sleeves), and string orchestra music. The Sa Nayon suite portrays the lives of farmers, fisher-folk, and other peasants as they experience the joys and frustrations of daily rural life. Music is set to sounds from materials indigenous to the Philippines, such as bamboo sticks and coconut shells. The male Maglalatik dancers wear six coconut shells and loin cloths to depict friends dancing and drinking together.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Dance Image 2.png","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/cultural-society-filipino-americans-minnesota-csfa"},{"alt":"Members of the National Guard confront striking meatpacking plant workers in Albert Lea. Printed in the Minneapolis Morning Tribune, December 12, 1959. Original caption: “National Guardsmen dispersed crowds at Wilson Gate early Friday morning.” Photograph by Charles Brill.","author":[{"name":"Paul Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/paul-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"September 25, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Martial Law in Albert Lea, 1959","postbody":"In the winter of 1959–1960 a bitter packing-house workers’ strike against Wilson & Company in Albert Lea descended into such disorder that Governor Orville Freeman declared martial law. ...","searchtext":"In the winter of 1959–1960 a bitter packing-house workers’ strike against Wilson & Company in Albert Lea descended into such disorder that Governor Orville Freeman declared martial law. A federal district court later ruled his order unlawful. Wilson & Co., with 1100 workers in a city of 17,000, was one of Albert Lea’s major employers. It was also the most anti-union of the nation’s four major meat-packing firms, and bad blood between the company and union workers had been building for weeks over forced overtime. When the national collective bargaining agreement with the United Packing House Workers of America (UPWA) expired on September 1, 1959, the differences between the two sides centered not on wages but on power. The union demanded the rehiring of seventeen union men fired in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and the creation of a union-controlled fund as a hedge against job losses caused by automation. Wilson would not budge on either issue—it considered them management territory—and so a strike began on November 3. This was a national strike against Wilson in Albert Lea and six other plants in cities around the country: Omaha, Cedar Rapids, Memphis, Kansas City, and Los Angeles. The company kept the Albert Lea plant open, with much lower production, using, at first, mostly management workers. Tensions rose dramatically the first weekend of December when the company announced that it would hire permanent replacement workers and not rehire strikers. Many of the roughly 500 replacement workers it hired were local farmers, idled by winter and in need of money due to low farm prices. Acts of violence began to pop up—tires slashed, corn cribs damaged, cars stoned. On December 9 a thousand picketers crowded the plant entrance, intimidating the replacement workers. The Albert Lea Evening Tribune called the incident “a violent three-hour siege.” Freeborn County law enforcement officers wrote Governor Orville Freeman that they feared an explosion of violence. Freeman had the power to call out the National Guard to keep the plant open and separate “scabs” from strikers. He reasoned, however, that this would do nothing to diminish the resentment felt by union workers who feared permanent loss of long-held jobs. So on December 11 Freeman declared martial law in Albert Lea and moved in the National Guard. In his proclamation he repeated words from a plea he had received from Albert Lea and Freeborn county officials: Night prowling and acts of vandalism away from the plant area and extending into the surrounding countryside, with danger and damage occurring to innocent persons…cannot be stopped, so long as the plant continues operation… And so he also ordered the plant closed. Soldiers with bayonets drawn appeared in Albert Lea. This had the desired effect of reducing tensions, but it also moved the Wilson Company to take Freeman to federal district court. The hearing was held December 16 in Minneapolis before a panel of three veteran judges (all Republicans): John Sanborn and Edward Devitt of St. Paul, and Gunnar Nordbye of Minneapolis. Attorney General and future federal judge Miles Lord argued the case for Freeman. The court found that “mob rule” existed in Albert Lea, but that Freeman had exceeded his authority in declaring martial law and closing the Wilson plant. The strikers had the right to strike, but the company also had the right to keep its plant open: Freeman had gone too far. The standard for the extreme measure of martial law (implied but not expressly authorized by the Constitution of Minnesota) was “dire necessity,” and that standard had not been met. The plant reopened December 28. Contract negotiations reopened too, and closed, and opened, back and forth for six more weeks, with plenty of friction between the union and Wilson, before a new contract was finally signed. The union did not get its automation fund, but all but a handful of the striking union members in Albert Lea were rehired without loss of seniority. Governor Freeman probably paid a price for his martial law decision. He sought a fourth term in the elections of 1960 but was defeated by Republican Elmer Anderson. President John F. Kennedy appointed him secretary of agriculture in early 1961.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Minneapolis_Morning_Tribune_12_12_1959.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246079,"name":"Cities and Towns","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246055,"name":"Labor","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/martial-law-albert-lea-1959"},{"alt":"Headline and images from an article on the disappearance of Kenneth Lindberg (“Missing Banker’s Auto Found on North Side”) that ran in the Minneapolis Star on November 18, 1955.","author":[{"name":"Paul Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/paul-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"September 23, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Murder of Kenneth Lindberg","postbody":"On Saturday, November 12, 1955, Kenneth E. Lindberg, cashier of the Northern State Bank of Thief River Falls, met in the bank with a man who had identified himself as Herbert Johnson of the ...","searchtext":"On Saturday, November 12, 1955, Kenneth E. Lindberg, cashier of the Northern State Bank of Thief River Falls, met in the bank with a man who had identified himself as Herbert Johnson of the Johnson Wax Company. Lindberg was never seen alive in Thief River Falls again. The man who called himself Herbert Johnson told Lindberg by telephone that he was on his way to Thief River Falls Saturday for an important business deal and wished to store $25,000 in cash over the weekend. When Johnson arrived, at 3:30, the bank’s vice-president and a janitor were also present. Johnson told Lindberg that his company planned to build a new factory near Thief River; Johnson extended the conversation until the other two men had left the building, at which point he revealed to Lindberg his true purpose: robbery. Johnson was in fact James P. Taylor, thirty, a career criminal fresh out of federal prison in Terre Haute, who imagined a $100,000 score from this bank and in this town about which he knew nothing— including that the vault operated on a timer that prevented its being opened on a weekend. He got away with at least $14,000 in travelers checks and $1,750 in coins. But he had no gun, no getaway car, and no getaway plan. So he commandeered Lindberg’s 1951 Buick and, because he did not know the local roads, Lindberg himself to serve as a guide. He told Lindberg that his “syndicate” was watching the banker’s wife and children. They drove south toward Minneapolis. By Sunday morning it was clear in Thief River Falls that the bank had been robbed and Lindberg taken. Because it was a federally insured bank, the FBI got involved, but five days passed with no leads. On November 18, Lindberg’s car showed up abandoned in north Minneapolis. On the same day, the Minneapolis Star reported that $8,000 of the travelers checks had been deposited in a Detroit bank in the name of Charles D. Kenwell; the FBI recovered a fingerprint. (A concurrent Minneapolis Morning Tribune story gave a figure of $6,000). On November 28, three Fierack brothers hunting on their farm near Clear Lake, Sherburne County, found Kenneth Lindberg’s frozen body. With the fingerprint, the FBI identified Taylor as its major suspect. And because it had a list of the stolen travelers checks, it could, with some delays, follow his movements. He had gone from Minneapolis to Chicago to Detroit to Miami to Fort Lauderdale, to Cleveland, back to Detroit, and then to Joplin, Missouri, mostly by air, cashing travelers checks along the way. The FBI arrested him in Joplin without incident on December 8. By December 15 he had been moved to Minneapolis to face federal murder and other charges. Judge Gunnar Nordbye appointed lawyer Irving Nemerov to represent Taylor. The able Nemerov presumably informed Taylor that the federal statute carried with it a possible death penalty, but only if imposed by a jury. On April 6 Taylor avoided a jury by pleading guilty to murder, no plea bargain. Judge Nordbye sentenced him to life in prison. Taylor made a complete confession. He had not planned to kill. On their way south from Thief River Falls to Minneapolis, Taylor had concluded that the coins were too heavy to bother with, so he decided to bury them. He chose a road in Sherburne County. As Lindberg and Taylor lugged the coins, looking for a hiding place, Taylor slipped, fell, and struck Lindberg. Lindberg took this to be an attack, and hit Taylor in the face with a bag of coins. Unknown to Lindberg, Taylor was carrying a small hatchet—the only weapon he ever had during the crime—to use in digging a hole for the coins. Nine hatchet blows to the head later, banker Kenneth Lindberg, age forty-four, married and the father of four, was dead. When the coroner examined his body he found defensive wounds and a Christmas list. James P. Taylor was sent to federal prison at Leavenworth, Kansas. In 1960, again in 1969, and again in 1994, he brought his case back to federal court, seeking to have his guilty plea thrown out or his sentence reduced. All of these attempts failed, but the hearings revealed that Taylor had repeatedly, without success, sought mental health treatment in prison.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Minneapolis_Star_November_18_1955.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246060,"name":"Crime and Punishment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/murder-kenneth-lindberg"},{"alt":"Fair housing protesters from the “Committee to End Discrimination against Fourth Class Whites, December 19, 1962, St. Paul Pioneer Press. Minneapolis and St. Paul Newspaper Negatives Collection, Minnesota Historical Society.","author":[{"name":"Kirsten Delegard","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/kirsten-delegard"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"September 18, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Racial Housing Covenants in the Twin Cities","postbody":"Minneapolis real estate developers began writing racial covenants—race-based property ownership restrictions—into property deeds in 1910. They were banned by the Minnesota state legislature ...","searchtext":"Minneapolis real estate developers began writing racial covenants—race-based property ownership restrictions—into property deeds in 1910. They were banned by the Minnesota state legislature in 1953, but their use in the early twentieth century laid the foundation for contemporary racial disparities in Minnesota. Racial covenants were legal clauses attached to property deeds. Parcels with these restrictions were reserved for the exclusive use of white people. |||Real covenants||| were used before racial covenants became popular. They have been used to dictate everything from building heights to the location of vegetable gardens in residential developments. But in the late nineteenth century, real estate developers found a new application for this type of restriction embedded into property deeds. They invented covenants that wrote race onto the land. Racial covenants were buoyed by a rising tide of white supremacy, which converged with a new determination to make cities more livable. They were offered as an answer to racial violence, with the explanation that neighborhoods needed to be racially segregated to foreclose conflict. Their use was driven by the conviction that the value of land was determined by the race of the people who lived on it. Covenants gave real estate investors the promise of security. Over the next fifty years, racial covenants were inserted into millions of property deeds across the nation. These discriminatory deeds built a hidden system of American apartheid. Segregated bathrooms and |||colored only||| water fountains were public markers of white supremacy. By contrast, racial covenants were out of view in the deed books of county recorders. But these powerful restrictions re-worked the relationship between race and land tenure in Minnesota and other places imagined to be free from Jim Crow restrictions. |||Racial covenants||| spread from California, where they were first cited in a lawsuit in 1892, through the rest of the country in the early years of the twentieth century. They were introduced to Minneapolis in 1910, when Henry and Leonora Scott sold a property to Nels Anderson. The deed for that transaction stipulated that |||premises shall not at any time be conveyed, mortgaged or leased to any person or persons of Chinese, Japanese, Moorish, Turkish, Negro, Mongolian or African blood or descent.” Scott became the first president of the Seven Oaks Corporation, a real estate development company that inserted this same language into thousands of deeds across Minneapolis and St. Paul. By the 1930s, most new residential developments in the Twin Cities were covered by these kinds of racial restrictions. Racial covenants were inspired by changing ideas about race and urban space. Like many cities in the north, Minneapolis was not especially segregated in 1900. But the city||s racial climate shifted quickly. By 1908 white residents were raising new alarms about race mixing. Denizens of the area around Fifth Avenue South organized to remove what they called |||undesirable residents,||| explaining that |||a negro is an undesirable resident of a white neighborhood.||| And white people in Prospect Park were horrified when the Jackson family—which was African American—built a new home on Franklin Avenue. The next year, when another black family joined the Jacksons on the block, residents erupted. A mob of 125 white men gathered on the Jacksons|| lawn to threaten the families. Across town, neighbors in Linden Hills banded together to prevent an African American minister from buying a house. The next year, the editorial board of the Minneapolis Journal called for coordinated action to make neighborhoods all white. The newspaper condemned mixed-race neighborhoods as |||dangerous||| and called on the city||s real estate board to contain what it called the city||s |||considerable negro colony.||| Only 1 percent of the city||s population was identified as African American. But in 1910, business and political leaders saw this small number of non-white residents as a threat to civic harmony and progressive development. The Seven Oaks corporation recorded its first racial covenant that same year. It was just one of the real estate development companies that had begun experimenting with these new tools for shaping the urban landscape. Covenants had the enthusiastic support of the professionalizing real estate industry, which formed the National Association of Real Estate Boards (NAREB) in 1908. This group popularized the idea that residential segregation kept the peace and protected investment. By 1924, the NAREB had adopted a |||code of ethics||| that enjoined its members from |||introducing into a neighborhood...members of any race or nationality...whose presence will clearly be detrimental to property values.||| In 1927, it issued a standard restrictive covenant for members to use in communities across the country. Though many covenants named a laundry list of |||objectionable||| people, in Hennepin County, covenants were crafted mainly to exclude African Americans. But Jews were also a target. For instance, a 1919 advertisement in the Minneapolis Tribune appealed to anti-Semitic sentiments. Developer Edmund G. Walton offered |||restricted||| housing sites overlooking Lake of the Isles that could not |||be conveyed mortgaged or leased to any person or persons of Chinese, Japanese, Moorish, Turkish, Negro, Mongolian, Semetic [sic] or African blood or descent.||| But later that same year, the Minnesota legislature banned real estate restrictions based on religious faith or creed. This might explain why less than one percent of the covenants identified by the Mapping Prejudice Project (as of 2019) contain anti-Semitic restrictions like the one advertised by Walton. Thanks to the 1919 state law, the city||s palpable anti-Semitism was only rarely articulated in racially restrictive deeds. Covenants were difficult to challenge, especially after the US Supreme Court upheld these private restrictive agreements in Corrigan v. Buckley in 1926. They ran with the land, which meant that they could be enforced decades after they were put into place. Anyone who breached a covenant risked ending up in court. They could be sued and held financially liable—a powerful deterrent. Most fearless in its campaign against racial covenants was the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which brought a series of court challenges that ended up at the United States Supreme Court. In Shelley V. Kraemer (1948), that body declared covenants to be unenforceable. Though widely hailed as a triumph for civil rights, that decision ultimately did little to dissolve the barriers created by covenants. In Minnesota, elected officials recognized that more action was necessary. The legislature banned new covenants in 1953. Then, in 1962, state lawmakers prohibited housing discrimination on the basis of race, religion and national origin. The federal government followed suit in 1968, when Congress passed the Fair Housing Act. By the time that covenants were made illegal, the damage was already done. Covenants made it difficult for African Americans to secure stable and affordable housing, which affected the health, educational opportunities and job prospects of generations of residents. And covenants created patterns of residential segregation that persist today. They also determined who could buy property. In tandem with redlining—a banking practice that made it impossible to get loans for properties in racially mixed neighborhoods—racially restrictive deeds shut African Americans out of property ownership. The legacies of these practices are clear today. In 2019, the Twin Cities have the lowest African American homeownership rate in the country. And since most families amass wealth through property ownership, this homeownership gap feeds the contemporary racial wealth gap. The wealth gap undergirds a whole host of other racial disparities, which are particularly acute in Minnesota.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/protest image, 1962, mhs.png","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056216,"name":"African Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246079,"name":"Cities and Towns","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/racial-housing-covenants-twin-cities"},{"alt":"Albert Woolson in his army uniform. The photo was probably taken at Fort Snelling following his army enlistment and was later enlarged and painted, ca. 1864. Woolson family archives, Duluth, Minnesota. Used with the permission of the Woolson family.","author":[{"name":"Mary Laine","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/mary-laine"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"September 16, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Woolson, Albert Henry (1850–1956)","postbody":"Albert Henry Woolson had outlived over two million Civil War Union Army comrades when he died in Duluth on August 2, 1956, at the age of 106. At his death, he was recognized as the last ...","searchtext":"Albert Henry Woolson had outlived over two million Civil War Union Army comrades when he died in Duluth on August 2, 1956, at the age of 106. At his death, he was recognized as the last surviving Union Army veteran. Civil War historians, however, now recognize him as the last survivor of both the Union and Confederate armies. Albert Woolson was born in Jefferson County, New York, on February 11, 1850. His parents were Caroline Baldwin Woolson and Willard Paul Woolson—a chair maker, painter, and musician. An 1850 census lists his age as six months old, and an 1855 census lists his age as five; thus his often-reported birth year (1847) and age of death (109) are incorrect. His age on official records varied throughout the years. In 1861, Willard Woolson migrated to southern Minnesota without his family. On November 9 of that year, he enlisted in Company I, Fourth Minnesota Volunteer Infantry Regiment; later, he was a member of a regimental brass band. A common fallacy is that his leg was wounded at the battle of Shiloh and he recuperated in a Windom hospital. His company was not at Shiloh, nor did Windom exist then. His leg was damaged in the Gladiator steamboat accident on the Tennessee River on May 13, 1862. Willard received a disability discharge on July 19, 1862. His family moved to Minnesota to join him, and by June of 1865 was living in Blue Earth County. Shortly after, he died in Elysian following a leg amputation. When Albert enlisted in the Union Army as a private at Okaman on October 10, 1864, he was fourteen years old. He may have lied about his age or received parental permission to enlist, since the minimum enlistment age was eighteen. He served in Company C, First Minnesota Heavy Artillery Regiment. Since he was young, he became a drummer boy and bugler. As a private, he earned sixteen dollars per month. On October 30, 1864, the members of Company C began their journey to Chattanooga, Tennessee, where their first assignment was to build winter quarters. They served garrison duty there until the fall of 1865 and did not see combat. Woolson was discharged on September 27, 1865, and returned to Minnesota. In 1868, Albert played the cornet and guitar in a traveling group of minstrels—white performers who blackened their faces to imitate African Americans in a mocking and degrading way. His group included a band, a Highland Scottish dancer, and an acrobat. In that same year he married Sarah Sloper, who died in 1901. In 1904, he married Anna Haugen, who died in 1949. The June 1905 Minnesota census listed his age as fifty-six (he was in fact fifty-three); Anna was twenty-three. Eight children from the two marriages survived to adulthood. Woolson held several different jobs as he and his family moved around southern Minnesota. When in Windom, he served on the state board of boiler inspectors and was the city water works and electric power plant superintendent. He taught mechanical engineering and music at the Breck School in nearby Wilder. In 1905, he and his family moved to Duluth, where he worked as an electrician, mechanic, and stationary engineer. In March 1911, Woolson filed suit against Governor A. O. Eberhart when he was not appointed boiler inspector for the three-county area. In addition to his thirty-five years of boiler experience, he claimed that state law gave him preference as a war veteran. The judge ruled the law was unconstitutional in its preference for veterans because it limited the appointment power of the governor. Woolson was an active member of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) and proudly wore its blue uniform. He was involved in veteran activities statewide, and was in many parades. As Civil War veterans aged and died, he became a nationally known figure and received much recognition. He was the model for the GAR memorial monument “Last Survivor,” located in the Gettysburg National Military Park, and received 8,000 cards and letters on his 104th birthday (celebrated as his 107th). When he died in 1956, Woolson was buried with full military honors. Over 1,500 people attended the funeral in the Duluth Armory, including Senators Hubert Humphrey and Edward Thye and Governor Orville Freeman. Ulysses S. Grant III, a grandson of the Civil War US Army general, was honorary pallbearer. Burial was in Park Hill Cemetery in Duluth.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/WoolsonCivilWar.jpg.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/woolson-albert-henry-1850-1956"},{"alt":"View of the collapsed I-35W bridge (Bridge 9340) on August 1, 2007. Photograph by Heather Munro.","author":[{"name":"Luz Ramirez Cruz","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/luz-ramirez-cruz"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"September 16, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"I-35W Bridge Collapse","postbody":"The I-35W (Interstate 35 West) bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis opened to traffic in 1967. Thousands of vehicles drove across it every day, but no one imagined that a ...","searchtext":"The I-35W (Interstate 35 West) bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis opened to traffic in 1967. Thousands of vehicles drove across it every day, but no one imagined that a mistake in the bridge’s design, made over forty years prior, would have such disastrous consequences on one summer evening in August of 2007. The I-35W bridge, given the designation “Bridge 9340,” was designed by a civil engineering company called Sverdrup & Parcel in the early 1960s. Construction on the bridge began in 1964, towards the end of the national highway construction boom that aimed to dramatically develop the roadway infrastructure of the United States. The bridge opened to traffic in late 1967. Bridge 9340 consisted of fourteen spans: nine spans were of steel multi-girder construction, two were of concrete slab construction, and the main three were of deck truss construction. The Minnesota Department of Transportation, also known as MnDOT, was tasked with taking over annual bridge inspection beginning in 1993. Prior to this, it was federally inspected every other year. Inspection reports by MnDOT often indicated significant corrosion, rusting, warped plates, and other structural issues with the bridge. It was noted that the lack of redundancy in the main truss design meant that the bridge was vulnerable to a collapse if a single critical piece in the truss were to fail. Subsequent inspection reports expressed concern about the bridge’s structural integrity, labelling it a “fracture critical bridge,” but no motion to close or drastically reinforce it was ever made. On the evening of August 1, 2007, slow-moving traffic descended on the I-35W bridge during peak rush hour as it had done countless times before; however, at precisely 6:05 pm CDT, the unthinkable happened. Drivers on the bridge recalled hearing a beam snap, followed by a loud clank! Then, they felt the bridge begin to tremble. Within seconds, 1,000 feet of the bridge collapsed, and about 456 feet of the main span fell 108 feet down into the Mississippi River and its banks. Thirteen people were killed and 145 were injured as a result. Emergency responders arrived on the scene within six minutes of the collapse. Only a handful of vehicles fell into the water, while many were trapped atop pieces of the broken bridge. A school bus with fifty-two children and nine adults was among the vehicles stranded on the wreckage. Twenty-year-old Jeremy Hernandez, a staff member onboard the bus, was critical to getting the children to safety. Panic and fear spread across the country as the news broke out, and observers wondered how this could have happened. Within twenty-four hours of the bridge collapse, investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) arrived on the scene to figure out the root cause of the tragedy. Investigators looked at the weather, traffic patterns, and even the type of solvent used to melt ice that built up in wintertime. Ultimately, they determined that a deciding factor in the collapse had to do with nearly 300 tons of construction equipment placed right over a critical flaw in the bridge’s design—gusset plate U10. The bridge’s deck truss design included fourteen gusset plates, large steel sheets meant to connect girders to the truss structure. Plate U10, which was half an inch thick when it should have been one inch thick, was calculated as being the weakest of the fourteen. This determination by the NTSB meant that a mistake made over forty years before the collapse led to the bridge’s ultimate failure in 2007. The critical design flaw was missed by over forty years of inspections, both state and federal, because checking for such design flaws after the fact was not standard practice. The tragedy that unfolded in Minneapolis on that summer day in 2007 caused a rift that reached every corner of the nation. Government officials everywhere felt urged to ramp up inspections and funnel money towards renovating and maintaining their traffic infrastructure; but, as was proved by the Minneapolis bridge collapse, local government often lacks the funds to deal properly with crumbling infrastructure. It has been estimated that over a trillion dollars are needed to make repairs. This money has been difficult to attain, and local governments across the country continue to struggle to keep up with the cost of maintenance and safety.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Collection I.523.3 dig.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246052,"name":"Science and Technology","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/i-35w-bridge-collapse"},{"alt":"Image of Ida Dorsey’s bordello at 212 Eleventh Avenue South, Minneapolis. Photograph by Wikimedia Commons user McGhiever, February 19, 2019. CC BY-SA 4.0","author":[{"name":"Alexandra Scholten","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/alexandra-scholten"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"September 12, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Dorsey, Ida (1866–1918)","postbody":"Employing the racial prejudices and fantasies of elite male clients once used against her, Ida Dorsey established herself as one of the Twin Cities’ most notorious madams, running multiple ...","searchtext":"Employing the racial prejudices and fantasies of elite male clients once used against her, Ida Dorsey established herself as one of the Twin Cities’ most notorious madams, running multiple brothels between the 1880s and the 1910s. As a woman of color in an industry dominated by white women, she demonstrated herself an adept entrepreneur and real estate owner when most women had neither income nor property. Ida Dorsey was born Ida Mary Callahan (alternatively ‘Ida Marie Callahand’) on March 7, 1866, in Woodford County, Kentucky. Little is known about her life prior to moving to the Twin Cities, though it is assumed that her mother had been enslaved and her father was white. She allegedly ran her first brothel (also referred to as a “bordello”) at the age of sixteen in Kentucky, though by 1886 she had changed her name and established herself in St. Paul at Fifth Street and Jackson Street. Newspapers described Dorsey’s first establishment as “a very tough place” that catered to soldiers of color. Within the year she relocated to 125 Second Street North in Minneapolis, which served a more affluent and whiter clientele, allowing Dorsey a stake in the increasingly lucrative sex trade. Brothels were subject to segregation, and unlike others in the area that only employed white women, Dorsey employed seven to eight women of color. Dorsey’s brothel was open only to white men, and she employed the racialized stereotypes projected onto her and her employees to corner a market for herself. Dorsey was selling her white clientele an “interracial sexual experience,” which was both exoticized and socially forbidden. Due to both Dorsey’s work as a madam and her race, she was targeted during raids, and in 1886 she was sentenced to ninety days in Stillwater State Prison for running a house of prostitution and selling liquor without a license. Other madams were caught up in the raid with Dorsey, though the white madams were only fined. Dorsey was one of two madams put in prison during the decade. After being released, Dorsey moved her operation to 116 Second Avenue in the First Street Red Light District, which occupied the blocks between the Hennepin Avenue Bridge and what is today the Third Avenue bridge. Unlike her previous brothel, the First Street District catered to working-class men. The streets neighbored the train depot, and itinerant lumberjacks and laborers were the primary patrons. Her bordello was subject to relentless raids and fines over the next few years, though Dorsey and other madams used their infamous publicity to further market their businesses. In November 1890, Dorsey built a new bordello on Eleventh Avenue South, allegedly costing her $12,000 to build and another $15,000 to furnish. She was one of the first to populate the new Eleventh Avenue Red Light District, a shift planned and established by the city’s madams themselves. The geographic containment of the red light districts demonstrated an agreement between city officials and the madams: vice was sequestered while the madams became some of the largest property owners in the area. Due to the influence of Dorsey’s clients, her brothel was not subjected to frequent raids. She had a publicly acknowledged affair with Carleton Pillsbury, the nephew of flour miller Charles Alfred Pillsbury and the grandson of Minneapolis mayor George A. Pillsbury. After his death, Dorsey occasionally referred to herself as “Mrs. Ida Pillsbury.” Tensions began to rise as early as 1907 against the toleration of prostitution in Minneapolis. Dorsey was subject to a vice raid and arrested in 1911. This brought her frustrations with the city to their peak, and on March 7, 1913, she relocated her brothel to 151 South Washington Street in St. Paul, a site previously owned by the madam Nina Clifford. Dorsey purchased the house from Clifford for $1,000 and paid a subsequent $3,000 to city officials to run her brothel without the previous hostilities she had faced. Nevertheless, the chief of police ordered all St. Paul brothels closed only months later, and Dorsey was forced to abandon her bordello. The pinnacle of her operations had passed. In her later life, she disregarded the sanctioned red light districts and laws and continued to operate smaller, clandestine brothels for a few years before her death in 1918.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Image5.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056216,"name":"African Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246060,"name":"Crime and Punishment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246055,"name":"Labor","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/dorsey-ida-1866-1918"},{"alt":"1964 Polaris sales brochure. From “Pamphlets relating to snowmobiles and snow cruisers, 1939–.” Pamphlets collection (TL234), Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul.","author":[{"name":"Dave Kenney","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/dave-kenney"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"September 09, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Polaris Snowmobiles","postbody":"Polaris Industries of Roseau, Minnesota, manufactured its first snowmobiles in 1956. In the years since then, it has remained an industry leader in production, sales, and innovation, even ...","searchtext":"Polaris Industries of Roseau, Minnesota, manufactured its first snowmobiles in 1956. In the years since then, it has remained an industry leader in production, sales, and innovation, even as it has diversified into other, more lucrative product lines. Minnesota’s snowmobile industry was born in January 1956, when a mechanic named David Johnson assembled a prototype of a snow-going vehicle in the garage of Polaris Industries, a small machine shop in Roseau. Johnson based his design loosely on an early snow machine called the motor toboggan, built by Wisconsin inventor Carl Eliason. But Johnson’s invention was smaller, lighter, and more nimble than Eliason’s. By the end of 1956, Johnson and his Polaris business partners, brothers Edgar and Allan Hetteen, had refined the machine’s design and named it the Sno-Traveler. Over the next several years, Johnson and the Hetteen brothers slowly ramped up Sno-Traveler production and assembled of network of dealers. An early breakthrough came in March 1960, when Edgar Hetteen led a caravan of three Sno-Travelers on a 1,200-mile trek across Alaska. The successful journey proved the machine’s ruggedness and reliability, and helped convince skeptics that the snowmobile was a viable consumer product. By 1962, Sno-Traveler sales were approaching $800,000 a year and accounting for 85 percent of the company’s annual revenues. In 1963, Polaris introduced the Comet, a light, front-engine sled designed to compete directly with the Ski-Doo, manufactured by Polaris’s main rival, Bombardier of Valcourt, Quebec. But the Comet suffered from multiple design flaws that emerged only after it hit the market. The subsequent customer backlash nearly bankrupted the company. The following year, Polaris unveiled a new line of snowmobiles including the user-friendly Mustang. The new sleds were hits with consumers and led the company into a sustained period of growth. Polaris’s improved performance attracted corporate suitors, and in 1968, the Rhode Island-based conglomerate Textron acquired it for about $11 million. Polaris sold a record 30,000 snowmobiles during the 1970–71 season, but business fell off sharply after that. The 1973 OPEC oil embargo and the ensuing energy crisis turned snowmobiling into a luxury activity that many Americans could no longer afford. Sales plummeted. More than a dozen snowmobile manufacturers got out of the business. Polaris survived by cutting production and slashing its workforce. The company won accolades in 1979, when it introduced the TX-L Indy, the industry’s first consumer snowmobile with race-tested independent front suspension (IFS). But the path to recovery remained difficult. In 1981, when a group of managers bought Polaris from Textron, the company’s production plant in Roseau employed just twelve people. In 1983, industry-wide snowmobile sales dipped to historic lows. Polaris responded, in part, by diversifying into new product lines including all-terrain vehicles (ATVs), which it introduced in 1985. Polaris continued to manufacture snowmobiles and introduce breakthrough technologies like electronic fuel injection (1989) and long-travel rear suspension (1994), but it gradually deemphasized the business through which it came to prominence. In 1996, for the first time, Polaris produced more ATVs than snowmobiles. By 2018, snowmobiles accounted for just 6 percent of the company’s sales.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/TL234_ad_2.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246054,"name":"Sports and Recreation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/polaris-snowmobiles"},{"alt":"The Minnesota Woman Suffrage Memorial on the northeast corner of the upper state capitol mall, 2019. Photo by Linda A. Cameron.","author":[{"name":"Linda A. Cameron","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/linda-cameron"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"September 05, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Minnesota Woman Suffrage Memorial, St. Paul","postbody":"In the summer of 1994, the League of Women Voters of Minnesota convened a group of thirty women to form the Nineteenth Amendment Celebration Committee. The committee organized events around ...","searchtext":"In the summer of 1994, the League of Women Voters of Minnesota convened a group of thirty women to form the Nineteenth Amendment Celebration Committee. The committee organized events around the seventy-fifth anniversary of the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, giving women the right to vote. They left a lasting legacy in the form of the Minnesota Woman Suffrage Memorial Garden. It was the first monument to a movement approved for the mall of the third Minnesota State Capitol. Minnesota was the fifteenth state to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment on September 8, 1919. It wasn’t until Tennessee ratified it on August 18, 1920, that it attained the three-fifths majority of states needed to amend the constitution. US Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby certified the amendment on August 26. Minnesota’s Nineteenth Amendment Celebration Committee hosted a successful seventy-fifth anniversary celebration in 1995. Programs included suffrage-themed performances and a “Women Win the Vote Day” at the state fair. The committee also commissioned a curriculum on woman suffrage for elementary and high school students created by the Upper Midwest Women’s History Center. Led by historian Barbara Stuhler, the committee considered ideas for a memorial that would be a fitting legacy for the milestone anniversary. They favored a garden on the state capitol grounds with plants native to Minnesota featuring the suffrage colors of yellow and white. The yellow daffodil, a traditional symbol of the suffrage movement, figured prominently in the plan. The committee worked with the Capitol Area Architectural Planning Board (CAAPB) for permission to proceed with the memorial and began fundraising. They kicked off the project at the final anniversary event held at the Minneapolis Women’s Club in October 1995. In March 1996, the Minnesota state legislature approved $250,000 for the planning and construction of the memorial. The appropriation required a matching grant of $50,000 raised from private and corporate donors. Over the summer, the CAAPB sponsored a juried design competition for the memorial. They expected applicants to have an interest in women’s history. Female designers were especially encouraged to enter. The planning committee outlined a number of design considerations. They wanted an accessible public memorial, no larger than 150 feet by 100 feet, for a location in the northeast corner of the lower capitol mall. The design should incorporate a path and at least one bench. Plantings could be flowers, shrubs, or trees, in the suffrage movement palette of yellow or gold and white, with some green and purple. The memorial should be easy to maintain and offer landscape interest year-round. It also had to fit in with other design elements on the mall. The committee received six proposals. The judges awarded the commission and a prize of $5,000 to architects Ralph Nelson, Raveevarn Choksombachai, and design associate Martha McQuade of LOOM Studio, and landscape designer Roger Grothe of Aloha Landscaping, for their proposal, “Garden of Time: Landscape of Change.” The winning design featured a garden with twenty-three beds and nine smaller plots of native prairie and woodland plantings separated by lines of pavers. It included a ninety-foot steel trellis inscribed with the names of twenty-five key Minnesota suffragists. A series of steel tablets shared the story of the fight for woman suffrage in Minnesota. The committee asked for more funding during the 1997 legislative session. The senate included the request in a state government finance bill, but it was line item vetoed by Governor Arne Carlson. The following April, the governor approved a final $150,000 for completion of the memorial. Overall, the state provided $400,000 and the committee raised more than $100,000 in non-state funds. A groundbreaking ceremony on August 26, 1998, marked the beginning of construction. The memorial was dedicated on August 26, 2000, the eightieth anniversary of the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution. Those attending enjoyed live music, an ice cream social, and a children’s activity. The committee sent special invitations to those involved with the project, and included a yellow “thank you” button bearing the name of one of the twenty-five suffragists featured in the memorial. Many of the original plants failed to thrive. In 2004, Aloha Landscaping refurbished the garden with many new plants, including hardy perennials, groundcovers, and grasses. A rededication took place on August 24, 2004.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/IMG_2595.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/minnesota-woman-suffrage-memorial-st-paul"},{"alt":"Trial-size box label for then-new Chocolate Malt-O-Meal, 1961. Used with the permission of Post Consumer Brands and Northfield Historical Society.","author":[{"name":"Stephanie Hess","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/stephanie-hess"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"September 03, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Malt-O-Meal Company","postbody":"The Malt-O-Meal Company was founded by John S. Campbell in Owatonna in 1919 and grew to be one of the top cereal manufacturers in the country. Since 1927, Malt-O-Meal cereal products have ...","searchtext":"The Malt-O-Meal Company was founded by John S. Campbell in Owatonna in 1919 and grew to be one of the top cereal manufacturers in the country. Since 1927, Malt-O-Meal cereal products have been made in Northfield and sold internationally. John S. Campbell grew up in a milling family and often ate bland hot wheat cereal. He decided to make a new breakfast food with more flavor that was easier to prepare. After experimenting with some ingredients, he found a good formula: a mix of wheat farina and malted barley. Campbell called this new cereal |||Malt-O-Meal.||| He formed the Campbell Cereal Company in 1919 to make Malt-O-Meal exclusively. At first, Campbell made and sold Malt-O-Meal cereal by himself in an old creamery building in Owatonna, Minnesota. The company moved into Owatonna||s Simpson Mill in 1925 and then to the Ames Mill in Northfield in 1927. Afterward, Northfield became the home of Malt-O-Meal manufacturing. The company||s first customers included grocery stores and food brokers in Minnesota and northern Iowa. They learned about Malt-O-Meal through direct sales, word of mouth, and product samples. As his cereal grew in popularity, Campbell started advertising it to a larger market. In the 1920s and 1930s, the Campbell Cereal Company sponsored radio programs and developed toy giveaways to increase sales. Some of their most popular radio shows included |||Steamboat Bill,||| |||Under the Sea with Jack Westaway,||| and |||Tena and Tim.||| In the 1940s, the Campbell Cereal Company came up with a new marketing slogan: |||It||s Smooth and Creamy, and Double-Flavored.||| This slogan appeared on cereal boxes, radio commercials, and local print ads during this era. The company||s first nation-wide Malt-O-Meal cereal print ad appeared in Ladies|| Home Journal in 1946 as well as other periodicals. It also created popular radio and early television commercials. These marketing efforts led to dramatic increases in sales and production of Malt-O-Meal in post-World War II America. The Campbell Cereal Company changed its name to the Malt-O-Meal Company in 1953. For decades, Campbell||s company had made and marketed only one product, but in the 1960s it began to diversify. It introduced a new product in 1961: chocolate-flavored Malt-O-Meal. Chocolate Malt-O-Meal was the company||s first successful new product since 1919, but it was not the last. In 1965, the Malt-O-Meal Company began to manufacture ready-to-eat cereals like Puffed Wheat and Puffed Rice. To make these new products, the company purchased the Northfield Creamery building. This became Malt-O-Meal||s second Northfield manufacturing plant. During this period, the Malt-O-Meal Company also attempted to manufacture food outside of the breakfast market. From 1967 through 1981, the Malt-O-Meal Company produced Soy Town and Soy Ahoy roasted soybean snacks as well as Pophitt popcorn bunnies and balls. These snack products were eventually discontinued. The Malt-O-Meal Company began to expand its ready-to-eat cereal lines in the 1970s. They introduced several flavors and packed the cereal in stay-fresh plastic bags. Some notable flavors include Toasty O||s (1975), Sugar Puffs (1980), and Tootie Fruities (1989). Other flavors came in the 1990s, when the company made microwave Malt-O-Meal. During this period, the company also started making store-brand cereal. After celebrating its seventy-fifth anniversary in 1994, the Malt-O-Meal Company continued to expand product lines and adapt to new trends in food manufacturing. It opened manufacturing plants in Tremonton, Utah, and Asheboro, North Carolina, in the 2000s. In later years the company also added organic and natural cereal lines. Then, in 2012, the company changed its name to MOM Brands. Despite these efforts, MOM Brands was challenged by changes in the breakfast food market. In 2015, its leaders agreed to sell the company to Post Holdings, Inc. Post Holdings combined its Post Foods business with MOM Brands to become Post Consumer Brands. Since then, Post Consumer Brands has continued to produce Malt-O-Meal products in Northfield. While the Malt-O-Meal Company that John Campbell started no longer exists, his malt-flavored hot cereal and dozens of others are still made in Northfield.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/2016-20-764.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/malt-o-meal-company"},{"alt":"FMA president Rene Dawis delivering a speech in Minneapolis, 1953.","author":[{"name":"Estelita Vargas Malicsi","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/estelita-vargas-malicsi"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"August 28, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Fil-Minnesotan Association","postbody":"The Fil-Minnesotan Association is a non-profit organization based in Plymouth, Minnesota, that serves Filipino Americans throughout the United States. Since its founding in 1953, it has ...","searchtext":"The Fil-Minnesotan Association is a non-profit organization based in Plymouth, Minnesota, that serves Filipino Americans throughout the United States. Since its founding in 1953, it has provided education, nurtured Filipino cultural traditions, and prepared Filipino youth for leadership roles. In 1953, twelve Filipinos, all University of Minnesota students, formed an organization dedicated to sharing companionship, Filipino news, and Filipino food. Soon after, the fledgling organization, under the leadership of Dr. Rene Dawis and Lily Salcedo, drafted a constitution and adopted the name Fil-Minnesotan Association (FMA). In 1966, FMA’s then-president, Dr. Emmanuel Balcos, initiated a fundraising project to establish a Filipiniana section at the University of Minnesota Library. That project became the FMA-produced play “Portrait of the Artist as Filipino,” presented at the Heritage Hall of the Minneapolis Public Library and directed by graduate student Antonio Mabesa. It had a cast of University of Minnesota Filipino graduate students, with theater major Lita Vargas in the lead. Minneapolis Mayor Arthur Nafthalin headed the list of dignitaries who attended the premiere performance. After Dr. Nelson Paguyo became president in 1974, FMA put more effort into increasing the visibility of the Filipino American community in the Twin Cities. An FMA-organized dance troupe led by choreographer Carie Evangelista performed at churches, colleges, and cultural centers. In 1976, FMA member Abe Malicsi initiated the first Paskong Pilipino, a Christmas celebration for Filipino American children. Later that year, a new undertaking began: an original musical production focusing on the culture and history of the Philippines, written by Noli Celestino and directed by Lita Malicsi (formerly Vargas). This developed into the Filipiniana series, created by the Celestino–Malicsi duo with Carie Evangelista, Marietta Docto, and Luis Siojo on the choreographic team. The series created an appreciation of Philippine heritage and values among the new generation of American-born Filipinos. A major FMA fundraiser that started in Dennis Diaz’s presidency in 1983 benefited humanitarian projects, including financial aid for the victims of the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines. In 1992, the Children’s Heart Fund received help from FMA for the establishment of a cardiac center in the Philippines for needy Filipino children with heart disease. In 1992, after becoming FMA president, Lita Malicsi authored the association’s mission statement: “to provide socio-civic, educational, cultural and artistic opportunities to the community it is committed to serve.” In pursuit of this mission, FMA conducted its first strategic planning campaign, embarking on projects that responded to the unique needs and issues facing the Filipino community. Parent–youth seminars on the topic “Relationships in a Bi-cultural Family” were conducted in partnership with the University of Minnesota Center for Youth Development Research and social agencies. After the campaign, FMA deepened its engagement in the arts and humanities. In 1994, Malicsi started the Klasika Series—home concerts presenting musically trained artists in the community. The association’s major extravaganza, MUSIKAL!, premiered in 1995 at the World Theater in St. Paul. Its success and public appeal stirred requests for the next production, MUSIKAL 2. Subtitled “America, Can I Tell You How I Feel,” it addressed societal issues faced by Filipinos and other immigrants in America. In 1998, President Dodge Flores launched Town Hall meetings where community members discussed concerns with FMA leaders. The association also held free clinics to provide health screening services to the underserved. The 1990s saw FMA’s continued growth. As an offshoot of the parent–youth seminar series on bi-cultural issues, the Fil-Minnesotan Youth organization was formed, with Sharon Lira as president. This was followed by the affiliation of the Fil-Minnesotan Seniors with FMA, with Fred de los Reyes as president. In 2007, President Boo Dava launched the first FMA basketball tournament, an annual event that brought the community together. The following year, President Darwin Yasis unveiled the Four Pillars of the association: FMA Arts and Culture, Akademy, Helping Hands, and Community Development. In 2009, the FMA realized its dream of establishing a “home away from home”: the Philippine Center of Minnesota, located at 1380 Frost Avenue in Maplewood.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/First FMA Pres. R. Dawis_cropped.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/fil-minnesotan-association"},{"alt":"The Dalai Lama at the Tibetan American Foundation of Minnesota in St. Paul, 2017. Photograph by Tashi Khongtsotsang.","author":[{"name":"Tendar Tsering","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/tendar-tsering"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"August 26, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Tibetan American Foundation of Minnesota (TAFM)","postbody":"The Tibetan American Foundation of Minnesota is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization with members living in and around Twin Cities. Since its inception in 1992, it has transformed into a ...","searchtext":"The Tibetan American Foundation of Minnesota is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization with members living in and around Twin Cities. Since its inception in 1992, it has transformed into a full-fledged social and cultural hub through events held at its headquarters, the Tibetan Community Cultural Center in St. Paul. It strives to preserve Tibetan identity, culture, and tradition, as well as to spread peace and compassion through social services in and around the Twin Cities. Under the 1990 Immigration Act, the US federal government authorized the issue of immigrant visas to 1,000 Tibetans in Nepal and India. These 1,000 people were sent to several different states in the country, and with the help of host families and volunteers, 160 of them arrived and settled in Minnesota. With a few exceptions, they were the first Tibetans to live in the state permanently. One of the exceptions was Thupten Dadak, a Tibetan immigrant who had come to Minnesota from India four years earlier, in 1986. Recognizing a need for an official group that could help resettle incoming Tibetans, Dadak co-founded the Tibetan American Foundation of Minnesota (TAFM) in St. Paul in 1992. At about the same time, a sister organization called the Tibetan Association of Minnesota (TAM) formed in the same city. While the TAFM was made up mostly of white Minnesotans—about 400 in total—and tackled settlement issues, the TAM was made up entirely of Tibetans and focused on cultural preservation, community building, and mutual assistance. As the 1990s progressed, Tibetan refugees continued to reunite with family members in the Twin Cities with the help of TAFM, and the area’s Tibetan American population increased. Meanwhile, TAM hosted community events and coordinated celebrations of Tibetan Buddhist holidays, including the Losar festival (observed on the first day of the Tibetan New Year), Lhabab Duechen (observed during the ninth Tibetan lunar month), and Tibetan Uprising Day (March 10), which recognizes the guerilla fighters who resisted the Chinese army in Lhasa (Tibet’s capital) in 1959. The Dalai Lama’s 2001 visit to St. Paul proved to be a crucial moment in the development of TAFM. It earned so much income from fundraising and sales related to his appearances that it was able to expand its programs. In 2003, it bought a building at 1096 Raymond Avenue in St. Paul and reopened it as the Tibetan Cultural Center. In the 2000s, TAFM has remained committed to preserving Tibetan culture, tradition, religion, and heritage. Its board members, who are directedly elected and serve three-year terms, are responsible for the management of the community center and for program coordination and planning. Programs include education for Tibetan Americans of all ages, including Tibetan language classes for children from preschool to eighth grade. The Lamton program, created in 2008 by Tibetan students at St. Olaf and Carleton Colleges in cooperation with TAFM, guides Tibetan youth toward higher education. Meanwhile, in the field of public health, the Tibetan Nurses Association (another TAFM partner) aims to uplift the wellbeing and health of its community members. In 2019, community members estimate that roughly 3,500 people of Tibetan descent live in Minnesota—the second-largest Tibetan American population in the country after New York’s. TAFM continues to collaborate with other community organizations such as the Regional Tibetan Youth Congress and the Regional Tibetan Women’s Association to amplify the voices of Tibetans inside Tibet. Together, they organize awareness campaigns and write petitions to the United Nations and American leaders, urging them to end the plight of Tibetans living under the rule of the Chinese communist regime.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/image_1.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/tibetan-american-foundation-minnesota-tafm"},{"alt":"Minnesota Boat Club, ca. 1885. Photograph by Charles A. Zimmerman.","author":[{"name":"Sarah M. Risser","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/sarah-m-risser"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"August 21, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Minnesota Boat Club, 1870–1900","postbody":"The Minnesota Boat Club (MBC) was founded by ten young men in 1870 at a time when rowing was wildly popular throughout the country. Over time, additional clubs were established in ...","searchtext":"The Minnesota Boat Club (MBC) was founded by ten young men in 1870 at a time when rowing was wildly popular throughout the country. Over time, additional clubs were established in Minnesota, intensifying the competition. After earning a national reputation, MBC encountered financial difficulties and faltered. In 1868, John W. L. Corning relocated from New York City to St. Paul. Like many enterprising young up-starts, he was drawn to Minnesota’s untapped resources and rapidly expanding transportation network. He had shipped his single rowing shell down the Atlantic coast to New Orleans and then up the Mississippi River to the head of navigation in St. Paul. By the late 1860s, rowing had become a national craze. Professional rowers were in the spotlight as the country’s first sports celebrities. When Corning launched his shell into the Mississippi River for the first time, a crowd gathered on the Wabasha Street Bridge to watch, thrilled that the sport had finally arrived in St. Paul. Rowing quickly took hold in the city, and on March 1, 1870, ten ambitious young men formally organized the Minnesota Boat Club (MBC). With limited resources, the team stored its boats in a leaky, floating, covered-over scow anchored to the foot of the Robert Street Bridge. Despite MBC’s crude boathouse, the new club attracted a steady influx of new members, including men of means who were able to secure its finances. On December 18, 1873, the Minnesota Boat Club was formally incorporated, and immediately thereafter it leased the western half of Raspberry Island from Daniel D. Merrill. By early 1874, MBC had completed construction on its first boathouse. When MBC hosted its first Fourth of July Regatta in 1874 to showcase the new boathouse, the event immediately became a crowd-drawing annual tradition. Invited spectators watched the races from Raspberry Island; others watched from the Wabasha Street Bridge or the bluffs along Third Avenue. The men of MBC competed against each other in single and double sculling races in which they held two oars, one in each had. They also raced fours, in which each man held just one oar. After the starting pistol’s shot rang out, the men raced from the Wabasha Bridge upriver one mile, turned 180 degrees around a stake, and then powered back downstream to the boathouse. This out-and-back racecourse enabled spectators to see both the start and the finish of each race. In 1877, MBC purchased the land they had been leasing on Raspberry Island, securing an advantageous location just a short walk from downtown St. Paul. That year they attended their first out-of-state regatta at Devil’s Lake, Wisconsin, where they competed against clubs from Milwaukee and Chicago. They captured victories in the single-, double-, and four-oared races, marking the beginning of a more competitive era. By the mid-1880s, competitive rowing was intensifying throughout Minnesota. In 1885, a second rowing club, the St. Paul Boat Club, was organized in St. Paul, with a boathouse situated just east of MBC on Raspberry Island. The following year, the two St. Paul clubs, together with the Winnipeg Rowing Club, formed a new international rowing association: the Minnesota and Winnipeg Amateur Rowing Association. The association presented Minnesota’s rowing clubs with a formal opportunity to compete for trophies and prizes. A victory in its signature event, the Senior Four (senior events were for oarsmen who had secured a previous victory), was a coveted honor. In 1887, MBC retained John A. Kennedy, an ex-professional rower, as its first coach. Kennedy had a reputation for instilling a sense of courage and determination in his crews. Under Kennedy, MBC became increasingly competitive, benefiting from his dedicated, long-term leadership. In 1893, the team enjoyed an outright winning streak that earned the club and their coach a national reputation. MBC’s glory years were short lived. By the mid-1890s, golf and tennis were overtaking rowing in popularity. MBC encountered financial difficulties and its fleet fell into disrepair. In 1897, MBC laid off its beloved coach, John Kennedy, and by the end of the 1890s competitive rowing in the Twin Cities had come to a halt. For the next decade, MBC continued to train and put boats on the water, but without a coach and in a much-reduced capacity. In 1903, the Minnesota Boat Club began positioning itself again for competitive rowing. Today, nearly 150 years since its founding, the club continues to put boats on the water and sends competitive athletes to local, regional, and national regattas.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/GV3.61B m1.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246054,"name":"Sports and Recreation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/minnesota-boat-club-1870-1900"},{"alt":"Martha Angle Dorsett","author":[{"name":"Ellen Jaquette","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/ellen-jaquette"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"August 19, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"1878","name":"Dorsett, Martha (1851–1918)","postbody":"Martha Angle Dorsett is best known for being Minnesota||s first female lawyer. After being denied the right to practice law in Minnesota in 1876, she successfully petitioned the Minnesota ...","searchtext":"Martha Angle Dorsett is best known for being Minnesota||s first female lawyer. After being denied the right to practice law in Minnesota in 1876, she successfully petitioned the Minnesota legislature to change the state law governing attorney admissions. With the law amended to permit admission regardless of sex, Martha went on to practice law and remained active politically throughout the rest of her life in Minneapolis. Born on April 2, 1851, in Randolph New York, Martha Angle eventually left the East Coast to attend the University of Michigan, graduating with a bachelor of philosophy degree in 1875. Afterward she enrolled in the Iowa College of Law (later Drake University Law School)—just five years after Ada Kepley became the first woman to graduate from any law school in the United States. Angle graduated from law school in 1876 and married her fellow Michigan and Iowa classmate Charles Dorsett the same year. Angle—now Dorsett—entered the Iowa Bar and relocated to Minneapolis soon after. In 1876 both she and her husband petitioned Hennepin County for admission to practice law in Minnesota. Charles was admitted to practice, but Judge Young of Hennepin County’s Court of Common Pleas denied Martha’s application, citing the Minnesota statute regarding legal practice as prohibiting her entry. The law at the time read that “Any male person of the age of twenty-one years, of good moral character, and who possesses the requisite qualifications of learning and ability, is entitled to admission to practice in all the courts of this State.” Like many of the first female attorneys across the country, Dorsett then worked to change the language of the state law to allow for entry for all applicants regardless of sex. Three bills were introduced at her behest in the state legislature: two to remove any discriminatory language from the state statute regarding attorney licensure (one in the Senate, and another in the House), and another allowing just her to practice law in the event that the first bills did not pass. Newspaper coverage regarding bills introduced at Dorsett’s request in the Minnesota legislature noted that debate on the bill was “half jocular” and hinted that passage of the broader bill, opening legal practice to all women in the state, was not guaranteed. Indeed, the broader bill, S.F. 12, failed twice in the House before successfully passing on February 27, 1877. Governor John Pillsbury signed it into law on March 1, 1877. Dorsett successfully entered the Hennepin County Bar in January of 1878, and officially became the first female attorney admitted to practice law in Minnesota. Dorsett’s active civic life continued after her fight in the legislature. She practiced law briefly, then went on to co-own a printing press and catering business with her husband. Outside of her business activity she was an active member of the Minnesota suffragist community. She served on the boards of both the Political Equality Club of Minneapolis and the Minnesota Woman Suffrage Association. She even fought for suffrage at the national level, serving as the vice-president at large of the American Women’s Suffrage Association in the 1880s. A statement by the Political Equality Club of Minneapolis after her death referenced Dorsett’s support for state suffrage, noting that she used her own printing press to make copies for the organizations. This involvement did have a downside: house fires at the Dorsett home tragically led to the loss of records for both the Political Equality Club as well as the Minnesota Woman Suffrage Association. In addition to running a business and her suffragist work, Dorsett served on the board of Martha Ripley||s Maternity Hospital, raised five children, and was active in the Minnesota Prohibition Party, where her husband ran as the party candidate for Minnesota governor three times. Near the end of her life Dorsett became a Christian Science practitioner and passed away in March of 1918 at the age of sixty-six, just two years before the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/HS1221.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/dorsett-martha-1851-1918"},{"alt":"SILC Hindi class","author":[{"name":"Preeti Mathur","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/preeti-mathur"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"August 13, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"School of India for Languages and Culture (SILC)","postbody":"The School of India for Languages and Culture (SILC) was established in 1979 as a weekend school by Indian American parents to help their children learn and become familiar with their ...","searchtext":"The School of India for Languages and Culture (SILC) was established in 1979 as a weekend school by Indian American parents to help their children learn and become familiar with their heritage. It is a non-profit, secular organization run by volunteers. SILC was created when five former teachers of a St. Paul school called Bharat School decided to reorganize that institution as a non-profit organization. As immigrants from India, they shared the goal of immersing their children in Indian languages and culture in a secular, all-inclusive environment. SILC is one of the oldest such institutions in North America and uniquely inclusive. Unlike many other ethnic schools in Minnesota and around the country, it is not associated with any religious, regional, or ethnic groups. The school, held September through June, originally met on Sundays at the Commonwealth Terrace on the St. Paul Campus of the University of Minnesota, and for a short time in the St. Anthony Elementary school. It changed to Saturdays after it moved to Como High School in 1992. Although language classes, electives, and other offerings have changed over the years, depending on student needs and volunteer availability, the school’s schedule has remained the same. The day starts at 10 a.m. with an invocation followed by language classes, a break for milk and cookies, and social studies (originally called General Knowledge), a class that teaches students about such topics as Indian festivals, geography, and history. The last session is an elective that allows students to choose from offerings such as dance, music, yoga, and cooking. After an assembly where students sing the national anthem of India, the school ends at 12:30 p.m. SILC’s curriculum has evolved, too, with many activities added to enrich and supplement the language and culture classes. While yoga and dance have been mainstays, other classes such as the SILC Achievement Project (SAP) have helped students produce the books Indian Cooking and India-on-a-Page (a facts book on India) and discuss issues critical to growing up in dual cultures. Similarly, classes such as cooking, music, art, and even coding have been offered. Extra-curricular activities such as field trips, visits from accomplished performers, speakers and special guests supplement the learning. SILC Mela, a social gathering as well as a fund-raiser, and Graduation Day (in June) are regular events that showcase the learning students have acquired over the year. Other celebrations, such as Indian festivals, are organized annually. In 1998, a pre-school was started to introduce children between the ages of three and five to their Indian heritage. Held once a month, it was a way to get younger students, particularly siblings, to attend SILC and become regular students. Each year, a special committee publishes a yearbook that has become a repository of SILC’s thirty-nine years of history. As the internet and social media became mainstays in the 2000s, SILC established a website and used social media and blogs to publicize and connect with potential students. Over the years, its collection of books and memorabilia has grown into an extensive SILC library. A laptop computer purchased for the school has helped digitize many of the materials and is used by students to make presentations. SILC has also started publishing books on India in limited quantities through the participation and investment of a few SILC members. Since its inception, SILC has participated in activities outside the regular school program, often with other organizations. It has regularly participated in the Festival of Nations, performing in the children’s program and organizing the cultural exhibits. It also participates in India Association of Minnesota (IAM’s) events, originally at the Independence Day Picnic and later in the IndiaFest (also called India Day). SILC students have participated in events like the Asian Heritage Dragon Parade and the Flint Hills Children’s Festival, and with the Minnesota History Center and the Parents of Indian Children (PIC workshop). In 2003, SILC helped start and organize Camp Masala, a two-day residential program for children adopted from India. Often, SILC students are called on to participate in international festivals, at schools, and at events such as the Burnsville International Festival May Day Parade.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Classroom_2002_2.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056210,"name":"Education","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/school-india-languages-and-culture-silc"},{"alt":"Stephen Kulieke (center bottom) with Cuban refugees","author":[{"name":"Britt Aamodt","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/britt-aamodt"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"August 09, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Positively Gay Cuban Refugee Task Force","postbody":"Founded in Minneapolis by activists Thom Higgins and Bruce Brockway, the Positively Gay Cuban Refugee Task Force helped ninety gay Cuban men fleeing the regime of Fidel Castro find new ...","searchtext":"Founded in Minneapolis by activists Thom Higgins and Bruce Brockway, the Positively Gay Cuban Refugee Task Force helped ninety gay Cuban men fleeing the regime of Fidel Castro find new homes in Minnesota in the summer of 1980. In the spring of 1980, thousands of Cuban refugees streamed into Miami as part of a mass emigration known as the Mariel Boatlift. These Marielitos (so called because they departed from Havana’s Mariel Harbor) were fleeing political persecution and economic hardship under Fidel Castro and seeking asylum in the United States. Miami couldn’t handle all the refugees—125,000 would make the crossing between April and October 1980—so the federal government set up refugee camps around the country. One such camp was Fort McCoy, a little-used army base in western Wisconsin that was rapidly outfitted with tents, a portable hospital, a chain-link fence, and concertina wire for its new purpose. Minnesotans Thom Higgins and Bruce Brockway, who had been following the story of the Mariel Boatlift in the newspaper, drove through the gates of Fort McCoy in June. The fort was located just hours from Minneapolis, where the two friends lived. But more significant to these gay activists, it was reported that thousands of gay men numbered among the Marielitos. Under Castro, gay people were imprisoned and sent to labor camps. In April, when Castro announced that anyone who felt dissatisfied with his government could leave, many felt they had no choice but to join the exodus to America. Higgins and Brockway wanted to help the gay men detained at Fort McCoy. No refugee could leave the fort without an American sponsor. Religious organizations were drumming up sponsors in the Twin Cities, but their priority was resettling Cuban families. That doomed single gay men to indefinite detainment in a facility with rampant sexual assault. In response, Higgins and Brockway formed the Positively Gay Cuban Refugee Task Force, named after Brockway’s newspaper Positively Gay (later renamed the GLC Voice by its new publisher). They printed up flyers asking for volunteers to sponsor one or more gay Cubans and posted them at Minneapolis gay bars, the Locker Room bathhouse, and the Women’s Coffeehouse. The task force screened and trained sponsors before finalizing matches. On June 12, the friends drove to Fort McCoy and, with the help of a refugee, identified and signed up seventy gay Cubans willing to be sponsored through Positively Gay. A month later, on July 15, Higgins and Brockway reappeared at the fort with a borrowed RV and a car to take refugee Rene Valdes and others to their new homes in Minneapolis. Along the way, they encountered a tornado whipped up by a severe weather system, the Western Wisconsin Derecho. As turbulent as the storm was, it was nothing next to the culture shock that was about to hit the Cubans. Most could not speak English. Some had spent the last few years in prison because of their homosexuality. Still, the American government expected them to look for work immediately. The sponsors felt the pressure. John Yoakam had signed up with Positively Gay to sponsor twenty-year-old Fidel Guerra. He quickly realized there was little guidance for sponsors beyond connection to English-language classes and some access to medical care. Guerra did get dentures for his missing teeth, but his sponsor spent frustrating weeks working his own contacts to find him a job. In the end, Guerra decided Minneapolis wasn’t for him. In September, he said goodbye to Yoakam and moved to Oklahoma with a friend. Other Marielitos also left—many for Miami and its established Cuban community. Rene Valdes liked Minneapolis. He was thirty-two and had a talent for foreign languages, a college degree, and a former career in the Havana Sugar Ministry. Within six months, Valdes found a job at Control Data Corporation working with computers. He’d also fallen in love with Brockway and would remain with him until just before Brockway’s death from AIDS in 1984. Higgins and Brockway had begun the Positively Gay Cuban Refugee Task Force with a sense of purpose. As gay men, they wanted to help gay Cubans live the open, free life in America that had been denied them in Cuba. But the pressures of the task force soon drove a wedge between the friends. Some Cubans didn’t like their sponsors. Some had no interest in learning English. Some sponsors begrudged houseguests who wouldn’t do chores. There were claims of theft. In the end, Higgins and Brockway couldn’t fix the problems or their friendship, and the task force was inactive after late 1980. But for ninety Cubans, it offered a way out of detainment by connecting them to sponsors. And it offered a first step in the challenging journey to American citizenship that lay ahead.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Higgins Box 15_05_A.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/positively-gay-cuban-refugee-task-force"},{"alt":"Flag of the American Indian Movement (AIM)","author":[{"name":"Jon Lurie","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/jon-lurie"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"August 02, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"1968","name":"American Indian Movement (AIM)","postbody":"The American Indian Movement (AIM), founded by grassroots activists in Minneapolis in 1968, first sought to improve conditions for Native Americans who had recently moved to cities. It grew ...","searchtext":"The American Indian Movement (AIM), founded by grassroots activists in Minneapolis in 1968, first sought to improve conditions for Native Americans who had recently moved to cities. It grew into an international movement whose goals included the full restoration of tribal sovereignty and treaty rights. Through a long campaign of “confrontation politics,” AIM is often credited with restoring hope to Native peoples. AIM’s rise occurred during a time of extreme hardship for Native Americans in the Twin Cities. A decade earlier, the federal government had passed the Indian Relocation Act, which promised good jobs and housing for Natives who moved from reservations into cities. Many of the thousands who migrated, however, found only low-wage labor, substandard housing, discrimination, violence, and despair. Their spiritual ceremonies, outlawed since 1884, were still illegal. AIM’s initial actions were meant to bolster Minneapolis’s Native population. To aid victims of police abuse, they formed the AIM Patrol. AIM also helped establish the Legal Rights Center, which provided free representation to the poor, and the Indian Health Board, which provided Native-centric medical care. In 1972, AIM founded the Heart of the Earth Survival School. Later that year, AIM widened its focus to the national stage, joining the Trail of Broken Treaties. The purpose of the walk—which began on the West Coast and ended in Washington, DC—was to demand that the government fulfill its treaty commitments. Upon arrival, AIM members occupied the Bureau of Indian Affairs Building. After nearly a week, the Nixon administration agreed to consider their demands and pay for them to return home. The action made AIM a target of COINTELPRO, the FBI’s covert operation meant to disrupt domestic political organizations. In 1973, AIM received a request from Gladys Bissonette of the Oglala Sioux Civil Rights Organization. The traditional Lakota people on the Pine Ridge Reservation were being terrorized by white vigilantes and supporters of tribal president Dick Wilson. In response, AIM joined the traditional Lakotas in occupying the village of Wounded Knee. Surrounded by hundreds of federal agents with military weaponry, the Natives battled government forces for seventy-one days. They demanded hearings on their treaty and investigation of the BIA. Two Native people, Buddy Lamont and Frank Clearwater, were killed. Major news organizations remained onsite throughout the conflict, reporting headlines across the world. While three men—Dennis Banks, Clyde Bellecourt, and Russell Means—are generally acknowledged as leaders of AIM, many Native women also made extraordinary, often anonymous, sacrifices for the movement. Among these were Pat Bellanger, an original AIM member whose nearly fifty years of service to the movement earned her the nickname “Grandma AIM”; Sarah Bad Heart Bull, who was beaten and jailed in Custer, South Dakota, while protesting her son’s murder; and Anna Mae Aquash (Mi’kmaq First Nation), who took up arms and fought alongside the men at Wounded Knee. History may view AIM as a militant group, but AIM saw itself as a spiritual movement. Before, during, and after Wounded Knee, AIM members participated in Sun Dances, sweat lodges, and other long-hidden ceremonies, helping to coax them from the shadows. In 1974, Banks and Means were tried for conspiracy and assault at the federal courthouse in St. Paul. After a nine-month trial, AIM declared victory when Judge Fred J. Nichols, citing government misconduct, dismissed all charges. The movement, however, had begun to splinter. Infighting, jealousy, and the FBI’s efforts to divide them had sewn suspicion and paranoia. The murder of Anna Mae Aquash, whose body was discovered on Pine Ridge on February 24, 1975, marked the beginning of the end of a united AIM. Members blamed the FBI and one another, destroying trust within the movement. AIM’s last major action took place in 1978. The Longest Walk was commenced to protest the imprisonment of AIM activist Leonard Peltier and eleven federal bills that threatened treaty rights. Several hundred Natives marched from San Francisco to Washington, DC. The walk achieved much of its purpose: the anti-Native bills were defeated. But the greatest victory of the walk, and perhaps the movement, came on August 11, just days after protestors arrived: President Jimmy Carter signed the American Indian Religious Freedom Act, lifting the ban on Native American spiritual practices. Bellecourt continued to lead the Minneapolis branch of AIM into the 2010s, fighting derogatory team names and police misconduct and founding the AIM Interpretive Center. He died in 2022.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/750px-Flag_of_the_American_Indian_Movement_V2.svg_.png","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246059,"name":"Native Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/american-indian-movement-aim"},{"alt":"Striking Hormel workers on April 10, 1986","author":[{"name":"Susan Marks","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/susan-marks"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 31, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Hormel Strike, 1985–1986","postbody":"On August 17, 1985, about 1,500 Hormel Foods Corporation workers went on strike at the meat-processing plant at the company’s headquarters in Austin, Minnesota. The strikers, members of ...","searchtext":"On August 17, 1985, about 1,500 Hormel Foods Corporation workers went on strike at the meat-processing plant at the company’s headquarters in Austin, Minnesota. The strikers, members of United Food and Commercial Workers’ Local P-9, cited a wage freeze, dangerous working conditions, and a wage cut as the reasons for the strike, which continued for thirteen months. New non-union workers were hired and the National Guard was called to protect them, drawing global attention. The conflict is heralded as one of the most contentious and longest-running strikes in Minnesota history. In the mid-1980s, a national recession deeply impacted the economy and, subsequently, the workforce. Companies commonly froze and cut wages, which hit economically disadvantaged communities, like Austin, especially hard. Prior to the strike at Hormel, workers in the hog-slaughtering plant were distraught over a wage and benefit freeze and dangerous working conditions. When Hormel management imposed a 23 percent wage cut, P-9 members voted to strike. However, the strike was not supported by the parent union, United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), leading to deep resentment and turmoil among P-9ers and the community of Austin. Hormel management was left with no immediate option but to close the plant temporarily. Meanwhile, both sides of the picket line strategized to hold their position. When Hormel offered 300 eligible employees retirement benefits if they stopped striking, thirty of them accepted the offer. Additional proposals from Hormel to resolve the strike were shot down by P-9ers. Striking employees staged protest activities like a roving picket line and rallies. P-9ers also mobilized Hormel retirees and community members to attend rallies and show their support. As the strike picked up momentum it gained national attention, leading to a widely publicized boycott of Hormel products. In January 1986, Hormel reopened the plant and asked the striking P-9 members to return to work while also accepting applications from non-union workers. Around 500 union members returned to Hormel, causing a divisive split in the Austin community. Additionally, about 540 non-union employees—most of them Mexican migrant workers—were hired to bring the plant back to full production. Minnesota Governor Rudy Perpich mobilized the National Guard to maintain order on January 20. As the strike dragged on, tension continued to mount between strikers and Hormel management. Protesters organized a massive blockade of several hundred cars to keep workers from getting into the plant. Hormel management retaliated by firing many of the strikers. Another blockage staged on an exit ramp of Interstate 90 led to the arrest of twenty-five demonstrators. Despite the ongoing protests and growing animosity, the National Guard was dismissed because it was determined that the local law enforcement could handle the protesters. Shortly after, violent clashes at demonstrations led to more strikers’ arrests. On April 10, 1986, a riot broke out outside the plant. Police used tear gas on strikers and nine police officers were injured during the riot. More protesters were arrested, including some from out of town. Soon after the riot the Reverend Jesse Jackson arrived to mediate between Hormel and the P-9 strikers. When the strikers met him at Austin Municipal Airport and welcomed him to Minnesota, he delivered an impromptu sermon. Later he met with jailed protesters, leading them in a chorus of the gospel-turned-protest anthem “We Shall Overcome.” Jackson mediated with both sides but was unable to help them reach a resolution. Throughout the strike, the UFCW sided with Hormel management, eventually leading them to order Local P-9 to end the strike in June. When Local P-9 refused, the UFCW suspended P-9 officers, forcing the local union into receivership as it was taken over by the parent union. The action essentially ended the strike, although it did not officially end for several more months. By fall, union workers ratified a new contract with Hormel, but only about 20 percent of striking employees got their jobs back. While the strike was unsuccessful for P-9, it succeeded in raising awareness of the plight of factory workers and effecting positive change in unions across the United States. Parent unions viewed the Hormel strike as a cautionary tale for the entire labor movement, evident by parent unions showing greater support to union members during negotiations with employers, resulting in fewer large-scale strikes.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Sheet 2  5A-6.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246055,"name":"Labor","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/hormel-strike-1985-1986"},{"alt":"Children of Governor Adolph Eberhart","author":[{"name":"Joy K. Lintelman","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/joy-k-lintelman"}],"categoryTag":[],"date":"July 31, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Swedish Immigration to Minnesota","postbody":"Over a quarter of a million Swedes came to Minnesota between 1850 and 1930, drawn primarily by economic opportunities not available to them at home. Once Swedish immigrant settlements were ...","searchtext":"Over a quarter of a million Swedes came to Minnesota between 1850 and 1930, drawn primarily by economic opportunities not available to them at home. Once Swedish immigrant settlements were established in the state, they acted as magnets, creating migration chains that drew others. Attracted at first to rural areas by agricultural opportunities, Swedes eventually chose to move to cities as well. In the twenty-first century, Minnesota’s Swedish Americans continue to honor their ethnic roots through family traditions, public festivities, and education. Choosing Minnesota Of the roughly 1.25 million Swedish men, women, and children who came to the United States between 1845 and 1930, more settled in Minnesota than in any other state. A few may have likened Minnesota’s geography to Sweden’s when deciding where to settle, but most chose the state for more practical reasons. Opportunities for immigrants to obtain land or find employment coincided with increasingly limited access to these resources in Sweden. For the ultimately nearly 300,000 Swedes who settled in the state, Minnesota presented the right place at the right time. Sweden’s population expanded markedly between 1750 and 1850, doubling in size from approximately 1.78 million to 3.58 million. This growth stemmed from Sweden’s improved health conditions, limited military conflicts, and increased food supply, with wide-spread social consequences. The number of landless agricultural workers increased dramatically. Agricultural reforms such as farm consolidation increased the food supply but also decreased opportunities for land ownership. The rise in population, moreover, was not matched by an increase in employment opportunities in other sectors. Sweden’s gradual shift from a rural to an urban-industrial society limited new employment opportunities for rural Swedes until an industrial labor market emerged. Mina Anderson, who chose to emigrate in 1890, expressed what many young Swedes likely felt: she was “tired of hard work and disappointment.” For Anderson and others like her, Minnesota was a destination that offered opportunities not available in their homeland. Economic and other incentives motivated people to move, as did dissatisfaction with the Swedish political environment of the nineteenth- and early-twentieth centuries. Religious intolerance of minority religious groups motivated others—Swedish Baptists who settled in Isanti County, for example. Personal issues such as family conflict and pregnancy outside of marriage also influenced migration decisions. Origins The first Swede recorded as living in Minnesota was Jacob Fahlström (ca. 1795–1859), a fur trader-turned Methodist missionary. His presence was noted near Fort Snelling in the 1820s. He and his family (a wife and nine children) eventually settled in Washington County near Afton. His migration, however, was unique, and did not lead other Swedes to make the move to Minnesota. Swedish migration to Minnesota really began three decades after Fahlström’s arrival. Swedes began to settle in Illinois in the 1840s, and their migration to Minnesota was part of a gradual spread northward. By 1854, a Swede arriving on the East Coast could travel by rail to Chicago and the Mississippi River and then take a steamboat to St. Paul. This stopping-off point in Minnesota Territory (established in 1849) made Minnesota a logical destination for farm-seekers. The Pre-emption Act of 1841 also encouraged settlement, as it enabled migrants to claim government land prior to its public sale. Three men from southern Sweden took land in Washington County near Marine-on-St. Croix in 1850, though they did not become permanent settler-colonists there. A larger group of Swedes settled in Chisago County in 1851, encouraging more to follow them. Many took land there and in the surrounding areas. Three core Swedish settlements were established in this first wave of migrants: the Chisago colony and two more colonies in Goodhue and Carver counties. Immigration to these areas was legal only after 1851, when Dakota people ceded most of their territory via the treaties of Mendota and Traverse des Sioux and agreed to move to a reservation. As a result, the Swedes and others who moved into the center of Minnesota Territory in the 1850s built their homesteads on the same prairie that had been occupied only a few years (and in some cases months) earlier by the Dakota. New arrivals sent letters sent back to relatives and friends about opportunities in Minnesota that drew other Swedish immigrants to these initial cores. Their communication contributed to an “America fever” in Sweden that encouraged immigration to the state—especially in family groups—for decades. Settlement did decrease in the late 1850s, however, due to an economic downturn in the United States. After this first wave (1849–1857), historians have identified four subsequent waves of Swedish immigration to Minnesota: 1863–1873, 1880–1893, 1900–1914, and 1919–1930. They are distinguishable by surges and declines in migration as well as the varying characteristics of the migrant groups themselves. The Second Wave: Building Communities (1863–1873) A second wave emerged in 1863 in reaction to the US Homestead Act of 1862 and lasted through the early 1870s, spurred on by crop failures in Sweden in 1867 and 1868. It included families as well as an increasing number of landless farmhands and rural domestic servants who saw little opportunity for maintaining or improving their standard of living in Sweden. During this second period, Minnesota Swedes often sent letters home with prepaid tickets, along with detailed information about transportation, employment opportunities, and the cost of living. Many settler-colonists in this wave took land along the St. Paul and Pacific Railroad||s main line, through the central region of the state. Swedish American communities emerged in Wright, Meeker, and Kandiyohi counties and in towns like Cokato, Litchfield, and Willmar. Railroad expansion also encouraged settlement in the Red River Valley in northwestern Minnesota. The state granted railroad companies land on which to build tracks, and the plots they didn’t use could then be sold to help pay for railroad construction. Settlement was further encouraged by the activities of Hans Mattson, a Swedish immigrant who had helped establish the Vasa settlement in Goodhue County. He worked as a land agent for the railroad and as a Minnesota state immigrant agent in Sweden and Scandinavia. The Third Wave: An Urban Turn (1880–1893) An economic downturn in the United States in 1873 dampened the second flow of migrants. By 1880, however, Swedish immigration to Minnesota had surged again, and a third wave arrived. Throughout the 1880s, the United States economy improved, and falling grain prices in Sweden meant continued economic struggles for rural Swedes. It was during this wave that Minnesota became the state with the largest number of Swedish immigrants in the nation. By 1890 nearly 100,000 Swedes resided in Minnesota. This migrant stream was dominated by single rather than family migration and continued through 1893, when another economic depression hit the United States. Much of the best affordable farmland had been claimed by this time, and newly arrived Swedes often lacked the capital to establish a farmstead. Some urban migrants hoped to earn money to obtain farms. In the meantime, sawmills, lumber mills and other industries in Minneapolis and St. Paul needed young male labor. Swedish men found wage-earning opportunities in the expanding railroad system as well as the timber and mining industries that had emerged in northern Minnesota and on the Iron Range. Jobs in domestic service and the textile industry drew young women to urban areas. “Help-wanted” advertisements targeted at women sometimes stated a preference for Swedes. Potential employers saw Swedish characteristics (previous experience as a servant in Sweden, reputation as hardworking and clean, white-skinned and Protestant) as desirable for workers living in their households. The Final Waves: 1900–1914 and 1919–1930 The last two surges in Swedish immigration took place from the turn of the twentieth-century to World War I, and from the end of the war through the beginning of the Great Depression. Like the previous waves, this twentieth-century migration included mostly single men and women. They took advantage of employment options available in urban areas of the state (especially Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Duluth). The onset of the war in 1914 greatly decreased migrant numbers. By the time the conflict ended, the United States appealed less to young Swedes than it had in previous decades. Sweden’s industrial and economic development had created opportunities for young Swedes to improve their life situations without migrating. Jobs could be had, and with wages not so different than those in America. Despite immigration restrictions implemented by the American government, for most of the 1920s, Swedish immigrants did not even fill the quotas allotted them. Once the Great Depression hit, immigration numbers were further diminished. More Swedish immigrants returned to their homeland in the 1930s than the reverse. Though some Swedes still immigrated to Minnesota, and continue to do so even in the twenty-first century, the era of mass migration from Sweden to Minnesota that had begun in the 1850s all but ended with the Great Depression. Farmer Pioneers The earliest Swedish immigrants in Minnesota faced challenges common to settler-colonists on the frontier. Government programs and railroad land grants helped them claim their own farmland. Establishing a successful farm, however, required sustained effort, persistence, and good fortune. Housing in the first years might consist of a one- or two-room log cabin that became more and more cramped as family size increased. Severe weather and long distances between villages or towns required careful planning to survive harsh winters. Swedish immigrant women might be left to manage households on their own while husbands wintered in lumber camps or at other seasonal work to earn much-needed cash. All the while, the threat of potential crises such as crop failures, grasshopper infestations, and reprisal by the Dakota people they had displaced (particularly in the wake of the US–Dakota War of 1862) weighed on the immigrants’ minds. The establishment of churches and other religious institutions helped settler-colonists meet challenges and provided important support networks. Church communities were hubs for social as well as religious activities, countering isolation and offering assistance. They also helped immigrants maintain their ethnic identity through activities such as Swedish-language worship, summer Swedish-language instruction, and celebration of ethnic holidays and traditions. Country schools also helped Swedish immigrants and their children adapt to their new homeland through public education as well as social events. Many settler-colonists eventually established successful farms. Some were able to provide an agricultural legacy for their children. Those who struggled with farming (or children of successful farmers who did not enjoy rural life) sought to make a living elsewhere, often in urban areas. City Swedes Swedish settlement in the Twin Cities began in St. Paul. Migrants settled on the East Side, where housing was affordable and employment accessible. The first Swedish-occupied neighborhood in St. Paul became known as Swede Hollow and took shape in a ravine along Phalen Creek. In the late 1850s a few Swedes occupied makeshift housing there that had been abandoned by earlier temporary residents. They found employment in the nearby breweries and mills. Over time ethnic businesses developed in the area, especially along Payne Avenue. These businesses met neighborhood needs with Swedish-speaking proprietors and culturally familiar goods and services. Swedish Lutheran and other Swedish American churches were also founded in the area. Like other early-established core communities, Swede Hollow attracted other Swedish immigrants. Most residents, however, did not stay in the Hollow for long. They moved out of the ravine and toward the Arlington Hills area as their finances improved Those up-and-coming residents were quickly replaced by newly-arrived Swedes, and eventually, other new immigrant groups began to settle beside them. Though Irish, Italian, and, later, Mexican immigrants made homes in the area before it was demolished by authorities in 1956, it still retains the original name of Swede Hollow. Swedish settlement in Minneapolis did not take off until the 1870s. At that time, Swedish immigrants began to populate areas along the north side of the Mississippi in the city’s Second and Ninth Wards, and on the south side of the river along Washington Avenue in the Sixth Ward. By the 1890s Swedes settled further north and south, in areas such as Camden, near Shingle Creek, and in the Seward and Longfellow neighborhoods. Young Swedish women were often exceptions to these patterns, working in homes in wealthy upper-class neighborhoods as domestics, cooks, seamstresses, and nannies. Snus Gatan Among Swedish urban enclaves, the Cedar-Riverside area in the Sixth Ward of Minneapolis, occupied by Norwegians and Danes as well as Swedes, gained the strongest reputation as a Swedish and Scandinavian community. That reputation persisted well into the twentieth century. Cedar Avenue also acquired the label Snus gatan (Snoose Boulevard). Many of its Scandinavian residents chewed tobacco (snus in Swedish) and relieved themselves of the liquid results of the habit on the street, especially after a night of carousing. Like Payne Avenue in St. Paul, Cedar-Riverside contained a wide range of Swedish businesses, services, and entertainment options. A Cedar-Riverside Swede in 1900 could purchase groceries at Samuelson’s Confectionery, attend worship services at St. Ansgarius (Swedish) Episcopal Church, watch a Swedish-language play or vaudeville act at Dania Hall, seek medical treatment from Carl J. Ringnell (Swedish doctor/surgeon), drink a beer or something stronger at Nels Nordeen’s saloon, and then renounce alcohol at the Salvation Army Corp #4 (Swedish Unit), all without leaving the neighborhood. By 1905 residents could also access Swedish-language books in the collections of the Seven Corners branch of the Minneapolis Public Library. Swedes and Religion Most devout Minnesota Swedes—both rural and urban— attended Lutheran churches. A Scandinavian Augustana Synod was established in 1860 by early Swedish and Norwegian clergy in the Midwest. By 1870 the Norwegians had separated to form their own ethnically based synods, The Swedish Augustana Synod grew to become the largest Swedish American religious organization in the nation, supporting a strong Minnesota Conference of member churches. Some Minnesota Swedish immigrants found spiritual homes in other Christian denominations, including the Mission Covenant, Methodist, Baptist, Pentecostal, Episcopalian, and Mormon churches, as well as the Salvation Army. Many of these grew out of religious movements in Sweden and were encouraged by American religious pluralism. American and Swedish Swedish immigrants quickly adapted to American life in outward, visible ways by changing their attire and diet. This was especially true of the young women who served in middle- and upper-class American homes. Most Swedish immigrants learned some English as was necessary for employment, and their children were instructed in the language in the public schools. Yet many immigrants continued to speak Swedish within their households and chose to patronize Swedish American businesses. They opted to reside in rural or urban areas with high concentrations of their countrymen and countrywomen, even as the core settlements dispersed over time. Swedish immigrants also participated in ethnically oriented institutions where they could maintain language and cultural habits. Swedish American churches valued and maintained Swedish ethnic identity. Secular organizations such as clubs, fraternal and provincial societies, and choruses that celebrated Swedish heritage were also established, especially in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-centuries. As Swedish migration to America grew and Minnesota Swedes continued to adapt to their new homeland’s culture, Swedish American institutions maintained elements of both identities. Recognizing the need to minister to Swedish descendants who did not understand Swedish, the Augustana Synod established its first English-language church in Minneapolis in 1903. Its pastor was bilingual. Most member churches shifted to English services (in part or in whole) in the 1920s and 1930s. This change was hastened in part by the pressure to Americanize that the US government put on immigrants during World War I. Legacies The number of Swedes settling in Minnesota had dwindled by the 1930s. But the Swedish influence upon the state’s economy, politics, society, and culture is still felt in the twenty-first century. Swedish immigrants helped build James J. Hill’s Great Northern Railway, process midwestern wheat into flour, and produce Munsingwear underwear. They also contributed to the operations of countless other financial ventures that made for Minnesota’s economic development. The influence of Swedish American business leaders like Curtis L. Carlson (for whom the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management is named) continues through philanthropic activities such as the Carlson Family Foundation. Swedish Americans have also left a legacy in Minnesota politics. From Hans Mattson to Nanny Mattson Jaeger to Arne Carlson, Minnesotans of Swedish heritage have long been active in politics at many levels. Their allegiances varied, ranging from Republican to Farmer-Labor and even socialist and communist. That Minnesota Swedes were white, literate, educated, and generally Protestant likely contributed to their success at the polls. Author Klas Bergman argues that the Swedish (and Scandinavian) political presence contributed to Minnesota’s progressive political traditions, solid educational system, and strong human services. A commitment to social welfare and human rights is evident in Minnesota’s private sector, as well as its government. Lutheran Social Service of Minnesota is a non-profit voluntary agency still active across the state in the twenty-first century. It traces its roots to the charitable work of Swedish immigrant Augustana Synod pastor Eric Norelius, who established the Vasa Children’s Home in 1865. Among the services the organization provides is legal assistance for newly-arrived immigrants and refugees. Swedish immigrants also founded caring institutions such as Bethesda Hospital in St. Paul in 1883, Swedish Hospital in Minneapolis in 1898 (now part of the Hennepin County Medical Center), and Bethany Home for the Aged in Alexandria in 1917. Minnesota Swedes’ educational legacy can be seen in the immigrant institutions that continue in the twenty-first century such as Gustavus Adolphus College (founded 1862), Bethel University (founded 1871), and Minnehaha Academy (founded 1913). Cultural Heritage In the 2000 federal census, nearly 10 percent of Minnesotans claimed Swedish ancestry. Two of the Swedish American cultural contributions still visible in contemporary Minnesota include Svenskarnas Dag (Swedish Day) and the American Swedish Institute (ASI). The former is an annual celebration of Swedish heritage that began in 1934. It is held in Minneapolis’s Minnehaha Falls Park each summer and involves raising a midsummer pole (Midsommarstång), Swedish music and folk dancing, the crowning of a Midsummer Queen, and Swedish food and vendors. The American Swedish Institute was established in 1929 by Swan J. Turnblad, publisher of the Swedish American newspaper Svenska Amerikanska Posten (1885-1940). It remains a fixture of Swedish American memory and institutional life. Before his death, Turnblad told newspaper reporters that he wanted “to foster and preserve Swedish culture in America” and donated his large mansion on Park Avenue in Minneapolis for that purpose. It provided a venue for exhibitions and other activities designed to educate","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/por 19746 p1_1.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/swedish-immigration-minnesota"},{"alt":"Governor Horace Austin","author":[{"name":"Linda A. Cameron","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/linda-cameron"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 29, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Minnesota Female Suffrage Bill, 1870","postbody":"Minnesota||s early woman suffragists endured many setbacks in their fight for the vote. Perhaps none was as disappointing as Governor Horace Austin||s veto of the 1870 female suffrage ...","searchtext":"Minnesota||s early woman suffragists endured many setbacks in their fight for the vote. Perhaps none was as disappointing as Governor Horace Austin||s veto of the 1870 female suffrage bill—the first to pass both the House and Senate. His controversial decision appeared to defy the state constitution. Minnesota women began to pressure the state legislature in the 1860s to amend Section 1 of Article IV of the Constitution of the State of Minnesota to give women the right to vote. On January 11, 1866, Representative Anson R. Hayden presented the first known petition for woman suffrage in the House of Representatives for Eva J. Spaulding and others. The petition made little progress beyond its referral to the joint committee on amendments to the constitution. In 1867, Representative John Seboski offered another petition with 200 signatures to House members for review. The petition stalled after it was referred to a special committee of representatives. The next year, the legislature considered a petition from Mary A. Graves with 350 signatures, presented by Representative Alpheus B. Colton. The petition asked that the word |||male||| be removed as a qualification for voting. The committee on elections recommended that it be carried forward, but the request was tabled. The tide seemed to turn when a fourth petition bearing 605 signatures reached the House in February 1869. In spite of some legislators treating it as a joke, it resulted in House File 91, the first bill for female suffrage in Minnesota. Representative John Lathrop of Rochester introduced the bill on February 8. A motion to table the bill indefinitely failed, and the bill advanced. On February 24, the legislature invited women to speak, and Mrs. Addie L. Ballou of St. Paul stepped up to address the House. In spite of objections and the absence of several representatives, a vote was taken. The bill suffered defeat by one vote, twenty-two to twenty-one. Efforts to reconsider the bill failed and it never reached the Senate. In 1870, the legislature considered two petitions with a total of 750 signatures. This resulted in House File 123 (HF 123), introduced by Representative Abram M. Fridley on February 9. The bill extended suffrage to all citizens, male and female, aged twenty-one and over. It included immigrants and Native Americans who agreed to live by US laws and customs and who adopted the English language. The bill passed the House on February 15, thirty-three to thirteen. It passed the Senate on February 24 with a vote of twelve to nine. Several legislators publicly admitted that they voted for the measure in their respective legislative bodies but would not support it at the polls. They wanted the people to decide. Minnesota||s constitution requires that any bill for a constitutional amendment that is passed by a legislative majority be put to a public vote. The 1870 bill clearly stated this: |||The proposed amendment shall be submitted to the people of the several districts of this State for their approval or rejection, at the next general election.||| Both men and women who met all necessary qualifications would be permitted to vote on the amendment, although women||s votes would be placed in |||separate and distinct ballot boxes.||| The bill reached Governor Austin||s desk for his signature. Recognized as being pro-suffrage himself, he surprised supporters by vetoing it. Senator William Lochren of Rochester protested that Austin could not legally veto a constitutional amendment bill and declared that the question of female suffrage would be decided at the polls the following November. The vote never happened. Austin cited the illegality of the bill as the reason for the veto and the blocked public vote. Under Minnesota||s constitutional law, women could not yet legally vote. The bill had no authority to enable them to vote until such authority was granted through constitutional amendment. In his personal correspondence, he claimed that he would not have vetoed the bill if it had called out the women||s votes as advisory only, not as legal and binding. Austin asserted that the author of the bill intended the measure to fail, and he indicated a desire to see a stronger bill in the future that had a better chance of success.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/AV1996.9.7_Gov. Austin.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/minnesota-female-suffrage-bill-1870"},{"alt":"Charles Maybury","author":[{"name":"Greg Gaut","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/greg-gaut"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 24, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Maybury, Charles G. (1830–1917)","postbody":"Charles G. Maybury dominated architectural practice in Winona from 1865 to 1905, designing churches, schools, courthouses, commercial buildings, and residences in the city and throughout ...","searchtext":"Charles G. Maybury dominated architectural practice in Winona from 1865 to 1905, designing churches, schools, courthouses, commercial buildings, and residences in the city and throughout southeast Minnesota. He moved comfortably between styles, including Italianate, Queen Anne, Richardsonian Romanesque, and Gothic Revival. Many of his buildings have survived and are on the National Register of Historic Places. Like most of Winona’s early entrepreneurs and professionals, Maybury migrated from the East as a young man in search of new opportunities after treaties with the Dakota opened the west bank of the Mississippi to colonization. Born in Solon, New York in 1830, he apprenticed for six years with a building contractor and then became a partner in the firm. When the young man came to Winona in 1856, he was already an experienced draftsman and builder. He worked as a building contractor during his first nine years in Winona, after which he set aside his tools and focused on architecture. Winona’s growing lumber industry was fueling the rapid expansion of the business district. Starting in the 1870s, Maybury designed a large share of the downtown’s commercial buildings—especially those on Third Street, which are part of a National Register of Historic Places commercial district (NRHP, 1998). His 1872 design for Anger’s Block (NRHP, 1978) was an early example. He also designed most of the original brick school buildings in Winona. In the 1870s Maybury designed houses in the Italianate style, including a home for the Winona brewer C. C. Beck on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi, the George H. Haven House in Chatfield (NRHP, 1982), and the sheriff’s residence and jail in Caledonia, the county seat of Houston County (NRHP, 1983). In 1881 Maybury’s son Jefferson joined him and the two practiced as Maybury & Son. The firm adjusted easily to changing architectural styles. In 1883 they designed the Houston County Courthouse (NRHP, 1983) in Romanesque Revival style, and six years later employed the newly popular Richardsonian Romanesque style in the Winona County Courthouse (NRHP, 1970). In the judgement of architectural historian David Gebhard, the Winona courthouse and the Minneapolis City Hall and Courthouse mark the highpoints of the Richardsonian style in Minnesota. In these years the Mayburys mastered the Queen Anne style, as exemplified by the Abner Hodgins House (NRHP, 1984). This home in the city’s Windom Park Historic District is widely recognized as one of the finest homes in the state. Many Winona congregations commissioned the firm to plan their churches. The architects designed churches in Romanesque Revival style, like the German Methodist Episcopal Church. They also designed Gothic Revival churches, like St. Martin’s Lutheran and St. John Nepocene, built for the city’s Bohemian parish. They designed many other churches in Wisconsin and Minnesota, but their crowning achievement was the Basilica of St. Stanislaus Kostka, built for the Polish Catholic congregation on Winona’s East Side in 1895 in a Polish Cathedral style, a blending of the Baroque and the Romanesque. Based on his extensive experience as a builder, Charles Maybury also oversaw the construction of two of Winona’s grandest buildings. In 1890, the federal government employed him to supervise construction of the Post Office and Federal Building (razed in 1963). In 1896, his home congregation enlisted him as supervising architect for Central United Methodist Church, designed by St. Louis architect Lorenzo B. Wheeler. Charles Maybury had a defining influence on the built environment of Winona. An early history of Winona County remarked that “it is impossible to get out of the sight of his work in walking through the city.” As noted earlier, however, Maybury & Son were also active throughout southeastern Minnesota, including in Rochester and Caledonia. They designed Queen Anne houses for the Mayo brothers—for W. J. Mayo in 1888 (razed 1918) and for C. H. Mayo in 1894 (razed 1987) They also worked extensively for the Franciscan Sisters in Rochester. In Caledonia, the firm designed adjacent houses for Robert and Ellsworth Sprague (NRHP, 1982), two successful bankers in Caledonia. In 1904, Jefferson Maybury moved West and eventually opened an office in Seattle. The following year his father, who was then seventy-five, retired from active practice. He died in Winona in 1917.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Charles Grandison Maybury.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/maybury-charles-g-1830-1917"},{"alt":"Clayton Jackson McGhie Memorial","author":[{"name":"Tina Burnside","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/tina-burnside"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 22, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Duluth Lynchings","postbody":"Lynching is widely believed to be something that happened only in the South. But on June 15, 1920, three African Americans, Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson, and Isaac McGhie, were lynched in ...","searchtext":"Lynching is widely believed to be something that happened only in the South. But on June 15, 1920, three African Americans, Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson, and Isaac McGhie, were lynched in Duluth, Minnesota. Clayton, Jackson, and McGhie were working at the John Robinson Circus, which was in town for a performance. On June 14, 1920, Irene Tusken, nineteen, and James Sullivan, eighteen, who were both white, attended the circus. Later that night, the couple claimed that six black circus workers robbed them at gunpoint and raped Tusken. The next day, June 15, Duluth Police Chief John Murphy rounded up several African Americans for Tusken and Sullivan to identify as the alleged attackers. The couple accused six black men who were then arrested and held in the Duluth city jail. On that same morning, Tusken was examined by a doctor who concluded there was no evidence that she was raped. News of the alleged rape and subsequent arrests spread throughout the city as Louis Dondino organized an angry mob by driving around and telling people to join the “necktie party.” The crowd, estimated at 10,000 people, used bricks, clubs and sticks to break into the police station. Duluth Commissioner of Public Safety William F. Murnian failed to instruct his officers to stop the rioters forcefully, allowing them to enter the jail. The people in the mob broke into the jail cells of Clayton, Jackson, and McGhie, beat the three men, and declared them “guilty” in a mock trial. They then dragged them a block from the jail to the corner of First Street and Second Avenue. The rioters threw a rope over a light pole, stripped the men down to their waists, and lynched them. When McGhie’s rope broke, they hung him a second time. A man sitting on a lamppost repeatedly kicked Clayton in the face as he suffocated. After Clayton, Jackson, and McGhie were killed, Clayton’s body was cut down or fell to the ground. The crowd gathered around their lifeless bodies, then illuminated them with car headlights and posed Clayton’s limbs. Dozens of white men stood smiling for a photograph, which was made into postcards sold as a souvenirs. The Minnesota National Guard was deployed to secure the city and protect the remaining three African American men who had been arrested. They were moved from the Duluth jail to the St. Louis County jail. Meanwhile, news of the lynching spread across the country. Some people were shocked and outraged about the lynching while others believed the false rape claim—despite the fact that there was no evidence the men committed a crime. A grand jury indicted thirty-seven white men for rioting and/or murder. Only eight, however, were tried, and only Louis Dondino, Carl Hammerberg and Gilbert Stephenson were convicted for rioting. No one was convicted for the murders of Clayton, Jackson, and McGhie. Seven African Americans were indicted for rape. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) sent attorneys to Duluth to defend them. Charges were dismissed against some, but William Miller and Max Mason were tried for rape. Miller was acquitted, but Mason was convicted and sentenced to up to thirty years in prison. After serving four years in prison, Mason was released on the condition that he leave Minnesota. After the lynchings, a local NAACP branch was founded. Nellie Francis, an activist from St. Paul, lobbied the state legislature for an anti-lynching law that was passed on April 21, 1921. The lynchings were mostly forgotten or ignored until 1991, when the graves of Clayton, Jackson, and McGhie were given headstones reading, “Deterred but not defeated.” In 2000, citizens formed the Clayton Jackson McGhie Memorial Committee, and in 2003 a monument honoring the three men was dedicated in Duluth across the street from where the men were lynched. Soil from the lynching site and the names of Clayton, Jackson, and McGhie are included in the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. The national memorial was founded by the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) in 2018 to acknowledge the more than 4,400 African Americans lynched by mobs of white people between 1877 and 1950. In Duluth, a “Day of Remembrance” is held annually to commemorate the lives of Clayton, Jackson and McGhie. Max Mason, who had applied for a pardon in 1923 and been denied, was pardoned by the state in 2020, seventy-eight years after his death.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/duluth_lynchings_hero.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056216,"name":"African Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246060,"name":"Crime and Punishment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/duluth-lynchings"},{"alt":"Clark W. Thompson","author":[{"name":"Colin Mustful","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/colin-mustful"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 17, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Thompson, Clark Wallace (1825–1885)","postbody":"Clark W. Thompson was a businessman and politician who founded the town of Wells, Minnesota, in 1870. As superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Northern Superintendency during the ...","searchtext":"Clark W. Thompson was a businessman and politician who founded the town of Wells, Minnesota, in 1870. As superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Northern Superintendency during the US–Dakota War of 1862, he was involved in crooked business practices and corrupt political dealings—a man of industry who used his position and power to build wealth at the expense of Native populations. Clark Wallace Thompson was born near Jordan, Ontario, on July 23, 1825. In 1840, he and his family moved to Roscoe, Illinois. There, his father built and managed a large wool factory. He sent young Thompson to the Mount Morris Academy in Mount Morris, Illinois. According to his own account, Thompson “learned very fast there and [became] the best scholar in school.” In September 1843, he married Rebecca Sophia Wells. In 1850,Thompson traveled west to join in the Gold Rush. He found little success as a miner, so in 1852 he began building water wheels for mills in California. He returned to Minnesota in 1853 and began working at a mill in Hokah, Houston County. He also found work as a banker and railroad speculator. Thompson, a Republican, entered politics in 1854, when he was elected to the 6th Territorial Legislative Session. He was re-elected to the 7th and 8th Legislative Sessions. He also served as a Republican member of the Territorial Constitutional Convention in 1857. In 1861, because of the influence of Minnesota Senator Morton S. Wilkinson, Thompson was appointed the Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Northern Superintendency. In that role, he oversaw Indian agencies in Minnesota and Wisconsin. As superintendent, Thompson was in charge of the disbursement of funds to Native people— a duty that put him at the center of a corrupt system of political patronage. Because Thompson used his role to support his own business interests while awarding contracts to friends and business partners, he and the men around him became rich at the expense of Native populations. In the same year as his appointment, for example, Thompson partnered with Ojibwe Agent Lucius Walker to falsify annuity rolls, steal and then resell Ojibwe goods, and collude with dishonest traders. In the summer of 1862, Thompson recognized the poor condition of the Dakota people awaiting late deliveries of food and annuity money from the US government. He worked against those who sought to delay the annuity payment. In July 1862, he wrote a letter to Commissioner of Indian Affairs William Dole. “If the payment is not made very soon,” he wrote, “there is but little hope of preventing an outbreak.” Thompson was at Fort Snelling when the payment arrived on August 16. He personally escorted the monies to Fort Ridgely on August 18, shortly after the outbreak of the US–Dakota War. In 1863, Thompson arranged the removal of the Dakota and Ho-Chunk people to the Crow Creek reservation in South Dakota. The land he selected was dry, lacked game for hunting, and was not well suited for people accustomed to a woodland terrain. For six weeks after their arrival at Crow Creek, three or four people died every day from starvation or disease. The people working above and below Thompson often sought political and business favors. They also encouraged Thompson to commit fraud, and he often went along. In 1863, he led a disastrous campaign to send goods from Mankato to the Dakota and Ho-Chunk at Crow Creek. The plan, called the Moscow Expedition by local papers, allowed Thompson to award lucrative contracts to business partners but delayed the delivery of food. Meanwhile, he ignored the dire situation of the people living at Crow Creek. At the time, the government largely overlooked Thompson’s corrupt conduct. In 1861, special agent George E. H. Day accused Thompson of fraud in letter to President Lincoln that went ignored. Two years later, in a letter to Senator Henry M. Rice, Bishop Henry B. Whipple noted that Thompson brought $12,000 in gold to the Ojibwe annuity payment, but only $5,500 was paid. After retiring from Indian affairs, Thompson became the president of the Southern Minnesota Railroad. Beginning at La Crescent the railroad went across southern Minnesota to Winnebago City. In 1870, the railroad led to the founding of Wells, named for Thompson’s wife. Thompson built factories, including a flourishing mill, and the town grew quickly. In 1870, Thompson was elected to the Thirteenth Minnesota Legislative Session representing Faribault County. From 1880 to 1885, he served as the president of the State Agricultural Society. He died in Wells, Minnesota, on October 11, 1885.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Clark W Thompson.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246059,"name":"Native Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/thompson-clark-wallace-1825-1885"},{"alt":"Minnesota Pipes & Drums","author":[{"name":"Linda A. Cameron","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/linda-cameron"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 15, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Scottish Cultural Organizations in Minnesota","postbody":"Scottish immigrants first came to Minnesota with the fur trade in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In the 1850s, colonies of Scots began to put down roots in towns such ...","searchtext":"Scottish immigrants first came to Minnesota with the fur trade in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In the 1850s, colonies of Scots began to put down roots in towns such as Mapleton and Caledonia, while others migrated to the larger cities of Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Duluth. Like other immigrants, they sought to preserve the customs of their homeland wherever they landed. The clubs they formed and the events they held allowed them to celebrate their heritage. Scots came to Mapleton shortly after its founding in 1856. The next year, they held a gathering to honor Scotland’s poet laureate, Robert Burns, and in 1866, they formed the Blue Earth Valley Burns Club. (Since then, Mapleton has held a Burns Night event nearly every year. 2019 marked the town||s 143rd Burns celebration.) Scots in St. Paul formed the St. Andrew’s Society of Minnesota in 1859, a benevolent organization named for the patron saint of Scotland. Steep membership dues of fifty cents every three months or twenty-five dollars for a life membership contributed to the society||s rapid decline. The secretary recorded in November 1861 that there were no meetings held or dues paid during that year. He cited poor management, few qualified members, and hard economic times as reasons for the group||s failure. In the 1870s, a resurgence of interest in Scottish heritage prompted the formation of new clubs. Scots in Minneapolis met in June 1871 to organize the St. Andrew’s Society of Minneapolis. On November 30 of that year they held their first event, a celebration of St. Andrew’s Day open to “all Scotchmen and sons or grandsons of Scotchmen throughout the State.” Founded as an all-male society, the group invited members’ wives and daughters to the Burns supper for the first time in 1875 and honored them with the now traditional “Toast to the Lassies.” The group hosted a picnic at Lake Calhoun (Bde Maka Ska) In July 1876. It featured traditional music and highland games, such as the caber toss, putting the stone, and throwing the hammer, as well as wheelbarrow, foot, and sack races for all ages. St. Paul Scots convened the St. Andrew’s Society of St. Paul in May 1879. They hosted their first annual picnic and games that August at White Bear Lake, and observed St. Andrew’s Day with a supper and ball in November. The group held monthly entertainments and annual Burns celebrations. By 1874, Scots in Duluth had organized a Caledonian Society. Minneapolis followed suit in 1885. These clubs hosted monthly social events featuring traditional music and readings from Scottish literature. They held annual Burns suppers and picnics with highland games. The growing popularity of the Minneapolis Caledonian Club may have caused the demise of that city||s St. Andrew’s Society around 1890. The traditional Scottish sport of curling may have been played in Minnesota as early as 1857 on the Maple River in Mapleton. The Blue Earth Valley Burns Club became the Maple River Curling Club in 1888 and, later, the Heather Curling Club. The sport||s popularity grew as clubs sprang up in towns across Minnesota, especially in the north. Members of the Minneapolis Caledonian Club formed the Thistle Curling Club (later the Flour City, then Minneapolis Curling Club) in 1885. Organizers planned practice sessions in Central (Loring) Park in Minneapolis “every afternoon, when it is pleasant.” The Duluth Curling Club started in 1887 and became incorporated in 1895. Still active, it has hosted world competitions and boasts Olympic champions among its members. The St. Paul Curling Club grew out of the combined Nushka and Capital City curling clubs in 1912 to become the largest in the country. More than thirty active curling clubs thrive in Minnesota in 2019. Individual clan and family societies in Minnesota didn||t appear until the late twentieth century. The Order of Scottish Clans (OSC), organized in 1878 in St. Louis, was a national fraternal society created to help Scottish Americans in need. It served as an umbrella organization for clan societies with membership open to all with Scottish blood, regardless of surname. The earliest and largest OSC society in Minnesota, Clan Stewart No. 50 of Duluth, began in 1888 with thirty-one members. Clan Stewart hosted annual Burns Night banquets and summer picnics in Fond du Lac, with highland games, dance, and bagpipe competitions. Membership peaked at more than 500 in 1915. Other OSC societies in Minnesota included Clan Matheson No. 73 and Clan Forbes No. 237 in Duluth, Clan Gordon No. 98 and Clan McDonald No. 198 in Minneapolis, and Clan Campbell No. 116 in St. Paul. By 1898, each had a ladies’ auxiliary. Immigrants from the Hebridean Isle of Lewis formed the Lewis Society in Duluth in 1911. Unique among Scottish cultural societies in Minnesota, they conducted meetings in Scots Gaelic, their native language. The group remained active until the mid-twentieth century. The St. Paul St. Andrew’s Society was active until about 1900. The Minneapolis Caledonian Club disappeared in the late 1890s as younger members of the community opted for the more socially active Clan Gordon No. 98, OSC. Some OSC clans remained active in Minnesota until the late 1960s. The OSC merged with the International Order of Foresters in 1971. As earlier societies disbanded, a group of young Scottish immigrants founded the Twin Cities Scottish Club (TCSC) in 1969. The club||s annual calendar includes a Burns supper, whist night, afternoon tea, and family Christmas party. Members participate in Tartan Day events and the Minnesota Scottish Fair and Highland Games. TCSC supports dance programs, pipe bands, and the Scottish American Center. In recognition of its Scottish Presbyterian roots, Macalester College in St. Paul hosted its first Scottish Country Fair in May 1972. The fair continued at Macalester until 2003. Renamed the Minnesota Scottish Fair and Highland Games, it moved to the Dakota County Fairgrounds in 2004, and later to Eagan. Athletes, bagpipers, and dancers compete for prizes, clan societies staff information tents, and vendors sell Scottish foods and merchandise. In 1976, members of the Twin Cities Scottish community resurrected the St. Andrew’s Society of Minnesota (SASM). SASM hosts an annual Burns Night, Pub Night gatherings, and a traditional First Footing event on New Year||s Day, and participates in the Scottish Fair. Scots in northeastern Minnesota and northwestern Wisconsin formed the Duluth Scottish Heritage Association (DSHA) that same year. Annual events include Burns Night, dance competitions, and a Kirkin|| of the Tartan, where clan tartans are blessed in a special church ceremony. The DSHA added a pipes and drums corps in 1990. Representatives of clan societies organized the Minnesota Coalition of Scottish Clans (MCSC) in 1982. The group helped to coordinate major events, such as A Scottish Ramble, an indoor festival held in St. Paul from 1986 to 2018, and served as a resource for Scottish genealogy. In 2017, the MCSC merged with the Scottish American Center, which had opened in 2006. In 1999, the Minnesota Tartan Day Cooperative (MTDC) began to plan annual activities to commemorate the April 6 anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Arbroath for Scottish Independence. One MTDC initiative came to fruition on February 4, 2002 when the state legislature passed a resolution to accept an official Minnesota state tartan.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/MN Pipes & Drums_Ramble_1999_0.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/scottish-cultural-organizations-minnesota"},{"alt":"Kid Cann","author":[{"name":"Paul Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/paul-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 10, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Blumenfeld, Isadore “Kid Cann” (1900–1981)","postbody":"In the annals of Minneapolis crime one man occupies the place held by Al Capone in Chicago and Meyer Lansky in New York and Miami: Isadore Blumenfeld, also known as Kid Cann. He was a ...","searchtext":"In the annals of Minneapolis crime one man occupies the place held by Al Capone in Chicago and Meyer Lansky in New York and Miami: Isadore Blumenfeld, also known as Kid Cann. He was a lifelong criminal who made fortunes in liquor, gambling, labor racketeering (all protected through political corruption), and real estate. Only late in life did he serve more than a year in prison. He retired in Florida and died rich. Blumenfeld was born into a Jewish family in 1900 in Râmnicu Sărat, Romania, and came with his family to North Minneapolis in 1902. Poverty dogged his childhood and, very young, he turned to crime. Like many criminals he found Prohibition a godsend and seems to have moved easily from running stills to running speakeasies. Blumenfeld’s first major arrest came for killing taxi driver Charles Goldberg in a row about a woman outside the Vienna Cafe on Nicollet Avenue in 1924. He admitted to the shooting but claimed it was an accident and was never tried. The next arrest came for shooting two policemen at the Cotton Club (Minneapolis) in 1928. The row was over a woman nicknamed Shuffle Along. Witnesses said Blumenfeld ducked under a table when the shooting started, and he was not charged. Blumenfeld made plenty of money during Prohibition as a high-volume bootlegger. He mostly evaded prosecution, as he did all his life. He paid a $400 fine in 1927, $1500 more in 1932, and served a year in the Hennepin County workhouse in 1934, all for bootlegging. In 1931 he was charged in New Orleans with running rum into the country from Cuba, but he fled Louisiana and never returned to face the charges. He was tried in Oklahoma in 1933 for laundering the $200,000 ransom paid to free oilman Charles Urschel, kidnapped by Machine Gun Kelly (George Kelly Barnes). Of the seven defendants in that trial, only Blumenfeld was acquitted. He was tried again in 1936 for the Minneapolis murder of journalist Walter Liggett. Liggett’s wife, an eyewitness, positively identified Kid Cann as the drive-by machine-gun killer, but Cann produced an alibi witness, his barber, and the jury found him not guilty. It seems unlikely he would take such a risk when he could pay a professional to do the job. Liggett’s daughter late wrote that the hitman might have been Chicago mobster Frank Nitti, who did resemble Blumenfeld. After Prohibition state law forbade any person from owning more than one liquor license, yet Kid Cann controlled many bars, nightclubs, and liquor stores through relatives, blinds, corporations, and bribery. It was alleged that he controlled liquor licenses in Minneapolis and had aldermen on his payroll. In 1957 the US Attorney estimated that he made $100,000 a year from Minneapolis liquor stores. Throughout the 1950s crime commission after crime commission and grand jury after grand jury investigated Blumenfeld, but nothing stuck. In 1959 he was charged with five others for fleecing the Twin City Rapid Transit Company during the conversion from streetcars to buses; once again, only he was acquitted. Then his luck changed. The federal government pursued him relentlessly and finally convicted him under the Mann Act for transporting a woman across state lines for |||immoral purposes||| (this was like getting Al Capone for tax evasion). Blumenfeld had not engaged in sex trafficking. The woman, Marilyn Ann Tollefson, was a regular paid paramour of his, but not under his control; just the same, the conviction was upheld on appeal. Then he was convicted, again in federal court, for procuring false statements in Minneapolis liquor license applications. That conviction was overturned. But during that trial he attempted to bribe a juror for $10,000, and that conviction stood (he admitted the crime). He went to Leavenworth, though he served most of his time at the Springfield, Missouri, medical facility. Heart trouble, it was said—but he lived another twenty years. Freed in 1964, he moved to Miami Beach, worked there for mafia financier Meyer Lansky, and reportedly acquired a fortune in real estate. He died at Mount Sinai Hospital in Minneapolis on June 24, 1981, while in the city on a visit. The source of the Kid Cann nickname, which he hated, has never been satisfactorily explained. He preferred to be called Dr. Ferguson, or, especially by his lady friends, just Fergie.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/por 17777 r1.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246079,"name":"Cities and Towns","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246060,"name":"Crime and Punishment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/blumenfeld-isadore-kid-cann-1900-1981"},{"alt":"Guthrie Theater, riverside view","author":[{"name":"Jacob Marcott","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/jacob-marcott"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 08, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Guthrie Theater","postbody":"The Guthrie Theater was one of the first major resident theaters to be established in the United States. It was founded by Tyrone Guthrie, Oliver Rea, and Peter Zeisler, who wanted to bring ...","searchtext":"The Guthrie Theater was one of the first major resident theaters to be established in the United States. It was founded by Tyrone Guthrie, Oliver Rea, and Peter Zeisler, who wanted to bring a professional theater company with a classical repertoire to a relatively small American city. Minneapolis was chosen to be the home for Guthrie’s company, which has supported and inspired many artists in Minnesota and played a major role in developing the Twin Cities’ theater scene. Before the 1960s, the Twin Cities was a quiet place when it came to theater. Certainly, there were theaters, such as the Old Log Theater and Theater in the Round Players, but the scale of the local scene was relatively small. In 1959, Tyrone Guthrie, Oliver Rea, and Peter Zeisler had grown tired of mainstream theater. Guthrie stated that there were “too many actors in New York and London, and not enough elsewhere.” Inspired to counteract the poor distribution of professional theaters across the world, the three men devised to bring a professional, residential theater company to a smaller city. On September 30, 1959, an advertisement in the New York Times sought out cities interested in having a resident theater. Seven cities responded, and the three men visited each of them. Of those, Minneapolis gained the most interest from Guthrie. It was attractive to Guthrie because it was large enough to support a theater financially but small enough that it would be the most prominent venue in town. The T. B Walker Foundation donated land next to the Walker Art Center at 725 Vineland Place for the new theater to be built, and the state of Minnesota raised over $2.2 million for the project. The building was designed by architect Ralph Rapson, and construction began in the summer of 1960. On May 7, 1963, the Guthrie Theater opened with a production of Hamlet directed by Guthrie himself, who had been knighted two years earlier. Minnesotans were eager to see their new theater company—so much so that their first season started with 22,000 season ticket holders. In response, the Guthrie lengthened its seasons by adding shows and extending runs. Although the Guthrie was becoming a major success story, the company needed room to grow. Originally, its building was supposed to have more offices, larger set shops, and rehearsal spaces. In the late 1960s, the Walker Art Center was rebuilt, allowing the Guthrie to add those areas. There was still a need, however, for one crucial amenity: a second stage. At Vineland Place, the Guthrie only had one stage: a 1,441-seat thrust. Many renowned theaters, including the National Theatre in London, had multiple stages that allowed a company to mount a variety of shows at the same time. Where the Guthrie’s thrust stage (one open to the audience on three sides) was meant for playing large-scale classics, a second stage could be used to put on more contemporary, smaller-scale plays. The Guthrie made multiple attempts to establish a second stage. Such spaces were the Crawford Livingston stage, The Other Place, Guthrie 2, and Guthrie Lab. Though most of these lasted for only a few seasons, they provided a venue for other local theater companies to perform and gain recognition from the Twin Cities community. As it grew in the 1990s, the company looked towards another expansion. By then, however, it had outgrown Vineland Place, so the company moved to downtown Minneapolis by the Mississippi River. The new Guthrie Theater, designed by Jean Nouvel, came equipped with three performance spaces (one modeled after the stage in the original Guthrie), a larger set and costume shops, rehearsal spaces, and offices. The project was completed in 2006 at a total cost of $125 million. The Guthrie Theater continues to thrive in its new location. As it did at Vineland Place, the new Guthrie not only performs but also educates and trains young actors. It also partners with the University of Minnesota’s BFA acting program and hosts workshops and events for theater companies across the state. As of 2019, the Guthrie has had eight artistic directors: Sir Tyrone Guthrie (1963-1966), Douglas Campbell (1966–1967), Michael Langham (1971–1977), Alvin Epstein (1978–1980), Liviu Ciulei (1980–1985), Garland Wright (1986–1995), Joe Dowling (1995–2015), and Joseph Haj (2015–present)","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Guthrie_exterior_by_Joe_Wolf.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/guthrie-theater"},{"alt":"Anna Dickie Olesen","author":[{"name":"Christian Bjornson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/christian-bjornson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 03, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Olesen, Anna Dickie (1885–1971)","postbody":"The first female nominee of a major party for the US Senate, Anna Dickie Olesen was a celebrated orator and passionate social reformer who became one of the most prominent Democratic women ...","searchtext":"The first female nominee of a major party for the US Senate, Anna Dickie Olesen was a celebrated orator and passionate social reformer who became one of the most prominent Democratic women of the early twentieth century. Anna Dickie was born on July 3, 1885, to Peter and Margaret Dickie of Cordova Township, Le Sueur County. Intelligent and talkative from a young age, Anna showed signs early on of the oratorical power she would wield as a public speaker. The Dickies, teetotalers and staunch Republicans, switched their party allegiance in the 1890s and became avid supporters of three-time Democratic presidential nominee William Jennings Bryan, whom Anna would admire as a political idol. In 1905, at age nineteen, Anna married a young Danish immigrant named Peter Olesen, at the time a student at Hamline University. The couple settled in St. Paul before moving to Pine City in 1908, where Peter had accepted a job as superintendent of schools. The next year Mr. Olesen accepted the same position in Cloquet, once again uprooting the young family, which now included a year-old daughter, Mary. Anna became involved in the social and political affairs of her new community, leading the local Mothers’ and Women’s Clubs and tutoring area immigrants in English. In 1918, the Olesens lost their home in the wildfire that ravaged the area. Despite the setback, they remained in Cloquet for another decade, and Anna began a seventeen-year crusade to secure federal aid for the fire’s victims. As her busy schedule put pressure on her single-income family, Olesen sought an additional income source by auditioning for the Chautauqua circuit—a travelling, tent-based speaker series that drew thousands across the country. Olesen’s oratorical skills and political acumen on the circuit soon caught the attention of national Democrats, and in 1920 she was the first woman invited to speak at the national Democratic Party’s Jackson Day Dinner. In 1922, at age thirty-six, Olesen ran for and won the endorsement of the state Democratic Convention in Minneapolis for the US Senate seat held by Republican Frank Kellogg, making her the first woman nominated for the body by a major party. Driving a Ford sedan given to her by friends for the purpose, Olesen, sometimes accompanied by her brother and/or daughter, maintained an exhaustive campaign schedule across the state. Some days she would make as many as twelve stops, delivering speeches that earned her comparisons to populist former governor John A. Johnson. In the end, both Olesen and Kellogg fell short to Farmer-Labor candidate Henrik Shipstead. Olesen came in third with just over 120,000 votes. Olesen’s electoral defeat did not keep her from continuing her political work. She continued to be a popular speaker on the Chautauqua circuit and achieved a degree of financial independence through her speeches. In 1932, she was elected a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. By now known nationally as one of the party’s preeminent orators, Olesen was invited to give a speech seconding the nomination of House Speaker John Nance Garner for vice president. She also campaigned vigorously for the Roosevelt/Garner ticket in the lead-up to Election Day. After the Democratic sweep of federal offices in 1932, President Roosevelt appointed Olesen to lead the new National Emergency Council (NEC) in Minnesota in 1934. As state director (the only woman to serve in the role nationwide), Olesen coordinated the efforts of various New Deal agencies in Minnesota during the Depression. In addition to her role as state director of the NEC, Olesen also continued lobbying for funding for the Cloquet fire victims. Perhaps her single greatest political achievement was helping steer an aid bill through Congress and pressuring Roosevelt to sign it, which he did on August 27, 1935. In total, $10.8 million would be paid out to fire survivors as a result of the law. In 1942, at the age of fifty-seven, Olesen retired from public life. In 1960, Peter Olesen died; the next year, Anna married Chester Burge, a friend of hers and Peter’s, only to lose him to a gas explosion two years later. Olesen passed away in Northfield on May 21, 1971, at the age of eighty-six. She is interred in Sakatah Cemetery, Waterville, next to Peter.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/CCHS_Olesen-Washington.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/olesen-anna-dickie-1885-1971"},{"alt":"Beltrami County History Museum (Old Great Northern Depot, Bemidji)","author":[{"name":"Sue Bruns","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/sue-bruns"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 01, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Great Northern Depot, Bemidji","postbody":"Bemidji’s Great Northern Depot—James J. Hill’s last commissioned depot—celebrated its grand opening in January of 1913. Replacing the first Great Northern Depot, a wooden structure built in ...","searchtext":"Bemidji’s Great Northern Depot—James J. Hill’s last commissioned depot—celebrated its grand opening in January of 1913. Replacing the first Great Northern Depot, a wooden structure built in 1898, this impressive brick and sandstone building provided space and modern amenities to accommodate the needs of the growing community. The wooden depot had been enlarged in 1901. In 1903, electricity was added, and in 1905, a baggage room; but the old depot was still insufficient. By 1907, the Bemidji Commercial Club had started a push for a new station. The old depot was too small, not well ventilated, and couldn’t handle the traffic that was coming through Bemidji. In June of 1911, pleas went out to the Great Northern Railway to build a new depot. Governor Adolph Eberhart and Louis Hill, president of the railway and son of railroad tycoon James J. Hill, visited Bemidji. The Bemidji Commercial Club treated them to dinner at the Markham Hotel and took them by boat around Lake Bemidji. Afterward, local businessmen rode with Louis Hill in his private coach on the train for further discussion. In January of 1912, James J. Hill, chairman of the board of the Great Northern Railway, came to Bemidji. He spoke at the Armory on Bemidji Avenue; the Commercial Club entertained him at the Markham Hotel and escorted him around the city. On April 25, 1912, a headline in the Bemidji Daily Pioneer announced: “Hill Promises a New Brick Building.” Work was to start immediately. Plans that had been drawn up the previous year were re-examined because they called for an expensive “Permanent Type A depot, usually built for towns of 20,000 or more.” But when Hill visited Bemidji, the first thing he noticed when he stepped off the train was an impressive new brick Soo Line and Minnesota & International Railway depot just down the tracks to the east. “We will build a depot and a good one,” he said. The original plans were approved for a 217-foot-long, 7,000-square-foot building with a red brick and sandstone exterior. Most of the work on the depot was completed before the end of 1912. Thousands of people toured the depot for its grand opening on January 16, 1913. The center of the building housed the ticket office, and the east end had baggage rooms and a freight room. On the west end were modern ladies’ and men’s rooms. Each waiting room had settees, and the ladies’ room had several rockers. A small, windowed projection on the south side allowed views of the tracks from both directions. All wires entered the new structure from the rear, so as not to distract from the aesthetics of the building. Hill returned to Bemidji by train for the grand opening and spoke at a banquet at the Markham Hotel that evening. He told the crowd he’d taken special care to see to the depot’s completion since it would be his last. The depot served passengers until the late 1950s and continued as a freight depot until the mid-1980s, when it was closed, boarded up, and abandoned. It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1988, but without a tenant, the building was damaged by water seepage and vandals and dirtied by pigeons, bats, and rodents. The Great Northern Depot had become a liability to the railroad company. Orders were sent from Burlington Northern to demolish the building. Thanks to Roger Mackenroth (a railroad superintendent who put the demolition orders on hold), the hard work and fundraising of a devoted Historical Society Museum Committee, and a state capital bonding bill for $650,000, the building was saved and renovated at a cost of nearly two million dollars. It reopened as the home of the Beltrami County Historical Society in October of 2000. Instead of meeting the fate of a wrecking ball, Bemidji’s Great Northern Depot became a repository for the history of which it is a part.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Depot_current image.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246053,"name":"Transportation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/great-northern-depot-bemidji"},{"alt":"Church of the Redeemer, Minneapolis","author":[{"name":"Linda A. Cameron","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/linda-cameron"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"June 26, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"American Woman Suffrage Association Convention, Minneapolis, 1885","postbody":"The fight for woman suffrage in Minnesota was well underway when the American Woman Suffrage Association held its annual convention in Minneapolis in 1885. Key leaders of the movement were ...","searchtext":"The fight for woman suffrage in Minnesota was well underway when the American Woman Suffrage Association held its annual convention in Minneapolis in 1885. Key leaders of the movement were on hand to speak, among them prominent Minnesota suffragists, both female and male. The long campaign for woman suffrage began with the convention held in Seneca Falls, New York, in July 1848. Congress gave the movement a setback when it adopted the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, specifying |||male||| as a qualification for voting. In response, suffrage leaders stepped up the effort by starting two new organizations the following year. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony founded the National Woman Suffrage Association to gain the vote by constitutional amendment. Lucy Stone, Julia Ward Howe, and Stone||s husband, Henry Blackwell started the more conservative American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA). The AWSA worked for suffrage through state auxiliaries. In 1881, a group of local women led by Sarah Burger Stearns of Duluth formed the Minnesota Woman Suffrage Association (MWSA) in Hastings. By this time, the Fifteenth Amendment had technically extended suffrage to African American men (1870) and Minnesota women could vote in school board elections (1875). The state legislature had considered several petitions and suffrage bills in the 1860s and 1870s, but none had succeeded. In October 1885, the AWSA||s seventeenth annual convention came to Minneapolis. Minnesota sent five delegates, one for each of the state||s congressional districts. Local newspapers featured both pro- and anti-suffrage articles. Detractors doubted the success of the suffrage movement, accusing most women of being |||fatally apathetic||| to the vote. They argued that women||s influence over their husbands, whose duty was to represent the family unit at the polls, was sufficient. Pro-suffragists responded that men and women both had much to offer in public affairs—that their different perspectives offered a balance that was missing with half of the population disenfranchised. The convention opened on October 13 at the Church of the Redeemer in Minneapolis. AWSA President William Dudley Foulke of Indiana gave the opening remarks, followed by speeches from Lucy Stone, Dr. Hannah Cutler Cobden of Illinois, and Henry Blackwell. All spoke of progress made and predicted the movement||s ultimate national success. Thirteen states allowed women to vote in school elections, and three territories (Wyoming first, followed by Washington and Utah) gave them full suffrage rights. Major J. A. Pickler shamed Governor Gilbert Pierce of Dakota Territory for vetoing the suffrage bill passed by his legislature earlier that year—an echo of Minnesota Governor Horace Austin||s veto in 1870. Minneapolis Mayor George A. Pillsbury spoke that evening. He questioned the sense of preventing intelligent, native-born women from voting when “ignorant and debauched ” male foreigners, new to citizenship, enjoyed that right. AWSA President Foulke delivered a powerful speech in which he reminded the assembly that |||the just powers of government are derived from the consent of the governed,||| a principle violated with the vote denied to female citizens. Lucy Stone spoke on the duties and strengths of motherhood and the logic of including women||s voices in policy-making, particularly on issues concerning women and children. The sessions on October 14 featured reports from each state auxiliary. Dr. Martha G. Ripley, president for the MWSA, reported that Minnesota women had petitioned Congress for the passage of a sixteenth amendment with a request that married women be allowed to retain their property. They lobbied the state legislature each year, and vowed to continue to do so until achieving suffrage. Sixty-five Minnesota newspapers published weekly suffrage articles. Sarah Burger Stearns spoke on the progress being made in higher education for women as more colleges opened their doors to female students. The Committee on Resolutions declared perhaps the strongest arguments in favor of woman suffrage by citing the US Constitution. Women were not only being governed without their consent, they were being taxed without representation. If political power lay with the people, then women, as people, should be permitted to vote. At the final session on October 15 attendees heard the AWSA||s resolutions and elected officers. Minnesota||s Martha A. Dorsett was elected a vice president at large, Sarah Burger Stearns a vice president for the states, and Dr. Ripley as a member of the Executive Committee of States.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/MH5.9 MP5.1 p349.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/american-woman-suffrage-association-convention-minneapolis-1885"},{"alt":"Street view of Washington Avenue","author":[{"name":"Samuel Meshbesher","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/samuel-meshbesher"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"June 24, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Gateway District (“Skid Row”), Minneapolis","postbody":"The Gateway District was Minneapolis’s original downtown, where life revolved around mills and railroads. As aging buildings became boarding houses for the thousands of temporary workers ...","searchtext":"The Gateway District was Minneapolis’s original downtown, where life revolved around mills and railroads. As aging buildings became boarding houses for the thousands of temporary workers who spent their off-seasons in Minneapolis, the neighborhood gained a seedy reputation and the nickname “Skid Row.” The twenty-five-block zone was targeted for decades by mission workers, city planners, and police as a hub of vice and firetrap buildings, but the redevelopment of the area failed to mitigate its decline after World War II. Minneapolis’s transition from town to city was fueled by the Mississippi River and seasonal workers. Lumberjacks floated old-growth timber down the river each spring for milling. In the summer and fall, wheat was brought to the city on tracks built and maintained by railroad workers known as “gandy dancers.” When Minneapolis’s downtown shifted away from the river, dozens of offices and homes between First and Fifth Avenues were converted into inexpensive boarding houses for these workers. Originally known as Bridge Square, the twenty-five-block area was home to hundreds of small business owners, including grocers, lawyers, and barbers. It was better known, however, as one of the only places in Minneapolis to buy a drink legally for decades. Reasoning that law enforcement would be easier and neighborhoods safer if saloons were confined to one district, the city council passed ordinances in 1884 making it difficult to open a saloon anywhere but in the immigrant neighborhoods along the riverside. Ironically, this turned Minneapolis’s old downtown into a de-facto “vice” district—known as “Skid Row” by the 1920s—where seasonal workers and permanent Minneapolitans alike came for liquor, gambling, and prostitution. By 1902, there were more than 100 saloons on Washington Avenue alone. By World War I, the neighborhood had transformed from a mixed-income community of immigrant families to one of predominantly young and single transient men who defied “Yankee” attitudes for proper living. In the 1910s, city planners attempted to rebrand Skid Row as the “Gateway” to Minneapolis by razing four blocks of lodging, building a Neoclassical-inspired park, and banning women from boarding houses. In hopes of curbing prostitution, churches and women’s groups built hotels and boarding houses for the single women who worked at downtown hospitals, factories, and private homes. In spite of these efforts and Prohibition, the neighborhood remained an inexpensive haven for Midwestern seasonal workers and Minneapolis nightlife. Industry changes and the Great Depression ended this boom. As mechanization displaced farmhands and railroad workers, forest depletion and chainsaws made many loggers “redundant.” Flour mills moved operations to Buffalo, New York, leaving hundreds of millers out of work. Faced with greater competition for work during the Depression, many of the same men who had built Minneapolis into a metropolis were now “marooned” on Skid Row. It became a de facto low-income retirement community for pensioners and the chronically unemployed. Better-off Minneapolitans still frequented Skid Row’s bars—the Persian Palms and Great Lakes Bar were especially popular—but warned their children that they would end up “on the skids” if they didn’t stay in school. In the post-war era, Minneapolis planners and civic organizations grew concerned about declining population growth and property values as white residents and corporate offices moved in droves to the suburbs. Many blamed Skid Row for this shift; most of its residents were unemployed, unmarried, and on public benefits. They made up 44 percent of total arrests in Minneapolis, most for public drunkenness. Most buildings were not up to fire and sanitation code. Establishments like the Persian Palms, Dugout Bar, and Herb’s were refuges for the Twin Cities’ LGBTQ community. Many bars paid corrupt police and aldermen to ignore sex workers, sports betting, and regular closing times. Because of this relative openness to bribery, raids on gay bars were rare in the Gateway District, as in the rest of Minneapolis. The Federal Highway Act of 1956 gave planners the excuse they had been looking for to deal with Skid Row while luring commuters back to Minneapolis with expressways and parking. The city council unanimously voted in favor of a federally funded plan to completely raze the area, and demolition began in 1958. The brownstone Metropolitan Building (308 2nd Avenue South) was Minneapolis’s first skyscraper and is considered the greatest architectural loss of the more than 200 structures demolished. The most notable structures to come of the new development were the Northwest National Life and 100 Washington Square office buildings, both designed in the New Formalist style by Minoru Yamasaki. Nevertheless, the Gateway District was denigrated for years as a sea of parking lots and generic government buildings built without much concern for pedestrians.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/street view washington.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246079,"name":"Cities and Towns","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/gateway-district-skid-row-minneapolis"},{"alt":"Men working near the capitol dome","author":[{"name":"Randy Croce","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/randy-croce"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"June 19, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Workers Killed During State Capitol Construction, 1898–1903","postbody":"Six workers were killed in accidents during the building of the third Minnesota State Capitol between 1898 and 1903. The deaths resulted from unsafe working conditions that labor laws have ...","searchtext":"Six workers were killed in accidents during the building of the third Minnesota State Capitol between 1898 and 1903. The deaths resulted from unsafe working conditions that labor laws have greatly improved since that time. After being nearly forgotten, the six builders were honored in 2011, 2012, and 2017 by ceremonies and a plaque at the capitol. The Minnesota State Capitol came at a cost; six workers died building it. These builders were forgotten for more than 100 years after their deaths. The first worker to lose his life on the construction project was Felix Arthur, who came north with the marble shipped to St. Paul from a quarry in Georgia. He was working on a stone-polishing machine when he got caught in the flywheel. He died in the hospital several hours later, on May 5, 1898, at the age of twenty-five. Arthur’s family was prominent, so the Georgia Marble Company paid for his elaborate grave marker in Nelson, Georgia. The families of later capitol accident victims did not receive such support. All other statehouse deaths were caused by falls. John Biersack, the thirty-six-year-old son of Bavarian immigrants to Wisconsin, died in October 1898, a few days after he fell from a hoist. Like all of the other fatal accident victims, Biersack was unmarried and had no children. A freak accident killed twenty-year-old Albert Swanson, a mold caster from Sweden. The St. Paul Globe’s headline for the story summarized the incident: “Passing Wagon Drives over Rope used to Hoist Materials and Scaffolding, on Which Men Stood, Falls.” Swanson and Frank Thiery fell forty feet; Swanson collided with scaffolding and died before hitting the ground. Thiery landed on a pile of sand and broke his leg but was able to go home from the hospital that night. Another Swedish immigrant, twenty-year-old stonemason Alfred Magnuson, was the nephew of capitol master stonemason Nils Nelson. Magnuson fell thirty feet on June 25, 1900. He died in St. Joseph’s Hospital four days later. Florian Zauner was born in Germany forty years before he worked as a laborer on the capitol, where he fell seventy feet and died immediately on August 3, 1900. Few details about the lives of Zauner and Magnuson survive, and their graves are unmarked. On June 25, 1903, eighteen-year-old John Corrigan fell thirty-two feet to his death in the unfinished House Chamber. After less than two weeks on the job, Corrigan had lost his balance while carrying a heavily-loaded wheelbarrow across a narrow and unguarded gangway. These accidents stirred controversy about unsafe conditions at the capitol site. An 1899 St. Paul Globe headline read, |||Railing Is Needed There—Safety Device Suggested By The Labor Bureau For Capitol Workers.||| By June 27, 1903, the outrage in the Minneapolis Journal headline was clear: |||Deaths Due To Neglect.||| The article noted that contractors had been ordered to widen high runways, but they were still too narrow “to protect a man from momentary dizziness.” The outcry over young Corrigan||s death may finally have changed worksite conditions. He was the last worker to die during construction of the capitol, which opened to the public in 1905. While inspectors visited worksites and issued safety orders, they did not have the power to make employers pay fines or face legal consequences. Attitudes about worksite hazards were also different then. HGA architect Ginny Lackovic, who supervised the 2010 capitol dome repairs, said, |||I think the level of safety when this building was built was based on everybody||s sense of their own judgment. Your safety was your own responsibility and if you made a mistake you paid dearly for it.||| Because worker’s compensation laws weren’t enacted in Minnesota until 1913, receiving compensation for workplace accidents required proving negligence by the employer and proper behavior by the employee—a difficult, expensive, and time-consuming process. Mutual benefit societies and unions provided some illness, accident, and death assistance. Safety laws and technical innovations have greatly improved workplace safety in the 2000s. Insurance programs help those who are injured or killed. The six builders were finally recognized publicly during Workers Memorial Day ceremonies in 2011 and 2012. They were honored by a plaque installed in the capitol in 2017, thanks to a group of Owatonna middle school students who, after studying the Labor Education Service’s capitol project website, successfully lobbied for a bill authorizing the memorial.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Men working near the Capitol dome_FM6_145_r8.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246055,"name":"Labor","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/workers-killed-during-state-capitol-construction-1898-1903"},{"alt":"All American Girls Professional Baseball League members performing calisthenics in Opalocka, Florida. Black and White photo","author":[{"name":"Alexandra Scholten","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/alexandra-scholten"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"June 17, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Minneapolis Millerettes","postbody":"The short-lived run of the Minneapolis Millerettes brought professional women’s baseball to the Twin Cities. While providing entertainment during wartime and highlighting women’s ...","searchtext":"The short-lived run of the Minneapolis Millerettes brought professional women’s baseball to the Twin Cities. While providing entertainment during wartime and highlighting women’s athleticism on a national scale, the female players struggled against press perceptions and male competition. Their two-year run was immortalized in the film A League of Their Own. At the height of World War II, over 1,000 professional baseball players were enlisted into service, leaving barebones major teams to recruit male players from the minor leagues. When that failed to fill the empty positions, the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League looked to recruit women into the field of professional baseball. The mass entrance of women into the workforce was an effort to fill vacated industrial jobs, and a similar substitution was made in the male-dominated world of sports. Philip K. Wrigley, Wrigley Chewing Gum Company CEO and the owner of the Chicago Cubs, financed the creation of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. Women were scouted from throughout North America, and tryouts were held at Wrigley Field. The selected players were compiled into four teams—the beginnings of the league. The game initially resembled women’s professional softball, as many players were accustomed to pitching underhand, and gradually evolved to regulation baseball. Many National League stadiums refused to allow women to play in them, so teams were established in Midwest cities. The selected cities were central to wartime production, and the presence of baseball provided entertainment. It also kept up morale for male and female wartime workers, as well as their families. Due to the initial success, Wrigley expanded the league to two other major Midwest cities only two years later: Milwaukee and Minneapolis, the new home to the women’s team, the Minneapolis Millerettes. The Millerettes played at Nicollet Park, sharing the stadium with the men’s minor league team, the Minneapolis Millers. Despite the lack of players many other teams faced, the Millers continued to play during World War II and competed with the Millerettes for an audience. General admission to both teams’ games was eighty-five cents. The games were publicized as “family-friendly,” and the female players’ behavior was expected to reflect that image. The League hired chaperones to supervise the women, and smoking, drinking, and dating were among forbidden behaviors. Wrigley wanted to assure fans that women were not trying to take over the “men’s sport,” and thus promoted femininity above all else. Many of the players were from rural areas, and the league established charm schools to educate the women on proper behavior, training them on how to speak, dress, apply makeup, and “proper posture.” Tryouts were not far from a beauty pageant, as the women were chosen as much for their looks as for their playing ability. The uniforms of the Millerettes consisted of maroon-colored knee socks and a short-skirted dress (either cream or pink, depending on whether it was a home or away game) emblazoned with the Minneapolis city seal. Although shorts were worn underneath, the dresses did nothing to protect the women from injuries; the “strawberry” scrapes across their legs gained from sliding were all too common. In newspaper articles covering the games, Millerettes were described as “dainty,” “pretty,” and ”statuesque.” Former Major League Baseball catcher Clarence “Bubber” Jonnard managed the team during their 1944 season. The Millerettes’ lineup included sisters Margaret “Marge” Callaghan and Helen Callaghan, one of the leading hitters in the League. Despite the season’s enthusiastic start, the Millerettes were 23–36 at the end of the first half of the season. They did not make much improvement, and ended that season 45–72. Box office sales began to decline due to competition with the Millers. Many other teams in the league complained of the travel distance to play at Nicollet Park; their closest competitors were 400 miles away in Rockford, Illinois. On July 23, 1944, the Millerettes became exclusively a traveling team throughout the Midwest, earning themselves the nickname “the Orphans.” In 1945, after one of the shortest durations in the AAGPBL, the Millerettes were relocated to Fort Wayne, Indiana, where they played as the Fort Wayne Daisies until 1954. In 1987, Millerettes outfielder Helen Callaghan’s son Kelly Candaele and friend Kim Wilson paid tribute to the female players in the production of the documentary film A League of Their Own. It chronicled the Callaghans’ experiences of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, which inspired Penny Marshall’s 1992 feature film of the same name.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/MillerettesImage1.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246054,"name":"Sports and Recreation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/minneapolis-millerettes"},{"alt":"Kevin Garnett dunking","author":[{"name":"David Sandager","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/david-sandager"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"June 12, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Minnesota Timberwolves","postbody":"The Minnesota Timberwolves have competed in the National Basketball Association (NBA) since the 1989–1990 season. The team is the second professional NBA franchise to represent Minnesota, ...","searchtext":"The Minnesota Timberwolves have competed in the National Basketball Association (NBA) since the 1989–1990 season. The team is the second professional NBA franchise to represent Minnesota, which was home to the Minneapolis Lakers from 1949 to 1960. After owner Bob Short moved the Minneapolis Lakers to Los Angeles in 1960, it took almost thirty years for professional basketball to return to Minnesota. In October of 1986, a “Name the Team” contest was held to come up with a nickname for a potential expansion team for Minnesota. A total of 6,076 entries, featuring 1,284 different nicknames, were submitted with “Timberwolves” and “Polars” being most popular. Minnesota||s 842 city councils selected the nickname “Timberwolves” as the winner. The NBA’s four-team expansion in 1987 included the Minnesota Timberwolves, the Orlando Magic, the Charlotte Hornets, and the Miami Heat. Harvey Ratner and Marv Wolfenson, local Minnesotan businessmen, paid $32.5 million for the Timberwolves franchise in April of 1987. With a name and logo designed by Austin, Minnesota, native Mark Thompson, the team prepared to make its NBA debut in the 1989–1990 season. The Timberwolves hired former University of Minnesota Golden Gophers men’s basketball coach Bill Musselman to lead the new franchise. In the 1989 NBA Draft, Musselman selected Jerome James “Pooh” Richardson from the University of California, Los Angeles, with the tenth overall pick. For their first game, held on November 3, 1988, the team traveled to Seattle and lost to the Seattle SuperSonics by a score of 106-94. The Timberwolves held their home opener at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome on November 8th, 1989. The Chicago Bulls, led by Michael Jordan, defeated them by a score of 96-84. Their first victory came in their next home game on November 10, 1989, against the Philadelphia 76ers by a score of 125 to 118 with forward Tyrone Corbin and guard Tony Campbell each scoring over 30 points. The Timberwolves would finish the 1989-1990 season with a final record of 22-60, good for a thirteenth place finish in the Western Conference. However along the way the team set the NBA’s all-time attendance record, with over one million fans attending home games at the Metrodome. The following seasons saw the Timberwolves struggle as the team failed to finish higher than eleventh place in the Western Conference through the 1995-96 season. The team moved into the Minneapolis Target Center in October of 1990 and were sold to Mankato businessman and former State Senator Glen Taylor in 1994. The selection of Kevin Garnett on June 28, 1995, was a turning point for the Timberwolves franchise. Garnett, along with Head Coach Flip Saunders and teammates Stephon Marbury, Tom Gugliotta, and Sam Mitchell, turned the team’s fortunes around. In the 1996-97 season, the Timberwolves reached the playoffs for the first time, despite having an overall record of 40-42. The 2003-04 season stands as the most successful in franchise history. The team finished first in the Western Conference with a regular season record of 58-24. Kevin Garnett was awarded the NBA’s Most Valuable Player as he averaged 24.2 points, 13.9 rebounds, 5.0 assists, 2.2 blocks and 1.5 steals per game over the season. Head Coach Flip Saunders and General Manager Kevin McHale helped build and direct a solid supporting cast for Garnett’s MVP season with players like Fred Hoiberg, Wally Szczerbiak, Latrell Sprewell, Trenton Hassell, and Sam Cassell. The Timberwolves reached the 2003-04 Playoffs and advanced to the franchise’s first Western Conference Finals. The early 2000s proved challenging for the franchise as the team went thirteen consecutive seasons without a playoff appearance. During this period they traded star forward Kevin Garnett and failed to finish with an .500 or better win percentage from the 2005-06 season to the 2016-17 season. They returned to the Playoffs at the end of the 2017-2018 season with a roster featuring Karl-Anthony Towns, Andrew Wiggins and Jimmy Butler, but they lost in the first round. The following season, head coach Tom Thibodeau was fired, Butler was traded, and the team finished eleventh in the Western Conference. The Timberwolves hired head coach Ryan Saunders in 2018 and replaced him with Chris Finch the following year. Anthony Edwards was drafted with the first overall pick in the first round of the 2020 NBA Draft. The Timberwolves then reached the 2021–22 NBA Western Conference Playoffs after a single game play-in victory over the Los Angeles Clippers. They finished the next season with a record of 56-26—a second-best regular-season record for the franchise—on the way to their second-ever Western Conference Finals appearance. In 2024–25, after trading Karl Anthony Towns, the Timberwolves returned to the Western Conference Finals for a second consecutive season. In June of 2025, ownership of both the Timberwolves and the Minnesota Lynx passed from long-time owner Glen Taylor to a group led by Marc Lore and Alex Rodriguez.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/483px-Kevin_Garnett_with_the_Minnesota_Timberwolves_dunking,_2007_1.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246054,"name":"Sports and Recreation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/minnesota-timberwolves"},{"alt":"Cootie game in its original 1966 packaging","author":[{"name":"Mary Laine","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/mary-laine"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"June 10, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Schaper Manufacturing Company","postbody":"In 1948, Herbert W. Schaper was a mailman in Minneapolis and a fisherman who made his own lures. One day, he added six legs to a lure that he had whittled and called it a “Cootie.” Starting ...","searchtext":"In 1948, Herbert W. Schaper was a mailman in Minneapolis and a fisherman who made his own lures. One day, he added six legs to a lure that he had whittled and called it a “Cootie.” Starting out with a basement factory in his home and $1200 in 1949, he transformed the fishing lure into the Cootie game that reached $1.5 million in sales by 1953. World War I soldiers used the word “cootie” to refer to the lice that infested them. They may have influenced the early creation of games called Cootie, which were usually played with paper and pencil. Schaper created simple games that younger children could play even if they could not read or write. With them in mind, he used children in his neighborhood to test the games during their development. Playing the Cootie game is fairly straightforward. The player rolls a die, with each die number corresponding to one of six colorful, plastic body parts of the insect. When rolling the die, a player must get the body first and then the head followed by, in any order, two antennae, two eyes, one proboscis (a mouth-like part), and six legs. The first player to fully assemble the Cootie wins. Prior to Cootie, similar games were usually played on a board. The first production line to prepare a Cootie body for the game was simple. Workers sat in a circle and held glue pans in their laps. They dipped each part of the Cootie into the glue and held it until dry, then drilled holes into the body to insert the legs and eyes. In this way, they produced forty thousand games in the first year. The Cootie games were first sold by Dayton’s Department Store. The two dozen games that Schaper initially convinced the store to take sold out within a few days. By Christmas, the store had sold over 5,000 games. Eventually, Schaper Manufacturing became known as the “Cootie Company.” By 1952, Schaper located his first production plant and offices at 1800 Olson Memorial Highway in Golden Valley. Three years later, when equipment was added to replace some manual functions, over 1,200,000 Cooties were sold. By then, Cootie was one of the first games to be made in a plastic mold—a significant innovation. By 1951, Schaper had developed seven games—Sparetime Bowling, Pickins, Scare Crow, Stadium Checkers, Skunk, Tickle Bee, and Cootie. Despite his ability to predict a game’s success, Schaper made a costly mistake in 1953 when he turned down the opportunity to buy the game Scrabble, which became a classic American board game. He did, however, take advantage of the new medium of television to successfully advertise his products in addition to newspapers and magazines. By 1953, the company had 125 employees, and in 1957 the company expanded its headquarters in Golden Valley. The building held the administration and offices for Thunderbird Plastics, which manufactured the game’s plastic pieces, and Highlander Sales (the sales department). In 1961, the company became publicly owned when stock was sold to the public. Sales increased to nearly $6 million by 1968. In 1969, the Schaper games Ants in the Pants and Don’t Break the Ice were two of the toy industry’s biggest sellers. In 1971, the company was sold for $5.4 million in stock and became a division of Kusan, Inc., a plastics manufacturer in Nashville, Tennessee. By 1978, sales of Schaper games reached $40 million and there were more than forty toys and games manufactured under the Schaper brand. The company had production and warehouse/distribution facilities in Lakeville, Plymouth, and Edina. At peak times, there were 774 employees with a weekly toy production of 125,000. That year, a 2,500-pound Cootie float appeared in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, accompanied by clowns carrying a birthday cake and singing “Happy Birthday” to the Cootie on its thirtieth birthday. In 1986, the plant in Lakeville closed when Schaper Toys was sold to Tyco Toys, a company based in New Jersey. In 2003, the Toy Industry Association released a list of toys of the 100 “most memorable and creative” toys of the past century. The entry for 1948 included the Cootie game along with the Slinky and Scrabble (which were not Schaper products).","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/1986.303.1.1-9.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246054,"name":"Sports and Recreation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/schaper-manufacturing-company"},{"alt":"Winona Normal School","author":[{"name":"Greg Gaut","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/greg-gaut"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"June 05, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Winona Normal School","postbody":"The Winona Normal School was Minnesota’s first teacher-training school when it opened in 1860. The school fostered many innovations, including the state’s first “model school” program, a ...","searchtext":"The Winona Normal School was Minnesota’s first teacher-training school when it opened in 1860. The school fostered many innovations, including the state’s first “model school” program, a kind of laboratory school for training teachers. Over the years, the normal school evolved into a four-year state college and then into Winona State University. European Americans from the East settled Winona in 1851 and sought to create all the cultural resources they associated with eastern cities. Dr. John Ford, a physician who advocated public education, campaigned for a “normal school” in Winona. The purpose of a normal school was to expand basic education beyond the wealthy by preparing a large cohort of teachers trained to effectively develop their students’ ability to read, write and do basic math. After being exposed to the idea in Europe, Horace Mann organized the first American normal school in Massachusetts in 1839. From there the ideas spread west. In 1858, Dr. Ford persuaded the newly created Minnesota Legislature to establish a system for creating normal schools, and the following year, he succeeded in getting the Winona Normal School chartered as the state’s first teacher training school. The school established a three-year curriculum and admitted its first students in 1860. By the end of its second school year, however, many of the students and some of the faculty had enlisted in the Union Army, forcing the school to close for the duration of the Civil War. It reopened in 1865 under the leadership of William F. Phelps, an educational reformer. He established a ‘model school” in which Phelps and his staff taught local children. Normal school students learned to teach by observing the faculty and by teaching under the guidance of the faculty. Both Winona and the normal school prospered and grew. In 1869, Phelps secured funding to build a large, three-story brick building in Second Empire style on the edge of downtown Winona. By this time, normal schools had also been established at Mankato and St. Cloud, soon to be followed by schools at Moorhead, Duluth, and Bemidji. By the end of the nineteenth century, the normal schools had added new admission requirements and convinced the legislature to make a normal school degree the equivalent of a teaching license. In the 1880s, the Winona Normal School, under the leadership of Irwin Shepard, founded the first kindergarten in the state as part of the model-school program, and also the first training program for kindergarten teachers. The Winona Normal School added a library building in 1909, a dormitory in 1910, and a Model School Building in 1915, all designed by Minnesota state architect Clarence H. Johnston. In 1921, the normal schools were upgraded to teachers’ colleges with a four-year degree program. The Winona Teachers College suffered a setback in 1922 when the main building was destroyed in a spectacular fire. The legislature quickly appropriated $632,000 to build College Hall, also designed by Johnston. It is a massive building centered around a gymnasium and 900-seat auditorium featuring a pipe organ. Although enrollments declined during the Depression, the school built a new library partially with Public Works Administration funds in 1938. Another New Deal program, the Federal Arts Project, funded the creation of murals by John Socha depicting early Winona history in College Hall. The murals provide evidence that European Americans chose to imagine their conquest of the region as a reality to which the Dakota willingly acquiesced. In 1946, the teachers’ colleges were allowed to expand their curriculum beyond teacher training, and in 1957 the legislature changed their name to “state colleges.” Although Winona State College now had many academic departments, the model school continued to thrive as a laboratory for educational innovation. Model-school faculty developed a collaborative approach to teaching and experimented with such ideas as modular scheduling and outdoor education. The Winona model school came to an end in 1971 because there were many more students seeking teacher certification than could be accommodated in the model school. Students would now practice teaching in local elementary schools, middle schools, and high schools. In 1975, the legislature designated the state colleges as state universities. In the twenty-first century, Winona State University continues to make the preparation of teachers a major focus of its curriculum.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/main_building_wchs.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056210,"name":"Education","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/winona-normal-school"},{"alt":"Work Progress Administration sewing project strike, Minneapolis","author":[{"name":"Anja Witek","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/anja-witek"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"June 03, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Works Progress Administration Strikes, 1939","postbody":"In the summer of 1939, workers went on strike across the nation to protest budget cuts to the Works Progress Administration imposed by the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act. While they did ...","searchtext":"In the summer of 1939, workers went on strike across the nation to protest budget cuts to the Works Progress Administration imposed by the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act. While they did not bring about the act’s repeal, they kept their jobs and were allowed to return to work after the strike. Minnesota was the only state in which strikers faced criminal charges for preventing people from working. The Works Progress Administration (WPA) created jobs for millions of unemployed Americans during the Great Depression. In early 1939, Minneapolis WPA officials dismissed over 900 women workers, defending the decision by saying that the women could obtain income from Aid to Dependent Children (ADC). For most, however, getting ADC was impossible; even if they qualified, waiting for processing would deprive them of income. As the job cuts continued, the women organized, and in May, 1500 workers voted to take a one-day strike. On June 2, more than 5,000 workers marched to the WPA’s Minneapolis office to demand re-instatement for laid-off workers and an increase in the budget for relief work. The one-day strike and march, however, did not succeed. On Saturday, July 1, 1939, a new law went into effect: the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act (Woodrum Act). Under this law, WPA positions were slashed from 3.35 million to 2 million, and the WPA budget was cut by 773 million dollars. Skilled Twin Cities workers’ hourly wages dropped from $1.25 to 71 cents. The result was the largest nationwide strike (up to that date) in US history, with close to half a million workers on strike across the country. On Tuesday, workers walked off their jobs at the Minnesota state fairgrounds. By the end of Wednesday, July 5, 13,350 workers were on strike in the Twin Cities alone. Workers in all sorts of projects walked off the job―plumbers, electricians, steam-fitters, sewing workers, and library workers. Even drummers in the Federal Symphonic band refused to play. Others, however, did not participate. The next day, WPA administrator Linus C. Glotzbach declared that anyone who failed to report to work by Monday morning, July 10, would be fired and replaced with eligible workers on the relief rolls (the federal government’s lists of people looking for jobs).The strike continued, and on July 10, WPA officials announced that 90 percent of the projects were still closed in Minneapolis; 50 percent remained closed in St. Paul. Thanks to previous organizing efforts, like the 1934 truckers’ strike, workers in the Twin Cities did not hesitate to engage in militant direct action. Pickets went to the various projects and prevented workers from breaking the strike by going back to work. Violent clashes ensued. On Monday, July 10, fights along the picket line occurred at the sewing project headquartered at 123 2nd St North, and it was closed for the next five days. On July 14, there was a second battle at the sewing project, this time between pickets and police. A crowd of 3,000 had amassed in the area. Seemingly unprovoked, police fired into the crowd, killing one relief client and injuring twenty-four. Neither the mayor of Minneapolis, George Leach, nor the governor of Minnesota, Harold Stassen, wanted to deal with the strike. They argued that since the WPA was a federal project, the city and state were not responsible for maintaining law and order. Previously, when there had been a labor dispute at a project, it had been shut down. Keeping projects open meant that workers would continue protesting. Over the next week, a joint strike committee met with Glotzbach and Stassen to come to an agreement. The bosses got the workers to accept their existing wages and working conditions, and the strike was settled on July 21. Most of the laid off or fired workers were then re-instated or re-assigned to their jobs. The fight was far from over, however. Twenty-five FBI agents had infiltrated the strike and uncovered a hard picket—a picket where workers physically prevent scabs from going to work by blocking entrances. The hard picket violated section 28 of the Woodrum Act, which stipulated that any person who denied another’s relief benefits by means of fraud, force, threat, or intimidation was guilty of a felony. As a result, hundreds of strikers were tried in court and given unusually high bail, and were convicted of felonies.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/HG3.19 p34.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246055,"name":"Labor","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/works-progress-administration-strikes-1939"},{"alt":"Basilica of St. Stanislaus Kostka","author":[{"name":"Greg Gaut","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/greg-gaut"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"May 30, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Basilica of St. Stanislaus Kostka","postbody":"In 1895, the Polish immigrant community in Winona raised funds to construct St. Stanislaus Kostka, the grand church dominating the city’s skyline. The church, which still serves the East ...","searchtext":"In 1895, the Polish immigrant community in Winona raised funds to construct St. Stanislaus Kostka, the grand church dominating the city’s skyline. The church, which still serves the East End parish, was listed on the National Register in 1984 and elevated to a minor basilica of the Catholic Church in 2011. The earliest European settler-colonists of Winona were almost exclusively “old stock Americans,” primarily of English and Scottish ancestry. After the Civil War, the newcomers to Winona tended to be European-born immigrants who identified as German, Irish, Norwegian, Polish, or Bohemian. They came seeking jobs in the grain-milling, lumber, and railroad industries. The Polish immigrants mostly came from Kashubia, a region on the Baltic Sea that was under Prussian control during the nineteenth century. The Kashubian Poles became the predominant ethnic group in Winona’s East End, a residential neighborhood adjacent to the saw mills along the river front. The early immigrants worshipped at a German-language Catholic parish, but in 1871 they organized a Polish parish on the East End to be known as St. Stanislaus Kostka. The following year, they built a small church, and in 1873, Bishop John Ireland appointed a Polish-speaking pastor. Poles continued to migrate to Winona, and in 1886, the School Sisters of Notre Dame began teaching in the parish’s school. In 1889, Bishop Ireland created the Diocese of Winona and appointed Joseph Cotter as its first bishop. Bishop Cotter found that the Polish parish was volatile place—partially because the parishioners felt a powerful sense of ownership of their church, and partially because they were torn between differing ways of expressing Polish identity in a new land. Although they did not speak with one voice, the parishioners felt that they should have the final say in choosing their priests. Following one period of parish turmoil over clerical appointments, Cotter chose Fr. Anthony Klawiter in 1893. Noting the rapid growth of the parish, the new pastor demolished the existing church and hired Winona architect Charles Maybury to design a new one larger than any other in Winona. After less than a year, Klawiter abruptly left. The parish was again gripped by turmoil, and not only the bishop but also the city officials tried to mediate. After several failed attempts to find a priest acceptable to the parish, Cotter appointed Fr. James Pacholski. He completed the building project and served as pastor until his death in 1931. Most of the cost of $86,000 was contributed by parishioners who were mostly unskilled workers in the lumber mills. The impressive church was dedicated on Thanksgiving Day, 1895, with a large parade through the city followed by a celebratory Mass presided over by the bishop. Maybury’s design is reflective of the “Polish Cathedral” style, which in this case suggests a blending of Romanesque and baroque styles. The red brick church is built on a Greek cross plan with an eight-sided center. The central structure has a red tile roof, and above that is a thirty-foot diameter drum and segmented dome topped by a statue of St. Stanislaus, topping out at 172 feet. Each of the four arms of the Greek cross ends with a gabled roof. The main entrance is on the north arm through a thirty-nine-foot-wide entrance porch flanked by twin towers, each one fifteen feet square and 114 feet high. The gable of the north arm contains a large rose window. Similar but smaller towers mark the corners of the south arm. The church measures 140 feet from the main entrance on the north to the south wall, and 124 feet from the east to the west arms. The interior, which before modern renovations could seat 1,800, was dominated by four iron columns in the center of the church, which are coated with plaster designed to represent marble. The ceiling is forty-six feet high and at the center; the dome towers 120 feet above the congregants. The parish built a three-story school building in 1905. This was demolished in 1966 and replaced by a single-story school which continues to be used today. The church now serves a parish that combines St. Stanislaus Kostka with the nearby church of St. John Nepocene, another church designed by Maybury, which originally served Winona’s Bohemian community.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Basilica_of_St_Stanislaus_Kostka_NW.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246089,"name":"Religion and Belief","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/basilica-st-stanislaus-kostka"},{"alt":"St. Anthony, St. Cloud and Hartford Land Office","author":[{"name":"Hannah Dyson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/hannah-dyson"}],"categoryTag":[],"date":"May 28, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186622056203,"name":"1792–1861 (Expansion and Reform)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Land Speculation, 1854–1857","postbody":"Between 1854 and 1857, a craze for platting town sites and selling the deeds to settler-colonists swept through Minnesota. Speculators poured into the territory hoping to make their ...","searchtext":"Between 1854 and 1857, a craze for platting town sites and selling the deeds to settler-colonists swept through Minnesota. Speculators poured into the territory hoping to make their fortunes, and many succeeded. An estimated 700 town sites were platted during this time, though most of them were never developed or were abandoned after a few years. Ultimately, the mania of land speculation ended when the Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Company went bankrupt in 1857, causing a financial panic through the country. Minnesota before the 1850s was a non-industrial region populated primarily by Dakota, Ojibwe, and Métis people. The white settler-colonists living there—most of them fur traders and government agents—were estimated to number less than 5,000. There were some white settlements, such as the logging town of Stillwater, but they were surrounded by forests and land not used for farming. This changed rapidly when Minnesota officially became a territory of the United States on March 3, 1849. Through the treaties of Traverse des Sioux and Mendota, which were signed in the summer of 1851, the federal government acquired millions of acres of land from the Dakota people. After the signing of the two treaties, a flood of settler-colonists from the eastern United States and Europe came to Minnesota to buy land and start farms. The idea of transforming the land from a “savage wilderness” into farms that produced food and other commodities attracted many white Americans, and advertising campaigns encouraged them to come west and “settle” the land. Fur traders turned politicians such as Henry H. Sibley, who had initially resisted white settlement, switched their focus from the fur trade to real estate and land speculation in order to stay relevant in a changing Minnesota. The new territory, with its constant stream of settlers looking to buy land, offered newcomers the perfect opportunity to make money. Speculators of all backgrounds began platting townsites in 1854 and seized more land each year as the decade progressed. Buying up potential town sites was the most profitable form of speculation, and an estimated 700 town sites were platted between the years 1855 and 1857. Speculators used tricks to make the land they were selling seem more desirable. Even the smallest rumor that a railroad was going to be built near a piece of land prompted them to raise their price. There was also a corrupt intermingling of politics and land policy. Many of Minnesota’s prominent public figures, such as Sibley, Henry M. Rice, and Franklin Steele, were involved in real estate and land speculation. In one large-scale example of corruption, Moccasin Democrats (the party of Sibley and Rice) rigged the 1857 territorial census to claim that thousands of settler-colonists were living in southwestern Minnesota. In reality, there were five. Democrats did not carry out the scheme to benefit speculators outright so much as rig the vote to keep themselves in power. The census, however, helped speculators by announcing there were more settlers already living in southwestern Minnesota than there actually were. This reassured families who wanted to buy land and move there but feared living in an isolated place. Land prices in the period of land speculation were highly inflated. Farmers could purchase plots from the land office for as little as $1.25 an acre, but speculators would buy them as soon as they were available and immediately raise their prices for resale. This put speculators in conflict with farmers and their supporters. Settlers became frustrated with US land policy, which they felt did not protect them from speculators looking to buy the land they intended to farm. Settler-colonists could not legally buy and live on a plot of land until it had been surveyed by the US land office. Most of them, therefore, were squatters. However, they arrived in Minnesota so quickly and in such large numbers that the land office failed to keep up. Congress granted preemption rights to squatters, promising that when their land was surveyed, they would get the first chance to buy it. But officials executed this policy clumsily, opening land for sale only to put it on hold for months. As a result of settlers’ fears about losing land to speculators, organizations began to form that advocated for their rights against the speculator. Land speculators were unpopular in the public eye for other reasons, as well. Speculation was considered dishonest because it hoarded land from settler-colonists looking to farm it. Newspaper articles in the 1850s criticized speculators for their selfish and immoral business practices. St. Paul resident J. Fletcher Williams (a future secretary of the Minnesota Historical Society) referred to them as “shysters.” This reputation was not undeserved. Many speculators sold town lots to unsuspecting newcomers that were not, and never would be, developed. Sometimes, the speculators did not even own the land they were selling, giving people false deeds in exchange for their money. Speculators proposed creating “paper towns”—communities that could be platted and named before they were populated—across Minnesota Territory. In 1856, W. G. Cowell platted a town to be built on Lake Superior in St. Louis County and named it Buchanan, after President James Buchanan. A land office was established on the chosen site, but it was moved when it became clear that the town would never develop. Judge John Carey confirmed that while an office did exist in Buchanan, there was nothing around it but wilderness. Cowell never acquired the deeds for the land he platted, and by 1857, there was no one living there. Some paper towns, like Washington and Manchester, saw even less development than Buchanan. They were platted in the counties of Washington and Anoka, respectively, but never materialized beyond the pages they had been mapped on. This was the fate of most paper and led to buyers losing their money. Minnesota’s era of land speculation did not survive the 1850s. California’s Gold Rush and a European grain shortage, both of which had inflated farmland prices, ended in 1855 and 1856, respectively. The credit that had driven speculation tightened. When Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Company—one of America’s largest banks—collapsed as a result, a mass sell-off ensued, ruining many investors. This triggered the Panic of 1857, and many banks in Minnesota closed their doors. Land values dropped, and speculators lost their fortunes. Most Minnesotans were left in debt, and people moved outside of the state to seek wealth elsewhere.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/MH5.9 MP3.1S p44.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246091,"name":"Agriculture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/land-speculation-1854-1857"},{"alt":"Foreclosure auction poster","author":[{"name":"Linda A. Cameron","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/linda-cameron"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"May 22, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Farm Crisis, 1979–1987","postbody":"Minnesota’s farmers enjoyed an economic boom in the 1970s. Land values soared, United States exports of agricultural products grew, and farmers gained access to easy credit to expand their ...","searchtext":"Minnesota’s farmers enjoyed an economic boom in the 1970s. Land values soared, United States exports of agricultural products grew, and farmers gained access to easy credit to expand their operations. When the 1980s brought a sharp decline in exports and land values, rising production costs, and higher interest rates on loans, many farmers found themselves in serious financial trouble. The farm crisis of the 1980s caused many farm foreclosures and bankruptcies—the worst economic conditions the agricultural sector had seen since the Great Depression. Several factors contributed to the farm crisis of the 1980s. Minnesota’s net farm income rose to nearly $2.25 billion in 1973, a more than 130 percent increase over the previous year. Land values in Minnesota grew nearly 30 percent from $898 per acre in 1978 to $1,165 by 1982, making many farmers millionaires on paper. A weak US dollar, combined with severe drought conditions around the world, caused a large increase in US exports of agricultural products. The federal government encouraged farmers to increase production to meet the demand. Expecting the booming economy to continue, farmers flocked to banks to accept offers of easy credit to buy more land and equipment. As a result, many found themselves overextended when the economy went into recession at the end of the decade. In the early 1980s, exports flagged due to a strengthening US dollar, recovering agriculture abroad, and a grain embargo imposed against the Soviet Union. Land values and prices for farm products fell, while production costs continued to rise. The average value of farmland per acre in Minnesota fell nearly 40 percent from $1,165 in 1982 to $700 in 1987. Jackson County farmers experienced the sharpest decrease in land values in Minnesota during this period, with prices falling nearly 54 percent, from $1,991 to $921 per acre. The average value of machinery and equipment on all Minnesota farms increased nearly 25 percent from 1978 to 1982. Farmers also faced increasing fuel, fertilizer, and other input costs. By 1984, Minnesota farms carried nearly $12 billion in debt. Interest payments added another $1.5 billion. By 1987, Commodity Credit Corporation loans alone totaled more than $810 million. Prices for commodities and net farm income fell as farmers received a smaller percentage of what consumers paid for their products. Minnesota’s total net farm income fell 58 percent, from just over $1.2 billion in 1981 to less than $500 million in 1983. By 1986, in spite of government programs providing price supports and income subsidies, farm prices had fallen to just 51 percent of parity (the purchasing power of a commodity compared to its purchasing power during America||s |||Golden Age||| of agriculture, 1909–1914). It was the lowest percentage since the Great Depression. In an attempt to offset bad debt, some lenders raised interest rates by more than 20 percent by 1982. Farmers’ lower net incomes couldn’t keep pace with the rising cost of debt repayment, causing many to fail. Government subsidies to farmers helped somewhat to offset losses in net income. In 1987 nearly 49,000 Minnesota farms received payments totaling $712.8 million. Government payments increasingly depended on compliance with new conservation measures for farmland use. Some farmers resorted to selling off land or machinery to pay down the principal so the lender would extend the loan or lower the interest rate. Selling assets, however, could impact neighboring farms by lowering adjacent land values. Even with these options, thousands of farmers defaulted on their loans and faced bankruptcy or foreclosure. By 1982, 49 percent of the 11,000 farmers in Minnesota with Farmers Home Administration (FmHA) loans were in delinquency, and more than 300 farms faced foreclosure. In 1983, in response to high unemployment and the poor farm economy, the state legislature passed a moratorium on mortgage foreclosure and contracts for deed termination similar to the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933, then extended it in 1984. The law required sixty days’ notice of a contract for deed or default on a mortgage, and eight weeks’ notice on foreclosures to give the mortgage holder time to remedy the situation. The following November, 250,000 farmers nationwide brought a class-action suit against the FmHA resulting in a suspension of farm foreclosures until a loan deferment program could be approved. This granted farmers the right to mediation in liquidation proceedings. The Minnesota Department of Agriculture launched the Farm Advocate Program in the spring of 1984. The program offers free financial and legal counseling to farmers dealing with debt and provides emotional support to families in crisis. In the first six weeks, thirty-five advocates assisted 550 farm families. Farm protests gained momentum. A 1984 bank protest in Paynesville supported by Citizens Organized Acting Together (COACT) prompted the start of Groundswell, a grassroots farm movement. On January 21, 1985, organizers held a rally that brought an estimated 10,000 people to the state capitol to call attention to the farm crisis. Demands included state-guaranteed operating loans, a 120-day moratorium on farm foreclosures, and fair prices for farm products. As a result, the legislature ordered a report on farm finances and appropriated money for farm business education and other assistance programs. In 1986, Congress passed the Family Farmer Bankruptcy Act (Chapter 12 bankruptcy) as a way to keep families on their farms. The act provided the options of reducing debt and interest rates, and lengthening the repayment period. That same year, the state||s Agricultural Extension Service began to provide mediation to assist farmers in meetings with creditors, which saved some farms. Nationwide, 9,556 farmers filed for Chapter 12 bankruptcy in the 1980s. Minnesota bankruptcies totaled more than 600 in 1987, but dropped to 230 the following year as the economy began to improve. The number of farms in Minnesota decreased from 98,671 in 1978 to 85,079 in 1987. While some fell victim to poor financial management, others were lost due to a lack of good jobs available off the farm to subsidize household income, and to the retirement of an aging generation of farmers. For families losing their farms, it meant not only the loss of their livelihood, but of their preferred way of life. For those with a long history on the farm, it ended the tradition of passing the farm on to the next generation. The emotional toll led to depression and, in severe cases, suicide. As farms were lost, the average size of surviving farms grew. Owners of corporate farms began to take over more acreage. In spite of state laws designed to protect family farms, non-farmers owned 28 percent of all Minnesota farms by 1982. Farmers and local lenders resented outside investors, many of whom were absentee landlords. The farm crisis of the 1980s claimed other victims. Small town bankers faced the difficulty of having to call in loans, go through debt mediation, and foreclose on friends and neighbors. Agricultural suppliers lost customers. Main street businesses in rural communities suffered as farm families had less expendable income. Rural communities were faced with the challenge of luring non-agricultural industries to town to bolster their sagging economies. Although the farm economy began to recover in the late 1980s, the number of Minnesota farms is still in decline (down from 85,079 farms in 1987 to 74,542 reported in 2012), and farmers continue to face serious economic challenges in the twenty-first century.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/HR7 a1.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246091,"name":"Agriculture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/farm-crisis-1979-1987"},{"alt":"Crescent Grange Hall #512","author":[{"name":"Anoka County Historical Society","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/anoka-county-historical-society"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"May 20, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Crescent Grange Hall #512","postbody":"Crescent Grange Hall #512 in Linwood Township is an artifact of Reconstruction-era Minnesota (1865–1877). During this period, rural residents united in response to economic upheaval and ...","searchtext":"Crescent Grange Hall #512 in Linwood Township is an artifact of Reconstruction-era Minnesota (1865–1877). During this period, rural residents united in response to economic upheaval and high interest rates. Farmers, particularly those in the south and west of the state, struggled to make a living in a volatile and unregulated economy. After the Civil War, Southern farmers who had exploited enslaved people for their expertise and labor tried to adapt through sharecropping, while farmers on the Western plains faced falling crop prices. Both became increasingly indebted to bankers and merchants who charged high interest rates. Compounding the problem, railroads and food producers charged high tariffs. In 1866, the US Department of Agriculture assigned Oliver H. Kelley of Minnesota to assess the situation. Kelley, a successful farmer who owned 200 acres of land near Elk River, was struck by the social isolation he encountered on farms. In response, he and six colleagues founded the National Grange and Order of the Patrons of Husbandry, which included both men and women as members. His message to farmers was clear: join the movement, find strength in numbers, and secure prosperity through a share of the market. Envisioning a way to counteract the tariffs and fraudulent methods endured by the farmers, Kelley encouraged farmers to form cooperatives through which they could store and sell their crops and compete against middlemen and their high fees. He then organized the State Grange of Minnesota—the first such state-level subdivision of the organization—in 1869. By 1875, the national Grange had grown to 858,000 members. Minnesota’s Crescent Grange #512 was organized in Linwood Township (Anoka County) in 1874. Until a hall was built, members met at churches and in the homes of charter members. On February 23, 1881, a meeting was held at the home of J. G. Green in which L.O. Tumbler proposed building a thirty-two-by-twenty-foot hall. J .G. Green offered to donate the land for the project, and the motion carried. On March 25 of 1881, Grange #512 members met to cut pine wood from a nearby forest. The men hauled the wood to George Haskell’s sawmill near Typo Lake, where they cut it into lumber for building. Construction began in earnest at township 33, range 22, section 4 of Anoka County on the first Saturday in June. Over the summer, members absent from the project were fined one dollar. During this period, the original architectural plans were modified to include sufficient kitchen space. Crescent Grange Hall #512 held its first formal celebration on July 4, 1882, but work on the structure continued until 1884. The one-story, forty-six-by-twenty-foot structure is capped by a gabled roof with clapboard siding. The interior contains a meeting room, an auditorium, and a kitchen. In 1916, further embellishments to the hall made by Grange member W.W. Wittig created alcoves on each of side of the building. The front alcove began to serve as an entrance; the one in the rear contained decorative stained glass. Further modifications to save heat and improve acoustics occurred in 1949, when the ceiling was lowered. The hall served as a venue for educating and informing farmers of the best practices in agriculture throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It allowed members to share equipment owned collectively (including a thresher and saw) and to use a barn space for both storage and social gatherings for the Granger community. By the turn of the twentieth century, the Grange Movement had outlasted the remains of the Farmers Alliance, a group that called for more explicitly political action and served as a catalyst for the Populist movement. Crescent Grange Hall #512 was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/2013-0326-CrescentGrangeHall.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246091,"name":"Agriculture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/crescent-grange-hall-512"},{"alt":"Guadalupe Area Project booth at Neighborhood House career expo","author":[{"name":"Shirley Saldivar","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/shirley-saldivar"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"May 15, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Chicano Movement in Westside St. Paul","postbody":"When migrant workers from Mexico began to look for homes in Minnesota in the mid-twentieth century, many joined a growing enclave in Westside St. Paul. In spite of challenges, they sought ...","searchtext":"When migrant workers from Mexico began to look for homes in Minnesota in the mid-twentieth century, many joined a growing enclave in Westside St. Paul. In spite of challenges, they sought opportunities to create a strong community and build a brighter future. They saw the Chicano Movement of the 1960s and 1970s as a means to that end. During the 1960s, as the nation was experiencing a civil rights movement for African Americans, Mexican Americans were inspired to bring change to their own communities. They created the term Chicano to show a sense of pride, express resistance, and strengthen cultural identity. It was first used in Southern California and Texas, where Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, and the United Farm Workers were uniting figures. Their political and social work came to be known as the Chicano Movement, or El Movimiento. Mexican and Mexican American migration to the Midwest dates to the 1920s and 1930s, when laborers moved to the north to work on sugar beet farms. Over time, they set down roots in Minnesota communities—particularly St. Paul’s Lower West Side (the West Side Flats), which offered jobs in meatpacking and the railroad industry. Towards the end of the 1930s, so many Mexicans tried to settle near their families that there was a housing shortage in the neighborhood. Much of the housing on the Lower West Side was eventually considered uninhabitable due to the area’s high risk of flooding. A flood in 1952 caused 2,641 residents to evacuate, and a second flood in 1957 emphasized a need for a long-term solution. The neighborhood had already become a target for urban renewal, and the St. Paul Port Authority had announced in 1956 that the Riverview Industrial District project would demolish the community. Families were reluctant to leave their homes, stores, schools, and churches, even though they were promised jobs in Riverview. The city completed the project in 1964 at a cost of $9 million for the construction and $4 million for relocation costs, but the jobs didn’t come in the quantity promised. As a result of losing a section of their neighborhood, Mexicans and Mexican Americans took inspiration from the Chicano cultural movement happening throughout the United States. Some groups, including the US government and southwestern Chicanos, disparaged the Midwesterners. The latter called them “culturally deprived” and claimed that they “didn’t know what it meant to be Chicano.” The comments, however, did not derail Chicanos in Minnesota, and they continued to seek connections and advice. Sister Mary Giovanni Gourhan, a Westside St. Paul native active in Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, resolved to help her community specifically through education. In 1966, she came up with the idea of the Guadalupe Area Plan, also known as GAP. GAP was designed to fill the opportunity gap between Latino people and other groups through alternative education classes. The program admitted fourteen to nineteen-year-old students on probation or parole as well as those having difficulty in school. GAP’s general school courses integrated Mexican history, culture, and tradition, creating an immersive experience for students intended to inspire pride in their work. They also built foundational skills for students to seek employment to provide for their families. By 1967, Gourham’s dream had become a reality, and GAP was a mainstay in the community. (In 2019, GAP continues to assist at-risk students via the St. Paul school system.) In 1967, the Brown Berets, a pro-Chicano group, formed on the East Side of Los Angeles. Their objectives were to address police harassment, improve education, and increase political representation. A chapter was created in St. Paul in 1969. St. Paul’s Brown Berets served their community by raising funds for families in need, providing legal aid, and assisting the Guadalupe Area Plan by transporting craft goods. There was also a push for Chicano history to be taught at the university level. In 1969, the University of California Santa Barbara’s Chicano Coordinating Council on Higher Education crafted a “Plan de Santa Bárbara”—a call to action to increase Latino recruitment, admission, representation, and programming in higher education. The Latin Liberation Front (LLF), a student group at the University of Minnesota, formed in 1970. On October 26, 1971, LLF students led by Ramona Rosales took over Morrill Hall and demanded that a Chicano Studies Department be created. The College of Liberal Arts agreed, and the first Chicano studies classes were held in the fall of 1972.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/L3.5 r55.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246079,"name":"Cities and Towns","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/chicano-movement-westside-st-paul"},{"alt":"Original Dungeons & Dragons rulebooks","author":[{"name":"Jonah Lemkins","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/jonah-lemkins"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"May 13, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Arneson, David Lance (1947‒2009)","postbody":"David Lance Arneson was a game designer from St. Paul who collaborated with Ernest Gary Gygax to publish the famous tabletop roleplaying game Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) in 1974. ...","searchtext":"David Lance Arneson was a game designer from St. Paul who collaborated with Ernest Gary Gygax to publish the famous tabletop roleplaying game Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) in 1974. Although the D&D property changed hands in 1997, and the game’s mechanics have evolved, its core wouldn’t be what it is today without Dave Arneson. Arneson was born on October 1, 1947, in Hennepin County. His parents bought him the Gettysburg board game in the early 1960s, and he became entranced with historical wargames. While attending Highland Park Senior High School in St. Paul, Arneson joined the Midwest Military Simulation Association (MMSA). The MMSA’s members were high school and college-age wargame fans in the Twin Cities who gathered to play historical military simulation games. Some of them, including Arneson, were more interested in the game itself than in historical accuracy. This group, in Arneson’s parents’ basement, began playing individual character roles instead of controlling large armies. Due to his interest in historical wargames, Arneson pursued a history degree at the University of Minnesota. He particularly liked the Napoleonic era. The organizer of the Lake Geneva Wargames Convention, Ernest Gary Gygax, also loved Napoleonic-era naval battles. When Arneson met Gygax at Gen Con (a tabletop games convention) in August 1969, the two men discovered a shared interest in game design. In the years after Gen Con, Arneson developed a fantasy role-playing game and introduced it to his MMSA group. He eventually modified the rules to allow players to act as individual characters rather than large armies. These characters had backstories and motivations which the players could roleplay. To Arneson, what the characters did outside of combat was just as important as the combat itself. He also introduced fantasy creatures and magic, largely inspired by J. R. R. Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings trilogy and Robert Howard||s Conan the Barbarian series. In 1973, after two years of playtesting (testing for design flaws) with his Twin Cities cohort, Arneson introduced the game he now called Blackmoor to Gygax and his group of gamers. They loved the roleplaying elements Arneson had mixed with fantasy combat. Gygax had published a medieval-miniatures wargame of his own, called Chainmail, in 1971. After the meeting, Arneson and Gygax mailed their playtesting notes back and forth. It was difficult to iron out the Twin Cities group’s notes, since Arneson preferred improvisational rulings over codified rules. He found that these slowed down the game and the fun. With financial help from his friend Don Kaye, Gygax formed the company Tactical Studies Rules (TSR) in October 1973 before publishing the original version of Dungeons & Dragons in 1974. Dave Arneson was not asked to join the company, in part because Gygax saw Arneson as a designer, not a businessman. Arneson received royalties from TSR until 1977. In 1976, Arneson moved to Lake Geneva and briefly worked at TSR as a creative director. He was forced out of the company that same year, after he refused to lower his royalties. In 1977, TSR released a new version of D&D called Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D). Thematically it was the same game, but rules were now more codified and less freeform, as Gygax preferred. TSR refused to pay Arneson royalties for AD&D, citing significant differences from the original version. Arneson didn’t pursue legal action until 1979. After helping found two companies, 4D Interactive Studios and Adventure Games, and publishing Adventures in Fantasy, Arneson sued TSR for royalties. The lawsuit was settled out of court on March 6, 1981. Neither party was allowed to discuss legally the terms of the settlement. It is public knowledge that Arneson was paid his royalties for AD&D and is credited in all editions of D&D as a co-creator. In 1984, Arneson was elected into the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design Hall of Fame. Gygax contracted him to write adventures for TSR based on his original Blackmoor setting in 1986. During the 1990s, Arneson worked in California, using games to teach special-needs kids. In 2000, he moved to Florida and taught game design at Full Sail University. He later suffered a stroke and was diagnosed with cancer. He retired in 2008 and moved back to Minnesota to be with his family and old MMSA friends. Arneson died on April 7, 2009, in St. Paul. The surviving members of his original Blackmoor playtesting group still get together every year to play the same characters they’ve portrayed for almost fifty years.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Dungeons & Dragons.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246054,"name":"Sports and Recreation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/arneson-david-lance-1947-2009"},{"alt":"Norway Brook Dam at Pine River","author":[{"name":"Renee Geving","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/renee-geving"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"May 06, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Pine River Dam and Power Plant","postbody":"The Pine River Dam and Power Plant was built in 1911 and provided power until 1946, when it was converted into a recreational area. The village of Pine River was illuminated by candles and ...","searchtext":"The Pine River Dam and Power Plant was built in 1911 and provided power until 1946, when it was converted into a recreational area. The village of Pine River was illuminated by candles and kerosene lamps as late as 1910. In 1908 a twenty-five-year franchise was granted to Albert Langenbach “to install and maintain an acetylene gas plant for the village,” but it was never acted upon, and the village streets remained dark at night. In August of 1909, three promoters met to discuss building an electricity plant for Pine River: C. H. Smith of Duluth and B. E. Wideman and E. L. Forbes of Pine River. They developed a plan for placing the franchise matter before the village council at their next meeting. The men predicted that they would have the support of the residents in Pine River, who were tired of living in the dark. An important part of the project involved putting in a dam in the brook at the side of Norway, permitting the use of launches directly from the village up the river and into Norway Lake. The water would be kept at a near-constant level and would lure fishermen and waterfowl alike. A mass meeting of village residents was held September 25, 1909, to consider the application of the electric franchise that was before the village council. Pine River’s village council passed ordinance #34 on October 10, 1910, and granted permission to Hans and Thomas L. Arvig, to “establish and operate a power plant in the village.” The village of Pine River chose local residents Charles E. Webber and Harry H. Hill to fund and manage construction of the dam, which was to be made of a combination of earth and concrete crossing Norway Brook. Webber and Hill designed the dam to have three openings: the flume to admit water to the wheel; an eight-foot sluiceway, and a four-foot-by-six-foot fishway. The dam was completed in November of 1910. Work on the power house began the same month by the Arvig brothers. The generator began operating in late January 1911, and a few businesses were connected to electricity on Barclay Avenue, west of the plant. The Arvig brothers incorporated their plant under the title of Pine River Electric Power and Light Company and extended service to Pequot Lakes and Hackensack. They operated the plant until June 13, 1926, when the business was sold to the Minnesota Hydro-Electric Company, which enlarged the generating plant in 1927. Less than a year later, the plant and lines were resold. After two other sales, Minnesota Power and Light Company bought the plant and operated it for the next twelve years. (It generated power until the spring of 1946, when the generators were removed and electricity came via high-line.) In August 1937, a Works Progress Administration (WPA) crew built a new steel-and-concrete, seventeen-foot diving tower that replaced the log tower built two years previously by the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Post #2617, of Pine River. It was dedicated in 1938. As years passed, the dam continued to deteriorate and became obsolete. In the 1980s, the village of Pine River purchased it from Minnesota Power Company for one dollar. It renovated the dam, reservoir and the adjacent park. The Norway Brook area flourished with fish and a variety of ducks, and cabins appeared on its shores. In cooperation with the Pine River Fish and Game Club, the Pine River Chamber of Commerce purchased a pair of mute swans, Freda and Stanley, and raised their young along Norway Brook in the late sixties and early seventies. In the 2000s, the stretch of Norway Brook that runs between Highway 371 was made into a wildlife preserve. Every summer since then, events like duck races have been held in the park below the dam, drawing summer visitors to participate. As of 2019, there are plans to take down the dam, replacing it with a rock-riffle dam and a functional fish ladder. The City of Pine River will be conducting informational meetings to gain public input on the dam prior to its installation.While a riffle dam would alter Norway Brook||s current water flow, it would improve fishing and water quality upstream while reducing maintenance costs for the city of Pine River.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/MC3.9_PR_16.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246052,"name":"Science and Technology","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/pine-river-dam-and-power-plant"},{"alt":"Mixed Blood Theatre","author":[{"name":"Jacob Marcott","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/jacob-marcott"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"May 06, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Mixed Blood Theatre","postbody":"Mixed Blood Theatre, Minnesota’s first multi-racial theater company, was founded in 1976 to produce shows that pay positive attention to difference, break down racial barriers, and make ...","searchtext":"Mixed Blood Theatre, Minnesota’s first multi-racial theater company, was founded in 1976 to produce shows that pay positive attention to difference, break down racial barriers, and make theater accessible to anyone and everyone. Originally meant to be a summer project that would last for only one season, the company has presented over forty seasons as of spring 2019. Following the arrival of the Guthrie Theater in 1963, the theatre scene in the Twin Cities quickly began to germinate. There remained, however, a clear lack of diversity on the stage, especially when it came to race. The exclusion of actors, directors, and other artists of color led to the creation of Mixed Blood Theatre, Minnesota’s first multi-racial theater company. The company was started in 1976 by a man named Jack Reuler. Reuler, a twenty-two-year-old who had recently graduated from Macalester College, was working at an organization called the Center for Community Action (CCA). While there, he witnessed a racially charged casting crisis related to Theatre in the Round’s production of The Great White Hope. Although the show centered on an African American boxer and his family, it did not cast African American actors in all of those roles. The debate that followed exposed the double standard that allowed white actors to play African American roles but not vice versa. “The Theatre in the Round incident provoked me to go to the Center for Community Action,” said Reuler, “to set up [a] theater to try to have a particular voice for the successful coexistence of people with difference.” He chose a performance space and office in the same building as the CCA’s offices: an old firehouse in the Cedar Riverside neighborhood of Minneapolis. The company’s first season consisted of six plays with a total combined budget of $30,000. Reuler intended for Mixed Blood to be a summer project that would last for only one season. When the company’s debut was a success, however, he decided to produce more seasons. Under Reuler’s direction, Mixed Blood grew into a professional theater company and a pillar of the Twin Cities’ arts community. Grants were an important part of Mixed Blood’s finances from the beginning. It received support from the Hudson Dayton Foundation soon after its founding and from the McKnight Foundation in 1979 Corporations like 3M and Medtronic have also supported Mixed Blood throughout the years. Capitalizing on this increase in funds, Mixed Blood built a reputation for engaging and innovative theater. The company extended its mission outside of the firehouse in 1980, when it began touring across the country. As part of educational programs, cast members performed plays about people of color and other minority groups, such as Dr. King’s Dream and Minnecanos, at schools all over the US. In 1989, the company also started providing training programs for businesses and corporations. These programs, known as “EnterTraining,” raised awareness of difference both in and outside the workplace while also encouraging the respectful acceptance of that difference. One of the biggest changes for Mixed Blood came alongside the demographic evolution of its neighborhood. In the 1990s and 2000s, the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood became the home of thousands of Somali refugees fleeing war in their homeland. In response, Jack Reuler said, “We had to make a decision, whether to become an island in our community or an anchor in our community, and we chose the latter.” As a result, Mixed Blood began to focus less on touring and more on supporting the Cedar Riverside community. Regardless of the programs Mixed Blood added and the shows it produced, the company remained committed to its mission to “pay positive attention to difference.” In the twenty-first century, it has expanded that mission to address differences of gender, sexuality, and disability. In 2010, it started a program of “Radical Hospitality” intended to make Mixed Blood available to new audiences. It offered free admission on a first-come, first-served basis and arranged free parking and free transportation to the theater for guests with disabilities.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Mixed_Blood_Theater_Wikimedia_Commons.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/mixed-blood-theatre"},{"alt":"Original poster from the 1936 Festival of Nations","author":[{"name":"Krista Finstad Hanson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/krista-finstad-hanson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"May 01, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Festival Of Nations","postbody":"The International Institute of Minnesota created the Festival of Nations in 1936 to celebrate the ethnicities and cultures of people living in Minnesota. Since then, the event has grown to ...","searchtext":"The International Institute of Minnesota created the Festival of Nations in 1936 to celebrate the ethnicities and cultures of people living in Minnesota. Since then, the event has grown to reflect the increasing diversity of the state. From its founding in 1919, the International Institute of Minnesota encouraged nationality groups to meet and connect with people who shared their cultures. These groups met in the “club rooms” at the St. Paul Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA). The institute also hosted events to bring people from different cultural groups together. In 1932, the institute held the first three-day “Homelands Exhibits” event at the YWCA. Fifteen nationality groups prepared cultural exhibits and sold ethnic desserts and drinks to the 3,500 visitors who attended. The institute then held a three-day “Folk Festival” at the St. Paul Civic Auditorium in 1934. This festival expanded to include Native Americans and twenty-eight cultural groups. In 1936, the institute held the first event called “The Festival of Nations,” at the St. Paul Civic Auditorium. Architect Dorothy Ingemann designed a church front as the center of a world village. Decorated facades framed the ethnic and cultural groups’ food booths. This event established a pattern for the festivals that followed, which included cultural exhibits, international food cafes, ethnic dancing, and music performances. After 1936, each festival was held once every three years. Cultural exhibits were organized around a theme, and participants brought items from their home countries for their cultures’ exhibit booths. Ethnic dance groups formed and practiced at the institute. Volunteers sewed ethnic costumes for the dance groups. Dorothy Ingemann designed a town hall for the center of the 1939 festival’s International Village. African American Minnesotans first participated in the event during this festival. Crown Prince Frederick and Princess Ingrid of Denmark, who were touring the US, paid a visit. When the institute held a festival in 1942, during World War II, the organizing committee adapted the event to address wartime concerns. The Germans chose to not participate in the dance program. Some Italians withdrew, but others decided to participate in the dance program. Both groups had exhibits and food booths.” Local clergy offered an interfaith prayer for peace. There was a five-year break until the festival was held again in 1947, in which Japanese and Japanese Americans participated for the first time. The institute again began hosting the festival every three years starting in 1949. The 1949 festival coincided with the Minnesota Territorial Centennial, telling the story of ethnic groups arriving in Minnesota. Forty-four cultural groups participated. The 1958 festival celebrated 100 years of Minnesota statehood. It lasted for four days that overlapped with a twelve-day trade exposition. Many state, national, and world leaders, including Princess Astrid of Norway and Prince Bertil of Sweden, attended the event. Cubans first arrived to live permanently in Minnesota in 1960; four years later they participated in their first festival. Breaking with tradition, the event was held in November twice in that decade: once in 1964 and again in 1967, when its theme was “Nations in Harmony.” When a project to build the St. Paul Civic Center began in 1970, the institute had to leave its downtown location at Kellogg and Exchange Streets to make room for construction. No festival was held again until 1973, when it was the first major event to be held in the new building. The institute made the Festival of Nations an annual event after 1979. The 1980 festival included fifty-one ethnic groups, including, for the first time, Hmong and Laotian refugees. In 1983, the festival expanded to allow school groups to visit on Fridays during the school day. 5,000 students came that year. In 1991, Thursdays were added to the festival to allow more student groups to attend during the day. US immigration laws changed in 1990 to allow more immigrants and refugees to the US, and in 1998, 100 ethnic groups participated in the festival. It was the first festival to be held in the St. Paul RiverCentre, which had been built adjacent to the Civic Center in that year. Refugees from Somalia first participated a year later, in the 1999 festival. In the 2010s, the festival has evolved while retaining its original elements. In addition to ethnic dance and music performances and international food cafes, there are now bazaars, folk arts demonstrations, and information booths from community organizations. The purpose of the festival remains to build an appreciation of the rich cultural diversity in Minnesota. More than 1,000 volunteers helped run the 2018 festival, which drew 50,000 visitors.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/1936 Festival poster.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/festival-nations"},{"alt":"Huset School at its original site","author":[{"name":"Renee Geving","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/renee-geving"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"April 26, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Huset School, Boy Lake Township","postbody":"Huset School, an example of the kind of one-room log schools once common in northern Minnesota, was built in Boy Lake Township (Cass County) in 1912. Cass County Historical Society restored ...","searchtext":"Huset School, an example of the kind of one-room log schools once common in northern Minnesota, was built in Boy Lake Township (Cass County) in 1912. Cass County Historical Society restored it in 1968 and opened it to the public as a historic site. When the Soo Line railroad was completed in the fall of 1910, settler-colonists moved into an area in Cass County known as “the Island.||| The Island consisted of a few square miles of rather high land between Leech Lake and Big Boy Lake, with the Boy River flowage to the north and a cedar swamp to the south (hence the name “The Island,” which is still used today). The Island was quite isolated, and the settlers had to travel by boat to get the mail. There was no school that first year. Parents taught their children at home using lessons prepared by Stella Good, a carpenter’s wife and mother of three who lived close by. Ole J. Huset filed a claim to land in Boy Lake Township in about 1909 and received the patent for 160 acres in the northeast quarter of T142N-R28W (Township 143 North, Range 27 East) on February 28, 1914. Even before he received the patent, he realized the need for a local school and donated one acre of land for the Huset School in 1912. The Huset School was built in the center of the Island in 1912 by settlers Lemon Mix, Dave Clark, Algot Johnson, John Pichotte, Martin Forbord (boss carpenter), Al and John Meyers, Herb Bonick, William Reinke, Nels Granbecker, Benart Engebretson, William Billings, Art and Charley Preble, and R. P. Brown. Frank Anderson had the only horse team in the neighborhood and skidded the logs used in the building. Guy T. Mix, another local resident, was awarded the first teaching job in 1912. After he found that he could make more money working in the woods than he could teaching at the school for $20 a month, however, he gave up the assignment. Esther Wenholz was then hired as a replacement and became the school’s first teacher. Several single women taught between 1912 and 1929 (it was difficult to retain teachers because it was such an isolated area), including Wenholz’s replacement, Faith Seamans. When Frida Norman Ecker was hired in 1929, this was highly unusual because she was a married woman with three children. After she left her new baby with relatives, she and her sons lived in the schoolhouse for ten weeks until they moved to a small cabin half a mile from the school. The school building was last used for its original purpose in 1937. The land then reverted to Virgil Dickson (sometimes incorrectly spelled “Dixon”), a local farmer who owned the property. Dixon donated the school to the Cass County Historical Society and the building was brought by truck to the Cass County Museum Grounds in Walker in 1968. Dedication day was June 9, 1968, with a ribbon-cutting ceremony. Original to the school are slate boards on two walls, a bookcase, and a forty-eight-star American flag. A pump organ in working condition sits waiting to be used. Original desks from rural schools throughout the county, a suspension world globe, framed pictures of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, teachers’ certificates, end-of-the-year souvenir booklets, kerosene lanterns, and period photographs adorn the walls. Memorabilia such as ink wells, dip pens, slates, textbooks, and historical novels add to the authenticity of the interior. Restoration of the building was completed in 1968 and included installation of a new foundation, a cedar shake roof, and a bell tower. The interior, which had been covered in the early 1930s with wainscoting, was given a coat of paint. A jacketed woodstove was brought into the back of the classroom and a teacher’s desk was added to the platform at the front of the classroom. A Waterbury seven-day school clock was hung on a nearby wall. The school was moved once more in 1982 just a few feet west of its original location to allow for construction of the new Cass County Museum. In 2017, the school was again upgraded when its exterior logs, which had been deteriorating, were restored.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Huset School 003.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056210,"name":"Education","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/huset-school-boy-lake-township"},{"alt":"Reception gown worn by Mary LeDuc","author":[{"name":"Linda McShannock","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/linda-mcshannock"},{"name":"Lizzie Ehrenhalt","slug":"https://www3.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/lizzie-ehrenhalt"}],"categoryTag":[],"date":"April 24, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Custom Dressmaking, 1880–1920","postbody":"Throughout the nineteenth century, custom dressmaking was one of the few socially acceptable professions for women of multiple ages and classes, including immigrants, young farm girls, ...","searchtext":"Throughout the nineteenth century, custom dressmaking was one of the few socially acceptable professions for women of multiple ages and classes, including immigrants, young farm girls, wives, and widows. Dressmaking establishments—run and staffed primarily by women—provided creative labor, living wages, and career advancement opportunities for businesswomen and skilled workers alike. In Minnesota, as in other states, the dressmaking industry grew in proportion to the local population and economy. Minnesota Territory experienced rapid growth after it offered land to settler-colonists in 1849, and many newcomers strove to create an urban environment that equaled the Eastern cities they had left behind. Their wealth, leisure, and desire for culture eventually created the museums, parkways, orchestras, and clothes that fashion demanded. Of the 77,000 white women counted by the 1860 Minnesota census, 124 were employed as seamstresses. By 1890, when the total population of Minnesota had reached 1,300,000, over 5,000 women in the Twin Cities alone identified themselves as seamstresses, dressmakers, or milliners. Also by 1890, Minnesota led the nation in women working away from home; by 1895, the numbers of dressmakers in the Twin Cities had reached an all-time high. Minnesota dressmakers worked in various settings. Some, like Matilda Lilleby McReynolds, set up shop in their own homes, enlisting help from teams that included family members. Others opened businesses in locations convenient to their clients, such as downtown office or retail buildings in St. Paul (Mary Molloy) and Minneapolis (Hattie H. McGahn). Still others rented space in prominent department stores, including Mannheimer’s (Mary G. Worley) and Dayton||s (Helen Gjertsen). The most exclusive dressmakers, like Rose Boyd and Lina Christianson, operated from their own salons and employed as many as 100 seamstresses, tailors, cutters, and fitters. Dressmakers’ clients participated actively and extensively in their own wardrobe selection and production. As a writer for the Minneapolis Saturday Evening Spectator observed in 1882, |||With many women, dress in all its details and necessities of shopping, fitting, etc., is a business requiring an average of three or four hours daily.||| This remained evident in the early twentieth century. The diaries of Louise Weyerhaeuser (Mrs. Rudolph Weyerhaeuser), daughter-in-law of timber magnate Frederick Weyerhaeuser, detail her shopping habits and record seven visits to four dressmakers (including Rose Boyd) and one millinery shop in the month of May 1914 alone. Cutting the intricate pieces of a garment and fitting them to a particular body shape challenged even the most skilled dressmakers. Custom clothing, moreover, required repeated visits for fabric and pattern selection and multiple fittings as the garment was created. Mary Hill visited Mrs. George F. Hall in Chicago on March 11, 1902, and noted in her diary, |||We found Mrs. Hall all ready for us although her shop opened only yesterday. Spent all forenoon selecting materials, the afternoon talking over designs and some fitting.||| Rose Boyd’s establishment, called Madame Boyd’s, billed Hill for the time of three staff members who attended to her fittings at her house on Summit Avenue. Clients expected their dressmakers to provide them with exclusive patterns and the highest-quality fabrics. In 1903, Mrs. Peavey, a customer of dressmaker Lizzie Morrissey, paid her thirty dollars--the equivalent of a month||s wages for many workers--for an exclusive dress pattern. Clients also asked dressmakers to reproduce the trends that appeared in fashion magazines while interpreting them in their own styles. Former debutante Bessie Pettit Douglas recalled, |||If one bought a model dress before it had been copied the price was high but one could be sure there would not be another dress like it in the city.||| To keep up with changes in European fashion, Minnesota dressmakers relied on periodicals like Godey’s Lady’s Book (in circulation as early as 1830) and, later, Gazette du Bon Ton (founded in 1912). They made annual and even semi-annual buying and scouting trips to Paris and London. Dressmakers like Mary Molloy, Hattie McGahn, and Rose Boyd publicized their Paris connections in local newspaper reports of their trips as well as their advertising in theater programs and the Dual City Blue Book, the local social register. Many used |||Madame||| in their labels and professional titles to emphasize their European outlook. Traditionally, dressmakers had learned how to cut and fit custom garments professionally through an apprenticeship system. Seamstresses who had no opportunity to work under an experienced dressmaker, however, attended dressmaking schools. Madame BuChane||s Northwestern Dress Cutting School on Hennepin Avenue in Minneapolis advertised in 1903 that it had provided seventeen years of training in the |||French and English Tailor system of actual measurements and graduated scales.||| BuChane’s school offered several levels of instruction. The most advanced included a complete course in drafting, cutting, basting, boning, sewing, designing, and trimming, as well as management. Students could work off a portion of the tuition at the rate of $2.00 per day for experienced dressmakers and $1.00 per day for beginners. Beginning students without any sewing skills were discouraged from applying, since they “would require too much attention.||| BuChane claimed to run the only dressmaking school in the Twin Cities with a dressmaking establishment on the premises. The arrangement, she emphasized, promised practical experience that would lead to |||a living for the earnest” and “a fortune for the capable.||| Seamstress jobs in the late 1800s and early 1900s were demanding, low paying, and seasonal. They required women to work six ten-hour days per week, with overtime common during the peak seasons―fall and spring. Business dropped over the summer months, putting many out of work. Employers paid wages that ranged from 85 cents per day to $2.50 per day, depending on skill level. Seamstresses employed by dressmakers like Rose Boyd, Lina Christianson, Mary Molloy, and Mary G. Worley were part of a large group of women who lived independently in large cities, earning incomes to support themselves (and sometimes their families). They migrated from rural homes to work in the city and developed their skills beyond those required for at-home sewing, occasionally advancing in the profession to open their own shop. By the early twentieth century, the rise of department stores and the marketing of fashionable ready-made clothing had reduced the number of clients looking for custom pieces, cutting into dressmakers’ business. Mary Brooks Picken, an educator who trained sewers, observed that although the ready-made industry did not influence American fashion until 1890, its growth was rapid. By 1911, Picken wrote, it “superseded in every way the custom dressmaking and tailoring industries.” After 1910, the same seamstresses who had worked in custom trade became machine operators in ready-to-wear factories or clerks in department stores. Fewer women worked as seamstresses as demand for women’s labor multiplied in these new professions and industries. Factory and department store jobs, moreover, often offered women more appealing opportunities, better wages, and regular hours. As its available workforce diminished due to these forces, the custom dressmaking industry declined in Minnesota and throughout the United States.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/10322919.640x640.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246055,"name":"Labor","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/custom-dressmaking-1880-1920"},{"alt":"ACT UP handbill","author":[{"name":"Britt Aamodt","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/britt-aamodt"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"April 22, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"HIV/AIDS Crisis, 1981‒1997","postbody":"In 1981, AIDS was a mystery illness—a so-called “gay plague” because of its initial appearance among men who had sex with other men in large coastal cities like New York and San Francisco. ...","searchtext":"In 1981, AIDS was a mystery illness—a so-called “gay plague” because of its initial appearance among men who had sex with other men in large coastal cities like New York and San Francisco. Minnesotans breathed a sigh of relief, thinking they were far enough from the epidemic to be safe. But they were wrong. The first inkling of an emerging epidemic came in the weekly report issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on June 5, 1981. The article, which reported on trends in morbidity and mortality, identified five previously healthy gay men who had contracted a rare pneumonia. The disease had already spread to Minnesota. St. Paul native Bruce Brockway was a gay activist and the publisher of the Twin Cities’ first gay newspaper: Northland Companion, later renamed Positively Gay and then GLC Voice when it was taken over by Tim Campbell. By July, Brockway already suspected he had AIDS. He was finally diagnosed in June 1982, making him the first documented Minnesotan with the disease. Acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) is caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). HIV attacks the body’s immune system. When this happens, the infected person falls prey to a host of opportunistic infections that take advantage of the broken immune system. HIV is transmitted through blood and other bodily fluids. In the United States, it initially appeared in men who had sex with men, IV drug users, and, before the invention of a test to screen for HIV, recipients of tainted blood transfusions, including hemophiliacs. Brockway refused to take his diagnosis lying down. In April 1983, he helped found the Minnesota AIDS Project (MAP), the state’s first grassroots organization set up to help people with HIV/AIDS. And they needed the help. AIDS was worse than anyone could imagine. Sufferers succumbed to multiple complaints—swollen lymph nodes, oral thrush, night sweats, diarrhea, weight loss—while shuttling in and out of intensive care, fighting off yet more opportunistic infections. The end result was almost always death. In addition to serious medical problems, people with HIV/AIDS had to deal with the stigma that came with a disease associated with homosexuality and drug use. Billy Runyon, another MAP co-founder, lost his job at a Minneapolis blood bank when his employer found out he had AIDS. He wasn’t alone. People with HIV/AIDS lost jobs, apartment leases, friends, and family. They were the subjects of accusatory religious sermons that framed HIV/AIDS as God’s judgment against gays. Then there was the fear. Brockway and Runyon, along with their doctor, Frank Rhame, talked to print and TV journalists. Through interviews, they tried to dispel the rumors, among them the idea that you could get HIV from mosquito bites and from being in the same room as an infected person. By the end of 1983, Minnesota had nine diagnosed cases. But that was only the tip of the iceberg. HIV has an incubation period of up to ten years. That meant that most Minnesotans with HIV didn’t know it yet. By 1985, four years into the epidemic, people with HIV/AIDS were living longer because of improvements in treating infections. But there was still no cure. In response, a new organization set down roots: the Aliveness Project. The project’s focus was on living with HIV/AIDS, with the stress on living. While MAP helped with medical care, housing, and end-of-life needs, Aliveness provided opportunities for social gatherings. It offered tickets to concerts and plays. It hosted a food shelf and community meals. One of Aliveness’s volunteer cooks was Bill Rowe, a chain-smoking, leather-wearing anthropology professor at the University of Minnesota. When regulars stopped showing up at the community meal because they were too sick, Rowe brought meals to their doors. This act of goodwill evolved into Open Arms, which enlisted a team of cooks and drivers to make food deliveries to homebound clients. In 1983, San Francisco opened the first HIV/AIDS clinic in the world. Two years later, Dr. Keith Henry, newly arrived in Minnesota, opened Minnesota’s first HIV/AIDS clinic at St. Paul Ramsey Medical Center. In the same year, a test for HIV became available. When doctors diagnosed patients as HIV-positive at St. Paul’s sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) clinic, they could now immediately refer them to the nearby HIV/AIDS clinic for ongoing treatment. The year 1987 witnessed Minnesota’s one hundredth death from AIDS. It also saw a monk retire from his work at St. John’s Abbey in Collegeville to open the first AIDS adult foster home in Hennepin County. The monk, Brother Louis (Charles) Blenkner, rented a four-room house in South Minneapolis. He lived in one room and took care of the residents in the other three. He shopped, cooked, offered friendship, and provided medical care with the help of nurses and doctors. For most of the epidemic, the spotlight had been on New York and San Francisco, where hundreds and then thousands of men and women were dying. But the media’s focus briefly shifted to the Twin Cities. On April 2, 1989, Hans Paul Verhoef, a Dutch HIV/AIDS educator, was detained at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. Customs officers had discovered AZT, the first effective HIV drug, in his luggage. It was at this moment most Americans learned that the US Congress had passed a travel ban on foreign travelers with HIV/AIDS. Verhoef had breached the law by not declaring his AIDS status before arriving in the US. He was jailed for five days and finally let go on a $10,000 bond and a promise to leave the country in three weeks. Incidents like Verhoef’s detention enraged communities fighting HIV/AIDS. In 1987, a group of New York activists had formed ACT UP, which staged demonstrations to bring attention to the HIV/AIDS crisis. The Twin Cities chapter of ACT UP took up local causes, like the mistreatment of an HIV-positive inmate at the Minnesota Correctional Facility–St. Cloud, and participated in national actions. An ACT UP representative was among the community members who served as a review board for doctors running the HIV drug trials at the University of Minnesota. The university’s drug trials program was part of a national network, the AIDS Clinical Trials Group, which streamlined the movement of potential HIV drugs from labs to volunteer test subjects. AZT had only worked for patients temporarily before the virus came roaring back. New drugs were needed. By the end of 1995, 319,849 Americans had died of AIDS and over half a million were infected with HIV. And that was only in the United States. Those numbers made the search for a cure, or at least a way of managing the disease, desperate. By 1996, Michael Reinbold, a young Minneapolis man, had been living in the AIDS foster-care home Grace House for a year. He’d suffered a number of medical complications and was expecting to die at the home. Later that year, however, a new drug cocktail became available. Researchers discovered that using three antiretroviral drugs together prevented HIV from reproducing inside the body. People with HIV/AIDS saw their health restored after taking the cocktail. The phenomenon of so many dying people suddenly returning to life was called the Lazarus effect. In 1997, Reinbold, with the help of his drug cocktail, became one of the first HIV/AIDS patients to walk out of Grace House alive. Minnesota’s HIV/AIDS organizations are still relevant in the twenty-first century. So is HIV/AIDS. Though the disease is now a survivable chronic condition, the virus continues to spread, with thousands infected in Minnesota and tens of millions worldwide.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/1991.139.277.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246087,"name":"Health and Medicine","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/hivaids-crisis-1981-1997"},{"alt":"Christmas Party at the International Institute, 1920","author":[{"name":"Krista Finstad Hanson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/krista-finstad-hanson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"April 15, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"International Institute of Minnesota","postbody":"The International Institute in St. Paul opened on December 12, 1919. For one hundred years, it has helped meet the needs of immigrants, refugees, and asylees beginning their new lives in ...","searchtext":"The International Institute in St. Paul opened on December 12, 1919. For one hundred years, it has helped meet the needs of immigrants, refugees, and asylees beginning their new lives in Minnesota. The national Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) created the first International Institutes in the 1910s as service bureaus for foreign-born residents and new immigrants. Following World War I, the all-female staff and board of directors of the St. Paul Institute included Lorena Harrison, the organization’s executive secretary, and Bess Leuthold Beebe, the president of the board. The 1921 staff of four caseworkers spoke German, Italian, Norwegian, and Polish and served people from thirteen countries. The institute’s services helped new Americans overcome barriers such as learning English, becoming citizens, and finding jobs. Caseworkers took people to appointments and made home visits. At the same time, the institute’s cultural programs helped encourage new and “old stock” Americans to share similarities and celebrate differences. In the 1930s, the institute offered classes and programs at the downtown St. Paul YWCA and other sites. An Upper Levee site served Italians, and a West Side site served Mexicans. In 1931, Alice Lilliequist Sickels became the third executive secretary; she then began what became the Festival of Nations in 1932. A three-day “Homelands Exhibit” event that celebrated fifteen cultural groups was held at the YWCA on April 22–24 of that year. On December 6, 1941, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. In March of 1942, the US government forced West Coast residents of Japanese descent into concentration camps. In response, the institute started the St. Paul Resettlement Committee in October of 1942. Committee members found jobs and housing for Japanese Americans who wanted to leave the camps and settle in St. Paul. During World War II, institute caseworkers responded to community needs and expanded services to work with the Red Cross to find European family members. Citizenship classes filled with resident “aliens” eager to complete their citizenship process. After the war, the institute reached out to “war brides” married to US servicemen. These women needed cultural support and English classes. In 1946, the institute moved into its own building at 183 West Kellogg Boulevard. It built up a large membership and offered many activities to bring different cultures together. In addition to monthly international lunches and dinners with guest speakers and film screenings, it offered classes in ethnic dance, folk arts, cooking, citizenship, English, and world languages. From 1948‒1952, the institute expanded its services to help displaced people arriving from Eastern Europe. In 1956, the Hungarian “Freedom Fighters” came after a failed revolution. In the early 1960s, the institute served Cubans fleeing their country’s Communist revolution. The institute moved into a building at 1694 Como Avenue in 1970. After the Vietnam War ended in 1975, 3,800 people came to Minnesota from Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam as legal refugees. In 1975, the Institute hired its first Vietnamese caseworker. By the following year, the institute’s main staff was eighteen people, and thirty teachers taught English to the new arrivals. From 1976 to 1980, the number of Hmong people living in Minnesota grew from zero to 10,000. The Immigration Act of 1990 opened up resettlement from more countries and introduced new kinds of immigrant visas. This act guides immigration policy today and has brought an increased diversity to Minnesota. Meanwhile, the institute continued expanding services to help new Americans succeed. In 1990, it started a nursing-assistant job-training program to find better jobs for clients. In 1993, the first refugees from civil wars in Bosnia, Liberia, and Somalia came to Minnesota. The institute served 10 percent of Africans who resettled in the US in 1999. In the 2000s, the institute served refugees fleeing conflicts all around the world. In 2001, refugee arrivals temporarily stopped after the 9/11 attacks. The institute resettled a record 2,316 people in 2004. More than half were Hmong from Wat Tham Krabok, a refugee camp at a Buddhist monastery that Thailand’s government had closed. At the same time, the institute started new programs to serve clients who needed college-readiness preparation. As of 2019, the institute has resettled nearly 23,000 refugees and asylees to Minnesota since 1980. The institute annually serves clients from nearly 100 countries and continues to help new Americans overcome barriers to success in American life. More than fifty employees and many volunteers and interns work in the departments of Refugee Resettlement, Immigration, Employment, Job Training, English and Spanish Language Classes, College Readiness, and the Festival of Nations.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/1920 Christmas Party.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/international-institute-minnesota"},{"alt":"Gull Lake Dam","author":[{"name":"Cecelia Wattles McKeig","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/cecelia-wattles-mckeig"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"April 15, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Gull Lake Dam","postbody":"The sixth and final dam in the Headwaters Reservoir System, Gull Lake Dam was built in 1912 to increase the output of mills and turbines downstream. In 2019, the dam maintains water levels ...","searchtext":"The sixth and final dam in the Headwaters Reservoir System, Gull Lake Dam was built in 1912 to increase the output of mills and turbines downstream. In 2019, the dam maintains water levels for recreation and navigation, and the site is also home to ancient burial mounds and a recreation area. Gull Lake Dam is one of six dam sites in the Mississippi River headwaters area built by the Army Corps of Engineers to improve navigation and contribute to the commercial development of the adjoining areas. Late in the nineteenth century, logging companies built dams at the site to make floating logs down the Gull River easier. Originally written off as a potential dam site due to high land costs and pre-existing logging dams on the Gull River, Gull Lake Dam was authorized by Congress in 1907 after John S. Pillsbury of the St. Anthony Falls Water Power Company granted the flowage and land rights necessary to go forward with construction. The St. Anthony Power Company hoped the dam would provide significant increases in output for their mills and turbines in Minneapolis, and put together the land deeds and property leases necessary for construction to begin. Colonel Francis R. Shunk and George Freeman worked on the design of the dam, which is composed of reinforced concrete on timber pilings. Their design included five sluiceways (overflow channels), a log sluice, and a five foot wide fishway, which has since been closed off. It was constructed half a mile down the Gull River from the Gull Lake outlet and became operational in 1912. The Gull Lake dam tender||s Craftsman-style seven-room house was built in 1912 on a hill above the dam. Former dam tenders such as Ed Sunde and Orin Henderson pointed out that the dam tender’s job was a lonely one, and they often worked alone at the site. As demand for recreational facilities increased at the dam sites, the tender became a park manager, and the “dam tender” title faded into obscurity. The dam’s administrative offices are currently located in this building. After the Nine Foot Channel lock and dam system was built between St. Anthony Falls and Guttenberg, Iowa, the headwaters dams were less necessary for regulating the Upper Mississippi’s water levels. The US Army Corps of Engineers reconsidered the purpose of the headwaters dams and determined that the regulation of water levels was second to the management of public recreation areas. In the fall of 1968, the construction of a recreation area was interrupted by the discovery of prehistoric Native American burial grounds on the property. After an excavation in 1969 by the University of Minnesota, the recreational area was redesigned to protect the burial mounds as a sacred site. An interpretive center provides information on artifacts found there, and the human remains found were reinterred in 1998. In 1995, archaeologists Christy Hohman-Caine and Grant Goltz identified pottery found at the site as belonging to the Brainerd Ware subgroup, associated with the better-known Woodland Tradition (800 BCE–900 CE). The US Army Corps of Engineers held a public meeting on July 25, 2018, on the potential closure of the single lane road that runs through the Gull Lake Recreation Area and campground and over the Gull Lake Dam. Possible damage to any part of the burial grounds prompted participation in meetings with the Corps of Engineers, local residents, and members of the Leech Lake and Mille Lacs Bands of Ojibwe. In a January 2019 news release, the corps announced that a portion of the road will be closed in 2025.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/5023-A.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/gull-lake-dam"},{"alt":"Governor Mark Dayton delivering an address to state legislators","author":[{"name":"Lori Sturdevant","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/lori-sturdevant"}],"categoryTag":[],"date":"April 10, 2019","eraTag":[],"keydate":"","name":"Politics in Minnesota","postbody":"People in Minnesota have engaged in lively politics noted for a high level of citizen participation since the founding of the state in 1858 and long before. Often, they showed a willingness ...","searchtext":"People in Minnesota have engaged in lively politics noted for a high level of citizen participation since the founding of the state in 1858 and long before. Often, they showed a willingness to use government to improve the state’s quality of life. Though Minnesota’s political parties have at times diverged from their national counterparts, they have produced leaders who made notable contributions to the nation. Indigenous Politics Governing structures existed among the peoples of Mni Sota Makoce (the Dakota name from which the word Minnesota derives) well before statehood. Neither the Dakota, who occupied the southern two-thirds of Minnesota for centuries, nor the Ojibwe, who moved to the northern portion of the state from the east in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, created “national” governments. Rather, both were organized in autonomous groups of villages (called bands by Euro-Americans), each typically composed of members of five or more large kinship groups that camped, traveled, hunted, and made war together. Decisions were made by village councils that, like the town meetings of New England, operated largely by consensus. Though many of these were limited to men, women gathered in councils of their own that also guided political decisions. The bands’ civil leaders occupied hereditary positions typically passed from father to son; their power, however, derived largely from personal influence. Other skill-specific leadership roles within bands were temporary. Among the Ojibwe, leaders were often chosen from kinship groups deemed to have particular aptitude for medicine, religious observance, dispute resolution, and/or warfare. Leaders of related bands within a region communicated with each other and met for joint decision-making as needed. A similar loose confederation among the Iroquois—neighbors of the Ojibwe in the Great Lakes region—influenced the designers of the young United States of America in the eighteenth century. Minnesota Becomes A State The New Englanders who arrived in Minnesota in the mid-nineteenth century were also practitioners of highly participatory democracy. Descendants of English Puritans who had resisted rule by kings and noblemen, they governed themselves via town meetings in which all free adult males could vote and many were expected to take a turn at public office. For them, as for Native people bound by kinship ties, participating in politics was an extension of responsibility to families and enterprises. Minnesota state government, which is modeled after the three-branch federal government, includes a two-chamber legislature whose members are elected by voters in defined geographic districts. The state’s founders opted for a large “citizen legislature” that includes the nation’s largest state senate, with sixty-seven members. At first, legislators met in regular sessions for only a few months each year; between 1879 and 1973, they met only every other year. Settler-colonists in the new state saw government as their ally in the pursuit of prosperity. They looked to it to remove or subdue the Dakota and Ojibwe, assure access to cheap land, protect property owners’ rights, and provide transportation to link Minnesota to the rest of the nation. The first amendment to the state constitution allowed for borrowing money via “special bonds” and loaning it to four new railroad ventures. The railroad companies, however, reneged on their part of the bargain as the Panic of 1857 spread. Angry Minnesota voters passed another amendment in 1860 forbidding the use of tax money to honor the bonds. It took more than two decades and the persistence of one governor, John S. Pillsbury, for the debt to be settled. Despite that speed bump, railroad building accelerated in the 1860s as the Civil War traumatized the nation. That war colored state politics for the remainder of the century. While Minnesota’s first governor, Henry Sibley, was a Democrat, his successor, Alexander Ramsey, and the state’s next eleven governors all affiliated with the Republican Party—the party of Lincoln. Minnesotans sided strongly with the Union, many because they hated slavery. Ramsey was the nation’s first governor to offer troops (the First Minnesota Volunteer Infantry Regiment) to President Abraham Lincoln in April 1861. Minnesota’s soldiers suffered severe losses at the Battle of Gettysburg and played a major role in the Union victory at Vicksburg. Those soldiers sealed in blood a bond with the party that won the war. Recovering From Civil War Some of those who chose to come to Minnesota after the Civil War were newly freed enslaved people (African-Americans were granted the vote via an amendment to the state constitution in 1868). Many more were from northern Europe, with Germans making up the largest group. But those from Ireland and Scandinavia made a stronger imprint on state politics. Irish immigrants clustered in St. Paul, bringing Catholic solidarity and reliable Democratic votes to the older and, by the 1890s, smaller of the Twin Cities. Scandinavians flocked to Minneapolis and scattered to small towns and farms to the south and northwest. Their Lutheran ideas about community and government nearly matched those of earlier Yankee settlers. Republican politics, moreover, suited them. The first Norwegian-born governor of Minnesota, Republican Knute Nelson, was elected in 1892; all but five of the state’s twenty-three governors in the twentieth century possessed Scandinavian heritage. Farmers’ zeal for the Republican Party waned as the industrial revolution advanced. As Minnesota’s timber, milling, mining, railroad and banking entrepreneurs made fortunes, a growing share of farmers felt cheated by low commodity prices and high shipping and machinery costs. Oliver H. Kelley, a farmer from Elk River, founded in 1867 the first association of farmers trying to collectively improve their lot: the National Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry. While the Grange (including its Minnesota branch) was apolitical, its organizational descendants were anything but. By the 1890s, the agrarian protest movement had spawned the Populist Party, whose gubernatorial candidate topped the Democrats to come in second to Nelson in 1894. Four years later, the long line of Republican governors was broken by John Lind, a Swedish-American congressman from New Ulm. He wore three party labels: Democrat, Populist, and Silver Republican. Lind served one term and met none of his goals: higher railroad taxes, an income-based alternative to the unpopular property tax, creation of a board of control to bring accountability to state agencies and institutions, and more voter control of government through a direct primary, initiative, referendum, and recall. That agenda would endure as the Midwestern progressive movement arose in the early twentieth century. Politics In A New Century The state’s next Democratic governor, John A. Johnson, won by campaigning on progressive ideas in 1904, even as Minnesotans voted overwhelmingly for President Theodore Roosevelt, a progressive Republican. Johnson was thought to be on his way to a presidential bid when he died suddenly in September 1909. But by then, the idea that government should shield working people from the excesses of big business had caught on in the state. Republicans dominated the state capitol in the first three decades of the twentieth century. Legislators did, however, bow to progressive calls in 1912 to ratify federal constitutional amendments authorizing an income tax and direct election of US senators. The next year, they made the legislature a nonpartisan body—a status that would endure for sixty years. Legislators caucused as Conservatives and Liberals, names that came to be nearly synonymous with Republicans and Democrats, respectively. In 1915, state legislators allowed counties the option of banning the sale of alcohol. It was a precursor of Prohibition, which was popular with Minnesota’s Yankee and Scandinavian progressives and resisted by immigrants from Germany and Ireland. The issue also divided Minnesotans on religious lines, with Protestants favoring Prohibition and Catholics more often opposed. The US House sponsor of legislation enacting Prohibition in 1919 was Minnesota Representative Andrew Volstead, a Republican from Granite Falls. Minnesota Republicans were less responsive to another progressive demand: votes for women. With the exception of school board elections, women did not win the right to vote in Minnesota until the US Constitution’s Nineteenth Amendment was ratified in 1920. Afterward, the Minnesota Women’s Suffrage Association evolved into the Minnesota League of Women Voters. Despite the Republicans’ progressive tilt in the early twentieth century, they remained allied with big businesses. That was evident during World War I, when Governor J. A. A. Burnquist and some of the state’s largest businesses used the war as justification to surveil and forcibly silence the leaders of labor unions and the new Nonpartisan League, the latest agrarian protest movement. The harsh measures employed by the Minnesota Public Safety Commission strengthened the resolve of farmers and laborers to fight back politically. Though Burnquist won reelection in 1918, in second place was David H. Evans, who ran on a new ticket: the Farmer-Labor Party. Rise Of The Farmer-labor Party The new party first flexed its muscle to winning effect in a 1922 US Senate race, in which Farmer-Laborite Henrik Shipstead upset a future US secretary of state, Republican Senator Frank B. Kellogg. The next year, F-L candidate Magnus Johnson bested Republican Governor J. A. O. Preus in a special election to succeed the late US Senator Knute Nelson. The governorship was harder for the new party to capture. But after the stock market crash in 1929, the economic distress that farmers had known in the 1920s reached urban dwellers, too, and voters turned away from the party of President Herbert Hoover. Charismatic Farmer-Laborite Floyd B. Olson took the governorship in 1930. Two years later, Farmer-Labor candidates ended Republican/Conservative control of the Minnesota House for the first time in the twentieth century. That change led to enactment in 1933 of the state income tax, a mortgage foreclosure moratorium, and a ban on labor contracts that barred employees from joining unions. Olson sold the idea that government had a responsibility for the welfare of its citizens, and his personal appeal papered over divisions within the Farmer-Labor coalition. It was an uneasy alliance between leftists who favored state takeover of key industries and working people who simply wanted to hang on to their jobs and farms. Like Johnson before him, Olson was seen as a possible future president when death intervened. He died of stomach cancer in August 1936. Olson’s Farmer-Labor successors failed to keep his coalition together, and by 1938, a new star was rising. Harold Stassen, a Dakota County prosecutor just thirty-one years old, sailed to an easy victory over Farmer-Labor Governor Elmer Benson. Stassen represented a shift in Republican thinking. Friendly toward organized labor and Roosevelt’s New Deal, he sought to assist those impoverished by the Depression. When war broke out again in Europe, he argued that America should not turn its back. Those ideas attracted young talent that would form the core of Minnesota’s progressive post-war Republican Party. Stassen resigned after the 1943 legislative session and enlisted in the Navy. He became a top aide to Admiral William “Bull” Halsey and a US delegate to the conference that drafted the United Nations charter. He ran for president in 1948, leaving in Minnesota his hand-picked successors Joseph Ball and Edward Thye in the US Senate and Luther Youngdahl in the governor’s office. But Stassen came in second to Governor Thomas Dewey of New York in the Republican presidential contest. He faltered again when even Minnesota’s Republican convention delegates preferred General Dwight Eisenhower in 1952. Stassen’s party also suffered a reversal at home when Ball lost the 1948 Senate election to a newcomer, Hubert Humphrey of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. New Leaders Emerge Humphrey, thirty-seven years old in 1948, had four years earlier helped engineer the merger of the fading Farmer-Labor Party and the third-place Democratic Party. Their shared support for President Franklin Roosevelt augured for union. So did Humphrey’s ambition. A Macalester College professor, Humphrey had lost the Minneapolis mayoral election in 1943. He believed a party merger would help him win in 1945, and that assessment proved correct. In 1948 Mayor Humphrey was a Senate candidate who attracted headlines with a fiery call for civil rights at the Democratic National Convention. The young talent Humphrey’s first Senate campaign enlisted would lead the DFL for the next forty years. Among them were Walter Mondale, a future vice president; Orville Freeman, future governor; Arthur Naftalin and Don Fraser, future Minneapolis mayors; Arvonne Fraser, future leader of the Minnesota women’s movement; and Eugene McCarthy, a future US senator elected to the US House in 1948. The parties that Stassen and Humphrey built were fierce competitors. But their platforms were remarkably similar in the mid-twentieth century. The center-right Minnesota Republicans and center-left DFLers both opposed racial bias in housing and employment. Both supported public assistance for the disabled. Both were willing to use state tax revenue to boost funding for schools and local governments, so that the quality of education and municipal services was not dependent on a community’s property wealth. Both sought to safeguard the natural environment. Republican governors Luther Youngdahl, Elmer L. Andersen, Harold LeVander, Al Quie, and Arne Carlson embraced those positions. So did DFL governors Orville Freeman, Karl Rolvaag, Wendell Anderson, and Rudy Perpich. At mid-century, both Minnesota parties stood to the philosophical left of their national counterparts. When Republicans chose conservative Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater for president in 1964, a majority of Minnesota’s national convention delegates cast a protest vote for former US Representative Walter Judd of Minneapolis. A decade later, the Minnesota GOP renamed itself the Independent-Republican Party to distance itself from the Watergate-stained national party. The name would stick until 1995. Minnesotan Politicians On The National Stage Humphrey gained fame throughout the 1950s as a leading voice for labor and civil rights. In 1960, he lost the Democratic presidential nomination to a more moderate-minded candidate, John F. Kennedy. Humphrey’s Senate sponsorship of the 1964 Civil Rights Act was followed by his selection as President Lyndon Johnson’s running mate. When Johnson opted not to seek reelection in 1968 at the height of the Vietnam War, Vice President Humphrey ran again for president. This time, he was the establishment candidate, facing anti-war challenges from his fellow Minnesotan Senator Eugene McCarthy and, until his assassination on June 5, New York Senator Robert F. Kennedy. The Humphrey-McCarthy split was keenly felt in the DFL. Only two years earlier, it had endured a gubernatorial primary battle between Governor Karl Rolvaag and Lieutenant Governor Alexander M. “Sandy” Keith. Both times, intraparty conflict benefitted the opposite party. Harold LeVander beat Rolvaag, who had won the DFL primary despite the party’s endorsement of Keith. Humphrey lost the presidential election to Richard Nixon, though he carried Minnesota by 200,000 votes. By an even larger margin, Minnesotans returned Humphrey to the US Senate in 1970. He remained in office until his death in January 1978, long enough to see his protégé, Mondale, elected vice president in 1976. Between 1911 and 1966, the legislature did little to adjust congressional and legislative maps to equalize district population. That neglect allowed rural Minnesotans to gain advantage as the Twin Cities population grew. Redistricting was finally done under federal court order in time for the 1966 election and would follow every census thereafter. More Twin Cities legislative seats resulted and helped DFLers win control of the full legislature and governorship in 1973—a first for the party. A host of changes in policy and lawmaking processes ensued, led by Senate Majority Leader Nicholas Coleman and House Speaker Martin Olav Sabo. The legislature began meeting every year. Its members again took party labels, and meetings were opened to the public. A nation-leading system of public campaign financing was created. At the same time, women arrived at the legislature in bigger numbers. Only one woman, Helen McMillan, served in the legislature in 1971‒72; a decade later, the total was twenty-four. (As of 2019, the share of women in the body has exceeded 25 percent since 1993. The state’s first female US senator, Democrat Amy Klobuchar, was elected in 2006.) The 1974 and 1976 elections that followed Watergate brought DFLers their largest majorities in state history. But Republicans rebounded in 1978 when voters rejected DFL Governor Wendell Anderson’s self-appointment to the US Senate in late 1976 after Mondale became vice president. Republicans Rudy Boschwitz and Dave Durenberger won US Senate seats, and Al Quie ousted the former lieutenant governor who succeeded Anderson: Hibbing dentist Rudy Perpich. Perpich returned to office in 1982 after several years of state budget turmoil led Quie not to run again. Perpich’s theme was that Minnesota could compete in the global economy as “the Brainpower State,” home to a well-educated workforce. Perpich served eight more years for a ten-year total, the longest of any Minnesota governor. Minnesota gave Mondale his only state win in his 1984 presidential bid as President Ronald Reagan scored a landslide victory. Reagan’s influence, however, was pushing the Independent-Republican Party to the ideological right. So were the former DFLers and conservative Christians who were attracted to the I-R Party by its platform’s opposition to legal abortion. Businesses that sought lower taxes and less regulation also stepped up their activity on Republicans’ behalf in Minnesota and around the country in the 1980s. Power Shifts And Competition Conservatives were in charge at Independent-Republican conventions by 1990, when businessman Jon Grunseth was endorsed to challenge Perpich. But revelations about sexual misconduct led Grunseth to leave the contest nine days before the election. His spot on the ballot went to State Auditor Arne Carlson, a GOP moderate who had run well behind Grunseth in the primary. Carlson went on to two terms as governor. Then, in 1998, former professional wrestler Jesse Ventura became the first third-party governor in the state since the 1930s. It was not until Tim Pawlenty was elected governor in 2002 that the conservative shift of the Republican Party was fully felt at the statehouse. Perpich’s 1990 defeat coincided with the election of Carleton College professor Paul Wellstone to the US Senate. An energetic orator and decided liberal, Wellstone solidified DFL dominance in the Twin Cities. His vote against authorizing a unilateral American attack on Iraq in 2002 was the only such vote cast by a Democrat facing a serious reelection challenge that year. His standing in the polls against his Republican challenger, former St. Paul Mayor Norm Coleman, rose in the days after the vote. Then tragedy struck: Wellstone, his wife, their daughter, and several aides were killed in a plane crash twelve days before the election. Coleman won the seat, but six years later he lost it to former entertainer Al Franken in the closest US Senate race in state history. Franken’s victory margin was 312 votes. Though Minnesota has been Democratic “blue” in every presidential election save one (1972) since 1960, state politics have been highly competitive. But a wide philosophical gap has separated the two parties in the twenty-first century. A geographic split—DFL hegemony in the Twin Cities, Republican dominion in Greater Minnesota—has added to the parties’ difficulty in reaching consensus on state policy. In 1973, Time magazine described Minnesota as “The state that works.” State government shutdowns in 2005 and 2011 and recurring lawmaking gridlock in the 2010s have called that reputation into question.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Untitled-1_0.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/politics-minnesota"},{"alt":"Tilt-A-Whirl at the Minnesota State Fair","author":[{"name":"Mary Laine","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/mary-laine"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"April 05, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Sellner Manufacturing Company","postbody":"On April 24, 1926, Herbert W. Sellner filed an application with the United States Patent Office for an “Amusement Device” designed for parks and resorts. His goal was to provide riders with ...","searchtext":"On April 24, 1926, Herbert W. Sellner filed an application with the United States Patent Office for an “Amusement Device” designed for parks and resorts. His goal was to provide riders with “pleasurable and unexpected sensations” by swinging, snapping, and rotating them in an unpredictable pattern. He named his creation the Tilt-A-Whirl, and it became the most popular ride made by his Faribault-based Sellner Manufacturing Company. Herbert Sellner was born in Faribault in 1887. His father was a skilled cabinetmaker, and Herbert inherited his father’s creativity and talents. In 1912, at the age of twenty-five, he established the Sellner Woodcraft Company in Faribault to manufacture mission furniture, lamps, and other wood articles. Sellner also created the Ideal Lamp Company. A 1917 catalog listed magazine racks, smoking and telephone stands, folding dining tables, and lamps with leaded stained glass shades. When World War I affected supply availability, Sellner began manufacturing wood toys for children. By 1923, Sellner’s creativity evolved, and he invented both a water toboggan slide and a water wheel that became popular items at bathing beaches. The slide was thirty feet high, featured a 100-foot-long track, and occupied a space of eighteen by 100 feet. With twelve toboggans priced at fifty cents a ride, the owner could earn $6.00 every hour. The slide had a ramp with raised treads (instead of steps) that were easier for riders to climb while carrying a toboggan. It was popular not only in the United States but also in Canada, Switzerland, Jamaica, and Sweden. In 1925, Sellner applied for a patent on the water wheel, which also had a diving platform. The wheel was eight feet high; swimmers either lay on the wheel to spin into the water or dove from the platform. The Swooper, created in 1928, looked like an elevated, oval Ferris wheel. Because it was too bulky for a carnival to transport and manage, only about fifteen were built. In 1926, the first Tilt-a-Whirl—a ride with nine cars that held two passengers each—was built in Herbert’s neighbor’s garden in Faribault. This original Tilt-a-Whirl was purchased for $4500 by the Wildwood Amusement Park in White Bear Lake for its 1927 season. Gross profit that year was $30,000. The Tilt-a-Whirl first appeared at the Minnesota State Fair in 1926 and had 4,233 riders over the seven days that the fair was open. Each ride cost fifteen cents. In 1927, Sellner built a factory at 515 Fowler Street in Faribault to accommodate his growing business. By 1928, the Tilt-A-Whirl design was already modified and required three men to operate it: a clutch operator, a ticket taker, and a ticket seller. Model 9-36 had nine cars (three red, three orange, and three blue) and held thirty-six riders. It could earn as much as $162 per hour. Model 7-28 had seven red cars that carried twenty-eight riders and could earn $126 per hour. Each car had a colorful canvas canopy, a seat cushion stuffed with curled hair, and a lap bar to keep riders in place. The cars had linoleum floors and were made of pine and oak and reinforced with iron brackets. A collapsible ticket office with a small cash window and money drawer, canvas covers for each car, and a TILT-A-WHIRL entrance sign with twenty-eight lights were included. By 1938, 143 Tilt-A-Whirls operated in England, Sweden, New Zealand, and Mexico City. When World War II created a shortage of both workers and materials, Sellner factory employees made bomb carts. In 1987, the Sellner company introduced Spin Rides, including the Spin-the-Apple, the Berry-Go-Round, Bear Affair, and Barrel-Of-Fun. Other rides that followed included Dizzy Dragons, the Pumpkin Patch, and Windjammer. New colors appeared on the Tilt-A-Whirl, including lime green and purple or white and fuchsia, and the Generation Five Tilt-A-Whirl, with fiberglass cars and an open design, was introduced in 2004 as an alternative to the traditional model. Economic downturns in the early 2000s hurt Sellner Manufacturing and led to a slump in sales. After it missed payments on a loan from the Economic Development Authority of Faribault, the business was sold in 2011 to Larson International, Inc., of Plainview, Texas. In 2019, Larson International continues to manufacture the Tilt-A-Whirl and the other Sellner rides. In 2015, a rusting Tilt-A-Whirl car located in a junk yard in Faribault was restored and placed on display in downtown Faribault to honor the history of the Tilt-A-Whirl in the city.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/1969 MSFIMAGE2010_4822.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246054,"name":"Sports and Recreation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/sellner-manufacturing-company"},{"alt":"World War I soldiers from Windom (Cottonwood County)","author":[{"name":"Janelle Kaye","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/janelle-kaye"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"March 29, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Influenza Epidemic in Cottonwood County, 1918","postbody":"The 1918 influenza epidemic had a devastating effect on communities across Minnesota, including those in Cottonwood County. Over the course of five months (October 1918–February 1919), ...","searchtext":"The 1918 influenza epidemic had a devastating effect on communities across Minnesota, including those in Cottonwood County. Over the course of five months (October 1918–February 1919), seventy-two residents of the county died from the virus or from pneumonia-related complications. About 900 young men from Cottonwood County enlisted in the military after the entry of the United States into World War I in 1917. Over thirty of them died, but not only from combat action. Another war was already raging—the war against the influenza pandemic that was sweeping the world. Approximately sixteen young men from Cottonwood County died from influenza or from a combination of influenza and pneumonia symptoms while in the military; thirteen of them died from influenza while living in training camps. The first, Private William H. Unrau of Bingham Lake, died during training at Camp Dodge in Iowa on October 13, 1918. In general, the influenza pandemic infected one out of four members of the armed forces and proved to be more deadly than combat. In 1918, the transmission of influenza was a mystery for many Cottonwood County residents. As a result, local education about the virus was a crucial part of the community’s response to the epidemic. An article published in the Cottonwood County Citizen in October 1918 warned that the disease was contagious (transmitted by air) and could occur at any season of the year. Influenza victims showed symptoms more severe than those associated with a cold and it developed more rapidly. Most patients, it explained, experienced dizziness, nausea, and a fever between 100 and 104 degrees Fahrenheit accompanied by chills and a reduced pulse. A second article, published in the Mountain Lake View in the same month, instructed citizens to isolate flu victims to contain related germs and limit their activity. Warmth, fresh air, and plenty of food and water, it added, were crucial for recovery. Relatives nursing their loved ones could administer quinine, aspirin, and Dover’s powder (a powder containing ipecac and opium, used as an anodyne, diaphoretic, and antispasmodic). By October, the disease had entered Cottonwood County. Local patients who needed hospitalization were sent to Ruse Hospital—a property in Windom with living quarters for flu victims (the property’s owner, Sophia Ruse, had bought the building in 1905 and opened it as a hospital in 1906). The six-room, two-story building operated past its capacity throughout the epidemic. One of its physicians, F. R. Wieser, was the only doctor in Cottonwood County who did not contract the flu while caring for patients. Wieser’s colleagues at Ruse Hospital, Dr. Ludwig Sogge and Dr. Joseph H. Dudley, became sick but survived. The epidemic touched families in towns and townships countywide. Churches and schools closed, bans were placed on public gatherings, and parents kept their children at home. Families organizing funerals for their loved ones requested closed caskets. Over a period of three days in November, the mayor of Mountain Lake—one of the largest communities in the county—closed schools with afternoon classes as well as church services and general public gatherings. An estimated 50 million people died of the flu around the world in 1918 and 1919. Twenty-eight percent of all Americans contracted the disease, and 675,000 of them died. By the spring of 1919, the epidemic had declined, but the disease had already killed 10,000 Minnesotans, including seventy-two residents of Cottonwood County. Editor’s note: A pandemic is not equivalent to an epidemic. In an epidemic, a disease affects large numbers of people within a relatively local community, such as a city or county or state. In a pandemic, a disease affects people across a broader area, such as a nation or continent. Therefore, the sections of this article that refer to the worldwide influenza crisis of 1918 use the word pandemic; those that refer to the spread of influenza inside Minnesota, including the title, use the word epidemic.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/E435.25 p6.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246087,"name":"Health and Medicine","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/influenza-epidemic-cottonwood-county-1918"},{"alt":"Federal Duck Stamp Design","author":[{"name":"Caitlin Silberman","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/caitlin-silberman"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"March 29, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Jaques, Francis Lee (1887‒1969)","postbody":"Francis Lee Jaques emerged from rural Minnesota in the 1930s and 40s to become a nationally known wildlife artist. After two decades at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, ...","searchtext":"Francis Lee Jaques emerged from rural Minnesota in the 1930s and 40s to become a nationally known wildlife artist. After two decades at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, he returned to his home state to paint a much-loved series of habitat dioramas at the University of Minnesota’s Bell Museum. His images of Minnesota are a valuable record of the state’s natural history. Generations of museum-goers across the country have seen his paintings, but few recognize his name. Yet Francis Lee Jaques helped shape America’s vision of nature in the twentieth century. “Lee” Jaques (JAY-kweez) was born in Geneseo, Illinois, in 1887. After several lean years in Illinois and Kansas, the family moved to a farm north of Aitkin, Minnesota, in 1903. As a young man, Lee tried many jobs: taxidermist, railway fireman, electrical engineer. But he was always drawn to art, especially wildlife art. Rural life in Aitkin County offered him opportunities to draw and paint local plants and animals, including game the Jaques family hunted. Upon returning from service in World War I, Jaques worked in Duluth as a commercial artist. After some informal training and much practice, in 1924 he sent three paintings to the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York. The museum swiftly hired him as a staff artist. For eighteen years at the AMNH, Jaques specialized in painting backgrounds for habitat dioramas. Combining taxidermy mounts, plants, and realistic painted backgrounds, habitat dioramas were—and remain—a central feature of natural history museums. Jaques painted dozens of dioramas for the AMNH, many still on display. He also traveled throughout the world with the museum’s scientific expeditions. In 1927, Jaques married the writer Florence Page. The spent their honeymoon in what is now the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, sparking a lifelong love of this area and a commitment to its preservation. Florence wrote about their experiences in Canoe Country (1938), which Lee illustrated. The couple would publish five more books about their travels exploring nature. Birds, especially ducks, were a favorite subject. In an era before high-speed photography, Jaques was noted for his accurate images of birds in flight. In 1940, his design of black ducks was used for the annual Migratory Bird Hunting Stamp, better known as the Federal Duck Stamp. The same year, Jaques was invited to work at the University of Minnesota’s natural history museum. The museum (later named the Bell Museum, for benefactor James Ford Bell) was creating a series of dioramas depicting the state’s natural diversity, and curator Thomas Sadler Roberts felt Jaques was a natural first choice as artist. Jaques’s first Bell diorama depicted wolves at Lake Superior. Moose, elk, cranes, shorebirds, and more followed. Between 1940 and 1964, the artist painted nine large and eleven medium-sized dioramas for the Bell Museum. The 1940s and 50s also saw Jaques in demand as an illustrator of popular natural history books. These included three works by Minnesota naturalist and conservationist Sigurd Olson, who became a personal friend. For Jaques, artistic appreciation and conservation went hand in hand. Late in life, the artist wrote, “The shape of things has always given me the most intense satisfaction…Everything one sees and senses.” He added that “the keenest sense of all has been in wildlife, and that includes its habitat. Such beauty one wants to preserve—to make it available, as far as one can, to others.” Jaques’s paintings and illustrations continue to be at once beautiful works of art and accurate sources of information about the natural world. And in an era of rapidly changing climate, his faithful depictions of Minnesota landscapes take on new importance as records of change over time. Francis Lee Jaques passed away in 1969, and Florence Page Jaques in 1971. Florence donated the couple’s art collections to the Bell Museum. Her donation forms the core of the museum’s Jaques archive. In 2018, the Bell Museum opened in a new building in St. Paul at 2088 Larpenteur Avenue West. All of Jaques’s large diorama paintings remain on permanent display. The Jaques Art Center and Museum, which opened in Aitkin in 1995, holds the largest collection of Jacques||s art outside the Bell Museum.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/JC.2018.1.15 Duck Stamp 1940.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/jaques-francis-lee-1887-1969"},{"alt":"Aerial view of Fridley tornado damage","author":[{"name":"Jonah Lemkins","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/jonah-lemkins"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"March 27, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Fridley Tornado, 1965","postbody":"On the night of May 6, 1965, two F4 tornadoes cut through the northwest Twin Cities metro area. Known collectively as the Fridley tornado, these twisters were the worst cyclonic disaster to ...","searchtext":"On the night of May 6, 1965, two F4 tornadoes cut through the northwest Twin Cities metro area. Known collectively as the Fridley tornado, these twisters were the worst cyclonic disaster to hit the Twin Cities to date. On the evening of May 6, 1965, Twin Cities residents knew that there was going to be a storm. They just didn’t know how devastating it would turn out to be. When Fridley residents saw the sky turning dark green and spotted baseball-sized hail raining down around 7:00 pm, they called their kids inside. Eyewitness accounts describe the air smelling of sulfur. Many who were children at the time later remembered putting large pieces of hail in their refrigerators. At 7:06 pm, the first tornado touched down in southwestern Fridley. Over the next fifteen minutes, it cut a 6.8-mile path to the northeast and dissipated in Blaine. This tornado was an F4 classification—the second-most powerful category of storm on the Fujita scale. The most common shared experience that people later remembered was hearing the deafening, train-like noise that accompanied the tornadoes. By the end of the storm, there were three fatalities and 175 injuries. People emerged from their destroyed homes and helped others who were trapped in rubble or injured. However, they did not have much time to do so before a second tornado appeared. This second tornado touched down in Golden Valley at 8:14 pm. It travelled for 17.3 miles from there through Fridley and Mounds View before dissipating west of Centerville at 9:02 pm. The second tornado was also an F4 storm; this time, there were six fatalities and 158 injuries. Although many homes were mostly destroyed, that night people gathered together with their neighbors and slept in basements and cars that were still intact. In total, the damage caused by the two tornadoes that passed through Fridley was $14.5 million dollars. Approximately 1,100 homes and businesses were damaged. 425 were destroyed. Most of Hayes Elementary School (later renamed Fridley Elementary School) and Fridley Junior High was destroyed; students finished the three weeks remaining in the school year in Northfield. World War II veterans likened the state of their town to that of an artillery-shelled battlefield. The unidentified driver of a white van, masquerading as a Red Cross volunteer, rode around and stole appliances. The looting was stopped when the National Guard was stationed in Fridley on May 7. The next weeks saw the community come together to clean up damaged properties and house and feed people. The sight and sound of chainsaws cutting up fallen trees were common during the summer that followed. Vice President Hubert Humphrey, Minnesota Senator Walter Mondale, and Minnesota Governor Karl Rolvaag came to Fridley soon after the disaster. Local residents appreciated Rolvaag||s visit, but some criticized Humphrey and Mondale for their relatively late arrival. Humphrey and Mondale, they contended, had come to town only to take pictures and present themselves favorably for the news. One Fridleyite later referred to the two politicians as “the vultures” for failing to do enough to help people impacted by the storm. This was in stark contrast to reaction to Governor Rolvaag and the Canadian volunteer workers, who helped clean up the destruction. As much as the tornadoes caused destruction, they also inspired a strong sense of community among local residents.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/aerial view of Fridley damage.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/fridley-tornado-1965"},{"alt":"View of old mountain island, Mountain Lake","author":[{"name":"Janelle Kaye","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/janelle-kaye"},{"name":"Samuel Meshbesher","slug":"/mnopedia/search/index/author/samuel-meshbesher"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"March 21, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":203519472229,"name":"Pre-1585 (Before European Contact)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Mountain County Park and Historic Site","postbody":"Cottonwood County’s now-dry Mountain Lake was the site of Indigenous villages and encampments over the course of 3,000 years. The area has provided clues—some of the oldest evidence of ...","searchtext":"Cottonwood County’s now-dry Mountain Lake was the site of Indigenous villages and encampments over the course of 3,000 years. The area has provided clues—some of the oldest evidence of human habitation in present-day Minnesota—about the lives of a group of people who remained relatively isolated from Upper Mississippi trade networks. In the 1970s, the site was developed into a public park operated by Cottonwood County. Named by William Mason for the raised island in its center, Mountain Lake shows a near-continuous record of human activity stretching back 3,000 years. In 1976, an archeological team led by Joseph Hudak carrying out a dig there found traces of an ancient village. Carbon dating determined the remains of a round dwelling on the site to be roughly 2,100 years old, making it the oldest dwelling yet found in Minnesota. The amount of material uncovered on the dwelling site indicated that it had been used for only one winter season, making it a remarkably intact snapshot of life in the Middle Woodland period. Because shards of decorated pottery from the village site are similar to those found on nearby islands, archaeologists have identified the Mountain Lake village as part of the “Fox Lake focus,” named for a village site on nearby Fox Lake. The Fox Lake people lived on islands in present-day Southwestern Minnesota from approximately 100 BCE to 850 CE, hunted buffalo, and had a unique style of pottery featuring wide mouths and impressions made with cord-wrapped paddles. The Fox Lake people seem to have used items like certain types of hide scrapers and grit-tempered pottery later than groups to the east, indicating that they remained isolated from the river trade routes used by the Upper Mississippian (Oneota) culture. Anthropologist Karl Schlesier has found evidence that the Fox Lake group—possible ancestors of Crow and Hidatsa people—later migrated northwest into present-day central North Dakota. Artifacts like shell-tempered pottery and certain types of hide scrapers indicate that the Mountain Lake area was later inhabited by Oneota groups, whose descendants include the Ho-Chunk, Otoe, Iowa, and Missouria. In the 1870s and 1880s, Mountain Island was a source of wood fuel for the settler-colonists who moved to Cottonwood County. In the early 1890s, it seemed an ideal place for a summer resort. However, the lowland area surrounding the lake was swampy, and the island was difficult to reach. Mountain Lake was drained between 1905 and 1906 for additional farmland, and farmers raised produce on the fertile lakebed for the next several decades. A road was built to provide access to the island. Interest in the mountain grew in the 1950s when flint arrowheads were found by Sam Franz, whose father owned the farmland surrounding the old island. Excavations at the site led by Lloyd Wilford in 1956 uncovered a “deeply stratified village site” and indicators that it had been occupied from the Late Archaic through the Middle Woodland periods. Further excavations by Wilford seven years later identified similarities in the form of arrowheads and pottery with nearby sites. As a result of these surveys, Mountain Park was placed on the National Register of Historic Places on June 4, 1973. To prevent damage to the culturally significant site, construction of campground facilities was kept to the side of the island, which had previously been submerged. Some of the dig’s findings were displayed at the Science Museum of Minnesota in St. Paul; a replica of the round dwelling and some of the artifacts found at the site were also displayed at Heritage House in Mountain Lake. Cottonwood County bought Mountain Park from Franz in November of 1976, and major development proceeded in 1979 with the assistance of the Law and Conservation Fund (LAWCON). Roads, toilets, trails, a picnic shelter, entry signage, and a well were built at a cost of $31,000. The undeveloped rise of the former island at Mountain Park is a superior site for observing wildlife and birds of many species. In 2019, visitors can view a wide array of wildlife in this relatively undisturbed area and enjoy campgrounds and picnic sites nearby. Editor’s note: Dates provided prior to 1800 are approximate and based on a combination of carbon-14 dating and comparison of cultural elements similar to those found at other area sites. There is debate among archaeologists over whether “Middle Woodland” is the appropriate terminology for dating in this region; the term is included here for the sake of wider familiarity.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Mountain_County_Park.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246059,"name":"Native Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246054,"name":"Sports and Recreation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/mountain-county-park-and-historic-site"},{"alt":"Ranier Bridge","author":[{"name":"Marjorie Savage","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/marjorie-savage"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"March 20, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Ranier Railroad Bridge","postbody":"The Ranier Railroad Bridge (Canadian National River Bridge) was constructed in 1908 by the Canadian Northern Railway and its subsidiary, the Duluth, Rainy Lake and Winnipeg Railway. The ...","searchtext":"The Ranier Railroad Bridge (Canadian National River Bridge) was constructed in 1908 by the Canadian Northern Railway and its subsidiary, the Duluth, Rainy Lake and Winnipeg Railway. The single-track lift bridge crosses Rainy River between Ranier, Minnesota, and Fort Frances, Ontario, and is one of the busiest ports of entry for international rail freight in the United States. The Duluth, Virginia, and Rainy Lake Railway (DV&RL) was chartered in 1901 to haul timber from northwoods forests to the sawmill in Virginia, Minnesota. Four years later, the Canadian Northern Railway (CN) purchased majority ownership in the DV&RL. CN changed the logging railway’s name to Duluth, Rainy Lake, and Winnipeg (DRL&W) and selected the newly platted town of Ranier, Minnesota, for a border crossing over the Rainy River. Plans called for a bascule, or moveable bridge, that would allow riverboats to pass beneath it. CN contracted with Scherzer Rolling Lift Bridge Company of Chicago. To open, the rolling lift span would rock upward and backward rather than rotate or pivot. The Ranier bridge represents typical railroad architecture of the early twentieth century. The lift section features a Warren truss construction—a series of alternating, equilateral triangles with vertical support beams at the center of each triangle. The triangular framework spreads the weight of a passing train across the bridge deck; vertical beams provide extra support. The stationary section of the bridge spans nine concrete piers. The first train crossed the bridge on April 28, 1908. For several years, two trains a day crossed over the river, one going north and one south. Shipments included mostly timber bound for the Virginia and Rainy Lake Lumber Company and crops from Western Canada. Steam locomotives crossing the Ranier bridge typically hauled a mix of box cars, log cars, and hoppers, with one passenger car attached. Freight was carried on CN and DRL&W tracks to Virginia. Cars bound for delivery further south were transferred to other northern Minnesota rail lines and carried to Duluth. There, shipments were loaded onto boats or other lines bound for Minneapolis or Chicago. In 1909, the Minnesota-based line underwent another name change, reflecting its long-range goals, and became the Duluth, Winnipeg, and Pacific Railway (DW&P). It did not connect to Duluth on its own road until 1912. A twice-daily, dedicated passenger train was introduced in 1913, connecting riders traveling between Duluth and Winnipeg. With multiple railway connections from Chicago’s train hubs, riders could board almost anywhere in the US, travel to Duluth, and board the DW&P. At Winnipeg’s Union Station, they could make a connection to nearly any city in Canada. As northwoods forests were depleted, logging shipments declined, but grain, potash and pulp wood products increased. Refrigerated cars carried fish from the border lakes to Chicago. By the 1930s, road improvements and increasingly affordable automobiles caused a decline in passenger ridership. US Highway 53 from Duluth to International Falls, completed in 1935, provided more flexible travel across northern Minnesota than trains offered. In 1956, DW&P averaged just five passengers per trip, and in 1959, the company lost nearly $160,000 on passenger service. The last passenger car crossed the Ranier bridge in the early morning hours of July 1, 1961. Meanwhile, developments in technology, trade, and transmodal shipping have kept the Ranier Bridge busier than ever. The shortest sea routes to North America from many Asian ports cross the Pacific Ocean to Prince Rupert, British Columbia, where shipping containers are loaded onto Canadian National trains. Loads destined for the United States pass over the Ranier bridge to Duluth for transfer onto Great Lakes ships, trucks, or other rail lines. In 2019, traffic over the Ranier Bridge has grown to more than twenty trains a day with most pulling between 100 and 200 cars. As one of the busiest freight border crossings in the United States, the town of Ranier comes to a halt multiple times each day while trains roll over the bridge at speeds of less than ten miles per hour. At the US Customs Port of Entry, southbound cars are scanned for explosives, weapons, drugs, and other contraband. Boxcars, hopper cars, and tank cars still travel the line, but every CN train is dominated by flat cars or well cars holding double-stacked shipping containers.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/MK8.9 RN r7.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246053,"name":"Transportation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/ranier-railroad-bridge"},{"alt":"Coast Guard surf boat","author":[{"name":"Dorie Carlson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/dorie-carlson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"March 18, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"North Superior Coast Guard Station","postbody":"The Coast Guard station at Grand Marais was built in 1928 to aid the people who traveled and worked on the sometimes turbulent waters of Lake Superior. Since the opening of the station in ...","searchtext":"The Coast Guard station at Grand Marais was built in 1928 to aid the people who traveled and worked on the sometimes turbulent waters of Lake Superior. Since the opening of the station in 1929, Coast Guard personnel from the station have rescued hundreds of fishermen, boat crews and passengers, and recreational boaters from the lake. In 1918, Grand Marais was considered the center of the North Shore fishing industry, with 126 official licensed fishermen, an annual estimated value of $172,684, and an annual yield of 4,283,684 pounds of fish. The natural harbor of Grand Marais was also a port from which loads of pulpwood, gravel, and other forest products were shipped to mills across the lake. Ships carried locals, visitors, and supplies to the communities along the shore. Fishermen, boat crews and passengers, and other travelers on Lake Superior were at grave personal risk from intense storms, which could blow up without warning. The nearest life-saving station was ninety miles across the lake in Michigan or 120 miles (by car) down the shore, in Duluth. The North Shore Fishermen’s Association petitioned for a life-saving station in March 1919 after losing “about 15 men, just by having them caught in these storms and being swept out to sea.” In response, Congressman W. L. Carss from Duluth introduced a bill (H.R. 9228) that provided $54,175 for a station on September 11, 1919. The estimated yearly cost was another $17,215 for crew, rations, and upkeep. Though President Woodrow Wilson signed the bill in May 1920, it wasn’t until February 1928 that funding was available to construct and staff the station. In August 1928, the Whitney Bros. Company began excavating the site using a scow and steam shovel. Local contractor Ed Nunstedt won the bid of $27,992.00 for construction of the facilities, which were to be completed by November 20. A lifeboat, self-bailing surfboat, wagon, motor dory, two small pulling boats, two beach carts, and other equipment made up the additional appropriation. CWO (Chief Warrant Officer) Daniel Magnusson arrived in January 1929 to take charge of the new station. Thirteen crew members followed him in April, and the station was commissioned on May 10. As was typical in the Coast Guard, the crew worked long hours and stood a rotating watch over Lake Superior and the harbor. A forty-foot watch tower was built on what is now called Artists’ Point. In the 1930s, crew at the station kept up the lookout twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. While standing watch, four hours on, eight hours off, they also performed duties such as cooking, maintenance, and record keeping. The crews remained on duty but were allowed to go into town and could be called to return at any time in an emergency. The base pay at that time was $60 per month, with thirty dollars for rations. Each Lake Superior station was assigned a thirty-six-foot self-righting lifeboat, crewed by three to four men, to be used for rescue. These boats were improved over the years for the safety of the crew, with added navigational aids. Over the years, the need for a fully manned Coast Guard station declined as new technology and faster rescue crafts were built. Ships no longer supplied the communities, in part because an improved Highway 61 provided tourists and residents with quick access to the North Shore. The last load of logs was rafted across the lake in June 1972. Rising operating costs and an invasion of lamprey eels into Lake Superior took a toll on the ability of fishermen to make a living, and many left the business. In response to these changes, the station was closed in March 1973 by the impounding of $10 million of appropriations for the Coast Guard. Its name was changed to Superior North, after which it was manned by Coast Guard Auxiliary volunteers during the boating season. Auxiliary personnel donated their time and boats while the Coast Guard provided fuel, food, and maintenance. The station reopened in 1977 as North Superior Station but again closed in 1988, reopening afterward for only the months of May through October, with two Coast Guard crewmen. In 2019, large ore boats, recreational boaters, and some fishermen still operate on the lake. The mission of the station is |||Law Enforcement, Marine Safety and Homeland Security from Taconite Harbor to the US Border including Isle Royale.||| Four Coast Guard Reservists man the station from Memorial Day to Labor Day.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/A225 Coast Guard surf boat.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246087,"name":"Health and Medicine","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246053,"name":"Transportation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/north-superior-coast-guard-station"},{"alt":"Henry M. Rice","author":[{"name":"Samuel Meshbesher","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/samuel-meshbesher"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"March 14, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186622056203,"name":"1792–1861 (Expansion and Reform)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Rice, Henry Mower (1816‒1894)","postbody":"As a trader, businessman, treaty negotiator, and legislator, Henry Mower Rice played a crucial role in Minnesota’s statehood and the development of St. Paul. At the same time, Rice was ...","searchtext":"As a trader, businessman, treaty negotiator, and legislator, Henry Mower Rice played a crucial role in Minnesota’s statehood and the development of St. Paul. At the same time, Rice was responsible for policies that benefited himself and his business partners at the expense of Minnesota’s Indigenous populations. Henry Mower Rice was born in Waitsfield, Vermont, in 1816. After briefly studying law in Virginia, he moved to Michigan in 1834 and worked as a surveyor for the Sault Ste. Marie canal project. In 1839, Rice began working for the American Fur Company (AFC) at Fort Snelling, assisting sutler Franklin Steele in supplying goods to the fort’s soldiers, as well as with French and Métis traders and Indigenous trappers. In 1842, AFC’s regional agents, Henry Sibley and Hercules Dousman, worked with Rice after he was assigned to Fort Atkinson in Iowa Territory, where the Ho-Chunk had been removed from Wisconsin Territory. Rice quickly grew wealthy through the fur trade and land speculation. By the time he was thirty, he had built connections with the Ho-Chunk and Ojibwe through fluency in multiple languages and a canny understanding of the gift system. In 1846, these connections paid off for Rice when the Ho-Chunk asked him to represent them in Washington for the Treaty of Fond Du Lac. As white settler-colonists encroached on their Iowa holdings, they elected Rice to choose suitable land for hunting and farming. He selected land at Long Prairie, where he had just acquired rights to control the trade. Rice negotiated treaties with the Ojibwe in 1847 at Fond Du Lac, in 1854 at La Pointe, and finally in 1887. In exchange for a lucrative federal contract to return hundreds of Ho-Chunk who had abandoned Long Prairie for $70 per head, Rice, a Democrat, supported a delegate for Whig Zachary Taylor in 1849. This was likely cheaper and certainly more diplomatic than Sibley and Alexander Ramsey’s alternative of deploying soldiers, but Rice caused resentment by keeping these elected officials in the dark until the deal was done. Ramsey and Sibley ultimately settled their differences with Rice. In 1852, his diplomatic experience and lack of direct involvement in Ramsey’s disastrous Sandy Lake annuity scheme made him invaluable for convincing Dakota representatives to amend their 1851 treaty to allow white settlement to the west of the Mississippi. The fallout of this treaty contributed to the US–Dakota War of 1862, and the white population growth it facilitated was crucial for Minnesota statehood. In 1853, Rice easily defeated Whig opponents to become Minnesota’s second territorial delegate. As delegate, Rice focused on facilitating population growth and economic development for Minnesota Territory. He authorized new land offices and expanded pre-emption rights for settler-colonists, making it easier for individuals to acquire formerly Dakota-held land. Rice was re-elected in 1855, but questions over family and business connections to a railroad deal contributed to a close race. In 1857, he authored legislation enabling Minnesota to begin the process of drafting its own constitution and becoming a state. When this occurred in 1858, Rice and James Shields became Minnesota’s first senators. In 1854, Rice passed a bill allotting certificates, or “scrip,” exchangeable for 160 acres of unclaimed federal land, to Metís people dislocated by new Dakota treaties. While scrip was hypothetically non-transferable, a loophole allowed a land holding company owned by Rice’s associates to buy thousands of acres of so-called “half-breed||| scrip for pennies on the dollar. A Democrat with Southern in-laws and friendships with prominent pro-slavery senators, Rice supported allowing states to secede peacefully to avoid the Civil War well into the summer of 1861. He became an effective “War Democrat” following heavy losses by Minnesota’s First Volunteer Infantry Regiment at Bull Run. On the Senate Committee of Military Affairs, Rice used his business acumen and personal experience with relocating the Ho-Chunk to coordinate the mobilization and supply of Union soldiers. Rice lost a re-election campaign to Ramsey and effectively retired from politics. He served on the Board of Regents for the University of Minnesota during the 1850s and was a founding member of the Minnesota Historical Society. Rice remained active in St. Paul business and civic development and continued to act as a government consultant on Indian policy well into his seventies. He died while traveling in Texas in 1894 and was buried in St. Paul.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/AV1988.45.291.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246079,"name":"Cities and Towns","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246059,"name":"Native Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/rice-henry-mower-1816-1894"},{"alt":"800px-Winona_Public_Library_original_front","author":[{"name":"Greg Gaut","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/greg-gaut"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"March 13, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Winona Public Library","postbody":"In 1897, lumberman William Harris Laird offered to fund the designing and building of a library for the city of Winona. Two years later he presented this Classical Revival building to the ...","searchtext":"In 1897, lumberman William Harris Laird offered to fund the designing and building of a library for the city of Winona. Two years later he presented this Classical Revival building to the library board. It is the oldest building in Minnesota built as a public library that continues to fulfill that function in the present day. In 1863, the Young Men’s Library Association established a lending library in Winona. Ten years later it was reorganized as the Winona Library Association, acknowledging the large role that women had played in maintaining the library. Like other early Minnesota libraries, it was a private “subscription” library funded by membership fees and fundraising events. Meanwhile, advocates for public, tax-supported libraries lobbied state legislatures to pass laws authorizing cities to create public libraries. Minnesota did this in 1879, and the Winona city council created the Winona Free Public Library in 1886. The Winona Library Association turned over its books and furnishings to the new public library. The new library board, however, could not persuade the city to build a library. The new public library had to make do with a drafty former school house. Then came what the local newspaper called the “sweet surprise.” In 1897, William Harris Laird, one of the three partners of the Laird Norton Company (the most successful of the lumber companies along Winona’s riverfront) offered to build the city a $40,000 library. He hired two Philadelphia architects, one of whom was his nephew Warren Powers Laird, to design the building. His only conditions were that the city provide a site and add a new tax to maintain the library. The city quickly agreed. Typical of its times, the library was a Classical Revival building with symmetrical facades. Patrons entered its first floor by climbing a dramatic staircase to a gabled entrance portico flanked by marble columns. Inside, they found themselves in an exchange room topped by a grand art glass dome. The reading rooms featured elaborate oak millwork, including columns, cornices, and arches. There was a large lecture hall in the basement. Two rooms were set aside for art galleries, and a permanent collection of painting and sculpture was planned. A separate wing contained iron book stacks divided into three levels, each with glass floors to allow natural light to filter through the shelves. In the end, Laird donated over $55,000 to finance the building, in part because he bowed to his nephew’s desire to build the finest building possible. Warren Powers Laird’s work was well received, and later he was hired to design the Winona Masonic Temple. The Winona library is easily mistaken for a “Carnegie library” because most of the sixty-five public libraries funded by Andrew Carnegie in Minnesota were Classical Revival buildings. In fact, Laird decided to make his gift to Winona two years before the first Carnegie library grant in Minnesota. However, Laird may have been influenced by Carnegie’s 1889 “Gospel of Wealth” articles, which urged the rich to give away their fortunes before they died, especially to libraries. William Hayes hired Kenyon Cox to paint the “Light of Learning” mural in a lunette of the library’s dome. The mural was in memory of his deceased wife, Charlotte Prentiss Hayes, who had supported the library as a volunteer, board member, and librarian from the 1870s until her death in 1910. A nationally known muralist, Cox had recently completed a mural in the Minnesota State Capitol. William Harris Laird died the same year, and his family continued his legacy by funding the expansion of the stacks wing in 1914. Over the decades, the number of people served by the library grew, as did the kinds of services offered. As early as 1921, for example, the library created a separate children’s department, which resulted in the loss of the lecture hall. In 1985, the need for more space and handicapped accessibility resulted in a plan to build a new library. Voters overwhelmingly rejected the idea, and the following year they approved a proposal to add a new accessible entrance and an elevator to the historic library. After more than a century, the building that Laird gave Winona stands as a remarkable example of civic-minded philanthropy and neo-classical architecture.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/800px-Winona_Public_Library_original_front.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/winona-public-library"},{"alt":"Computer designed by Control Data Corporation","author":[{"name":"Margaret (Macey) Flood","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/margaret-macey-flood"}],"categoryTag":[],"date":"March 11, 2019","eraTag":[],"keydate":"","name":"Science and Technology in Minnesota","postbody":"The history of science and technology in Minnesota is the history of both how people have perceived and organized the world and how they have brought these worldviews into practice. They ...","searchtext":"The history of science and technology in Minnesota is the history of both how people have perceived and organized the world and how they have brought these worldviews into practice. They have defined science and technology in different ways over time, often according to their social, cultural, political, and economic circumstances. To discuss the history of science and technology in Minnesota is to discuss an immense cross-section of human thought and occupation. People living in different times, places, and societies have created many different scientific systems in order to meet their needs. Science and technology in Minnesota have been influenced by the unique characteristics and histories of the state: its natural resources, such as forests, rivers, lakes, and plains; the intersecting histories of Indigenous and settler-colonist communities; and the unintended consequences of scientific and technological development. Often, developments in both fields have been driven by, and in return have influenced, changes in other arenas of human action, including religion, industry, and war. Indeed, science and technology are integral parts of human culture. Science and technology are enormous categories, and to provide a comprehensive overview of their history in Minnesota would be impossible. Instead, this essay explores scientific and technological developments as cultural expressions; reveals their entanglement with industry, politics, and the university system; and describes some of the unforeseen consequences. Ultimately, science and technology have influenced the history of Minnesota just as Minnesotan science and technology have influenced the larger world. Indigenous Science: Dakota and Ojibwe Ecological Management The Dakota people have inhabited their homeland (Mni Sota Maḳoce, part of which is the region that we now call Minnesota) for hundreds of years. Indigenous Dakota science and technology were and are place-based, shaping and shaped by the prairies, forests, and waterways that make up the land. The Dakota practiced sustained-yield planting of fruit and nut trees; used fire to drive game, improve pastures, and facilitate travel; and developed transportation technologies such as canoes to navigate the region. Dakota astronomy combined detailed knowledge about celestial bodies and events with a cosmological worldview of human relationships to both natural and spiritual worlds. Ojibwe and other Anishinaabe people moved into what is now northern Minnesota from the eastern United States in the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century. They settled in the forests along the southern shore of Gichi Gami (Lake Superior), where they assumed a lifestyle centered around seasonal rounds of fishing, ricing, hunting, maple-sap harvesting, and small-scale horticulture. In order to thrive in their environment, Ojibwe communities also practiced careful resource management to sustain yields by keeping count of game animals, re-seeding wild rice, and managing forests through controlled burning. They manipulated and managed local ecosystems with techniques developed through close observation and experimentation. Both Dakota and Ojibwe technologies of resource management strategies or what some scholars call traditional ecological knowledge were and are systems rooted in Dakota and Ojibwe worldviews. Both include understandings of mutual responsibility or kinship between human beings and the ecosystems in which they live. Many Dakota and Ojibwe communities continue to develop resource management strategies informed by Indigenous scientific knowledge. That knowledge informs, for example, the fishing and forestry practices of the Red Lake Nation’s Department of Natural Resources and energy production at Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community’s Koda Energy Plant. Sciences of Exploration: Collecting and Mapping Minnesota European and Euro-American people came into present-day Minnesota beginning in 1659 with the French fur traders and explorers Médard Chouart de Groselliers (1618–1696) and Pierre-Esprit Radisson (1636/1640–1710). Like later explorers, Groselliers and Radisson hoped to determine whether trade in the region would be profitable for European countries. To do so, they produced scientific knowledge about the environment of Minnesota. They also created accompanying resources, such as maps, that recorded local geography, lists of plants and minerals, and commentary on Native people. Such knowledge was all part of what seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europeans and Euro-Americans called “natural history.” Natural historians collected specimens and mapped territories to sort the natural world into a comprehensible, accessible, and consumable whole. Mapping, in fact, was an essential technology for Europeans exploring the Great Lakes region. They created maps not only to explain what the land looked like and how to navigate it, but also to understand how it came to be that way. Explorers, who were often also natural historians, used their knowledge to support their agendas for travel and trade. For example, Radisson successfully petitioned for the support of the Royal Society, a British scientific organization, in his explorations of the Great Lakes on the grounds of both economic and scientific potential. The Royal Society’s advocacy helped secure the backing of Prince Rupert of the Rhine, the first governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company. The company, while predominantly a fur-trading enterprise, also contributed to the natural historical exploration of the region. The expeditions of French natural historian and cartographer Joseph Nicolas Nicollet (1786‒1843) further entangled natural history with commercial interests. Nicollet made detailed, scientific maps of the Mississippi River basin and wrote accounts of the people, plants, animals, metals, and minerals located there. His expedition in 1836 from Fort Snelling to the headwaters of the Mississippi River was funded by the American Fur Company. Among his companions on that trip were Chagobay, a leader of the Leech Lake Ojibwe, and Chagobay’s nine-year-old son. The US Senate published Nicollet’s magnum opus, the Map of the Hydrographical Basin of the Upper Mississippi, along with an accompanying report in 1843. It was considered the most accurate map yet produced by cartographers of European descent. It showcased Nicollet’s contributions to the growing fields of geography and geology with its depiction of the layout of land and striation of rock as well as speculations on how the land had formed. His notes included detailed accounts of the Native people he had met as well as speculation on the possibilities for agricultural development in the region. Science and Technology in Resource Extraction: Logging and Mining Enlightenment-era Euro-Americans believed the natural world could be categorized, extracted, and consumed. By using science and technology to manage extraction processes, they transformed natural resources into economic ones. As new industries arose that fueled this new economy, Euro-American settler-colonists developed specific technologies to suit their needs. On the heels of nineteenth-century land- and resource-cession treaties with Ojibwe and Dakota nations, land ownership in Minnesota shifted dramatically—and sometimes illegally—from tribal to federal control or into private hands. Supported by national expansion and the development of railway technology in the 1850s, federal bodies such as the Commission of Public Lands and the General Land Office sponsored surveys to assess lakes, streams, forests, and soil before land was sold to individuals or territorial governments. Many of these surveys were of trees—in particular, the great white pine forests in northern Minnesota. Logging white pine and other trees was a lynchpin of industrial development in the new state, which by 1900 had the largest lumber market in the world. Technological innovations, including steam-driven sawmills and hot ponds, powered the timber industry and defined the cities of Minneapolis, St. Paul, and later Duluth as centers of industrial development. Like logging, the development of mining in the state depended on exploratory missions, through which land and resources were surveyed, and on improving the efficiency of extraction and transportation technologies. The volume and rapid expansion of mining made the industry particularly influential in the mid- to late-nineteenth century. Mining in Minnesota, however, already had a long history. Dakota communities in southwestern Minnesota mined pipestone (catlinite) at sites like Pipestone Quarry to make pipes for religious and diplomatic use. The pipes entered economic trade systems through which they were distributed across North America. As Euro-American immigrants began to settle in the region, they too quarried material for building technologies like houses and forts. The US Army built Fort Snelling in 1820 with limestone mined from southeastern Minnesota, and the same stone was used to construct buildings in St. Paul and Minneapolis. The US government’s desire for mineral-rich lands prompted mid-century treaties between Ojibwe nations and the United States, including the 1854 Treaty of La Pointe. An ill-fated gold rush in 1865 and 1866 at Lake Vermilion hastened the development of railroads and brought an influx of prospectors into northern Minnesota. While they found little gold, they did discover an abundance of iron. The desire for expanded shipping and travel coupled with railroads and technological developments in steel-making increased national demand for iron, making mining a lucrative industry. Starting in 1884, iron ore mined from open pits in the Vermilion Range began shipping out from Two Harbors on Lake Superior. Iron was mined in Minnesota in the Mesabi, Cuyuna, and Vermilion Ranges, often in open pits, using processes that were developed in Minnesota and adopted elsewhere in the country. For the first half of the twentieth century, the Iron Range was the primary supplier for the booming steel industry in the United States. As supplies of more accessible iron ore in hematite declined over time, mining companies collaborated with scientists to adapt extraction processes to obtain iron from taconite ore. Taconite mining was developed over the course of several decades. It was begun in 1913 by mathematics professor Edward W. Davis (1888‒1973) in partnership with the University of Minnesota and several mining companies. Their innovative processes, in which magnetic force was used to separate out the iron ore, kept the iron industry productive through the 1960s. While the taconite industry kept the Iron Range economically viable long after high-grade ore had been mined out, mining byproducts caused serious environmental damage to the region’s lakes. Many scientific ventures spun off from Minnesota mining networks. Most notable was the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company, later known as 3M. Founded in 1902 in Two Harbors by businessmen interested in mineral mining, 3M developed sandpaper products for industry and later for domestic use. Over the twentieth century, the company produced such iconic consumer products as Scotch Tape and Post-It notes, as well as a variety of audio-visual equipment, medical products, and reflective coatings. In the 2010s, 3M is a multinational Fortune 500 corporation. Technological systems such as mines contributed materially to the development of late-twentieth-century scientific initiatives, including aerospace engineering and particle physics. In the 1950s, Portsmouth Mine in Crosby, Minnesota, became a launch point for Project Manhigh II, an Air Force investigation into the effects of altitude on the human body. Soudan Mine, which closed in 1962, served as the home to one of the leading particle physics research laboratories in the United States from 1980 to 2016. Scientific Partnerships: Agriculture, Computing, and the Medical Device Industry Partnerships between industries, academic institutions, and government agencies have often been essential to scientific investigation and technological development. As seen above, mining technologies in Minnesota were guided by partnerships between academic and industrial institutions. Networks were also essential in milling, agriculture, computing, and medical technology—industries that ushered in some of the most significant scientific and technological developments in Minnesota’s history. Alongside logging, milling and agriculture were among the most important industries in the state in the late nineteenth century. These industries benefitted from the same natural resources that make Minnesota distinct: rivers, forests, and prairies. The first grist mill in Minnesota was established in 1823 by the United States government at St. Anthony Falls (Owamniyomni) on the Mississippi River to provide flour for soldiers stationed at Fort Snelling. Other mills served lumbermen and, later, the developing urban centers of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Mills also provided hydroelectric power to some parts of Minnesota. Changing water levels and flooding in the rivers endangered mills and made river navigation dangerous. In 1881, in response to requests by Congress, the US Army Corps of Engineers began the first dam in Minnesota, at Pokegama Falls. It was completed in 1885. Electrical power provided from hydroelectric dams, such as the Coon Rapids Hydroelectric Dam in Anoka County, incentivized immigration through job creation even as it supported milling and other industries. The same land-cession treaties that had influenced the development of the timber industry also influenced the development of agriculture in the state. Coupled with an influx of northern European immigrants, an expanding railway system, and technological innovations in flour milling in the 1870s and 1880s such as the middlings purifier and the Berhns Millstone Exhaust System, many Minnesota farmers quickly adopted large-scale, mono-crop wheat production. By 1880 Minneapolis was the leading flour producer in the nation. The importance of agriculture for the state’s industry meant that agricultural concerns ranked high in the growing university structure. This emphasis created a research and educational environment that fostered innovation. The University of Minnesota was founded in 1851, and in 1867, under the Morrill Act, it became the state’s land-grant institution. Two years later, the university started its College of Agriculture, complete with an experimental farm for conducting trials of farm crops and garden produce as well as for providing formal agricultural training to Euro-American immigrants. Researchers and students at these stations conducted basic and applied science in dairy chemistry, animal nutrition, agronomy, and plant genetics. An exemplar of successful agricultural research at the university was the Honeycrisp apple. Developed in 1961 and released in 1991, the Honeycrisp is widely heralded as having changed the national consumer market for apples. Consumers of designer apples like the Honeycrisp proved willing to pay upwards of four times as much per apple. Another important contributor to plant genetics research, University alumnus and professor Norman Borlaug (1914‒2009), was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for his development of high-yield wheat in the so-called “Green Revolution.” Borlaug’s work, like that of other researchers, relied upon government and philanthropic funding, industry buy-in, and the knowledge and labor of non-university farmers and ranchers, reflecting the importance of networks to scientific and technological development. Government‒industry partnerships in Minnesota fed the development of science and technology in other industries as well. Computing and the medical device industries are two notable examples. The computing industry in Minnesota got its start in 1946, when a group of former Navy cryptographers formed a company called Engineering Research Associates (ERA) to build code-breaking machines. While ERA was relatively small, the company benefitted from multiple large government contracts through which ERA technicians developed the first magnetic storage drum (1947) and the Atlas computer (1950). Building on government, industry, and academic networks, ERA’s success spurred a cascade of computing development in Minnesota. In 1952, ERA merged with Remington Rand, a national conglomerate. This organization benefitted from the government-industry networks formed by ERA and became deeply involved in the development of military technology during the Cold War. In 1957, top researchers at ERA left to form their own company, Control Data Corporation (CDC, 1959‒1975), which became a global leader in computer manufacture and design and ultimately specialized in building supercomputers. The story of computing in Minnesota is a story of successful government, industry, and academic partnerships. For example, CDC’s success depended on the University of Minnesota’s production of trained technical workers during World War II as well as partnerships with other Minnesota companies like 3M and General Mills. Following CDC’s lead and benefitting from the many trained personnel in Minnesota, other companies, such as IBM, established research, development, and manufacturing centers in Minnesota. Even the State of Minnesota entered the computing industry with the development of the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (MECC, 1978–1999). MECC, in partnership with Apple Computer, Inc., made computers available to K‒12 students in the state. It developed software to integrate computing technology into the learning process—technologies such as the hugely popular Oregon Trail game. Skilled labor from the computing industry as well as from University of Minnesota graduates fed Minnesota’s nascent medical device industry. This industry also relied upon an established history of health sciences research in the state. Maverick surgeons at the University of Minnesota such as Owen H. Wangensteen (1898–1981) and his students invented a number of devices and techniques, including the Wangensteen suction apparatus (1931), techniques of open-heart surgery (1952), and the disposable bubble oxygenator (1955). The success of these inventions depended on a supportive network of university surgeons, researchers, and administrators. The particular needs of these surgical science networks intersected with other professions, such as electrical engineering, to spur the development of the regional medical device industry—what would be called Medical Alley. The rapid development of Minnesota as a center for medical device innovation is most often linked to the collaboration between heart surgeon C. Walton Lillehei (1918–1999) and electrical engineer Earl Bakken (1924–2018). Bakken was a mechanic at the university when Lillehei asked him to create a wearable, battery-powered heart-regulating device while Lillehei improved techniques to repair holes in the heart. Bakken’s invention, the pacemaker, became one of the most significant products Bakken’s company, Medtronic, ever made. Former Medtronic employees later founded many other companies, including St. Jude Medical and Cardiac Pacemakers, Inc. In 2019, over 500 companies in Minnesota fall under the trade organization of Medical Alley. Unforeseen Consequences of Science and Technology Scientific pursuits and technological developments have changed the people and ecology of Minnesota in many ways. Some of these changes have not been altogether positive. Innovations in logging practices led to the loss of much of Minnesota’s old-growth forest, which national, state, and Native agencies have since been attempting to restore. Mining tailings in Lake Superior have affected both the ecosystem and human health, leading to multiple lawsuits since the late 1960s. Dams along the Mississippi helped control flooding, enabled boat traffic, and produced hydroelectric power, but they have also endangered the homes and livelihoods of Ojibwe people living alongside the river and promoted the spread of invasive non-native species like zebra mussels and Asian carp. Some scientific advances have been controversial. Indigenous groups in the state have long protested genomic research by the university on wild rice, fearing that engineered rice could contaminate the wild rice native to the region. These competing social priorities are often framed by competing scientific worldviews. In particular, the history of science and technology in Minnesota has often privileged the development of new products and new ways to use natural resources, while environmental integrity and scientific development have been framed as competing interests.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/QC3.1 p1.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246052,"name":"Science and Technology","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/science-and-technology-minnesota"},{"alt":"Thomas Van Lear, 1917","author":[{"name":"Christian Bjornson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/christian-bjornson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"March 06, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Van Lear, Thomas (1869–1931)","postbody":"The only Socialist mayor of Minneapolis (1917–1919), Thomas Van Lear was a machinist and influential union leader. Socialist opposition to World War I proved a major factor in his failure ...","searchtext":"The only Socialist mayor of Minneapolis (1917–1919), Thomas Van Lear was a machinist and influential union leader. Socialist opposition to World War I proved a major factor in his failure to win reelection in 1918, after which he retired from politics. A talented writer and orator, he later helped found and lead the short-lived Minneapolis Daily Star. Van Lear was born in Maryland in 1869 to a working-class family. His career officially began at the age of eleven in an Appalachian coal mine. From a young age, Van Lear showed an interest in workplace organizing, joining the Knights of Labor in 1887 on his eighteenth birthday. In the early 1900s he took his activism a step further by joining the newly-established Socialist Party. After leaving Maryland and serving in the Army during the Spanish–American War, Van Lear relocated to Minneapolis to pursue work as a machinist. After being elected to lead the local chapter of the International Association of Machinists, he organized strikes and unionizing efforts at shops around the Twin Cities and served as the chapter’s “business liaison” in negotiations with owners. A powerful orator, Van Lear pulled no punches. He won the support of many Minneapolis workers through his withering criticism of business owners, managers, and strike-breakers. While he preferred to seek reformist measures in pursuit of socialist ends, he also had a unique ability to make socialist theory relevant to the lives of average workers. The board of the Minneapolis Labor Review, of which Van Lear was also a member, frequently lauded his contributions to the labor movement, opining in January 1908 that workers “may commend Mr. Van Lear’s methods as a good example to follow.” Van Lear ran for office several times unsuccessfully―for mayor in 1910 and 1912 and for Congress in 1914―before finally prevailing in the 1916 mayoral contest against Republican County Sheriff Otto S. Langum. During the 1916 campaign, Van Lear successfully used controversies surrounding Twin Cities Rapid Transit streetcar fares and corporate control of the city’s utilities to his advantage. Advocating for municipal control of utilities and increased funding for schools, he also benefitted from the support of progressive Democrats wary of the city’s dominant Republican business class. In fact, it was not uncommon to see banners supporting Van Lear alongside those for Democratic President Woodrow Wilson. As mayor, Van Lear undertook an ambitious reform effort across the city. Though a reluctant City Council blocked several of his main proposals—including a municipal food market and renegotiation of the streetcar franchise—his few successes left a mark on the city. One prominent accomplishment was his appointment of Lewis Harthill, a fellow Socialist and close ally, as police chief. Shortly after his term began, Harthill began a determined but humane effort to rid the city of “vice.” Illegal gambling, prostitution, and liquor ventures were shut down, with even the conservative Minneapolis Journal applauding the moves. But if the political climate had favored Van Lear in 1916, it did not take long for the winds to turn against him. The primary cause of this shift was American entry into World War I, which not only turned Democrats away from the Socialist Party but also prompted a schism within the socialist movement itself. In April 1917, the Socialist Party held a national convention in St. Louis and adopted a firmly anti-war platform. Though Van Lear did not attend the convention and made statements supportive of the war effort, if not its rationale, his opponents succeeded in using the controversy surrounding the St. Louis Platform against him. Refusing to explicitly denounce the platform, Van Lear was targeted by business interests for an alleged lack of patriotism. In 1918, he was defeated by “Loyalist” candidate J. E. Meyers in a race dominated by war politics. In 1919, Van Lear shifted away from politics to become vice president of Northwest Publishing, a labor-friendly media company which printed the short-lived Minneapolis Daily Star before it sold in 1924. In 1921, Van Lear made one last run for the office of mayor, falling short to Republican Col. George E. Leach. He died on March 4, 1931, from surgical complications surrounding an inflamed appendix, and is interred in Minneapolis.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Thomas_Van_Lear_in_1917.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246055,"name":"Labor","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/van-lear-thomas-1869-1931"},{"alt":"Digitally enhanced petroglyphs","author":[{"name":"Thomas L. Sanders","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/thomas-l-sanders"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"February 26, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186625246048,"name":"1585–1763 (Colonization)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056201,"name":"1754–1800 (Revolution and a New Nation)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":203519472229,"name":"Pre-1585 (Before European Contact)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Jeffers Petroglyphs","postbody":"Jeffers Petroglyphs is an internationally significant Native American sacred site and the location of the largest group of Indigenous petroglyphs (rock carvings) in the Midwestern United ...","searchtext":"Jeffers Petroglyphs is an internationally significant Native American sacred site and the location of the largest group of Indigenous petroglyphs (rock carvings) in the Midwestern United States. Situated in Dakota homeland, it is sacred to multiple Native American nations, including the Cheyenne, Arapaho, Iowa, and Ojibwe. The Jeffers site is where Minnesota||s recorded history began. It is embedded in a rich natural and cultural landscape made up of petroforms (boulder outlines), pictographs (rock paintings), campsites, quarries, sacred springs, and water falls. The 160-acre site is best known, however, for the estimated 8,000 Native American petroglyphs (rock carvings) pecked into its horizontally exposed Sioux quartzite outcrops. There, the sloping terrain and shifting depth of bedrock provide an unequal distribution of soil depth and water retention that creates diverse micro environments with many distinct plant, insect, and animal species. Jeffers Petroglyphs is part of the Red Rock Ridge, which rises some 100 to 300 feet above the landscape in northeast Cottonwood County and dominates the surrounding terrain. Twenty-three miles long and 800 feet wide, it contains 209 exposed outcrops―protrusions of bedrock that were ground smooth and flat by glaciers 14,000 years ago. Of these 209, twenty-four have petroglyphs carved into them, giving the ridge the largest concentration of such carvings in the Upper Midwest. One irregularly shaped, 300-yard-long by fifty-yard-wide outcrop at Jeffers contains most of the 5,000 total carvings found on the ridge. The petroglyphs illustrate animals and tools that were important to the people who carved them: bison, salamanders, turtles, elk, human stick figures, birds, leather bags, and various weapons (atlatls, spear points, arrowheads, and lances). They were made over an estimated 11,000 years, with the earliest dating to 9,000 BCE and the most recent to the 1600s or 1700s CE. Certain glyphs prevailed during specific time periods. At first, carvers etched the shapes of elk and buffalo; a baby moose was carved around 8,000 BCE. Animals remained the most popular symbol until about 3,000 BCE, when they were joined by human figures representing ceremonies. (A combination of carbon dating and comparisons of subject and style with other sites has allowed archaeologists to arrive at these estimates.) Native American elders believe that the glyphs were made directly by spirits and/or by inspired humans using a rock hammerstone, such as a chert cobble, that was as hard as or harder than the quartzite base. The multiple carvings styles are found at other sites across the North American continent, including the Peterborough Petroglyphs in Ontario. Jeffers is unique in the age and scope of the Indigenous cultural relationships it preserves. Elders (Dakota, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Ojibwe, and Iowa) state that it is a place where people retreated to fast, seek guidance, commune with spirits, and conduct ceremonies. More than art or mimicry of the natural environment, the carvings are eloquent cultural symbols of rich and complex Native societies. They also point out that there were many reasons for carving the glyphs. Elders taught philosophy to younger generations through parables pictured on the rock, and travelers used them to write directions for those who were to follow them. Some depict spirits; many record the visions of holy people. Others are healing altars or prayers to the Great Spirit, or to one of the helping spirits. Above all, it is a spiritual place where grandmother earth speaks of the past, present, and future. The descendants of those who carved the images consider the site a place of worship. In the twenty-first century, some still pray and conduct ceremonies there. Dakota elders Joe Williams, Jerry Flute, Tom Ross, and Robert Larsen state that the carvings at Jeffers, like those found elsewhere on the Red Rock Ridge, are an encyclopedia of Native American history that records historic and cultural knowledge. They believe that the petroglyphs are the only remaining evidence of the existence and lifeways of some of North America’s Native peoples. Because of this geographic and spiritual link to the past, Jeffers allows Native people living today to build and deepen their connections to their traditional culture. Editor’s note: Chronologies provided here are approximate and dependent on multiple methods of date determination.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Digitally enhanced petroglyps.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246059,"name":"Native Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/jeffers-petroglyphs"},{"alt":"F. Melius Christiansen","author":[{"name":"Robin Gehl","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/robin-gehl"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"February 26, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Christiansen, F. Melius (1871‒1955)","postbody":"Norwegian immigrant musician F. Melius Christiansen founded the St. Olaf College Choir in 1911. Through his career as a conductor, composer, and arranger, he established the preeminent ...","searchtext":"Norwegian immigrant musician F. Melius Christiansen founded the St. Olaf College Choir in 1911. Through his career as a conductor, composer, and arranger, he established the preeminent Lutheran a capella (unaccompanied) choral tradition in America. Born on April 1, 1871, in Berger, Norway, to parents Anders Christiansen and Oleana Jonsen, Fredrick Melius Christiansen was baptized in the Lutheran Church in nearby Eidsvold. Members of the families of both parents played in local orchestras and bands. His father, Anders, led his own band. As a child, he learned to play the clarinet, violin, and pipe organ. To pay for his own violin lessons, a teenage Christiansen taught violin to beginners. To further his music training and work opportunities, Christiansen, age seventeen, emigrated in 1888 to the United States, where two uncles and a brother had already journeyed. After arriving in New York he traveled to Oakland, California, to stay with his uncle Hans and pursue work as a church organist. Unable to find a post, Christiansen moved to Washburn, Wisconsin, to live with his brother Karl. Two years later he moved to Marinette, Wisconsin, to work as director of the Scandinavian Band as well as the organist and choir director of Our Savior’s Lutheran Church. At the church he heard a performance of a touring male vocal quartet from Augsburg College and Seminary, Minneapolis, and learned about musical opportunities there. In 1892, at age twenty-one, Christiansen enrolled at Augsburg, intending to become a concert violinist. He taught harmony and singing lessons at the college and conducted the student chorus. After his freshman studies he transferred to Northwestern Conservatory of Music in Minneapolis, where he studied music theory and counterpoint and graduated with honors. He continued to live and work in Minneapolis directing a number of choruses, serving as organist for several Lutheran churches, and teaching violin lessons. In July 1897 Christiansen returned to Marinette to marry Edith Lindem, a woman he had met while directing the church choir there. After their wedding the couple lived in Germany for two years to allow Christiansen to study at the Leipzig Conservatory of Music. In Leipzig, Christiansen enrolled in music theory classes and studied violin with the prominent German virtuoso Hans Sitt. He regularly attended the rehearsals and concerts of the St. Thomas Church Choir, whose choir director in the 1700s had been Johann Sebastian Bach. Its then-current choir director, Gustav Schreck, became Christiansen’s conservatory instructor in composition, counterpoint, and choir conducting. Christiansen received his diploma from the conservatory in 1899 and returned to America. For the next four years he worked in Minneapolis as a violin teacher, church organist, and chorus director. In 1903 he accepted a job offer from President John Kildahl to lead the newly established music department of St. Olaf College, Northfield. Christiansen directed the St. Olaf Band beginning in 1903 and took the group to perform in Norway in the spring of 1906. After the tour, he returned to Leipzig to continue his studies with Schreck. He studied folk music and its influence on church music and re-harmonized chorales, the hymns of the German Lutheran Church, before moving back to Northfield. St. Olaf Choir was formed as an outgrowth of St. John’s church choir during the 1911‒12 school year, and Christiansen gained international acclaim for his role as its founding director. He took the group on tour for the first time in 1912, then toured internationally the following year after a trip to Norway. For the next thirty years he revitalized choral singing in America, touring throughout America and Europe, performing before kings and presidents. He retired from conducting the choir in 1944 and ceded the position to his son Olaf, who had joined the faculty as co-director in 1942. Christiansen died in 1955. His legacy includes more than 250 choral arrangements published as the “St. Olaf Choir Series,” by Augsburg Publishing, beginning in 1919. His most beloved and performed works include “Beautiful Savior,” “Praise to the Lord,” and “Wake, Awake.”","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/por 19918 r2.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/christiansen-f-melius-1871-1955"},{"alt":"Denny Diamond and the Jewels","author":[{"name":"Janelle Kaye","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/janelle-kaye"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"February 25, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Windom Concert Series","postbody":"Residents of Windom, a community in southwestern Minnesota with approximately 3,000 citizens, created a musical concert series in 1948. The series’ governing body, the Windom Concert ...","searchtext":"Residents of Windom, a community in southwestern Minnesota with approximately 3,000 citizens, created a musical concert series in 1948. The series’ governing body, the Windom Concert Association, became one of the longest continually operating Minnesota organizations of its kind. In June of 1948, Evelyn Malone and a group of other Windom residents set out to create an ongoing local concert series that would showcase musical talent within their town. To begin, she contacted the University of Minnesota Lecture and Concert Service (UMLCS) and asked for administrative guidance and help. On June 16, David Simmons of UMLCS met with interested Windom citizens to advise their organizing process. They chose Roland Muller as a temporary chairman and proceeded to elect seven officers, including a president (Morton Smith), a first vice president (Malone), and a second vice president (Russell Henry). All of the attendees (excluding Simmons) became the association’s board of directors. In that same meeting, Simmons explained that other relatively small communities had established and conducted musical series by relying on something called an organized audience plan. The plan allowed people to attend performances only if they bought association memberships, which were sold during a one-week campaign held before the start of the season. This allowed the association to know how much it could spend on artists and musical groups without going into debt. At least three concerts were guaranteed per year, each of them to be performed in the 672-seat Windom High School Auditorium. In the fall of 1948, the association held a membership drive. With promotional aid from people in the nearby towns of Mountain Lake, Jackson, Westbrook, Storden, Jeffers, and Heron Lake, it sold out the auditorium and established a successful beginning to the series . During the first year of the series, 118 volunteer workers organized a campaign dinner. They sold season tickets to 750 subscribers, guaranteeing a run of five performances with enough money left over to launch the next year’s season. Neighboring towns invited into the Windom project took part in the campaign and were represented on the association’s board of directors. Windom gained statewide attention via Twin Cities newspapers for bringing talent to a town of its size. Participating artists began to spread the word about the ideal acoustics of Windom’s auditorium and the friendliness of its residents. During the concert association’s early years, much of the success it achieved was attributed to out-of-town subscribers. Later, Windom and nearby towns such as St. James, Worthington, Redwood Falls, and Slayton established a reciprocity agreement so that members of a local association could attend performances in all of these communities at no extra charge. Performances in the first decades of the series brought in famous entertainers, among them Fred Waring, Marian Anderson, Jerome Hines, Norman Luboff, and Mantovani. Dance troupes performed, as did theater companies and the Minneapolis Symphony. For many area residents, the series was their first experience of an opera, a symphony, or a ballet; some attended performances as school children. Visiting entertainers stayed in private homes and got to know local residents. Two musicians raised in the Windom area returned to the city as adults to participate in the concert series. Neva Pilgrim, an internationally touring vocal artist, sang in Windom in 1979. Maria Schneider, and American composer and big-band leader who has won multiple Grammy Awards, performed there in 2015.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Denny_Diamond.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/windom-concert-series"},{"alt":"Talcot Lake","author":[{"name":"Janelle Kaye","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/janelle-kaye"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"February 22, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186622056203,"name":"1792–1861 (Expansion and Reform)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Talcot Lake County Park","postbody":"Talcot Lake County Park, a forty-acre piece of land situated in Cottonwood County on Highway 62 between Windom and Fulda, offers visitors a place to appreciate the wildlife and natural ...","searchtext":"Talcot Lake County Park, a forty-acre piece of land situated in Cottonwood County on Highway 62 between Windom and Fulda, offers visitors a place to appreciate the wildlife and natural beauty of Southbrook, the county’s southwestern-most township. In the 1700s and early 1800s, the area around Kandi Kastakapi Mde (Lake Where They Hunt Buffalo Fish) was a summer village and burial site of the Sisseton Dakota. Rich with mink and muskrats, prairie chickens, pheasants, waterfowl, beaver, and deer as well as fish, the area was a valuable source of food as well as pelts for clothing and trade. When white fur traders first came to the area around 1835, they established a post for the American Fur Company at the headwaters of the Des Moines River. In the early 1840s, the French mapmaker Joseph Nicollet gave the name Lake Talcot to Kandi Kastakapi Mde in recognition of Andrew Talcott (1797‒1883). Talcot, a civil engineer, was surveying the northeastern border of the United States at the time. (The reason for the change in spelling is unrecorded but may be related to the transition of the surname from English into French.) After the 1851 Treaty of Traverse des Sioux forced the Dakota around Kandi Kastakapi Mde to move to a reservation, settler-colonists claimed the area for themselves. The lakeshore was the home of the first settler-colonists to live in the community that became Southbrook Township (named for Little Brook, which flowed out of the lake). A fur trapper with the surname Talke built a log cabin for himself and his daughter on the lake in the 1850s or early 1860s, and two other families followed in 1867. The United States Fish and Wildlife Service built Talcot Dam on the site in 1936 before turning it over to the State Department in 1948, at which point it became state-managed land. The Dundee Rod and Gun Club began using it as a hunting and fishing preserve in 1957 and named it Talcot Lake County Park. In December 1974, Cottonwood County Park purchased thirty acres adjacent to the state-owned property. A $40,000 grant from the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LAWCON) financed access roads, picnic facilities, comfort stations, and a campground. The purchase supported the goals and objectives of the Cottonwood County Park System and eliminated the possibility of unsightly land use and exploitation. A lease on the state-owned portion of land was drawn up to enable Cottonwood County Parks to carry out recreational and land use functions. It was signed on January 29, 1976. In May of that year, the land was leased to the county for development and maintenance guided by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR). In 1985, Cottonwood County opened Talcot Lake Park to the public for daily recreational use and as an access point for Talcot Lake. It continued to serve as a camping and swimming area. Later that year, LAWCON provided a grant for landscaping, camping pads, road improvements, and the development of a dump station and well-water system. In 2019, Talcot Lake County Park’s amenities include sixty-five camping sites with water and electricity; areas for campers to set up tents; picnic tables and grills; bathrooms with showers; and an unsupervised swimming area. The site is open from May 1‒October 31, with a shorter bathhouse season.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Talcot Lake Shores.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246054,"name":"Sports and Recreation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/talcot-lake-county-park"},{"alt":"Germanic-American Institute","author":[{"name":"Jonah Lemkins","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/jonah-lemkins"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"February 20, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Germanic-American Institute","postbody":"In 1957, a group of German clubs based in the Twin Cities came together to form the Volksfest Association, which represented German Minnesotans at that year’s centennial statehood ...","searchtext":"In 1957, a group of German clubs based in the Twin Cities came together to form the Volksfest Association, which represented German Minnesotans at that year’s centennial statehood celebration. After the centennial, eager to obtain an official building, it raised money through selling bonds and organizing fundraising events. In 1965, it purchased a home on Summit Avenue for $57,500 and refurbished the interior to accommodate large social gatherings. Originally built in 1906 for the family of George W. Gardner and his wife, Claribel, the 301 Summit Avenue home had four stories, including a third-floor ballroom and Rathskeller (cellar pub). After George and Claribel’s deaths in 1934 and 1938, respectively, the house was owned by their son, Truman. In 1948, Truman sold the house to the Sisters of St. Benedict, and it became known as St. Paul’s Priory. By the 1960s the Sisters of St. Benedict had outgrown the property, and in 1965 they sold it to the Volksfest Association before moving to Maplewood. Later that year, the Volksfest Association moved into the Gardner home and began to use it as its headquarters. They called it the Volksfest Kulturhaus—German for culture center. The building also served as a community hub where German Americans, Minnesotans of German heritage, and anyone interested in German culture could come to learn and celebrate. During the 1980s and 1990s, the Volksfest Association board of directors underwent a generational shift as younger members replaced older ones. In 1994 members decide to transform the organization from a social club into a non-profit institute and rename it the Germanic-American Institute, or GAI for short. The organization’s shift in focus was also precipitated by an influx of non-Germanic immigrants to the Minneapolis area, as well as the perceived disconnect between newer generations and their German heritage. The GAI’s revised mission statement read “to foster appreciation and understanding of the culture, language, arts, and ongoing history of the German speaking peoples through public educational and cultural programs.” In the 1990s, many public schools in the Metro area began to drop German-language classes from their curricula. In response, the GAI founded the Twin Cities German Immersion School in 2005. Among other programs, the GAI offers a summer language camps for kids, provides comprehensive German language instruction to adults ranging from new to fluent speakers, and hosts events and speakers that celebrate and promote understanding of German culture, traditions, and history. In the 2010s, the GAI board of directors anticipated another generational shift. It recognized that although German American millennials had grown up in a globally connected world, they were further removed from their German heritage than ever before. To adapt to this change, the GAI began restoration projects for the house and parking lot and planned new programs to attract younger generations of visitors.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Gai_exterior.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/germanic-american-institute"},{"alt":"Lawrence Taliaferro","author":[{"name":"Zac Farber","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/zac-farber"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"February 11, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186622056203,"name":"1792–1861 (Expansion and Reform)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Taliaferro, Lawrence (1794‒1871)","postbody":"Lawrence Taliaferro, the wealthy scion of a politically connected, slave-owning Virginia family, was the US government’s main agent to the Native people of the upper Mississippi in the ...","searchtext":"Lawrence Taliaferro, the wealthy scion of a politically connected, slave-owning Virginia family, was the US government’s main agent to the Native people of the upper Mississippi in the 1820s and 1830s. He earned the trust of Dakota, Ojibwe, Ho-Chunk (Winnebago), Menominee, Sauk (Sac), and Meskwaki (Fox) leaders through lavish gifts, intermarriage, and his zeal for battling predatory fur traders. In a series of treaties, he persuaded these leaders to cede tracts of land in exchange for promises that the government would later break. Lawrence Taliaferro was born in 1794 on a plantation in King George County, Virginia. At the outbreak of the War of 1812, he enlisted as a volunteer militiaman. Before turning twenty, he had earned an Army commission. He served on the Niagara frontier, rising to the rank of first lieutenant and helping prepare for the American invasion of Canada. In 1819, at the request of his “patron friend” President James Monroe, Taliaferro agreed to quit the Army and start a new career heading the St. Peters Indian Agency in the future state of Minnesota. For the next two decades, he would be the US government’s principal diplomat to the region’s Native American nations. Dakota and Ojibwe people would travel hundreds of miles to visit him in his log council house just west of Fort Snelling. Taliaferro relied heavily on the labor of enslaved people. Over his lifetime, he owned twenty-one African American men and women. In 1836 he officiated the marriage of Harriet Robinson, who had worked in his house, to Dred Scott. Slavery was illegal in the Upper Mississippi Valley, and the Scotts later used their Fort Snelling residency as a legal basis for their freedom in the US Supreme Court case Scott v. Sandford. Taliaferro would free all his remaining slaves before his death. A proud, methodical bureaucrat, Taliaferro became admired among Native Americans for his dependability and his candor. The Dakota leader Ta Oyate Duta (His Red Nation, also known as Little Crow) once told him there’s “no sugar in your mouth.” Taliaferro handed out gifts of guns, vermilion, tobacco and blankets to Native leaders. He launched a vaccination campaign and spent thousands of dollars of his own money on flour and meat for the poor. He turned down bribes from fur traders and risked his life enforcing trade laws and exposing fraud and extortion. Taliaferro also extended his influence through kinship ties by hiring Native and métis staff at the Indian Agency and by marrying the daughter of the Dakota leader Mahpiya Wicasta (Cloud Man). Their daughter, Mary, was born in 1828, and Taliaferro paid for her education. At Taliaferro’s urging, Mahpiya Wicasta established a farming village on the eastern shore of Bde Maka Ska in August 1829. Taliaferro dispensed seeds, ploughs, and other tools, and by 1835, the hundred-member community grew squash, potatoes, cabbage and corn. Taliaferro was vexed when some Dakota villagers, following their cultural norms, gave their surplus harvest to relatives. Despite his intimate admission into the life of Native communities, Taliaferro retained the worldview of the colonizer. He never became fluent in the Dakota language, and he speculated in his autobiography about the inscrutable “savage heart.” A believer in European superiority, he thought Native people needed to abandon their traditional way of life, convert to Christianity, and assimilate into Western society to survive. Taliaferro used the trust he built to cajole Native leaders into abandoning their ancestral land rights. In three 1837 treaties, he helped pressure Dakota, Ojibwe, and Ho-Chunk leaders into ceding all their land east of the Mississippi River. The treaties proved disastrous for the Native signers. Much of the settlement money was earmarked toward farming tools, missionary schools and fur traders’ pockets. Annuity payments were late and incomplete, and, to Taliaferro’s dismay, the US government did little to defend Natives’ hunting and fishing rights or to protect them from the white man’s “stupendous frauds” and “thirst for gold.” The treaties’ shaky rollout cost him his influence among Native leaders, and he resigned his post in 1839. He moved to Bedford, Pennsylvania, rejoined the army as a quartermaster, and served as county treasurer. He died in 1871 at age seventy-seven.","src":"https://www3.mnhs.org/hubfs/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Lawrence%20Taliaferro.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246059,"name":"Native Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/taliaferro-lawrence-1794-1871"},{"alt":"Walter Hoover","author":[{"name":"Michael J. Cochran","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/michael-j-cochran"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"February 11, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Hoover, Walter (1895‒1984)","postbody":"Walter Hoover was a competitive rower and rowing coach from Duluth who became world famous by winning the Diamond Sculls at the Henley Royal Regatta in 1922. The annual event, held in ...","searchtext":"Walter Hoover was a competitive rower and rowing coach from Duluth who became world famous by winning the Diamond Sculls at the Henley Royal Regatta in 1922. The annual event, held in England, was the world championship for single scullers (rowers who propel their boats alone) at the time. Walter Hoover was born in Duluth, Minnesota, to Harriet and George Hoover. His father died when he was very young and he was raised by his mother, who was an educator and became a principal in the Duluth School District. Hoover joined the Duluth Boat Club as a swimmer, but switched to rowing in 1913, at the age of eighteen. In his first year of rowing he was a member of the junior eight that finished first at the Northwestern International Rowing Association (NWIRA) regatta in St. Paul. The same crew went on to win the intermediate eight at the US National Championships in Boston and they beat their own senior eight from Duluth in the Senior Eight finals. In 1914, Hoover took up sculling and won the junior and senior singles events at the NWIRA regatta in Kenora Ontario. In 1914, he also rowed in the winning senior 8 at the national championships in Philadelphia. Hoover again won the senior single at the 1915 NWIRA in Winnipeg, along with the single quarter-mile dash. He went on to win the quarter-mile dash at the National Championship Regatta in Springfield, Massachusetts. In 1916, Hoover was a private in the Third Minnesota Infantry National Guard, which was called up to pursue the Mexican revolutionary leader Poncho Villa on the Mexican border. The military was also part of Hoover’s life in 1917, when he was drafted into the army and served as a second lieutenant in the Thirty-third Artillery. In 1920, Hoover did not compete in rowing competitions. Instead, he worked as a civil engineer and designed a racing shell (boat) that would he would later use to win the world championship. At the 1921 National Championships in Buffalo, Hoover won the intermediate single, the senior single, and the quarter-mile dash, which caught the attention of the rowing world. In 1922, Hoover easily won the Philadelphia Gold Challenge Cup (the single sculls championship trophy) by over two lengths of open water and setting a course record by 11 seconds. He sailed the next day to England to compete for the Diamond Sculls at the Henley Royal Regatta. Hoover easily won his two heats, including a victory over A. Baynes, the undefeated Australian sculling champion. In the finals, Hoover beat the famous English sculler Jack Beresford by the huge margin of 29 4/5 seconds and immediately became world famous. When he returned to New York he received an enormous welcome both at the docks and at City Hall. When Hoover finally got back to Duluth, the celebration in his honor was the largest party in the city’s history (it remains so in 2019). During 1926, Hoover rowed and was head coach at the Undine Barge Club in Philadelphia, where his rowers won forty-three races. He personally won the championship single and single dash at the US National Championship Regatta in Philadelphia and the championship single, the double, and the single dash at the Canadian Henley Regatta in St. Catherines, Ontario. After 1928, Hoover retired as a competitive rower. Hoover later moved to Detroit, where he coached rowers from the Detroit Boat Club. In 1956, his Detroit oarsmen won the straight four and double events at the US Olympic trials. Hoover was then made the US Olympic rowing team’s small boats coach. The five teams that he coached won one bronze medal, two silver medals, and two gold medals at the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, Australia. After Detroit, Hoover retired from coaching until 1978, when he led the Minneapolis Rowing Club. In 1979, he was the women’s crew coach at Kansas State University. 1982 saw Hoover working on the design of new rowing shells. He died in 1984, at the age of eighty-nine.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Hoover_in single shell.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246054,"name":"Sports and Recreation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/hoover-walter-1895-1984"},{"alt":"Joseph Linwood Laughy","author":[{"name":"Lindsay Marshall","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/lindsay-marshall"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"February 11, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Laughy, Joseph Linwood (1897‒1917)","postbody":"Joseph Linwood Laughy was born in 1897 and moved to Baudette, Minnesota, in 1915. In April 1918, four days after the United States entered World War I, Linwood signed up for the Navy. After ...","searchtext":"Joseph Linwood Laughy was born in 1897 and moved to Baudette, Minnesota, in 1915. In April 1918, four days after the United States entered World War I, Linwood signed up for the Navy. After serving only five months, he was killed in an accident, making him the first victim of the war from the Baudette area. Joseph Linwood Laughy (called Linwood) was born to John Patrick and Elizabeth Ann (Harding) Laughy on August 1, 1897, in Marinette, Wisconsin. In 1912, his father, John Patrick, moved to Baudette, Minnesota, to work for the Minnesota and Manitoba Railway. In March 1915, Linwood’s mother and sister joined John Patrick in Baudette. The following month, Linwood and five of his siblings arrived in Baudette. His two remaining sisters joined the family following the school year. Linwood enlisted in the US Navy on April 12, just four days after the US declared war on Germany. He served as captain on the USS Culgoa, stationed in Brooklyn, New York. While Laughy would only serve five months before being killed in an accident at the shipyard, a letter he wrote to his mother provides insight into his time with the Navy. His tone shows he wants his mother to know he is safe and that life is good, but his words indicate that he cannot tell her many details: She received it shortly after he arrived in New York. “I came on board this ship last Sunday night and like it first rate. The officers are all nice and discipline is not as bad as it is claimed to be…I marched in the front rank in the march through Chicago. We were four abreast and about three hundred deep. There was seven hundred sailors that came in the draft I was in. “Now mother, there are lots of things I would like to say regarding the life of a sailor and the ship, but I can’t. About the life I will say it is fine, and I am well satisfied about the ship. It is a good ship, but where I am and what I am doing I am not allowed to tell. I may be many miles at sea and I may be in port but that is all. It’s a good life anyway. When the ship is in port we are allowed to go ashore three nights a week, so that is not bad.” Five months after he left to join the Navy, Laughy lost his life. According to the newspaper, “[Laughy] was assisting in hoisting a motor launch when a large iron chain hit him on the head, rendering him unconscious and his death occurred a half hour afterwards.” Following his death, Laughy’s shipmates purchased a headstone in Elmpark Cemetery as a tribute to his sacrifice. In 1918, an American Legion in honor of Joseph Linwood Laughy was proposed for Baudette; it opened on September 22, 1919.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Linwood Laughy.jpeg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/laughy-joseph-linwood-1897-1917"},{"alt":"First issue of Hmong Pages","author":[{"name":"Txhee Belinda Xiong","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/txhee-belinda-xiong"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"February 04, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Hmong Pages","postbody":"Hmong Pages is a St. Paul-based newspaper created by, for, and about Hmong people. To reach a wide audience of individuals, it features articles written in both English and Hmong. The ...","searchtext":"Hmong Pages is a St. Paul-based newspaper created by, for, and about Hmong people. To reach a wide audience of individuals, it features articles written in both English and Hmong. The monthly publication seeks to raise awareness about Hmong people throughout the Twin Cities and is distributed across the metro area. St. Paul resident and Hmong refugee Cheu Lee began taking pictures of Hmong neighbors in his community in 1982 and developed a passion for documenting their experiences through his lens. His photography work led him to become interested in photo journalism and in journalism more broadly. In 1998, Lee began collaborating with his former math professor, Richard Wetzler, whom he had met at Lakewood Community College (renamed Century College in 1996). Together, he and Wetzler created Hmong Times, an independent newspaper company. After the success of Hmong Times, Lee left the paper in 2000 to begin a new publication, Hmong Pages. He aimed to translate the photography skills he had developed in the 1980s to the front covers of Hmong Pages while also serving as its editor-in-chief. His primary goal was to feature articles written in the Hmong language as well as English so that both younger and older generations of Hmong could read the newspaper. Hmong Times articles, by contrast, had been written only in English. Lee published the first edition of Hmong Pages on July 1, 2010, and established a process of working with a team of writers and graphic designers to prepare the product before it went to press each month. Through his editorial work, he met political figures like Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura, Minnesota Senator Mee Moua, and General Vang Pao, the exiled commander of the CIA-backed Secret Army that had fought in the Civil War in Laos. Lee found unique stories of the Hmong diaspora through the people he encountered, which in turn informed his journalism. He met Julienne Xiaaj, a dancer and Hmong Minnesotan, on a plane ride to California when Xiaaj was traveling to perform in a dance competition. To operate, Hmong Pages relies on income generated from the sale of advertisements sold to local companies. With the help of the restaurants, grocery stores, and community spaces that display it, the newspaper has become widely read. Once a month, when a new issue is printed, a distribution company transports bundles of papers to locations across the Twin Cities. In the 2010s, Hmong Pages continues to represent the everyday lives and concerns of Hmong people, both in Minnesota communities and across the United States. It covers broad topics, from celebrated war veterans and human rights advocates to drug scandals and murders. Reporting on a variety of stories helps Lee keep readers up to date with the latest news stories that matter to Hmong people today.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/cover_first issue.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/hmong-pages"},{"alt":"Registration table at Riverfest 1990","author":[{"name":"Janelle Kaye","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/janelle-kaye"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"February 04, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Riverfest","postbody":"Riverfest, an annual summer celebration in Windom first held in 1957, has its roots in an earlier celebration known as Flax Day. Under each name, the event has thrived and brought together ...","searchtext":"Riverfest, an annual summer celebration in Windom first held in 1957, has its roots in an earlier celebration known as Flax Day. Under each name, the event has thrived and brought together people in the area for fun and festivities. After World War II, flax was a major crop in Cottonwood County. Area business leaders thought that the public needed to show support for the processing companies that had moved to Windom for the flax boom. In 1957, after area farmers shifted from growing flax to producing corn and soybeans, the name “Flax Day” was changed to “River Days.” The Des Moines River flowed through Windom and was thought to be a more stable reason for a celebration than a crop. During the River Days years, activities were held at or on the river and were sponsored by the local Jaycees. Some activities returned year after year and were held during the first weekend in June. Airboat rides, a canoe derby, log rolling exhibitions, water polo, fishing contests, and muddy volleyball were some of the popular attractions. In 1970, actor William Windom attended River Days and was given a deed to land in his namesake city. His great grandfather William Windom, for whom the city was named, had been a Minnesota politician during the late 1800s. In 1984, local Jaycees didn’t have enough members to make the celebration a success. In response, they voted to give up control to the Windom Chamber of Commerce, which had more members and a larger workforce to back the celebration. In 1984 the chamber took over the production of River Days and changed the event’s name to Riverfest. Riverfest 1990 offered a chance for old friends to reminisce when the former students of local schools who had graduated as early as the 1900s took part in an all class-reunion. For several years afterward, all-class reunions held during Riverfest took the place of separate class reunions for specific graduating classes. In 2001, Riverfest honored Bloomington-based Toro Manufacturing Company for its fiftieth year of business in Windom. Visitors toured the company’s Windom plant and observed how it created its products—devices like snow blowers and lawnmowers. They took pride in realizing that walk-behind Toro products, sold all over the world, were built in Windom. In 2002, to align with a new thematic focus on twin siblings, Riverfest organizers invited twins to come to Windom from all over. In 2003, the theme “Climb Your Family Tree” recognized multi-generational families. Riverfest planned new activities every year. Visitors participated in a cribbage tournament, kiddie parades, autocross racing (which involved timed runs by corvettes), a vehicle fair, turtle races, 5-K runs, art shows sponsored by the local Art Club, rodeos, Marilyn Monroe look-alike contests, and more. Common events each year included the crowning of a Riverfest Queen and a parade complete with dignitaries, clowns, marching bands, floats, old cars, and Toro implements. Pancake breakfasts and beef barbeques were popular, as were the raffles and fireworks that closed down the festivities. Music was largely provided by area musicians. By 2013, the members of the Riverfest organizing committee stated in the local newspaper that due to a decrease in volunteer participation, the annual parade and other traditional events were in jeopardy. The committee voted unanimously to dissolve Riverfest with an intention to transition into a new structure. A new governing body, the Riverfest Committee, formed and decided to continue holding the annual celebration during the second weekend in June. Committee members planned to reimagine the event to honor the Windom community as a whole. In 2014, the first Riverfest organized by new leadership was held. Since then, Riverfest has continued in Windom with similar results: a celebration that focuses on fun, families, and favorite foods.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Curt_Loken.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246054,"name":"Sports and Recreation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/riverfest"},{"alt":"Anti-Vietnam War demonstration in Dinkytown","author":[{"name":"Sharon Park","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/sharon-park"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"February 04, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Anti-Vietnam War Movement, 1963–1973","postbody":"During the Second Indochinese War between communist North Vietnam and US-backed South Vietnam (1955‒1975), the US government escalated American involvement in Southeast Asia. In response, ...","searchtext":"During the Second Indochinese War between communist North Vietnam and US-backed South Vietnam (1955‒1975), the US government escalated American involvement in Southeast Asia. In response, anti-war activists and university students in Minnesota, along with demonstrators across the nation, took to the streets to protest. The US first intervened in Vietnam in the early 1950s, when it backed French troops during the First Indochina War. As the Second Indochina War began, the CIA and US government under Dwight D. Eisenhower backed pro-democracy South Vietnamese leaders. American interference in Southeast Asia continued as subsequent administrations slowly escalated the war throughout the 1960s. Most Americans were at first supportive of the US government’s efforts to purportedly fight communism and ensure democracy in Southeast Asia. However, anti-war critics believed that this was the Vietnamese people’s fight—first for independence from colonial rule and then for reunification. The US was intervening in a conflict that was not its own, and it was causing more deaths than saving lives. This argument rang true for young college-age Americans who could be drafted into the army, had friends risking their lives abroad, or had already served and were disillusioned with the government. Protesters across the nation took their concerns to the streets as well as the ballot box. In Minneapolis, anti-war demonstrators organized a march in Dinkytown in April 1967, carrying signs with slogans such as |||War is darkness; peace is light.||| Later that month, activists attended a rally at the University of Minnesota’s St. Paul campus to hear Martin Luther King Jr. speak out against the war. Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota was also an outspoken critic of the war. Supported by young anti-war activists, he won a high percentage of votes at the 1968 New Hampshire primary. Minnesota Senator Walter Mondale initially supported the conflict but shifted his stance in the late 1960s. In 1965 he had visited South Vietnam, where he talked to reporters from newspapers such as the Minneapolis Tribune and revealed what was going on behind the scenes. In response to President Nixon’s decision to send troops into Cambodia in April 1970, students on over 700 college campuses gathered to protest. On May 4, 1970, Kent State University students clashed with the Ohio National Guardsmen, which left four students dead and nine injured. University of Minnesota (U of M) and Macalester College students organized protests in response to the invasion of Cambodia as well as the Kent State deaths. In May 1970, thirty people attended anti-ROTC demonstrations at Morrill Hall. Seventeen were arrested and charged with unlawful assembly. Faculty also got involved and released statements protesting the arrests. Another group of anti-ROTC demonstrators posed as wounded or dead war victims outside the doors of an All-University Senate meeting. Meanwhile, twenty to thirty students conducted an all-night occupation of Coffman Hall, which ended peacefully when policemen escorted them out of the building. Students carried their protests beyond the campus to locations throughout the Twin Cities. On May 11, 1972, seventy-five demonstrators spent the night on Washington Avenue in Minneapolis and blocked traffic to make their point. Three hundred policemen and National Guardsmen, called in by Governor Wendell Anderson and Minneapolis Mayor Charles Stenvig, told the demonstrators to clear the street. Most complied, though 150 students returned and were joined by more students. Although this could have become a violent standoff, the police eventually withdrew. 3,000 protesters had gathered by then, either reconstructing blockades along Washington Avenue or moving on to other streets (including Interstate 94). A few days later, over 3,500 protesters marched from Northrop Mall to the Minnesota State Capitol in St. Paul. Later that month, Minnesotans gathered at the Metropolitan Sports Center in Bloomington for a “Dump the War” rally, which featured McCarthy, John Kerry (Vietnam Veterans against the War spokesman), and several Congressmen as speakers. It was considered the largest anti-war assembly in Minnesota to date. Protests in Minnesota took place within a nationwide context of anti-Vietnam War demonstrations, as well as other social movements that mobilized large numbers of people. Such acts of protest and resistance drew public attention and built up domestic pressure on the US government to gradually withdraw American troops from Vietnam by 1975.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/E455 p7.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/anti-vietnam-war-movement-1963-1973"},{"alt":"Nymore Bridge","author":[{"name":"Cecelia Wattles McKeig","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/cecelia-wattles-mckeig"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"February 01, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Nymore Bridge","postbody":"Spanning a narrow stretch of the Mississippi River in Bemidji, the Nymore Bridge is a notable example of early-twentieth-century construction. Completed in 1917, it owes its success to ...","searchtext":"Spanning a narrow stretch of the Mississippi River in Bemidji, the Nymore Bridge is a notable example of early-twentieth-century construction. Completed in 1917, it owes its success to innovative engineering, attractive design, and local funding. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1989. Approximately fifty river-miles northeast of its headwaters in Lake Itasca, the Mississippi River flows out of Lake Irving for a short stretch before entering Lake Bemidji. A wooden bridge spanned this section of the river in Bemidji’s early years. In addition to regular traffic from the city center to the southeastern village of Nymore, it supported heavier loads from sawmills and farms. Repairs were frequently required, and as early as 1911, the street commissioner declared the bridge unsafe. Finally, in 1916, the city council passed a resolution for a more substantial structure. Estimated costs rose greatly in that interim, partially because of the effect of World War I on material prices. Although the bid prices shocked the council’s members, they did not choose the cheapest, all-steel option. Instead, they opted for a three-arch, steel-reinforced concrete bridge. They then bargained with the lowest bidder, Illinois Steel Company, whose St. Paul agents agreed to reduce their royalties for a final price of $22,772. Only after the completion of bridge construction, however, did the city act on a bond to pay for it. Several worldwide trends give context to the Nymore Bridge. First, the Good Roads Movement of the early twentieth century supported safe and reliable infrastructure in rural areas. At the same time, the ongoing City Beautiful Movement advocated aesthetic civic design choices. The visually appealing design of the bridge reflected this value, with Classical Revival elements such as raised concrete panels, decorative lampposts, and gaslights. The era also saw bridge engineers experimenting with new methods. George M. Cheney’s patent specified the pouring of concrete over an intricate steel grid. The embedded structure aimed to eliminate or minimize the appearance of unattractive cracks, even though they did not affect bridge stability or strength. This method incorporated structural integrity and beauty. Original plans called for the bridge to be completed and opened on January 1, 1917. Contractor disputes, however, not to mention winter weather in northern Minnesota, caused construction delays. When it was finally completed in October 1917, the bridge measured 168 feet long and thirty-one feet wide, with a center span of sixty-five feet. The Nymore Bridge was the last city-funded crossing built over the Mississippi between Lake Irving and Lake Bemidji. In 1934, the federal Works Progress Administration (WPA) sponsored construction of a new bridge just 100 feet downstream, thereby downgrading the Nymore Bridge. When double State Highway 197 bridges opened in 2002, city officials blocked the Nymore Bridge on one end, closing it to anything more than foot or bicycle traffic. In 2019, the city of Bemidji remains the bridge’s owner.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/1607 Nymore Bridge pic.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246053,"name":"Transportation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/nymore-bridge"},{"alt":"Train blocked by snow near Windom","author":[{"name":"Janelle Kaye","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/janelle-kaye"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"January 29, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Cottonwood County Blizzard, 1936","postbody":"Early twentieth-century winters in Minnesota were a hardship for the state’s residents―including those of Cottonwood County. Newcomers, hearing stories about the weather, soon learned that ...","searchtext":"Early twentieth-century winters in Minnesota were a hardship for the state’s residents―including those of Cottonwood County. Newcomers, hearing stories about the weather, soon learned that the accounts weren||t exaggerated. A few storms stand out, but the blizzard of 1936 topped them all. The first settler-colonists of Westbrook Township had intimate experience with Minnesota||s harsh winter weather. A severe blizzard that hit the area on January 7, 1873, continued for three days. The |||Winter of the Big Snow||| (1880–1881) left snow on the ground from October to April. The blizzard of January 1909 left huge drifts that blocked doors, forcing some people to leave their homes through upstairs windows. The winter of 1936 was a memorable occasion that surpassed even these earlier storms. Temperatures dropped to 30 degrees below zero in late January and did not rise above zero for thirty-six days. This 1936 North American cold wave ranks among the most intense in the recorded history of North America. The winter (December through February) of 1935/36 was the coldest on record for Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota, with February being the coldest month. Although the wind, snow, and temperatures were similar to previous memorable winters, they impacted residents in different ways. Farmers were not lost in their ox carts or frozen on their property a few yards from their homes, but stranded by automobiles and trains and interruptions of electric power. Several feet of snow accompanied the cold. Farmers strung ropes between their farmhouses and barns to prevent themselves from getting lost even on short walks outside. Even brief exposure was dangerous, since frost bite and hypothermia could occur in a few minutes. Many animals died. On some days, winds and snow were so intense that farmers could not see their fingers stretched out in front of them. Blocked food and fuel deliveries created critical shortages by the end of the first week of February. By the middle of the month, all schools were closed by deep snowdrifts, and medical aid was delayed by a shortage of serum. In a February 14, 1936, account of the blizzard in the Windom Reporter, a reporter stated that the snow halted train and truck service from early Saturday to Monday night. The storm hit the Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Omaha railroad especially hard, and the line between Mountain Lake and Butterfield short-circuited most of the day. 209 passengers on this train waited for nearly twelve hours for the snow to be cleared. With roads closed by large drifts, churches canceled their services on Sunday and schools were closed to students on Monday. Rural schools in Cottonwood County lost approximately a month of class time that winter. Frozen water pipes overwhelmed plumbing establishments, automobiles refused to start, and the wire service was impeded, though not totally paralyzed. The blizzard caused medical emergencies and made it difficult for doctors to attend their patients. Doctors at the Windom Hospital treated two cases of frozen feet. People with severe injuries and illnesses managed with the ingenuity and help of others to get to hospitals and receive the help they needed. One doctor from Westbrook reportedly reached a pneumonia patient in Storden on skis. A farmer with a badly cut hand stopped the bleeding and the following day hitched a ride with a snow plow to the hospital. The early February blizzard wasn||t the end of Cottonwood County||s winter woes in 1936. A storm on February 17 stopped trains and mail service for two days. After a promising thaw, another storm a week later dropped ten inches of snow, again bringing transportation in the county to a standstill.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/HE6 43 p11.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/cottonwood-county-blizzard-1936"},{"alt":"CCC-ID workers from Nett Lake","author":[{"name":"Harlen LaFontaine","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/harlen-lafontaine"},{"name":"Margaret Vaughan","slug":"/mnopedia/search/index/author/margaret-vaughan"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"January 23, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Civilian Conservation Corps-Indian Division","postbody":"Between 1933 and 1943, Native Americans worked on their lands as part of the Civilian Conservation Corps-Indian Division, run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). More than 2,000 Native ...","searchtext":"Between 1933 and 1943, Native Americans worked on their lands as part of the Civilian Conservation Corps-Indian Division, run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). More than 2,000 Native families in Minnesota benefited from the wages as participants developed work skills and communities gained infrastructure like roads and wells. The federal public work program known as the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) formed in 1933 in response to the soaring unemployment rates of the Great Depression. Native American communities faced deeper poverty and hardship than many others, prompting the BIA to create a CCC division that could bring jobs and skills training to reservations. First called the Indian Emergency Conservation Work program (IECW), it was eventually renamed the Civilian Conservation Corps-Indian Division (CCC-ID). Beginning in 1933, Ojibwe and Dakota work crews in Minnesota signed on with the CCC-ID to provide income for themselves and their families. The BIA ran the program and allotted federal funding for the CCC-ID for about nine years. The Consolidated Chippewa Agency (serving White Earth, Nett Lake, Grand Portage, Fond du Lac, Mille Lacs, Leech Lake) and the Red Lake Agency both registered Ojibwe people in the program with the help of Ojibwe social worker and CCC-ID employee Isabella Robideau. The Minnesota Sioux Agency registered Dakota men from Eggleston, Prairie Island, Shakopee, Granite Falls, Morton, Pipestone, and Prior Lake. Men seventeen years and older as well as some women worked on CCC-ID projects that mattered to their communities, both on and off reservations. They experienced fewer military-style regulations in their work lives than those in the rest of the CCC, and some Ojibwe workers spoke Anishinaabemowin in addition to English. Men held positions as camp managers, assistant foremen, draftsmen, transit operators, mechanics, machine operators, blacksmiths, and laborers. They sometimes worked through the winter and in bad weather. The CCC-ID offered classes on topics like fighting forest fires and using building tools. In July 1935, the Consolidated Chippewa agency offered classes in forestry, bookkeeping, art, English, and history. Nett Lake’s offerings included science, mechanics, chorus, art, English, drama, shorthand, and tap dancing. Consolidated Chippewa crews cleared pathways like the Blacklock Trail—described as “mostly uphill”—for the transportation of fire personnel and horses. They strung telephone wire, built fire look-out towers, and even fought forest fires directly. They also cleared bushes in white pine forests to prevent blister rust. Consolidated Chippewa workers took on two of the CCC-ID’s largest-scale projects. For the first, completed at Grand Portage between 1939 and 1940, they rebuilt the historic site’s stockade and gathered archeological objects for donation to the Cook County Historical Society. Thanks in part to their efforts, the nine-mile Grand Portage Trail, a site of cultural and historical importance to the Ojibwe, later became the Grand Portage National Monument. For the second project, a thirty-five-person unit from White Earth made a wild rice site at Rice Lake more accessible by building a log walkway, constructing docks and canals, clearing five ten-acre campsites, and adding restrooms. A Nett Lake crew also worked on a rice camp project. The workers left projects when necessary in order to gather wild rice with their families. Blister-rust work at Red Lake meant cutting, clearing, and burning bushes and stumps to protect white pines from the spores of currant bushes. Crews there also did fire prevention work, and one project at Ponemah Camp created a tree nursery. Workers grew trees in the Experimental Plot project, made maple syrup, and surveyed and mapped 80,000 acres of the Red Lake forest. The Red Lake Agency offered classes in first aid, forestry, communication, and current events. The Minnesota Sioux Agency’s projects varied. From 1934 to 1936, one Dakota crew worked in the Pipestone quarry to create picnic areas and a visitors’ shelter, laying the groundwork for the Pipestone National Monument. Another dug wells and installed water pipes for the local community. Workmen also cleared trees around a school and erected a railing of posts and wire to mark boundaries between reservation and non-reservation land. The CCC-ID dissolved in 1943 when the federal government diverted attention and funding to World War II. By then, Native Americans from multiple Minnesota communities had gained wages, work experience (including management experience), and some improvements in living conditions.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/E445.2 p10.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246055,"name":"Labor","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246059,"name":"Native Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/civilian-conservation-corps-indian-division"},{"alt":"Colorvision Cake advertisement","author":[{"name":"Emma Dill","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/emma-dill"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"January 23, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Betty Crocker Cake Mix","postbody":"General Mills did not invent cake mix, but in the early 1950s, Betty Crocker helped make it nationally popular as a staple of the American pantry. In 1933, P. Duff and Sons, a Pittsburgh ...","searchtext":"General Mills did not invent cake mix, but in the early 1950s, Betty Crocker helped make it nationally popular as a staple of the American pantry. In 1933, P. Duff and Sons, a Pittsburgh molasses company, patented the first cake mix after blending dehydrated molasses with dehydrated flour, sugar, eggs, and other ingredients. The mix required only water and baking to yield gingerbread. By 1947, more than 200 companies produced cake mixes for regional distribution, but consumers were skeptical. Packaging was often inadequate and jeopardized the mix’s quality. Mixes remained expensive, produced inconsistent results, and lacked flavor. Some companies added soap to lighten the consistency. After World War II, many women who had replaced soldiers in industrial jobs during the war resumed their domestic lives. American gender roles, however, had permanently shifted. In 1950, one in four married women was employed. With the return of domesticity and a newfound lack of time, women turned to products like Minute Rice and Reddi-Whip. Contrary to corporate predictions, women used convenience foods reluctantly, adopting them as ingredients in from-scratch recipes. After four years of development, General Mills debuted its Betty Crocker Ginger Cake mix in 1947. General Mills joined the convenience-food movement because flour sales had been declining since the 1920s. Higher postwar incomes allowed families to buy bread instead of baking it. These higher incomes, coupled with increased nutritional awareness, drove households away from potatoes and breads toward diets of fruits, vegetables, and meats. General Mills hoped to compensate these flour losses with mix sales. In 1949, General Mills debuted Devil’s Food and Party Cake mixes. Party Cake allowed consumers to prepare a white, yellow, or spice cake, depending on the eggs and spices added. Betty Crocker continually debuted new flavors: yellow cake and white cake in 1952, Honey Spice and Angel Food in 1953, marble in 1954, and chocolate in 1955. Unlike other “convenience” foods, for many women cakes symbolized femininity and household happiness. Women felt pressured to perfect the homemade cake. A 1953 Gallup poll ranked cake the second “real test of a woman’s ability to cook,” behind apple pie. Domestic ideals split American women; - some accepted mixes while others clung to recipes. Although cake mix sales tripled between January 1947 and August 1948, they soon plateaued. General Mills asked marketing expert Ernest Dichter to find out why. After interviewing groups of women, Dichter concluded that the simplicity of mixes made them feel too self-indulgent. So, General Mills removed dried eggs, requiring women to add their own. Sales improved. In 1954, Betty Crocker debuted Answer Cake—cake and frosting mix pre-packaged in a pan—and marketed it to small families. Although later discontinued, Answer Cake returned as Stir ‘n Frost mix in 1976. Betty Crocker’s Chiffon cake mixes came out in 1958. Chiffon combined the richness of butter cake with the lightness of sponge cake and was created by celebrity caterer Harry Baker. In affluent postwar America, products flooded grocery shelves, forcing companies to creatively sell their products to stay competitive. Betty Crocker, General Mills’s fictional homemaker mascot, embodied quality and value. General Mills used Crocker’s image to refute popular perception of mixes as “shortcuts.” Some Crocker devotees were shocked to see her marketing mixes. General Mills drew female shoppers with “high impact” colors, such as their red packaging. It advertised with television commercials and even promoted a fourth meal consisting of Betty Crocker cake. Ads inundated women with reminders of their frantically busy schedules to sell “shortcuts” like mixes. The company also steered attention away from the mix’s ease of preparation by promoting lavish frosting designs on packaging and in cookbooks. Appearance became the standard for success, trumping flavor and texture. The importance of appearance is exemplified in the success of Betty Crocker’s Picture Cookbook. Published in 1950, it sold over one million copies in its first year. By the 1950s, General Mills, Duncan Hines, and Pillsbury monopolized the cake mix market. In 1977, General Mills, inspired by Pillsbury, added pudding to its mixes to make them more moist. Since then, General Mills has marketed an array of cake mix formulas and flavors, including Stir’n Streusel and Light Style, a mix with one third fewer calories than the original. Betty Crocker cake mix remains popular in the 2010s.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Colorvision Cake Ad_1.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/betty-crocker-cake-mix"},{"alt":"Entrance to the Carlos Avery Game Farm","author":[{"name":"Johannes Allert","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/johannes-allert"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"January 23, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Carlos Avery Game Farm","postbody":"In the mid-twentieth century, Anoka County||s Carlos Avery Game Farm helped to build populations of dwindling game bird species, such as the bob white quail, chukar partridge, and ...","searchtext":"In the mid-twentieth century, Anoka County||s Carlos Avery Game Farm helped to build populations of dwindling game bird species, such as the bob white quail, chukar partridge, and ring-necked pheasant. A National Register-listed historic district since 1991, it is now part of the nearly 25,000-acre Carlos Avery Wildlife Management Area (WMA) and has become a reserve for deer, waterfowl, and other woodland animals and birds. The Minnesota Department of Conservation (MDC, later the Department of Natural Resources) bought 8478.73 acres of land from the Crex Carpet Company in 1933 for a wildlife refuge. The land, which the company had used to grow a type of wire grass used in rug manufacturing, covered portions of Anoka and Chisago counties and included swamp land, three lakes, and woods. It was named the Carlos Avery Game Refuge in honor of Minnesota||s first commissioner of conservation. The superintendent of the MDC, Frank Blair, saw the land as the perfect location for a game-bird breeding program. He worked with Walter D. MacLieth, an architect with the Division of Game and Fish, to design a modern facility for raising bob white quail and chukar partridge within the refuge. The Works Progress Administration (WPA) agreed to build it. Construction began in January 1936 for the first structures on the property, a barn and a storage building. A house for the gamekeeper was completed later that summer. More buildings followed in 1937, including a heating plant, power plant, garage, incubation building, and superintendent||s house. MacLieth designed each building in a Colonial style, with white-painted clapboard siding and green-stained wood shingles. Later additions included several brood shelters, a pump house, and an iron flagpole with a limestone base. Governor Elmer Benson dedicated the Carlos Avery Game Farm on October 16, 1938. The WPA covered 85 percent of the $40,887 cost of construction. In 1937, the game farm began to raise 700 chukar eggs and 200 pairs of bob white quail as part of a bird-species propagation program. The first year||s yield resulted in 2,879 quail, including 1000 kept for breeding, and 469 partridges. By 1940, the yield had increased to 22,664 quail and 19,449 partridges. The MDC stopped raising partridges at the farm in 1947, but the bobwhite quail program continued until 1955. A total of 150,000 quail were released into the wild before that program ended. A shortage of pheasants prompted the creation of a new program in 1947 to produce ring-necked pheasants. Farmers, members of sportsmen||s clubs, and others received day-old pheasant chicks to raise until they reached six weeks of age and could be released. The farm produced up to 100,000 pheasants each year, though many chicks did not survive. The MDC began to rebuild Minnesota||s Canada goose population in the late 1950s. In the 1970s, the focus of wildlife management shifted from propagation of species to improving habitat and providing a food supply. The Department of Natural Resources (DNR) phased out the goose program in the early 1970s and the pheasant program in 1981. On August 9, 1991, the National Park Service (NPS) added the Carlos Avery Game Farm Historic District to the National Register of Historic Places. The listing recognized the unique architecture of the eleven remaining structures. The NPS recognized its significance as |||one of the largest and best equipped game farms in the nation||| when it opened in 1937 and its value as an early example of wildlife management in Minnesota. Approximately every other year, the DNR adds carefully reviewed land to the Carlos Avery Wildlife Management Area. It allows birdwatching, hunting, angling, and trapping (by special permit). In 2018, the WMA exceeded 24,600 acres. 4,500 acres are designated as a wildlife sanctuary, with no hunting or public access allowed. Staff work to maintain buildings, roads, and grounds, carefully review potential land purchases, and carry out controlled burns. They grow crops of corn, rye, and root vegetables to feed deer and other woodland animals, birds, and waterfowl.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/657.1.06.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/carlos-avery-game-farm"},{"alt":"Influenza awareness poster","author":[{"name":"Mary Laine","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/mary-laine"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"January 18, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Influenza Epidemic in Minnesota, 1918","postbody":"“I had a little bird, its name was Enza. I opened the window, and In-Flu-Enza!” Children innocently sang this rhyme while playing and skipping rope during the 1918 influenza pandemic, which ...","searchtext":"“I had a little bird, its name was Enza. I opened the window, and In-Flu-Enza!” Children innocently sang this rhyme while playing and skipping rope during the 1918 influenza pandemic, which caused an estimated fifty million deaths worldwide. 675,000 of these were in the United States; over 10,000 were in Minnesota. The influenza virus that caused the worldwide pandemic originated in Haskell County, Kansas, in early 1918. By March, 100 soldiers at Camp Funston, Kansas, now Fort Riley, became ill with the flu. As the soldiers were deployed to fight in World War I, they carried the virus with them and spread it rapidly worldwide. The first flu case in Minnesota was reported in Wells in the last week of September in a soldier who had returned home on leave (train travel was effective in spreading the virus). Additional cases were quickly reported in other areas of the state. It produced high death rates among children younger than five years old, adults sixty-five years and older, and, more unusual, people between twenty and forty years old. Signs of the disease appeared quickly, and a victim could be healthy in the morning and dying by late evening. Extreme and agonizing symptoms included cough, exhaustion, general body pain, chills, fever, congestion, and bleeding from body orifices. Victims could develop highly unusual, devastating lung damage resulting in pneumonia, cyanosis (blue skin), and quick death, or secondary bacterial pneumonia. The intensity and speed of the disease stunned doctors. The flu, also known as the grip or grippe, occurred in three waves in 1918: March to early summer; the fall; and winter extending into early 1919. The highest mortality occurred during the second wave, when returning troops brought the virus home. Although named the Spanish flu, it did not originate in Spain. Spain, however, was the first country to report cases since its newspapers were not under war censorship. The hospital at Fort Snelling admitted its first case of influenza on September 27. Within ten days, 850 patients had been admitted, most with the flu. Two hundred of those developed pneumonia, with sixty-one deaths. Most of the patients were men under the age of twenty who had enrolled in the Students’ Army Training Corps (SATC) at the University of Minnesota. Close contact in classrooms and barracks was likely the cause of the explosive spread of the infection. The epidemic peaked there around October 15. From November 5 through November 16, 1918, the Aitkin Base Hospital admitted 158 patients. Upon admission, 122 were diagnosed with influenza and twenty-seven with pneumonia. Seven people with the same last name from Andersonville, probably a family, were admitted on November 5—five with influenza and two with pneumonia. To reduce the spread of the flu, health officials directed Minnesotans to rest, use handkerchiefs, and go to bed and contact a doctor if symptoms arose. They discouraged standing in crowds, spitting on floors and sidewalks, and sharing drinking cups and towels. Government officials throughout the state closed public spaces in an attempt to prevent the spread of the flu. Schools, libraries, dance and pool halls, theaters, bowling alleys, churches, and lodge halls were shuttered. Public events such as parties, meetings, and funerals were banned. After children in Bemidji flooded a school playground on the Sunday after school was closed, the mayor authorized ten men to patrol the city to ensure the stay-at-home ban was respected. The epidemic affected multiple areas of community life. In St. Paul, operating elevators in buildings with less than seven stories was prohibited to reduce human contact. Streetcar drivers were directed to keep their windows open so that fresh air could circulate; the number of riders allowed was reduced. Retail businesses could not advertise sales and their hours were regulated. Postal carriers and the Boy Scouts delivered influenza information to homes, stores, and offices, but compliance with the regulations was variable. On the night before the public events ban went into effect in Minneapolis, people gathered in lines outside theaters despite the risk of disease exposure. While some protested the changes, monetary cost, and income loss while complying with the rules, others blatantly defied them. Minneapolis and St. Paul health officials were inconsistent in managing the epidemic in their cities. Dr. Henry Bracken, the secretary of the Minnesota State Board of Health during the epidemic, expressed frustration with the shortage of nurses and doctors to care for the sick. One-third of doctors were already supporting the war effort, and others were in northern Minnesota caring for forest fire victims. Others were sick themselves, had died from the flu, or feared exposure to the disease. Burial of the dead was complicated by a shortage of coffins. Undertakers, grave diggers, pall bearers, and clergy were also ill and dying. The Warren Sheaf in Marshall County reported that influenza claimed the life of a couple who were married on October 23. The bride died on Thursday afternoon, October 31, and the groom died the following morning. They were buried in the same grave. The priest who married them died on November 2, ten days after the ceremony. On November 22, Captain F. L. Smith, medical director of the Northern Military District of the Home Guard, reported on his tour of the towns and hospitals in his area. He closed the schools in Kimberly and Aitkin. By then, the epidemic had ended in McGregor, but Brookston had thirty-three flu and ten pneumonia cases in the hospital, with sixty people being treated at home. Eight people were in the Floodwood hospital and 160 patients had been treated in Automba—eighty with the flu and fifteen with pneumonia. A good portion of the area had also been severely damaged by the forest fires. In 1920, the Minnesota State Board of Health reported that there had been 257 influenza deaths in 1917 (before the new strain of the virus entered the state). That number jumped to 7,521 in 1918 and 2,579 in 1919. The majority of the deaths occurred from October 1918 through January 1919—October, 2105 deaths; November, 3,260; December, 2010; January, 1012. During that same period, Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Duluth reported 1,103, 944, and 327 deaths, respectively. The number of deaths due to influenza dropped dramatically by the spring of 1919. In May 1919, the Office of Indian Affairs, Department of the Interior, reported that the Native American population in Minnesota was 5,792. From October 1, 1918, to March 31, 1919, there were 1,633 influenza cases in this hard-hit group. Eighty-five deaths resulted, with a fatality rate of five in 100. (The data were likely incomplete, and it is unknown whether the deaths of Native Americans were included in the state total.) Since there was no effective vaccine or antibiotics to treat flu complications, people turned to home and commercial remedies. A Dr. Delmore in Roseau County advised eating squirrel soup. Gargling with disinfectant solutions and wearing gauze masks to prevent exposure to cough and sneeze droplets was common. Quarantine to prevent exposure was the primary means of managing the epidemic. In 1918, viruses were unknown, and the cause of influenza was incorrectly attributed to a bacterium known as Pfeiffer’s bacillus. It wasn’t until the 1930s that scientists proved that the flu is caused by viruses. Editor’s note: A pandemic is not equivalent to an epidemic. In an epidemic, a disease affects large numbers of people within a relatively local community, such as a city or county or state. In a pandemic, a disease affects people across a broader area, such as a nation or continent. Therefore, the sections of this article that refer to the worldwide influenza crisis of 1918 use the word pandemic; those that refer to the spread of influenza inside Minnesota, including the title, use the word epidemic.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/nlm_nlmuid-101580385-img_cropped.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246087,"name":"Health and Medicine","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/influenza-epidemic-minnesota-1918"},{"alt":"Arthur Peterson","author":[{"name":"Becky Colebank","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/becky-colebank"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"January 16, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Peterson, Arthur O. “Colorado Pete” (1896‒1932)","postbody":"Though his life was tragically short, Colorado Pete made his mark on the history of Clearwater County, Minnesota, through both his civic activities and his poetry. Arthur Owen Peterson ...","searchtext":"Though his life was tragically short, Colorado Pete made his mark on the history of Clearwater County, Minnesota, through both his civic activities and his poetry. Arthur Owen Peterson (also spelled Pederson) was born in Fosston, Minnesota, on July 23, 1896, to parents P. H. and Minnie Peterson. P. H. (Peder) and Minnie were naturalized citizens originally from Norway, having immigrated with their young son Andie in 1895. They moved twelve miles east to Bagley, Minnesota, in April of 1898 to open the second general store in the new and growing town. Peder’s brother Hans came from Norway to join him, and the brothers operated Peterson Hardware on Main Street. By 1905 the Peterson family had grown to include four sons: Andie, Arthur, Harold, and Peder M. Arthur was sixteen when he graduated from Bagley High School in 1913. After high school he headed to southern Minnesota to attend Carleton College in Northfield. In the fall of 1917 Arthur taught at a high school in Hendrum, Minnesota, (about eighty miles southwest of Bagley.) The United States joined World War I in the spring and Arthur resigned his teaching job to enlist in the Army. He was mustered in on April 13, 1918, at Jefferson Barracks, Missouri, and then was sent to Camp Hamilton, New York, for training. On July 14, 1918, Peterson was shipped overseas to France as a sergeant in the Fifty-fourth Coast Artillery Corps. He spent eight months in Brest, Houssimont, and Angers. After the war ended Peterson, ill with amoebic dysentery, was discharged and returned to Bagley in March of 1919. His disease was common among soldiers in the trenches and led to lifelong health complications. Peterson and other veterans organized Post 16 of the Bagley American Legion in 1919, and Peterson became its first commander. He was considered an enthusiastic worker as he organized novelty dances and became chief “stunt and fun producer” for convention tours. Around this time, he purchased the Bagley Herald newspaper and became its outspoken editor. In the 1920s, Peterson’s health started to deteriorate. Diary entries show a cycle of periods of fever and tiredness, gradual recovery, and short-lived reinvigoration before fever again set in. In the summer of 1921 he spent a short time in Fairview Hospital in Minneapolis and returned home feeling so much improved that he decided to take a job in Chicago working for the Illinois Agricultural Association. His good health didn’t last, and he was soon back in Minnesota consulting the Mayo Clinic. On February 19, 1923, Peterson wrote in his diary, “I called in the afternoon and two doctors gave me the hard-to-take dope.” He had tuberculosis. Shortly after his diagnosis he applied and was accepted to the Woodmen Tuberculosis Sanitarium in Woodmen, Colorado. He spent thirteen months there being treated for his lung disease with the thin, cool air, bedrest, and sunshine. While at the sanitarium, Peterson learned basket weaving and knitting to fill his time. It was there he started writing poetry and was soon sending his poems to the Chicago Tribune, where they were published under the pen name “Colorado Pete.” The Chicago Tribune had a readership of 700,000 people by 1926 and it published 111 of Arthur’s poems. The first of them, “The Dentist Intervenes,” appeared on September 14, 1923. Arthur’s health improved and he returned to Bagley in 1924. The improvement, however, didn’t last long, and he spent the winter of 1924‒25 at the Veterans’ Hospital in Whipple, Arizona, and the winter of 1925‒26 at Fort Snelling, all the while publishing poems in the Chicago Tribune. He improved for short periods of time, but his final hospitalization occurred at Fort Snelling in October of 1930, where he died from a massive hemorrhage of his lungs on February 15, 1932, at the age of thirty-five. Although his life was short, Peterson brightened the community and added a bit of color to the history of Clearwater County. Upon being notified of his death, the Chicago Tribune noted, “Most of you . . . knew him only through his beautiful poems in the Line; but to those who knew Arthur Owen Peterson personally, he was, more even than a fine poet, a brave and gallant lad.”","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/colorado pete uniform.jpeg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246087,"name":"Health and Medicine","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/peterson-arthur-o-colorado-pete-1896-1932"},{"alt":"First Section of Battery B, 151st Field Artillery Battalion","author":[{"name":"Jack K. Johnson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/jack-k-johnson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"January 10, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"151st Field Artillery Regiment","postbody":"The 151st Field Artillery is one of the oldest, most decorated units in the Minnesota National Guard. Its performance in combat during World War I as part of the Forty-second “Rainbow” ...","searchtext":"The 151st Field Artillery is one of the oldest, most decorated units in the Minnesota National Guard. Its performance in combat during World War I as part of the Forty-second “Rainbow” Division, and during World War II with the Thirty-fourth “Red Bull” Division, drew high praise from senior Army commanders and remains a source of pride to the soldiers in its ranks. The 151st traces its beginnings to the Civil War. Organized at Fort Snelling in 1864 as the First Regiment of Heavy Artillery, Minnesota Volunteers, it took charge of heavy guns surrounding Chattanooga, Tennessee. After the war, it emerged as a light artillery battery in Minnesota’s fledgling National Guard. In 1893, it became the First Battalion of Artillery, consisting of Battery A in St. Paul and Battery B in Minneapolis. By 1913 it had grown into a regiment—the First Minnesota Field Artillery—with a First Battalion in St. Paul and Second Battalion in Minneapolis. Each battalion had three firing batteries. Border attacks in 1916 by Mexican revolutionaries prompted President Wilson to activate the National Guard. The First Minnesota Field Artillery went to Camp Llano Grande on the southern tip of Texas. For seven months, it trained and patrolled the border along the Rio Grande. It was activated again when the US entered Europe’s stalemated “Great War” in April 1917. The Army re-designated the regiment as the 151st Field Artillery and assigned it to a newly-created Forty-second “Rainbow” Division, made up of National Guard units from all parts of the country (thus the name “Rainbow”). Commanded by Colonel George E. Leach of Minneapolis, the 151st shipped to France, where it fired French 75mm guns in six campaigns: Lorraine 1918, Champagne 1918, Champagne-Marne, Aisne-Marne, St. Mihiel, and the climactic Meuse-Argonne. An armistice was signed on November 11, 1918, ending the war. Although the entire Minnesota National Guard had been called up, the 151st—nicknamed the “Gopher Gunners”—was the only Minnesota National Guard unit to see combat. It received a tumultuous hero’s welcome upon returning home to Minnesota in May 1919. The regiment became part of the Thirty-fourth Infantry Division when it was reconstituted in 1921. In February 1941, with Europe already at war, the Thirty-fourth Division was activated for a year of precautionary training at Camp Claiborne, Louisiana. Enlistments were extended for the duration when the US entered World War II that December. The Army restructured its infantry divisions and the regiment’s First Battalion was re-designated as the 151st Field Artillery Battalion; its Second Battalion became the 175th Field Artillery Battalion. The new battalion embarked from New York harbor with other elements of the Thirty-fourth Division on January 15, 1942, becoming the very first contingent of American troops to sail for Europe in the war. After training in Northern Ireland, the unit proceeded to the battlefields of Tunisia. From mid-February to mid-May 1943, it fired British 25-pounder howitzers against German forces until the enemy withdrew from North Africa. In September 1943, the battalion was temporarily attached to the Thirty-sixth Infantry Division to aid in establishing a beachhead at Salerno, Italy. After rejoining the Thirty-fourth, it provided artillery support—now using US M2 105mm howitzers—for the tough Italian campaigns that followed: Naples-Foggia; Anzio; Rome-Arno; North Apennines; and, finally, Po Valley. The war in Europe ended in May 1945. By the time the 151st got back to the US in November, its battle-hardened soldiers had spent over four years and eight months on active duty. When war swept over Korea in the summer of 1950, the US immediately dispatched troops to aid the South Koreans. The 151st, as part of the Forty-seventh “Viking” Infantry Division, was sent in January 1951 to Camp Rucker, Alabama. For two years it trained replacements for combat units in the Far East Command. Few National Guardsmen were activated to fight in Vietnam (1964‒73), although some units, including the 151st, were designated as a Selected Reserve Force (SRF). They received additional training and prepared for deployment on short notice, but the call never came. After the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the Guard became an operational force of the Army rather than a strategic reserve. This meant that for most National Guard soldiers, deployments became the “new normal” due to on-going conflict in the Middle East. The First Battalion, 151st Field Artillery, deployed to Iraq for a year in 2005‒2006 and to Kuwait and Iraq in 2009‒2010.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/B 151FA June42_edited.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/151st-field-artillery-regiment"},{"alt":"David Park House pic #1_0","author":[{"name":"Cecelia Wattles McKeig","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/cecelia-wattles-mckeig"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"January 07, 2019","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"David and Wanda Park House, Bemidji","postbody":"The David Park House in Bemidji is an outstanding example of residential Streamline Moderne architecture. It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1988. The David Park ...","searchtext":"The David Park House in Bemidji is an outstanding example of residential Streamline Moderne architecture. It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1988. The David Park house (1501 Birchmont Drive Northeast) was built in 1936‒37 for the Park family by a young unknown architect named Edward Mahlum in an undeveloped neighborhood on the north end of Bemidji. By choice, it was in a wooded area across from one of the earliest buildings on the campus of the Bemidji State Teachers College. The neighborhood included Diamond Point Park, which was a rustic camping area, and a popular small zoo. Little else, however, existed in the way of residential development. David Park bought the entire block of land, giving him control over the choice of neighbors. David Park purchased the Koors Brothers Creamery Company in 1926 and converted it to the David Park Creamery and built it into a highly successful business enterprise. He promised his wife that he would eventually build her a fine home. He attended the Chicago World’s Fair in 1933, and this exposure to the Art Deco designs (featured in that fair’s theme of “Century of Progress”) likely influenced his choice of Edward K. Mahlum as his architect. He chose a local contractor named Adolph Nasvik to build it. Nasvik was so impressed with the home that he later built a home next door, which some consider complimentary to the Park residence. The home was featured in Larry Millett’s book Minnesota’s Own: Preserving Our Grand Homes because of its unusual and beautiful design. Viewed from the air, it appears to be in the shape of a piano. The house was built of poured concrete, which was most unusual at a time when most homes in northern Minnesota were built of wood. One of the most remarkable features was a three-story brass railing on the curved staircase. It was necessary to install the railing at an early point in the construction before the house could be closed in around it. David and Edna Park moved into the house in late 1937. Edna had only a few short years in the house as she died of cancer in 1941. He married Wanda Hartman Batchelder in 1944. The neighborhood children were fascinated with the house. Each Christmas, the family allowed one of the Park grandchildren to choose the colors for a gigantic Christmas tree that was placed in the front window. In one year it was a white flocked tree with orange lights; in another, it was a purple flocked tree with white lights. Visitors and locals also marveled at one of the home’s inhabitants in particular: “Megaw,” the family’s pet monkey. David Park was proud of his unique home. His daughters, Margaret and Mary, recalled that he often invited guests to tour the house even though they were already asleep in their rooms. He loved to entertain, and one of his most famous guests was Eleanor Roosevelt. When she visited Bemidji in 1955, Park was shocked to learn that no one had planned a reception for her. As was his custom, he organized an impromptu reception at the house. Park continued to live in the home until his death in 1977. In 1992, Wanda Park deeded the house to the Bemidji State University Foundation. The building underwent extensive renovations, but workers took care to retain its original interior elements and style. In 2018, it houses the offices of the Foundation and the Alumni Association.","src":"https://www3.mnhs.org/hubfs/Mnopedia%20Blogs/David%20Park%20House%20pic%20%231_0.jfif","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/david-and-wanda-park-house-bemidji"},{"alt":"Official senatorial portrait of Henrik Shipstead","author":[{"name":"Christian Bjornson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/christian-bjornson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"December 31, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Shipstead, Henrik (1881‒1960)","postbody":"Henrik Shipstead forged an independent path through Minnesota politics as a mayor, state representative, gubernatorial candidate, and four-term US senator. Serious yet personable, he ...","searchtext":"Henrik Shipstead forged an independent path through Minnesota politics as a mayor, state representative, gubernatorial candidate, and four-term US senator. Serious yet personable, he opposed big business and was one of the staunchest non-interventionists in Senate history, vigorously criticizing American militarism as well as entry into the League of Nations, World Court, and United Nations. Born in rural Kandiyohi County in January 1881, Shipstead was the eighth of twelve children in the Norwegian immigrant family of Saave and Christine Shipstead. He grew up listening to his politically minded father criticize big business, consumerism, and modernity while extolling the virtues of simple farmers. As a young man he was encouraged by a friend to apply to Northwestern University Dental School, from which he graduated in 1903. Later that year, Shipstead returned to western Minnesota and set up a practice in Glenwood. In 1910, at age twenty-nine, he was recruited by both of Glenwood’s rival political factions to run for mayor. He was twice elected, without opposition, to one-year terms. After refusing a third term in order to return full-time to dentistry, he was nominated and elected to the state House of Representatives in 1916. In 1917, during Shipstead’s term as a state representative, some Glenwood residents decided to form a chapter of the Nonpartisan League (NPL)—an association of progressive farmers and workers. When conservative town residents balked at giving the farmers a space to organize, Shipstead rented them a hall in his own name. His actions on behalf of the NPL endeared him to many but nonetheless made him a more controversial figure. In 1920, Shipstead unsuccessfully sought the governorship as an NPL-endorsed independent. Two years later, he was nominated by the new Farmer‒Labor Party to run against incumbent Republican US Senator Frank B. Kellogg. Enjoying added name recognition from his previous statewide campaign, he easily won the three-way contest with 47 percent of the vote, including large majorities in western and northern Minnesota as well as working-class wards in the Twin Cities. In the Senate, Shipstead emerged as a progressive advocate for farmers, workers, and small-business owners. He pursued agricultural and labor reform, natural resource preservation, inland waterway navigability, non-interventionism, rural electrification, and banking reform. His most lasting legislative accomplishments included a nine-foot shipping channel on the Mississippi River, federal protection of the sacred Pipestone Quarry, and the Shipstead-Newton-Nolan Act. Passed in 1930, the act protected what is now the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness from damming and logging. During the 1934 campaign, as Shipstead was facing a left-wing primary challenge from Congressman Francis Shoemaker, a raucous state convention of the Farmer‒Labor Party adopted a stridently left-wing platform that explicitly called for an end to capitalism. While Shipstead had serious reservations about capitalism and had long supported cooperative business ventures, the new platform contained proposals that he viewed as the result of creeping socialist and communist influence. In 1940, six years after winning reelection on the platform he now criticized, Shipstead upended the Minnesota political world by leaving the Farmer‒Labor Party and returning to the Republicans. In announcing his switch, Shipstead stressed that it was the Farmer‒Labor Party—not he—that had changed. After rejoining the GOP he reaffiliated with the left-wing of the party, alongside figures including Senators Lynn Frazier and Hiram Johnson. He remained adamantly opposed to war and belligerent internationalism even as other Minnesota Republican leaders, including Harold Stassen and Joseph Ball, worked to shift the party in that direction. When World War II came, Shipstead vigorously opposed American entry. Though he voted in favor of declaring war on Japan after Pearl Harbor, he would argue for the rest of his career that the war had been the fault of Western elites. He was one of only two senators to vote against the United Nations Charter, which he saw as an attempt by powerful countries to control less powerful ones. After failing to win reelection to a fifth term, Shipstead retired to his farm in western Minnesota in 1947. Falling short in the GOP primary for the seat he had held for the last twenty-four years was a spectacular ending for a man who had spent most of his career as “the most popular and enduring public figure in the State.”","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/por 14887 r3.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/shipstead-henrik-1881-1960"},{"alt":"Lawrence Vizenor","author":[{"name":"Jenn Johnson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/jenn-johnson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"December 21, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Vizenor, Lawrence A. (1895‒1958)","postbody":"Lawrence Alexious Vizenor (White Earth Ojibwe) left his home in Becker County, Minnesota, to enlist in the army and fight in World War I in 1918. Before mustering out the following year, he ...","searchtext":"Lawrence Alexious Vizenor (White Earth Ojibwe) left his home in Becker County, Minnesota, to enlist in the army and fight in World War I in 1918. Before mustering out the following year, he earned military honors and a promotion to corporal. Lawrence Alexious Vizenor was born on the White Earth Indian Reservation on July 15, 1895, to Mitchell and Angeline Vizenor. He grew up in White Earth but later moved to the town of Richwood, just outside the reservation, and worked as a farmer. He married Elizabeth Trotterchaud on February 11, 1918, and entered military service two weeks later, on February 25. On his registration card, he reported his race to be “mixed blood American Indian.” Private Vizenor was originally assigned to Company K of the 349 Infantry, 88th Division. He reported for training to Camp Dodge in Iowa before heading to Fort Logan in Texas. In Texas, the Army transferred him to Company I, 132nd Infantry, 33rd Division. He completed his training at Camp Upton, New York, before shipping out on the USS Mount Vernon on May 16, 1918. He arrived in Brest, France on May 24. Vizenor first saw action in the Battle of Hamel on July 4. He then fought at Chateau-Thierry; the second battle of the Marne; Beaumont; Grande Pre; St. Mihiel; Meuse-Argonne; and other locations throughout his service. On October 8, 1918, in the fighting at Bois du Fays in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, Vizenor’s actions earned him both the Silver Star and the Distinguished Service Cross, also known as the American War Cross. When heavy machine gun fire forced Vizenor||s reconnaissance patrol backward, he continued forward with another soldier and an officer. Enemy fire wounded the officer. Vizenor and the other soldier destroyed the machine gun nest and carried the officer to safety, where they delivered valuable information on the enemy||s position. On the same day, Vizenor||s brother, Ignatius, died in action at Montbrehain, France, less than 150 miles away. Vizenor remained in Europe after the signing of the Armistice on November 11, 1918. He earned a promotion from private to corporal on April 10, 1919. He returned to New York on May 17, 1919, and mustered out at Camp Dodge on May 26. After leaving the service, he lived for four more decades and died on October 5, 1958, and was buried in the Catholic Cemetery in White Earth.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/L.A.Vizenor_edited.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246059,"name":"Native Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/vizenor-lawrence-1895-1958"},{"alt":"Great Northern Railway Veterans’ Association certificate","author":[{"name":"Tom W. McMillan","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/tom-w-mcmillan"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"December 21, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Veterans’ Association of the Great Northern Railway","postbody":"The Veterans’ Association of the Great Northern Railway was organized in 1913 to encourage the fellowship of those who had served with the company for at least twenty-five years, and to ...","searchtext":"The Veterans’ Association of the Great Northern Railway was organized in 1913 to encourage the fellowship of those who had served with the company for at least twenty-five years, and to promote their general welfare. A merger of railways created a new veterans’ group in 1972. Seventy long-time Great Northern Railway employees met at the Lafayette Club on Lake Minnetonka to celebrate James J. Hill’s seventieth birthday on September 19, 1908. All in attendance had worked for the railway prior to 1880. After the celebration, several shared with Conductor W. J. McMillan a desire for a permanent group. In response, McMillan envisioned a group that would last as long as the Great Northern by adding new members when they reached the twenty-five-year mark. In time, elders would pass away, but the group would continue as younger railroaders joined. A pamphlet of the Nickel Plate Veterans’ Organization was shared with Conductor McMillan as an example of the type of organization that would work for the Great Northern. The old timers agreed and suggested going forward with a veteran employees|| group. They approached the company’s managers, who gave their approval: “Go ahead and we will back you up to the last dollar.” When the group held its initial meeting on February 13, 1913, forty-nine retired Great Northern employees attended. All were in favor of starting the Veteran’s Association, and they elected Great Northern Railway founder James J. Hill himself as a member. Hill received membership certificate No. 1, dated April 9, 1913. At the February 1913 meeting, the association also approved a constitution and by-laws and elected W. J. (William John) McMillan as its first president. The by-laws set the rules for membership, stating that “[a]ny person having been in the service of the Great Northern Railway Company, continuously for twenty-five years, shall be eligible for membership.” According to McMillan, “The object of this Association will be to foster social feeling, to maintain and create mutual interest and become mutually acquainted one with the other and promote our general welfare and good fellowship . . . There is also another object, and that is to be loyal to ourselves and loyal to our employer by rendering good service at all times.” On September 16, 1913, the Veterans’ Association met at Glacier National Park in Montana for a business meeting and to honor James J. Hill’s seventy-fifth birthday. At the time, the group had 378 members. The annual meeting held at Grand Forks, North Dakota, on September 16, 1915, again honored Hill on his birthday. Association members discussed starting a pension system for Great Northern employees during the gathering. To kick off the new program, Hill gave a personal donation of $10,000 towards the pension fund. At the meeting the next year, McMillan announced the Great Northern Railway’s contribution of one million dollars for the pension fund. The president of the railway, Louis W. Hill, selected a group of men to serve on a board of pensions and administer the fund. In 1928, the association met in Winnipeg to elect new officers. A. J. Whitaker took over as president from McMillan, who had held the role since 1913. McMillan, in turn, who could not attend the meeting due to illness, was elected to the honorary office of president emeritus. The Veterans’ Association of the Great Northern Railway held annual meetings through 1971. Fifteen hundred Great Northern veterans were expected to attend that year. The group reorganized in March 1972 after the merger of several railroads. At that time, veteran employees of the former Northern Pacific; Great Northern; Chicago, Burlington and Quincy; and the Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railways formed the Burlington Northern Veterans’ Association. Six thousand railway veterans joined the expanded group.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Louis W. Hill 5028.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246055,"name":"Labor","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246053,"name":"Transportation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/veterans-association-great-northern-railway"},{"alt":"America First Association poster","author":[{"name":"Steven R. Anderson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/steven-r-anderson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"December 21, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"America First Association","postbody":"The expression “America First” has been used by numerous American organizations and movements since at least 1914. Most of them opposed US involvement in foreign conflicts. The ...","searchtext":"The expression “America First” has been used by numerous American organizations and movements since at least 1914. Most of them opposed US involvement in foreign conflicts. The Minnesota-based America First Association (AFA) was an exception in that it was formed to support the United States’ entry into World War I. Nearly three years after the war in Europe began, the United States declared war on Germany on April 6, 1917. Soon thereafter, a group of prominent Minnesotans, including the president of the University of Minnesota, issued an invitation to “fellow citizens of Minnesota” to attend loyalty meetings in November of 1917. The letter declared that “[our] objects are to unite the people in support of the Government in its gigantic task of winning the war, and to make Americanism the paramount issue of the present.” Residents in many counties selected delegates to the primary St. Paul meeting, which was held on November 16, 1917. At this meeting, the delegates adopted the constitution for the America First Association, which would be based in St. Paul. The leaders of the AFA sought to counter what they perceived to be apathy or hostility toward the American war effort against Germany and Austria. Some labor and civic leaders continued to oppose entry into the war. According to the 1910 census, more than half of the population of Minnesota were natives of Germany, Austria, Scandinavia, or Ireland or were children of such natives, and some AFA members were concerned about their loyalty. It was thought that Scandinavians tended to be more sympathetic to Germany than to the United Kingdom. Minnesotans of Irish descent were believed to be hostile to the British. According to the president of the AFA, however, people of all backgrounds could be good Americans if they fully endorsed the American system of government and supported the war effort by, for example, participating in the Liberty Loan program. The principal activity of the war-time AFA was to conduct meetings throughout the state to promote “Americanism” in support of the war effort. Attendees at these meetings were encouraged to sign pledge cards and join the AFA. The officers and county representatives of AFA held follow-up meetings in which they reported the extent of Americanism in their communities (e.g., 90 percent Americanism). By the end of the war, the AFA claimed more than 100,000 members. The signing of the armistice ended fighting in Europe on November 11, 1918, thereby eliminating the AFA’s reason for existence. In meetings held in January of 1919, the leaders of the AFA debated whether to disband the organization. They decided to continue but to change their focus from combatting “Prussianism” to fighting socialism and Bolshevism. They also adopted a new constitution and a resolution to advance their new goals. In the records and publications of the post-war AFA, there was considerable discussion of the dangers posed to the American system of property rights and personal rights. AFA members feared, for example, socialists and their outreach to farmers, the activities of the Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W.) and other so-called radical labor unions, the Nonpartisan League (a farmers’ organization), and developments in the North Dakota government that were considered socialistic. In its 1919 meetings, the AFA planned to educate students about the virtues of the American system and the dangers of socialism. It proposed to Minnesota education officials that one class period a week be set aside for Americanization work and that one day each school year be designated “America First Day.” It is not clear from the available records for how long, if ever, these plans were implemented. The AFA demanded that English be used in schools. In 1919, the Minnesota Legislature passed a law requiring the use of English in the teaching of the basic courses. This requirement, with some exceptions, continues to the present in Minnesota law. AFA organizational records and Minneapolis newspapers do not reflect significant AFA activity after 1919. When World War II approached in the 1930s, new movements adopted the “America First” label, but they opposed, rather than supported, US involvement in Europe.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/E430 b1.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/america-first-association"},{"alt":"Immigrants by Peter Wedin","author":[{"name":"Saengmany Ratsabout","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/saengmany-ratsabout"}],"categoryTag":[],"date":"December 18, 2018","eraTag":[],"keydate":"","name":"Immigrants and Refugees in Minnesota: Connecting Past and Present","postbody":"The history of Minnesota, its statehood, and immigration are closely intertwined. In fact, it is impossible to discuss Minnesota history without detailing immigration in the past and ...","searchtext":"The history of Minnesota, its statehood, and immigration are closely intertwined. In fact, it is impossible to discuss Minnesota history without detailing immigration in the past and present. The Ojibwe and Dakota people who have made this land their home for centuries were joined and then driven out or confined by European settler-colonists and immigrants in the nineteenth century. Minnesota became a home for Swedes, Irish, Germans, and Italians in the late nineteenth century, for Poles and Mexicans in the early twentieth century, and for Hmong, Khmer, Lao, Vietnamese, Mexican, Salvadoran, Karen, and Somali people in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Minnesota’s immigrant history reveals that state and federal legislation has impacted the movement of people to the state. When nativist sentiment rose, restrictive legislation often followed. The challenges of today’s political environment have again brought to light the xenophobia of the past. Restrictions and exclusions that Southern European, Chinese, and Jewish immigrants once faced are now aimed at Muslims and other war refugees seeking to make the United States and Minnesota their home. Settler-colonists And Treaties When thinking about immigration to Minnesota, it is crucial to acknowledge the peoples that existed before the arrival of European immigrants and settler-colonists. The land inside the boundary of present-day Minnesota has long been inhabited by the Dakota and Ojibwe people. Some oral traditions state that the Dakota have lived in Mni Sota Makoce, their homeland, since their creation. Ojibwe people migrated there from the Northern Great Lakes region in the 1700s, prompting the Dakota to move deeper into the prairies and river valleys of the south and west. Through a series of treaties, land cessions, and conflicts that culminated in the 1850s and 1860s, the US government exiled most of the Dakota and restricted the Ojibwe to reservations. European immigrants from the East Coast moved west, but their expansion came at a price for the original inhabitants of the land. The Treaty of Traverse des Sioux (1851) favored European immigrants who wanted to move deeper into Native lands. It resulted in, among other things, the cession of much of what is now southern and western Minnesota. The late nineteenth century was an era of continued expansion justified by Manifest Destiny—the idea that settler-colonists were entitled and fated to cross the continent. It became the driving force of US territory purchases, treaties, and occupations. Given this mantra, it is not surprising that the Homestead Act of 1862 (and similar legislation that followed) granted homesteaders the right to settle on land newly owned by the federal government. By the end of the nineteenth century, it had granted land to more than 480,000 settler-colonists. Most of them were European immigrants unable to own land in their own countries who seized the enticing opportunity of moving to America. Many gravitated to the West and to new states and territories like Minnesota. European Immigrants For the first European immigrants, Minnesota was a place where the dream of owning land could become a reality. The possibilities it offered for employment in the timber and mining industries, along with farming opportunities, enticed people to leave their birth countries. For many, the unknown landscapes of the Minnesota river valleys, prairies, and forests offered better conditions than their homelands, where overcrowding, land competition, and famine were chronic problems. By the 1850s, settler-colonists with British roots had already ventured west to Minnesota Territory to create a “New England of the West.” Immigrants from Sweden, Norway, and Germany followed them throughout the 1860s and 1870s. They often made their way to areas where others from their home countries already lived, producing ethnic enclaves. Many Germans, for example, came to farming areas in the southern and central parts of the state. Spurred on by the Homestead Act and the thousands of new arrivals, Minnesota established a Board of Immigration in 1867 to promote immigration to the state and to assist travelers on their way to the Upper Midwest. It published pamphlets, brochures, and maps to advertise public lands available for homesteading. Norwegians, in particular, responded enthusiastically and immigrated in such numbers that roughly 50,000 lived in Minnesota by 1870 and 120,000 by 1880. They gravitated to fertile rural areas in the south, to the Twin Cities, and, eventually, to parts of the Red River Valley and Buffalo River Valley. The new immigrants quickly changed the makeup of Minnesota. By 1896, official voting instructions were offered in nine different languages: Czech, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, and Swedish. In the 1890s, 40 percent of the state’s population was foreign-born, compared to 11 percent of the US population overall. And by 1900, more than 60 percent of the state’s foreign-born population came from Germany, Norway, and Sweden. Jewish people from multiple countries came to Minnesota, too—first to St. Paul and Duluth and later to Eveleth, Virginia, Hibbing, and Chisholm. Opportunities in a new land often came with feelings of isolation. A letter sent by Finnish immigrant Bert Aalto from Big Falls, Minnesota, to his friend Hilma Aerila in 1911 recounts his loneliness: “Time goes by fast these days. I have moved since I last wrote you. I am now working in a logging site. There aren’t many Finns here, except for the six of us.” To counter this feeling, people like Aalto joined ethnic organizations and churches that helped them maintain their language and cultural heritage. Their determination to preserve their culture was so strong that in 1912, Finns in Virginia, Minnesota, petitioned their local school board to substitute Finnish for German as a foreign language requirement. This kind of national pride hurt Germans in particular when the United States entered World War I and the Minnesota Commission of Public Safety branded it a sign of disloyalty. The MCPS and other groups harassed citizens of German descent during a wave of anti-immigrant nativism that lasted through 1919. The early twentieth century saw changes in economic and living conditions in European countries that prompted more waves of immigrants to the US. Once established, like groups before them, these new immigrants served as springboards for the migration of their kin to Minnesota. Asian Immigrants And Refugees The history of Asian immigration to Minnesota dates back to the mid-1870s, when the first Chinese immigrants sought to escape the hostility and racial violence of the West Coast. In 2018, over forty different ethnic groups make up the state’s Asian American and Asian immigrant and refugee communities. Their journeys and experiences differ in how and why they chose Minnesota to be their home. “Immigrant” and “refugee” are not equivalent terms. An immigrant is someone who chooses to leave her country and live permanently in a new one. A refugee, on the other hand, is a person compelled by dangers at home—like war and persecution—to relocate to a safer place. Although many refugees plan to return to their birth countries when conditions there improve, circumstances often lead them to stay in their new homes for long periods of time, if not indefinitely. Between the 1880s and the 1970s, US laws restricted the immigration of earlier groups while allowing in more recent refugees. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 (repealed in 1943) was explicitly created to restrict the entry of Chinese people into the United States. Laws such as the 1917 Immigration Act imposed literacy tests on immigrants, created new categories of inadmissible persons, and barred immigration from much of Asia. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (the Hart‒Cellar Act) further shifted the demographics of the United States by eliminating a longstanding country-of-origin quota and establishing paths for family reunification. The first documented Chinese immigrants to Minnesota arrived in 1876 and established laundries and restaurants in St. Paul and Minneapolis. Liang May Seen, the first woman of Chinese descent to live permanently in the state, arrived in Minneapolis after moving from San Francisco in the 1890s. For many Chinese people, cold weather in Minnesota was preferable to the racial violence they had encountered on the West Coast. As the nineteenth century progressed, their numbers grew in areas outside the Twin Cities. In Iron Range towns like Ebbing and Eveleth, population booms led to increased demand for goods and services. To meet that demand, Chinese immigrants on the Iron Range diversified their businesses and operated hotels and restaurants that catered to European immigrants. Although Chinese immigrants experienced a less hostile environment in Minnesota than on the West Coast, discrimination remained an issue. Incidents of anti-Chinese vandalism were common. Even in the mid-twentieth century, when Chinese people purchased property, they found themselves barred from buying homes in affluent suburban towns. Over time, the Chinese American and immigrant communities diversified to include both families who had lived in Minnesota for decades and immigrants who qualified to settle based on family reunification goals or HB-1 visas. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, President Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066 authorized the removal of Japanese immigrants, their American children, and other family members who lived on the West Coast. As a result, thousands of people were placed in American concentration camps. In Minnesota, organizations like the YWCA and War Relocation Authority—the same group charged with relocating Japanese Americans and immigrants—established a resettlement committee in St. Paul to help bring Japanese to Minnesota. Even after the war, however, anti-Japanese sentiment and housing discrimination were prevalent. In response, the Japanese American Citizen League opened a chapter in Minnesota in 1946 to advocate for the rights of Japanese Americans. During and after World War II, thousands of refugees fled persecution; many had no homes to return to. This global crisis motivated the US to enact new legislation to allow the entrance of immigrants seeking refuge beyond the national quota set by the National Quota Act of 1924. The legislation||s main target populations were those from Eastern European countries occupied by the Soviet Union. The subsequent Displaced Persons Act of 1948 provided assistance and resources to immigrants and refugees fleeing fascist persecution. Assistance programs and social services infrastructures created after World War II were utilized again in the 1970s, when the global community experienced another refugee crisis. The collapse of American-supported governments in Cambodia, Laos, and South Vietnam in 1975 led to a mass exodus of refugees fleeing from repressive regimes. This included Hmong and Lao people who had fought against communist forces in Laos on behalf of the US Central Intelligence Agency. The Indochina Migration and Refugee Assistance Act of 1975, signed by President Gerald Ford, conferred special status to Southeast Asian refugees, and they began arriving in Minnesota in the fall of 1975. Minnesota Governor Wendell R. Anderson established an Indochinese Resettlement Task Force (later renamed the Indochinese Refugee Resettlement Office) on December 1, 1975. The US Congress and the public alike became concerned about the potential for millions of refugees to suddenly appear on American shores. This fear arose amid a severe economic crisis in the 1970s, which led some working-class Americans to believe that refugees were competing with them for scarce resources. Politicians felt that legislative action would bring the admission of refugees into congressional statutory control. In 1980, the Refugee Act created for the first time a US definition of refugee status and set up the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement. Passage of the act capped off the evolution of American refugee policy from the largely ad hoc, disjointed system in place after World War II to a more consistent set of policies and practices. Voluntary agencies (VOLAGS) in charge of resettling Southeast Asian refugees helped with the recruitment of sponsors, many of whom were members of church congregations. Another notable Asian population in Minnesota is made up of Korean adoptees. Korean adoption to Minnesota began in 1953, shortly after the end of the United States’s direct involvement in the war in the Korean peninsula. VOLAGs such as Lutheran Social Services of Minnesota played a prominent role in facilitating the adoption of Korean children to Minnesota. Since the 1950s, an estimated 13,000 to 15,000 children from Korea have been adopted by Minnesota families. Today, despite escaping war and experiencing trauma, refugees from Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam are thriving in Minnesota. Many actively participate in civic engagement; others have been elected to public office. In 2002, lawyer and former refugee Mee Moua became the first Hmong person elected to the Minnesota legislature—and to any state legislature. More recent refugees from Asia, like the Karen people of Myanmar and the Bhutanese, have also thrived. In the 2010s, Asian Americans (including recent immigrants and refugees) are the fastest-growing ethnic group in Minnesota. Latinx Immigrants Latinx people have made Minnesota their home since the early 1900s. Like immigrants before them, they came in search of economic opportunities. In Minnesota, Latinx men, women, and children worked hard in the sugar-beet fields of the western part of the state. In the 1920s they began to settle in neighborhoods in St. Paul and Minneapolis—notably Swede Hollow on the east side of St. Paul, once occupied by European immigrants. Latinx communities then, as now, centered around the west side of St. Paul and the city of West St. Paul. Since their arrival, Latinx people have experienced and still are experiencing discrimination. During the labor shortage caused by the deployment of thousands of working-age people overseas to fight in World War II, the government-sponsored Bracero Program recruited Mexican immigrants to work in factories and meat-packing plants. When not wanted for their labor, members of the community became targets for forced deportation; in 1931, at least 15 percent of the Mexican residents of St. Paul’s West side were forcibly removed from their homes and repatriated to Mexico. Like other immigrants before them, Latinx people established organizations and institutions throughout Minnesota to support one another. The Spanish Speaking Affairs Council (later renamed the Minnesota Council on Latino Affairs), began in 1978. Comunidades Latinas Unidas en Servicio (CLUES) followed, incorporating in 1981 to deliver bilingual and bicultural social services to Latinxs throughout the Twin Cities. The Latino Economic Development Center (LED) officially formed in 2003, but its efforts can be tracked back to 1994 and the formation of a South Minneapolis Catholic Church: Sagrado Corazon de Jesus. The deportation of Mexican and other Latinx immigrants continues in the twenty-first century. In the 2010s, conservative and nationalist politicians have targeted “Dreamers” (Latinxs who came to the United States as children with their undocumented parents) and pushed them to the forefront of immigration-reform debates. Refugees who fled ongoing conflict in El Salvador and came to the US after being assigned Temporary Protected Status (TPS) face the threat of losing their TPS and being forcibly deported. The struggle to be recognized as American and overcome being labeled as perpetual foreigners remains constant for Latinx Minnesotans, most of whom are US-born. In 2018, there are over 276,000 Latinx people of diverse backgrounds living in the state, with the majority being of Mexican descent. Somali Refugees Most Somalis in the US are refugees or children of refugees who escaped a civil war in their homeland in the early 1990s. For many, living in refugee camps for decades has contributed to on-going trauma, which they continue to process in their new home. Minnesota is home to the largest Somali diaspora community in the world. Its center is the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood of Minneapolis, known widely as “Little Mogadishu.” American Community Survey data states that there are nearly 47,000 Minnesotans with Somali ancestry. Social services and refugee resettlement agencies that were created to assist Southeast Asian refugees since 1975 have played a crucial role in resettling Somali refugees in Minnesota. Like Finns in the nineteenth century, many Somalis in Minnesota have struggled to learn English while maintaining their native language and culture. Despite these challenges, they formed community-based and professional organizations to assist one another in housing, education, and civic engagement. A group of Somali refugees took action in 1994 to create the Confederation of Somali Community in Minnesota, a non-profit group based in Minneapolis designed to provide social services to Somali Minnesotans. Somali Minnesotans have engaged fully in civic life and held public offices in several levels of government. Ilhan Omar, a Somali refugee who came with her family to Minneapolis in 1995, was elected in 2018 to serve Minnesota in the US House of Representatives. Following the events of September 11, 2001, Somalis and Muslims in Minnesota and other states have been discriminated against, targeted by hate groups, and surveilled by the FBI because of their Islamic faith. The executive orders signed by President Donald Trump in February of 2017 banned new immigration from Somalia, among other countries. Trends In The 2000s The history of immigration in Minnesota shows the state’s strong ties in attracting immigrants and refugees from around the world. These movements have remade both Minnesota and what it means to be “Minnesotan.” The immigrant makeup of Minnesota has diversified over time. Between the 1980s and the 2010s, Minnesota—alongside the rest of the United States—has experienced an exponential increase in immigration. New US Census figures show that Minnesota’s minority population has increased faster than its population as a whole. In the 2010s, most of Minnesota||s immigrants come from Somalia, Mexico, China, India, Laos, and Myanmar. The number of African immigrants in the state grew by 620 percent in the 1990s, and the number of immigrants from Latin America increased by 577 percent. Between 2000 and 2010, Latinx people accounted for 60.7 percent of the population growth in the Midwest and 27.8 percent of the population growth in Minnesota. Refugees from Southeast Asia continue to transform small towns like Worthington and Jackson. Karen and Somali workers have reinvigorated local workforces and enriched their culture. As of 2018, Minnesota has the largest Hmong population in a US metropolitan area and the largest Somali population outside of Somalia. Its immigrant and refugee communities represent a remarkable diversity, reflected in the fact that more than 230 languages are spoken in the homes of Minnesota’s students. According to US Census data, Minnesota has the highest number of refugees per capita nationwide (13 percent and 2 percent, respectively). The demographics of Minnesota have been evolving since its designation as a state, and much earlier. What has remained constant is the state’s vital role in settling and supporting immigrants and refugees from across the globe.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/AV1988.204_0.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/immigrants-and-refugees-minnesota-connecting-past-and-present"},{"alt":"Einar A. Rogstad","author":[{"name":"Jenn Johnson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/jenn-johnson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"December 17, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Rogstad, Einar A. (1894‒1957)","postbody":"Einar A. Rogstad, from Becker County, Minnesota, joined the United States Marine Corps (USMC) in 1917 to fight in World War I. He served overseas from May 1918 to May 1919, fighting at St. ...","searchtext":"Einar A. Rogstad, from Becker County, Minnesota, joined the United States Marine Corps (USMC) in 1917 to fight in World War I. He served overseas from May 1918 to May 1919, fighting at St. Mihiel, Marbache, Champaigne, and in the Meus-Argonne Offensive. After the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, he remained in Europe during peacetime as part of the Army of Occupation. Einar A. Rogstad was born on February 12, 1894, to Norwegian immigrants Thomas and Karen Rogstad in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota. He entered the Marine Corps as a private on May 10, 1917. Assigned to the 77th Company of the 6th Machine Gun Battalion, USMC Second Division, he trained in Mare Island, California, onboard the USS Buffalo, and at Norfolk, Virginia. He traveled to Fort Crockett in Galveston, Texas, for further instruction in November 1917, completing his training at the US Marine Corps base at Quantico, Virginia, the following May. Assigned as a Private with the 77th Company of the 6th Machine Gun Battalion, USMC 2nd Division, Rogstad left for service overseas on the USS Frederick on May 27, 1918. He served in campaigns at St. Mihiel, Marbache, Champagne, and Meuse-Argonne. In a letter written on October 3, 1918, to his brother, Ferdinand, Einar described his experiences on the front to living inside an inferno. He also shared his happiness in receiving a box of cookies and a bar of chocolate that night before discussing the horrors of the front lines: “At daybreak…we went over in the first wave to make a surprise attack. The Boche beat us to it. They came yelling like mad men. At once we got busy though appearances were not favorable. With pistols they were held off until we got our machine guns in action. Hand grenades were falling terribly close but when we begin to sweep the woods with a steady stream of machine gun bullets they retreated. Their aeroplanes swooped down on us with machine gun fire but didn’t do much damage. You ought to hear them holler ‘Kammerad’ when the ‘jig is up.’…The experience is very uncomfortable and yet one can go through shell and machine gun fire without getting scratched.” Rogstad wrote of the horrors of war and the desolation of no man||s land. He shared his belief that his wartime experiences made him a wiser and better man. Rogstad continued to fight until the signing of the Armistice on November 11, 1918. He remained in Europe with the Army of Occupation until he returned home in June 1918. Rogstad mustered out on June 25, 1919 at Quantico, Virginia. He lived for nearly four more decades and died on November 2, 1957. Because of his status as a veteran, he was buried in Fort Snelling National Cemetery.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Einer Rogstad_WWI_edited.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/rogstad-einar-1894-1957"},{"alt":"Ervin T. Blix in his navy uniform","author":[{"name":"Becky Colebank","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/becky-colebank"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"December 17, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Blix, Ervin Theodor (1898–1918)","postbody":"Ervin T. Blix was Clearwater County’s first fatality in World War I and is the namesake of Bagley, Minnesota’s Irvin Blix American Legion Post 16. Blix was born on November 13, 1898, in ...","searchtext":"Ervin T. Blix was Clearwater County’s first fatality in World War I and is the namesake of Bagley, Minnesota’s Irvin Blix American Legion Post 16. Blix was born on November 13, 1898, in Granite Falls, Minnesota, to Albert and Anna Marie Paulsdatter Blix. He was baptized in the Wegdahl Trinity Lutheran Church on the day after Christmas, 1898, with the spelling of his name as “Ervin Theodor.” During his short life his name was also spelled “Erwin” and “Irvin.” Albert Blix had immigrated from Norway to the US in 1859, when he was three years old; Anna immigrated separately in 1889. The couple was married in 1892 and began farming in Sparta Township, near Granite Falls. Ervin was six years old when his family moved north in 1901 to establish a new home in Nora Township (Clearwater County), where they farmed 160 acres in section 34. Ervin had three older brothers―Anton, Emil, and James―who helped with the farm work. Albert was admitted to the Minnesota State Hospital for the Insane at St. Peter not long after the family’s move, and he died while in treatment there in December of 1918. Anna took over the running of the farm with the help of her sons. Ervin traveled to Minneapolis and enlisted in the U.S. Navy on May 3, 1917. He was given the specialty and title of Electrician’s Mate. The United States had stayed out of the world-wide conflict that began in 1914, but after Germany sank seven US merchant ships and invited Mexico to join their war effort, President Woodrow Wilson called for war on Germany. Congress declared it on April 6, 1917. After training as a radio operator, Ervin attained the rank of EM3, or Electrician’s Mate Third Class (E-4). In late September of 1918 he was transported to Europe aboard the USS Herman Frasch. The Frasch had been a bulk cargo carrier built to carry sulfur for the Union Sulphur Company and was named after the company’s president. It was commissioned at New York in September of 1918 and outfitted to be a troop transport ship. The Frasch left New York harbor on October 1, 1918, and sailed for Sidney, Nova Scotia, where it was to join a convoy departing for Europe on October 7. Ervin boarded the Frasch in New York, but the voyage was ill-fated. Shortly after midnight on October 4, the Frasch collided with the tanker USS George G. Henry . Five days earlier, the Henry had barely survived an encounter with German submarine U-152 and had received a direct hit. A torpedo pierced its after deck, damaged its steering gear, and destroyed its after magazine. The Henry was limping home and was about 110 miles east of Cape Sable Island on the southernmost point of the Nova Scotia peninsula when it made an emergency turn to avoid an oncoming ship, but to no avail. The Henry’s bow cut deeply into the Frasch. The Frasch’s bow rose up perpendicularly, crushed the Henry’s port rail, hung suspended in the air for a few moments, and then slid into the sea. The Frasch took only seven minutes to sink. The Henry immediately dispatched boats and life rafts and searched for survivors using its searchlight beams. By morning, when the search was abandoned, sixty-five men had been rescued. Twenty-three men had drowned, and Ervin Theodor Blix was among them. His body was never recovered. Blix’s sacrifice is commemorated on a while marble loggia in the World War I memorial chapel of the Suresnes American Cemetery and Memorial near Paris. The cemetery contains the graves of 1,541 World War I American military dead and 974 Americans missing or lost at sea. Blix was posthumously awarded the World War I Victory Medal.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Ervin Blix_corrected.jpeg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/blix-ervin-theodor-1898-1918"},{"alt":"Mille Lacs Indian Trading Post, 1929","author":[{"name":"Carissa Thomas","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/carissa-thomas"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"December 14, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Mille Lacs Indian Trading Post","postbody":"Mille Lacs Indian Trading Post debuted its services as a general store for the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe in 1918. In future decades, it evolved into a center for local Ojibwe to trade and ...","searchtext":"Mille Lacs Indian Trading Post debuted its services as a general store for the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe in 1918. In future decades, it evolved into a center for local Ojibwe to trade and sell their art and educate visitors about Ojibwe culture. Mille Lacs Indian Trading Post opened in 1918 when new businessman Harry D. Ayer acquired a trader’s license from the White Earth Indian Agency allowing him to trade with the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe. After receiving federal permission, Ayer began to trade tools, food, and clothing out of a small building he leased from the Minnesota government along Shaub-uush-kung Bay on Mille Lacs. The post operated as a general store for the Mille Lacs Band, selling or exchanging credit for essential supplies such as needles, thread, flour, baking powder, sugar, salt, bread, and vegetables. Non-essential items included snuff, candy, soda, and tobacco. In March 1925, the federal government forced Harry and his wife, Jeanette, to vacate the building. One month later, in April, they moved three miles south along the lake to an area called Vineland Bay. Construction consumed the following months and on November 12, 1925, the trading post opened inside a newly built and permanent building that Harry and Jeanette owned themselves. Harry worked as the buyer and trader for the post, travelling to the southwestern United States to purchase or trade items to sell at his store. Jeanette supervised and ran the store with the help of day clerks. The Mille Lacs Band highly valued the trading post. The store employed only local Ojibwe community members and operated a credit system that greatly aided locals during tough economic times. Local Ojibwe traded their cultural work and traditional harvests to pay debts owed to the store. According to the oral history of Fred Benjamin, a Mille Lacs Band member, not once was a local community member turned down; because of this, the trading post quickly gained an impressive collection of handcrafted Ojibwe art. Annual treaty payments from the Indian Service were paid out to the Ojibwe at the trading Post. The 1920s and 1930s brought affordable automobiles and improved roads to the area, both of which attracted tourists from the Twin Cities to northern Minnesota. The influx of visitors inspired the Ayers to expand the post’s business. In May of 1929 they added cabins (for rent) and a dining hall to the property and constructed an additional room. The extra space served as a museum for Ojibwe artwork, including beaded pieces like necklaces and earrings as well as birch bark items like toy canoes and small baskets. Other Native American artwork from Harry’s visits to southwestern states, like silver jewelry, rugs, and pottery, were also displayed in the additional room. That same month, a small boat works (factory) was added to the property where boats of high quality were created. They were of various sizes and functions ranging from sports to leisure. The factory employed local Ojibwe men to work as laborers and as guides to visiting fishermen. The post reached its peak year in 1937. By that time, it had evolved from a sales operation into a cultural center for art sales, trading, and education about Ojibwe life. The fishing and tourist resort was in full swing, and sales and museum visits soared. The post enjoyed a fruitful business of art and culture over the next two decades. The boat works met its end in 1939, when it closed down after a decade in which it produced over 200 boats. The rental cabins and dining hall were dissolved in 1940. However, the trading post’s business of buying and trading Native American artwork continued to thrive. Its collection of Native American arts and crafts, as well as its legacy, grew to became not only a vital aspect of the lives of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe but also an enriching and unique contribution to Minnesota tourism and recreation in the northern lake regions. In 1959, the post ceased to operate as an independent enterprise. The Ayers donated their collections and land to the Minnesota Historical Society, which reopened the post as an historic site in 1960.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/MM6.7M r81.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246059,"name":"Native Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/mille-lacs-indian-trading-post"},{"alt":"Kline Sanatorium postcard","author":[{"name":"Anoka County Historical Society","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/anoka-county-historical-society"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"December 07, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Kline Sanatorium","postbody":"The Kline Sanatorium was built in 1902 by Dr. James Kline and served hundreds of patients before it closed in 1935. Serving as a shelter for those left without homes in the wake of a 1939 ...","searchtext":"The Kline Sanatorium was built in 1902 by Dr. James Kline and served hundreds of patients before it closed in 1935. Serving as a shelter for those left without homes in the wake of a 1939 tornado, the building again provided relief for people in the area. Later, it served as a hotel and then as a private residence and apartments. It remains one of the city of Anoka’s more iconic structures, clearly visible as you enter the city from across the Mississippi River. In the early twentieth century, the city of Anoka enjoyed a reputation as a healthy community. Part of that reputation came from the Kline Sanatorium located next to the Anoka-Champlin Bridge, which spanned the Mississippi River on South Ferry Street. By strict definition, a sanatorium was a hospital that treated chronic diseases such as tuberculosis, nervous disorders like neurasthenia, and respiratory ailments like catarrh. A sanatorium could also serve as an institution for the preservation or recovery of health, especially rehabilitation. The Kline Hospital served as both. The sanatorium’s head physician, Dr. James Kline, supervised operations alongside fourteen staff. Kline, a transplant from Pennsylvania, had graduated from the University of Minnesota with a degree in homeopathic medicine. He and his wife, Anna Griffith, moved to Anoka in 1893 and bought out the practice of a Dr. Brown, who ran a clinic at the corner of Branch Street and West Main Street. The red-brick building incorporates elements of four architectural styles: Second Empire, Romanesque revival, Queen Anne, and Neo-Classical. The first-floor porches supported by Corinthian columns, with balustrades on their roofs, reflect the Neo-Classical style. The parapets and arched windows are signatures of the Romanesque revival. The towers (one conical and one polygonal) at the third-story level draw from the Queen Anne style, and the mansard roof with dormers represents the French Second Empire. When it was completed in 1902, the hospital had fifty-four rooms. They provided spaces for staff to perform operations, conduct treatments, and dispense drugs, as well as waiting rooms, kitchens, and patient rooms. Patient care often involved many types of restorative baths including solar baths and massage treatments. Floors throughout the facility were made of hardwood to make them easier to clean. The main floor was devoted to consultation offices; it was also the home of the doctor and his family. The hospital’s reputation as a care facility spread quickly, and by 1905, Kline Sanatorium had treated a cumulative total of about 20,000 patients. Dr. Kline placed great emphasis on patient education, which stressed achieving and maintaining a healthy lifestyle. He was also known for treating both rich and poor patients equally. Before arriving in Anoka, Dr. Kline worked for nine years as a surgeon for the Great Northern Railroad, as a medical examiner for Masonic lodges, and for the New York Life Insurance Company. Outside of his practice, he served as a member of several civic organizations. When the State of Minnesota dedicated a new concrete bridge over the Mississippi River in 1929, they placed on it a bronze plaque with the names of Dr. and Mrs. Kline to honor their service to the community. The couple had four children. Following Dr. Kline’s death in 1932, his oldest son, Harry, took over the practice. After the hospital closed in 1935, the building provided shelter to people displaced by the tornado 1939. It was sold, renovated, and used as a hotel, then sold again and transformed into a private residence and apartment building. The structure was added to the National Register of Historic Places in December of 1979. Editor’s note: This article incorporates writing from Kline Sanatorium’s National Register of Historic Places nomination form (cited below), whose text is in the public domain.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/2057.6.13_resized_0.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246087,"name":"Health and Medicine","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/kline-sanatorium"},{"alt":"Vårblomsten #40 (Thief River Falls)","author":[{"name":"Debbie Miller","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/debbie-miller"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"December 07, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Daughters of Norway","postbody":"The largest secular organization of Norwegian American women to date, the Daughters of Norway, was founded in Minneapolis in 1897. Its creators worked to form a group that focused on ...","searchtext":"The largest secular organization of Norwegian American women to date, the Daughters of Norway, was founded in Minneapolis in 1897. Its creators worked to form a group that focused on women’s needs, their interests, and their connections to Norway. The United States and Minnesota supported dozens of fraternal organizations in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. They formed to provide social and economic support to a specific group of people, often an ethnic group. Most had members that were either all female or all male. Most were also national in scope and made up of place-based groups called lodges. They usually wrote constitutions and established their own rituals, often including a secret handshake, practiced only by members. Daughters of Norway members followed a prescribed ritual at their twice-a-month meetings and called each other sisters. They offered insurance to members who had no health or life insurance. For example, in exchange for regular dues payments from each member, the Daughters of Norway provided burial insurance, a payment of a set amount of money that, after a member died, helped her survivors pay for her funeral. When there was enough money in the treasury, the Daughters also paid members a small amount for each day that they were sick or unable to work. The organization, whose original Norwegian name was the Døtre af Norge, served single, working-class women who were immigrants or first-generation Americans. The immigrants had left Norway to work as domestic servants and cooks in prosperous American households or as seamstresses or laundresses in local businesses. Those born in the US often grew up on farms in Norwegian regions of the Midwest and moved to cities as young women to find non-farm jobs. A brief history of St Paul’s Synnoeve Lodge described its early days around 1903, when members met at the city’s Central Hall: “The aim of the lodge was to help…members in times of sorrow, to keep alive the traditions of the old country, as well as its culture, and to create a place for the young girls that came over from Norway where they could come and speak their native tongue and enjoy themselves socially.” Within many lodges, members organized singing groups and sewing groups that attracted new members. By 1909 there were 2,000 members in thirty lodges, all of them speaking and singing and conducting lodge rituals in Norwegian. Drill teams took part in parades and performed for lodge meetings. They sometimes competed with other lodges’ drill teams for prizes like elaborate banners. In 1904, the Daughters of Norway head lodge offered such a banner to the drill team judged the best of that year: Minneapolis’s Freya #1. The Daughters of Norway reached its maximum size in 1927, when it totaled 5,553 members organized into seventy-two lodges. Elected leaders belonging to a head lodge in Minneapolis guided the lodges’ formation. Though most lodges were in the Midwest (Minnesota, North Dakota, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Illinois), there were also a few in the northeastern US (Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York). After the Emergency Quota Act (1921) and the Immigration Act of 1924 restricted immigration to the US, the number of immigrants from Norway, both women and men, dropped. The Daughters continued as an organization until 1950, when they merged with the Sons of Norway, also based in Minneapolis. Insurance laws had changed in many of the states where the Daughters offered insurance, and the Daughters could no longer insure their aging members. Since there were fewer immigrants, fewer young women joined the lodges. That meant there was less money to pay out for burial insurance and sick leave. Members discussed changing the name of the Sons of Norway to reflect the merger, but the name did not change. Minnesota towns and cities have supported one or more Daughters of Norway lodges since the organization’s founding. They include Minneapolis (five), St Paul (two), Duluth (two), Windom, Cloquet, Virginia, West Duluth, Two Harbors, Hibbing, Halstad, Thief River Falls, Benson, Crookston, and, possibly, Lanesboro. Records of several individual Minnesota lodges have been preserved in the archives of the University of Minnesota Duluth, the Minnesota Historical Society, the Cottonwood County Historical Society, and the Iron Range Research Center.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Thief_River_Falls_Varblomsten.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/daughters-norway"},{"alt":"Isla Tuliro","author":[{"name":"Julia Gay","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/julia-gay"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"December 07, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Pangea World Theater","postbody":"Pangea World Theater is an international, multidisciplinary theater based in Minneapolis. Founded in 1995, Pangea produces, commissions, and presents the work of artists who address social, ...","searchtext":"Pangea World Theater is an international, multidisciplinary theater based in Minneapolis. Founded in 1995, Pangea produces, commissions, and presents the work of artists who address social, economic, cultural, racial, gender, and political inequity. Through its community-centered and relevant programming, Pangea builds bridges of understanding across cultures locally and globally. Pangea World Theater was founded in 1995 by Keith Lee, Kathy Haddad, Luu Pham, and Dipankar Mukherjee. They were soon joined by Meena Natarajan, and the group set out to create a global space in the arts for dynamic conversations. The development of the theater was greatly informed by the cornerstones of Indian dramaturgy: need, desire, and revelation. Its founders also crafted a mission statement: “Pangea illuminates the human condition, celebrates cultural differences, and promotes human rights by creating and presenting international, multi-disciplinary theater.” In 1996, Pangea produced its first production: Conference of the Birds, a theatrical adaptation by Meena Natarajan of a twelfth-century Sufi poem. The play inspired Pangea to commit to producing, commissioning, and presenting works that explore themes such as race, exile, freedom, immigration, and human rights. A key value of the organization is centering Indigeneity. Before beginning any rehearsal, event or production, Pangea acknowledges that it exists on the sacred, traditional lands of the Dakota people. In 2001, it launched the Indigenous Voices program, a series that takes place before Thanksgiving each year and highlights the work of Indigenous artists. Another key value of the organization is sustained collaboration. For example, Pangea has been a long-term collaborator with Latinx theater company Teatro del Pueblo since 2008. This partnership led to the birth of the Latino Asian Fusion program in 2014 and numerous productions. In addition to producing three or four original artistic creations, productions, and presentations each year, Pangea hosts programs that speak to minority and immigrant cultures and serve a broad public. This includes programs such as Bridges, which was launched around 2004. The program brought together immigrant artists and artists of color from across the Midwest for a peer exchange guided by the Open Space Technology leadership practice. In 2004, Pangea was commissioned by The Advocates for Human Rights to adapt the book Journey to Safety into a play that centered the voices of immigrant women and women’s advocates. This production toured from 2004 through 2012. In partnership with the Battered Women’s Justice Project, it was made into a video and facilitator’s guide that was dispersed widely. It also influenced national policy on issues of domestic violence against immigrant women. In 2005, Pangea received a Special Recognition Award from The Advocates for Human Rights for its work in using arts to promote human rights. Also in 2005, Pangea launched its education initiative, Diverse Stages, to unite young people from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds. With the support of Pangea artists, students created performances around issues of race construction, social equity, discrimination, and activism. Pangea’s educational programming has grown over time to include artist residencies, workshops, study guides, and student matinees. Each program aims to expose students to literature and creative processes outside of the Western canon. In response to the lack of professional development and exchange opportunities for directors of color and women directors in the US, Pangea collaborated with Art2Action in 2012 to launch a program called The National Institute for Directing and Ensemble Creation. This pilot program grew into an annual summer institute dedicated to peer exchange and training for directors of color and women directors. In July 2018, Pangea welcomed local, national, and international directors and director mentees to Minneapolis for the fourth incarnation of the institute. In 2014, Pangea received an Artplace award to bring Somali and Latinx communities together through a creative placemaking project called The Lake Street Arts Corridor. This project grew into a larger community engagement initiative called Lake Street Arts!. This four-year program facilitated art making and dialogue around issues such as immigration, migration, and displacement among East African, Latinx, and Indigenous communities in Pangea’s neighborhood. In 2017, as part of Lake Street Arts!, Pangea launched its first-ever Arts Organizing Institute, dedicated increasing the role of artist organizers in community and city development work.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/IslaTuliro (1).jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/pangea-world-theater"},{"alt":"Hüsker Dü concert poster, 1986","author":[{"name":"Kim Park Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/kim-park-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"December 03, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Hüsker Dü","postbody":"Hüsker Dü was a hardcore punk/alternative rock band that formed in St. Paul and performed and recorded between 1979 and 1987. The Hüskers (as they were called by fans) were a key creative ...","searchtext":"Hüsker Dü was a hardcore punk/alternative rock band that formed in St. Paul and performed and recorded between 1979 and 1987. The Hüskers (as they were called by fans) were a key creative force in the Twin Cities hardcore scene in the early 1980s and became one of the most influential and highly praised American alternative rock bands. Hüsker Dü formed in St. Paul in 1979 after its three members (Grant Hart, drums and vocals; Greg Norton, bass guitar; and Bob Mould, guitar and vocals) met at Cheapo Records (then located on Grand Avenue and Macalester Street) where Hart worked. Hart and Norton both grew up in the Twin Cities and were previously acquainted. Mould had recently moved to St. Paul to attend Macalester College, and frequented the nearby store. During its active years, the band was a cornerstone of the vibrant 1980s Minneapolis‒St. Paul hardcore scene. It played live shows at the punk rock venue Jay’s Longhorn Bar (14 South Fifth Street, Minneapolis) and at First Avenue & 7th Street Entry in addition to other local venues, including college and university campuses. Like other groups in the DIY punk and hardcore scene, the band often played makeshift venues in basements, galleries, and rental halls. That same scene supported many other local bands, including the Replacements, Loud Fast Rules/Soul Asylum, and Babes in Toyland. The group released six records on independent record labels: Land Speed Record, Everything Falls Apart, Metal Circus, Zen Arcade, New Day Rising, and Flip Your Wig. The first three of these established the band’s reputation for short songs and fast playing. The next three records, on the SST label, began to earn the band critical acclaim. The conceptual double album Zen Arcade is noted for both its storyline and its creativity, drawing from multiple musical styles. Flip your Wig marked a move towards power pop and increased the band’s popularity in the mainstream as a college radio mainstay. The first of the 1980s independent/alternative bands to sign with a major label, Hüsker Dü produced three records with Warner Brothers: Candy Apple Grey, Warehouse: Songs and Stories, and The Living End. The move was precipitated by SST’s inability to effectively distribute the band’s records as they became increasingly popular. The demands of supporting major-label releases and touring schedules are sometimes blamed for breaking up the band. While some fans felt the band had sold out when it moved to Warner, major-label interest in an independent band with punk/hardcore roots represented an early investment in a style of rock—eventually labelled grunge—that became mainstream in the early 1990s. The band broke up in 1987 while on tour due to discord in the group caused by Hart’s drug use and the suicide of band manager David Savoy immediately before the tour began. Afterward, all three band members went on to new musical projects. Norton’s band Grey Area performed until 1991, when he largely retired from music to pursue a career in the restaurant business in Red Wing (he later played in the group Porcupine). Mould led the band Sugar and performed as a solo artist, recording both rock and electronic dance music. In the 1990s, Hüsker Dü’s fast playing and musicality continued to influence the most popular rock bands of the era, including the Pixies, Nirvana, the Foo Fighters, Metallica and Green Day. Two of Hüsker Dü’s members, Hart and Mould, had same-sex relationships while representing their band in venues and subcultures that were often hostile to queer people. Though Mould did not come out officially until 1994, his example paved the way for the more explicitly queer punk of bands like Pansy Division. Throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s, Hart performed with the band Nova Mob and as a solo artist. He died in 2017 of liver cancer and Hepatitis C. His death prompted a new wave of critical praise for Hüsker Dü. Vanyaland critic Zeth Lundy called them “The Beatles of the ‘80s” in an August 2017 review and Paste critic Geoffrey Himes named “Hüsker Dü—Not Nirvana—the Real Kings of Punk’s Second Wave.” Numero Group released Savage Young Dü, a box-set compilation of the band’s early work, in 2017.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/2002.47.43.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/h-sker-d"},{"alt":"Nelson’s Ice Cream float in Flax Day parade","author":[{"name":"Janelle Kaye","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/janelle-kaye"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"December 03, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Flax Day","postbody":"During the 1940s, Cottonwood County produced so many acres of flax that Windom, the county seat, came to be known as the “Flax Capital of the World.” Between 1948 and 1956, the city ...","searchtext":"During the 1940s, Cottonwood County produced so many acres of flax that Windom, the county seat, came to be known as the “Flax Capital of the World.” Between 1948 and 1956, the city celebrated this distinction by hosting an annual event called Flax Day. During the 1940s in Cottonwood County, the fields near Windom were purple with flax. Agricultural researchers claimed that because the Windom area produced 55 percent of all the flax processed in the United States, it was the flax capital of the world. In 1944, a $225,000 flax-processing plant was built by the federal government in Windom to turn flax straw into a jute substitute. World War II soldiers used the material for camouflage netting and shipping bags. Before this operation was completed, the war ended, and the plant was purchased in 1945 by the Schweitzer brothers. They converted it into a processor of flax tow for use in making cigarette paper, carbon paper, and high-quality paper for Bibles. Local business leaders worked together to promote flax production throughout the area. In 1946, a successful one-day event was held in nearby Heron Lake that led to annual events, and in 1947, Windom held its first Flax Festival in the Windom Armory. A crowd of about 5,000 people attended—more people than the population of Windom. The state extension department’s farm-safety and labor-saving exhibits and moving picture shows in the State Theater were especially popular. In October 1948, the first Flax Day parade was organized. It was a mile long and included a drum corps, marching units, bands and many floats. By 1950, the parade was three miles long. By 1953, it featured eighty-seven marching units. Between 1949 and 1952, Flax Day attracted thousands of attendees—as many as 15,000 over the course of the event, which usually lasted for one day and two evenings. By 1956, the crowds had diminished, but at 7,500 people they were still more than twice the population of Windom. Flax Day festivities were held in September or October of each year. Popular events included a parade with floats from towns in the area; a horseshoe tournament; a rodeo; a free barbeque; pancake breakfasts; a hometown amateur show; musical performances; work auctions; and performances involving archery and shotgun trickery. Every year, they evolved to match the interests of the crowds. Governors attended Flax Day events, as did professional wrestlers, radio announcers, and circus performers. Hubert Humphrey made an appearance at the 1954 Flax Day celebration while campaigning for reelection to the US Senate. Other notables attending included Norman Pyle, a representative of Metro-Golden Mayer (MGM) Pictures (1947); Cedric Adams, newscaster and newspaper columnist (1947); and Governor Luther Youngdahl (1949). Much of Flax Day centered around the public selection of a Flax Day Queen, which preceded a coronation ceremony and ball. The Flax Queen crowned in 1950 won a trip to New York, while the 1952 winner received a diamond-studded watch. In 1953 and 1954, new cars were given away. Measured by the crowds and gifts, Flax Day was a huge success and each year’s celebration reflected the success of the industry. During the early 1950s, area farmers changed from the production of flax to the production of corn and soybeans. Flax production had traveled north and west and Windom could no longer claim to be the flax capital of the world. 1949 was its peak production year. By 1959, the number of acres of flax had dropped to about 5,000. After 1970, numbers were too low to be counted. Local residents and businesses, however, decided that having an annual celebration was important to the social life of the town. As a result, they transformed Flax Day into a more contemporary celebration and named the new event River Days (later called River Fest).","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/nelsons_ice_cream_float.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246091,"name":"Agriculture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246079,"name":"Cities and Towns","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/flax-day"},{"alt":"Riverside trail in William O’Brien State Park","author":[{"name":"Matt Reicher","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/matt-reicher"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"November 26, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Morgan, Samuel Huntington (1911–2000)","postbody":"Samuel Huntington Morgan was a long-time attorney regarded as a champion of Minnesota||s outdoors. His advocacy efforts helped create, preserve, or expand many of the state||s most popular ...","searchtext":"Samuel Huntington Morgan was a long-time attorney regarded as a champion of Minnesota||s outdoors. His advocacy efforts helped create, preserve, or expand many of the state||s most popular open spaces, including Fort Snelling State Park, Lilydale Regional Park, Afton State Park, and the Gateway State Trail. Morgan was born February 21, 1911, in Duluth. He and his family relocated to St. Paul when he was seven. In the 1950s, Minnesota communities—like others across the United States—began to expand beyond the boundaries of city centers into newly formed suburbs. Suburban sprawl led to a widespread interest in preserving open spaces. Later in life, Morgan recalled the joy he had felt as a child in the natural landscapes of Duluth, as well as summers spent swimming in the St. Croix River. Affected by these experiences, he became part of a call to action to preserve the environment. On January 19, 1961, Morgan’s friend Thomas Savage asked him and his wife, Natalie, to attend a meeting held by the Fort Snelling State Park Association. He went with them and watched the speakers outline the opportunity for a citizen-led effort to establish a park below the fort. Morgan offered to help and attended weekly meetings at the St. Paul Athletic Club to discuss strategy. The group||s work led to the passage of an act to establish Fort Snelling State Historical Park on April 20, 1961. In 1967, Morgan was named the president of the nascent Minnesota Parks Foundation. Its purpose was to raise money to preserve, protect, and support natural landscapes through land acquisition. At a July 8, 1967, meeting, the foundation decided to use a permanent revolving fund to meet its goals. It planned to purchase desired land with its own raised monies and then sell it to the state to replenish the fund. The foundation||s first project, which laid the groundwork for Afton State Park, presented significant challenges. Legislative constraints delayed enacting a park until 1969. At the same time, the group worried that their inability to assure donors that their contributions would result in a state park would hurt their fundraising efforts. In the end, through charitable gifts and secured loans, a purchase agreement was completed on July 12, 1968. With the purchase agreement settled, the group began meeting with nearby property owners to discuss buying their land. Although a sketch of the proposed property layout was drawn, no one could be sure of actual park boundaries until the 1969 State Legislature convened to enact the park and designate the land. There was strong opposition, but supporters prevailed. After assurances that the foundation wasn||t profiting from the purchase, Governor Harold LeVander signed the legislation. This success set the foundation on a path of acquisitions that continued throughout the 1970s. In the 1980s, Morgan’s efforts on behalf of the Minnesota Parks Foundation expanded to include acquiring abandoned railways for public trails. At the time, existing parks could not accommodate newly popular linear sports like cross-country skiing, cycling, inline skating, and snowmobiling. The Soo Line Trail, later part of the Gateway Trail, was the foundation’s first purchase, followed by the Cannon Valley Trail. In 1987, Morgan’s presidency ended when the Minnesota Parks Foundation and the Minnesota Council of State Parks merged to become the Minnesota Parks and Trails Council. In 2000 it was renamed the Parks and Trails Council of Minnesota. Between 1967 and 2018 it acquired more than 10,000 acres of land worth over 30 million dollars. The revolving fund became known as the Samuel H. Morgan Land Fund. After leaving the Minnesota Parks Foundation, Morgan continued his advocacy work. In 1985, the Samuel H. Morgan Trail and Interpretive Center opened in William O||Brien State Park. Governor Arne Carlson named August 11, 1992, |||Samuel H. Morgan Day||| in his honor. And on May 21, 2000, he received the Met Council||s |||Metropolitan Regional Leadership Award||| for his leadership in advancement of his environmental vision. Morgan passed away on October 17, 2000, at the age of eighty-nine. On September 20, 2002, a bicycle and pedestrian path along the Mississippi River in St. Paul was named in his honor. The Samuel H. Morgan Regional Trail is a crucial cycling route in the city and the southern leg of St. Paul||s Grand Rounds Scenic Byway.","src":"https://www3.mnhs.org/hubfs/Mnopedia%20Blogs/William_OBrien_State_Park_Riverside_Trail-1.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/morgan-samuel-huntington-1911-2000"},{"alt":"Reward poster for Alvin Karpis and Fred Barker","author":[{"name":"Emma Dill","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/emma-dill"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"November 26, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Barker‒Karpis Gang","postbody":"The Barker‒Karpis gang, a revolving cast of Midwestern criminals, shuttled in and out of St. Paul in the 1930s, committing robberies and kidnappings under the protection of a corrupt police ...","searchtext":"The Barker‒Karpis gang, a revolving cast of Midwestern criminals, shuttled in and out of St. Paul in the 1930s, committing robberies and kidnappings under the protection of a corrupt police force. In 1932, the Barker‒Karpis gang rented a house at 1031 South Robert Street in West St. Paul, posing as a family of speakeasy musicians. Fred Barker and Alvin “Creepy” Karpis, the gang’s principal members, had entered St. Paul, then a haven for criminals, after killing a Missouri sheriff. Other members included Fred’s brother Arthur (called Doc) and his mother, Kate (called Ma). Later that year, the gang robbed Minneapolis’s Third Northwestern National Bank. While they emptied the vault, a teller activated an alarm, and two officers—Ira Evans and Leo Gorski— responded. The gang’s lookout, Larry DeVol, fired into their patrol car, killing Evans and wounding Gorski. A few months later, the gang planned the kidnapping of William Hamm Jr., president of Hamm’s Brewing Company. On June 15, 1933, Doc Barker and Charles “Fitz” Fitzgerald approached Hamm as he walked home for lunch. They wrestled him into Alvin Karpis’s car, placing a pillowcase and goggles over his head. En route to their suburban Chicago hideout, they forced Hamm to sign ransom notes demanding $100,000 (more than $1.8 million in 2018). William W. Dunn, the brewery’s sales manager, quickly became the gang’s contact. He was instructed to bring the ransom money to Duluth and wait for five rear headlight flashes before dropping it beside the road. After receiving the ransom, the gang released Hamm and headed to Chicago. After returning to St. Paul in August, the gang planned to rob the payroll of Swift and Company, a meatpacking plant, as it was transferred from a Minneapolis vault to St. Paul’s stockyards. While robbing the messengers, Doc and Karpis shot accompanying officers John Yeaman and Leo Pavlak. The gang stole $33,000 and escaped in an armored car, aided by a smokescreen. Over the next four months, the gang planned their final major crime: the kidnapping of Commercial State Bank president Edward Bremer. On January 17, Bremer was driving to work when he stopped at the corner of Lexington Parkway and Goodrich Avenue. A gang-driven car blocked his path while another pulled up behind. The kidnappers opened Bremer’s door; when he struggled, the kidnappers pushed him to the floor. They then abandoned Bremer’s sedan, forcing him to sign ransom notes. Within two hours, Bremer family friend Walter W. Magee received ransom instructions. The $200,000 was requested in $5 and $10 bills. When ready, Magee was to print “We are ready Alice” in the Minneapolis Tribune||s personal ads. Magee ran the ad, but the gang did not respond. They delivered several other ransom notices to people close to the Bremer family, but because of the blood left in Bremer’s car, his family suspected he was already dead. Edward’s father, Adolph Bremer, demanded a note in his son’s handwriting before he would pay. The next day a bank cashier received the requested note. The gang finally delivered instructions for ransom payment to priest Father John Deere, another friend of the family. On February 6, Magee, following the instructions, located a car with Shell Oil stickers in St. Paul, transferred the ransom into the car, and trailed a bus for Rochester. After seeing a cluster of red lights on a hillside, Magee turned down the next gravel road, driving until he saw five headlight flashes. He placed the money beside the road and drove off. The gang released Bremer after twenty-one days of captivity. They drove to Chicago to launder the ransom but realized the FBI had recorded the serial numbers on the bills. The next spring, a Wisconsin farmer found a discarded gas can that the gang had used to refuel their car between Chicago and Minneapolis. FBI investigators lifted Doc’s fingerprints from the can to connect the gang to the kidnappings. Gang members scattered across the US to escape the FBI. Fred and Ma Barker holed up in Ocklawaha, Florida, where the FBI eventually located them. On January 16, 1935, both Barkers were killed in a shootout with FBI officers. Karpis remained on the run until the FBI arrested him May 1, 1936. He was sentenced to life imprisonment and served twenty-six years in Alcatraz.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/por 20416 p2_0.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246079,"name":"Cities and Towns","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246060,"name":"Crime and Punishment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/barker-karpis-gang"},{"alt":"Gene Ritchie Monahan in her studio","author":[{"name":"Marjorie Savage","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/marjorie-savage"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"November 20, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Monahan, Gene Ritchie (1908‒1994)","postbody":"Gene Ritchie Monahan was a northern Minnesotan portrait and landscape artist. She is best remembered for the character and mood she conveyed in her portraits and for the realism in her ...","searchtext":"Gene Ritchie Monahan was a northern Minnesotan portrait and landscape artist. She is best remembered for the character and mood she conveyed in her portraits and for the realism in her pen-and-ink drawings for the Rainy Lake Chronicle, a weekly Minnesota newspaper with an international readership. When Genevieve (Gene) Ritchie graduated from Duluth’s Denfield High School in 1927, her dream was to attend the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She passed the Institute’s entrance exam, but the cost was too expensive for an electrician’s daughter. She aimed, instead, for a more rounded education and signed up for art lessons with local painters A. E. Schar and David Ericson. One of Ritchie’s earliest works, a self-portrait, earned a first-place award in the Duluth Art Institute’s annual Arrowhead Art Exhibition. The painting drew the attention of national art critics, and her portrait was featured on the cover of the prestigious Art Digest. The magazine described her as “the find of the year” in 1930. Ritchie earned a teaching certificate from Duluth State Teachers College before transferring to the University of Minnesota. In Minneapolis, she taught art at the Phyllis Wheatley Settlement House. She also gave private lessons and opened a studio to paint and sell portraits. One of her first customers was university student George Monahan. A year and a half after she finished his portrait, Gene and George were married. Just before World War II, George was called up by the Army. As a form of insurance in case something should happen to George, Gene enrolled in the University of Minnesota’s graduate program in art education. She supported the couple’s children during the war by working as supervisor of art for Faribault public schools. In 1955, the family moved to New York City, where Gene opened the Studio Gallery in Greenwich Village. She received a scholarship to study and teach at the National Academy School of Fine Arts. Although pressured by other Village artists to work in the abstract style, she refused. Her paintings were praised by Village Voice art critics for their light-filled natural tones and confident brushwork. Friends and family drew the couple back to Minnesota in 1960. They bought a home in Ranier in 1963 and spent time on the Rainy Lake islands of conservationist Ernest Oberholtzer. Gene continued her work as part of a colony of local artists. She expanded her portfolio to include silk screening and bookbinding, and experimented with sculpture and pottery using local clays. In the early 1970s, Time magazine’s bureau chief, Ted Hall, left New York City and moved to Ranier to establish the Rainy Lake Chronicle. He called on Monahan to illustrate stories and create cover art. Monahan’s drawings and paintings came to represent the people, places, and natural elements of the border lakes region. Author and environmentalist Sigurd Olson said her work “caught the details of the changing seasons, the little things that appear almost without expecting them, the flash of a gull’s wing in the early spring, the freezing of the lake, the sounds and rumbles, the thawing in the spring.” Throughout her career, Monahan received national acclaim. In the late 1950s she was elected president of New York City’s branch of the National League of American Pen Women. She won first prize in portrait art at a Smithsonian National Gallery of Art exhibition in 1962. She was invited to present the first one-woman show in the Little Gallery at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (1964). For two summers in the late 1960s she was invited to paint and teach art to members of the Sandy Lake First Nation in Ontario. Among those who sat for Monahan’s portraits were pianist Van Cliburn, Minnesota governor Rudy Perpich, conservationists Ernest Oberholtzer and Frances Andrews, and Canadian First Nations artists Norval Morrisseau and Carl Ray. Her work is held in public, corporate, and private collections worldwide. Monahan died in 1994 at the age of eighty five. Her work continues to be exhibited, most recently in Duluth in 2015; Grand Marais in 2016; and International Falls in 2017.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Gene Ritchie Monahan 1985_resized.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/monahan-gene-ritchie-1908-1994"},{"alt":"Mario Duarte in the La Prensa office","author":[{"name":"Jessica Lopez Lyman","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/jessica-lopez-lyman"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"November 15, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"La Prensa de Minnesota","postbody":"La Prensa is the first state-wide Spanish-language and bilingual newspaper in Minnesota dedicated to informing and representing issues pertinent to the Latinx and Chicanx community. Every ...","searchtext":"La Prensa is the first state-wide Spanish-language and bilingual newspaper in Minnesota dedicated to informing and representing issues pertinent to the Latinx and Chicanx community. Every ten years, the United States government conducts a census to learn about the demographics of the nation’s population. In Minnesota in 1990, the Latinx and Chicanx population was changing rapidly on pace with other parts of the country. Due to increased violence and economic disparities in Mexico, Central America, and South America, thousands of people were migrating to the United States in search of more stable living conditions. In Minnesota, industries like agriculture, meat packing, education, and healthcare recruited both low-wage migrant workers and the professional class. In order to document the new population in Minnesota, the government sought out volunteers from these communities to help conduct the 1990 census. One such volunteer was Mario Duarte, who had moved from El Salvador in 1982 with his family in order to flee the civil war. As a census volunteer, Duarte traveled around Minnesota meeting different Latinx and Chicanx families. He noticed that there were few easy ways for them to communicate across the state with each other. Cell phones did not yet exist, and the internet was available only to a few individuals. Duarte decided that the best way to keep the community informed about current events, politics, education, and immigration was to create a bilingual newspaper in St. Paul. At the time, there were other newspapers for communities of color in Minnesota, such as the Asian American Press and the Spokesmen Recorder. Duarte decided it was important for Latinxs and Chicanxs to have a voice also. In 1991, he started La Prensa, the first Spanish-language newspaper in the state. Since many second- and third-generation Latinx and Chicanx people (most of them living in the Twin Cities) did not speak Spanish, let alone read it, Duarte decided to make the newspaper bilingual in order to reach more people. Under Duarte’s tenure as editor, La Prensa was a weekly publication. When the newspaper was first established, he was its only employee. He gathered the stories, completed the layout, and delivered the newspapers to local businesses, schools, and community centers in the Twin Cities. Duarte also wanted to ensure that the rural Latinx community had access to the newspaper. He mailed out large bundles to individual towns each week; from there, they were distributed to other communities. After working as La Prensa’s lead editor for over a decade, Duarte turned the newspaper over to his daughter, Lorena. She originally started working at the newspaper as a writer and served as lead editor between 2001 and 2006, when she returned to Minnesota after graduating from Harvard University. Lorena Duarte was also born in El Salvador and moved with her father to the West Side of St. Paul in the late 1980s. While she was growing up, there were not many Central Americans living in Minnesota. As a result, Lorena became integrated into the dominant Chicanx and Mexican community. Her ability to understand differences with the Latinx community resulted in La Prensa covering a wide variety of stories, ensuring all ethnic groups were represented. In 2006, the Duartes sold the newspaper to El Cine Latino Communications Networks, which later sold it to Latino Communications Network. In 2018, although La Prensa remains a weekly publication, it is distributed inside another Spanish-language newspaper, Vida y Sabor. The newspaper serves as an important place for local businesses to advertise, for community members to write editorial pieces, and for readers to learn about current events. Since La Prensa is also available online, its circulation now extends beyond Minnesota. Editor’s note: Nouns in Spanish are gendered; Latinas are the female equivalents of Latinos. The same is true of Chicanas and Chicanos. For the sake of inclusion, this article uses the terms Latinx(s) and Chican(x)s to refer to men and women and non-binary people at the same time.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/la prensa office_edited_0.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/la-prensa-de-minnesota"},{"alt":"Xee Yang harvesting kale flowers","author":[{"name":"Pakou Hang","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/pakou-hang"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"November 15, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Hmong American Farmers Association","postbody":"The Hmong American Farmers Association (HAFA) was co-founded by siblings Janssen and Pakou Hang in November 2011. Since then, the St. Paul-based organization has helped Hmong American ...","searchtext":"The Hmong American Farmers Association (HAFA) was co-founded by siblings Janssen and Pakou Hang in November 2011. Since then, the St. Paul-based organization has helped Hmong American farmers develop profitable, sustainable businesses in Minnesota. In 2011, Hmong farmers met in Minneapolis with impact investors from the Opportunity Finance Network conference. At that meeting, Vang Thao Moua, a Hmong farmer who had immigrated to the United States in 1977, said she had been waiting for twenty years to be asked what investors could do to support immigrant farmers. Her remark sparked a lively discussion that culminated with a suggestion that Hmong farmers form their own organization. “We have to stop waiting for someone to come save us. We can save ourselves,” said Blia Yee Moua. A week later, HAFA was formally incorporated with eleven inaugural farmer-members. HAFA emerged from the understanding that Hmong farmers faced unique barriers. According to a 1997 study by the University of Minnesota’s Department of Applied Economics, immigrant farmers faced many challenges: long-term access to affordable farmland near the Twin Cities; access to diverse markets besides farmers markets; access to capital to purchase land and other farm equipment; and access to bi-lingual and bi-cultural research and trainings. Because Hmong families did not have access to these resources, many were exploited. HAFA collected stories of Hmong farmers who were charged $300 an acre to rent land from a white farmer only if the Hmong farmers agreed to allow their family to come into the fields and harvest produce free of charge. Some white farmers charged Hmong farmers $50 to $75 an acre for custom soil tilling when the market rates for white farmers were only $15 to $20. Based on an annual survey it conducted, HAFA estimated that, in general, Hmong farmers earned only $5,000 in sales per acre. Other mainstream vegetable growers made over $8,000. In short, racist policies and practices perpetuated an unfair economic system in which Hmong farmers were working hard but barely making it. To address these problems, HAFA rooted its work in the “whole foods model”—a system that supported capacity-building while protecting ecology and demanding equitable wages for farmers and workers. In order to build true community wealth, HAFA argued that it needed to simultaneously engage all components of the whole foods model: land access, new markets, financing, trainings and research. Other groups had focused on delivering one component of the system or tried to support individual farmers as they moved through the system. But what made HAFA’s model unique was its focus on all the components, at the same time, with cohorts of Hmong farmers to truly change the system. The ultimate goal was to build the farmers’ self-efficacy, expand social capital, build community and intergenerational wealth, and change the food and agricultural system so that it worked for all. To participate in HAFA’s programs, one had to be a farmer-member. In order to be a member, one had to have been farming for more than three years on more than three acres and have over one million dollars in liability insurance. HAFA spent its first two years under the fiscal agency of the Latino Economic Development Center (LEDC). The small organization was granted 501(c)(3) status in December 2013, but even then, the operation was touch and go. HAFA struggled to secure enough funding to maintain cash flow as it competed with the more established organizations already working with Hmong farmers. What set HAFA apart were its practices, which were rooted in cultural norms, its membership requirements, and its explicit articulation of self-determination. As the organization pointed out in its early grants, it was the only such group started and led by Hmong farmers. In 2014, through the support of a generous benefactor, HAFA secured a 155-acre incubator and research farm in Vermillion Township (Dakota County) along Highway 52 South. The HAFA Farm, as it came to be known, gave over twenty Hmong families long-term access to five- to ten-acre parcels, along with irrigation and a rinsing, washing, and cooling facility. This opened the door for Hmong farmers to sell their produce to schools, co-ops, restaurants, and other institutions. In 2017, HAFA received the coveted Bush Prize from the Bush Foundation in recognition of its innovative and transformative work.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Xee with kale flowers.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246091,"name":"Agriculture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/hmong-american-farmers-association"},{"alt":"Mikwendaagoziwaag (memorial) at Sandy Lake","author":[{"name":"Colin Mustful","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/colin-mustful"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"November 14, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186622056203,"name":"1792–1861 (Expansion and Reform)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Sandy Lake Tragedy","postbody":"In the fall and early winter of 1850, the US government forced thousands of Lake Superior Ojibwe to leave their homeland in Wisconsin and gather at Sandy Lake, in Minnesota Territory, to ...","searchtext":"In the fall and early winter of 1850, the US government forced thousands of Lake Superior Ojibwe to leave their homeland in Wisconsin and gather at Sandy Lake, in Minnesota Territory, to receive an annual treaty payment. When the money never arrived and the government provided spoiled rations, many tried to return to Wisconsin. As a result, about 400 Ojibwe people died from starvation, disease, and exposure in what is known as the Sandy Lake Tragedy. On October 11, 1849, the Minnesota Territorial Assembly approved an agreement for the removal of the Ojibwe people living along the southern shores of Lake Superior. The agreement was based on the desire to pay out annuities due under two treaties of La Pointe (1842 and 1837) at a site inside Minnesota Territory. There, the Ojibwe would use their money to buy goods from local agents and traders, providing much-needed hard currency to territorial businessmen and others in the capital city of St. Paul. Until that point, payments to the Lake Superior Ojibwe had been made at La Pointe, Wisconsin. The agreement was sent to Congress, which then forwarded it to President Zachary Taylor. As a result, on February 6, 1850, Taylor signed an executive order cancelling the land usage rights of the Lake Superior Ojibwe. It also ordered the Ojibwe to remove from lands in Wisconsin and Michigan. Citing promises made by US officials at the 1842 Treaty of La Pointe, the Lake Superior Ojibwe refused to remove from their lands. This led Minnesota Territorial Governor Alexander Ramsey to create a plan that would force them to leave. Ramsey and John Watrous, a sub-agent at La Pointe, agreed to tell the Ojibwe that if they did not remove to Sandy Lake along with their families, they would not receive their promised annual payment. Once they arrived at Sandy Lake, Ramsey would delay the payment until so late in the year that the waterways would freeze over. This would prevent the Ojibwe from returning to their homes. The Ojibwe were told to expect payment at Sandy Lake on October 25, 1850. Thousands gathered from the Mississippi and Lake Superior Bands. Watrous, however, did not arrive until November 24. Upon arrival he found many Ojibwe suffering and dying from meager and spoiled rations provided by the government. Because payment had not been authorized by Congress, Watrous was unable to pay the Ojibwe the annuities himself. Instead, he contracted with local traders at high prices to provide them with a small amount of provisions. Once he had completed handing out provisions it was early December and winter had set in. Because the waterways had frozen over, the Ojibwe had to abandon their canoes and return home to Wisconsin on foot. Watrous again visited the Sandy Lake encampment on December 10 and compiled a report for Ramsey. He wrote that the Ojibwe were suffering from both measles and dysentery and as many as 150 people had died. Bagone-giizhig (Hole-in-the-Day, descended from the Sandy Lake Ojibwe) also spent time in the camp. He later testified at a public meeting in St. Paul that between four and six people died every twenty-four hours. The rations were rotten as well as inadequate, “the portion for an adult not being sufficient to fill my two hands.” The annuity payment finally arrived in mid-December—too late for many of those who had waited for it. On December 23, the Minnesota Chronicle and Register reported that 167 Ojibwe had died at Sandy Lake from starvation and disease. According to estimates of Ojibwe leaders, another 230 died during the long, cold march home. As agents of a territorial legislature attempting to control federal affairs, Watrous and Ramsey had violated federal law. They received no punishment, however, and the following year, they continued their forced removal policies. They relied on the same plan to intentionally delay payment. The Lake Superior Ojibwe continued to resist removal with written petitions and sent a delegation to Washington City (Washington, DC) in 1852. It was not until 1853, when a new administration replaced Ramsey and Watrous, that removal efforts ended. Then, in 1854, the Lake Superior Ojibwe signed a new treaty at La Pointe that promised permanent reservations and on-site annual payments in their homeland. Editor’s note: The Lake Superior Ojibwe involved in the Sandy Lake Tragedy are not to be confused with the Sandy Lake Band of Mississippi Chippewa, which is a distinct group.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Sandy Lake Memorial.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246059,"name":"Native Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/sandy-lake-tragedy"},{"alt":"Ball Play (La Crosse)","author":[{"name":"John Hunter","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/john-hunter"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"November 09, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246048,"name":"1585–1763 (Colonization)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056201,"name":"1754–1800 (Revolution and a New Nation)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056203,"name":"1792–1861 (Expansion and Reform)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":203519472229,"name":"Pre-1585 (Before European Contact)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Traditional Native American Lacrosse in Minnesota","postbody":"Known as one of the continent’s oldest team sports, lacrosse was invented by Native American nations that played the game for social, political, and ceremonial purposes. Today, in ...","searchtext":"Known as one of the continent’s oldest team sports, lacrosse was invented by Native American nations that played the game for social, political, and ceremonial purposes. Today, in Minnesota, Native Americans continue to play lacrosse in the same manner and on the same fields as they have for over 400 years. To begin a lacrosse game, players divide into two teams. Each side works together to score points by moving a ball against or over the opponents’ goal. Players may not touch or carry the ball with their hands; instead, they use wooden sticks made of ash or hickory to carry and throw the ball. The ball is often made of solid wood or stuffed hide. The team that has scored the most points at the end of the game wins. Technical rules, however, are generally avoided. Instead, both teams agree to basic guidelines about the number of players per team, the length of the field, the amount of physical contact between players, and the style and shape of the goal. The purpose and style of play of Native lacrosse have changed little over the last 400 years. The “Creator’s game,” as it is sometimes known, is played for fun, celebration, and socializing as well as healing. Ceremonial games are played to restore balance to individual players and their communities and express respect for the connection between humans and plants, animals and earth. Ojibwe; Dakota; Ho-Chunk; Sauk and Meskwaki; and other nations played lacrosse in the lands around the upper Mississippi River basin well before European explorers arrived. One of the earliest documented games was in 1753, when the Sisseton Dakota played against the Sauk and Meskwaki at Fort Vaudreuil (a French trading post in present-day Wisconsin). European and early American observers of the game were amazed by the skill and excitement of what they saw. Missionaries and government officials observed games of 80 to 100 players per team played on expansive fields with individual games lasting up to several days. While traveling through the Upper Mississippi River basin in the 1820s, Italian explorer Giacomo Beltrami acquired a lacrosse stick; in 2018, it is the oldest extant stick of its kind. Later, in the 1830s and 1840s, painters George Catlin and Seth Eastman created famous images of historical games and players. Locations of historic ball fields are documented across the state, with some a mile or longer in length. Minnesota has two lakes and one town named Ball Club, and also shares a border with the town of La Crosse, Wisconsin, which was a French translation of the Dakota name for a place where the sport was often played. The Ojibwe word for lacrosse is baaga’adowewin, which means to strike something (repeatedly). The corresponding Dakota word, takapsicapi, translates to making a ball bounce or jump. The Indigenous nations of the upper Mississippi basin were part of a larger group of lacrosse-playing Nations from the Great Lakes, which used a similar style of lacrosse stick. These nations, while very different in language and customs, all played lacrosse using a stick with minimal netting and one end completely bent into a hoop. The single-hoop-style distinguishes Ojibwe and Dakota sticks from those of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) style or the double-stick style of the Nations from the southeast, such as the Muscogee Creek. Non-Native lacrosse is much different from the original Dakota and Ojibwe game in both form and function. Modern-era lacrosse uses Iroquois-style sticks and was standardized in Montreal. The first rule book of the modern-era game, published in 1867 by William George Beers, forbade Native Americans from participating in the sport alongside whites. For a short time in the early twentieth century, Minnesota was home to the top professional lacrosse teams in the United States. These Minnesota teams were mostly made up of non-Native American players who had experience playing in well-established leagues in Canada and the eastern United States. In the twenty-first century, Minnesota has become a leader for growth of the popularity of the modern-era game.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/SAAM-1966.48.69_1.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246059,"name":"Native Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246054,"name":"Sports and Recreation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/traditional-native-american-lacrosse-minnesota"},{"alt":"Workers at the Twin Cities Ordnance Plant","author":[{"name":"Kara Sorensen","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/kara-sorensen"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"November 06, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Twin Cities Army Ammunition Plant","postbody":"Authorized in 1941, the Twin Cities Army Ammunition Plant (TCAAP) contributed to United States military efforts for more than fifty years. Economic and environmental impacts extended beyond ...","searchtext":"Authorized in 1941, the Twin Cities Army Ammunition Plant (TCAAP) contributed to United States military efforts for more than fifty years. Economic and environmental impacts extended beyond the New Brighton/Arden Hills site into the greater Twin Cities area. Prior to US entry into World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt advocated for the country’s role as the “Great Arsenal of Democracy.” His aid strategy, laid out in the Lend-Lease Act, utilized government-owned, contractor-operated (GOCO) ammunition-manufacturing plants to provide supplies overseas. As a result, the Army Ordnance Department authorized construction of the Twin Cities Ordnance Plant (TCOP) in the spring of 1941. Federal Cartridge Corporation (FCC) of Anoka, a sporting ammunition manufacturer, was contracted to operate the facility. Land was purchased in rural Ramsey County, about ten minutes north of Minneapolis by car. Crews worked night and day, constructing an operational facility and supporting infrastructure in just six months. The rapid pace continued as ammunition production began, with thousands of Twin Cities workers filling three shifts around the clock. The massive facility eventually functioned like a small city, with its own fire department, security force, hospital, bus system, and rail terminal. Social elements like a plant newspaper, intramural sports leagues, and a choir served to maintain morale. When Roosevelt visited the plant in September, 1942, he inquired about both the high numbers of women in manufacturing positions and the integration of African Americans into the organization. Indeed, over half the employees were female, known as WOWs (Women Ordnance Workers). And while African Americans in Minnesota were then generally limited to service occupations, men such as Cecil E. Newman and J. W. Pate held supervisory positions at TCOP. FCC President Charles L. Horn also refused to separate employees by race. Community spirit and innovation marked the World War II era at TCOP. Taxpayers’ committees encouraged high production levels, since workers’ own tax dollars funded the plant. Managers actively sought and implemented employee suggestions that saved time and money. Working under a non-strike agreement, an internal grievance committee of union and non-union members handled labor issues. Horn’s investment in electronics led to the invention of an electric eye to aid assembly machines. Steel-cased cartridges were developed at TCOP to deal with brass shortages. At war’s end, the plant served as one of five returned-material centers in the US. Employees tested and sorted ammunition for future reserves. Other army ordnance plants sent machinery to be prepared for long-term storage. In 1946, TCOP’s name changed to Twin Cities Arsenal. The arsenal returned machines to defense manufacturers nationwide when the Korean War developed. This war-and-peace-pattern would be repeated for the remaining life of the plant. When ammunition was needed for the Vietnam War and First Persian Gulf War, production resumed under contracts with FCC. In peacetime, the plant returned to standby status with army oversight. Private companies, including Honeywell and 3M, leased property for defense research and development. Disputes arose in later generations. Internally, labor strikes stopped work in 1951, 1967, and 1971. Vietnam War protesters targeted the Twin Cities Army Ammunition Plant (TCAAP; renamed in 1963) as a hub of military production in 1971 and 1972. Environmental effects of the manufacturing process and chemical disposal were confronted in the early 1980s The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) defined a twenty-five-square-mile “New Brighton/Arden Hills Superfund Site” in 1983. This extended beyond the TCAAP into affected portions of seven nearby communities. A 1987 agreement between the EPA, the US Army, and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency mandated cleanup of the site at army expense. The army announced plans to release portions of TCAAP land as excess federal property in 1994. This prompted planning, led by Congressman Bruce Vento, for redevelopment of the area. Several other proposals were drafted and ultimately rejected in subsequent years, until Ramsey County finalized purchase of the land in 2013. With environmental remediation completed, the City of Arden Hills and Ramsey County partnered with Alatus in 2016 to work toward developing Rice Creek Commons for residential and business use. Other portions of the original TCAAP land are currently utilized as the Rice Creek North Regional Trail and the Arden Hills Army Training Site. The site also hosts public works facilities for Arden Hills, Ramsey County and MnDOT, and the Arden Hills City Hall.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/TC Ordnance Plant.women_.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/twin-cities-army-ammunition-plant"},{"alt":"John A. Brown","author":[{"name":"Janelle Kaye","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/janelle-kaye"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"November 05, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Brown, John A. (1841–1925)","postbody":"John A. Brown, a Civil War veteran, settled in Cottonwood County in 1878 on land that he homesteaded near Windom. After surviving many hardships, he became one of the county’s best-known ...","searchtext":"John A. Brown, a Civil War veteran, settled in Cottonwood County in 1878 on land that he homesteaded near Windom. After surviving many hardships, he became one of the county’s best-known citizens and contributed significantly to its welfare and advancement. Brown was born in Symington, Ayrshire, Scotland on August 8, 1841, to John and Elizabeth Brown. After receiving some schooling in Scotland, he came to the United States in June 1856, when he was fifteen years old. Whether he immigrated alone or with family is unclear. He settled in West Salem, Wisconsin, where he became a naturalized citizen and lived until the outbreak of the Civil War. On December 10, 1861, Brown enlisted at La Crosse, Wisconsin, in Company B of the Second Regiment of Wisconsin Volunteer Cavalry. Appointed corporal and then quartermaster sergeant, he served under Generals Grant and Sherman and took part in numerous raids and expeditions in Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Mississippi, as well as in the siege of Vicksburg. After the surrender of General Robert E. Lee in 1865, Brown was sent under General Custer to Austin, Texas, to protect the southern border from warring factions in Mexico. He remained in Texas with his unit until November 16, 1865, when it was honorably discharged. They were paid off on December 10, 1865, and mustered out at Madison, Wisconsin. After the war, Brown returned to West Salem, where he engaged in lumbering. In 1878, he moved to Cottonwood County, Minnesota, where he bought a farm outside Windom. While living in a granary during his first winter in his new home, he endured a severe winter. On October 22, 1880, Brown married Edith C. Allen, daughter of Dr. Silas S. Allen, a pioneer physician. They had two sons and a daughter: S. A., Eugene, and Lucy. The family lived on the farm near Windom until 1890 when Brown, a Republican, was elected county auditor and they moved into Windom. He served as the county auditor and as deputy until 1910. In 1912, Brown was elected as a county commissioner for two terms. In all, he was in public service for twenty-four years. This record of public service was remarkable for its longevity and also is a testimonial to the personal popularity of Brown. After his retirement, Brown’s son, S. A., became the county auditor. Outside of his public service, Brown was involved in several local businesses, owning shares of the Farmer’s Co-operative Elevator Company in Windom and the State Bank in Storden. He also edited the two-volume History of Cottonwood and Watonwan Counties, published in Indianapolis in 1914. In addition to his work, Brown served his community as a member of the Masonic Lodge and the Grand Army of the Republic (G. A. R.) where he was an adjutant. (Organized on December 3, 1874, the G.A.R. had fifty members and existed for only a few years in Windom, the only town in Cottonwood County where the organization flourished. Toward the end of his life, Brown was physically weakened by hardening of the arteries. He died peacefully on March 25, 1925 as a result of a cerebral hemorrhage and is buried at Lakeview Cemetery, in Windom, Minnesota.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/John Brown_1910_cropped.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/brown-john-1841-1925"},{"alt":"Nathan Whitefeather and family","author":[{"name":"Margaret Vaughan","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/margaret-vaughan"},{"name":"Harlen LaFontaine","slug":"/mnopedia/search/index/author/harlen-lafontaine"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"October 29, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Indian Reorganization Act in Minnesota","postbody":"In 1934, the US Bureau of Indian Affairs set up a new organizational model to transform Native American tribal governments. The articulation of that model, the Indian Reorganization Act, ...","searchtext":"In 1934, the US Bureau of Indian Affairs set up a new organizational model to transform Native American tribal governments. The articulation of that model, the Indian Reorganization Act, influenced the governance systems of Native people, including Minnesota’s Ojibwe and Dakota. They now work to customize the government forms imposed upon them. In the 1930s, Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) Commissioner John Collier sought to overturn federal policies that had led to tribal land losses—particularly the Dawes Act of 1887. The resulting Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 (IRA) ended land allotment, prohibited non-consensual land seizure, recognized tribal governments, encouraged the writing of tribal constitutions, and empowered Native people to manage their own resources. The Ojibwe and Dakota in Minnesota stood to benefit from Collier||s reforms. Like many tribes, they were struggling to make a living off their lands. They also wanted to govern themselves, and many rejected assimilation into white society. Although Congress interfered with Collier’s plans, enough of the original bill survived to give tribes a start. Between 1934 and 1945, Native American nations across the United States voted to decide whether to restructure their governments according to the IRA. Ninety-two tribes accepted the model, and seventy-two rejected it. In Minnesota, the Red Lake Nation of Ojibwe walked away from most of the IRA. Their constitution dated to 1918; their governance included hereditary chiefs, while their lands were owned communally. They did find one part of the law useful: the guarantee of more power to manage their own land. The five remaining Ojibwe bands in Minnesota—White Earth, Leech Lake, Bois Forte (or Nett Lake), Grand Portage, and Fond du Lac—voted as well. Out of 6,351 individuals, 1,966 voters accepted and 346 rejected the IRA. Each of these, together with the Mille Lacs band, joined together as the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe on June 18, 1934, and later voted to accept one IRA constitution. In 2018, the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe focuses as a governing body on three issues: land trusts (lands with special protections on taxation and development); elections within bands; and citizenship rules. The Ojibwe communities of Sandy Lake, Lake Lena, Isle Royale, and East Lake joined the Mille Lacs Band due to a BIA decision. Each of the six bands wrote its own constitution. Minnesota’s Dakota communities also reorganized under the IRA. Lower Sioux and Prairie Island voted for constitutions in 1936 and for business charters in 1937. Upper Sioux formed as a community in 1938, created a board of trustees in 1942, and wrote a constitution in 1995. The Shakopee Mdewakanton officially formed an IRA government in 1969. The original standardized IRA constitutions centralized power in the Tribal Councils or a similar governing body; different branches of government did not double-check their decisions and courses of action. The templates also failed to accommodate traditional leadership structures and other community lifeways. Some of these features evolved. For example, in 1981 the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe incorporated a separation of powers, forming executive, legislative and judicial branches. Tribal governments could qualify for business loans under the IRA. They also had a say in renting out their land to companies who wanted to take natural resources, which led to economic development. The late Amos Owen, a former chairperson of the Mdewakanton Dakota at Prairie Island, pointed out in 1970 that some families accessed loans for farming through the IRA’s revolving credit fund. He admitted, however, that the community faced difficulties with buying back land. Albert Prescott, chairperson of Lower Sioux, said in 1979 that the federal government still made the “real decisions.” In general, tribes had little choice but to fall in line with what the BIA allowed. It regularly reviewed constitutions and approved business dealings. Still, Native American nations were able to purchase more land with BIA go-ahead. By the end of 1936, tribes in Minnesota held about 16,000 more acres of land than they had owned before the IRA. Native Americans and scholars debate the impacts of the IRA today. Some say the IRA was the beginning of modern tribal governments; others argue that it isolated Native American nations as “problems” and discouraged their independent, creative thought.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/NMNH-landes_photo_chippewa_people_17_edited.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246059,"name":"Native Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/indian-reorganization-act-minnesota"},{"alt":"Anoka Halloween Celebration kids’ parade, 1990, Minnesota","author":[{"name":"Susan Marks","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/susan-marks"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"October 29, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Anoka Halloween Celebration","postbody":"Anoka, Minnesota, became the Halloween Capital of the World in 1937. The title recognizes its status as one of the first cities to discourage Halloween tricks by hosting a city-wide party: ...","searchtext":"Anoka, Minnesota, became the Halloween Capital of the World in 1937. The title recognizes its status as one of the first cities to discourage Halloween tricks by hosting a city-wide party: the Anoka Halloween Celebration. In the early 1900s, Americans braced themselves every October for pranks committed by not-so-innocent children. The mischief-making spiraled so out of control in Anoka that the town decided to put an end to Halloween-night shenanigans by throwing a celebration. Starting in 1920, Anoka civic leaders and local organizations, led by businessman George Green, formed a Halloween committee to address the growing prankster problem. The Halloween committee hoped to create an event so captivating that Anoka’s youth would forgo the usual troublemaking and join in the festivities. On the evening of Sunday, October 31, 1920, the committee sponsored its first-ever community-wide Halloween celebration. The highlight was a parade down Main Street that included the Fireman’s Band of Minneapolis, the Anoka police and fire departments, and the Kiwanis and Commercial Clubs. A drum corps, the Anoka National Guard, and hundreds of children also marched. After the parade a bonfire was lit in nearby Bridge Square, and the youth who marched received free popcorn, peanuts, and candy. The event was so successful that the police received no reports of pranks. Soon, plans were underway for the next Halloween celebration. Anoka’s new tradition expanded each year to include activities like dances, parties, games, concerts, and fireworks. It also grew to include community sing-alongs, races, costume contests, and a storefront-decorating competition for local merchants. Together, the festivities attracted thousands of people each year. The city’s multi-day Halloween activities helped establish Anoka as the Halloween Capital of the World. That title, however, wasn’t official until 1937, thanks to an act of Congress. In that year, twelve-year-old newspaper carrier Harold Blair of Anoka was one of 200 Minneapolis Journal paperboys to win an all-expenses-paid trip to tour the nation’s capital. Civic leaders behind the Halloween activities seized on Blair’s visit as an opportunity to establish their little town as a big player on the Halloween scene. Anoka’s Commercial Club, headed by drug store owner Bernard Witte, lead the charge. It commissioned local artist Alyce Vick to create a customized patch for Blair to wear in DC. The large insignia showcased a witch flying in the light of a full moon with “Halloween Capitol” (sic) written in the sky and “Anoka, Minnesota” below it. On the bottom of the patch was an open gate with the words, “The Gateway to the Great Northwest.” The patch was sewn to Blair’s yellow sweater, a gift from Anoka clothing storeowner and Commercial Club member Craydon Colburn. The club sent Blair off with a proclamation to deliver about Anoka’s unique achievement in attracting youngsters to the annual celebration. In recognition of this, the town asked for Anoka to be officially known as the Halloween Capital of the World. In DC, Blair did his best to represent a city on a mission and gave the proclamation to Minnesota Representative Millard Rice. Shortly afterward, Congress granted Anoka’s wish. With Anoka officially the Halloween Capital of the World, 1937 proved to be an especially celebratory Halloween season. The following year, Life magazine sent a photographer to Anoka to capture the Halloween spirit in a town that was virtually unknown outside of Minnesota. New events were added each year. Meanwhile, civic organizations and community volunteers raised money and worked year-round to make each celebration more impressive than the last. Anoka’s Halloween traditions continued without interruption until 1942. By then, many of those involved in the planning of the Halloween activities were called to service in World War II. In their absence, the committee opted to focus on home-front activities like raising money for the war effort instead of celebrating Halloween. The festivities were suspended again in 1943 but reinstated in 1944 toward the end of the war. Over time, Anoka’s Halloween events moved away from Halloween night so residents were home for the trick-or-treaters. New traditions began, including haunted houses, royalty coronations, celebrity appearances, Pumpkin Bowl football games, and house decorating. As the Halloween Capital of the World continues to defend its title, the celebration remains ever-evolving and expanding, providing a month’s worth of Halloween fun every October.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/2062.5.16.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246079,"name":"Cities and Towns","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246054,"name":"Sports and Recreation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/anoka-halloween-celebration"},{"alt":"Norwegian leprosy patient","author":[{"name":"Mary Laine","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/mary-laine"}],"categoryTag":[],"date":"October 26, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Leprosy in Minnesota","postbody":"When Minnesotans think about leprosy, they may recall Biblical references to the “unclean,” the National Leprosarium in Louisiana, or a Hawaiian leper colony. In our state, however, leprosy ...","searchtext":"When Minnesotans think about leprosy, they may recall Biblical references to the “unclean,” the National Leprosarium in Louisiana, or a Hawaiian leper colony. In our state, however, leprosy was a medical concern during the late 1800s and early 1900s, when many of the affected were Norwegian immigrants. Since the 1960s, leprosy discovered in its early stages has been successfully treated and cured with a combination of antibiotics. However, leprosy was once and still is a highly feared disease around the world that results in discrimination, maltreatment, and isolation of affected people and their families. Untreated individuals experience disfiguring changes in skin color and texture, swelling under the skin, nerve damage resulting in paralysis of the hands and feet, shortening or loss of fingers and toes, and pain. An 1888 newspaper article described the facial blotches as resembling “the black matter that often accumulates on ears of corn while on the stalk.” In the 1860s, there were more leprosy cases in Norway, which had three leprosy hospitals, than any other European country. Found primarily on the coast and in peasants more generally, the disease was often attributed to a diet high in fish. In 1873, Gerhard Armauer Hansen, a Norwegian physician, discovered bacteria in the lesions of a leprosy patient and was the first to suggest that bacteria caused leprosy. Others believed that the disease was hereditary since bacteria had not yet been proven by scientists to cause disease. Leprosy is also known as Hansen’s disease and is caused by slow-growing Mycobacterium leprae bacteria. In 1888, Dr. Hansen arrived in St. Paul to study leprosy because of the high number of Norwegian immigrants in the state. His goal was to prove that leprosy was not hereditary but contagious only through close contact. He stated that if diseased people wanted to live in their own homes, they should have their own eating utensils and clothing, washed separately from others’, and their own beds. He wrote that from 1857 to 1895, there were about 5,053 new cases of leprosy in Norway and about 170 people with the disease immigrated to North America. Since disease symptoms can take up to twenty years to exhibit, he said, only twenty of the 170 were known to be infected prior to immigration. His statements refuted accusations that Norway was sending infected immigrants to the United States to rid Norway of leprosy. Other Norwegian physicians believed that leprosy was hereditary and became symptomatic due to the stresses associated with ocean fishing and farming in the rugged Norwegian landscape. Also in 1888, Dr. Hansen traveled to Red Wing to spend several weeks with Dr. Christian Grönvold, a member of the State Board of Health and chairman of its leprosy committee. Dr. Grönvold was an immigrant from Norway who lived in Goodhue County, home to a large population of Norwegian immigrants. Henry Bracken, M.D., served as chief executive officer of the Minnesota State Department of Health and secretary of the State Board of Health. In 1906, a Mr. J. D. wrote to Dr. Bracken that his wife had died of leprosy and that he had fumigated the house with sulfur. He asked for information on what else he should do. Dr. Bracken responded that J. D. should thoroughly clean and scrub the house with formaldehyde and liberally use paint and whitewash throughout. He instructed him to destroy his wife’s clothing and bedding and to contact the health officer in the neighboring town for additional help. In 1912, a letter appeared in a Minnesota newspaper asking readers to send items such as books and magazines to an eighteen-year-old boy, E. B., who was suffering from leprosy. The writer said E. B. was “deserving of a Carnegie medal” since he had cared for his mother until she died from leprosy in 1905. Now E. B. was isolated in a log cabin and waiting to die himself. County commissioners helped to build the family a new house, and E. B. remained in the old home. Parents in the nearby township refused to allow their children to attend school with the boy’s siblings. (E. B died in 1913.) Also in 1912, Dr. Bracken resolved a dispute between a creamery and E. B.’s family. The creamery refused to buy the milk from the family since the belief was that the milk could transmit leprosy. Dr. Bracken wrote to the creamery management and said that the people who handled the milk were not in contact with E. B. Leprosy, moreover, was not as contagious as tuberculosis. He said at the time there were seventeen or eighteen cases of leprosy in the state, but there were over 10,000 cases of tuberculosis. Because of his letter, the creamery reversed its decision. In 1921, after E. B.’s sister, who no longer lived with the family, was diagnosed with leprosy, physicians visited the remaining family members and evaluated their conditions. E. B.’s father and other sister and brothers showed no evidence of the disease. Doctors and officials from other states routinely wrote to Dr. Bracken asking about how the state of Minnesota managed leprosy. He responded that the affected were usually cared for by their families or at county poor farms. They would occupy a room by themselves with their own bedding, towels, and dishes. Soiled bandages were burned and washable bedding and clothing were disinfected. He wrote that there was no quarantine or persecution of the individual and no panic regarding the person. Dr. Bracken stated that no one with a family member with leprosy should be allowed to enter the country so the disease would die out. He was an advocate for a national home to care for the patients so they could be moved from filthy homes where adequate hygiene was not practiced. He said this action would be more economical, provide more satisfactory care, and segregate but not isolate them. He wrote of a woman from Sweden who wished to die to free her family from the persecution caused by her disease. Her husband, who was a carpenter, could not find work, and her children could not go to school due to public sentiment. Bracken said her family would be free of this stigma if she could be cared for in a leprosarium. In 1898, Dr. Bracken reported that he knew of fifty-one people affected with leprosy in Minnesota prior to 1890. Of the fifty-one, he said twenty-one were married and had a collective total of seventy-eight children. None of the children or spouses had developed leprosy at the time. As of 1948, there had been ninety-eight leprosy cases reported in the Minnesota population—fifty-three Norwegians, thirteen Swedish, 8 with Swedish or Norwegian parents or grandparents, 8 to 10 that were probably Norwegian, and 14 from other countries. In the twenty-first century, the Minnesota State Department of Health requires that a newly identified case of Hansen’s disease must be reported to them within one working day of discovery. The disease is uncommon in the twenty-first century, with zero to three cases per year reported. The risk of developing Hansen’s disease in the United States is very low, since 95 percent of the worldwide population has natural immunity. Close and prolonged exposure over several months to an infected individual is required to catch the disease; it is likely spread by droplets released during coughing and sneezing.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Leprosy.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246087,"name":"Health and Medicine","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/leprosy-minnesota"},{"alt":"Amish Buggy Entering Harmony, Minnesota","author":[{"name":"Amy Jo Hahn","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/amy-jo-hahn"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"October 22, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Harmony Amish","postbody":"On the streets of the small town of Harmony, in Fillmore County, cars and trucks share road space with horse-drawn black buggies and wagons. Drivers in modern dress travel alongside people ...","searchtext":"On the streets of the small town of Harmony, in Fillmore County, cars and trucks share road space with horse-drawn black buggies and wagons. Drivers in modern dress travel alongside people dressed in dark, plain clothing resembling mid-nineteenth-century attire—members of a local Amish enclave. Since its founding in 1974, the Harmony-area Amish community has grown to become the largest Amish population in Minnesota. The Amish who live in the countryside of Harmony and Canton belong to the most conservative Amish group, called the Old Order Amish. It is the least progressive of Amish orders, and its members do not use modern technologies or conveniences, including electricity and running water. Harmony’s Amish came to Minnesota from Wayne County, Ohio, where they had lived for several decades after immigrating to the United States in the eighteenth century to escape persecution for their religious beliefs. They were originally part of the Dutch Mennonite movement. In the seventeenth century, however, several members broke ties and formed their own religious sect, headed by Jakob Ammann. In 1850, a second schism created the New Order Amish and Old Order Amish. While the New Order Amish accepted some forms of modernization, the Old Order Amish continued to follow the traditional practice of living in the modern world while remaining separate from it. By the early 1970s, the Ohio Amish, who belonged to the Schwartzentruber subgroup, were experiencing an overcrowding problem. Growing families were using up dwindling agricultural and business resources. In August 1973, four Amish men traveled to the Harmony and Canton area of Minnesota to survey the location as a possible place for settlement. They were impressed with what they saw; small acreage farms could be purchased for $300 to $700 an acre. In addition to the excellent farmland, they found plenty of timber and an abundance of water sources provided by natural springs. Harmony and surrounding small towns also appealed to the Amish since their populations were low—around 1,000 people in total. The four travelers returned to Ohio and told family and friends of their discovery. They decided that Harmony would be a perfect place to start a new life. They purchased land through a local real estate agent, and six families arrived in the spring of 1974. Their horses, buggies, farming equipment, and other machinery arrived by freight train. Although Harmony’s Old Order Amish sometimes use modern conveniences borrowed from the English—a term they use to refer to their neighbors who are not Amish—they do not have their own. They pump cold water into their houses, use kerosene lamps for lighting, stoke wood-burning stoves for warmth, and power their machines with diesel engines. The Amish conduct church services in their homes and have their own cemeteries. They also run their own schools. One-room buildings accommodate children through the eighth grade. They speak Low German or Pennsylvania Dutch in their homes and among themselves; children do not learn English until they go to school. Adults support themselves by farming but bring in extra income from selling homemade candy, bread, jams, and jellies, as well as handmade baskets, furniture, and quilts. Amish people dress in dark blue or black clothing, the women in ankle-length dresses with aprons and bonnets and the men in denim trousers and shirts with wide-brimmed hats. They do not use zippers; straight pins secure clothing. The Amish believe that the Bible forbids images of any kind. They cite Deuteronomy 5:8: “You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.” For this reason, they have no photographs or mirrors (though men may use a small mirror for shaving), and children’s dolls lack faces. The Old Order Amish have thrived in the rural agricultural area surrounding the towns of Harmony and Canton, growing from a handful of families in the 1970s to ninety families by 1993. In 2018, over 1,000 Amish live in the area. Their presence has provided Harmony with a lucrative tourism business. Every year people from all over the state, region, country, and world stop in Harmony to learn about the Amish lifestyle and purchase their homemade and handmade wares.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Harmony Buggy Entering Harmony.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/harmony-amish"},{"alt":"|||Cowpoke,||| by Robert Remick","author":[{"name":"Janelle Kaye","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/janelle-kaye"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"October 22, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Remick, Robert (1904‒1998)","postbody":"Visual artist Robert Remick spent decades creating masterpieces that grace public buildings, galleries, business places, and homes. As his fame grew throughout his career, so did his ...","searchtext":"Visual artist Robert Remick spent decades creating masterpieces that grace public buildings, galleries, business places, and homes. As his fame grew throughout his career, so did his generosity. The Remick Gallery in the Cottonwood County Historical Society building, the Remick Ridge Estates for senior living, and the Robert and Helen Remick Charitable Foundation Trust are named in recognition of his philanthropy. Born in Crookston, Minnesota, in 1904, Remick graduated from the high school in nearby Mentor and then moved to Omaha to work. He later attended college at Bemidji State before returning to Mentor to teach for a short time. He moved to Minneapolis in the late 1920s and graduated from the Minneapolis School of Art and Design (now the Minneapolis College of Art and Design) in 1932. “Drawing and painting were my overpowering interests,” he later observed. While living in Minneapolis, Remick worked in the window display department at Dayton’s. This gave him experience in commercial art, which he put to good use later. Remick married Helen Hebbel, from Windom, on October 2, 1929, and lived in Minneapolis. The couple visited Windom together in 1936 and never went back to Minneapolis. For the next twenty-five years, Remick lived on the Hebbel farm near Windom, where he raised purebred Brown Swiss cattle. Farm work monopolized his time, and painting became a memory. After working as a librarian in Minneapolis, Helen continued her career as a librarian in Windom. During the summers of 1959-1961, she attended the university in Boulder, Colorado to work on her master||s degree, and encouraged Robert to take painting classes there. He followed her advice and studied with Clyfford Still and Kenzo Okada in different media, creating collages with paper, paint, fabric, and cardboard. He then decided to quit farming and focus on painting. By 1961, he was painting and creating collages full time. Eventually, boldly textured collages became his forte. The Remicks traveled to Tucson every year for nineteen winters. A dealer at the Amersen Gallery there handled all of his paintings and arranged one-man and group shows for him. Robert’s style became recognizable for its bold designs and soft earthy tones. Robert and Helen also spent some time in Mexico at the James Punto Artist Colony at San Miguel Allende, where Robert was influenced by the post-Cubist expressionism of the 1960s. His work was primarily shown in Minnesota and Arizona, in addition to numerous private collections. As the volume of his work grew and became recognizable for its style, his acclaim grew as well. Remick received the grand prize for original art at the 1967 Minnesota State Fair and collected dozens of other awards in Minnesota and Arizona. On May 14, 1994, he received the second Prairie Star Award given out by the Southwest Minnesota Arts and Humanities Council (SMAC) in Marshall. The award, given in alternate years, honors artists whose body of work best exemplifies the highest quality of art in the eighteen counties of the SMAC region. As Remick’s fame grew, twenty local artists flocked to his studio for informal gatherings and inspiration. These budding artists eventually became the Windom Art Group, with a few of their members building substantial careers of their own. During the last years of his life, Remick became well known in southwestern Minnesota not only for his art, but also for his philanthropy. Robert invested his financial resources in Windom and the surrounding southwest area. Before his death in 1998, he made a generous financial contribution to an art gallery now known as the Remick Gallery at the Cottonwood County Historical Society, and later willed his collection of art to it. He also helped to construct a retirement community in Windom known as Remick Ridge Estates. Both Robert and Helen Remick believed in the benefits creativity brings to communities. As a result, they directed much of their support to art education, scholarship funds, historical organizations, environmental programs, performing arts groups, schools, and alternative instruction programs. Remick’s will established the Robert and Helen Remick Charitable Foundation Trust, which in 2000 began to contribute millions of dollars to charitable causes with an impact on southwestern Minnesota. Most of its beneficiaries live in Cottonwood County, Jackson County, and nearby areas.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Cowpoke.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/remick-robert-1904-1998"},{"alt":"Parade floats passing down a Minneapolis Street for Aquatennial||s Grande Day Parade, 1960.","author":[{"name":"Samuel Meshbesher","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/samuel-meshbesher"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"October 15, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Minneapolis Aquatennial","postbody":"Started in 1940 by a group of businessmen looking to promote their city nationally, the Minneapolis Aquatennial has been drawing crowds every July since for parades, pageantry, and crowd ...","searchtext":"Started in 1940 by a group of businessmen looking to promote their city nationally, the Minneapolis Aquatennial has been drawing crowds every July since for parades, pageantry, and crowd events, highlighting Minneapolis’s status as the “City of Lakes.” The idea for the Aquatennial was born in 1939 out of a desire to promote Minneapolis as a vacation and business destination through an annual festival rivalling Mardi Gras, the Rose Parade, and, closer to home, St Paul’s Winter Carnival. After witnessing a large parade in Winnipeg for Great Britain’s King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, a group of Minneapolis businessmen including W. N. “Win” Stephens and Tom Hastings concluded that a similar spectacle would improve Minneapolis’s reputation nationally after a tumultuous decade of labor strife and gangster violence. With the help of veteran volunteers from the Winter Carnival, they organized a ten-day festival with almost 200 events in less than a year. The name “Aquatennial” was chosen by contest to highlight the abundance of lakes, rivers, and parks around Minneapolis. Sail and motor boat races were to take place on Lake Calhoun (Bde Maka Ska),* and a 450-mile canoe derby down the Mississippi River from Bemidji would arrive on the first day of the festival. A massive airshow and an interdenominational sermon at Powderhorn Park the next day would both draw more than 100,000. The parades, however, were the main attraction. With support from business sponsors, promotional Aquatennial pin sales, and thousands of volunteers, the inaugural Grande Day parade featured eighty-six elaborate floats, 15,000 marchers, and fifty bands, drawing a crowd of more than 200,000. Even more attended the nighttime Torchlight Parade later in the week. Attendance would grow even higher in coming years: 750,000 would watch 1962’s Torchlight Parade. Along with the parades, the Queen of the Lakes contest has been an Aquatennial mainstay since 1940, drawing contestants from local pageants across the state. A panel of judges choose the next year’s queen and princesses based on personality, public speaking skills, and professionalism. After winners of the pageant are crowned, they serve as ambassadors for Minneapolis in parades nationwide, travelling more miles than the winner of any pageant in the country except Miss America. The contest has undergone significant changes since its origin; while queens do not have the same high-flying international trips and free cars they enjoyed into the sixties, they receive educational scholarships. In the mid-1960s, newspapers stopped listing the queens’ ages, weights, measurements, and home addresses. The Aqua Follies, a highly choreographed aquatic revue show, was introduced to great fanfare in 1941, and provided the festival with crucial revenue for years. A permanent pool, diving platforms, and a stage were built on Lake Wirth to host multiple shows for 6,000 spectators at a time. Twenty-four women known as the Aqua Dears practiced routines for months at the University of Minnesota pool. For many years, they were all required to be exactly five feet and four inches tall and weigh 125 pounds. After the audience was warmed up by stunt divers and comics, professional dancers and the Aqua Dears performed a number with elaborate sets and costumes flown in from Broadway and Hollywood. Over the next half-century, several programs were added to bring in younger audiences. 1967’s festival featured a live show called “The Happening” featuring Jefferson Airplane, Buffalo Springfield, and the Electric Prunes. In an event promoted by the American Dairy Association, contestants raced boats homemade from milk cartons across Lake Calhoun. The eccentric event was an Aquatennial staple from 1971 until 2015, and was revived by a separate nonprofit in 2017. In the late eighties, an event called Aqua Jam drew hundreds of skateboarders competing for prizes and sponsorships to the festival. Going into the new millennium, the Minneapolis Aquatennial Association neared bankruptcy as corporate sponsors, individual contributors, and contest fees could not keep up with programming costs. In 2002, the organization was absorbed by the Minneapolis Downtown Council (DTC), a business association which already included many of the companies which sponsored the festival for years. Simultaneously, the Aquatennial Ambassador Organization(AAO) was created to run the Queen of the Lakes program and maintain connections with festivals across the state and nationally. While the length and scope of the festival has been reduced in recent years to reflect busier summer schedules and a greater focus on Downtown Minneapolis, the Aquatennial continues to promote the “City of Lakes” with free shows, parades, contests, pageantry, and fireworks. *Editor||s note: At the time the Aquantennial was founded, the formal name of the lake recognized by state government was Lake Calhoun. The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources restored the lake||s Dakota name, Bde Maka Ska, in 2018.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Aquatennial parade, 1960.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246079,"name":"Cities and Towns","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246054,"name":"Sports and Recreation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/minneapolis-aquatennial"},{"alt":"Sacred Earth, Ragamala Dance Company","author":[{"name":"Ashwini Ramaswamy","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/ashwini-ramaswamy"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"October 08, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Ragamala Dance Company","postbody":"Founded in 1992 by Ranee Ramaswamy and David Whetstone, Ragamala Dance Company is a leading dance ensemble of the Indian diaspora in the United States. Through original works like Sacred ...","searchtext":"Founded in 1992 by Ranee Ramaswamy and David Whetstone, Ragamala Dance Company is a leading dance ensemble of the Indian diaspora in the United States. Through original works like Sacred Earth and Song of the Jasmine, the Minneapolis-based institution has made a global impact while maintaining its Minnesota roots. Under the direction of Ranee and her daughter Aparna, the company creates intercultural, collaborative performance works. Their choreography is rooted in the south Indian classical dance style of Bharatanatyam, a 2,000-year-old art form that originated in Tamil Nadu, India. Highly stylized, with sophisticated technique, Bharatanatyam blends two distinct components: nritta, or rhythmic dance, comprising various complex body movements and rhythmic compositions, and nritya, or narrative dance, which utilizes the language of gesture and facial expression. Raised in Chennai (Madras), India, Ranee trained in Bharatanatyam from age nine to nineteen. After moving to Minneapolis with her husband and youngest daughter, Aparna, in 1978, she became active in the local Indian community and joined a number of organizations for Indian expatriates. After taking a ten-year break from dancing, she was invited to perform at a festival at the University of Minnesota. The performance led to teaching, and she began making annual trips to India to further her study. 1983 was a critical juncture in Ranee and Aparna’s artistic lives. The internationally renowned dancer and choreographer Alarmél Valli came to the University of Minnesota for a teaching workshop and performance, after which Ranee and Aparna become her students. “I had never seen anyone dance Bharatanatyam like she did,” recalls Ranee. “Valli’s dancing was brilliant and soul-stirring.” From 1983 to 1990, Ranee and Aparna continued their annual studies with Valli while establishing themselves in the Twin Cities dance community through teaching and performing. The idea to start a company began when Ranee met the poet Robert Bly in 1990. She realized that she could bring Indian poetry, dance, and music to new audiences through his dynamic English translation of the poems of Mirabai, a Hindu writer and mystic who lived in the 1500s CE. Through Bly, Ranee met sitarist David Whetstone and tabla player Marcus Wise, and the three collaborated with her on a multi-media production called Mirabai Versions. The show’s 1991 premiere was a milestone. “For the first time, I felt like I was really doing my own work,” she says. “And the poems in English and music by local musicians made Indian dance more accessible to audiences outside of the Indian community.” Encouraged by the show’s success, Ranee and Whetstone founded Ragamala Music and Dance Theater in 1992 (Whetstone left the company to pursue other projects in 1996). “I was excited to collaborate with other cultures that had something in common and to use my dance language to communicate,” Ranee says. Aparna became co-artistic director of the company in 2002. Since then, her shared vision with Ranee has brought international visibility to Ragamala. “Our work explores the hybridic perspectives of intercultural life that is omnipresent in today’s world,” says Aparna. “It’s this idea of carrying ritual and culture forward. We’re looking at the way tradition isn’t static; the contemporary and the traditional can co-exist.” A series of national and international tours—the first in 1998—also helped introduce the company to new audiences. In the 2010s, more tours and original productions like Sacred Earth and Song of the Jasmine brought Ragamala worldwide recognition. As individuals, Ranee and Aparna received such accolades as a McKnight Distinguished Artist Award (Ranee, 2011) and Doris Duke Performing Artist Awards (Ranee, 2014, and Aparna, 2016). National and international venues commissioned the company to create new works, and it received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the McKnight Foundation, and the Joyce Foundation, among others. The company performed at Lincoln Center (2014), the Walker Art Center (2014), the Music Center of Los Angeles (2016), and the Just Festival in Scotland (2017), among dozens of other venues. In early April 2018, Ranee and Aparna were awarded Guggenheim Fellowships in the field of choreography. Later that month, they added the production Body, the Shrine to Ragamala’s repertory, following its debut in Minneapolis. They went on to present six performances of their large-scale work, Written in Water, at the Jacob’s Pillow Dance summer festival in Becket, Massachusetts. Turning Point: In 1983, Ranee and Aparna Ramaswamy meet their guru, Alarmél Valli, at a dance workshop and performance in Minneapolis. Valli’s style of Bharatanatyam becomes the inspiration for their creative aesthetic. The idea to start a company began when Ranee met the poet Robert Bly in 1990. She realized that she could bring Indian poetry, dance, and music to new audiences through his dynamic English translation of the poems of Mirabai, a Hindu writer and mystic who lived in the 1500s CE. Through Bly, Ranee met sitarist David Whetstone and tabla player Marcus Wise, and the three collaborated with her on a multi-media production called Mirabai Versions. The show’s 1991 premiere was a milestone. “For the first time, I felt like I was really doing my own work,” she says. “And the poems in English and music by local musicians made Indian dance more accessible to audiences outside of the Indian community.” Encouraged by the show’s success, Ranee and Whetstone founded Ragamala Music and Dance Theater in 1992 (Whetstone left the company to pursue other projects in 1996). “I was excited to collaborate with other cultures that had something in common and to use my dance language to communicate,” Ranee says. Aparna became co-artistic director of the company in 2002. Since then, her shared vision with Ranee has brought international visibility to Ragamala. “Our work explores the hybridic perspectives of intercultural life that is omnipresent in today’s world,” says Aparna. “It’s this idea of carrying ritual and culture forward. We’re looking at the way tradition isn’t static; the contemporary and the traditional can co-exist.” A series of national and international tours—the first in 1998—also helped introduce the company to new audiences. In the 2010s, more tours and original productions like Sacred Earth and Song of the Jasmine brought Ragamala worldwide recognition. As individuals, Ranee and Aparna received such accolades as a McKnight Distinguished Artist Award (Ranee, 2011) and Doris Duke Performing Artist Awards (Ranee, 2014, and Aparna, 2016). National and international venues commissioned the company to create new works, and it received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the McKnight Foundation, and the Joyce Foundation, among others. The company performed at Lincoln Center (2014), the Walker Art Center (2014), the Music Center of Los Angeles (2016), and the Just Festival in Scotland (2017), among dozens of other venues. In early April 2018, Ranee and Aparna were awarded Guggenheim Fellowships in the field of choreography. Later that month, they added the production Body, the Shrine to Ragamala’s repertory, following its debut in Minneapolis. They went on to present six performances of their large-scale work, Written in Water, at the Jacob’s Pillow Dance summer festival in Becket, Massachusetts.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/sacred_earth_hub_wilson.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/ragamala-dance-company"},{"alt":"Photograph of 1914 women|| suffrage parade","author":[{"name":"Elizabeth Loetscher","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/elizabeth-loetscher"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"October 01, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Scandinavian Woman Suffrage Association","postbody":"The Scandinavian Woman Suffrage Association used its unique ethnic affiliation to promote suffrage within Minnesota’s substantial Scandinavian community. By weaving celebrations of culture ...","searchtext":"The Scandinavian Woman Suffrage Association used its unique ethnic affiliation to promote suffrage within Minnesota’s substantial Scandinavian community. By weaving celebrations of culture with targeted suffrage campaigns, the club contributed to Minnesota’s larger fight for women’s voting rights and even raised enough money to build a suffrage movement headquarters on the state fairgrounds. The Scandinavian Woman Suffrage Association (SWSA) was founded in 1907 with help from prominent suffragist Ethel Edgerton Hurd. Affiliated at first with the Minnesota Woman Suffrage Association, the SWSA quickly carved its own identity as a crucial link between the Scandinavian community and the women’s suffrage movement. Though open to men, the SWSA was mostly made up of—and exclusively led by—women. It charged no dues, which helped suffrage supporters of all ages and socioeconomic backgrounds take active roles in the organization. The SWSA was also unique for limiting membership to first- and second-generation Scandinavians, the vast majority of whom were Norwegian and Swedish. The dominant ethnicity of members tended to slant toward that of the acting president. Founding president Jenova Martin attracted many Norwegian suffragists, while her successor, Nanny Mattson Jaeger, pulled in more Swedes. The two presidents had diverging goals for the SWSA. Martin emphasized cultural preservation and prized the unique aspects of her Scandinavian heritage. Jaeger, a self-described “patriotic American mother,” was an assimilationist who hoped that woman suffrage could lead immigrants, including women, to fuller American citizenship. Though both presidents prized their heritage, swelling anti-immigrant sentiments during World War I almost led the organization to change its name to avoid association with any particular ethnic group. Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish suffragists were not without their differences. Yet they recognized the advantages of uniting in their fight for women’s voting rights. Together, they made up Minnesota’s largest immigrant group. Because the SWSA emphasized this shared heritage, its outreach efforts in the Scandinavian community were particularly effective. President Nanny Mattson Jaeger wrote to Scandinavian lawmakers like Knute Nelson to garner support for suffrage. She also partnered with Swedish newspapers like Svenska Folkets Tidning to publish pro-suffrage articles. The SWSA also forged strong bonds with Scandinavian suffragists in Europe and shared their successes with women in the United States. Members translated speeches from Norwegian to English, performed a play about the Swedish struggle for women’s suffrage, and celebrated Scandinavian suffrage milestones. Though the SWSA found great success working within the Scandinavian community, it also collaborated with other suffrage groups in Minnesota. In 1914, the SWSA joined 2,000 other marchers from across the state at a Minneapolis suffrage parade. Members wore traditional Scandinavian clothing and urged the United States to catch up with Norway, which had legalized women’s suffrage the previous year. President Jaeger also brought Swedish folk dancers to lawn parties thrown by Clara Ueland, president of the Minnesota Woman Suffrage Association. Because the SWSA did not charge dues, it organized frequent fundraisers to support its work for women’s suffrage. Many doubled as celebrations of the members’ heritage, varying from Scandinavian plays performed at members’ homes to cultural festivals held in Minneapolis parks. One of the SWSA’s most significant fundraising efforts supported the construction of a suffrage headquarters on the state fairgrounds. Though the SWSA initially pledged $500, it eventually decided to cover the full $2,000 price tag. Fundraising efforts ranged from soliciting donations of money and labor to selling baked goods and marmalade. The association also hosted a Scandinavian culture night at St. Paul’s Central High School, which drew an audience of over 1,000 people. When completed, the headquarters was named the Woman Citizen Building. The SWSA dedicated it to the Minnesota Woman Suffrage Association on the first day of the 1917 State Fair. It was intended as a space for women to meet friends, make plans, and eventually celebrate their newly-earned right to vote. That dream came true for the SWSA when the nineteenth amendment was ratified in August of 1920. With its mission fulfilled, the association disbanded just months later.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Suffage march.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/scandinavian-woman-suffrage-association"},{"alt":"Harmony Grain Elevators, ca 1885","author":[{"name":"Amy Jo Hahn","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/amy-jo-hahn"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"October 01, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Harmony Grain Elevator and Railroad Depot","postbody":"Like many towns across Minnesota, Harmony owes its existence to a railroad. The first train arrived in 1879, connecting the farming village to larger cities. The rail line became a major ...","searchtext":"Like many towns across Minnesota, Harmony owes its existence to a railroad. The first train arrived in 1879, connecting the farming village to larger cities. The rail line became a major contributor to Harmony’s early population growth and economic vitality. Preston and Harmony Township residents were not happy when they missed out on the first rail line to cross Fillmore County. Prosperity was directly connected to the railroad. Finished in 1870, the Southern Minnesota Railroad’s line traveled from La Crescent along the Root River Valley. It made stops in Rushford, Whalen, Peterson, Lanesboro, Isinours and Spring Valley. The Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad, commonly known as the Milwaukee Road, eventually purchased the line and it reached South Dakota in 1880. Preston, the county seat, was determined to gain a railroad. Its citizens engaged others in the area to give support if an opportunity presented itself again. Nine years after the Southern Minnesota Railroad Company completed its track, Preston got its second chance. Construction of the Caledonia, Mississippi and Western rail traveling west from Reno in Houston County to Preston began in the spring of 1879. Caledonia, Spring Grove, Mabel, Prosper, Canton, and Harmony were stops along the line with Preston as its western terminus. Trains used a railway turntable to turn the locomotives around to return to Reno. The Caledonia, Mississippi and Western chose land a mile north of Greenfield Prairie, also known as Greenfield, to lay track, and local business owners moved their buildings to be closer to the lifeblood rail. This track placement gave birth to Harmony Village. When a thirty-two-man rail work crew descended on the village to start working on the line in the fall of 1879, they were greeted with an enthusiastic welcome. The first trains arrived by the end of the year. Harmony was now economically connected with the rest of the state, region, and country. A train station depot was built on a farm on the village’s western side to accommodate arriving and departing train passengers. It wasn’t long before it was decided the building was too far away from the growing downtown. It was moved by horse and wagon and placed along the tracks at the northern edge of Harmony’s now-flourishing downtown. W. E. Taylor became the depot’s first station agent. Grain companies and elevator builders arrived with the railroad, seeking access to wheat and other crops from Southeast Minnesota’s productive farmland . Farmers in Minnesota’s most southeastern corner finally had the ability to deliver grains and other crops directly to Mississippi River markets and beyond. Elevators were needed to process and store grain and move it into large freight cars for transporting. Two elevators, the McCormick and the McMichel, were completed in the fall of 1879. In 1884, sparks from a train ignited the McCormick’s hay supply, which was used to feed the horses working the elevator equipment. Water was pumped from two nearby farm wells and a bucket brigade was formed to douse the fire. When it was realized that the elevator was a total loss, efforts quickly refocused on saving the nearby lumberyard. An overnight rain quenched the elevator fire, but its grain smoldered for days after. Another McCormick was built on the southeast side of the tracks. The McMichel survived and still stands in 2018. The Harmony Area Historical Society, the City of Harmony, local businesses, and historic preservation advocates hope to preserve and restore it as a reminder of Harmony’s rich agricultural history. In 1895, Joel Wolsted built a new elevator near the tracks. Wolsted would eventually come to own all Harmony elevators. By 1901, the three feet narrow gauge tracks were replaced with standard tracks, allowing for faster travel and more freight traffic. In 1909, the Wolsted Grain Company was formed. In 1915, it became the Harmony Feed and Fuel Company. It was renamed the Harmony Agri Services in 1975 A new grain receiving and storage facility was constructed in 2017. In 1977, despite protests from farmers and businesses owners, Harmony lost its railroad. In 1997, the old rail bed was reborn as the Harmony-Preston Valley State Trail, connecting bikers and walkers to the Root River State Trail.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Late 1880s harmony grain elevators elevators.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246091,"name":"Agriculture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246053,"name":"Transportation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/harmony-grain-elevator-and-railroad-depot"},{"alt":"Aerial view of sinkholes in Fillmore County","author":[{"name":"Amy Jo Hahn","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/amy-jo-hahn"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"October 01, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246048,"name":"1585–1763 (Colonization)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056201,"name":"1754–1800 (Revolution and a New Nation)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056203,"name":"1792–1861 (Expansion and Reform)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":203519472229,"name":"Pre-1585 (Before European Contact)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Karst Topography in Fillmore County","postbody":"Southeast Minnesota boasts a unique geological landscape of rolling hills, fertile fields, dramatic bluffs, and freshwater streams. Beneath its lush surface is a hidden world of underground ...","searchtext":"Southeast Minnesota boasts a unique geological landscape of rolling hills, fertile fields, dramatic bluffs, and freshwater streams. Beneath its lush surface is a hidden world of underground caves and rivers created after thousands of years of rain and snow seeped through fractured bedrock, slowly softening and dissolving sedimentary rock. Between 14,000 and 12,000 years ago, the last glacier moved across most of the upper Midwest. It buried much of the area under deposits of silt, clay, gravel, and rocks known as “drift.” Because the distinctive bluffs and narrow valleys of Southeast Minnesota, Northeast Iowa, Southwest Wisconsin, and Northwest Illinois stopped the glacier’s advancement, these areas are known collectively as the Driftless Area. The unique terrain of the Driftless Area, created by dissolving sedimentary rock, is known as karst topography. Karst is formed by a chemical reaction between water and carbon dioxide in the soil and atmosphere. It makes the water slightly acidic, which causes soluble rock to gradually dissolve. Soluble rock includes limestone, one of the most common types of bedrock in Fillmore County. Limestone was formed from an accumulation of mud, sand, and the remains of animals that made a prehistoric sea in the area their home during the Paleozoic era. This shallow sea came and went over thousands of years, depositing layers of mud, sand and fossils. As these deposits slowly broke down in Fillmore County, they left behind bluffs, narrow river valleys, and, most notably, sinkholes and caves. Fillmore County is home to more than 10,000 sinkholes. They were formed when soluble rock beneath the surface soil collapsed following centuries of exposure to rain, snow, and seasonal freezing and thawing. Most Fillmore County fields have outcrops of trees where only green leaves and branches can be seen. Tree branches jut upwards from these sinkholes; trunks and roots are hidden from view. Sinkholes can measure anywhere from a few feet to a hundred feet in depth, and occasionally become entrances to the underground caves that pepper Southeast Minnesota. Because so many visitors to Harmony ask about those unusual tree clusters, the Harmony Area Historical Society (HAHS) purchased a sinkhole on the northwest side of town along the Harmony-Preston Bike Trail. They created the Karst Exhibit at the Harmony Visitor Center and the Karst Interpretive Site along the trail to explain how sinkholes are created, as well the area’s geology. The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources now manages the Karst Interpretive Site. Visitors to Fillmore County can experience the unique karst geology of the Driftless Area up close by visiting two caves within a few miles of each other. Public tours are offered to see Niagara Cave near Harmony and Mystery Cave near Preston. Both caves were formed nearly 400,000 years ago and provide excellent examples of intricate underground passageways carved by underground water flow.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Google_Earth_overview.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/karst-topography-fillmore-county"},{"alt":"Sons of Norway Stavanger Lodge 538 banner","author":[{"name":"Janelle Kaye","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/janelle-kaye"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"October 01, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Sons of Norway in Cottonwood County","postbody":"Cottonwood County citizens have participated in local chapters of the national Sons of Norway organization, called lodges, since 1938. Since 1974, Stavanger Lodge 538 has brought members ...","searchtext":"Cottonwood County citizens have participated in local chapters of the national Sons of Norway organization, called lodges, since 1938. Since 1974, Stavanger Lodge 538 has brought members together to participate in cultural, artistic, and community events that celebrate Norwegian American traditions. The Independent Order of the Sons of Norway was founded on January 16, 1895, by eighteen Norwegian immigrant men living in Minneapolis. In 1893, they conceived the idea of creating a fraternal benefit organization in the wake of a severe economic depression. Inspired by both Norwegian and American ideals of fraternalism, the group sought to provide a range of social assistance, including insurance plans, to its members. In its first years, the organization’s primary goal was to care for Norwegian immigrants and facilitate their assimilation into American culture. It provided security in financial crises; a forum for celebrating American nationalism; and methods for preserving Norwegian language, literature, music, and art. By 1901, there were twelve Sons of Norway lodges in Minnesota. Between 1905 and 1914, it became an organization with national influence and reach. Lodges were established across the continent, from New York to the Pacific Northwest. In the 1920s and 1930s, more lodges were formed throughout the United States. They were divided (as they continue to be in the twenty-first century) into six districts on the US mainland, one district in Norway, and one district in British Columbia. Cottonwood County’s participation in the Sons of Norway dates to September 23, 1938, when an organizational lodge meeting was held in Revere, Minnesota. Twenty-six members from Revere and Walnut Grove (Redwood County) and Westbrook and Storden (Cottonwood County) attended. They named their lodge Helgeland after the Helgeland region of Norway, in which most of them had ancestral roots. The new lodge chose Storden for its headquarters and met for the first time around 1950. Meetings were held there until 1956, when the lodge moved to Westbrook. Meetings continued at the second site until June 17, 1958, when the group disbanded and its members joined lodges in other counties. For fifteen years, there were no Sons of Norway lodges in Cottonwood County. Then, around 1973, Erling Husby, a benefit officer at the Sons of Norway Minnesota state headquarters in Minneapolis, was sent to Worthington to see if it would be a good location for a new lodge. During his visit there, he realized that Windom would be a better site due to the larger number of Norwegian immigrants living there. He recommended that the state organization choose Windom. On March 19, 1974, Stavanger Lodge 538 in Cottonwood County, a part of Sons of Norway District 1, was formed in Windom with 118 charter members. Membership in the new lodge was open to anyone with Scandinavian heritage or an interest in learning about the culture. It is named for Stavanger, Norway, where several original members originated. Its mission is: “…to promote and preserve the heritage and culture of Norway, to celebrate our relationship with other Nordic Countries, and to provide quality insurance and financial products to our members.” Members of Stavanger Lodge receive multiple benefits, including insurance and annuities; scholarships and grants; and sports, cultural, and heritage programs. They also receive the award-winning monthly magazine Viking—the national organization’s official magazine. The lodge awards sports medals to members who accomplish established goals in a fitness program and cultural medals to those who learn about Norwegian culture. Medals are awarded in twelve units: foods, literature, stamp collecting, rosemaling, genealogy, knitting, language, Hardanger embroidery, wood carving, weaving, folk dancing, and music. In the twenty-first century, Stavanger Lodge 538 continues to flourish by building on the traditions of the past while also incorporating contemporary Norwegian American lifestyles into its programs. Lodge members continue to gather to celebrate Mid-Solen, the arrival of the summer solstice, much as it is observed in Norway. Lodge members collaborate with other organizations to bring programs and services to Cottonwood County residents. At the annual Riverfest celebration in Windom, for example, lodge members host a Scandinavian smorgasbord that showcases traditional Norwegian, and Norwegian American, foods and arts. Sons of Norway continues to flourish by meeting the interests and needs of area residents just as it did in 1893.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Banner_edited.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/sons-norway-cottonwood-county"},{"alt":"Cottonwood County Courthouse","author":[{"name":"Janelle Kaye","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/janelle-kaye"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"October 01, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Cottonwood County Courthouse","postbody":"The Cottonwood County Courthouse, completed in 1905 and listed on the National Register of Historical Places in 1977, is a source of beauty and pride for the residents of Cottonwood County. ...","searchtext":"The Cottonwood County Courthouse, completed in 1905 and listed on the National Register of Historical Places in 1977, is a source of beauty and pride for the residents of Cottonwood County. On July 29, 1870, the Minnesota legislature legally organized Cottonwood County. Its commissioners first gathered to do their administrative work at a home in Big Bend, a small community six miles northwest of the future site of Windom. Since the commissioners lacked a permanent building where they could meet and store their paperwork, meeting in private homes was common. As the county’s population grew and demands on the judicial and governmental systems increased, local officials recognized the need to consolidate both people and paperwork, and residents began to call for a permanent home. Big Bend, however, didn’t meet the county’s needs because it was six miles away from any hotels and businesses. The commissioners decided to name Windom, which had been platted on June 20, 1871, as the county seat—in part because it had been chosen as a stop on the Sioux City and St. Paul Railroad. Cottonwood County commissioners first met in Windom in January 1872. Talk of building a courthouse continued for a decade without action because the county needed to reserve its funds for countering the devastation caused by Rocky Mountain locusts between 1873 and 1877. In the meantime, Cottonwood County rented various structures in Windom to house the first government offices. By 1883, a wooden structure that met the county’s needs was built. A decade later, however, it was too small, and local citizens talked about building a centrally located courthouse that would serve a population of 30,000. By November 1903, the county chose the architectural firm of Omeyer and Thori of St. Paul; by March 1904, it awarded the construction contract to J. B. Nelson and Company, contractors in Mankato, for the sum of $59,994. Work began in April 1904 and the cornerstone was laid in July 1904. In October 1904, Odin J. Oyen of La Crosse, Wisconsin, who specialized in ecclesiastical decoration, received a contract to supervise the building’s interior decoration. As construction progressed, costs soared past the original estimate to $100,000 (including interiors) when the county took advantage of a new state program that granted loans for the construction of courthouses. By August 1905, the building was complete. A dedication ceremony was held on November 3, 1905 with Governor John Johnson delivering the primary speech. This event brought crowds to Windom to admire the new building which consisted of two stories of red sandstone and brick set upon a rusticated basement. It combined elements of the Neo-classical and Renaissance Revival styles and included a central domed atrium which rose through the two upper stories and provided access to offices and chambers. In the second floor courtroom, Oyen executed the gold-leaf-embellished mural of “Justice” which was patterned after the painting of the same name in the Palace of Justice in Paris. Between 1905 and 1909, work continued on the courthouse’s grounds and interior. Sidewalks, gutters, and curbs were eventually completed. In 1927, professional landscapers planted 597 shrubs and trees. Cottonwood County commissioners approved the first courthouse remodeling project in 1930, in part because of the need to accommodate new women voters, jurors, and staff inside the building. The jury room was remodeled and additional rest room space for women was added. The next major remodeling project occurred during the Great Depression. A number of new governmental agencies were created which required space. During WWII, additional agencies were created to deal with new crises. The basement was remodeled to give agents more room. In 1977, the Cottonwood County Courthouse was placed in the National Register of Historical Places. This pattern of modernization and reparation has continued until the present day. Elevators to aid the disabled and a musical dome that chimes every day are two of the more notable modern improvements. Through all the changes, the Cottonwood County Courthouse has remained a historical gem and a source of pride for the people of the county.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/wikimedia_commons_mcghiever.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/cottonwood-county-courthouse"},{"alt":"Photograph of The Fireplace of States, Bemidji Tourist Information Center","author":[{"name":"Cecelia Wattles McKeig","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/cecelia-wattles-mckeig"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"October 01, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Fireplace of States","postbody":"Originally a feature of the 1934 Paul Bunyan House, the Fireplace of States is a symbolic hearth and art project made to represent the cooperation of American states, national parks, and ...","searchtext":"Originally a feature of the 1934 Paul Bunyan House, the Fireplace of States is a symbolic hearth and art project made to represent the cooperation of American states, national parks, and Canadian provinces. When the Paul Bunyan House was torn down in 1995, the fireplace was moved to a new Tourist Information Center on Lake Bemidji. The Fireplace of States is part of Bemidji’s Tourist Information Center, which sits next to the statues of Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox on the shore of Lake Bemidji. It is constructed of 900 rocks from every state in the union, every Canadian province, and all eighty-seven Minnesota counties. There are also stones from each national park. The fireplace contains stones from the US Capitol in Washington, DC, and Franklin D. Roosevelt||s home in Hyde Park, New York, as well as a brick from the Statue of Liberty, a letter “M” and gopher stones from the University of Minnesota, and a piece of Old Fort Gary in Winnipeg The fireplace was as an original feature of the Paul Bunyan House, which was built in 1934 under the Civil Works Administration (CWA) as part of Roosevelt’s New Deal. It was located at 300 Bemidji Avenue in Bemidji. Like other CWA projects, it was intended to create jobs for unemployed and underemployed workers during the Great Depression. The fireplace concept was conceived by Harry Roese, owner of the Shorecrest Resort, president of the local Civic and Commerce Association, and a district manager of the Federal Re-Employment Service. In 1934, he directed a secretary in his office, Kathleen Wilson, to send letters across the United States and Canada asking for rocks to be included in a fireplace that would unite pieces of geologic and social history from across the continent. Recipients responded enthusiastically, and Wilson marveled at how willing people were to send their rocks to Bemidji, considering the shipping costs. As each rock arrived, it was numbered with a pin, and an identification key was compiled. Architect Charles Budge drew up the plans for an octagonal building—the Paul Bunyan House—that would house the fireplace. Stonemason Mark Morse designed and built the fireplace itself. The Fireplace of States was lit for the first time on a Monday evening, September 24, 1934, at the Paul Bunyan Playground Association’s meeting. Resort owners and operators, businessmen and women, and other visitors gathered at the newly completed Tourist Information building to view the finished hearth. Roese explained the methods used to obtain the various stones and the unexpected cooperation he had received in the project. The fireplace’s centerpiece is a stone depicting Shaynowishkung (the Ojibwe leader known to settler-colonists as Chief Bemidji) in St. Cloud granite. One stone is from the Connecticut statehouse of 1635, and one from the original wing of the United States capitol. Some of the stones are fossils. As of March 20, 1938, the Fireplace of States contained stones from every part of Canada and the United States from the Arctic Circle to the South Pole. Stones were continually added to the fireplace over a period of six years. Two bricks and pieces of the 1792 stonework from the White House were added on May 22, 1939. Nearly 1,000 tourists visited the Fireplace of States on July 4, 1939, proving its popularity. New stones arrived yet again on November 4, 1939, for installation. When a Tourist Information Center on the Lake Bemidji waterfront was built in 1995, the fireplace was shrink-wrapped and moved, intact, to the site of the new building. It was then moved inside with a crane and installed next to the statues of Paul Bunyan and his blue ox, Babe. Many of the original pins used to identify each rock were lost during the moving process. Although a list of donors and rock descriptions remained afterward, the only identifiable rocks were those engraved by their donors.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/MB4.9 BJ8 r27.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246079,"name":"Cities and Towns","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/fireplace-states"},{"alt":"Maggie Sengoge and Porky White making maple sugar","author":[{"name":"Erik Martin Redix","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/erik-martin-redix"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"September 28, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246048,"name":"1585–1763 (Colonization)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056201,"name":"1754–1800 (Revolution and a New Nation)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056203,"name":"1792–1861 (Expansion and Reform)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":203519472229,"name":"Pre-1585 (Before European Contact)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Maple Sugaring and the Ojibwe","postbody":"Ojibwe people have made maple sugar, a traditional dietary staple, for centuries. It is easily accessed in the woodlands of Minnesota and can be stored for months without spoiling. While ...","searchtext":"Ojibwe people have made maple sugar, a traditional dietary staple, for centuries. It is easily accessed in the woodlands of Minnesota and can be stored for months without spoiling. While the technology used in the process has changed over the years, Ojibwe people continue to harvest maple sugar in the present day. Native people have produced maple sugar since time immemorial throughout the Great Lakes and New England. It is produced by boiling the sap of the sugar maple tree (acer saccharum), which grows throughout Minnesota. While the sap of other tree species, such as birch and other maple varieties, can be harvested, sugar maple sap contains the highest concentration of sugar. It takes about thirty-five gallons of sap to produce one gallon of maple syrup. In Minnesota, the harvest of maple sugar usually occurs between mid-March and mid-April, when temperatures are above freezing during the day and below freezing at night. Sap is most plentiful at this time of year as it is the beginning of the trees’ annual growth cycle. The harvesting process begins with the drilling of small holes about one-inch deep into maple trees. (Before the advent of drills, Ojibwe harvesters would simply gash the trees with an axe.) Next, spigots are pounded into the trees to divert the flow of their sap. Taps made of sumac were common, as sumac branches of two to three inches in diameter can be easily hollowed out. Since the late 1700s, Ojibwe people have also used metal taps. In the next step of the harvesting process, the dripping sap is collected in a container placed at each tree. Historically, the Ojibwe used birch bark containers for this, as they were easily stacked. Finally, the sap is collected from each tree and boiled in a larger kettle made of cast iron or stainless steel. The process of making maple sugar was greatly aided when Ojibwe people began acquiring cast iron kettles from French traders in the seventeenth century. Prior to this, the Ojibwe boiled thousands of gallons of maple sap in kettles made of birch bark or copper. Once they had collected the sap in kettles, Ojibwe people boiled it down into granulated sugar, which was used as the primary seasoning in food. Writing in 1855, German ethnographer Johann Kohl noted: “They are fond of mixing their meat with sweets, and even sprinkle sugar or maple syrup over fish boiled in water.” If kept dry, granulated sugar will not spoil for months, providing Ojibwe people with a food source throughout the year. Before the reservation era (ca. 1871–1928), the opening of sugar camps every spring played an important role in the social life of Ojibwe communities. During the winter, Ojibwe people scattered into family groups of around a dozen people. The opening of sugar camp in the early spring marked the beginning of Ojibwe communities coming back together into larger groups for food production, ceremonies, and social events. Historically, women performed most of the labor associated with maple sugar production, with men working in supporting roles such as cutting firewood and supplying food by hunting and fishing. This began to change during the twentieth century as entire families worked in sugar camps. Mille Lacs elder Larry “Amik” Smallwood described his family’s sugar camp during his childhood in the 1950s: “Families would help each other and everybody would have a role. There was the wood cutters, the gatherers of water, the boilers, the food makers. It was really a lot of fun long ago.” In the twenty-first century, Ojibwe people continue to harvest maple sugar, which remains an important traditional food source. Ojibwe families operate camps on reservations throughout Minnesota and may also gather maple sugar off-reservation on county, state, and federal lands in east-central Minnesota—a right derived from the 1837 Treaty of St. Peters and subsequent interpretations, including a 1999 Supreme Court case. Maple sugar is a vital resource in preserving Ojibwe culture and sovereignty. Mille Lacs elder Larry “Amik” Smallwood noted: “We treat that maple syrup with respect. The same as we would wild rice. If you burn some, if you spill it, if you waste any unintentionally, you got to do a little tobacco ceremony for that because it’s a gift from the Creator.”","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/E99.32 p26.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246091,"name":"Agriculture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246059,"name":"Native Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/maple-sugaring-and-ojibwe"},{"alt":"Photograph of William Nash","author":[{"name":"Paul Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/paul-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"September 17, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Winnipeg Liquor Conspiracy","postbody":"National Prohibition went into effect January 17, 1920. On March 23—sixty-six days into Prohibition—federal liquor agents arrested Oscar Martinson, sheriff of Hennepin County. Next came ...","searchtext":"National Prohibition went into effect January 17, 1920. On March 23—sixty-six days into Prohibition—federal liquor agents arrested Oscar Martinson, sheriff of Hennepin County. Next came William M. Nash, Hennepin County Attorney, indicted April 6, arrested May 13. Martinson pleaded guilty. Nash was acquitted, but Governor J. A. A. Burnquist removed him from office. Nash and Martinson were the highest-ranking Minnesota law enforcement officials prosecuted under Prohibition. In 1920 William Nash was just thirty-seven; he had for several years been a lawyer and partner with his brother John in a downtown Minneapolis law and real estate business. Oscar Martinson was forty-three, born in Sweden, and had been Minneapolis chief of police from 1913 to 1917 under Mayor William Nye. Both Nash and Martinson had been elected November 1918. The Volstead Act took effect in January 1920, but by then the importation of whiskey had been forbidden since August 1917, and so-called wartime Prohibition had been in place since November 1918. Criminals and law enforcement both had used the time to practice for the real thing. The later conduct of Nash and Martinson suggests that in Prohibition they saw opportunity for gain. The plot that brought them down involved just three shipments: 74 barrels of whiskey from Winnipeg hidden in gondola cars of scrap metal and delivered to a Minneapolis scrap yard. The key witness against both men was Minneapolis brothel owner Mike Weisman. He told federal authorities that a bootlegger named Saul Goldberg had asked him to “fix” the sheriff and county attorney so that there would be no trouble with the Winnipeg shipments. Martinson readily agreed to provide guards—himself and two of his deputies—while the liquor was unloaded. Nash was needed to be on call so that if federal agents appeared the men unloading could quickly be charged in state court, rather than federal court. Nash would ask for low bail, which the men would post, then disappear. Weisman said that when he offered $200 per carload, Nash replied, “I won’t turn a wheel for less than a thousand.” Weisman came up with the thousand. Martinson seems to have gotten less. Martinson admitted his rather minor role and got a sentence of two years prison, the maximum. Nash denied everything. At his trial in federal court he had good lawyers and the great advantage that all the witnesses against him were criminals. He was acquitted, but that was not the end of his troubles. Governor Burnquist then moved to remove Nash from office. A week after Nash’s acquittal Burnquist convened a removal hearing at the state capitol. At the hearing Nash was accused not only of taking bribes in the liquor cases, but also of accepting two thousand dollars to go easy on four Minneapolis madams arrested for prostitution. The contentious proceedings, front page news, went on more than a week. Nash continued to deny everything, but some of the evidence was damning. Before Martinson had been charged, he and Nash had visited the federal prosecutor at home to ask if anything could be done to stop it. The four Minneapolis madams were revealed to have rented their brothel space from Nash’s brother and partner, John Nash, at a rate so high that it seemed to include protection from prosecution. Before that, they had rented from Mike Weisman. Governor Burnquist removed Nash from office, but the case was still not over. Nash appealed to the Minnesota supreme court. In December 1920 that court affirmed Governor Burnquist in a divided vote over a blistering dissent. Both Martinson and Nash recovered. Martinson served one year at Leavenworth, then returned to Minneapolis and opened a detective agency. Soon he moved to southern California, where he worked briefly for the Salvation Army and as a traveling evangelist. Then he found the movies. He became chief security officer for the motion picture company town Universal City. His local obituaries, in 1935, recorded that he had worked as a “motion picture studio director.” William Nash went back to the private practice of law, and apparently did well. He died, a respected attorney, while on a fishing trip near Brainerd, at age fifty-one.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/William Nash_Hennepin Cty Lib..jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246060,"name":"Crime and Punishment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/winnipeg-liquor-conspiracy"},{"alt":"Photograph of Alexander Ramsey","author":[{"name":"Jayne Becker","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/jayne-becker"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"September 17, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Ramsey, Alexander (1815–1903)","postbody":"Alexander Ramsey was Minnesota’s first territorial governor (1849–1853), second state governor (1860–1863), and a US senator (1864–1875). Although he directly contributed to the founding ...","searchtext":"Alexander Ramsey was Minnesota’s first territorial governor (1849–1853), second state governor (1860–1863), and a US senator (1864–1875). Although he directly contributed to the founding and the growth of Minnesota, he also played a major role in removing the area||s Indigenous people—the Dakota and Ojibwe—from their homelands. Ramsey was born on September 8, 1815, in Hummelstown, Pennsylvania. He participated in local politics as a young man and followed closely the events at the statehouse in Harrisburg. His interest in government prompted him to study law, and in 1839 he was admitted to the Pennsylvania bar. Ramsey joined the Whig party and became a rising star in Pennsylvania politics. He was a delegate to the Whig national convention in 1840 and in 1843 began the first of two terms in the US House of Representatives. In 1845, he married Anna Jenks, whose father was a Congressman from Pennsylvania. The couple had three children. Their two sons, Alexander and William, died in childhood, but their daughter, Marion, survived into adulthood. In 1848, Ramsey campaigned in Pennsylvania for Zachary Taylor, the Whig nominee for president. He played a crucial role in Taylor’s win. The new president rewarded Ramsey by appointing him governor of the recently organized Minnesota Territory. Ramsey was reluctant to leave Pennsylvania but realized the move would benefit his career. In May 1849, Ramsey arrived in Minnesota to begin his position as governor and superintendent of Indian Affairs. The government’s most urgent task was to remove Dakota and Ojibwe people from the land and open it for settler-colonists who were flooding into the territory. When the Treaties of Traverse des Sioux and Mendota were signed with the Dakota in 1851, Ramsey played a key role in obtaining the signatures of Dakota leaders. Several Dakota alleged intimidation and fraud in the treaty signings, and Ramsey was one of the principal figures accused. Ignoring evidence uncovered in its own investigations, the US Senate exonerated him in 1854. Ramsey served as mayor of St. Paul in 1855. He ran as a Republican for state governor in 1857 but lost to Democrat Henry Sibley by 240 votes. His second bid was successful, and he served as state governor from 1860 to 1863. On taking office, Ramsey inherited a state recovering from the financial panic of 1857. He therefore focused on economic development and balancing the budget. Two events, however—the Civil War and the US–Dakota War of 1862—defined his administration and shifted his attention to military matters. When the Civil War began in 1861, Ramsey became the first state governor to volunteer troops to the Union. In August 1862, war erupted in Minnesota after years of broken treaties, starvation on the reservations, and tension between the Dakota and settler-colonists. After bands of Dakota attacked farms and towns in southwestern parts of the state, Ramsey appointed Sibley commander of the US forces sent to fight the Dakota. The war lasted six weeks; about 70 soldiers, about 530 white civilians, and uncounted Dakota were killed. On September 9, Ramsey delivered a speech to the Minnesota legislature. He stated, “the Sioux Indians of Minnesota must be exterminated or driven forever beyond the borders of the state.” At the war’s end, more than 300 Dakota were tried and convicted of war crimes. On December 26, thirty-eight of them were hanged in Mankato. In 1863, Congress passed laws removing the Dakota and Ho-Chunk (none of whom had fought in the war) from Minnesota. In 1863, Ramsey was elected to the US Senate. He represented Minnesota for twelve years. In the era of Reconstruction, he voted for Radical Republican legislation, including the Reconstruction amendments and the impeachment of President Johnson. Ramsey became secretary of war for President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1879. In 1880, after the unjust court-martial of an African American West Point cadet assaulted by white classmates, he worked with other members of the Hayes administration to investigate and improve the school’s policies. Ramsey retired from politics in 1886. He served as a board member of the St. Paul Public Library and twice served as president of the Minnesota Historical Society. He died in St. Paul on April 22, 1903.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/10299923.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/ramsey-alexander-1815-1903"},{"alt":"Big Point, Leech Lake (Gaa-zagaskwaajimekaag)","author":[{"name":"Kai Pyle","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/kai-pyle"},{"name":"MNopedia","slug":"/mnopedia/search/index/author/mnopedia"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"September 17, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186622056201,"name":"1754–1800 (Revolution and a New Nation)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056203,"name":"1792–1861 (Expansion and Reform)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Ozaawindib (ca. 1748–?)","postbody":"Ozaawindib was a prominent figure among the Pillager Ojibwe who interacted with white travelers and participated in conflicts with the Dakota in the late 1700s. During one encounter in the ...","searchtext":"Ozaawindib was a prominent figure among the Pillager Ojibwe who interacted with white travelers and participated in conflicts with the Dakota in the late 1700s. During one encounter in the 1790s, she successfully defended her Ojibwe kin with a bow and arrows, earning a reputation for bravery. As an agokwa (a person deemed male at birth who took on women’s roles), she was a respected member of her community who grew into a position of leadership. Ozaawindib (also spelled Ozawindib, Ozawondib, and Ozaw-wen-dib, also known as Yellow Head) was born in the late 1700s to an unknown mother and the Minnesota Ojibwe leader Wiishkobak (also known as the Sweet, or La Sucre). Wiishkobak was a chief of the Pillager band of Ojibwe, who lived around Gaa-zagaskwaajimekaag (Leech Lake). Little is recorded of Ozaawindib’s early life. As the child of a military leader like Wiishkobak, she would have observed and eventually participated in war councils, diplomatic discussions, and peace negotiations. By the time she was an adult she was recognized and accepted as an agokwa, an Ojibwe term that refers to a person designated male at birth who takes on the roles of a woman. Though Ojibwe people respected such individuals and honored their identities as women, Ozaawindib’s father attempted to convince her to return to the role of a man. There is no evidence that Ozaawindib complied. In about 1790, Ozaawindib attended a gathering of Ojibwe and Dakota people hosted by trader Joseph Réaume. The meeting was an attempt to resolve an ongoing conflict between the two groups, and at first, things seemed to go well. The Dakota, however, followed Ozaawindib and the other Ojibwe after they left the council, and Ozaawindib fired arrows at the Dakota in defense until her companions were able to reach a safe distance. The bravery she demonstrated earned Ozaawindib the gratitude of the other warriors, who retold the story to celebrate her after they returned home. When the fur trader Alexander Henry visited the same group of Pillager Ojibwe in 1801, witnesses told him the story, and he recorded it in his journal. In 1800, Ozaawindib encountered John Tanner, a white American who had been kidnapped and raised by Ojibwe people from a young age. Though she had already had multiple husbands in the past, Ozaawindib sought Tanner’s hand in marriage. She courted him by bringing him moose meat—a traditional Ojibwe way of showing care for someone. Tanner, however, was disgusted by Ozaawindib and rejected her advances. In the end, Ozaawindib decided to marry an Odaawaa man named Wenji-dotagaan instead. She became his third wife. Their marriage may have been strategic, since in the years around 1800 an alliance with the Odaawaa near the Red River, where Wenji-dotagaan and his people had recently moved, would have helped the Pillager Ojibwe in conflicts with the Dakota. The date of Ozaawindib’s death is uncertain. In the same 1801 journal that mentions her bravery during the incident with the Dakota, Alexander Henry referred to her as having been killed during a fight. A source written by US Indian Agent Thomas McKenney, first published in 1844, referred to her as having been “killed by the enemy” after participating in seven conflicts. Editor’s note: This article has been revised from its original version, which stated that Ozaawindib guided Henry Schoolcraft to the source of Gichi-ziibi (the Mississippi River) in 1832. Additional research has shown that there were two different Ojibwe leaders named Ozaawindib whose lives overlapped. The first, born in about 1748 and described above, was an agokwa from the Pillager band who participated in conflicts with Dakota warriors. The second, not an agokwa, was born closer to 1800, led an Ojibwe community at Gaa-miskwaawaakokaag (Cass Lake), and guided Schoolcraft’s 1832 expedition. Schoolcraft’s narrative of that expedition specifies that his guide was not the son of a chief. The sources that discuss the first Ozaawindib, however, refer to her as the child of a chief at Gaa-zagaskwaajimekaag (Leech Lake) named Wiishkobak.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/11388-A.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246059,"name":"Native Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/ozaawindib-late-1700s"},{"alt":"Photograph of Alice Tripp","author":[{"name":"Elizabeth Loetscher","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/elizabeth-loetscher"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"September 17, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Tripp, Alice Raatama (1918‒2014)","postbody":"A self-proclaimed “jumper-inner,” Alice Tripp made her mark as a grassroots activist and self-taught farmer. She was a key leader of a movement opposing the CU Powerline, which began ...","searchtext":"A self-proclaimed “jumper-inner,” Alice Tripp made her mark as a grassroots activist and self-taught farmer. She was a key leader of a movement opposing the CU Powerline, which began construction on western Minnesota farmland in the early 1970s. Tripp went on to steer a surprisingly successful gubernatorial campaign, and even briefly tried her luck in the 1980 presidential election. Alice Raattama Tripp was born on the Iron Range in 1918 to Finnish and Swedish immigrant parents. While attending Hibbing Junior College, she fell in love with her chemistry lab partner, John Tripp. The two married in 1942, shortly after Alice’s graduation from Lawrence College in Wisconsin. The couple moved frequently during their first years of marriage, jumping between big cities like Detroit and Chicago. Then, in 1957, the Tripps moved back to Minnesota to buy a 250-acre farm just west of St. Cloud. The move was a shock for them both, as neither had any farming experience. Alice and her family depended on books to build their agricultural knowledge and worked long hours to establish their fifty-cow dairy farm. Tripp spent much of the next decade raising her four children and keeping up with the demands of the farm. She later taught English for ten years at nearby Belgrade High School. Yet the early 1970s gave rise to the CU Powerline Controversy, which quickly captured Tripp’s attention. As proposed by two partnering utility companies, the CU Powerline would have stood 150 feet tall and cut across 8,000 acres of farmland in North Dakota and Minnesota. The plan sparked outrage in western Minnesota for its indifference toward small family farms. Area farmers worried about threats to their health and livestock, difficulties during planting and harvesting, and loss of land. A grassroots movement in opposition to the power line was born. Tripp attended her first anti-power-line meeting in the spring of 1976 and soon became a key voice of the movement. At first, Tripp and other protestors tried to reason with government representatives and utility company officials. Ultimately, however, they were given few provisions and little say in the fate of their land. As the power line plans moved forward, Tripp joined other farmers in active opposition of the line. In addition to attending hearings at the State Capitol and petitioning lawmakers, Tripp protested on her home turf. Her methods of resistance varied from presenting an armed state trooper with flowers to throwing snow into a cement truck to delay construction. Tripp also explained that she would have joined the Bolt Weevils—a group of farmers who dismantled power lines—if only she had been handy with a wrench. Though always nonviolent, Tripp was arrested three times for her participation in anti-power-line protests. Inspired by her leadership, Tripp’s neighbors urged her to run for governor of Minnesota in the 1978 election. She soon obliged and selected Carleton physics professor Mike Casper as her running mate. Their campaign centered on the anti-power-line protest by advocating for alternative energy and attacking the actions of large corporations. Armed with a solar-powered megaphone, Tripp also promoted peace and fought for the rights of women, minorities, and workers. Not surprisingly, Tripp lost the Democratic Primary to incumbent governor Rudy Perpich. Yet the grassroots organizer entered the general election anyway and won 20 percent of votes statewide. Though she lost the election, the widespread support was a victory for Tripp. She had spent only $5,000 on her campaign. In 1980, Tripp decided to enter the presidential election, seizing the opportunity to gain exposure for the anti-power-line movement. Ultimately, she was unable to gain the required number of delegate signatures. She instead endorsed socialist congressman Ron Dellums and spoke in his support at the 1980 Democratic National Convention in New York City. Despite the tireless efforts of Tripp and other area farmers, the CU Powerline became fully operational in August of 1979. Soon afterwards, in the early 1980s, Tripp and her husband retired from farming and moved to Scandinavian Lake, where they lived for twenty-five years. Tripp died in 2014 at the age of ninety-six.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Alice Tripp.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/tripp-alice-raatama-1918-2014"},{"alt":"Photograph of Coya Knutson","author":[{"name":"Elizabeth Loetscher","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/elizabeth-loetscher"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"September 14, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Knutson, Coya (1912‒1996)","postbody":"Coya Knutson, a Norwegian American farmer from North Dakota, became Minnesota’s first congresswoman when she was elected in 1954. Though her political career was groundbreaking and packed ...","searchtext":"Coya Knutson, a Norwegian American farmer from North Dakota, became Minnesota’s first congresswoman when she was elected in 1954. Though her political career was groundbreaking and packed with important legislation, it was cut short by her husband and political rivals. Coya Gjesdal Knutson was born in 1912 on a farm near Edmore, North Dakota. The child of Norwegian immigrants, Coya spoke Norwegian at home and prized her family’s Lutheran faith. Farming was also a central part of Knutson’s early life—she drove a tractor by age eleven—and her parents’ involvement with a farmers’ activism group called the Nonpartisan League gave her an early look into the world of politics. Knutson graduated from Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota, in 1934 with degrees in English and music. After studying opera at Juilliard for a summer, she decided to return to North Dakota and become a teacher. Back at home, a slow-moving romance developed between Coya and one of her father’s farmhands, Andy Knutson. The two married in 1940 and bought a hotel in Andy’s hometown of Oklee, Minnesota. Coya managed the hotel’s popular café on top of a full-time teaching career. Later, in 1948, the couple adopted their only son, Terry. Between teaching positions, Knutson began to dip her toes into the world of politics. She got her start in 1942 when she took an outreach position with the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA). She then joined the Red Lake County Welfare Board in 1948 and became the county’s Democratic Farmer-Labor (DFL) chairwoman the same year. Knutson’s affinity for local politics led her to run for state representative. She won her district in both 1950 and 1952. Kuntson’s platform focused on strengthening the Fair Employment Practice Committee, which fights workplace discrimination, as well as increasing state aid for education. Knutson also sponsored a clean-air bill to limit public smoking and advocated for migrant workers, disabled children, and people struggling with mental illness. Riding on the success of her two terms as state representative, Knutson focused her sights on a congressional campaign. The summer before the 1954 election, she travelled more than 25,000 miles to address more than 20,000 voters. She often woke at dawn to visit with farmers, and charmed crowds at county fairs and pickle festivals with her accordion and operatic singing voice. When she beat a six-term incumbent to win the election that November, she became Minnesota’s first-ever congresswoman. Knutson authored sixty-one bills during her two congressional terms (1955–1958). As the first woman appointed to the Agricultural Commission, she learned about farming practices in the Dominican Republic and championed small farmers from her state. She channeled her passion for education into a school lunch assistance program and the first federal student loan bill. Knutson also helped grant one million dollars to the University of Minnesota to fund cystic fibrosis research and introduced bills to support Native Americans from her district. Yet as Knutson gained momentum as a politician, her home life began to darken. Her husband, Andy, was an abusive alcoholic who resented his wife’s growing success and independence. A rift had also formed between Knutson and Democratic Party officials, who were angered by her support for rural-minded politicians over DFL-endorsed candidates. Before long, a series of letters signed by Knutson’s husband was published in newspapers nationwide. The “Coya, Come Home” letters, as they were popularly known, publicly ordered Coya to end her political career and return home to Andy. They also wrongfully accused Knutson of having an affair with her campaign manager, Bill Kjeldahl. The letters are believed to have been written by Knutson’s Republican opponents and signed by her husband. The ensuing national scandal effectively ended Knutson’s political career. She lost the 1958 election by just 1,390 votes to Odin Langen, whose campaign slogan was “A Big Man for a Man-Sized Job.” Though unable to find further success as a politician, Knutson continued to cultivate a successful career. She produced children’s television in New York for a year before moving back to Washington, DC, in 1960. She worked there for ten years in the Civil Defense Office. After retiring in 1972, Knutson moved to Bloomington, Minnesota to live with her son Terry. She died in 1996 at the age of eighty-four.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Headshot.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/knutson-coya-1912-1996"},{"alt":"Photograph of Harmony School","author":[{"name":"Amy Jo Hahn","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/amy-jo-hahn"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"September 12, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Harmony Area Schools","postbody":"Harmony’s first school, nicknamed the Little Red Schoolhouse, was a one-room structure built in 1864 in the village of Greenfield Prairie, a mile south of where Harmony would later be ...","searchtext":"Harmony’s first school, nicknamed the Little Red Schoolhouse, was a one-room structure built in 1864 in the village of Greenfield Prairie, a mile south of where Harmony would later be incorporated. The modest school, built by some of the area’s earliest immigrants, provided the foundation for what would become a thriving independent school district, a source of great pride, and a sign of prosperity for those living in and around Harmony for almost a century. For two decades, Harmony area students attended classes at the Little Red Schoolhouse, but it was decided in 1884 that a larger school was needed to accommodate a growing population. A two-story frame structure went up along Main Street, with one spacious classroom on each floor. Because of the busy spring planting and lucrative fall harvest seasons, enrollment during the first few years fluctuated between 88 and 143 students. When a larger four-classroom school was constructed in 1897, the first two-story school was converted into the Arlington Hotel, which operated for almost four decades. By 1900, Harmony’s school had 205 students. It was still considered an elementary school, but it no longer fit that definition because high school courses were being taught. Voters approved a bond, and Harmony Independent School District #228 was born. In the spring of 1905, Harmony High School held its first graduation ceremony for four young men and five young women. The class flower was a white rose, and its colors were maroon and gold. “No Victory Without Labor” was the school’s original motto. The white frame school was remodeled during the summer of 1902. The first floor went from two to four classrooms, accommodating the first through seventh grades; the second floor’s two rooms were opened up into one larger room for the eighth grade. A library boasting 700 books, science classrooms, and a recitation room were also added. Students participated in spelling bees, literary societies, and debate. Due to the school’s lack of a gymnasium or stage, spring graduation ceremonies and class plays were held in the Harmony Opera House. By 1905, sports at Harmony High were already underway, with the most popular being baseball and basketball. The Harmony High School baseball team won the state championship in 1905 and the next four consecutive seasons. The school’s mascot was a red cardinal and its school song was a rendition of the University of Minnesota’s Rouser. Over time, Harmony’s sporting teams would win several conference and district titles, including Minnesota’s Class “C” Football Championship in 1984. In 1910 yet another new school was built on the south side of the white frame school to house the growing student body, at a cost of $12,500. Upon its completion, the red brick building became the high school while the white frame structure housed the younger students. In 1935, Harmony voters approved $142,756 for construction of a new building, which included a gymnasium with a stage. Graduation ceremonies and plays were no longer held at the Harmony Opera House. The white frame school was demolished and the new school dedicated December 4, 1936. Lower grades moved into the 1910 red brick school. Harmony High School’s first Junior-Senior Prom was held on June 3, 1937 and its first band was organized in 1940. In 1959, the remaining one-room country schools in the surrounding area voted to merge with the Harmony School District. To meet this increased demand, a one-story fourteen-classroom elementary school was completed in 1960. By the fall of 1962, the high school had 839 students. Harmony voters passed bonding in 1966 for construction of a high school addition, which included new administrative offices, a kitchen and lunchroom, classrooms and a new gymnasium with upgraded locker rooms. The project was completed in 1968 at a cost of $945,000. In the May 1993, the last Harmony High School graduation was held. In September, the Harmony High Independent School District #228 ceased to be upon consolidation with nearby Preston-Fountain Independent School District #233.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Harmony School Building.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056210,"name":"Education","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/harmony-area-schools"},{"alt":"Niagara Cave Halls","author":[{"name":"Amy Jo Hahn","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/amy-jo-hahn"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"September 10, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Niagara Cave","postbody":"Since its opening as a tourist attraction in 1934, Niagara Cave near Harmony has welcomed thousands of visitors from around the world into its inspiring environment. The unique underground ...","searchtext":"Since its opening as a tourist attraction in 1934, Niagara Cave near Harmony has welcomed thousands of visitors from around the world into its inspiring environment. The unique underground space is filled with distinctive rock architecture and naturally carved pathways created by freshwater underground streams. With a maximum depth of 200 feet, Niagara Cave is one of the largest limestone caves in the Midwest, and the first cave in Minnesota to open to the public. An interior passageway extends for 1,750 feet past striking geological features, including a gorge (the Grand Canyon), a limestone island (the Battleship), and a rounded concave ceiling (Cathedral Dome). Its interior maintains a constant temperature of forty-eight degrees. The first documented entry of the cave occurred in 1924, when three meandering pigs fell through a sinkhole a few miles southwest of Harmony. They fell seventy-five feet before landing inside a spacious cavern. It wasn’t long before their owner, a local farmer, noticed his pigs were missing. The farmer found more than his livestock when he retrieved them. Gasping lamplight in the underground’s dark dampness revealed the shimmering, golden-hued walls of an undiscovered grotto, nearly magical in its display of varied rock formations. Eight years later, in 1932, three amateur spelunkers thoroughly explored the cave. Landowner Al Cremer, Leo Tekippe, and Joe Flynn slipped through the open crevice and spent two hours examining the cave’s layout. What they discovered was breathtaking: ceilings that sometimes measured 100 feet high, a sixty-two-foot waterfall that emptied into a swiftly moving underground stream, ancient fossils, established walkways, and impressive stone formations. The successful expedition led to an exciting idea: opening the cave to public tours. Inspired by the waterfall, Cremer, Tekippe, and Flynn named the site Niagara Cave and opened it to tourists in June 1934. In its opening season, it was one of the most advertised tourism attractions in the country. Hundreds of billboards advertising the cave lined highways across the state, region, and country. The first wedding in the cave’s chapel took place in 1935. Al Cremer sold the cave to Ron and Nancy Vikre in 1981; the Vikres, in turn, sold it to Mark and Jennifer Bishop in 1995. In 2014, the cave celebrated the ninetieth anniversary of its first documented entry by shutting off the overhead electrical lighting and hosting guided lantern tours. The tours gave visitors a similar experience to that of the first spelunkers. In 2015, it became the first commercial cave in the world to be powered by solar energy. It has been consistently ranked as a top cave destination in America by several media outlets, including CNN and the Travel Channel. A 2016 USA Today poll ranked it as the second-best cave in the country. Between 25,000 and 30,000 visitors tour the cave each year. They marvel at the icicle-like stalactites suspended from the ceiling and the cone-like stalagmites protruding upwards from the floor. Over 400 couples have exchanged wedding vows in the chapel. Visitors can shop the gift shop, play eighteen holes of mini golf, pan for gemstones and fossils, and enjoy an outdoor picnic.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Niagara Cave Halls.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/niagara-cave"},{"alt":"","author":[{"name":"Elizabeth Loetscher","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/elizabeth-loetscher"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"September 07, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Macalester College","postbody":"Founded in 1874, Macalester College began as a Presbyterian college with few resources and only six students. The private liberal arts college became known for its rigorous academics and ...","searchtext":"Founded in 1874, Macalester College began as a Presbyterian college with few resources and only six students. The private liberal arts college became known for its rigorous academics and commitment to internationalism, multiculturalism, and service to society. Macalester College, named for benefactor Charles Macalester, was founded in 1874 by Minnesota education leader Edward Neill. After bobbling between locations, including the elegant Winslow House, Macalester found a permanent home on forty acres of land between Minneapolis and St. Paul. The surrounding sprawl was named Macalester Park. The college’s first building, the east wing of Old Main, was completed there in 1884. It opened for classes the following fall to just five professors and six students. The college’s beginnings were rocky, slammed with falling enrollment and rising debt. Yet president James Wallace helped the college gain financial footing with a vigorous fundraising campaign. Figures like George Dayton, James J. Hill, and Andrew Carnegie chipped in to keep the college afloat. James Wallace’s son and daughter-in-law, Dewitt and Lila Wallace, followed to become some of Macalester’s most generous and consistent donors. The Reader’s Digest founders helped the college through the Great Depression and many other financial setbacks in the decades to follow. Though founded as a nonsectarian college, Macalester has always held ties to the Presbyterian Church. Early on, its religious focus attracted Presbyterian students and led many to work in religious fields after graduation. Charles Turck, president from 1939 until 1958, began to shift the college toward a more religiously welcoming and less explicitly evangelical atmosphere in the 1940s. He also began to define the set of values for which the school became known: internationalism, multiculturalism, and service to society. Macalester’s ties with internationalism reach back to 1893, when the college admitted its first international student. Many domestic students also travelled abroad during those early years, though their trips were often fueled by a desire to evangelize or provide humanitarian aid. By the 1930s, the curriculum had expanded to include subjects like international law and additional world languages. In 1950, Macalester became the first Minnesotan college to fly the United Nations flag. In the 2010s, international students made up about 12 percent of the student body, and 60 percent of students studied abroad during their college career. Multiculturalism, too, has a long history with the college. In 1915, Catharine Lealtad became Macalester’s first African American graduate. Esther Suzuki followed as its first Japanese American graduate in 1946. In 1969, Macalester joined the Expanded Educational Opportunities (EEO) program. EEO admitted more than 300 students of color before approaching an end in 1975, a year after substantial budget cuts sparked a twelve-day student protest. In its earlier years, Macalester focused heavily on religion and the sciences. The curriculum expanded to include the arts when women were admitted in 1893. A school of music opened soon after. Later, during Turck’s presidency, the college focused on preparing students for work with a variety of vocational programs. Macalester is known today for its liberal arts curriculum, which was introduced in 1964. Outside of classes, students can play for a sports team or choose from a variety of campus clubs. The student newspaper, the Mac Weekly, has published student work since 1914. WBOM (now WMCN) became Minnesota’s first campus radio station in 1948. In honor of its Scottish roots, the college also offers free bagpipe lessons to any interested student. Macalester celebrates the anniversary of its founding each year with a game of pushball, first played on campus in 1914. In the 1990s, Macalester’s Reader’s Digest shares rocketed in value. The college has used the funds in the decades since to remodel much of the campus, as well as diversify the faculty and strengthen academic programs. Notable alumni include Kofi Annan, Danai Gurira, Joan Adams Mondale, Walter Mondale, Tim O’Brien, and John S. Campbell founder of Malt-O-Meal Company, as well as members of the music groups Sounds of Blackness and Hüsker Dü. Notable professors include former vice president Hubert Humphrey and Man Booker Prize winner Marlon James.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Bagpipe Band.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056210,"name":"Education","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/macalester-college"},{"alt":"Photograph of South Main Avenue, Harmony MN","author":[{"name":"Amy Jo Hahn","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/amy-jo-hahn"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"September 05, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"City of Harmony","postbody":"The City of Harmony traces its origins to an 1854 Norwegian settlement called Greenfield Prairie, just outside the town’s current southern edge. Its creation, population growth, and lasting ...","searchtext":"The City of Harmony traces its origins to an 1854 Norwegian settlement called Greenfield Prairie, just outside the town’s current southern edge. Its creation, population growth, and lasting economic vitality were made possible by the arrival of the Caledonia, Mississippi and Western Railway in 1879. Harmony flourished after the first trains arrived in late 1879. By 1886, it had several businesses, including a millinery shop, blacksmith, lumberyard, roller-skating rink, implement dealer, harness shop, photography studio, creamery, flourmill, barbershop, and a mercantile, hardware and drug store. By 1897, a two-story white frame school was built to accommodate the student population. The creation of the Harmony Independent School District #228 in 1901 paved the way for a new 1910 brick high school. Although Harmony Township was organized on May 11, 1858, the City of Harmony was not officially incorporated until October 14, 1895. A legend exists about how Harmony got its name. Town citizens held a meeting to decide what to call the village. After tempers flared and arguments erupted, one citizen pleaded, “Let’s have harmony!” It was decided “Harmony” was the perfect name. Harmony’s first major fire happened in 1884 when sparks from a freight train landed in the grain elevator’s haymow. A fire burned for days, destroying the elevator. A bucket brigade moved water from a nearby farm’s well to douse the fire, which threatened the town’s nearby business and residential areas. Partially as result, a city well was dug in 1885, marked by a sixty-foot windmill. The Harmony Methodist Church was the first church built within the city limits. It was dedicated in 1895, the same year the city installed sidewalks and electric lights. The Greenfield Lutheran Congregation, which had built a church in Greenfield Prairie in 1874, completed a Lutheran Chapel in Harmony in 1901. A larger Lutheran church was dedicated in 1913. The town’s first Catholic church was built in 1907. In 1884, the Harmony Concert Band entertained the city’s residents with summer performances. Its first performance, on July 4, 1884, was held on the rail depot platform. The band gave Sunday afternoon concerts at the depot throughout the summer. The band also gave concerts at Selvig Park. The park, created in 1923, also hosted the Chautauqua Circuit, a traveling entertainment troupe which performed in a circus tent each summer. Concerts, dances and plays were held in the 1909 Harmony Opera House. Harmony’s Yates Harp Orchestra held a regular gig at the opera house, performing at dances every Wednesday night for many years. Harmony residents watched movies at the Orient Theatre and then the JEM Theatre, which opened in 1935. The JEM is still in operation, holding the distinction as the only movie theatre in Fillmore County. During the Great Depression, Harmony benefitted from United States Works Progress Administration funds. A bond issue was passed to match funds from the WPA for paving the city’s roads, installing an upgraded water system and a new city building. In 1935, another WPA proposal was introduced to build a new high school. It passed and the school was built. An addition was added in 1968. When Harmony’s School District consolidated with the Preston-Fountain School District in 1993, Harmony retained the high school. Harmony sits in the middle of prime farmland, and agriculture is still an important contributor to the city’s economic sustainability. Niagara Cave has attracted tourists to the area since it opened for tours in 1934. The arrival of the Amish in 1974 provided another opportunity for Harmony to entice tourists. Even with the 1977 removal of the rail line, Harmony continued to be home to a variety of local businesses. Some of the oldest include Harmony Agri-Services, Harmony House Restaurant, Harmony Enterprises Inc., Torgerson-Ostby Floor Coverings & Stone, Inc., and Hahn Lumber Co. The establishment of the Harmony–Preston Valley Trail along the old railroad bed in 1997 also had a positive economic impact. Harmony’s largest event is its annual Fourth of July celebration. Thousands flock to see the Grand Parade, attend a concert in Selvig Park, and watch fireworks. One thousand people and dozens of thriving local businesses call the self-declared “Biggest Little Town in Southern Minnesota” home.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/South Main Avenue Harmony Minnesota_Amy Jo Hahn.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246079,"name":"Cities and Towns","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/city-harmony"},{"alt":"Photograph of Henrytown area in 2018","author":[{"name":"Amy Jo Hahn","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/amy-jo-hahn"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"August 27, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Henrytown","postbody":"Drivers may easily miss Henrytown, a rural hamlet five miles north of Canton, as they speed through it on Fillmore County Highway 21. In 2018, not much exists to indicate it was once a town ...","searchtext":"Drivers may easily miss Henrytown, a rural hamlet five miles north of Canton, as they speed through it on Fillmore County Highway 21. In 2018, not much exists to indicate it was once a town populated by hardworking immigrants who dreamed of building a thriving and long-lasting community. In April 1853, Henry Onstine convinced over two dozen family members to leave their homes in Amherst, Ohio, and follow him into Minnesota Territory. The Onstine Party staked claims in what would eventually be Amherst and Canton Townships in Fillmore County. Amherst Township was named after the Onstine Party’s city of origin: Amherst, Ohio. The village of Henry, named after Henry Onstine, was incorporated in the spring of 1854, and would eventually change its name to Henrytown. After three years of Henrytown’s children walking four miles to nearby Lenora for school, parents decided that their town needed its own school. In the spring of 1857, a log schoolhouse was constructed; its first teacher was Helie Ann Churchill. The school quickly became a community gathering spot for all types of social gatherings, from dances to church services. In 1867, a schoolhouse was built for fifty-five pupils through the eighth grade at a cost of $850. Michael and Augusta Onstine purchased most of the supplies, including the school bell. Michael built the one-room frame schoolhouse with assistance from several volunteers. N. I. Wilson was the school’s first teacher. The country school operated until 1963, when the area was absorbed into the Harmony Public School District. The Fillmore County Board of Commissioners purchased 386 acres near Henrytown in the spring of 1868 for building a county poor house. By fall, a two-and-a-half-story house and several outdoor buildings were completed near Henrytown’s eastern edge. An 1896 fire destroyed the house, but it was rebuilt that same year and continued to operate as a home for the poor and elderly until it closed in 1943. The US Post Office opened a Henrytown office in 1858. Caleb Onstine was its first postmaster. Michael Henry Onstine was appointed in 1859 and would hold the office for five years before E. W. Bullis replaced him. Michael would take over the position again and hold it for several additional years before the office closed in 1902. Michael was also the town clerk for over a decade. For more than twenty years, Henrytown residents conducted church services first in their homes and then in the town’s schoolhouses. Before his death in 1873, Henry Onstine donated land for the future church’s construction. During the summer of 1878, construction began on the Henrytown Lutheran Church. The cornerstone was laid at last on June 16, 1878, and a dedication ceremony was conducted on July 1, 1879. The church cost $3,500 and stood for 136 years before a fire destroyed it in April 2015. No one was hurt, and the church’s historic records were spared, but the altar painting by the influential Norwegian American artist Herbjorn Gausta was lost. A new church was erected on the same location in 2017. At one time, Henrytown boasted a blacksmith shop; a steam saw mill; a feed mill; multiple mercantile stores; a broom factory; and several other businesses. It was a booming town throughout the 1860s and 1870s. However, its growth was halted when the Caledonia, Mississippi and Western Railroad Company selected nearby Canton as a location for its rail line. Although many of Henry Onstine’s descendants lived into the twenty-first century, the last to carry the surname of Onstine in Henrytown died in 2002. Alden Onstine was the great grandson of Henry Onstine and the grandson of Michael Henry. Having been in the family since 1853, the Onstine farm was recognized in 1958 as a Minnesota Century Farm as it passed from Henry to Michael Henry to Elmer to Alden Onstine. All that remains of Henrytown in 2018 is the Henrytown Lutheran Church, which continues to be a social and spiritual gathering place for those living in the countryside surrounding the once bustling village.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Henrytown Looking North Along Fillmore County Hwy 21_Amy Jo Hahn_2018.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246079,"name":"Cities and Towns","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/henrytown"},{"alt":"Photograph of the Ellefson homestead","author":[{"name":"Samuel Meshbesher","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/samuel-meshbesher"}],"categoryTag":[],"date":"August 24, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186622056203,"name":"1792–1861 (Expansion and Reform)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Norwegian Immigration to Minnesota","postbody":"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, ...","searchtext":"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. Origins Norse travelers, the ancestors of present-day Norwegians and other Scandinavians, first arrived in North America with Leif Erikson around 1000 AD. Their settlements in Newfoundland, however, were short-lived; Icelandic sagas and Inuit accounts share similar stories of conflict between Erikson’s colonists and proto-Inuit natives. Norwegians may have older connections to North America than any other non-Scandinavian country in Europe, but they did not begin emigrating in earnest until the second half of the nineteenth century, due to tensions brought on by economic shifts, a growing population, and individual drives for status and autonomy. Improved farming techniques led to food surpluses that doubled the country’s population between 1750 and 1850. This growth was unsustainable; Norway’s fickle growing conditions, short summers, and recently depleted fish stocks threatened to cause widespread famine. Ironically, increasing numbers of young people saw emigration as necessary to maintain their society’s way of life. The Tocquevillian ideal of politically involved yeoman farmers appealed greatly to Norwegians. In the 1840s and 1850s, accounts of the American Midwest from settler-colonists like Ole Rynning convinced tens of thousands that emigrating to America would help solve their problems. By the second half of the nineteenth century, new technology made the journey to America more appealing to prospective European immigrants while simultaneously wreaking havoc on Norway’s economy. Steamships put tens of thousands of shipbuilders, dockworkers, and sailors out of work, and Norwegian farmers could not compete with the cheaper grain that was now easily shipped from continental Europe. At the same time, steamships made travel to America less burdensome; voyages abroad “iron-sailed” passenger liners from ship towns like Liverpool to New York and Quebec were cheaper and faster than voyages by sail. Faster travel times also meant that information from family members and community leaders in America reached more curious Norwegians. Why Minnesota? Prior to the establishment of Minnesota Territory in 1849, several hundred Norwegians lived around present-day southern Wisconsin and northeastern Iowa. After landing in New York, many took steamers through the Great Lakes to the swampy village of Chicago. By 1860, many of those who had stayed to see the city explode from a few dozen shacks in 1840 to a population of more than 100,000 were dismayed at the difficulty of maintaining their native culture and religion. Among a sea of different ethnic groups, they feared their children would lose their Norwegian identity. Some wrote negative letters home to tell the next wave of immigrants that their way of life was best pursued on farms further West. The first Norwegians to arrive in Minnesota Territory settled in the southeast, near the Mississippi River, in 1851, after the Treaty of Traverse des Sioux. Like their compatriots in Wisconsin and Iowa, they wrote letters home to Norway extolling the suitability of the land and climate, easing the fears of relatives and community members that they would be alone abroad. These so-called “America Letters” had been circulating in Norway and Sweden since the 1840s. So great was local excitement and “America fever” that letters were read and copied hundreds of times. Ole Rynning’s True Account of America was the most popular of these documents. The short tract answered common questions (e.g., how much did land cost? What skills were in demand?) and dispelled rumors spread by a lack of information. Poisonous snakes were uncommon, Rynning assured his readers, and emigrants faced no risk of being sold into slavery. In order to save up for tickets, fathers and sons often made the journey before the rest of their family members, staking claims or working in high-demand professions such as carpentry, tailoring, and blacksmithing. Unlike other immigrant populations, however, the first wave of Norwegians had an almost even gender split, indicating that whole families came over with the intention of staying. For Norwegians willing to endure continual hardships, Minnesota was a place of immense opportunity. The first generation of immigrants largely stayed in the southeastern corner of the state, where farmland was available in large tracts until the mid-1860s. Norwegian settler-colonists were apprehensive about straying from this region, which had ample clean water and lumber, ready access to established towns like Decorah and Rock Prairie, and, by the late 1850s, dozens of small Norwegian communities. Fears of extreme social isolation, Indigenous people like the Dakota, and crop failure kept most Norwegians off the open prairie until access to cheap farmland near Norwegian population centers dried up. The first Norwegians in the grassy plains of southern and central Minnesota lived in abodes that suited their budgets and available materials; some built cabins out of sod, others simply dug out hills. They followed Red River ox cart trails for hundreds of miles looking for choice land. When they chose sites, getting crops in the ground took priority over living conditions. Entire families often lived in a “soddy” not much larger than ten by twelve feet square with poor ventilation; mental illness and communicable disease outbreaks were common. Rynning appealed to the frugality of his readers in addressing this issue: “Many of the newcomers have been shocked by the wretched huts which are the first dwellings of the settlers... Before the land has been put into such shape that it can support a man, it is hardly wise to put money into costly living-houses.” Good returns on spring wheat crops allowed this first generation of immigrants to pay for tickets for friends and relatives; by 1857 there were almost 7,000 Norwegians living in Minnesota. This number would seem like a drop in the bucket in less than two decades. Enclaves and Animosity In 1858, after the first Norwegian immigrants had established themselves in Minnesota, the territory became a state. A second wave of newcomers—tens of thousands—began to arrive in the 1860s, eager to recreate the villages they had left behind almost four thousand miles away. Like their predecessors—many of them their parents—in the first generation of immigrants, those who came after statehood were young; most were from rural areas outside Bergen and Oslo. The gender ratio remained at nearly fifty-fifty, and letters indicate that young, single women of this wave were interested in procuring land grants. With millions of acres of recently seized land still available, farming remained the most common profession among Norwegians for decades. The Homestead Act of 1862 gave 160 acres of land to families in exchange for their promise to live on and cultivate the land for at least five years. Subsequent acts made it easier for Yankee and European settler-colonists alike to cheaply increase the size of their lots, especially if they had fought in the Civil War. To displaced Scandinavian farmers who had been renting plots of land that averaged only two acres back home, this was the chance of a lifetime. Railroad companies were granted wide swaths of land in exchange for building lines. They sent plat maps, advertisements, and agents to Norway promising cheap and accessible farmland for less than two dollars an acre. Spurred by cheap land, larger Norwegian settlements started to spring up in southern Minnesota. Entire communities were often made up of immigrants from the same region, or even the same village, back in Norway. For example, 1,135 of the 1,200-odd residents of Spring Grove in Houston County were Norwegian by 1870; the majority were from the Hallingdal region, northwest of Oslo. Known as bygds, these ethnic enclaves preserved the social hierarchies and customs of the “old world;” Norwegian regional dialects were noticeable well into the twentieth century in small towns across the state. Serving as places of worship, business, and social gathering, Lutheran churches became the main forces of cohesion—and contention—in these towns. A former resident of Spring Grove noted only half-jokingly in the 1970s that visitors could easily determine that they were in a Norwegian settlement if “they saw two churches close together, preferably on opposite sides of the road.” Frustration with the monolithic and hierarchical Church of Norway had been a contributing factor in the hard choice to leave for many Norwegians, and they wasted no time in establishing new branches of Lutheranism, known as synods. By 1865, there were five separate synods of Norwegian American Lutheranism, each with their own doctrine and class associations. Old regional and religious rivalries from Norway manifested themselves in rural Minnesota as immigrants argued that their town, or their respective synod, was the most productive, pious, and industrious. Of the several colleges founded by Norwegians in the state, all were affiliated with seminaries. Before church mergers in later decades, they represented three different synods between them. In spite of debates over “high” versus “low” churches, old regional rivalries and class antagonisms, Norwegian Americans of the second wave were united by shared experiences of language barriers, hardship, and frustration over being misidentified as Swedes by most Yankees. Growth and New Experiences The immigration pattern set by the first wave of Norwegian Americans was repeated twice more before the turn of the century. After running out of farmland in southern Minnesota, Norwegian settler-colonists moved northwest, settling around towns like Alexandria, Fergus Falls, and Thief River Falls. By the mid-1870s, a final wave of rural immigration took Norwegians into the Red River Valley, where thousands more put down roots along both sides of the Minnesota–North Dakota border. In 1870, there were about 50,000 Norwegians living in Minnesota. By 1880, there were more than 120,000, more than of them half foreign-born. This third wave of Norwegians differed from the first two in demographic, outlook, and goals. Norway’s economy had improved, and farmers had gained the political representation and religious freedom that had driven earlier generations to leave. The land scarcity and famines that had pushed entire families to leave rural Norway had subsided, and young men from Norway’s cities now came in droves to Minnesota seeking better-paying employment. As railroad lines reduced the time needed to travel through the state, homestead properties were quickly snapped up. Those who still wanted to farm largely went on to North Dakota. From this point on, foreign-born Norwegians—both men and women—poured into Minnesota’s major cities, along with tens of thousands of first- and second-generation Norwegian Americans looking for work. While farming remained the Norwegian ideal for decades, increasing numbers found other forms of work. Along Lake Superior, communities like Tofte practiced a combination of subsistence farming and seasonal fishing that would not have seemed out of place in Norway. In the coming decades, many would find well-paying work inland at iron mines and in logging camps. Knowledge of carpentry, masonry, and even engineering enabled many Norwegian men to earn good wages in building up St. Paul, and then Minneapolis. Hundreds of Norwegian women found work as seamstresses and dressmakers in shops; some, like Lina Christianson, started successful businesses. Domestic work in middle- and upper-class households employed thousands of young Norwegian women of this generation. The desirability of English-speaking “help” allowed their children to enjoy far greater opportunities than their parents thanks to bilingual exposure from a young age. The prejudices of the time also contributed to the success of Norwegians in this field; Scandinavian servants were seen as more prestigious than Irish servants. Expansion and Acceptance Combined with a nationalistic excitement over the prospect of Norway||s independence from Sweden, increasing political, social, and economic clout made the period of 1880 to the start of World War I an exciting time to be Norwegian in Minnesota. By 1905, there were more than 250,000 Norwegians in the state, and almost 45,000 of them lived in Minneapolis. Because their parents had arrived in Minnesota earlier than most, children of the first generation of Norwegian immigrants quickly climbed the social ladder though education and business opportunities presented by Minnesota’s exponential growth at the turn of the century. Thanks to appreciation and development on farmland acquired through federal land grants, Norwegians owned about 650 million dollars|| worth of land in the country (more than 16 billion in 2018 dollars) by the late nineteenth century. A third of them lived in Minnesota. By combining forces with Swedes, they exerted a disproportionate role in early Minnesotan politics. By the 1890s, Lutheran pietism and anti-alcohol policies kept Norwegians popular with Protestants and Republicans wary of Irish and German Catholic influence, while the group’s collective distrust of urban elites attracted Grangers and Populists. Norwegians would go on to play a key role in shaping the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party, which dominated state politics through the Great Depression and elevated influential players like Floyd B. Olson. It merged with the Democratic party to form the Democratic Farmer-Labor Party (DFL) in 1944. Nativism and Assimilation: The Melting Pot While Norwegian-language newspapers and the low intermarriage rates of early Norwegian communities helped to preserve Old World traditions and language for the first two generations of immigrants, young Norwegians were increasingly exposed to different cultures and hierarchies as they moved to larger cities. The growing tension between heritage and assimilation came to a head when America entered World War I. In the 1890s, nativist rhetoric from politicians like Massachusetts’ Henry Cabot Lodge had urged Americans to preserve the hegemony of Protestant Anglo-Saxons against millions of new immigrants. It reappeared in the 1910s, strengthened by fears of political radicals and German saboteurs. Denounced as “hyphenated Americans,” immigrants who had already officially renounced their allegiance to their former homes when they became citizens were now under immense pressure to prove their loyalty and American-ness. In Minnesota, Governor Burnquist’s Commission of Public Safety sought to censor foreign-language newspapers which leaned socialist or sympathized with Germans. In 1917, the commission ordered schoolteachers to instruct students solely in English. At a conference in Minnesota that same year, the Norwegian Lutheran Church in America, to which most Norwegian Minnesotans belonged after multiple synod mergers, decided to drop “Norwegian” from its name. The number of church services in Norwegian dropped precipitously, and families’ ongoing adoption of English as the primary language spoken at home accelerated in the 1920s. From 1915 to 1945, the number of Lutheran Church services conducted in English in Minnesota increased from 22 percent to 93 percent. “Arrival” Norwegian Americans welcomed the presence of Calvin Coolidge at the 1925 Norse-American Centennial in the Twin Cities as an omen that the United States would spare Norway the draconian immigration restrictions it had placed on most of Continental Europe. At the event, the president who had just signed away access to America for most of Europe in fear of potential Catholic, Jewish, and socialist fifth columns announced to thunderous applause that Leif Erikson, not Christopher Columbus, was the first to discover America. The centennial celebrated the wholesale assimilation of Norwegians, highlighting their industry and a “Protestant work ethic” palatable to mainstream America rather than their folk traditions. Along with a full-size replica of Leif Erikson’s ship, the highlight of the event was a schoolchildren’s chorus in red, white, and blue garments arranging themselves into a human Norwegian flag. The children then turned their costumes inside out, morphing the display into the stars and stripes. Clearly, to belong in the American melting pot in the 1920s, one needed to relegate the less superficial aspects of one’s heritage to the back burner. In spite of Coolidge’s affirmation that Norwegians had officially “arrived” as an accepted group, the immigration bills of the 1920s cut the number of Norwegians coming to America by more than half. This restriction was mild compared to those facing the majority of Europe, as well as the rest of the world. By this time, however, the “push” and “pull” factors that had driven large-scale emigration for decades had subsided. Economic modernization, a strong farmer-labor political alliance, and a labor movement empowered by a depleted worker pool (only Ireland lost a greater portion of its population to America) helped raise wages and improve working conditions in Norway. For the first time in generations, young Norwegians could enjoy a higher standard of living than their parents. Factory work had lost its stigma, while Norway’s traditional shipping and fishing industries had found a niche in the wider European economy. In 1942, the Sons of Norway, a Minneapolis-based fraternal organization and insurance agency that catered to Norwegians, began printing its magazine in English rather than Norwegian. Without a constant stream of new immigrants from Norway, Norwegian became a language of grandparents and isolated farming communities. Nevertheless, a substantial number of Minnesotans continued to identify as Norwegian American in the twentieth century. More than three-quarters of a million Minnesotans identified as Norwegian American on the 1990 census, a figure that rivals the total number of Norwegians who originally immigrated to the entire country. The Norwegian Legacy in the Twenty-First Century Norwegians have had a strong impact on the identity and politics of Minnesota. A visitor with little knowledge of the state might name the Vikings football team, church basement ladies, and a vaguely Scandinavian brogue among the first things that come to mind when thinking of Minnesota. For better or worse, the Minnesotans of Fargo, A Prairie Home Companion, and Sinclair Lewis’ Main Street share a heavy Norwegian influence. The Norwegian tradition of a civically engaged and reform-minded agrarian class has radically shaped Minnesotan politics for more than a century; both vice presidents with Minnesota roots, Hubert Humphrey and Walter Mondale, were the children of Norwegian immigrants, as was Coya Knutson, the state’s first congresswoman. A statue of Leif Erikson has stood near the capitol in St. Paul since 1949.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/ML7.9 HD p1_1.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/norwegian-immigration-minnesota"},{"alt":"Photograph of Selvig Park","author":[{"name":"Amy Jo Hahn","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/amy-jo-hahn"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"August 22, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Selvig Park","postbody":"In 1923, the City of Harmony created a central park amid a national urban planning movement focused on adding outdoor spaces to cities. The park quickly became a venue for a variety of ...","searchtext":"In 1923, the City of Harmony created a central park amid a national urban planning movement focused on adding outdoor spaces to cities. The park quickly became a venue for a variety of summer events as well as a community gathering spot. The Harmony Women’s Club was an early proponent of a city park. An inviting green space, members contended, would provide a location for community socializing. At the urging of the club, the City of Harmony purchased a cow pasture from local farmer A. G. Johnson. The few acres of land sat at the southern edge of the town’s business district. After the purchase, the women’s club took over, raising money for the beautification of the parkland. Fundraising efforts included hosting teas, dinners, food and bake sales, and theatre performances, including the operetta “Feast of the Red Corn” in the fall of 1923 and the play “A Prairie Rose” in 1924. By 1928, enough money had been raised to purchase a pair of white pillars, complete with electric lights, for the two park entrances. The club also purchased a fountain and a flagpole and raised funds for gravel pathways, flowers, trees, and shrubs. Shortly after the park’s creation, the Harmony Concert Band, founded in 1884, started performing outdoor concerts. Before the creation of the park, the band had performed at different locations throughout town during the summer months, even setting up instruments on the railroad depot platform. Eventually the band gave concerts in a band shell erected at the park. Every summer during the 1920s and 1930s, Harmony was a stop for the Chautauqua Circuit, a traveling entertainment troupe based out of New York. The Chautauqua Circuit stayed in town for an entire week. With its arrival, a white-and-red-striped circus tent was set up at the park. The Chautauqua members performed philosophical and political speeches, musical concerts, and plays, both dramatic and comedic. A talent show, starring local residents and presented on the final night, was a highlight. Harmony’s Truman Quammen performed for several summers with the Chautauqua Circuit. Quammen studied at the MacPhail School of Music in Minneapolis before returning to Harmony and directing the Greenfield Lutheran Church Choir. When a new brick high school was built on the south side of the park in 1935, it lost some of its acreage. The site, however, continued to host community events year-round, from high school students’ afternoon picnics to Fourth of July celebrations. On Memorial Day, a dozen young girls dressed in white dresses laid wreaths on white crosses in remembrance of the city’s Civil War and World War I veterans. An expansive 1962 addition on the high school’s north side further diminished the park, making it a shadow of its former self. In order to prepare for a large 1976 July Fourth Bicentennial Celebration, efforts were made to revitalize the park. A parks and recreation board created in 1975 joined forces with several local organizations, raising funds to purchase and plant new flowers, plants, and trees. The 1990s brought several park improvements. In 1990, the Harmony Lions Club used funds from its annual Fourth of July bratwurst stand to build new bathrooms. In 1992, the city received a generous donation for park renovations from Eleanor Selvig Thorne, daughter of Dr. Carlus Selvig. Dr. Selvig had served on the Harmony School Board from 1910 to 1945; he had also been the town’s mayor for nine years and its dentist until 1956. In recognition of the $10,000 donation, the park was officially named after Dr. Selvig. A gazebo was built and new playground equipment installed. Funds were also spent on a concrete walkway, various greenery, and construction of a rental shelter. Selvig Park remains a centerpiece of Harmony’s community events, and efforts continue towards its maintenance and preservation. In May 2013, funds provided by the Harmony Area Community Foundation and the Southern Minnesota Initiative Foundation supported the purchase and installation of new playground equipment.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/2016SelvigPark_0.jpg","topicsTag":[],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/selvig-park"},{"alt":"Image of Genevieve Clark entering court","author":[{"name":"Paul Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/paul-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"August 22, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Clark v. United States","postbody":"Many people suffered from the collapse of Wilbur Foshay’s Public Utilities Consolidated Corporation (PUCC)—chiefly the company’s investors, who lost their money, and Foshay and his ...","searchtext":"Many people suffered from the collapse of Wilbur Foshay’s Public Utilities Consolidated Corporation (PUCC)—chiefly the company’s investors, who lost their money, and Foshay and his associates, who went to prison. But those who suffered most were neither. The tragic figures turned out to be a juror, Genevieve Clark, and her family. Wilbur Foshay’s story is well known. In the 1920s he built a multi-state empire of utility companies, PUCC. Flush with cash and, perhaps, hubris, he built Minnesota’s first skyscraper, the Foshay Tower, in downtown Minneapolis. Then came the stock market crash of October 1929. Foshay went broke. When it came out that he had lured investors with misleading profit reports, the US government charged him with mail fraud. Foshay’s case came for trial in federal court in St. Paul in the fall of 1931 before a jury of eleven men and one woman, Genevieve Clark. After six weeks of testimony and several days of deliberations the jury reported itself hopelessly deadlocked. Judge Joseph Molyneaux declared a mistrial. Stories circulated immediately that there had been something fishy about what went on in the jury room. The vote had been 11-1 for conviction; the lone dissenter had been Genevieve Clark. It was learned that she had briefly worked for the Foshay Companies but had not revealed this to the court. It was learned that her husband, real estate agent and former banker Daniel D. Clark, was a friend of one of Foshay’s co-defendants. It was also learned that early in jury deliberations she had made clear that she would not vote to convict. Minnesota’s US Attorney, Lafayette French, took the rare step of charging Mrs. Clark with contempt of court. Mrs. Clark went on trial before two federal judges, Gunnar Nordbye and John Sanborn, even before Wilbur Foshay’s retrial. The judges found her in contempt and sentenced her to six months in jail and a fine of $1000. She appealed to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals and lost. She then appealed to the United States Supreme Court in 1933 in a case called Clark v. United States. The appeals, expensive and desperate, bled the Clark family dry. At the Supreme Court level their lawyer, Sigurd Ueland, worked for free. Justice Benjamin Cardozo wrote the opinion for Clark v. United States for a unanimous Supreme Court. He observed that. Mrs. Clark had not lied about working for Foshay—she had not been asked directly—but she had withheld information that anyone could be expected to know was relevant. As a juror she had taken an oath to render a verdict based on the evidence, but her conduct had shown a dishonest disregard for the evidence. She had subverted the American system of justice. Her conviction and sentence were upheld. A second jury, meanwhile, convicted Wilbur Foshay of mail fraud. The courts had been careful to limit the factual bases of their decisions narrowly, to Mrs. Clark’s failure to reveal that she had worked for Foshay, and her close-mindedness in jury deliberations. But there were other damning facts. She had told a relative how much she wanted to be on the Foshay jury. Her name had not been among those in the original pool assembled by the clerk of court, yet somehow it had appeared, handwritten, on the clerk’s desk, with fateful consequences. During trial, when jurors were forbidden to get outside information, she had met with her husband. The district court ordered Mrs. Clark to surrender on April 24, 1933, but she did not. On April 28 a car was found on a roadside near Prior Lake in Scott County. A hose attached to the exhaust pipe led to a hole chopped into a car window. On the front seat, dead, lay Daniel Clark. On the back seat, also dead, lay Genevieve Clark, her arms around the bodies of her two young sons. Wilbur Foshay was sentenced to fifteen years in federal prison. He had friends, however, who did not rest in their support. President Franklin Roosevelt commuted his sentence and he went free after not quite three years. Foshay lost his fortune, his tower, his reputation, and his thirty-five months in prison; his many investors lost money; Genevieve, Daniel, Dean, and Rowland Clark lost their lives.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/clark_1.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/clark-v-united-states"},{"alt":"Photograph of John Lyght, 1984","author":[{"name":"Samuel Meshbesher","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/samuel-meshbesher"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"August 20, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Lyght, John (1927–2010)","postbody":"John Lyght, Minnesota’s first African American sheriff, faced different challenges than his constituents as one of the only African Americans in Cook County. A reputation for fairness, ...","searchtext":"John Lyght, Minnesota’s first African American sheriff, faced different challenges than his constituents as one of the only African Americans in Cook County. A reputation for fairness, however, won him multiple re-elections with wide support between 1972 and 1994. In 1913, growing tired of giving his whole paycheck to a West Pennsylvania coal mine’s company store, John’s father, Hosey, moved with his wife, Stella, and their children to one of the few remaining Homestead Act properties in Minnesota. The site of their future home included 160 forested acres and a small hunting shack, just inland from the town of Lutsen, on Lake Superior. Many in Lutsen related to the situation Hosey and Stella faced as young “homesteaders” unused to the isolation and harsh winters of Northern Minnesota. Nevertheless, the family faced intolerance; many in the county had never seen an African American person before. While hunting without a license was common, John’s older brother Norman later recalled that his father seemed to be the only one ever arrested for it. When some of his neighbors threatened to torch his new house, Hosey told them that he would be waiting at home, armed, if they tried. They never did. In 1925, Hosey used savings from working on road construction crews and in lumber camps to open a fishing resort aptly named “Northern Lights.” The business was successful, and the Lyghts met many African American families from Duluth and the Twin Cities coming for the North’s only African-American-owned resort. Through their success, the Lyghts became a respected family in the county. Hosey became a member of the Cook County school board only a few years after fighting for his children to be allowed to ride the same school bus as white children. John spent his childhood years working at Northern Lights, serving as a fishing guide, and cleaning the cabins. When the Great Depression pushed vacations out of reach for most, extra money was needed to help the family of fifteen survive. John worked odd jobs in Duluth when he was only twelve; his older brothers and father found work through New Deal public works agencies. When his father died in 1944, John left high school to help support his family, as the resort business had folded. He spent a year in the Air Force and then joined his brothers to start Lyght Brothers, a trucking company. John regretted not finishing high school and furthered his education through correspondence courses. John eventually left Lyght Brothers to become the caretaker of a private resort, spending the “off seasons” driving school buses, hauling lumber, and even selling lift tickets and serving as a bouncer for dances at the Lutsen Resort. It was through this last gig that Lyght chanced upon a career in law enforcement. The Cook County Sheriff’s Department did not have the resources to deal with the dances and hired Lyght as a part-time deputy in 1968. When the sheriff retired in 1972, John was chosen out of six candidates to replace him. Lyght later noted that the main challenges he faced as sheriff stemmed from the isolation of his county’s permanent residents. Like his parents, many of the county’s families had chosen to live in Cook County because it offered more freedom than heavily populated areas; they were used to resolving disputes without law enforcement. This frontier mentality was exacerbated by a lack of funding; John had only one deputy to help him oversee almost 1,500 square miles for his first term. In spite of limited resources, John quickly made his mark on the county through his reputation for being firm yet fair in his work and genuinely concerned for the well-being of his constituents. Steve Elam, a retired police officer in Silver Bay, recalled an occasion when John picked up someone his office had arrested from Cook County: “The kid told John that he was going to plead guilty because…John didn||t arrest people who weren||t guilty.” While Lyght secured re-election after re-election through strong relationships with the people of Cook County, he always thought his department could improve. Starting in the early 1980s, he advocated for an increased budget with the county board to bring on more officers and a dispatcher. Lyght finally retired after losing a re-election in 1994. He died in 2010.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/glasses.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056216,"name":"African Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246060,"name":"Crime and Punishment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/lyght-john-1927-2010"},{"alt":"Picture of the old Harmony Opera House, 2018.","author":[{"name":"Amy Jo Hahn","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/amy-jo-hahn"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"August 16, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Harmony Opera House","postbody":"Built in 1909, the Harmony Opera House was used for a wide range of activities. It provided a venue for dances, high school graduation ceremonies, political debates, local organization ...","searchtext":"Built in 1909, the Harmony Opera House was used for a wide range of activities. It provided a venue for dances, high school graduation ceremonies, political debates, local organization gatherings, and music and theatre performances. In 2018, it is an Old Legion Hall event-rental facility. Harmony’s chapter of the fraternal benefit society Modern Woodmen of America (MWA) spearheaded the construction of the Harmony Opera House in 1909. The MWA, which had local chapters in small towns across several states, sought to achieve its mission to help rural communities grow and thrive. It provided financial support, volunteer labor, and other resources towards related projects. In the early 1900s, many small-town opera houses had auditoriums on the second floor and kept first-floor space available for retail rental. Although Harmony’s small opera house did not have a second floor, it did have a largely ineffective balcony. Using moveable folding chairs instead of stationary seating provided flexibility and allowed the opera house to transform easily from a performance hall to a basketball court for high school home games. The building’s original stage, built along its west end, was a decorative centerpiece. When it first opened, large American flags draped each side and patriotic bunting lined its front. Heavy velvet curtains and several backdrop curtains, one an image of a rural European village on the edge of a small waterfall and river, provided atmospheric opulence. A Greek lyre entwined with flowers painted against a cream-colored background accented the proscenium stage. Flanking doors led to stage right and stage left. Pendant lights hung from the auditorium ceiling. A grand opening dance was held on January 26, 1910. Harmony’s Yates Harp Orchestra, created and led by Bert Yates, performed. The orchestra became a regular fixture, performing on Wednesdays—Dance Club Night—for several years through the 1920s. The orchestra played polkas, waltzes, fox trots, and square dances, and the Harmony Concert Band played winter concerts. High school graduation ceremonies were held until 1935, when a larger high school with a gym and stage was built. A highlight of the opera house was its annual March Masquerade Dance. Attendees discarded their masks by midnight, and those wearing the best costumes received awards. Dancing continued until the early morning hours. On other nights, traveling theatre groups stopped at the venue entertaining Harmony residents with comedies, dramas, and musicals. After the MWA, which sold it in 1919, the opera house’s owners included Adolph Abrahamson, Helmer Johnson, Stanley Todd and Louis Walters. Eng Sandvik operated it as both a dancing hall and a roller skating rink. The Harmony Legion Gustav Berg Post #81 bought the building in 1956 and remodeled it extensively in 1974. The building was also home, from 1963 to 1964, to the newly created Harmony Enterprises, Inc. (HECO) as headquarters for its manufacturing division. Early products of this company included ice fishing shelters and a walking cane that could turn into a seat. American Legion Post #81 sold the building in 2012. New owners Miles Petrie and Lisa Miller updated and modernized it, reopening it as the Old Legion Hall, a rental facility for wedding receptions, banquets, parties, and community events.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Harmony Opera House Current_Amy Jo Hahn.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/harmony-opera-house"},{"alt":"Portrait of Herbjorn Gausta","author":[{"name":"Amy Jo Hahn","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/amy-jo-hahn"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"August 15, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Gausta, Herbjorn (1854–1924)","postbody":"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 ...","searchtext":"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. Herbjørn Nilson Gaustå was born on June 16, 1854, in Tinn, Telemark, Norway. In 1867 he immigrated with his family to America, where his parents purchased a farm outside the growing village of Harmony, Minnesota. Herbjorn maintained a close relationship with his family and the town until he died, even choosing to be buried there. In 1872, Gausta enrolled in a parochial school training program at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. His teachers encouraged him to pursue a career as an artist. An early supporter was Ulrik Vilhelm Koren, a Lutheran minister who served northeast Iowa and southeast Minnesota. Koren recognized Gausta’s potential. He raised funds for him to travel to Norway and enroll in an Oslo art school. Gausta left America in 1875, then became a student at the Bergslien School of Painting. After finishing courses in Oslo, Gausta remained in Europe. He traveled, painted, and took additional art classes. He then enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, Germany, where he was awarded an academy medal for his exceptional work. Gausta returned to America in 1882. He lived in several cities before returning to Decorah, where he created altar paintings for rural churches in Minnesota, Iowa, and Wisconsin. His first altar painting was commissioned in 1884, possibly for the church in Greenfield Prairie, his hometown congregation. He charged $75 to $200 for an altar painting. Gausta taught art courses at Luther College from 1886 to 1887, during which time he lived with Reverend Koren and his family at the Washington Prairie Parsonage. Eventually, he stopped using Norwegian diacritical marks in his first name and surname in American settings. He moved to Minneapolis in 1888 and purchased a private studio. In 1889, a fire destroyed the studio and over 100 of his earliest creations. Despite this setback, Gausta continued to paint. His “Farmer’s Daughter” won best in class during one art exhibition. He also participated in the 1890, 1891, and 1893 Minneapolis Industrial Exposition Art Exhibitions. In 1894, Gausta teamed with fellow artists Robert Koehler, Alexis Jean Fournier, and Alexander Grinager to create the Minneapolis Art League, which promoted and organized art exhibitions showcasing local artistic talent. Its first art show was held in 1896 at a small Minneapolis gallery. The following two exhibits were held in Koehler’s home. The third, in 1897, was held at the Minneapolis Public Library. Over a two-week period, two thousand people viewed the eighty-two pieces of art, which consisted of charcoals, oils, pastels, and watercolors. In 1905, Gausta participated in the Minnesota State Art Society’s second annual Minnesota State Art Exhibit. Although the exhibit was held in Winona, a special preview was hosted at the new Minnesota State Capitol. Due to interest in Cass Gilbert’s new building, crafted in the Italian Renaissance and Beaux-Arts styles, hundreds of people attended the event. Gausta selected his “Fishing Village” for the exhibition. According to one of Gausta’s art professors, quoted in Olof Nickolaus Nelson’s History of the Scandinavians and Successful Scandinavians of the United States, the artist was a talented but unassuming man. “He does not know how to advertise or put himself forward,” the professor said, “but he is one of the best Scandinavian artists in this country; his landscapes are beautiful, original and natural.” As he aged, Gausta retained a deep affection for his boyhood home, often spending summers on his family’s farm; the landscape surrounding Harmony continued to inspire him to create paintings. He died on May 22, 1924, in Minneapolis. His funeral was held there, but he was buried in Harmony at Greenfield Lutheran Cemetery. A sixteen-foot granite monument was erected at his gravesite in 1927.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Koehler_painting_of_Gausta.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/gausta-herbjorn-1854-1924"},{"alt":"Primary image","author":[{"name":"Elizabeth Loetscher","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/elizabeth-loetscher"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"August 13, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Ueland, Clara (1860–1927)","postbody":"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 ...","searchtext":"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. Clara Hampson Ueland was born in 1860 in Akron, Ohio. In 1869, she moved to Minnesota with her family, eventually settling in Minneapolis. She worked there as a schoolteacher before marrying Andreas Ueland, a prominent Norwegian American lawyer, in 1885. The two went on to have eight children, including writer Brenda Ueland. Many of the Ueland children shared their mother’s dedication to gender equality and activism. Ueland spent much of the 1880s and 1890s raising her children, but her interest in feminism and community advocacy was apparent throughout. In 1892, she campaigned for women to serve on the Minneapolis School Board and established several free kindergartens in the city. She also displayed her feminist beliefs at home, breaking gender norms by teaching her sons to do housework and encouraging her daughters to go to college. As women’s organizations gained momentum around the turn of the twentieth century, Ueland became serious about the suffrage movement. Her interest was piqued by a Minneapolis suffrage convention in 1901. Soon after, Ueland joined two organizations in support of the cause. She even went on to help found the Woman’s Club of Minneapolis, but left in 1912 to focus her energy on women’s voting rights. Ueland’s determination and leadership skills quickly pulled her from the periphery to the center of Minnesota’s suffrage movement. In 1913, she founded the Equal Suffrage Organization of Minneapolis, notable for its male as well as female members. The following year, she organized a suffrage parade in Minneapolis with a turnout of nearly 2,000 marchers. Its success propelled her to her most significant leadership role as the president of the Minnesota Woman Suffrage Association (MWSA). As MWSA president, Ueland launched a whirlwind effort to gain support for women’s suffrage. Her leadership style was relatively conservative, and she prized order and restraint over the more radical methods of other organizations. She prioritized outreach outside of the Twin Cities, mailing regular “Dear Suffragist” letters to suffrage leaders statewide and visiting outlying towns to give speeches. Ueland also organized a group of women to call directly on policy makers for change. Praising her leadership, a fellow suffragist referred to her as “the Moses who is leading Minnesota to the promised land.” Ueland’s efforts finally paid off in 1919 when the nineteenth amendment was passed by Congress. She celebrated with almost fifty other Minnesotan women at a 1920 victory convention in Chicago. She attended the first national congress of the League of Women Voters on the same trip, and soon assumed leadership of the League’s Minnesota branch. Although Ueland retired from the presidential position soon afterwards, she continued to work closely with the League as head of its legislative council. Ueland had always been quick to note that her suffrage work focused not only on increased rights for women, but also on the good women could do with their votes. She stuck to these words. As leader of a 1922 campaign to pass a child labor amendment, Ueland pushed through repeated failures in an attempt to secure protections for children. She also worked with the League to elect women into office, support workers and mothers, and promote peace between nations. Ueland remained an activist until the day she died in 1927. After a day of campaigning for stricter child labor laws at the state capitol in St. Paul, she was hit by a truck near her home. She died almost immediately, her death prompting many to remember the strides she had made for women’s rights. The following year, a plaque was installed in her honor at the capitol.","src":"https://www3.mnhs.org/hubfs/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Primary%20image.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/ueland-clara-1860-1927"},{"alt":"aerial photograph of St. Olaf College campus","author":[{"name":"Julia Lavanger","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/julia-lavanger"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"August 10, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"St. Olaf College","postbody":"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. St. Olaf was ...","searchtext":"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. St. Olaf was founded on November 6, 1874, when a board of trustees signed articles of incorporation for an academy they called St. Olaf’s School. They chose the name to honor King Olav II Haraldsson of Norway(1016–1030), who was killed at the Battle of Stiklestad and is widely credited for Christianizing Norway. Classes began on January 8, 1875, and Thorbjorn N. Mohn became the school’s first principal. Though St. Olaf was founded to support a liberal education drawing from the Norwegian Lutheran church, it did not begin with an official church connection. From the beginning, it was a coeducational institution; the first graduate of the academy was a woman, Marie Aaker. Another defining element of St. Olaf’s mission was the preservation of the Norwegian language and culture. Faith and religion featured prominently in coursework but did not dominate it. In 1876, negotiations were completed to purchase thirty acres on Manitou Heights, which would become the permanent home of the school. St. Olaf officially became a college in 1889, and in 1890 it received the sponsorship of the United Norwegian Lutheran Church. The church, however, severed ties with St. Olaf three years later while attempting to resolve an ongoing dispute with Augsburg Seminary. Until the church rekindled its relationship with St. Olaf in 1899, Professor Halvor T. Ytterboe worked on behalf of the school to raise enough funds to keep it operating. By the early 1900s, the college had a band, a choir and orchestra, a newspaper, a literary and debate society, and other student organizations. The band’s 1906 tour of Norway made the group the first American collegiate music ensemble to tour abroad. By 1912 there were a variety of additions to the campus, including a boys’ dormitory, a residence for the president, Steensland Library, a central power plant, Hoyme Memorial Chapel, a college hospital and farm, a bandstand, and a new dormitory for women. The St. Olaf Choir, one of the college’s most widely known institutions, was founded in 1912 by F. Melius Christiansen. In 1913 it became the first American collegiate choir to tour abroad. It grew to become one of the premier collegiate acapella choirs in the country, and its annual “Christmas Fest” concert garners a wide audience at the school and on national broadcasts. St. Olaf’s athletic teams grew in popularity in the early 1900s. Until 1917, athletic endeavors were organized by the student Athletic Association. Early sports included tennis, baseball, basketball, track and field, and, after much petitioning by students, football, in 1918. St. Olaf was one of the first American colleges to offer skiing and ski-jumping as a sport. The college was a charter member of the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, or MIAC, which was established in 1920. World War II brought big changes to the school. Enrollment decreased, dropping from 1,122 students in 1941 to 707 in 1943. In 1943 the college agreed to house a US Navy pre-flight preparatory school on the campus. In 1958, St. Olaf joined nine other schools to create the Associated Colleges of the Midwest. The consortium was intended to help the schools work together to solve educational and financial problems. St. Olaf maintained connections with its Norwegian roots throughout its history. Members of the Norwegian royal family visited the school over ten times between the 1930s and 2010s, including King Olav V; Crown Princess Märtha; Princess Astrid; King Harald V; and Queen Sonja. The school continues to offer degrees in Norwegian and Nordic studies. The college celebrated its 125th anniversary in 1999. Its single largest construction project on campus to date, the student union Buntrock Commons, was dedicated on November 6 of the same year. The building continues to house dining areas, offices, a lecture hall and theater, conference rooms, and student entertainment spaces. St. Olaf enacted a sustainability initiative around 1990. It built a wind turbine on campus to generate energy in 2005; in 2008, it completed its first LEED- (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified building, Regents Hall of Natural Science.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/birds-eye_view_campus.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056210,"name":"Education","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/st-olaf-college"},{"alt":"Photograph of Commemorative Cyrillic Highway Sign","author":[{"name":"Samuel Meshbesher","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/samuel-meshbesher"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"August 06, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Mikhail Gorbachev||s Visit to Minnesota, 1990","postbody":"In 1990, workers installed a three-by-six-foot aluminum highway sign reading “Mississippi River” in Russian on the I-94 Dartmouth bridge between St. Paul and Minneapolis. It had been ...","searchtext":"In 1990, workers installed a three-by-six-foot aluminum highway sign reading “Mississippi River” in Russian on the I-94 Dartmouth bridge between St. Paul and Minneapolis. It had been prepared by the Minnesota Department of Transportation’s sign shop in Oakdale for Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev’s visit to the Twin Cities on June 3. Gorbachev’s motorcade passed the sign on that day as he and his wife, Raisa, began a historic visit that established a friendly relationship between the Soviet Union and the North Star State and signaled the approaching end of the Cold War. On an unseasonably cold June afternoon, Minnesota welcomed the Gorbachevs, Mikhail and his wife, Raisa, to the Twin Cities. The greeting followed Mikhail’s morning meeting with President George H. W. Bush, where the two discussed foreign policy. At a Governor’s Mansion luncheon, Rudy Perpich announced the development of the Gorbachev–Maxwell Institute of Technology, an ultimately ill-fated international research institution tentatively funded by Czech-British newspaper billionaire Robert Maxwell. The Gorbachevs then took a planned motorcade route through the Summit Hill neighborhood of St. Paul in a limousine shipped in from the USSR, stopping multiple times to shake hands with members of the crowd. Most approved of Mikhail for his glasnost (transparency) policies, but hundreds of people originally from Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania protested for Baltic independence. Gorbachev later met with Fortune 500 executives at the Downtown Minneapolis Radisson to encourage American investment, acknowledging the USSR’s economic shortcomings while warning that companies “that stand on the sidelines will remain observers for years to come.” While Mikhail was taking questions on Russia’s economy, Raisa attended a dinner with a family in South Minneapolis. She also accepted gifts from school groups and made an impromptu stop at a drugstore to ask about working conditions, maternity leave, and differences in quality between similar products. After a brief visit with Control Data Corporation, a technology firm with longstanding ties to Russia, the Gorbachevs departed for San Francisco. Rudy Perpich, who emerged as the clear political winner of the visit, reported confidence that the visit would have a direct impact on international trade with Minnesota.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/media_4.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/mikhail-gorbachevs-visit-minnesota-1990"},{"alt":"Photograph of Cora Best","author":[{"name":"Cheryl Jacklin-Piraino","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/cheryl-jacklin-piraino"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"August 06, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Best, Dr. Cora Johnstone (1884–1930)","postbody":"Minneapolis-born Cora Johnstone Best achieved international success as a mountaineer during the 1920s. She was a pioneer in the sport, becoming a licensed guide at a time when women were ...","searchtext":"Minneapolis-born Cora Johnstone Best achieved international success as a mountaineer during the 1920s. She was a pioneer in the sport, becoming a licensed guide at a time when women were rarely given the opportunity to be lead climbers. Although she advocated for other women in mountaineering, as a doctor she supported the racist science of eugenics, giving lectures that preached “racial fitness.” Best was born in Minneapolis in 1884. As a child, she saw a postcard of an alpine lake that inspired her to explore the mountains for herself. In a 1924 article, she recalled that postcard when she promoted “visual education,” a teaching system that brought photographs and moving pictures into Minnesota classrooms for the first time. She was also the first to advocate for physical education in Minnesota schools. She spoke to local students and adult audiences alike, encouraging an appreciation of nature through her wilderness films and hand-colored slides. Best studied in the United States and abroad and became a medical doctor. Together with her husband, Dr. Robert Best, she ran a private hospital in Minneapolis known for its charitable work with Native American children. The couple’s home, “Sundance Lodge,” on Lake Harriet Boulevard, was a meeting place for scientists, poets, and mountain enthusiasts. Cora spent nine summers in Yellowstone National Park, then turned her attention to Canada. In 1922, she became the first female section head of the Alpine Club of Canada (ACC). At the time, women were not seen as capable mountaineers. Men often removed women’s names from expedition lists and rarely allowed them to lead on difficult routes. One 1920 newspaper even claimed that female climbers should be disciplined for wearing mountaineering pants in public. Best chaired club meetings in 1923 and 1924 at the Curtis Hotel in Minneapolis. The group offered women a new freedom to travel and take on athletic challenges that were previously reserved for men. Some members went on to achieve first ascents while others took part in scientific research, such as glacial retreat studies. Best’s climbing partner and close friend, Audrey Shippam, was an active member, and the two chased adventure together for more than a decade. Records show that Best may have been the first woman to be granted a full guiding licence for all US and Canadian national parks. She and Shippam joined the Trail Riders of the Canadian Rockies, a group that included royalty, writers, and Hollywood stars. They became the first to paddle Big Bend, a two-hundred-mile stretch of white water on the Columbia River in Canada. Best’s determination and personality made for entertaining headlines. Newspapers detailed her time in the Arctic, where she drove dog sleds and hunted whales with the Aleut. In Alberta, she hunted big horn sheep and collected rare fossils. She spoke of a hunting trip through Manchuria, where she and Shippam fought “bandits” at gunpoint. They made their escape from the war-torn region disguised as teenaged boys. Best had a dozen first ascents in Canada, broke climbing records in Japan, and was given lifetime memberships in the American, Canadian, and Swiss Alpine Clubs. In 1924, she became the first woman to guide her own party through the notorious “Death Trap” over the glaciers that straddle the Continental Divide near Lake Louise. That year, she stood on the peak of Mount Sir Donald and completed a second ascent of the dangerous Mount Sir Douglas Haig. Best was the first woman to guide on Mount Odaray, and she and Shippam scored the first female ascents of Mount Hungabee, a route with a 4,000-foot sheer drop along its final approach. While working with the famous mountaineer Conrad Kain, they recorded first ascents of Mount Iconoclast (“The Smasher”) and several other peaks in southeastern British Columbia. One of the biggest alpine challenges of the 1920s was Mount Robson, “The Great White Fright” (12,972 feet). Best attended the 1924 ACC camp with her sights set on being the first woman to summit the heavily glaciated peak. Her attempt in August was cut short by bad weather, and Canadian Phyllis Munday summited days later. Undaunted, Best returned in September and made the ascent in record time, hauling moving picture cameras to make the first films of the mountain along the way. As a public figure, Best advocated for Jewish women in Minnesota as well as Japanese climbers who faced racism in North American clubs. But she also gave lectures that promoted eugenics and the “survival of the white race.” In one 1925 lecture, she divided human beings into “supernormals” and “subnormals,” proposing that people of color, disabled people, and people with low IQs were “naturally” inferior. Best stopped making these claims after 1927. In the late 1920s, Best developed a lung infection while climbing in Switzerland. She died in her Minneapolis home on November 19, 1930.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/por 17502 p1.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246054,"name":"Sports and Recreation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/best-dr-cora-johnstone-1884-1930"},{"alt":"Picture of the Dacotah Building","author":[{"name":"Joan Mathison","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/joan-mathison"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 30, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"1889","name":"Dacotah Building","postbody":"When the Selby Avenue horse-drawn cable car began to carry passengers up the steep hill, in 1887, the isolated upper-class neighborhood experienced a building boom. Patrick Dwyer, owner of ...","searchtext":"When the Selby Avenue horse-drawn cable car began to carry passengers up the steep hill, in 1887, the isolated upper-class neighborhood experienced a building boom. Patrick Dwyer, owner of Patrick V. Dwyer Bros., plumbers and glass fitters, built the Dacotah Building in hopes of attracting solid tenants, both commercial and residential. Completed in 1889, the three-story building at the corner of Selby and Western Avenues was built by Hennessey, Agnew and Cox at the impressive cost of $70,000. The name of the original architect has been lost, along with the first building permit, but the design reflected the massive Richardsonian Romanesque style that was popular at the time. Charming rounded oriel bay windows added interest to the dark red brick walls above a pink sandstone foundation, fourteen feet deep. Elegant apartments on the upper floors featured fireplaces, ornate plasterwork, and tile floors. Several years later, the pharmacist W. A. Frost relocated his downtown business to the Dacotah Building. Born in Newfoundland, he came to St. Paul fresh from pharmacy school in New York. One of the founders of the University of Minnesota School of Pharmacy, Frost enjoyed a distinguished career in that location until he died in 1930. The pharmacy advertised “drugs, chemicals, and medicines, medicinal wines and liquors and fancy toilet articles of great variety.” It featured a soda fountain, and a young F. Scott Fitzgerald, who grew up in the neighborhood, was a frequent customer there when he ran errands for his father. Later, he would stop in for Cokes and smoke breaks and to buy his favorite cigars. Other commercial tenants included a florist, a shoe repairer, and a tailor and dressmaker. The building served as a short-lived second location for the Andrew Schoch Grocery business, which featured imported, unusual, and hard-to-get food items. Piggly Wiggly, America’s first self-service grocery store chain established in 1916, also occupied the space. The Great Depression drastically changed the neighborhood. Many families could no longer afford servants to maintain their mansions on Summit Avenue, so the jobs and small businesses on Selby that supported them closed. Large houses on Cathedral Hill were subdivided into apartments, and some stood empty when elderly owners could no longer manage them. The pharmacy closed in 1950 as people and businesses began moving to the suburbs. Local crime rates rose after the opening of Interstate 94 in 1968, and the area declined. In 1974, John Rupp, a law school graduate from the neighborhood, purchased the nearly empty Dacotah Building with the help of a friend. It was an act of faith because “suppliers of foodstuffs and servicemen” were often unwilling to risk working in the dangerous neighborhood at Western and Selby. Inspired by a European tour, Rupp restored the distinctive building and created offices from the apartments. He opened a bar, taking the name of the original pharmacy, W. A. Frost & Co., and finished the space with architectural salvage. In 1977, the business expanded to include a kitchen, dining room and St Paul’s first city-approved outdoor patio. A year later, Brenda Langton opened her first restaurant in the building, Café Kardamena, featuring locally sourced vegetarian cuisine and fish. She was helped by her best friend, Nan Bailly, whose family had produced the first Minnesota wine at their Alexis Bailly vineyard in Hastings. (Langton later became a successful Twin Cities restaurateur, Nan Bailly an award-winning winemaker; W. A. Frost started listing her wines on their wine list.) In 1981, Eileen Shapiro opened Paper Patisserie next door. The Pulitzer-Prize-winning playwright August Wilson wrote his most memorable work during his years in St. Paul, often at the bar at Frost’s, which was near the Penumbra Theatre. Chef Lenny Russo took over W. A. Frost’s kitchen in 1998, and for the next four years he refined his skill creating meals with locally sourced ingredients. He left to open Heartland, his signature restaurant, where he earned five nominations for Best Chef of the Midwest from his peers in the James Beard Society. A new generation of Frost executive chefs opened their own three-star neighborhood restaurants in 2014 and 2016: Leonard Anderson (Tongue in Cheek) and Wyatt Evans (Heirloom).","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/david_kopacz_edited_0.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/dacotah-building"},{"alt":"Photograph of the DeGonda Family","author":[{"name":"Barbara W. Sommer","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/barbara-w-sommer"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 30, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Romansh in Minnesota","postbody":"Between 1820 and 1910, it is estimated that at least 30,000 people emigrated from the Swiss canton of Graubünden to the United States. Included in this number were Romansh people—members of ...","searchtext":"Between 1820 and 1910, it is estimated that at least 30,000 people emigrated from the Swiss canton of Graubünden to the United States. Included in this number were Romansh people—members of an ethnically distinct Swiss population—headed for Minnesota. Beginning in 1854, they settled in Stillwater, St. Paul, the St. Henry Colony (Le Sueur County), the Stillwater-sponsored Badus Colony (South Dakota), and other communities throughout the region. The Swiss canton that is historically home to the Romansh people is called Grischun in Romansh but is better known by its German name, Graubünden. Reflecting the four national languages of Switzerland, it is known as Grisons in French and Grigrioni in Italian. Its capital is the ancient city of Chur, known as Curia during the Roman period. Romansh people share Rhaetian-Roman ancestry. The Rhaetians moved into the area sometime after 500 BCE and were followed centuries later, in 15 BCE, by soldiers sent to guard the perimeter of the Roman Empire. The Romansh language is derived from vernacular Latin brought to the area by these soldiers. It is a living descendent of Latin and is recognized as one of four official languages of Switzerland. The term “Romansh” refers to both the people and their language. The name Graubünden means Grey League; it refers to three alliances formed by Romansh leaders between 1367 and 1436 to protect the area and people against political, military, and religious wars. By 1524, the concepts the league supported—cooperative labor, personal freedom, military and political cooperation, and autonomy—were codified in the Constitution of the Free State of the Three Leagues. The Grey League’s commitment to self-sufficiency and mutual support influenced many Romansh immigrant communities and had an impact on their values over time. In the early nineteenth century, as opportunities for work in Graubünden decreased and economic opportunities in America increased, Romansh people began joining the waves of immigrants from northern Europe coming to the United States. The earliest Romansh immigrants established communities in several eastern states, including Ohio and Wisconsin, in the 1820s and 1830s. In 1848, as news of the California Gold Rush reached Romansh communities in Switzerland, others emigrated to Sacramento and San Francisco. Graubünden-based immigration boards and societies, such as the Wolf Company, helped Romansh families choose Minnesota as a destination. They sent scouts to determine prospects for settlement and helped immigrants finance their trips. Between 1851 and 1852, two men from Graubünden—Francis Tambornino and Jacob Beer—visited Le Sueur County in search of available farmland. They purchased land in the Big Woods area of Lexington Township and encouraged others to join them. The first group of Romansh immigrants to come to Minnesota arrived in Stillwater in 1854. Drawn by opportunities in the logging industry, about forty-five families settled in or near the community. Many found work in the business side of the industry; the Minnesota territorial census of 1857 lists Romansh immigrants in Stillwater working as lumbermen, cooks, millers, laborers, carpenters, and clerks. Others moved to rural areas of the county and began farming, continuing the traditional pattern of living in close-knit, self-supporting communities. After settling in Lexington and Sharon Townships in Le Sueur County, Romansh immigrants in that area established the St. Henry Colony in 1854–1855, and, in 1859, the St. Henry the Emperor Catholic Church. Anton Simonet (1842–1932), an early St. Paul resident who later moved to the St. Henry Colony, was the first Minnesota volunteer to be mustered into Brackett||s Battalion of Minnesota Volunteer Cavalry for duty in the Civil War. He joined the battalion on September 8, 1861, re-enlisted on January 1, 1864, and rose to the rank of Sergeant before his discharge with the battalion at the end of the war. Residents from all of Minnesota’s Romansh communities followed his example. Probably the most studied Romansh colony in the United States is the Badus Colony. It was established as an agricultural colony by members of the Stillwater Romansh community between 1875 and 1877. Located in Lake County near Ramona, South Dakota, it was incorporated as a cooperative colony through an organizing document called the Ligia Grischa (an early version of the name Grey League) that spelled out traditional Romansh values of self-sufficiency and mutual support. Members paid to join the organization and worked to help one another establish farms and businesses. In 1886, when the community reached its pre-determined goal of self-sufficiency, the members dissolved the organization. Romansh immigration to Minnesota continued in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The extended family members of early immigrants often followed their relatives to Minnesota or were sponsored by Romansh community members already living in the state. Most came first to Stillwater, which remained the gateway community for Romansh immigration to Minnesota. Some stayed in the city while others moved to the St. Henry Colony or, pursuing business and agricultural interests, settled elsewhere in the state. Counties with Romansh settlements included Washington, Le Sueur, Hennepin, Ramsey, Anoka, and Stearns. By 1880, Romansh people in Minnesota continued in farming-related work and in urban trades such as retail grocery, furniture sales, brewing, carpentry, butchering, barbering, medicine, and domestic service. Among those establishing businesses were brothers Joseph and Martin Wolf, who founded the Joseph Wolf Brewing Company in Stillwater in 1868. It became one of the largest breweries in the state before closing in 1925 as a casualty of Prohibition. Romansh master carpenter Sebastian Simonet, a member of the St. Peter Home Guard during the US–Dakota War of 1862, founded the Simonet Furniture & Carpet Company in Stillwater; it remained in business for 145 years. The Romansh enclave in St. Paul||s North End neighborhood was bounded by Wheelock Parkway to the north, Jackson Street to the West, and Nebraska Avenue to the south (construction of Interstate Highway 35E bisected the neighborhood in 1956). Several community members owned and operated small dairy and cheese farms there; the McDonough Townhomes near Wheelock Parkway were built on the site of the Baerth/Flipp farm. In the twenty-first century, descendants of Minnesota’s Romansh population live throughout the state but remain united by a shared history and identity. One native of the community, Justice John E. Simonett, is well known for his service on the Minnesota Supreme Court (1981–1994).","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/DeGonda_family.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/romansh-minnesota"},{"alt":"Ernest Wabasha","author":[{"name":"Cheyanne St. John","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/cheyanne-st-john"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 26, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Wabasha, Ernest Reginald (1929–2013)","postbody":"Ernest Reginald Wabasha, also known as Caŋku waste waŋ ohna ya (He Travels a Good Road), was a sixth-generation hereditary chief in a long-established Dakota chieftainship. Through ...","searchtext":"Ernest Reginald Wabasha, also known as Caŋku waste waŋ ohna ya (He Travels a Good Road), was a sixth-generation hereditary chief in a long-established Dakota chieftainship. Through repatriation efforts and tribal leadership initiatives, he worked to re-frame histories of the Dakota people and expand narratives of their experiences. Ernest was born on the Santee Sioux Reservation (Nebraska) in the home of his parents, Florence Helen Chase and Henry B. Wabasha, on September 2, 1929. He grew up with five sisters (Ernestine, Emmarica, Veronica, Vera, and Mary) and two brothers (George and Mathew). The Wabasha family has deep roots in Minnesota. Ernest’s great-grandfather was Chief Wabasha III (ca. 1816–1876), one of the thousands of Dakota who were forcibly marched to Fort Snelling and then exiled from their homelands after the US–Dakota War of 1862. During the 1930s and 1940s, many Dakota families made their way back to Minnesota—including the Wabashas, who returned from Nebraska in August 1938. After attending St. Paul’s Boarding School in Marty, South Dakota, for eleven years, Ernest attended Birch Coulee School in Morton, Minnesota, for one year before finishing high school back at St. Paul’s. In 1943, Ernest’s older brother, George, was reported missing in action while fighting for the Allies in Italy during World War II. At the time, Helen Chase was ill with pneumonia. She died in Pipestone before she could learn, with the rest of the family, that George had been killed in action. Ernest was an exceptional high-school athlete, earning a place on an all-state basketball team. After graduating in 1948, he enlisted in the US Navy. He was then deployed during the Korean War and stationed in the Mediterranean on the USS Newport News. He served for five years and two days before his honorable discharge in October 1953. After leaving the Navy, Ernest pursued education and training in radar-detector reading. By December, he had started work as an electronics technician at Western Electric in St. Paul, which eventually transferred him to the Arctic Circle to install and maintain a distant early warning (DEW) defense system. Ernest married Vernell Drapeau at the Cathedral of St. Paul in February 1956. Vernell was a life-long friend of Ernest’s sister Vera; all three had attended St. Paul’s School. In October 1957 Ernest and Vernell welcomed their first child: a daughter, Theresa Ann. A son, Leonard Ernest, followed in December 1959. In August 1959 Ernest began seeking funding opportunities to attend college. He was referred to the Bureau of Indian Affairs and selected for the Indian Relocation program, which enabled him to attend DeVry Technical Institute in Chicago. He scored in the top dozen of the school’s more than 600 electricians and graduated in 1961 with a degree in engineering. In September 1961 McDonell-Douglas Aircraft (MDA) recruited Ernest to work as an electrical engineer. His MDA research team partnered with an aerospace program to develop components for the Gemini and Mercury spacecraft. He spent six years at MDA before becoming an engineer at Honeywell Corporation in 1967. After he retired in 1990, he and Vernell built a home in Lower Sioux Indian Community and relocated there permanently. Ernest remained active after retirement. In November 1987, he and other Dakota elders organized the repatriation of the remains of thirty-one Dakota from Crow Creek, South Dakota, to Lower Sioux’s cemetery, adjacent to St. Cornelia’s Episcopal Church. In the 1990s the Lower Sioux Indian Community elected him to its tribal council, and in 2003 Ernest and other Dakota formed the Winona Dakota Unity Alliance (WDUA) subcommittee to establish the annual “Great Homecoming and Gathering of Dakota People” in Winona. Ernest, Dakota elders, and the Gordon Weston Post of Flandreau, South Dakota, co-founded the commemorative project Circle of Life in 2002. The project led to the construction of the Spirit of the Circle, a memorial at Crow Creek dedicated to the exiled Dakota who died there between 1863 and 1866. Ernest was the first person appointed by Lower Sioux Tribal Council as a NAGPRA representative and liaison between federal and state institutions. In an advisory role, he remained active in cultural resource management; in 2013, he worked on-site at a museum to identify objects for repatriation. He died ten months later in Redwood Falls at the age of eighty-four.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/EW Mnopedia Images0003_edited.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246059,"name":"Native Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/wabasha-ernest-reginald-1929-2013"},{"alt":"Fillmore County Poor Farm","author":[{"name":"Amy Jo Hahn","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/amy-jo-hahn"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 24, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Fillmore County Poor Farm","postbody":"Located outside the village of Henrytown, the Fillmore County Poor Farm was part of a statewide initiative in the late 1800s to provide housing for poor and elderly Minnesotans. After its ...","searchtext":"Located outside the village of Henrytown, the Fillmore County Poor Farm was part of a statewide initiative in the late 1800s to provide housing for poor and elderly Minnesotans. After its start in 1868, it was considered one of the best county poor farms in the state. In the 1930s, however, it fell victim to a lack of funds and resources, and the farm closed in 1943. In 1864, a new Minnesota law required that all counties with a “significant” number of poor and aging people provide them with a home, daily meals, clothing, and medical care. By this time, the county poorhouses in Eastern states—the first organized system of poor relief in the US—had already developed into poor farms. These institutions, the designers of the new system believed, would generate enough income to cover their own upkeep and perhaps even provide extra money for their counties. The poor-farm system depended on finding good farmland, and Fillmore County was especially fertile. In 1868, four years after the passage of the Minnesota law requiring counties to provide housing for the poor, the Fillmore County Board settled on a site for a farm. It purchased 386 acres in Amherst and Canton Townships from B. F. Tillotson for $9,000. Burr Dauchy was hired to build the two-and-a-half-story house in July. The cost was $2,625. A barn and additional outside buildings were constructed. The board also approved $3,000 for the purchase of household furnishings and livestock. The poor farm was ready for its residents in the fall of 1868, less than a year after planning had begun. Its first superintendent, James H. Tedman, served in the position for two years. In its mention of the farm, the 1882 History of Fillmore County describes it as a well-managed 275-acre parcel of cropland, its main crop being corn, with several horses, cattle and hogs. Seventeen people called the Fillmore County Poor Farm home by July 1884. This small-sounding population, however, had stressed it beyond its capacity (twelve residents). The Reverend Hastings Hornell Hart, secretary to the State Board of Corrections and Charities, criticized it as being underfunded, dilapidated, and overcrowded only sixteen years after it opened its doors. A statewide study conducted by Hart found that women, men, children, elders, and mentally ill people often roomed together in poor farms, and that Fillmore County’s was no exception. The board’s secretary, H. R. Wells, reported that nine people had shared a badly insulated sixteen-by-sixteen-foot room at the Fillmore County Poor Farm through the winter of 1884–1885. In general, Hart found that few residents could contribute labor to their farms’ operation, as was originally intended. Larger houses with more bedrooms, bigger community spaces, and modern conveniences were needed. Funds, however, were not easily accessible. On April 14, 1896, over a decade after Hart’s in-depth and critical report, the Fillmore County Poor Farm’s house was destroyed by fire. The County Board allocated $6,660 for a new house and awarded a contract to builder Ole Ask of Lanesboro. Ask built a three-story, thirty-room house with a limestone basement. The building had wide hallways, an open staircase, and a walk-up attic with living space. The 1912 History of Fillmore County, Minnesota described the house as “large, sanitary and commodious, steam heated, and furnished with running water and other conveniences. The barns are large and well kept.” Author Edith McClure mentions in More Than a Roof: The Development of Minnesota Poor Farms and Homes for the Aged that it was “a first-class farm…quite a showcase.” In 1902, the State Board of Corrections and Charities dissolved. A new board was created to continue oversight of poor farms, and Louis G. Foley was hired in 1908 to lead it. Foley approved new regulations for the farms’ management and operation, placing them under stricter state scrutiny. By 1929, a nationwide movement created public demand for changes to the treatment and care of the poor and elderly. A new federal social security act in 1935 was the death knell for the county poor farms. The act gave assistance to poor and elderly people living in privately owned institutions; as a result, public poor farms lost residents to these newer homes and started to close their doors. By 1950, the Fillmore County Poor Farm was privately owned and used as a single-family home. The same family has owned the property since purchasing it from the county in 1943 in a sealed bid process.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Poor Farm_edited.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246091,"name":"Agriculture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/fillmore-county-poor-farm"},{"alt":"","author":[{"name":"Stephanie Lein Walseth","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/stephanie-lein-walseth"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 20, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Theater Mu","postbody":"Theater Mu is Minnesota’s first professional Asian American theater company. Since its founding in 1992, it has impacted both local and national theater landscapes, helping to create a ...","searchtext":"Theater Mu is Minnesota’s first professional Asian American theater company. Since its founding in 1992, it has impacted both local and national theater landscapes, helping to create a pan-Asian community of artists and presenting world-premiere productions that illuminate Asian American experiences. In the early 1990s, Minnesota seemed like an unlikely place for an Asian American theater company to emerge. Yet when Dong-il Lee, a Korean graduate student at the University of Minnesota, proposed the idea of Theater Mu to Japanese Canadian playwright Rick Shiomi during one of his visits to Minneapolis, Shiomi agreed to help found the company. They partnered with Martha Johnson, a Euro-American theater professor at Augsburg College; Andrew Kim, a Korean American artist; and Diane Espaldon, a Filipina professional, to create Theater Mu in 1992. The company aimed to give voice to Asian Americans, especially those in the Midwest, and to contest their invisibility and exclusion from the stage. One of Mu’s first tasks was building a pan-Asian talent pool. It drew from well-established Japanese, Filipino, Korean, and Chinese American communities; southeast Asian refugee and immigrant communities that included Hmong, Laotian, Cambodian, and Vietnamese artists; and the state’s large population of Korean adoptees. Mask Dance, Theater Mu’s inaugural production, showcased the stories of Korean adoptees. Their dual consciousness was reflected in the hybrid aesthetic that Mu became known for―a blending of traditional Asian performance forms with contemporary personal narratives about Asian American experiences. By bringing together artists from myriad ethnic backgrounds and experiences, Mu not only nurtured the formation of an Asian American Twin Cities community; it also shaped artists’ identities and their sense of belonging to a broader Asian America. Multiculturalism was beginning to gain currency in Minnesota in the 1990s. As such, Mu used its well-timed artistic platform to challenge Orientalist tropes of the perpetual foreigner and exotic “other” as well as stereotypes of the model minority. In 1997, Shiomi began teaching taiko drumming to interested Mu artists. Their passion for the form led to the formation of Mu Daiko, a professional taiko group. As taiko performances and classes grew, the company realized it needed a name change to reflect this expanded focus. In 2001, the organization became Mu Performing Arts, housing both Theater Mu and Mu Daiko. After a decade, Mu’s theatrical aesthetic began to shift away from its initial hybrid style towards pieces that more explicitly engaged with political and social issues. In 2009, it announced a new mission statement that made social justice an explicit goal. This aided participation in activities like the 2013 protests against the Ordway’s production of Miss Saigon and forums on issues like yellow-face casting, Asian American stereotypes of the stage and screen, and employment equity. Mu’s commitment to developing new plays continued as the company evolved, giving rise to countless young playwrights. Through more than fifty world premiere productions produced between 1992 and 2016, Mu also cultivated Asian American actors, directors, musicians, and designers. Following the lead of a wave of artists who were also accomplished singers, the company began producing mainstream and Asian American musicals, often in collaboration with larger theaters. Asian American casting of classics from the European canon rounded out their expanding aesthetic. Through partnerships, Mu has increased its influence on the regional and national theater landscape. At the Guthrie Theater, Mu presented Circle Around the Island in the brand-new Dowling Studio in 2007. Circle marked the first time in the Guthrie’s history that a play conceived, performed, and directed entirely by Asian American artists was performed on one of its stages. Mu has since performed numerous times at the Guthrie and has partnered with many other Twin Cities companies. Theater Mu is one of the largest Asian American companies in the country. It has developed a national presence through leadership in the Consortium of Asian American Theaters and Artists and has helped to form the Twin Cities Theatres of Color Coalition, alongside Penumbra Theatre, New Native Theatre, Teatro del Pueblo, and Pangea World Theater. In 2017, Mu’s theater and taiko operations separated. Mu Daiko became a new organization―Taiko Arts Midwest―under the ongoing leadership of Jennifer Weir. The theater company returned to its original name―Theater Mu―under artistic director Randy Reyes.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/2011 Four Destinies - MD.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/theater-mu"},{"alt":"Beginning of the Grand Portage trail","author":[{"name":"Lizzie Ehrenhalt","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/lizzie-ehrenhalt"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 19, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186622056201,"name":"1754–1800 (Revolution and a New Nation)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056203,"name":"1792–1861 (Expansion and Reform)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Grand Portage (Gichi Onigamiing)","postbody":"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, ...","searchtext":"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. Indigenous people have used the eight-and-a-half-mile pathway that connects the Pigeon River with Lake Superior since at least the beginning of the first millennium CE. Though the river provides the fastest route from the lake to inland forests, its lower twenty-one miles are full of rapids and waterfalls. To bypass this rough stretch, Indigenous travelers carried their canoes overland and entered the river at its easternmost navigable point. Ojibwe and other Anishinaabe people called the area—and still call it—Gichi Onigamiing, the great carrying place. Around 1680, a group of Ojibwe people migrated westward along the northern shore of Lake Superior to Thunder Bay and, eventually, Grand Portage Bay. Gichi Onigamiing became a crucial part of their seasonal cycle, which was structured around the earth’s changes and their resource needs. During the winter, they lived in hunting camps at inland sites like Brule, Whitefish, and Arrow Lakes. In the spring, they moved to maple sugar camps before returning to summer villages at Gichi Onigamiing and other sites around Lake Superior. A white cedar tree (manito gizhigans: spirit little cedar tree) growing from the rocky shore on the eastern edge of Grand Portage Bay became a sacred landmark. After Pierre de la Vérendrye landed at Gichi Onigamiing on August 22, 1731, the site grew into a major rendezvous point for the fur trade, and Europeans began to refer to it as Grand Portage. By 1784, the North West Fur Company was running two operations on the site: Fort Charlotte, at the western end of the portage, and Fort George, a trading depot at its eastern terminus. Company clerks expanded the depot to include, by 1793, sixteen wooden buildings: shops, private lodgings, a mess hall, an accounting office, and six storehouses, all surrounded by gated log palisades. Activity at Grand Portage, as at other trading posts, followed a seasonal cycle. Only a few company employees stayed on site in winter to maintain buildings while the majority traveled to hunting and trapping sites. Every year in June, however, they reunited at Grand Portage for the Great Rendezvous, a two-month celebration with feasting, dancing, and socializing. There, Ojibwe hunters and trappers exchanged animal furs for traders’ goods like sugar, flour, tobacco, gunpowder, and guns. Influential traders passed through Grand Portage and noted it in their journals, including David Thompson and Alexander Henry the Younger—both employees of the North West Company. The French-Ojibwe Collin family (Antoine and his sons Michel and Jean-Baptiste) worked in and around Grand Portage for over four decades, first for the North West Company (1790s–1821) and then for the Hudson Bay Company (1821–1830s). Grand Portage’s heyday as a trading site arrived in the late 1790s, when the North West Company and its rival, the XY Company, competed most fiercely. Limited business resumed in 1821, when the Hudson’s Bay Company established a fort at Grand Portage Bay, and continued into the 1830s. By the 1840s, however, fur trading no longer promised large-scale profits, and companies abandoned their forts. After the fur-trade era, Ojibwe people remained near Gichi Onigamiing. The first Treaty of La Pointe (1842) reserved the right of the Lake Superior and Mississippi River Ojibwe to use the portage. The second treaty of that name (1854) established the Grand Portage Indian Reservation, one of the seven federally recognized reservations of Ojibwe in Minnesota. Between 1939 and 1940, workers employed by the Indian Division of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) reconstructed Grand Portage’s Great Hall on its original foundations. Twenty years later, the Grand Portage Ojibwe ceded 709.67 acres of their reservation to the National Park Service, allowing the site to become a National Monument on October 15, 1960. Fire destroyed the Great Hall on July 15, 1969, but the reconstructed palisades and East Gate remained intact. In 1974, a rebuilt Great Hall opened to the public.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/image9.jpg","topicsTag":[],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/grand-portage-gichi-onigamiing"},{"alt":"JEM Theatre","author":[{"name":"Amy Jo Hahn","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/amy-jo-hahn"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 18, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"JEM Theatre, Harmony","postbody":"The JEM, the only remaining movie theater in Fillmore County, first opened its doors at the end of 1935. Although the JEM has had many owners—it even operated for a short time as a bowling ...","searchtext":"The JEM, the only remaining movie theater in Fillmore County, first opened its doors at the end of 1935. Although the JEM has had many owners—it even operated for a short time as a bowling alley—for generations it has been a centerpiece of Harmony’s Main Avenue and a community gathering place for entertainment and cultural events. The building at 20 Main North Avenue in Harmony was first called The Orient Theatre. J. M. Rostvold bought it in December 1935 from Elmer and Millie Hanson, then renamed it the JEM. He created the name by placing the first initial of his wife’s name (Emma) between his first and middle initials. During July 1936, the JEM showed The Bride Walks Out, starring Barbara Stanwyck; Mary of Scotland, starring Katharine Hepburn and Fredric March; and the Great Buck Jones western serial The Phantom Rider. On April 25, 1940, a fire broke out inside the theater that seriously damaged the building. Afterward, Rostvold built a larger and improved JEM, complete with comfortable seating and the most modern film equipment available. Steel, tile, and concrete products were used in its construction to make it more resilient to fire. Located on the lot directly next to the original building at 14 Main Avenue, the new JEM was completed in September 1940. Due to its up-to-date film technology, modern conveniences, and use of fireproof materials, its cost soared from an initial estimated $18,000 to $30,000. Rostvold sold the theater to A. J. Treamann in 1943. Treamann, in turn, converted it into a bowling alley, which closed in 1947. For the next fourteen years, the building sat unused until Bob and Hazel Johnson purchased it in 1961. The Johnsons removed wood bowling lanes and installed new theater seats. They also purchased a new screen and projection equipment. The name on the marquee, however, remained the JEM. The Johnsons owned and operated the theater for the next twenty-five years, showing a mixture of new releases and classic films. Afternoon matinees were offered during the weeklong Christmas school break. The JEM changed hands several times after 1986. Local residents bought and maintained the theater, keeping its doors open. During the nineties, it became a center for cultural activities. The biggest threat to the JEM’s existence was technological advancement. In the early 2000s, Hollywood studios began to announce plans to stop making movies with 35mm film. An upgrade to a digital projection system was required, and by 2011, the JEM needed $75,000—an overwhelming amount for a small-town, single-screen theater. Owners Paul and Michelle Haugerud were able to save it after a local fundraising effort, acquiring a loan and receiving private donations. The first movie shown with the new projection system was Dolphin Tale. In 2017, Dana and Amber Coaty became the JEM’s owners. Together, they continued its longstanding legacy as a cinema house and community event center.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/JEM Theatre March 2018 Amy Jo Hahn.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246079,"name":"Cities and Towns","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/jem-theatre-harmony"},{"alt":"Bemidji Carnegie Library","author":[{"name":"Cecelia Wattles McKeig","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/cecelia-wattles-mckeig"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 16, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Bemidji Carnegie Library","postbody":"For five decades, Bemidji’s public library operated in a one-story, brick-and-stone neo-classical structure designed by Haxby & Gillespie and built in 1909. It is a well-preserved ...","searchtext":"For five decades, Bemidji’s public library operated in a one-story, brick-and-stone neo-classical structure designed by Haxby & Gillespie and built in 1909. It is a well-preserved example of the libraries throughout Minnesota—and the United States—that were financed by Andrew Carnegie. The first Bemidji library was housed in the city’s old courthouse. After a new courthouse was constructed in 1902, the library was moved to the lower level of that building. The Bemidji Public Library Association was formed in 1904. After three years of fundraising, the Bemidji Public Library was established on February 25, 1907. In 1908, Bemidji Library Board Chairman A. P. Ritchie wrote to Andrew Carnegie to inquire about the possibility of funding for a new library building. On March 23, 1908, the city council commenced proceedings to vacate Fifth Street east of Bemidji Avenue to make room for a construction site. The library’s original design included porches on either side of the building, overlooking the lake. The board and the architects intended for these porches to be used in the evening, when the sun shines into the building from the west. Carnegie, however, thought they were unnecessary, and the porches were dropped from the plans, lowering the cost of the building to within the amount of Mr. Carnegie’s donation of $12,500. Thomas Johnson of Bemidji was the construction project’s lowest bidder and was awarded the contract for the sum of $11,300 on August 7, 1909. The building was to be completed by January 1, 1910. Johnson completed the work on time, and the building was occupied during the winter and dedicated the following June. The building is located on the banks of Lake Bemidji in Library Park, on a fifty-foot-by-sixty-foot lot of Block B. It is a typical one-story, rectangular, brick-and-stone library structure, Neo-classical in style. The exterior is made of brown brick with Bedford limestone trim. It is covered with a low hipped roof and is set upon a high (five feet above grade) basement. The basement is the full size of the building. Inside, a stone staircase led to the library’s main-floor circulation desk (in the building’s center, under a low dome) and two reading rooms; book stacks and stock rooms offered storage and work space behind it. varnished oak woodwork provided decoration throughout the elegant main floor. Although the porches the architects designed were never built, doors were installed on the library’s eastern (lakeside) façade, perhaps to allow for the future construction of reading porches. While an appropriation was never made for such an addition, it remained feasible. Work crews thoroughly remodeled the building in 1940. The story of the remodeling, complete with pictures, made the pages of the Minneapolis Sunday Tribune. City improvement projects in the 1950s widened Bemidji Avenue in front of the library, increasing traffic and making it more hazardous to cross the street. The building stopped operating as a library on November 28, 1961, when the Bemidji Public Library moved into a larger building. It was recognized as a historic property and placed on the National Register of Historic Places on November 25, 1980. The Beltrami County Welfare Board occupied the space for a time, and the Bemidji Arts Council installed an art gallery inside it in 1983.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Wikimedia photo.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246079,"name":"Cities and Towns","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/bemidji-carnegie-library"},{"alt":"Wakan Ozanzan’s village","author":[{"name":"Jane Skinner Peck","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/jane-skinner-peck"},{"name":"Mary Elise Antoine","slug":"/mnopedia/search/index/author/mary-elise-antoine"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 13, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246048,"name":"1585–1763 (Colonization)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056201,"name":"1754–1800 (Revolution and a New Nation)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056203,"name":"1792–1861 (Expansion and Reform)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":203519472229,"name":"Pre-1585 (Before European Contact)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"1763","name":"Dakota, Ho-Chunk, and French Indigenous Communities Between St. Paul and Prairie du Chien, ca. 1300–1865","postbody":"The stretch of land between present-day St. Paul, Minnesota, and Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, served as a highway for Native and mixed-ancestry (metis) fur traders—especially those with ...","searchtext":"The stretch of land between present-day St. Paul, Minnesota, and Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, served as a highway for Native and mixed-ancestry (metis) fur traders—especially those with French heritage or kinship ties—during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Building on Native trade networks, they created new communities, adapted to cultural change, and contributed to Minnesota’s recognition as a state in 1858. Present-day Minnesota, along with parts of northwestern Wisconsin and northern Iowa, is Mnisota Makoce, the Dakota homeland. Important villages flourished in what is now western Minnesota, as well as at Bdote (Mendota), Kapozia, (the present-day St. Paul area), Bde Wakan (Mille Lacs), and He Mni Caŋ (the present-day Red Wing area). Smaller villages formed further down the Haha Wakpa (Mississippi River), near ancient burial and effigy mounds. He Mni Caŋ was a village and cultural center for centuries; Dakota oral history mentions a migration of the tribe’s seven bands that began there and spread in all directions. Archaeologists have found evidence of human habitation along the northern Mississippi dating to 11,000 BCE. They also confirm that a large group of Native people migrated in about 1300 CE to the area north of present-day LaCrosse, Wisconsin. Often identified as part of the Oneota culture, they are ancestors of the Dakota. Their villages on the Mississippi were for summer living, gardening, and fishing; in the fall, Native people moved up tributary rivers to winter lodging and hunting sites. By 1600 the La Crosse Dakota moved across the Mississippi to the Root River. In 1780 Wabasha I and his son (Wabasha II) moved their band from Mille Lacs to the Root River; in 1810 they relocated again, this time to Keoxia (Winona). The beginning of French colonization of Quebec in 1608 disrupted Native nations’ hunting and trading patterns. French and British competition in the fur trade caused conflict between the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) and Wyandot (Huron) in what were called the Beaver Trade Wars. Thus began a western migration of the Ojibwe, Wyandot, Potowatomi, Sauk (Sac), and Meskwaki (Fox). The Ojibwe stayed to the north while the others moved southwest, towards the Mississippi River basin. By 1650 the tribal migrations began to affect the present-day Wisconsin area, pushing the Dakota, the Bahkhoje (Ioway), the Menomonee, and the Ho-Chunk (Winnebago) towards the Mississippi River. The Bahkhoje moved across the Mississippi to the Root River and down the Oneota and Iowa Rivers. As European nations established colonies in North America, the French claimed the extensive Mississippi River watershed. Frenchmen Jacques Marquette, Louis Joliet, Louis Hennepin, and Robert La Salle each explored the Mississippi River in the late 1600s looking for fur trade sites and established contact with Native people. In the late eighteenth century, Frenchmen from Quebec, Michilimackinac, and Illinois Country built homes at Prairie du Chien. They established wintering posts close to Dakota villages the length of the Mississippi north to Kapozia. French Canadian and French Indigenous men from Prairie du Chien married daughters of the Native leaders with whom they traded, forming more French Indigenous families. Among these were the Rocs, the Grignons, the La Bathes, the Pizannes, the Rolettes, the Faribaults, and the Baillys. Although the French lost their North American colonies to the British after the French and Indian War in 1763, fur trade on the Mississippi continued under British control, as did French culture. French Indigenous traders signed trading contracts under British licenses. The land east of the Mississippi became part of the US after the American Revolution (1776); the Louisiana Purchase (1803) transferred land west of the Mississippi to the United States. British control of the fur trade in the upper Mississippi, however, continued unabated with the aid of French Indigenous people. All of these transfers ignored the rights and sovereignty of indigenous nations. During the War of 1812 the United States built a fort at Prairie du Chien, which was soon attacked by a British force of French Inidgenous traders and Native warriors. The US lost that battle but won the war, and by 1816, it had gained political control of the upper Mississippi. Many French Indigenous veterans responded by applying to US Indian agents for trading licenses. At the Great Council and treaty signing held at Prairie du Chien in 1825, the US told Native leaders representing the nations of the upper Mississippi to map out their lands. The leaders insisted that their people shared hunting rights in the lands between them. US representatives insisted on the treaty, knowing that establishing boundaries would facilitate later land cessions. A line was drawn to separate the warring Dakota and the Sauk-Meskwaki. Five years later, a council was held at Prairie du Chien to create a buffer zone, necessitating land cessions by the two tribes. A forty-mile-wide zone became a “Neutral Ground”—a rectangular strip of land running diagonally southwest for 200 miles from the Root River (Houston County) through Iowa. The Ho- Chunk people were forcibly relocated there from southern Wisconsin in 1840, and many died on the journey. Growth in the new state of Iowa meant the Neutral Ground was in demand for settler-colonists only six years later, so the Ho-Chunk were moved to a reservation in Long Prairie, Minnesota. Many fled and tried to return to their Wisconsin homeland. Though Henry Rice led an effort to “round-up” the Ho-Chunk, small groups traveled west along the Root River to lesser known areas, living quietly and entering local oral histories. In 1855, the Ho-Chunk were moved yet again, this time to a reservation in Blue Earth, Minnesota. Minnesota had a population of 30,000 Native Americans and 5,000 white settler-colonists when it became a US territory in 1849. Many of those counted as whites were people of mixed heritage. St. Paul, which had begun as a trading site with a Catholic chapel founded by the French priest Lucien Galtier, was growing quickly. After Wisconsin became a state in 1848, more settler-colonists arrived seeking land along the Mississippi. The Treaties of Mendota and Traverse des Sioux (1851) confined the Dakota to narrow reservations along the Minnesota River. The US then failed to deliver promised food, supplies, and annuities throughout the 1850s and 1860s, causing many to suffer and prompting some of the Mdewakanton band to begin the US-Dakota War of 1862. At the war’s end, Governor Alexander Ramsey exiled the Dakota and Ho-Chunk from the state, though few of the former and none of the latter had acted as combatants. The 1830 Treaty of Prairie du Chien had set aside land near Wabasha, eventually called the “Half-Breed Tract,” for the “mixed-blood” members of the Dakota nation. White squatters claimed so much of it that in 1854, the US government gave eligible recipients |||scrip” that could be exchanged for the same number of acres of western land. Following the US–Dakota War of 1862, politicians who were also land speculators worked quickly to buy the scrip from its mixed-blood owners for pennies. In the mid-1860s, settler-colonist villages and cities grew in places where Native people had lived, in places they held sacred, and in places where French Canadians and Native people had once gathered to exchange goods for furs. The newcomers presented French Indigenous families with a choice: join their kin on reservations or adopt “white” customs. By the late 1870s, most of these families had moved to western reservations. But some stayed, and in 1886 the federal government placed 120 acres into trust for what became the Prairie Island Indian Community. Other exiled Dakota returned in the following decades; in the twenty-first century, descendants of the Dakota and their mixed-ancestry kin still enrich Minnesota communities.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/10395802.640x640.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246059,"name":"Native Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/dakota-ho-chunk-and-french-indigenous-communities-between-st-paul-and-prairie-du-chien-ca-1300"},{"alt":"Ames-Florida-Stork House","author":[{"name":"Kristann Strobel","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/kristann-strobel"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 11, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"1937","name":"Ames-Florida-Stork House, Rockford","postbody":"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 ...","searchtext":"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. George Ames traveled to eastern Minnesota in 1855 hoping to make his fortune and settled in what would later become the village of Rockford. He and his business partners—Guilford D. George and Joel Florida, who was also his brother-in-law—built a lumber mill and later, woolen and grist (grain) mills. Ames built the house between 1860 and 1861 as a “retirement” home for himself and his wife, Sarah Woodard Ames. He settled on the Greek Revival style popular in his native Vermont and used wood milled from the property and its immediate vicinity to build the house. He chose to build the two-story, cedar-shingled structure into a hillside—a rare design element for a fashionable, mid-nineteenth-century American home. As originally used by the Ames family, the house included a kitchen/dining room; a main-floor parlor; a second-floor “sky” parlor; a master bedroom; three additional bedrooms; and a back staircase that led to a maid’s room and boarders’ area. It also had both an attic and a root cellar with an escape tunnel—thought to have been built in case of attack by Native Americans. When Ames became gravely ill in 1878, he sold the house to George Florida, Joel Florida’s son (and Ames’s nephew). The Florida family added a new kitchen and dining room to the house in 1912; the carriage house on the property dates to this era as well. As the years progressed, the original kitchen/dining room was converted into a music room. After its tunnel was filled in for safety reasons, the root cellar came to be used as a tool room. The house remained in the Florida family until 1937, when it was bought by Clinton and Meda Stork of St. Paul. The couple used it as a summer home until Clinton’s retirement, after which it became their year-round home. When they purchased the property, the Storks made a conscious decision to maintain the historic integrity of the house. This required preserving the previous owners’ personal possessions and, as much as possible, keeping the aesthetics of the house true to ca. 1880. In 1986, just two days before her death, Meda Stork (by then a widow) sold the Ames-Florida-Stork House to the City of Rockford using an anonymous donation. In 1986, the Rockford Area Historical Society began to operate the Ames-Florida-Stork House as a museum and administrative headquarters. The museum provides both an intimate look into the lives of the house’s owners and a direct view into the lives of settler-colonists in eastern Minnesota. It preserves almost 10,000 artifacts that originally belonged to the Ames, Florida, and Stork families, including clothing, household items, tools, and numerous journals, diaries, letters, and other written materials. Most were created in the 1860s and after; a few date to the 1850s. In the attic, visitors can view the roof’s original cedar shingles and log frame. The Ames-Florida-Stork House and its collections are open to the public, primarily by appointment.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Ames-Florida-Stork House.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/ames-florida-stork-house-rockford"},{"alt":"Antoine Grignon","author":[{"name":"Jane Skinner Peck","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/jane-skinner-peck"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 09, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186622056203,"name":"1792–1861 (Expansion and Reform)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Grignon, Antoine (1829–1913)","postbody":"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 ...","searchtext":"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. European-Indigenous fur trade families frequently travelled long distances by canoe on the Mississippi, and the Grignon family was no exception. Antoine’s father, Amable, had a trading post near present-day Dakota, Minnesota, a site where Native people had lived for hundreds of years. He counted French traders as well as members of the famed Decorra family, who were Ho-Chunk, among his ancestors. Amable’s wife, Archange LaBathe, sister to Francois La Bathe and cousin to Wabasha III, was French, Dakota, and Ho-Chunk. The couple was married in Prairie du Chien, where Amable worked as interpreter for Colonel Zachary Taylor. Antoine was born there in 1829. Antoine attended three English-speaking schools and a French school taught by Father Cretin, who later became bishop of St. Paul. By age fifteen, he could read, write, and speak English, French, Ho-Chunk, and Dakota: perfect skills for an interpreter. Amable Grignon died when Antoine was seven. At the age of fifteen, Antoine began working with the American Fur Company at the Turkey River under Alexis Bailly. Within a year he journeyed to Reed’s Town, also named Trempealeau, where James Reed had a fur post. Reed married Antoine’s mother and Antoine worked for him, describing him as a good and fair man to local Native people. Reed also kept a tavern and inn, whose customers Antoine later described in his memoirs as “a varied company—traders, surveyors, and blanketed Indians.” Trempealeau (soaking mountain) is a French translation of Hay-nee-ah-cha, the Ho-Chunk name for a rock mound near the confluence of the Mississippi and Trempealeau Rivers. According to Ho-Chunk elder O-kick-chum-hak (Looking Glass), Hay-nee-ah-cha was a sacred place, guarded by timber rattlesnakes. Ho-Chunk people went there for healing and to pray for good harvests. Wabasha III’s Dakota village, Kiyuksa, was at the site of present-day Winona. Grignon’s memoirs describe mail carriers traveling from Prairie du Chien to Kiyuksa and St. Paul. They made their way by canoe in summer, by horse-drawn sleigh on the winter ice, and by horse on the shore in the spring. 1846 found Grignon back in Prairie du Chien enlisting in the Mexican War in Henry Dodge’s Home Guard. That same year, the US government forced his Ho-Chunk relatives to move from Iowa to an area near what is now Long Prairie, Minnesota. They opposed the order, having lost their own lands in 1837; many hid out in the hills. Although Grignon helped Henry Rice and David Olmstead take many Ho-Chunk to Long Prairie in 1849, he did not reveal those who were in hiding further inland. While working for Alexis Bailly, trading on the Trempealeau River, Grignon met Mary Christine de la Ronde, who was French as well as part of the Decorra family. Antoine joined the Ho-Chunk at Long Prairie, interpreting at the post of David Olmstead. Mary joined him, and the couple was married in 1851. After settling in Trempealeau, the Grignons went on to have fourteen children, six of whom lived to adulthood. The US government forcibly moved the Ho-Chunk to Blue Earth, Minnesota, in 1855. Grignon worked there at Nathan Myrick’s trading post until the US–Dakota War of 1862. Although the Ho-Chunk had not participated in the war, they were exiled to South Dakota with the Dakota in its aftermath. Many Ho-Chunk escaped and walked back to their home ravines along the Mississippi. Grignon found an ally in Dr. Frank Powell, who came to Lanesboro, Minnesota, in 1875. They both worked to benefit the Ho-Chunk. Dr. Powell, a mixed-race man, treated the Ho-Chunk at no cost. In 1881, when Grignon was hired by the US Interior Department to take a census of tribal members for repayment of land from the Winnebago Trust Fund, Powell assisted with the project. Most French Indigenous people were left out of these payments because they lacked the papers to prove they had at least 25 percent Native blood. Grignon died in Trempealeau, Wisconsin—a canoe ride across the Mississippi from Winona, Minnesota—in 1913.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/grignon_cropped.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246059,"name":"Native Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/grignon-antoine-1829-1913"},{"alt":"Main building, Beltrami County Poor Farm","author":[{"name":"Cecelia Wattles McKeig","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/cecelia-wattles-mckeig"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 06, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Beltrami County Poor Farm","postbody":"The Beltrami County Poor Farm provided shelter and care for elderly and disabled people from 1902 until 1935, when old-age assistance programs replaced the poor farm system. In 1901, the ...","searchtext":"The Beltrami County Poor Farm provided shelter and care for elderly and disabled people from 1902 until 1935, when old-age assistance programs replaced the poor farm system. In 1901, the Beltrami County Board of Commissioners decided to purchase land suitable for a farm complex that would care for the county’s poor citizens. While large cities in Minnesota (and across the US) supported poor houses and houses of charity, rural areas established poor farms and tried to make them well run and self-sustaining. Beltrami County was one of the sixty-three Minnesota counties, out of a total of eighty-seven, that maintained a poor farm at some point in its history. Beltrami County purchased the property on August 2, 1901, from Rien Kilgard in Section 14 of Bemidji Township, directly east of the city limits. It advertised for bids for the main building and a second small building for quarantine and hospital purposes in September 1901, and the buildings were erected soon afterwards. On January 9, 1902, bids were opened for the position of farm superintendent. H. J. Armstrong, the lowest bidder, was appointed; his salary was fixed at $50 per month, starting on the first day of January 1902. This salary included the services of a Mrs. Armstrong as cook and matron. Neighbors hired by the superintendent often helped with outside work; residents who were able to perform labor did so and helped keep the farm functioning. The Beltrami County Poor Farm was run with great economy. It consisted of a house, a four-story barn, a granary, a pest house, a smoke house, and a root cellar on thirty-two acres of land. The pest house was a separate building and housed people with contagious diseases, particularly diphtheria, smallpox, and typhoid. Epidemics that originated in lumber camps—homes for many farm residents—were a common concern. After the logging era passed, the farm formally became known as the Detention Hospital. The farm included a “paupers’” cemetery on a two-acre tract of land set aside for that purpose. Beltrami County paid for coffins as well as the services of an undertaker and a gravedigger, who placed an upright board with the name of the deceased and date of death at the head of each grave. There were three periods in the history of the Beltrami County Poor Farm. The first, during which the farm was under the governance of county commissioners, lasted from 1901 until 1908. The second began in 1909, when the county abandoned the county system of caring for the poor in favor of the township system. This involved shifting the cost of relief administration from county boards to townships. The city of Bemidji then leased the farm from 1909–1914. When farm’s main building burned on March 10, 1914, its residents were moved to various locations throughout the city. At that time, there were nine residents (commonly referred to as inmates). The third period began in 1920, when the county constructed a new building. It opened on April 1, 1920, with a new name: the Beltrami County Infirmary. At the time, it was considered one of the most modern institutions in the Northwest. Locally, it was still referred to as the poor farm. After the Social Security Act mandated old-age assistance at a state level in 1935, several Minnesota counties closed their poor houses and disposed of the properties. Ten of them, including Beltrami County, followed a different course of action: selling their poor farms to private buyers to remove them from the legal category of “public institution.” After Beltrami County leased its farm to Arthur Spears, it was no longer regarded as a poor house, and the resident population of the farm quickly grew. In 1937, Arthur Spears bought much of the property, and it became a private facility. As decades passed, the farm’s cemetery became a pasture. Grave markers rotted or were lost, and in 1967, Beltrami County sold a portion of the property to a private owner. In 1979, however, it exchanged land deeds with the owner to regain ownership. The land was cleared, fenced, and once again identified as a cemetery.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/main_building_with_horses.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246087,"name":"Health and Medicine","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246055,"name":"Labor","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/beltrami-county-poor-farm"},{"alt":"Thomas D. Schall","author":[{"name":"Paul Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/paul-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 02, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Schall, Thomas D. (1878–1935)","postbody":"Thomas D. Schall was twice a self-made man: first in rising from rural poverty to become a lawyer, second in recovering from an accidental blinding to serve twenty years in Congress. Born ...","searchtext":"Thomas D. Schall was twice a self-made man: first in rising from rural poverty to become a lawyer, second in recovering from an accidental blinding to serve twenty years in Congress. Born in 1878 in a log cabin near Grand Rapids, Michigan, Schall spent his childhood in desperate poverty. His father died when Schall was a toddler, leaving the family with nothing. Eventually his mother took up a homestead near Wheaton, in Traverse County, and worked as a cook. Young Tom worked where he could to help his mother. Schall started school in Wheaton at age twelve. At sixteen he entered high school in Ortonville, where he discovered oratory. In 1896 the president of Hamline University heard him speak and arranged a scholarship, allowing Schall to enter Hamline in 1898. He transferred to the University of Minnesota in 1900; he graduated from there in 1902 and from St. Paul College of Law in 1904. Schall was trying a case in Fargo in 1907 when he used a newly installed electric device at a cigar stand to light a cigar. Connected to the wrong power source, it flashed in his face. Over the next three months he lost his eyesight completely. After a period of doubt he resumed his law practice, specializing in personal injury. With his wife, Margaret, doing his reading and writing, Schall prospered; juries liked his oratory. In 1914 Schall ran for Congress from the Tenth Congressional District—Hennepin, Wright, Anoka, Pine, Kanabec, Pine, and Mille Lacs Counties—on the Progressive Party ticket. In a three-way race he won by just 1,403 votes. He became the first blind member of Congress. In 1916 he won again, this time easily. In April 1917, as the country geared up for war with Germany, Schall made a dramatic speech in Congress and cast a key vote electing Democrat Champ Clark Speaker of the House, giving President Wilson a unified government for conducting the war. By 1918 the Progressive Party had ceased to exist, and Schall tried to enter the Republican Congressional primary. It took a ruling by the Minnesota Supreme Court to get him in. He won that primary by a huge margin and then the general election easily in 1918, again in 1920, and in 1922. In 1924 he ran for the US Senate against Magnus Johnson, a Farmer-Labor politician who had come to the Senate by special election in 1923. Schall won by just 8,000 votes in another three-way and bitterly contested election. Johnson challenged Schall’s win in the Senate, claiming that Schall had violated Minnesota’s Corrupt Practices Act through unlawful spending, bribery, and the promising of favors. In June 1926 the Senate unanimously rejected Johnson’s complaint. In an angry speech afterward, Schall called Johnson “a marionette who kicked and waved his hands and opened his mouth according to the tension of the string.” In 1927 Schall became one of the first Americans to use a recent German innovation, the guide dog, and forced the Senate to change its rules to accommodate him. He became an avid horseman. He also loved aviation and flew often. Schall ran for re-election in 1930. In yet another three-way race against Farmer-Labor and Democratic opponents, he won by 11,000 votes with just 37 percent of the total. The Farmer-Labor candidate Einar Hoidale challenged Schall’s election again, on much the same grounds that Magnus Johnson had done, and lost, just as Johnson had done. Schall was a progressive, Theodore-Roosevelt-style Republican. He supported child labor laws, federal regulation of big business, and federal protection of Minnesota’s Quetico-Superior wilderness area. But the New Deal seemed to unhinge the already volatile Schall. He repeatedly called Franklin Roosevelt a communist intent on dictatorship and blamed all modern wars on the Rothschild family of bankers. In November 1935 Farmer-Labor Governor Floyd Olson announced that he would challenge Schall for the Senate seat, and a historic battle of two aggressive politicians loomed for 1936. But it was not to be. On December 19, 1935, on his way home from the office, Schall was killed by a hit-and-run driver. He was fifty-eight. Olson died of stomach cancer in June of 1936 at age 44. Both Olson and Schall are buried in Lakewood Cemetery, Minneapolis.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/schall_US_Senate_Office.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/schall-thomas-d-1878-1935"},{"alt":"Photograph of side exterior of Greenfield Lutheran Church","author":[{"name":"Amy Jo Hahn","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/amy-jo-hahn"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"June 30, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Greenfield Lutheran Church","postbody":"Harmony’s Greenfield Lutheran Church traces its history to 1856, when Norwegian immigrant families began holding religious services in the settler-colonist community of Greenfield Prairie. ...","searchtext":"Harmony’s Greenfield Lutheran Church traces its history to 1856, when Norwegian immigrant families began holding religious services in the settler-colonist community of Greenfield Prairie. In 1913, a brick church was built a half mile to the north in Harmony. It became the congregation’s permanent home and one of the city’s most beautiful architectural landmarks. Construction of the first Lutheran church in Greenfield Prairie began in 1866, shortly after Reverend Tobias Larsen was hired as the congregation’s permanent pastor. Until Larsen’s hire, pastors traveling on horseback served the congregation every four weeks. Religious services lasted up to three hours, and some settler-colonists traveled up to eight miles to attend. The church was not completed until 1874; poor weather conditions and delayed delivery of building materials were to blame. Workers created the brick exterior from local clay heated in a kiln on a nearby farm. The resulting building was forty-eight feet long, thirty-six feet wide, and eighteen feet high. It boasted a steeple that ascended seventy-five feet into the sky. A parsonage was also built on a forty-acre farm east of the church. In 1884, the Greenfield Lutheran Congregation hired the Norwegian American artist Herbjorn Gausta to create an altar painting. The resulting work, “Christ’s Resurrection,” was placed at the front of the sanctuary. In 1886, the congregation purchased an organ; in 1887, pastors delivered sermons in both Norwegian and English for the first time. Greenfield Lutheran congregants built a small chapel in Harmony in 1901 to give themselves a place to gather outside Greenfield Prairie. By then, the town had become a thriving community due to the arrival of the Milwaukee Road railway in the autumn of 1879. Greenfield Prairie’s business owners had moved to Harmony to be closer to the rail line, and a majority of the church’s congregation lived there. The chapel, built on donated land, had a kitchen and a large room used for church meetings, services, social events, and Sunday school. A parsonage was also built in Harmony in 1905. The congregation decided to build a larger place of worship in Harmony in 1912. The cornerstone was laid on September 29, 1912, and the new church was dedicated on September 21, 1913. The much larger church replaced the church in Greenfield as well as the Harmony chapel, which was sold, moved to a different location in town, and used as a private home. Church parishioners contributed money for the purchase of large stained-glass windows, a pipe organ, interior decorations, and other items. One church member donated the altar painting, titled “Christ as the Good Shepherd”—another Gausta creation. The church had a full basement and kitchen. The building was described in the church’s 100th anniversary booklet as “of Gothic architecture and adorned with two well proportioned steeples, the highest capped with a gold cross, reaching one hundred feet above the ground. It is built of pressed brick and the arches being cut of Bedford stone.” Forty-eight years later, a large addition was built that included administrative offices, several Sunday school classrooms, a small chapel, and a library. In 1919, the church in Greenfield Prairie was demolished and the original Gausta painting was given to the Lutheran church in Fremont, Minnesota. When the Fremont church closed, the painting was donated to the Vesterheim Norwegian-American Museum in Decorah, Iowa. In 1921, the Harmony congregation erected a memorial to the founders of Greenfield Lutheran Church. It was placed in the church’s cemetery at Harmony’s south entrance, where the original church had stood. The seven-foot-high granite memorial lists eighty-five founders, and an inscription on a bronze tablet states: “On this site stood the first church of the Norwegian Evangelical Lutheran Congregation of Greenfield, Fillmore County, Minnesota.”","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Greenfield Lutheran Image 1_Harmony_Amy Jo Hahn 2018.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246089,"name":"Religion and Belief","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/greenfield-lutheran-church"},{"alt":"John W. Vessey Jr.","author":[{"name":"Steven R. Anderson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/steven-r-anderson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"June 27, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Vessey, John W., Jr. (1922–2016)","postbody":"From his teenage enlistment in the Minnesota National Guard through his retirement as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff forty-six years later, John W. Vessey Jr. served his country ...","searchtext":"From his teenage enlistment in the Minnesota National Guard through his retirement as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff forty-six years later, John W. Vessey Jr. served his country through several wars and many peacetime assignments. After retiring from the Army, he was appointed as envoy to Vietnam to resolve issues about missing American military personnel. Vessey, the oldest of six children, was born in Minneapolis on June 29, 1922. His family then lived in Lakeville, Minnesota. His father, a World War I veteran, was a railroad station agent. In 1936, he moved with his family to Minneapolis; he graduated from Minneapolis’s Roosevelt High School in 1940. Lying about his age, Vessey enlisted at sixteen in the Minnesota National Guard in 1939. (The minimum age for enlistment was eighteen.) He joined the guard’s Thirty-fourth “Red Bull” Infantry Division as a motorcycle rider. In February 1941, the Thirty-fourth Division was mobilized for active duty. During World War II, Vessey fought with the Thirty-fourth Division in North Africa and Italy. When the Japanese surrendered on September 2, 1945, he was training for the expected invasion of Japan. By the end of the war, he had been promoted to second lieutenant. On July 18, 1945, Vessey married Mavis Claire Funk, whom he had met in high school. They had three children; their marriage continued until her death in 2015. After World War II, Vessey moved from the national guard to the regular army, where he spent the remainder of his military career. Between World War II and the Vietnam War, he was, among other things, a student at artillery and command schools, a battery officer, and an artillery instructor. He also held several command and liaison positions in Europe and Korea. During the Vietnam War, Vessey served as commander and chief of staff of an armored division in Europe, as an artillery unit’s executive officer in Vietnam, as commanding general of the support command in Thailand, and as coordinator of operations in support of the war in Laos. From 1976 until 1979, Vessey was commander in chief of the United Nations Command in Korea. In 1978, he also was appointed commander in chief of the US–Republic of Korea Combined Forces Command. He received his general’s fourth star in 1976. In 1979, Vessey was appointed Army Vice Chief of Staff in Washington, DC. He planned to retire on his sixtieth birthday in 1982, but President Reagan persuaded him to become the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. As chairman, Vessey strengthened the role of the joint chiefs as the primary military advisors to the president and the secretary of defense. Modernizing the armed forces in the post-Vietnam era was an important project during his tenure. In October 1983, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger gave Vessey command of the US invasion of the Caribbean nation of Grenada in response to a coup that endangered American students there. Another significant event that unfolded while Vessey was chief was the October 23, 1983, bombing of the US Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, in which 241 American military personnel were killed. Vessey and the other joint chiefs had advised against stationing US troops in Lebanon because they feared entanglement with the other powers involved there. On September 30, 1985, Vessey retired from the army. As of that time, he had served longer than anyone else on active duty then in the army. He and his wife left Washington, planning to spend their retirement years at their lake home near Mille Lacs Lake in Minnesota. However, in 1987, President Reagan appointed him presidential envoy to Vietnam for POW and MIA affairs. Vessey served Presidents Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and Bill Clinton in that role and finally retired in 1993. As envoy, Vessey went to Vietnam six times to meet with Vietnamese officials about American military personnel who were still missing at the end of the Vietnam War. He established a procedure for American representatives to search for remains. Vessey also helped arrange for former South Vietnamese military and political officials and the children of American servicemen (and the children’s mothers) to come to the United States. Vessey died on August 18, 2016, at his home in North Oaks, Minnesota.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/vessey_official_photo_edited.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/vessey-john-w-jr-1922-2016"},{"alt":"Ravine House (Daniel Dayton House)","author":[{"name":"Amy Jo Hahn","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/amy-jo-hahn"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"June 25, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Ravine House (Daniel Dayton House)","postbody":"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 ...","searchtext":"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 first settler-colonists moved to what would be known as Harmony, in southeast Minnesota Territory, in 1853. A primary concern was establishing regular communication and trade between local residents and other communities. The answer came a year later when the Dubuque–St. Paul Trail was established and Harmony Township was chosen as a stop along the 272-mile mail and stagecoach route. Recent immigrant Daniel Dayton, seeing a business opportunity in the trail’s arrival, built a single-story log building in the village of Big Spring in 1855. He first provided food and drinks to weary travelers but soon offered overnight accommodations. In 1857, Dayton built a two-and-a-half-story limestone addition to the structure with walls that were twenty inches thick. Its windows, arranged in a six-over-six pattern, had double-hung sashes, limestone sills, and detailed lintels. Its gabled, pitched roof supported two brick chimneys. Dayton painted “Ravine House” on a shingle and hung it above the building’s front door to welcome visitors. The first and second floors contained framed beds, slide-out trundles, and floor mattresses for overnight guests; extra sleeping space was available in the small attic. In addition to providing rooms to travelers, Ravine House also functioned as a livery, a store, a post office, and a private farm residence. Dayton and his sons, Aaron and Zara, operated Ravine House as an overnight stop for stagecoach travelers until 1866, when use of the Dubuque–St. Paul Trail declined due to the arrival of the railroads. Although a railroad line (the Milwaukee Road) wouldn’t arrive in Harmony until 1879, other lines opened across the region in the 1860s and 1870s, drawing away traffic from the once-busy stage route. While operating Ravine House, Dayton served in the Minnesota Legislature and as Harmony Township’s chairman, clerk, and postmaster. He died in 1895. Ravine House was then used as a private residence for several decades until 1952, when it was abandoned and used as feed and hay storage for livestock. The building soon fell into disrepair. A passionate group of local preservationists, however, decided to renovate it in the 1970s. Work crews replaced the windows and roof, repaired wood floors, and stabilized the foundation. Every effort was made to return the historic structure to its original condition, and in 1977, Ravine House was added to the National Register.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Ravine_House_2014.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246053,"name":"Transportation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/ravine-house-daniel-dayton-house"},{"alt":"Painting of Connemara Patch","author":[{"name":"Natalie Heneghan","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/natalie-heneghan"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"June 22, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"1881","name":"Connemara Patch, St. Paul","postbody":"Connemara Patch began as a community of Irish immigrants on St. Paul’s East Side in the early 1880s. An unintended result of Bishop John Ireland’s Catholic colonization efforts and a victim ...","searchtext":"Connemara Patch began as a community of Irish immigrants on St. Paul’s East Side in the early 1880s. An unintended result of Bishop John Ireland’s Catholic colonization efforts and a victim of 1950s freeway construction, it was a small, swampy neighborhood on the banks of Phalen Creek. Despite its short and oft-forgotten existence, Connemara Patch was home to several generations of Irish working-class families and later immigrant groups. Between 1876 and 1881, Bishop John Ireland secured 369,000 acres of farmland along the expanding railroad in rural Minnesota. There, he resettled thousands of Catholic immigrants—most of them Irish. During this time, Graceville in Big Stone County emerged as a commercial center among Ireland’s Minnesotan colonies. After devastating crop failure in western Ireland in 1879, Bishop John Ireland sponsored fifty poor, starving families from the Connemara region of County Galway, Ireland. He arranged for them to settle in Graceville among earlier Irish immigrants to the region. The 309 newcomers, called “Connemaras,” arrived in Minnesota in June 1880. Ireland gave each family 160 acres of land, clothing, farming supplies, seed, and credit for food. Ireland expected the families to farm their land and ultimately pay it off. The Connemaras, however, were not familiar with large-scale farming techniques. They hardly spoke English and preferred to find work as day laborers on the nearby railroad or on established farms. Already suffering and arriving too late in the season to plant their first crops, the Connemaras were wholly unprepared for the winter of 1880–1881, one of the worst in Midwestern history. Bishop Ireland, persuaded by the Connemaras’ worsening condition and growing public sympathy, decided to move the families to St. Paul, where they were likely to find greater financial stability. The situation received national attention, and Ireland believed the move to St. Paul would preserve his reputation and not further demoralize his colonization efforts. Most settled in an area that became known as Connemara Patch, a neighborhood at the base of Dayton’s Bluff. It was roughly bounded by East Seventh Street on the north, Third Street on the south, Hoffman Street to the east, and Commercial Street to the west. Like Swede Hollow across Seventh Street and other poor neighborhoods built along the river flats, Connemara Patch was a working-class ethnic enclave. Its proximity to commercial activity in downtown St. Paul offered a range of employment opportunities. Residents found work as teamsters, tinsmiths, dressmakers, blacksmiths, and conductors. Many Connemara Patch residents attended St. John’s Parish on Dayton’s Bluff. The twelfth Catholic Church in St. Paul, St. John’s was established in 1886 to serve English-speaking Catholics new to the area. Existing Catholic parishes in the area catered to German speakers. A 1902 St. Paul Globe article paints one of the most vivid pictures of Connemara Patch, “a little settlement that lies at the foot of Dayton’s Bluff like sediment in the bottom of a big pool.” It was a small, rather hidden neighborhood. The writer visited on a sunny spring day and described the streets as crooked and the houses—or “huts”—as awkwardly built. Children played happily in the mud and sunshine, wearing tattered clothes. Opportunities to move away from the banks of Phalen Creek and make the metaphorical climb up the bluff represented upward social mobility and prosperity. As families moved in and out of the neighborhood, its identity evolved. Over time, Irish names like Connelly, Leahy, and McDonough became less common. Former residents like Rick Cardenas, interviewed in a 2007 St. Paul Pioneer Press article, never referred to it as Connemara Patch. By the mid-twentieth century, when he lived in the area he called “below the bridge,” most residents were Mexican American. All were cleared out by 1956 during the construction of Interstate 94. In 2005, the City of St. Paul created Bruce Vento Nature Sanctuary on the former site of the neighborhood.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/MNopedia/MNopedia%202025/Connemara%20Patch/10430936.640x640.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246079,"name":"Cities and Towns","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/connemara-patch"},{"alt":"Rev. Denzil A. Carty","author":[{"name":"Tina Burnside","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/tina-burnside"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"June 20, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Carty, Rev. Denzil A. (1904–1975)","postbody":"Rev. Denzil Angus Carty was an Episcopal priest and civil rights leader who fought against discrimination in Minnesota—particularly in the City of St. Paul. He was the rector of St. ...","searchtext":"Rev. Denzil Angus Carty was an Episcopal priest and civil rights leader who fought against discrimination in Minnesota—particularly in the City of St. Paul. He was the rector of St. Philip’s Episcopal Church in St. Paul for twenty-five years, from 1950 until his retirement in June 1975. Carty stated that his lifelong work in human rights was simply part of his Christian duty. The only thing worth doing, he contended, was helping people. Carty was born on March 30, 1904, in St. John’s Antigua, British West Indies. He received a bachelor of science degree from the City College of New York and a bachelor of divinity degree from General Theological Seminary in New York, where he later received an honorary doctor of sacred theology degree. He graduated from the Episcopal seminary in 1934 and worked in New York parishes at All Souls, St. Philip’s, and St. Luke’s churches. Carty served as a chaplain in the United States Army during World War II, from 1944 to 1946. He earned a master of arts degree in psychology from Wayne State University in Detroit. He was then a principal at Weber Elementary School in Baldwin, Michigan, prior to moving to Minnesota to become the priest at St. Philip’s. During his long career in Minnesota, Carty headed several organizations and provided leadership on many boards. He was one of the founders of the Christian Social Relations Department in the Minnesota Episcopal diocese and served as vice chair and director of the department. Carty was president of the Minnesota branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP); director of the St. Paul Urban Coalition; director of the Episcopal Society for Cultural and Racial Unity; president of the St. Paul Urban League; and president of the Minnesota Council for Civil and Human Rights. He also served as chaplain of the American Legion and on the boards of the Hallie Q. Brown Community Center and the Children’s Home Society. As an outspoken advocate for equality, Carty fought against discrimination in housing, education, and employment. In 1961, he lobbied the Minnesota legislature for passage of the Minnesota Fair Housing Act—a law that barred racial and religious discrimination in the sale, rental, and lease of housing. He led the effort to establish a state Fair Employment Practices Commission and fought to desegregate St. Paul public schools. As director of the Episcopal Society for Cultural and Racial Unity, Carty sought to create training schools for black and white civil rights leaders aimed at fighting white racism. He also assisted in negotiating an agreement between St. Paul construction trade unions and employers to increase the number of blacks in construction jobs in the 1970s. In 1964, Carty led a “prayer intercession” of about 300 people at the Minnesota State Capitol to garner support for the federal civil rights bill that was being debated by the US Senate. Carty encouraged the audience to write letters to their senators urging them to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The landmark legislation outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin in voting, public schools, employment, and public accommodations. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Carty supported urban renewal in the Summit-University area of St. Paul after the construction of Interstate 94 destroyed the thriving black community in the Rondo neighborhood. Carty encouraged African Americans to move from their homes, and many houses were condemned with the promise that better housing would replace it. The construction of I-94 destroyed black-owned homes and businesses, and subsequent urban renewal plans failed to rebuild the community. In 1974, under one plan, St. Philip’s Episcopal Church built St. Philip’s Gardens, a low-to-moderate income apartment complex. Carty later stated that he regretted his support of urban renewal because it scattered residents and divided the black community. The government, moreover, did not follow through on promises to build better housing. Carty passed away on August 24, 1975. Carty Park in St. Paul’s Summit-University neighborhood is named after him. In 2007, Episcopal Homes opened Carty Heights, an affordable senior apartment building named in his honor.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/HQB Reverend Photo_edited.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056216,"name":"African Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246089,"name":"Religion and Belief","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/carty-rev-denzil-1904-1975"},{"alt":"Northwestern National Bank, 1890","author":[{"name":"Linda A. Cameron","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/linda-cameron"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"June 18, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Northwestern National Bank, Minneapolis","postbody":"The Northwestern National Bank of Minneapolis opened its doors in 1872. During its long history, it survived locust plagues, economic panics, a major milling disaster, the turbulent times ...","searchtext":"The Northwestern National Bank of Minneapolis opened its doors in 1872. During its long history, it survived locust plagues, economic panics, a major milling disaster, the turbulent times of the Great Depression, and a devastating fire. Acquisition of smaller banks and a growing list of services made it one of the top banking companies in the region. In 1929 it became a bank holding company organized as Northwestern Bancorporation (later Norwest Corporation). Norwest merged with Wells Fargo in 1998. A group of Minneapolis businessmen met in April 1872 to create a new banking institution with $200,000 in capital. The board of directors of the new bank elected Dorilus Morrison, a successful flour miller with an interest in the Northern Pacific Railway, as its first president. The bank opened at 100 Washington Avenue South a few months later. Board member William Hood Dunwoody made the first deposit of $2,315. Northwestern National Bank faced many trials in its first decade. The financial panic of 1873 forced many railroads into bankruptcy. Minnesota farmers lost crops to locust plagues in the mid-1870s. The Washburn A Mill explosion in 1878 impacted flour milling revenues. The bank lost one-fourth of its capital through wheat speculation by an assistant cashier. The bank, however, survived and continued to grow. Minneapolis prospered during the 1880s. By 1887, the bank||s capital had grown to more than $3.3 million. Needing more space, the bank moved to the Guaranty Loan Building (later the Metropolitan Building) in 1891. A second financial panic two years later caused five Minneapolis banks to fail, but Northwestern once again weathered the storm. The early 1900s brought improvements to the bank. It started a women||s department in 1901, enabling women to open their own bank accounts. In 1904, the bank moved to a new building at 411 Marquette Avenue and soon opened the first savings department in the city. Four years later, it began an affiliation with the Minnesota Loan and Trust Company and started to acquire smaller banks. By 1922, Northwestern National Bank offered city-wide banking services through a growing network of branch banks. Just before the 1929 stock market crash, construction began on a new building located at Seventh Street and Marquette. The new headquarters, designed by Graham, Anderson, Probst, & White of Chicago, cost $6 million. Built of granite and marble, it stood sixteen stories tall and boasted 115 teller stations, a 318-foot banking lobby, and four vaults. The safe deposit vault featured 63.5-ton, nine-foot diameter door made of twenty-four-inch-thick drillproof and fireproof steel plates. An electric alarm system protected the vault||s assets. The Northwest Bancorporation (Banco) was organized in January 1929, and by year’s end had ninety-five banks in its holdings. When the bank moved to its new building in 1930, its deposits totaled $100,459,000. The new organization set goals to stabilize banking operations and provide the best possible standardized service to its customers. Banco strengthened its position through a formal merger with Minnesota Loan and Trust in 1934. Throughout the Great Depression, Banco managed its assets so successfully that not a single customer lost money. The landmark seventy-eight-ton Weatherball sign appeared on the roof of the bank in 1949, shining out its first weather forecast on October 7. By 1957, twenty-one locations around the Twin Cities featured the trademark Weatherball signs. The Weatherball jingle helped people to remember the sign||s color code: When the Weatherball is glowing red, Warmer weather||s just ahead. When the Weatherball is shining white, Colder weather is in sight. When the Weatherball is wearing green, No weather changes are foreseen. Colors blinking by night and day Say precipitation||s on the way. On Thanksgiving Day in 1982, arsonists started a fire in the vacant Donaldson||s Department Store building. The fire quickly spread and consumed the bank building, with total damages estimated at more than $75 million. After demolition of the old bank in March 1984, the fifty-seven-story Norwest Center (later Wells Fargo Center) rose in its place. The Weatherball survived the blaze, but plans for its restoration at the state fairgrounds were dropped. In 1983 the bank changed its name to Norwest Corporation and stopped using the Weatherball logo. In 1998 Norwest merged with Wells Fargo Corporation to become the country||s sixth-largest banking company.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/NP 103084.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/northwestern-national-bank-minneapolis"},{"alt":"Charles Babcock","author":[{"name":"R. Michael Brubaker","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/r-michael-brubaker"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"June 15, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Babcock, Charles Merritt (1871–1936)","postbody":"As state highway commissioner (1917–1933), Charles Babcock established high standards for funding and building roads throughout the state of Minnesota. His plans for taxation and ...","searchtext":"As state highway commissioner (1917–1933), Charles Babcock established high standards for funding and building roads throughout the state of Minnesota. His plans for taxation and construction allowed modern roads to reach every corner of the state. Born August 10, 1871, in Sherburne County to Willard and Serepeta Babcock, Charles Merritt Babcock grew up on a farm. He later worked in his father’s mercantile store, entered the county political scene, and became president of the Bank of Elk River. Ultimately, his professional life evolved to focus on improving methods of transportation as a means to enhance business in rural Minnesota. Babcock entered the University of Minnesota in 1892 to study engineering. During the economic crisis of 1893, however, he became unable to pay his tuition and dropped out to work in his father’s store in Elk River. While working there, he realized that he could improve business and build relationships with county farmers by providing easy transportation and access to the markets. With this in mind, Babcock began a political career. In 1908 he ran for county commissioner with a plan to improve local roads and transportation routes. After two years of service, he realized that working for the state government and the state highway commission would better serve his mission. Babcock joined the Minnesota State Highway Commission in 1910. He served until 1917, when the state disbanded the commission. The legislature replaced it with the Department of Transportation under the direction of Governor Joseph Burnquist, who then appointed Babcock the first Minnesota highway commissioner. Babcock’s primary achievement during his sixteen-year tenure was an amendment to the state constitution that used tax dollars to fund the building and maintenance of state roads. Known as the Babcock Amendment, it levied taxes first on automobile registration and later on gasoline to fund roads. During his career, Babcock belonged to the American Road Builders Association, the National Safety Council, and several international transportation associations. Locally, he influenced the directing of the Jefferson Highway through Sherburne County to St Cloud. During his time in the Department of Transportation, work crews paved the road that passed from the Anoka County line north through Elk River and the entire county. The 1930 election of Governor Floyd Olson, a reform-minded Farmer-Labor advocate, led to public scrutiny of Babcock and his office. In December 1933 Olson asked him to resign from his post as commissioner. Babcock complied, and Olson replaced him with N. W. Elisberg. Starting in 1933, six taxpayers brought a series of lawsuits against Babcock alleging price fixing and preferential treatment of road construction contractors. One of them, Regan vs. Babcock (1936), reached the Minnesota Supreme Court. The justices ultimately cleared Babcock of fraud-related charges but ordered the contractors to return close to $385,000 in overpayment to the state of Minnesota. Babcock returned to his job at the Bank of Elk River and continued to work for improved roads and transportation. He died on November 23, 1936.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/1995017008 Charles Babcock_edited.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246053,"name":"Transportation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/babcock-charles-merritt-1871-1936"},{"alt":"Comstock House","author":[{"name":"Matt Eidem","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/matt-eidem"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"June 13, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Solomon G. Comstock House","postbody":"The Solomon G. Comstock House is a Queen Anne/Eastlake-style Victorian home that was built by one of the city of Moorhead’s first citizens, Solomon G. Comstock, in the years 1882–1883. It ...","searchtext":"The Solomon G. Comstock House is a Queen Anne/Eastlake-style Victorian home that was built by one of the city of Moorhead’s first citizens, Solomon G. Comstock, in the years 1882–1883. It is a historic house museum and one of the twenty-six historic sites owned by the Minnesota Historical Society. Solomon Comstock came to Moorhead with the Northern Pacific Railroad in 1871 as a track layer after his law career in Omaha, Nebraska, and St. Paul stalled. Within ten years of arriving he became the first Clay County Attorney, a Minnesota senator, owner of the Northwest Land Company, and a business associate of James J. Hill. After two large floods in 1880 and 1881, Comstock decided to move out of the area by the Red River where the family first lived, the Points neighborhood. He planned to build a large house that would shelter his growing family at a safe distance from the flood waters as well as Moorhead’s rough saloon district. A plot in the Highlands addition of Moorhead fit all of these criteria. Comstock chose a Minneapolis architecture firm, Kees & Fisk, to design the home. They used a combination of Queen Anne and Eastlake styles in the eleven-room structure. The property’s outbuildings included a carriage house and an ice house; the latter was demolished in the late 1950s. To support Fargo-Moorhead business, Comstock hired local contractors to complete the project. Comstock was hands-on with the construction of the home, picking out the different types of wood that were used throughout the structure. He spared no expense. A clause in the contract with the builders required them to use the “best available materials” or risk replacement at the cost of the contractor. The Comstocks were prominent Moorhead citizens, and their house hosted many people and community organizations from around Moorhead. Sarah Comstock, Solomon’s wife, was the first president of the Moorhead Public Library Board. Before the completion of the library building in 1906, board members conducted meetings around the Comstock family’s dining room table. The Moorhead Women’s Club, of which Sarah was a founding member, also met at the Comstock House. The Comstock House stayed in family hands until 1965, when George Comstock and his wife Frances Frazier Comstock donated it to the Minnesota Historical Society (MNHS). In 1974 the house was added to the National Register of Historic Places. The Comstock House Historical Society was formed to help restore the home to its 1883 appearance. After six years of fundraising, the house opened for public tours in 1980. The largest renovation project at the Comstock House began in 1988, when MNHS employee Kendra Dillard crested a furnishing plan. To carry it out, staff hired restorers to replace wallpaper, install new carpeting, and reupholster two chairs. Extensive research into the originals guided the effort; Dillard identified the chairs’ original upholstery and worked with a company in Boston to create and emboss an exact duplicate of the fabric. In 2004 the City of Moorhead signed a contract with the Minnesota Historical Society to manage the day-to-day operations of the Comstock House. It did so until 2015, when the house was closed to the public for a year during a lead paint remediation project. After the house reopened in 2016, the Historical and Cultural Society of Clay County took over management.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Comstock_House_wikimedia.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/solomon-g-comstock-house"},{"alt":"Ruth Nomura||s college graduation photo","author":[{"name":"Krista Finstad Hanson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/krista-finstad-hanson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"June 11, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Tanbara, Ruth Nomura (1907–2008)","postbody":"In August of 1942, Ruth Tanbara and her husband, Earl, were the first Japanese Americans to resettle in St. Paul as a result of President Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066. They assisted the ...","searchtext":"In August of 1942, Ruth Tanbara and her husband, Earl, were the first Japanese Americans to resettle in St. Paul as a result of President Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066. They assisted the St. Paul Resettlement Committee during World War II and remained in the city after the war’s end, becoming life-long community leaders in St. Paul. Ruth Tokuko Nomura was born in Portland, Oregon, on October 15, 1907. Her parents had come to America from Japan in 1903. In 1930, Ruth was the first Japanese American to graduate from Oregon State Agricultural College’s home economics education program. In Portland, she worked as a secretary for the Japanese Consulate and the YWCA. Ruth married Earl Tanbara in Portland, Oregon, in 1935. The couple moved to Berkeley, California, where Ruth worked as a social worker for Japanese clients of the International Institute in San Francisco. Ruth also taught glove-making, led craft workshops, and helped a Japanese chef write a cookbook in English. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt declared war against Japan on December 8, 1941. On February 19, 1942, Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066 authorized the creation of military zones on the West Coast and the forced removal of residents of Japanese descent. The Tanbaras took their valuables to a bank, stored furniture with white neighbors, and rented their home with forty-eight-hours’ notice. On March 2, they moved inland to a friend’s farm in Reedley, California. In March of 1942, Public Law 503 forced Japanese and Japanese Americans on the West Coast into ten US concentration camps. In July of 1942, the Tanbaras received War Relocation Authority (WRA) permission to move to St. Paul, Minnesota, where they knew a Japanese man who had offered them a place to stay. In August, they arrived in St. Paul, then reported to the International Institute in St. Paul with letters of introduction. There, they offered to help with the forced relocation of other Japanese Americans. The St. Paul YWCA hired Ruth as a secretary. The Tanbaras joined the St. Paul Resettlement Committee, formed by the International Institute, and Ruth gave public talks to help foster community acceptance of Japanese American evacuees. The Tanbaras also personally helped family and friends relocate to St. Paul. In 1943, they sold their house in California and bought a home at 218 S. Avon Street in St. Paul, When the internment camps closed in 1945, more Japanese and Japanese Americans arrived in St. Paul. Ruth received her master’s degree in home economics education in 1953 from the University of Minnesota. She attended the YWCA World Council in 1955 and proceeded to work for the YWCA in St. Paul for thirty years, teaching flower arranging and Japanese cooking classes. The YWCA honored Ruth with a memorial garden at its location on Kellogg Boulevard when she retired as director of adult education in 1972. Ruth was active in community service. She was a board member of the St. Paul Council of Human Relations and joined the Governor’s Committee on Human Rights. She also served on the boards of the Family Service Center of Greater St. Paul, the Minnesota Museum of Art, the International Institute, and Unity Church-Unitarian. She was a member of the Japanese American Community Center, the Twin Cities chapter of the Japanese American Citizens’ League, the Altrusa Club, and the Japan America Society. In 1947, Ruth led the first Japanese group in the Festival of Nations, a program of the International Institute; she continued this work for many years. In 1955, Louis Hill invited her to help him start the St. Paul–Nagasaki Sister City Committee. Ruth also led six group tours from St. Paul to visit atomic-bomb victims and city leaders in Nagasaki, Japan. The 1958 and 1964 editions of Who’s Who in Minnesota included Ruth; in 1991, a “Women in Minnesota History” series of booklets featured her. In 1994, she and thirteen other Japanese American women contributed their stories to the book Reflections: Memoirs of Japanese American Women in Minnesota, published in 1994. In 2001, Ruth received the Walter Mondale Award from the Japan America Society. Ruth passed away on January 4, 2008, at the age of 100. Her family honored her with a memorial bench next to the Global Harmony Labyrinth in Como Park in St. Paul.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/C-37_Ruth22_CapGown_OreStGrad_Portlnd_1930_45A-3.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/tanbara-ruth-nomura-1907-2008"},{"alt":"Charles A. Lindbergh Sr.","author":[{"name":"Greg Gaut","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/greg-gaut"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"June 08, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Lindbergh, Charles A., Sr. (1859–1924)","postbody":"Charles August (C. A.) Lindbergh, father of the aviator Charles Augustus Lindbergh, was a Little Falls lawyer who represented Minnesota’s Sixth District in the United States Congress for ...","searchtext":"Charles August (C. A.) Lindbergh, father of the aviator Charles Augustus Lindbergh, was a Little Falls lawyer who represented Minnesota’s Sixth District in the United States Congress for five terms. He was a leader of the progressive wing of the Republican Party and opposed the United States’ entry into World War I. As the nominee of the Nonpartisan League, he waged an unsuccessful campaign to unseat Governor Joseph Burnquist in the bitterly fought 1918 gubernatorial Republican primary. A few months after Lindbergh was born in Sweden in 1859, his parents immigrated to Minnesota, where they settled near Melrose in Stearns County. His father, a former member of the Swedish parliament and a liberal reformer, held several local offices in Melrose and helped organize the town’s first school. Young C. A. Lindbergh attended this school and, later, a nearby preparatory school. In 1881, Lindbergh entered the law school at the University of Michigan. When he graduated in 1883, he set up a law practice in Little Falls. He soon had an impressive list of commercial clients, including local banks and Frederick Weyerhaeuser’s nearby lumber operations. In 1887, Lindbergh married Mary LaFond. The couple had three daughters, one of whom died in infancy. In 1898, Mary died after unsuccessful surgery; in 1901, Lindbergh married Evangeline Lodge Land, with whom he had one son: Charles Augustus, the future aviator. The Lindberghs then built a large home on the Mississippi River. When that house burned down in 1905, they built a smaller home (designated a National Historic Landmark in 1976). At about that time, the Lindberghs separated, although they remained close and never divorced. Except for one term as Morrison County Attorney, Lindbergh did not seek public office until 1906, when he campaigned for the Republican nomination for Sixth District Congressman. Identifying himself as a progressive, he beat the incumbent and went on to win the seat in the general election. He successfully held his seat in the 1908, 1910, 1912, and 1914 elections. In Congress, he sided with the “insurgent,” or progressive, Republicans against the “stand pat,” business-oriented faction. He was best known as a critic of the “money trust,” the big Wall Street financiers led by J. P. Morgan, and as a reformer who sought to bring banking under democratic control. When World War I broke out in 1914, Lindbergh vocally opposed United States involvement. He argued that only the bankers and other “war profiteers” would benefit from a war with Germany. In 1916 he supported the Gore–McLemore resolution, which responded to German submarine warfare by urging Americans to avoid booking passage on the armed vessels of belligerent nations. In 1916, Lindbergh chose not to defend his House seat in order to pursue an unsuccessful run for senator. Shortly before his term ended in March 1917, he was part of a small minority that voted against arming US merchant vessels. After the US declared war on Germany, he published Why Is Your Country at War—a book in which he blamed the “inner circle” of the most wealthy for pushing the nation into the conflict. The legislature created the Minnesota Commission of Public Safety (MCPS) in April to govern the state for the duration of the war. It included Governor Burnquist, the attorney general, and five other men, mainly conservative business leaders. John F. McGee emerged as the dominant force, and under his leadership, the commission demanded “100 percent loyalty” and classified any criticism as treasonous. Meanwhile, the Nonpartisan League began a major drive to elect its candidates in the 1918 elections. Lindbergh became the league’s candidate in the Republican primary against Governor Burnquist. The MCPS branded the NPL as “disloyal” and encouraged local Home Guard units and county sheriffs to disrupt the Lindbergh campaign. Lindbergh was hung in effigy, barred from speaking, pelted with rotten eggs, shot at, and briefly jailed. Although Lindbergh carried thirty counties, Burnquist won, with 199,326 votes to Lindbergh’s 150,626. The 1918 campaign encouraged farmers and trade unionists to build the coalition that formed the Farmer-Labor Party. Lindbergh played a role in the development of this new party, and in 1923 ran unsuccessfully in the Farmer-Labor primary for US Senator. He died in 1924 while campaigning in the Farmer-Labor Party’s primary for governor.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/por 6678 p8.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/lindbergh-charles-sr-1859-1924"},{"alt":"River Drive and Jefferson Highway, St. Cloud","author":[{"name":"Carol Ahlgren","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/carol-ahlgren"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"June 06, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Jefferson Highway","postbody":"The Jefferson Highway, established in 1915 and named for President Thomas Jefferson, was a product of the early twentieth century’s Good Roads movement. Its route followed existing roads ...","searchtext":"The Jefferson Highway, established in 1915 and named for President Thomas Jefferson, was a product of the early twentieth century’s Good Roads movement. Its route followed existing roads that extended from Winnipeg to New Orleans. In this way it passed through Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, and Louisiana on variant routes. Like other named routes, the highway faded from public awareness after the advent of the federal numbering system in 1926. The Jefferson Highway was a product of the early-twentieth-century promotion of “good roads” for the emergent automobile. By the mid-1920s, the US had approximately 250 named automotive trails. Some, like the Jefferson, were designated as memorial roads. The Jefferson was a north-south counterpart of the well-known Lincoln Memorial Highway, a transcontinental route that extended from Times Square in New York City to San Francisco. Another memorial highway, the Theodore Roosevelt International Highway, crossed the country from Portland, Maine, to Portland, Oregon. Each of the named highways had a distinctive symbol that appeared on signs and telephone poles along its route. The Jefferson Highway’s logo consisted of the interlocking letters “JH” rendered in cobalt blue on a white background framed by top and bottom bands of cobalt. Like some of the other named highways, the Jefferson also had metal signs. Their design consisted of a white background with directional arrows, graphics of a pine tree and a palm tree, and the words “Jefferson Highway” and “Winnipeg-New Orleans.” The Jefferson Highway, along with other named highways, was promoted by a private group of “boosters” who advocated for good roads and extolled the benefits of proximity to the route. The Jefferson Highway Association (JHA), which had formed in 1915, sent its general manager, Missouri businessman J. D. Clarkson, to Minnesota in 1916 to help finalize the route. Three paths had been proposed for the highway that began from the Iowa border: one western; one central; and one eastern. Basing their decision on such factors as road conditions, accommodations, and scenery, the JHA selected the central route. The Jefferson Highway in Minnesota passed such iconic state landmarks as the state capitol and the Cathedral of St. Paul. In that city’s northwest, it shared the route of the Yellowstone Trail along University Avenue. Further north, near Bemidji, it shared the route of the Roosevelt Highway and passed the famous statues of Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox. Near Little Falls, it followed the Mississippi River past Charles Lindbergh’s boyhood home and the road that was later designated part of the Great River Road. The Jefferson Highway also passed through the state’s first state park, Itasca, known to generations of travelers and tourists as the headwaters of the Mississippi. It traversed the park and crossed the headwaters via a small bridge. Workers hired by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and Works Projects Administration (WPA) redesigned and rusticated the site in the 1930s and early 1940s. Like other highways, the Jefferson inspired businesses along its route, such as cafes and garages, to reference the road in their names. The Jefferson Highway Transportation Company, for example, operated throughout Minnesota and Iowa along the route of the highway. The bus company was established in 1920; by 1925 it was acquired by the Zelle family, which continued to operate it as the Jefferson Lines. Numerous highway associations, the rapidly increasing number of automobile travelers trying to follow a bewildering array of named highway markings, and varying state and local regulations, all contributed to the establishment of the federal numbering system in 1926. The Jefferson Highway became a series of federal, state, and county roads as well as city streets. This network includes US Route 65, US 10, US 71, University Avenue in St. Paul, and Broadway Avenue from Minneapolis to Robbinsdale. Whereas most of the Lincoln Highway became US Route 30 along Interstate 80 corridor, no single federal highway traverses most of the Jefferson’s original route in its entirety. The Jefferson Highway and other named automobile routes, however, did not immediately disappear from public memory. The JHA, reorganized in 2011, has had annual conferences and has been working to preserve, promote and map the original route and its associated resources.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/MS6 9 SC4 r8.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246053,"name":"Transportation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/jefferson-highway"},{"alt":"Bird||s-eye view of Georgetown","author":[{"name":"California Thorson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/california-thorson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"June 04, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Evacuation of Georgetown, 1862","postbody":"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 ...","searchtext":"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. In 1862, Georgetown was the northwestern-most community of settler-colonists in Minnesota. Built at the confluence of the Buffalo and Red Rivers, about fifty miles north of Fort Abercrombie, it was a company town for the Hudson||s Bay Company (HBC), and thus a busy trade port. The steamboat International regularly docked there loaded with Canadian goods that were transferred onto Red River carts bound for St. Cloud. On the night of August 22, a messenger arrived in Georgetown from Fort Abercrombie with news of fighting along the Minnesota River, about 220 miles distant—the beginning of what is now known as the US–Dakota War of 1862. He urged soldiers and civilians seeking protection to return with him to the fort. Some area residents decided to stay, gathering in Georgetown to fortify the buildings. The Hudson||s Bay Company’s cart brigade arrived the next day, bringing with it 110 carts full of goods and people to defend the town. Under the instructions of town leaders, HBC cart brigade commander Norman Kittson and Georgetown HBC agent Alexander Hunter Murray gathered the remaining townspeople, the Red River Cart brigade, and the crew of the International. A total of forty-four people—including women and children—made up the party. A guardhouse was built, and sentries kept watch day and night. After two weeks, E. R. Hutchinson reported seeing hundreds of Dakota warriors on their way to attack Fort Abercrombie while he was on guard duty. At this point, the townspeople decided to flee. The party chose the route north to Pembina as the safest way out of the area. Under the cover of darkness, some of them boarded the International with their cargo and headed north, planning to head up river under the command of Kittson. The rest would have to go by Red River cart. Tension rose as the residents traveling by cart waited to cross the river ferry into Dakota Territory. The last to leave—the Probstfield family and the sickly Alexander Murray— persuaded the ferry operator to return for them amidst an atmosphere of panic. After crossing, the group camped out of firing range of the tree line. The next day, they crossed the Elm River west of modern-day Hendrum and set up a new camp. Pierre Bottineau soon arrived on horseback, bearing news that he had escaped the siege of Fort Abercrombie and Dakota warriors were close behind him. The group continued north, with Bottineau speeding ahead to Pembina for help. Later, as the evacuees crossed the Goose River, Bottineau returned with a group of twelve armed men. They were led by Joseph Rolette, a fur trader and politician. The group soon discovered the International, which had got stuck near present-day Perley. A team was dispatched to rescue the steamboat’s passengers and cargo. Joseph Adams, Robert Scambler, and Robert’s wife, Elizabeth, volunteered to stay behind and guard the steamboat; E. R. Hutchinson volunteered to transport the cargo on a flatboat down the river to Pembina. On about September 12, a dispute arose between a few of the Georgetown party and the Pembina party over the posting of guards. None had been posted since the Pembina men had joined the party. Unsatisfied with the relaxed security, a few families, among them the Probstfields, chose to return to Georgetown. Hutchinson’s wife, Isabelle, and the couple’s children left with them. They boarded E. R. Hutchinson’s flatboat after spotting him on the river. They then floated to Fort Garry, where they were reunited with Isabelle’s family. The party led by Kittson and Bottineau were briefly detained by Ojibwe at modern-day Grand Forks before making it to safety in Pembina. When the Probstfields’ group finally returned to Georgetown, they found it undamaged. No further disturbances came to the town for the rest of the six-week war. The after-effects, however, went on for much longer; Henry Sibley ordered Georgetown’s few inhabitants to Fort Abercrombie the following spring for safety. Afterward, only the Probstfield and Hutchinson families returned to Georgetown.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/George1907_.gif","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/evacuation-georgetown-1862"},{"alt":"Randolph and Catherine Sidonia Probstfield","author":[{"name":"California Thorson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/california-thorson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"May 31, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Probstfield, Randolph M. (1832–1911)","postbody":"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 ...","searchtext":"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. Randolph Michael Probstfield was born to Jakob and Theresia Probstfield on November 9, 1832, in Coblenz, Germany. Well educated, he immigrated to America in 1852. After extensive travel across the Midwest, along the Mississippi River, and to San Francisco, Nicaragua, and even the Panama Canal, Probstfield eventually traveled to northern Minnesota to claim land. He arrived on March 21, 1859, helping a steamboat crew build the first steamboat on the Red River, which sparked the construction of a trading post by the Hudson||s Bay Company, thereby officially establishing the community of Georgetown later that same year. In September 1860, Probstfield received news of his father’s death and traveled back to Germany to help settle the estate. He returned to Georgetown in June the following year, along with three brothers and a cousin. Along the way, Probstfield married his long-time lover, Catherine Sidonia Goodman (1839–1899), on September 11, 1861. In March 1862, Governor Alexander Ramsey appointed Probstfield, along with Richard Manning and George W. Northrop, commissioners to help organize the newly created Clay County. The Probstfields welcomed their first child, Mary Ann Elizabeth, on June 17, 1862. The couple would go on to have thirteen children in total, eleven of which would live on to adulthood: Mary Ann Elizabeth (1862–1928), Justus Theobald (1866–1957), Cornelia Judith (1868–1958), Dorothea Christina (1872–1900), Walter George (1877–1949), Alexander Paul (1865–1936), Edmund Henry (1868–1919), Susan Theresa (1870–1928), Emily Martha (1874–1943), Carl (1877–1877), Arthur Charles (1879–1962), and Josephine Isabel (1882–1964). Their thirteenth child was unnamed. Probstfield’s commissioner position was never filled due to the evacuation of Georgetown in 1862 during the US–Dakota War. Though the family returned briefly, General Henry Sibley later ordered all remaining inhabitants to Fort Abercrombie for safety. Thus, it wasn’t until May 1864 that the family returned to stay. Along with the Hutchinson family, the Probstfields were the only settler-colonists to return to the Georgetown area after the war. In fall of 1868, Probstfield began building a farmhouse on the Red River in Oakport Township, three miles north of the future site of Moorhead. Though he started with seventy-one acres, he would eventually expand his property to over 400 acres and use them for cultivating crops, growing orchards, and hunting game. The family officially moved into their new home in May of 1869. A passionate learner and community supporter, Probstfield contributed to the area in many ways, particularly in agriculture, education, and politics. On his farm, he conducted various agricultural experiments for the United States Bureau of Agriculture. He proved that the Red River Valley was workable farmland for more than local crops, like corn. It could also yield tobacco, sugar beets, tomatoes, various fruit trees, and other plants previously thought uncultivable in the harsh northern climate. His crowning achievement came in 1893, when the World’s Columbian Commission awarded Probstfield an exposition medal for his entry of Saskatchewan wheat. Probstfield also contributed to the area’s educational development. After building the first schoolhouse in the area, he continued to support the cause by buying supplies and teaching when needed. He maintained a life-long passion for politics: his election to the Minnesota State Senate in 1891 on the People’s Party ticket proved to be the pinnacle of his career. During his single term, he served on committees devoted to agriculture, normal schools, and game laws. He was also chairman of the committee that oversaw tree fuel and culture issues. Probstfield passed away on his farm on September 11, 1911, after a series of heart attacks that led to paralysis. He was buried in Prairie Home Cemetery in Moorhead, next to his wife and other deceased family members. His legacy survives in his extant journal entries and letters, which have proved to be valuable historical sources, and in the name of Probstfield Elementary School. Cultivation and preservation of the Probstfield family farm continue at the Probstfield Organic Community Garden (funded by the Probstfield Farm Living History Foundation).","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/2 RandolphAndCatherineProbstfield.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/probstfield-randolph-m-1832-1911"},{"alt":"Black and white engraving on paper depicting Lake Pepin. Made by Jacob C. Ward c.1840.","author":[{"name":"Mary Elise Antoine","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/mary-elise-antoine"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"May 29, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186622056201,"name":"1754–1800 (Revolution and a New Nation)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056203,"name":"1792–1861 (Expansion and Reform)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Roc, Augustin (1787–ca. 1857)","postbody":"Augustin Roc was one of several generations of the Couilland dit Roc family who traded and lived on the upper Mississippi and St. Peters Rivers. As the nature of the trade between Europeans ...","searchtext":"Augustin Roc was one of several generations of the Couilland dit Roc family who traded and lived on the upper Mississippi and St. Peters Rivers. As the nature of the trade between Europeans and the local Dakota people evolved, Roc moved, gradually progressing up the Mississippi River. In addition to trading, he worked for the United States as an interpreter because of his knowledge of and connections with the Dakota. Roc was born in January 1787 and baptized at Michilimackinac. He was the son Joseph Roc and a Dakota woman—a daughter of the Mdewakanton leader Wabasha. During the American Revolution, Joseph served as an interpreter for the British Indian Department and accompanied Wabasha’s band when it participated in the attempted attack on St. Louis in 1780. With the establishment of a United States Indian Agency at Prairie du Chien in 1808, he was again hired as an interpreter. During the War of 1812, both Joseph and Augustin served as interpreters for the British Indian Department. Afterward, Augustin chose to continue living at Prairie du Chien, claiming a lot in the main village. He had married a woman named Angelique—the daughter of a Meskwaki father and a Mdewakanton Dakota mother—with whom he would have seven children. Like many of the French Canadians who resided at Prairie du Chien, Augustin was involved in various pursuits. From 1815 through 1820, he worked for Joseph Rolette and his trading partners, wintering one season at Little Crow’s village, one season at Lake Pepin, and three years at the Driftwood River. In 1817 and again in 1823, Major Stephen Long hired Augustin as an interpreter. On Long’s 1817 voyage, after they had passed the River Embarrass, Augustin pointed out the cabin in which he had spent the previous winter. From 1821 until 1838, Augustin worked for the American Fur Company in various capacities, receiving licenses to the trade at the Brushwood River, on the Red Cedar, and on the River Embarrass. During this time he was known as Wazustecha (strawberry in Dakota) or LaFramboise (raspberry in French)—possibly for the red blemish on his face. In a treaty conducted at Prairie du Chien in July 1830 between the United States, the Sauk and Meskwaki, the Otoe, the Iowa, and the Dakota, the Dakota requested the establishment of a tract of land for the mixed-race relatives of their nation west of Lake Pepin. The creation of this tract may have inspired Augustin to leave Prairie du Chien. In 1833, Augustin and Angelique sold their home in the main village, and the family moved up the Mississippi River. Four years later, Augustin “of Lake Pepin the County of Dubuque and Territory of Wisconsin” sold his Prairie du Chien farm lot to François LaBathe. Augustin had selected the site for their new home “at the south-eastern end of Lake Pepin, upon the high edge of a Prairie, fifty feet from the water on the right bank of the Mississippi.” When Henry Sibley stopped at Augustin’s home in 1834, he called it “the only habitation of a white man between Prairie du Chien and St. Peter’s.” As the fur trade declined and game grew scarce in the 1830s, many Mdewakanton suffered. Under the guidance of Indian Agent Lawrence Taliaferro, some had begun farming. Taliaferro, therefore, suggested to his superiors that the Dakota would be willing to sign a treaty giving up their lands east of the Mississippi River in return for an annual annuity. In September 1837, Taliaferro led a delegation of twenty-one Mdewakanton Dakota leaders and warriors to Washington City (later called Washington, DC). Several traders accompanied them, including Augustin Roc and François LaBathe. As a result of the subsequent Treaty of 1837, Augustin and his family received annual annuity payments. By October 1838, Augustin had moved again—this time to a house on the |||Half-Breed||| Reservation, southwest of Lake Pepin. In the 1838 census of Wisconsin Territory, Augustin was enumerated as living in the area “North of the Root River” with a household of five males and four females. There, he resided until his death in the winter of 1856–1857, when he left his estate to Angelique and his three sons.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/AV1989_44_26.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246059,"name":"Native Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/roc-augustin-1787-ca-1857"},{"alt":"Beltrami County Courthouse","author":[{"name":"Cecelia Wattles McKeig","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/cecelia-wattles-mckeig"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"May 22, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Beltrami County Courthouse","postbody":"The Beltrami County Courthouse, located at 619 Beltrami Avenue in Bemidji, is a three-story red brick and sandstone structure in the Beaux Arts style and the county’s most imposing example ...","searchtext":"The Beltrami County Courthouse, located at 619 Beltrami Avenue in Bemidji, is a three-story red brick and sandstone structure in the Beaux Arts style and the county’s most imposing example of public architecture. After Beltrami County was organized in 1897, local court proceedings took place in a cold, drafty building on the corner of Fourth Street and Beltrami Avenue. The county grew quickly, and by 1902, citizens were pushing for a new courthouse. Voters approved a bond issue of $50,000, to be used for a new jail and courthouse, in an election held on March 11, 1902. Although two saloon owners, Olia Olson and Stener T. Odegard from Shevlin, challenged the legality of the bond election, a judge dismissed their case on June 7, 1902, and construction of the new courthouse began. At the time, Beltrami County already owned all of the land in Block Seven, between Sixth and Seventh Streets, which was only a few blocks north of the old courthouse. Architects Kinney & Detweiler of Minneapolis drew up plans for a Beaux Arts-style building, square in shape, to be constructed out of red sandstone and bricks from a local brickyard. A bid of $39,975 from Schmidt Bros. was accepted on May 24, 1902, with the understanding that the courthouse would be ready for occupancy by December 1, 1902. O. M. Jellestad spent thirteen nights at the old building guarding the auditor’s and treasurer’s records after vault doors were removed to new courthouse. The County Board of Commissioners approved the building on December 12, 1902; the court held its first session in the space on January 3, 1903. The courthouse’s most striking feature is its rotunda, which occupies the center of the main hall on the first floor and extends past the second floor into the dome. A railing surmounted by a brass guard rail circles the rotunda on the second floor. On the exterior, a convex dome rises above an arcaded tower topped by a statue of blind Justice with her scale. The space intended for a clock served as an open-sky observation point during the Cold War. During the 1950s, volunteers stationed in the cupola watched for uncharted planes entering Bemidji airspace (this area was later glassed in). When the building first opened, visitors reached the courtroom via a double flight of stairs. The courtroom, which had covered half of the third floor, was remodeled and condensed to make space for offices in 1937. In 1971, County Auditor Wayne Alsop noticed a staircase inside the courthouse leading to an attic. Inside it, he and Jay Griggs discovered artifacts and written records, including tax books dating to 1897, underneath rafters more than ten inches thick. They also found the scales originally held by the statue of Justice, which had fallen down during a 1971 storm and been moved to the attic for storage. Construction of a large annex began in June 1973 and ended in July 1974. The finished structure housed two courtrooms on its first floor, and court personnel moved from the old courthouse to the annex in July 1974. In 1976, the county remodeled the old courtroom into office space. On December 13, 1977, one day after the courthouse celebrated its Diamond Jubilee, the board of commissioners received bids for a complete remodeling at an anticipated price of $425,000. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places on May 16, 1988. Thanks to a $20,000 matching grant from the Minnesota Historical Society, it was renovated in 2000. The grant money funded the restoration of the stairs, pillars, and retaining walls at the building’s east entrance facing Beltrami Avenue Northwest.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/keith_ewing.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246079,"name":"Cities and Towns","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/beltrami-county-courthouse"},{"alt":"Exterior of the Chief Theatre","author":[{"name":"Cecelia Wattles McKeig","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/cecelia-wattles-mckeig"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"May 21, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Chief Theatre (Paul Bunyan Playhouse), Bemidji","postbody":"The Chief Theatre, the primary movie theater in downtown Bemidji, opened in 1937 and operated until 1991. In 1992, it became the home of the Paul Bunyan Playhouse as well as the venue of ...","searchtext":"The Chief Theatre, the primary movie theater in downtown Bemidji, opened in 1937 and operated until 1991. In 1992, it became the home of the Paul Bunyan Playhouse as well as the venue of Bemidji Communty Theatre. The Chief Theatre opened its doors on Thursday, June 24, 1937, at 314 Beltrami Avenue—the heart of downtown Bemidji’s business district. The architectural firm Liebenberg and Kaplan designed the building and guided construction beginning in the early spring. After about four months of work, the theatre was ready for its formal opening: a screening of the 1937 hit Turn Off the Moon. Over 2,000 people attended the matinee and evening performances on opening day. The 800-seat theater was owned and operated by the Berger Amusement Company and was named the “Chief” by Ben Berger. It featured a faux-Aztec modernist design with a Native American figure on each side of the stage as well as “Indian” designs on the walls. The pieces were individually made in New York to decorate the entrance to the theater’s lobby. In keeping with the Art Deco style, rounded walls and columns led to a downstairs lounge with mirrored walls. A thirty-five-foot canopy made of leaded iron extended over the street. The Baehr brothers, A. W. and E. J., purchased the theater from the Berger Amusement Company in January 1944 (John Bender took over as manager and continued in that role until his retirement in October of 1972). Throughout that year, both the Bemidji and Chief Theatres offered free admission to servicemen in uniform. Tickets were ten cents for children and thirty-five cents for adults. During intermissions and before movies started, patrons were urged to buy War Bonds or to donate to charities like the March of Dimes. The annual Christmas movie was a major event. Children waited in line to get into the theater. A performer dressed as Santa Claus then handed out bags of peanuts and candy donated by local benevolent organizations, such as the Bemidji chapter of the Elks Lodge. The theater was preserved in its original state until 1960, when Cinemascope was introduced. In 1972 the Baehr brothers sold the theater to Norman Olson, who in turn sold it to Bud and Gloria Woodard in July of 1976. Bud Woodard had spent most of his lifetime in the theater business. He began working in the profession as a youth and continued until his retirement. He and Gloria renovated the building but preserved its unique design, placing special value on the designs on each side of the stage. The theater’s final screening was the John Candy film Only the Lonely. The theater closed on a Thursday evening: June 13, 1991. The next evening, a newly remodeled and expanded theater—the Amigo Five, just northwest of the city—opened and continued showing Only the Lonely for another week. The theater was sold to the Paul Bunyan Playhouse on January 2, 1992. The Playhouse, the oldest professional summer stock company in Minnesota, began in 1950 on the grounds of Ruttger’s Birchmont Lodge. After buying the Chief Theatre, it remodeled the building to accommodate its needs and decreased seating capacity from 800 to 315. The company opened its summer season at the theater in June with the play Summer Romance. A Chief Theater fundraiser held in March 2016 featured screenings of the films Roman Holiday and Gone with the Wind. Their success inspired the theater’s board members to host more movie nights. Through a grant from the George W. Neilson Foundation, they bought new projection equipment, a screen, lighting, and sound equipment, which was installed in August 2016.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/chief_theatre_2017.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246079,"name":"Cities and Towns","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/chief-theatre-paul-bunyan-playhouse-bemidji"},{"alt":"Dr. H. A. Burns","author":[{"name":"Cecelia Wattles McKeig","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/cecelia-wattles-mckeig"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"May 18, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Burns, Dr. H. A. (1883–1949)","postbody":"Dr. Herbert Arthur (H. A.) Burns was named superintendent of the Minnesota Sanatorium for Consumptives (Ah-Gwah-Ching) in 1928. Over the next fourteen years, he brought crucial changes to ...","searchtext":"Dr. Herbert Arthur (H. A.) Burns was named superintendent of the Minnesota Sanatorium for Consumptives (Ah-Gwah-Ching) in 1928. Over the next fourteen years, he brought crucial changes to the institution that improved patient care, housing, therapy, and recreation. Burns received his medical degree in 1908 from the University of Minnesota and spent some of the early years of his practice in Minneapolis. During World War I, he served as a medical officer; after his discharge he worked for the newly organized Veterans Administration Medical Division. The Minnesota Sanatorium for Consumptives hired him to serve as assistant superintendent in 1928. He was promoted to superintendent shortly afterwards, after the death of Dr. P. M. Hall. Burns was a nationally recognized authority on tuberculosis. After graduating from medical school, he served as an epidemiologist for the state board of health from 1912 to 1920—except for the time he served in the military during World War I. From 1920 to 1928 he worked with tuberculosis patients at the Veterans Hospital. Burns was the first person in Minnesota, and possibly in the United States, to employ full-time epidemiologists on a sanatorium staff (epidemiologists determine the origin, nature, and spread of epidemics). He hired Dr. F. M. Feldman in September of 1931. Early in his tenure, Burns demonstrated an interest in the study of Indigenous medicine and the transmission of tuberculosis within Indigenous communities. While working at the sanatorium, Burns theorized that tuberculosis bacteria could be transmitted through books. With this in mind, he assigned staff to experiment with washing the pages of books and culturing the results. Any books that patients touched were considered contaminated. When books were returned to the library, staff disinfected them. They also washed (and sometimes even ironed) the money that was taken into the patients’ store. Soon after his arrival, Burns introduced bird banding to provide recreation for patients. The sanatorium secured a permit in June 1928 that allowed them to capture and band migratory birds for scientific study. The banding continued from early spring until fall. During the winter, interested patients spent hours studying and planning for the next spring. From 1928 to 1932, patients and staff banded and released over 3,600 birds—more than forty species in all—from the sanatorium. Hall Memorial Pavilion, named in honor of Dr. P. M. Hall, was completed in 1928 and originally housed child patients. Burns, who believed that bringing children into an institution caused them more harm than good, oversaw the conversion of the building into a facility for the care and treatment of contagious adults in 1933. When a sanatorium for Native people across the bay at Onigum burned in January 1935, twenty of its patients were transported across the ice of Leech Lake and housed in temporary quarters. Construction of an “Indian building” of the sanatorium was completed, and patients moved in quickly. The structure, also known as the E or Eagle building, opened on August 1, 1935, with a capacity of 117 beds. In 1934, Burns hired Martha Emig to oversee an occupational therapy program. Emig’s sister, Magdelena, joined her in 1938. Burns advocated for a small wing to be added to the north of the E building for special craft and school work. Many patients or patients’ relatives gifted Burns with pieces of beadwork and birchbark items they had made as part of their therapy. Burns, in turn, appreciated their quality and preserved them throughout his tenure. The Burns family eventually donated the collection to the Cass County Historical Society in Walker, where it was displayed in a museum. Burns resigned in 1942 but continued to pursue his passion for improving the treatment of mentally ill patients with tuberculosis, this time as a medical director at Anoka State Hospital. He died in July 1949. Shortly afterwards, the Burns Memorial building was dedicated on the grounds of Anoka State Hospital.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/burns_edited_0.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246087,"name":"Health and Medicine","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/burns-dr-h-1883-1949"},{"alt":"Rensselaer Nelson","author":[{"name":"Paul Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/paul-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"May 15, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Nelson, Rensselaer (1826–1904)","postbody":"From statehood in May 1858 until May 1896, Minnesota had one resident federal district court judge. His name was Rensselaer Russell Nelson. Nelson was born in Cooperstown, New York, in ...","searchtext":"From statehood in May 1858 until May 1896, Minnesota had one resident federal district court judge. His name was Rensselaer Russell Nelson. Nelson was born in Cooperstown, New York, in 1826, the son of lawyer Samuel Nelson, who served on the US Supreme Court (1845–1872). Rensselaer Nelson studied at Yale and then read law in New York State. In 1850 he moved to St. Paul. After a stint in Superior, Wisconsin (1853–1854), he returned to St. Paul for good. In 1857 President James Buchanan appointed Nelson to a seat on the Minnesota territorial supreme court. The judges of this court served both as appellate judges and trial judges, and since Nelson was a trial judge based in St. Paul, the state capital controversy fell to him to decide. The 1857 legislature had passed a bill to move the territorial capital to St. Peter, but Senator Joe Rolette had made off with the bill itself so that Governor Gorman could not sign it. After the end of the legislative session aggrieved backers of the bill sued to require the governor and other officials to move their offices to St. Peter. Judge Nelson ruled that the legislature lacked the power to move the capital. With Minnesota statehood in May 1858, Congress also created a Minnesota federal judicial district, which needed a judge. President Buchanan appointed Nelson once again. Nelson then faced a task unique in Minnesota history: creating a new, statewide federal court, where a system of state courts was taking shape at the same time. It was hard duty and slow going. Congress had given the federal courts power to take on only specific categories of cases. One was cases involving federal law—the Constitution and acts of Congress. These did not come up often in Minnesota’s early years. When they did it was mostly in minor cases involving avoiding federal liquor taxes, selling liquor to Native Americans, and stealing timber from government lands. Judge Nelson heard a few hundred of these, but they counted for only a fraction of his caseload. The biggest category of federal court cases involved state law. The Minnesota federal court could also take cases in which one of the parties was a citizen of a different state. As the state and its economy grew, disputes between Minnesota businesses and people from other states became frequent. Judge Nelson had to try cases and make decisions across the entire range of American law— admiralty (steamboat law), patents (many involving inventions in the farming and milling industries), real estate, wills, and personal injury (especially railroad injuries), to name just some of the vast variety. He did this mostly alone, and before there was any nationwide system for communicating changes in law or important decisions in other states. A few of Nelson’s cases rose to national importance. In 1874 he ruled, in United States v. Forty-Three Gallons of Whisky, that a US treaty with the Ojibwe forbidding the sale of liquor to Native Americans did not bind the State of Minnesota and had no force outside the reservation. The US Supreme Court disagreed. In 1889 the Minnesota legislature passed a law requiring local inspection of all meat products before sale. In Minnesota v. Barber (1890), Judge Nelson ruled that law unconstitutional for interference with interstate commerce. In two other cases, involving margarine and a St. Paul wharf tax, respectively, Nelson also affirmed Congress’s power over commerce. Starting in the 1870s, railroad cases dominated his calendar—railroad organization, railroad land disputes, and especially railroad injury cases. In this era before safety laws or workers’ compensation, the deaths and maimings of railroad workers brought hundreds of cases to federal court. The law favored the railroads; Nelson tilted, when he could, toward the victims. When Judge Nelson retired in 1896 he was the longest-serving US federal judge and the only one in office appointed before the Civil War. He died in St. Paul in 1904.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/por 30668 r1_edited.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246060,"name":"Crime and Punishment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/nelson-rensselaer-1826-1904"},{"alt":"Students rallying in front of Morrill Hall","author":[{"name":"Tina Burnside","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/tina-burnside"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"May 14, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Morrill Hall Takeover, University of Minnesota","postbody":"Black students at the University of Minnesota staged a twenty-four-hour protest at Morrill Hall, the school’s administrative building, in 1969. The demonstration led to the creation of the ...","searchtext":"Black students at the University of Minnesota staged a twenty-four-hour protest at Morrill Hall, the school’s administrative building, in 1969. The demonstration led to the creation of the university’s Afro-American Studies Department. On January 14, 1969, about seventy black students with the Afro-American Action Committee (AAAC) occupied the University of Minnesota’s bursar||s and records office in Morrill Hall to protest the hostile campus environment towards black students and the absence of an African American studies department. The protest became known as the “Morrill Hall takeover.” The demonstration, which lasted twenty-four hours, was the culmination of events sparked by the assassination of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK) on April 4, 1968. After Dr. King was assassinated, the Minnesota Student Association (MSA) announced an MLK memorial fund for economically disadvantaged students, and the university organized a human rights task force. On April 11, 1968, the Afro-American Action Committee presented demands to the task force. These included funding scholarships to black graduates from Minnesota high schools; establishing counseling and recruitment offices for black students; reviewing athletic department policies towards black athletes; and creating an African American studies curriculum. The task force recessed at the end of spring quarter with little action taken to meet the demands. In December 1968, black students approached University President Malcolm Moos for financial support for a black conference. Moos told the students that the university would assist with raising private funds. However, by early January 1969, only $1,500 had been raised for the conference that was planned for February. At this point, the AAAC asserted that its demands were not taken seriously. It claimed that the university had failed to address the lack of an African American studies department and the isolation and marginalization that many black students experienced. On January 13, 1969, AAAC representatives went to President Moos’ office with a list of three demands: (1) establishment of an Afro-American studies department by fall of 1969; (2) contribution by the university of half the expense for the black conference; and (3) transfer of the MLK scholarship fund supervision to an organization in the black community. On January 14, 1969, about seventy students met with Moos at Morrill Hall in the Regent’s Room, but the students felt the discussion was not fruitful. They went to the office of the bursar and records and staged an occupation. They blocked the front door and refused to allow anyone to enter, though staff were allowed to leave. The protest was peaceful apart from one incident, in which an angry white student tried to force his way into the building. The AAAC began negotiating with university staff about their demands. On January 15, 1969, the students and the university reached an agreement to end the demonstration. The university agreed to: (1) support the development of an academic program leading to a bachelor’s degree in African American studies; (2) give AAAC $5,260 from non-public funds for the black conference; and (3) add seven community members to the fourteen-member board of the MLK scholarship fund. The protest ended peacefully with $7,229 in damages—most of them for office-equipment repair, custodial cleanup, personnel overtime, and long-distance calls made by students during the occupation. Some state legislators and the president of the Minneapolis Police Officers Federation urged the Hennepin County attorney to prosecute students who had participated. A grand jury indicted students Horace Huntley, Rose Mary Freeman, and Warren Tucker Jr., for aggravated criminal damage to property, rioting, and unlawful assembly. The arrests sparked protest by thousands of students and community members. Protesters claimed the indictments were “politically motivated.” Freeman, who was president of the AAAC, and Huntley, who was secretary, had led the takeover. On November 7, 1969, Freeman and Huntley were convicted of unlawful assembly and given a ninety-day suspended sentence and one-year probation. Tucker was acquitted. The jury rejected the |||criminal damage to property and rioting||| charges. The Morrill Hall takeover resulted in the establishment of the Department of Afro-American studies in 1969, which was one of the first in the nation. It later became the African American & African Studies department. The demonstration spurred the creation of scholarships and programs for black students. In 2012 the university created the Huntley House for African American Men (named for Horace Huntley) to provide support for students.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Student Protests. Rally in front of Morrill Hall.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056216,"name":"African Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056210,"name":"Education","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/morrill-hall-takeover-university-minnesota"},{"alt":"Minnesota and International Railway trestle bridge, facing southeast","author":[{"name":"Cecelia Wattles McKeig","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/cecelia-wattles-mckeig"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"May 11, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Minnesota and International Railway Trestle Bridge, Blackduck","postbody":"The Minnesota and International railway trestle bridge at Blackduck is historically significant for its method of construction and the length of timber required to span Coburn Creek and the ...","searchtext":"The Minnesota and International railway trestle bridge at Blackduck is historically significant for its method of construction and the length of timber required to span Coburn Creek and the surrounding marsh. It is the longest bridge on the former Minnesota & International Railway (M & I) and widely recognized as the railway’s most difficult bridge-building project. The M & I was a subsidiary of the Northern Pacific Railway that provided a rail link north from Bemidji to Koochiching, Minnesota, on the Canadian border (Koochiching became the town of International Falls in 1903). The area is dense pine forest punctuated by swamp, marshland, and peat bog. The marshland required the erection of timber trestles to span the sinkholes along the route. A trestle is a rigid frame used as a support; small versions are used to support large tables. A trestle bridge is composed of several short spans supported by such frames. This type of bridge is sometimes called a |||trestle||| for short, and each supporting frame is generally referred to as a bent. Engineers incorporated timber trestles into designs for wooden roller coasters and, in the nineteenth century, wooden bridges across gorges. Adventure scenes in many Western movies feature trestle bridges. Veteran engineer Frank H. O’Brien built the bridge at Blackduck according to a timber-stringer design, with rows of wooden beams (stringers) supporting an upper deck, between 1901 and 1902. It is 701 feet (210 meters) long. The trestle itself is made of a timber superstructure and a substructure accessed by gravel approaches on its northeast and southwest ends. The bridge opened after some delay in the fall of 1902 and boosted local business. Blackduck folk, however, complained about the location of the depot, since it was difficult to reach except on foot. In poor weather conditions, it was even less accessible. M & I roadmaster W. H. Gemmell agreed and donated $100 to improve the road to the depot. When that did not solve the problem, M & I awarded Foley Brothers a contract to move the depot across Coburn Creek. On November 12, 1902, they jacked up the building and pushed a piece of track and a flatbed car under it. They then pulled the entire building across the trestle to the new site. The Minnesota Department of Transportation (MNDOT) took over ownership of the bridge in 1992 after the M & I ceased operations. The bridge was then renovated for use by pedestrians and recreational vehicles as part of the Blue Ox Trail (also called the Voyageur Trail). The rail crossing became a favorite among hikers and snowmobilers. On February 4, 2014, years after the trains had stopped rolling, the bridge was added to the National Register of Historic Places. It was also called the Coburn Creek Trestle and the Blackduck Trestle by various railroads and entities. Three teenagers burned and severely damaged the bridge on April 13, 2015. About 200 feet of the bridge were charred and destroyed. The bridge was subsequently closed to all traffic. Police placed its value at $500,000. Due to the condition of the bridge overall, it was determined after two separate studies that it would cost up to $2 million to bring it up to standard. As a result, the bridge was closed. In 2018, cars and pedestrians following the Blue Ox Trail use a half-mile detour through Blackduck that allows them to avoid the bridge and then get back on the trail.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/MIRR Trestle facing SE.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246053,"name":"Transportation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/minnesota-and-international-railway-trestle-bridge-blackduck"},{"alt":"Button produced by the Minnesota Smoke-Free Coalition","author":[{"name":"Denis J. Hauptly","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/denis-j-hauptly"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"May 09, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"State of Minnesota et al. v. Philip Morris et al.","postbody":"The State of Minnesota and the health insurance federation Blue Cross and Blue Shield brought a lawsuit against tobacco companies in 1994. The suit—State of Minnesota et al. v. Philip ...","searchtext":"The State of Minnesota and the health insurance federation Blue Cross and Blue Shield brought a lawsuit against tobacco companies in 1994. The suit—State of Minnesota et al. v. Philip Morris et al.—ended the companies’ chain of legal victories and turned the tide in anti-tobacco efforts throughout the nation. Tobacco has been an important commercial crop in the United States since the 1600s. Its use grew after the late 1800s, when machine-manufactured cigarettes became available. By 1901, 3.5 billion cigarettes were sold each year in the United States. Starting in 1950, medical researchers published studies that raised health concerns about tobacco—particularly its effects on the lungs. Information about the danger of tobacco use continued to grow and reached a peak with the 1964 publication of Smoking and Health: Report of the Advisory Committee to the Surgeon General of the United States. The report announced two major findings. First, it concluded that cigarette smokers faced higher death rates and lung-cancer rates than non-smokers. Second, it linked cigarette smoking to illnesses such as chronic bronchitis, emphysema, and heart disease. The report confirmed that tobacco companies sold a dangerous product and people were dying from it; by the 1990s, it was clear that the tobacco companies knew this. To win lawsuits against tobacco manufacturers, however, plaintiffs had to prove that the person injured or killed had smoked cigarettes, had seen tobacco advertisements suggesting that smoking was healthy, and had contracted his disease from tobacco use. Such proof required expert witnesses and other legal resources. While the tobacco companies had the money to fight these battles, the smokers themselves were often sick or dying and generally not wealthy. The litigation process compensated a few plaintiffs but did not stop the marketing of tobacco as healthy or prevent new young smokers from becoming addicted. It was at this point that the State of Minnesota and Blue Cross and Blue Shield (a major health insurance company) came up with a new approach. In a lawsuit filed on their behalf by the Minneapolis law firm of Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi in 1994, the state and Blue Cross argued that the marketing and sale of tobacco products had harmed them as well as the persons made ill. The state claimed that the tobacco companies’ false advertising had violated consumer protection laws. Blue Cross, which insured nearly 2 million people in Minnesota, claimed that the sale of a dangerous product was making its customers ill. As a result, it argued, these customers were filing more insurance claims. If insurance companies did not raise customers’ premiums in response, they were effectively footing the bill for smoking-related diseases. For their long-term anti-tobacco strategy to succeed, the state of Minnesota and Blue Cross needed to collaborate. The state could seek to bar some advertising and force the companies to reform their business practices. Blue Cross could use its claims of lost revenue to pressure them to settle quickly. In response, the companies attacked Blue Cross’s right to sue, arguing, among other things, that Blue Cross did not lose money from the tobacco-related claims because it simply raised premiums to cover its rising costs. In July of 1996 the Supreme Court of Minnesota found that Blue Cross did have the right to sue; in fact, it had been injured as soon as it paid a claim. The possibility of making up that loss in the future did not cancel out the injury. The court’s ruling forced the companies to seek to resolve the case. In May of 1998, they agreed to pay the state $240 million a year for twenty-five years; to pay Blue Cross $469 million; and to make significant changes in their marketing and advertising programs. The state of Minnesota used large parts of those payments to fund anti-tobacco efforts and health care for tobacco users—programs that have lasted into the 2010s.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/2009.194.2_button_0.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246087,"name":"Health and Medicine","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/state-minnesota-et-al-v-philip-morris-et-al"},{"alt":"","author":[{"name":"Como Zoo","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/como-zoo"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"May 07, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Como Zoo","postbody":"Minnesota||s first zoo opened in St. Paul in 1897 with three donated deer in a fenced-in pasture. More than 100 years later Como Zoo continues its mission of animal conservation, education, ...","searchtext":"Minnesota||s first zoo opened in St. Paul in 1897 with three donated deer in a fenced-in pasture. More than 100 years later Como Zoo continues its mission of animal conservation, education, and family entertainment. Como Zoo began with a gift of three deer to the City of St. Paul in 1897. By 1902, foxes, elk, and two Cebu (Zebu) cattle joined the deer. Two bison donated by future Lieutenant Governor Thomas Frankson made their debut in 1915. An American black bear, donated by a local citizen in 1926, required the first cage. It was built from iron archways found in the park and covered with strong wire mesh. The first major improvements came in the 1930s when the Works Progress Administration (WPA) began federally funded construction projects at the zoo. Workers built the Bear Grotto and Monkey Island habitats as well as a barn. The main zoological building, completed in 1937, housed most of the zoo||s animals. The City of St. Paul recommended closure of Como Zoo in 1955, but action on the part of local citizens saved it. Attendance increased when Archie Brand brought his trained sea lion act to Como the following year. The |||Sparky the Sea Lion Show” has been a hit with generations of visitors since 1956. A giant Galapagos tortoise named Toby became popular with small children starting in 1958. John A. Fletcher became the zoo||s first director in 1957. During his tenure, wildlife conservation became an important part of the zoo||s work as it acquired endangered animals such as gorillas, orangutans, and Siberian tigers. Como||s program of loaning great apes to other zoos for breeding and its success in hand-raising Siberian tiger cubs in the late 1950s set an example for other zoos. In 1966 a metropolitan zoo study determined that Como could not be developed into a major urban zoo. Concerned that the zoo might close, the public again rallied to save it. In 1976 the Minnesota State Legislature provided funding for the development of a master plan for the zoo’s renovation. The Metropolitan Council approved the plan the next year. Its goals included the careful selection of animals and a breeding program to help preserve them. The zoo planned new support facilities for recreation, conservation, research, and education. The plan included accessibility improvements for visitors with disabilities, energy efficiency, and a multi-use design to maximize public use. In the 1980s, the master plan led to better habitats for large cats, primates, and African hoofstock, like zebras and giraffes. The Aquatic Animal Building, completed in 1982, met federal regulations for obtaining and caring for marine animals. It houses the zoo||s polar bears, harbor seals, and sea lions. It features exhibit space for penguins, sea puffins, and freshwater fish. The renovation of Monkey Island into Seal Island created a better home for seals and sea lions. Como Zoo received its first Association of Zoos and Aquariums accreditation in 1985. The Como Park Zoo & Conservatory Visitor Center, with a café and classrooms and space for meetings and events, opened in 2005. It serves as the primary entrance for both the zoo and the Marjorie McNeely Conservatory. In 2006, the visitor center unveiled its Tropical Encounters exhibit—an immersive recreation of a Central/South American rainforest. It was the first exhibit to feature animals from Como Zoo and plants from the conservatory. Polar Bear Odyssey, a 15-million-dollar habitat for the zoo||s polar bears, opened in 2010. The expanded environment gives the bears more room to roam and prompts natural behaviors. From a year-round viewing station, visitors learn about climate change and its impact on Arctic animals. Gorilla Forest opened in June 2013 with seven gorillas on exhibit. It is the largest all-mesh gorilla habitat in North America, with 13,000 square feet of outdoor space. The exhibit area lets the apes climb and play and gives visitors the opportunity to observe their social behavior. A giraffe feeding station opened in 2015 offering a close-up view of the animals. Como Zoo successfully breeds reticulated giraffes and welcomed its twentieth calf in 2017. In 2018, the zoo is carrying out an $18.5 million renovation of its sea lion and seal habitat, including Sparky||s performance space. The project will be completed in 2019.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Buzz & Neil_2.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/como-zoo"},{"alt":"Self-portrait of Anton Gág painted by his daughter Wanda","author":[{"name":"Jeanne Anderegg","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/jeanne-anderegg"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"May 04, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Gág, Anton (1858–1908)","postbody":"Anton Gág, the father of Wanda Gág, carved out a career as a painter of portraits, landscapes, and historical subjects. He also decorated homes, ran a photography studio, and designed ...","searchtext":"Anton Gág, the father of Wanda Gág, carved out a career as a painter of portraits, landscapes, and historical subjects. He also decorated homes, ran a photography studio, and designed murals for churches and other buildings. The Minnesota State Capitol displayed his most famous painting, “The Attack on New Ulm during the Sioux Outbreak, Aug. 19-23, 1862,” from 1923 to 2014. Best known today as the father of Wanda Gág, who wrote and illustrated children’s books such as Millions of Cats, Anton Gág was an accomplished artist in his own right. Born in Bohemia in 1858, Gág came to the United States with his parents in 1873. He lived first in St. Paul, where he tried without success to work as an artist. In 1879, Gág moved to New Ulm, where he met August Schell of Schell’s Brewery. Schell became his friend and patron, sending him for several months to Chicago and Milwaukee for training. Early paintings, such as “The Muses,” show Gág trying his hand at history painting in a grand style. After returning to New Ulm, Gág tried to make his living as a painter of portraits and landscapes. In 1883, he turned to photography to add to his income. For several years, he ran a studio noted for its artistic photos. He also explored different ways to earn money through his art, often in collaboration with two other New Ulm artists, Christian Heller and Alexander Schwendinger. As part of an interior design business, Gág decorated homes and public buildings. Examples of his work can be seen in his own restored home, the Wanda Gág House in New Ulm. He made murals and frescoes for churches such as New Ulm’s Cathedral of the Holy Trinity. Other work included monuments, advertising banners, and floats as well as scenery and curtains for theaters. He even opened an art school for a brief time. His most famous works are historical paintings of the US–Dakota War of 1862. To create these pictures, Gág read accounts and interviewed survivors of the war. Completed in 1904, his most famous painting, “Attack on New Ulm during the Sioux Outbreak, August 19–23rd, 1862,” was on view at the Minnesota State Capitol from 1923 until 2014, when the building was renovated. An exhibit at the James J. Hill House in the fall of 2017 explored the decision to relocate this piece. Between 1891 and 1893, Gág worked on another series of US–Dakota War paintings. Together with Christian Heller and Alexander Schwendinger, Gág made a panorama depicting scenes from the war. At the time, panoramas were a popular form of entertainment. These large-scale paintings were shown at fairs and in other settings with lighting and dramatic readings to recreate vividly a historic event. The US–Dakota War of 1862 panorama consists of eleven ten-by-seven-foot panels painted on a roll of fabric. Each section shows a scene from the war; three of them focus on actions that took place in New Ulm. The panorama was taken on tour after a first showing in New Ulm, but then was lost for years. In 1954, it was found, badly damaged, in New York by James Taylor Dunn, who gave it to the Minnesota Historical Society. Anton Gág’s first wife, Ida Berndt, died a year after their marriage in 1887. With his second wife, Elizabeth (Lissi) Biebl, Gág had seven children, including his eldest, Wanda. Despite financial struggles, the Gág household was a lively place, full of music and art. Lissi helped Gág in his photography studio, designing imaginative costumes for clients and the family. Anton and Lissi encouraged their children to be creative, and both Wanda and the youngest child, Flavia, became professional artists. When Anton died in 1908 of occupational tuberculosis, his last words were to Wanda, asking her to carry on his work as an artist: “What Papa was unable to accomplish, Wanda will have to finish.”","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/por 833 r1.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/g-g-anton-1858-1908"},{"alt":"Roméo et Juliet","author":[{"name":"Robin Gehl","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/robin-gehl"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"May 02, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Minnesota Opera","postbody":"Since its founding in 1963 as the Center Opera Company of the Walker Art Center, Minnesota Opera has maintained a reputation as a highly regarded opera company. In the twenty-first century ...","searchtext":"Since its founding in 1963 as the Center Opera Company of the Walker Art Center, Minnesota Opera has maintained a reputation as a highly regarded opera company. In the twenty-first century it produces standard classics while also commissioning and creating compelling new works. Interest in opera performance thrived in the Twin Cities in the 1950s due to yearly touring productions performed by the Metropolitan Opera of New York. The St. Paul Opera Company (originally called the St. Paul Civic Opera Association) also staged works from the classical repertoire. In 1963 the Center Arts Council, affiliated with the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, established Center Opera Company to produce chamber operas. The Center Arts Council organized concerts and theater not offered elsewhere in the community. Dominick Argento, a University of Minnesota music professor, composed A Masque of Angels for the first Center Opera production. The world premiere took place in January 1964 at the Guthrie Theater, which had opened the previous year on Vineland Place, adjacent to the Walker. The new company became the financial and administrative responsibility of the Walker Art Center. Initially it received financial support from the T. B. Walker Foundation, the McKnight Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation. During its second season the Center Opera Association was formed to promote interest in the company. It acquired new members and funders, making a third season possible. All Center Opera productions during the first five seasons took place at the Guthrie Theater. For more than a dozen subsequent years, at least one opera production occurred at the Guthrie Theater each season. Other venues included the Cedar Village Theater in Minneapolis and O’Shaughnessy Auditorium in St. Paul. In 1969 Center Opera incorporated as a separate company governed by its own board. As Norton Hintz, Center Opera||s president, reported in that year, the incorporation as a separate financial entity would allow “greater artistic and financial independence, more productions, and a closer cooperation with the University [of Minnesota], schools, and major musical organizations.” Hintz also explained the artistic direction of the early years. “The operas of the twentieth century provide an enormous range of artistic styles,” he observed. “[They range] from romantic, neo-classic, to the most advanced contemporary. The reputation and uniqueness of the Center Opera Company is based on new directions in opera production.” Center Opera launched its first national tour in 1971. It traveled to San Francisco, throughout the state of Minnesota, and on to the East Coast to present Gertrude Stein’s The Mother of Us All. It also staged the world-premiere production of Faust Counter Faust by John Gessner and H. Wesley Balk. In the fall of 1972, while publicizing its upcoming tenth season, Center Opera changed its name to Minnesota Opera. An October 8 press release explained the company’s aim “to avoid confusion with other opera organizations which use the word ‘center’ in their name.” It intended for the new name “to reflect the degree to which the local company has become a nationally known phenomenon of this region.” By 1975 the St. Paul Opera no longer produced its annual summer season of well-known operas, and financial deficits forced it out of business. Final productions from the 1974 season included Bizet’s Carmen and Wagner’s Siegfried. Several former board members of the defunct St. Paul Opera were then invited to serve on the board of Minnesota Opera. The Twin Cities opera scene weathered major changes in the 1980s. Minnesota Opera became a founding tenant of the Ordway Music Theater when it opened in downtown St. Paul in 1985 and began offering productions in that venue annually. In 1986 the Metropolitan Opera discontinued its national tours, limiting the options of local fans who preferred traditional opera. In response, Minnesota Opera shifted its programming philosophy and began offering more traditional opera repertoire. In 1990 the Opera Center opened in the Warehouse District of Minneapolis. Its new site consolidated company operations into three renovated warehouse buildings and provided a top-tier complex for all phases of opera production. In 2008 Minnesota Opera launched a New Works Initiative. It commissioned and produced new operas, such as Silent Night (2012), to critical acclaim.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/romeo_et_juliette.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/minnesota-opera"},{"alt":"robot_head-1","author":[{"name":"Emma Dill","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/emma-dill"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"April 30, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Walker Art Center","postbody":"In 1879, lumber baron T. B. Walker invited the public into his downtown Minneapolis home to view his art collection. Over the next century, that collection evolved into the Walker Art ...","searchtext":"In 1879, lumber baron T. B. Walker invited the public into his downtown Minneapolis home to view his art collection. Over the next century, that collection evolved into the Walker Art Center, a world-renowned site for challenging work by innovative artists, including Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Yoko Ono, and Kara Walker. In 1874, Harriet and Thomas Barlow (T. B.) Walker traveled to New York to furnish their Minneapolis home. There, they purchased a painting that began the lumber baron’s art obsession. In the following years, he amassed an eclectic range of art, and in 1879, he invited the public to view his in-house collection. Walker’s gallery, the first public art gallery west of the Mississippi, continued to grow. By 1915, his fourteen-room museum welcomed 100,000 visitors annually; by 1920, it displayed 400 paintings. In 1916, Walker bought land in Lowry Hill that he offered to the city of Minneapolis as space for a public library and art museum. After five years of futile negotiation, Walker resolved to build his own museum. Construction began in 1925, and the Walker Art Gallery opened in 1927. During the Great Depression, only three staff remained. After 1935, Walker’s grandchildren Hudson Walker and Louise Walker McCannel ran the gallery until the Minnesota Arts Council took charge in 1939. The council was funded by the Federal Art Project (FAP), a Works Progress Administration (WPA) program. FAP saw the gallery’s potential and hired thirty staff, making it the WPA’s largest community art center. Daniel Defenbacher, a FAP coordinator, became the gallery’s first director. To signal accessibility, “Walker Art Gallery” became “Walker Art Center” (WAC). WAC provided classes, exhibited local artists, and sponsored traveling exhibitions. As the economy improved, FAP waned, and by 1943, WPA involvement ended. WAC distanced itself from traditional museums by exhibiting modern art in 1940. It further challenged artistic tradition with its first performance event, Spring Dance Festival. Two years later, The Large Blue Horses by Franz Marc became WAC’s first modern acquisition. In 1951, H. Harvard Arnason became director. A former professor at the University of Minnesota, Arnason emphasized academic scholarship and modernism. He launched the Center Arts Council, organizer of WAC’s film and performing arts. In 1961, Martin Friedman became WAC’s director. His age—thirty-six— made him one of the youngest museum directors in the US. Under Friedman, WAC became more ambitious and contemporary. In 1963 alone, it welcomed avant-garde composer John Cage and the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, organized 10 American Sculptors and Adolph Gottlieb (entries to the 7th São Paulo Biennial), and established an artist-in-residence program. By the late 1960s, WAC needed repairs and more space In 1969, the building was razed, and two years later, WAC reopened in a minimalistic building designed by Edward Larrabee Barnes. It resembled stacked cubes and featured outdoor terraces and subdued surfaces that made art, not architecture, the focal point. WAC established a performing arts department in 1970, and three years later, the film and video department began. In 1981, Friedman proposed a sculpture garden to the Minneapolis Parks Service. The garden, designed by Barnes, turned the “Parade,” a once-popular park, into WAC’s outdoor gallery. It opened in 1988. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, WAC sold works from Walker’s original collection and acquired modern works. Contemporary acquisitions included works by Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, and Yves Klein. The Regis Dialogue Program (later renamed the Dialogue and Retrospective series) debuted its film screenings and interviews in 1990. In 1991, Kathy Halbreich became WAC’s fourth director. Under Halbreich, WAC extended accessibility with Free First Saturdays, Free Thursdays, and Explore memberships. In 1996, WAC established the Teen Arts Council, a group of 13 teenaged artists and art enthusiasts who ensure WAC provides teen events. As programs and collections expanded, a 2005 addition designed by the firm Herzog & de Meuron added much-needed exhibition space and linked galleries, event areas, and lounges. After Olga Viso, WAC’s fifth director, began her tenure in 2008, she worked to complete Halbreich’s vision for an integrated indoor and outdoor campus by expanding and renovating the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden (reopened in 2017). Under her leadership, WAC also acquired nearly 4000 objects from the Merce Cunningham Dance Archive for WAC’s permanent collection. Viso resigned in 2017.","src":"https://www3.mnhs.org/hubfs/Mnopedia%20Blogs/robot_head-1.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/walker-art-center"},{"alt":"","author":[{"name":"Sandra R. Edwardson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/sandra-r-edwardson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"April 27, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"1930","name":"Densford, Katharine J. (1890–1978)","postbody":"Katharine Densford was a pragmatic leader of American nursing as it gained political and academic recognition in the 1940s and 50s. She is remembered as a stateswoman whose leadership of ...","searchtext":"Katharine Densford was a pragmatic leader of American nursing as it gained political and academic recognition in the 1940s and 50s. She is remembered as a stateswoman whose leadership of Minnesota’s flagship school of nursing at the University of Minnesota provided the model for nursing education throughout the state and nation. Densford was born in Crothersville, Indiana, in 1890. She earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in history and Latin shortly before World War I—a time when few women earned advanced degrees. After teaching high school for several years, she noted that “it seemed that nurses were needed more than teachers, and since I was the only member of the family free to go to war, I should go into nursing.” By 1920, Densford graduated from Vassar Training Camp for Nurses, where she completed an intensive three-month educational program. Afterward, she completed a two-year clinical nursing experience at the University of Cincinnati. In 1925, she shifted her focus from traditional nursing practice to become the assistant dean of the Illinois Training School of Nurses and assistant director of nursing service for Cook County Hospital in Chicago. In 1930, she became the director of the University of Minnesota School of Nursing. Densford was a visionary leader of the content and methods of nursing education, far ahead of her time. At a time when nursing education followed an apprenticeship model and took place exclusively in hospital settings, she led the University of Minnesota (U of M) to become the first in the nation to create a continuously operating school of nursing within a university. Cognizant of her responsibility to make this model of education a success and show the way for other universities, Densford spread knowledge of the U of M experience and advocated for collegiate nursing throughout the country and world. In this way, she disseminated the latest thinking about nursing education and practice. In 2017, there are more than 674 baccalaureate and higher degree programs in the US. The Institute of Medicine recognizes them as essential for promoting health care in the country. Densford displayed similar boldness in addressing professional issues outside of the university. During the Great Depression, newly graduated nurses were among the many people who were unemployed. In response, she collaborated with hospitals and the university to create a “Learn and Earn” program. Nurses participating in the program devoted part of their time to clinical practice. At the same time, they took university courses tuition-free to earn baccalaureate and advanced degrees. When President Franklin Roosevelt proposed drafting nurses during the military buildup for World War II, Densford studied the situation and found that there were plenty of volunteers for the military. Bureaucratic inefficiencies, however, delayed and stopped the flow of recruits. After this was pointed out to the president, the roadblocks were reduced for all women and it became unnecessary to draft them. Densford then became a champion for recruiting nurses into the Cadet Nurses Corps, recruiting the largest number of women into the corps of any state in the US. After World War II, Densford found jobs in Minnesota for 200 Japanese American nurses facing internment in California and coordinated their travel and placement. She brought the International Council of Nurses to the United States against the objections of the State Department. As president of the American Nurses Association (ANA), Densford used her grit and parliamentary acumen to coax the organization into a unanimous vote in favor of racial integration. In 1945, she attended the United Nations Conference on International Organization in San Francisco, which produced the United Nations Charter. Densford’s global interests and influence were best illustrated by her participation in the work of several colleges of the University of Minnesota to help rebuild Korea after the Korean War. Her leadership was instrumental in helping Korean nurses establish the School of Nursing at Seoul National University. This partnership continues in 2017 and serves as a model for other internationally based schools. The day after her retirement in 1959, Densford announced her engagement to Carl Dreves, whom she married that same year. She died in 1978 and is buried in Acacia Park Cemetery in Mendota Heights.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Katharine Densford.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246087,"name":"Health and Medicine","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/densford-katharine-j-1890-1978"},{"alt":"Photograph of Kate Wulf and Jeri Rasmussen","author":[{"name":"Cory Haala","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/cory-haala"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"April 23, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"1977","name":"DFL Feminist Caucus","postbody":"The Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party Feminist Caucus was founded in 1973 to advocate for feminist positions on issues like poverty among women, abortion, and the Equal Rights Amendment. Its ...","searchtext":"The Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party Feminist Caucus was founded in 1973 to advocate for feminist positions on issues like poverty among women, abortion, and the Equal Rights Amendment. Its members lobbied the Minnesota State Legislature, endorsed candidates, and produced a US Senate candidate of their own in 1984. In 1971 a commission led by Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) party State Chair Koryne Horbal published a report titled “Women in the DFL: Present but Powerless.” This analysis of women’s roles in the DFL, writtten by Yvette Oldendorf and Esther Wattenberg, found that “even the ‘open’ and ‘accessible’ DFL yields a record of inequality so far as women are concerned.” It urged the foundation of women’s caucuses to advocate for women’s rights. In April 1973 frustration with the DFL Women’s Caucus led Horbal and five other “founding mothers” to form the DFL Feminist Caucus (DFLFC). The other five women were Mary Pattock Bremer, Cynthia Kitlinski, Yvette Oldendorf, Jeri Rasmussen, and Peggy Specktor. Prominent female politicians like Secretary of State Joan Growe, State Representative Phyllis Kahn, and State Representative Linda Berglin also joined the caucus, which included male members like 1982 US Senate candidate Mark Dayton. It was the first party-affiliated caucus in the US. The DFLFC supported thirteen principles, including resolutions to support the 1973 Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade, “economic justice for women at home and in the work force,” and feminists seeking election at all levels of government. The caucus only endorsed candidates who actively supported all of its principles. In 1974 Horbal delivered the first “Feminist State of the State” address, written by Mary Pattock. The speech advocated for more jobs for women, increased child care funding, the ERA, abortion rights, and subsidies for women’s health. As the DFLFC grew its membership and supported the candidacies of women like Secretary Growe, it became a controversial force within Minnesota politics and the DFL. In 1977 it helped lobby for the passage of a bill guaranteeing rights to displaced homemakers. Lobbying by the caucus’s executive committee helped secure Governor Rudy Perpich’s appointment of Rosalie Wahl as the first woman on the state’s Supreme Court. Moreover, in 1979 the caucus secured funding of $3 million to create Minnesota’s first battered women’s shelter. In 1980 a caucus member, Claire Rumpel, who had been associate chair in 1978 and 1979, became the State DFL party chair. However, the group members’ advocacy for the ERA and abortion rights brought them into conflict with other DFLers. Their intense arguments with pro-life advocates at the June 1977 Minnesota Women’s Meeting in St. Cloud prompted negative backlash directed at Perpich and Secretary Growe. In 1978 they failed to prevent the passage of a bill, sponsored by DFL legislators Ray Kempe and Florian Chemielewski, that cut off funding for abortion services to poor women. In the 1980s the DFLFC continued to fight for feminist issues and place its supported candidates in prominent statewide races. In 1984 Secretary Growe, a longtime supporter of the DFLFC, won the DFL nomination for US Senate; in 1986 St. Paul Mayor George Latimer chose longtime member Arvonne Fraser to be his running mate in the DFL gubernatorial primary. While neither was successful, the DFLFC had secured a prominent place in determining the DFL’s candidates and party platform. The DFLFC has advocated for progressive causes and supported feminist candidates at all levels of political involvement. Minneapolis’ passage of same-sex domestic partnership legislation in 1991 was attributed by city council member Brian Coyle to a 1989 attitudes survey conducted by the DFLFC. The caucus was a prominent supporter of the mayoral candidacies of Minneapolis mayor Sharon Sayles Belton (the first African American woman elected mayor of a major US city), and St. Paul candidates Marlene Johnson and Sandy Pappas.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Haala_141.F.17.8F scans part 2_Page_2.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/dfl-feminist-caucus"},{"alt":"Church of St. Columba, St. Paul","author":[{"name":"Paul Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/paul-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"April 19, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Church of St. Columba, St. Paul","postbody":"The Church of St. Columba in St. Paul’s Hamline-Midway neighborhood is the only Minnesota work by the Chicago architect Francis Barry Byrne. Architectural historian and critic Larry Millett ...","searchtext":"The Church of St. Columba in St. Paul’s Hamline-Midway neighborhood is the only Minnesota work by the Chicago architect Francis Barry Byrne. Architectural historian and critic Larry Millett calls it “a high point of modern church architecture in the Twin Cities.” The Hamline-Midway neighborhood is a modest one of mostly single-story houses built in the early twentieth century. But just off the corner of Hamline and Lafond Avenues rises something unique and out of character: a bright combination of massive blocks and graceful curves. A Roman Catholic Church with no steeple, built in the style called Modernist, it is unlike any other building in the Twin Cities. Archbishop John Ireland created St. Columba parish in 1914. For founding pastor he chose Michael J. Casey, whom he had met in Kilkenny, Ireland. Casey graduated from the St. Paul Seminary in 1906 and was serving a tiny parish in Big Stone County when Ireland called on him to come back to St. Paul. The Midway congregation first met in a storefront at the corner of Hamline Avenue and Thomas Avenue. Its first permanent church went up in 1915; it featured squat twin towers in a supposed “Norman-Gothic” style. The congregation grew quickly. It opened a school on Hamline Avenue, next to the church, in 1922, and expanded it to a capacity of 1000 students in 1931. In 1945 Father Casey decided a new, bigger parish church was needed, and challenged his congregation to raise the money. When, rather soon, $300,000 had been gathered, the Chicago church architect Francis Barry Byrne (1883–1967) was hired. St. Columba sources say Casey chose Byrne, whom he had known for fifteen years; Byrne’s biographer says it was St. Paul’s archbishop, John Gregory Murray, who insisted on Byrne. Byrne was an uncommon figure. He never finished high school but talked his way into a clerical role on Frank Lloyd Wright’s architectural team at age eighteen. There he served as chief draftsman and construction supervisor of the famed Unity Temple in Oak Park. At age twenty-four he went into business for himself, and after years of wandering and struggle settled on church architecture as his specialty. He was devoutly Roman Catholic. As he developed his own style, Byrne insisted on an American architecture free of classical European influence. Though he disliked the term modernist, his designs fit some of its characteristics—“form over function” and little ornamentation. “The function of a church,” wrote Byrne, “is worship, and a church in the new style that adequately and soberly expresses this great function of worship cannot be other than an enduring piece of architecture.” He designed Catholic churches in Racine, Chicago, Milwaukee, Tulsa, Pierre, Kansas City, and, his favorite, in Cork, Ireland. Byrne also published more than forty magazine articles, and nearly a hundred columns and book reviews on architecture, painting, and painters. St. Columba presented Byrne with two unusual challenges. One was a small footprint; the other was Father Casey’s insistence that the church feature an “Irish tower,” a feature associated with St. Columba himself. Against his own desires, Byrne added the tower and, to accommodate a building that would seat 1000, placed it on the lot on a diagonal. Construction began in 1948. To save money, Byrne designed the church with no basement; concrete was poured over a steel frame. The exterior walls are curved, so that the interior space resembles one of Byrne’s favorite motifs, the ancient Christian symbol of the fish. From Lafond Avenue, on the building’s south side, the first thing that catches the eye is the tall Irish tower. Inside, the sanctuary is open—no pillars—and filled with light that, according to Millett, “even on sunny days is mysterious and ethereal.” The building opened in 1950. In an essay for St. Columba, Barry Byrne wrote that the modern church “should be built to endure, to last into another and later age.” His St. Columba in the Midway has so far done that. The congregation, by contrast, has changed with the city. In 1950 it was, ethnically, mostly English, French, Irish, and German, with a seasoning of Eastern European and Italian surnames. In 2017 the majority of its congregation was Vietnamese American.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Saint Columba exterior with Irish tower.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246089,"name":"Religion and Belief","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/church-st-columba-st-paul"},{"alt":"Burma-Shave shaving cream, box, and pamphlet","author":[{"name":"Mary Laine","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/mary-laine"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"April 18, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Burma-Shave","postbody":"In the fall of 1925, a series of six signs advertising Burma-Shave, a new brushless shaving cream, appeared for the first time along highway 65 from Minneapolis to Albert Lea and on highway ...","searchtext":"In the fall of 1925, a series of six signs advertising Burma-Shave, a new brushless shaving cream, appeared for the first time along highway 65 from Minneapolis to Albert Lea and on highway 61 to Red Wing. The signs began an advertising phenomenon using clever rhyming jingles that lasted into the 1960s, including: “Your shaving brush / has had its day, / so why not / shave the modern way / with Burma-Shave?” In the early 1900s, Robert Odell, a Minneapolis attorney, was seeking a second source of income. He decided to manufacture an aromatic liniment, which he named Burma-Vita. He chose “Burma,” which was the source of the liniment||s ingredients (cassia, camphor, and cajeput), and vita, which is Latin for life. Odell promoted it as a remedy for aches and pains, burns, wounds and sores, skin irritations and rashes, and other ailments. In 1925, the Burma-Vita company was in dire financial straits. Robert’s son, Clinton, had the idea to develop a brushless shaving product for men from the liniment. This new product would eliminate the need for a shaving brush, which often became moldy and smelly when stored in a shaving kit. Burma-Shave was born after months of experimentation by Carl Noren, a Minneapolis chemist. In 1926, a newspaper advertisement encouraged enlightened young men to use Burma-Shave to shorten the time they spent on shaving. A half-pound jar cost fifty cents, and a big tube was thirty-five cents. Sales of the new product were slow until Allan Odell, Clinton’s son, decided to take advantage of the increase in car ownership and travel. He convinced his father to invest 200 dollars to create signs to advertise Burma-Shave along the roadside. One line of a non-rhyming jingle was painted on each of six boards, which were spaced one hundred feet apart on the roadside. By 1927, business increased to $68,000 in one year. By the late 1930s, Burma-Shave became the second-highest-selling brushless shaving cream in the US and was in 17 percent of medicine cabinets. Soon shorter, rhyming jingles appeared on the signs that motorists could more easily read as they passed by. Many of the jingles were early public service announcements—“Drive / with care. / Be alive / when you/ arrive. / Burma-Shave.” Eventually, the signs were installed in forty-five states, and over 6,000 sets were installed in thirty-three years. Initially, the Burma-Vita company was located at 2533 Hennepin Avenue in Minneapolis. In 1926, the company leased a building at 2005 East Lake Street in Minneapolis. With 17,000 square feet and four stories, the building accommodated modern machinery used to mix the shaving cream and to fill and label jars and tubes. Projected production was two tons per day. In 1940, the company moved once again to 2318 West Chestnut Avenue in Minneapolis. It never employed more than thirty-five employees, who worked in either sign or shaving-cream production. In the early years, Allan and Clinton Odell wrote most of the product||s jingles. In 1930, they realized their jingle-writing creativity was limited, so they created a yearly, national jingle-writing contest. In 1951, prizes ranged from two to 100 dollars. Contest rules required that the jingle words fit on a series of six signs, and the last sign had to read Burma-Shave. Each jingle had to rhyme and fit into one of six categories—Safe Driving; Humor; Brushless; Economy; Tough Beards, Tender Skin; and Avoid Substitutes. The top or bottom flap of a Burma-Shave carton had to be included with the submission. Over 50,000 entries were received in some years. The Odells were careful not to use potentially offensive jingles. During World War II, gasoline and tire shortages limited sign maintenance, and sales dropped since there were fewer vehicles on roadways. With the beginning of the interstate highway system in the 1950s, the signs lost their advertising effectiveness since they had to be installed farther from roads. At the same time, driving speeds increased, making signs harder to read. New laws regulating highway billboards and changing times led to the eventual demise of the signs, and thus declining sales. In 1963, the Burma-Vita company was sold to Philip Morris, which began removing the signs. In 1966, the manufacturing operations moved to New Jersey and production discontinued soon after.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/1990.507.14.A-C.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/burma-shave"},{"alt":"Nurse visiting a home","author":[{"name":"Joshua Preston","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/joshua-preston"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"April 16, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Professionalization of Nursing in Minnesota, 1898–1920","postbody":"For most of its history, nursing was an unregulated profession. To raise both their reputation and their standard of care, Minnesota nurses during the Progressive Era founded local and ...","searchtext":"For most of its history, nursing was an unregulated profession. To raise both their reputation and their standard of care, Minnesota nurses during the Progressive Era founded local and statewide nursing associations. Using these to create community among members, influence training schools, and engage in legislative advocacy, these nurses transformed what had been a mixture of skilled and unskilled work into a full, licensed profession. In St. Paul in August 1898, Theresa Ericksen and eight of her fellow nurses founded the United States’ first centralized nurse registry. “Realizing that in union is strength,” these nurses called themselves the Ramsey County Graduate Nurses’ Association (RCGNA). By their “mutual help and protection,” they aspired “to advance the standing and best interests of graduates [...] and to place the profession of nursing on the highest plane obtainable.” Because hospitals were too small to accommodate full-time nursing staff, nurses represented themselves and advertised their services through the few means available. These included word of mouth, newspaper ads, and free drug store registries with the nurses’ contact information and areas of expertise. While some hospital training schools had their own registries for alumnae, private duty nurses relied upon these free registries. This decentralized approach to connecting nurses to patients was problematic. Not only did each school have its own practices and standards, but the free registries were open to anyone. Nurses of all skill levels were mixed together, placing side-by-side the field’s capable Theresa Ericksens and less responsible practitioners. In contrast, the RCGNA’s centralized registry was selective in its membership and thus served as a kind of credentialing service. In its infancy, the association grew slowly as younger nurses relied on their school registries. Despite its small numbers, members shared best practices at their meetings and presented papers on an array of topical subjects. They also served as mentors to one another, creating a familial atmosphere they hoped would transfer to the workplace. Additionally, members had access to a private library of major nursing journals, which the association supplemented with its own publications. Such publications were also distributed to training schools and in time became part of the curriculum. Within five years, the association’s dues-paying membership reached 120. By 1903, having successfully maintained a centralized registry, the RCGNA set its sights higher. Because the association was only one of many around the state, its members realized that uniformly raising the profession’s standards required collective action. A statewide association would “develop a sense of unity and solidarity among nurses” and could lobby for a state registration system. Two years later this culminated in the Minnesota State Graduate Nurses’ Association (MSGNA). The association aimed for “the advancement of the nurses’ profession […] including the furtherance of the efficient care of the sick.” Membership applications arrived from every corner of the state, and groups from Seattle and Chicago wrote asking for advice on how to form their own statewide association. As one nurse put it, “the public awoke to the fact that the nurses of Minnesota were organized.” Small hospitals worried about the costs that came with an organized work force and pushed back against the MSGNA. By 1905 only a handful of states had state registration systems, which were often opposed by physicians and others as “giv[ing] the profession the nature of a Trade Union.” The MSGNA publicly denied this characterization, insisting it was not a matter of trade unionism but instead about raising standards of care—and that to do this, government oversight was necessary. With this as their cause, the association turned to the legislature. In 1906 the MSGNA hired a lawyer to draft a state registration bill, which it hoped would accomplish what centralized registries could not. The licensing system the group proposed did not ban anyone from practicing nursing but instead set standards for who could use the title of “registered nurse” (RN). These standards would be established and overseen by a State Examiners Board made of those invested and trained in the profession. Such a system granted nurses professional standing and reassured patients that the RN serving them could perform her duties. Additionally, beginning January 1, 1910, only nurses who received board-approved training were eligible for registration. Given women’s disenfranchisement and the sexist attitudes of the time, to pass its bill the MSGNA “carried on a quiet, but effective campaign.” They wrote letters and met with legislators, explaining why registration was necessary. Surprisingly, they were met “with much less opposition than anticipated.” In fact, the reception was such that—despite the protests of some (including their own lawyer)—MSGNA members “filled the gallery” to watch the final vote on April 9, 1907. After the bill passed and Governor John A. Johnson signed it into law, he appointed the State Examiners Board from a list of nominees provided by the MSGNA. The association’s president later wrote of this: “The time has nearly passed when a hospital can be a law unto itself in the kind of pupils it receives, the character of the training given and the general treatment of the nurses.” In less than a decade, the movement had evolved from nine nurses maintaining a centralized registry to a statewide organization successfully lobbying for uniform standards. Despite its victory at the legislature, the MSGNA knew its work was not yet done. Just as the board oversaw the profession, so too the profession needed to oversee the operations of the board. To this end, the MSGNA committed itself to vetting board nominees and protesting the appointments of those deemed “injurious” to the profession. As there was strength in numbers, the MSGNA continued to maintain its community of nurses through its journal and annual meetings. But because it was only a coalition of organizations, the local work of nursing remained in the hands of county associations like the RCGNA. Nurses’ accomplishments during this first decade of the twentieth-century provided the infrastructure necessary to address what awaited them. With the outbreak of World War I, nurses mobilized both financial and personal support of the nation’s war efforts (at least ninety RCGNA members served overseas). Even more, they helped nurses better withstand the horrors of the 1918 influenza epidemic. But despite its successes, these pressures revealed the difficulties of a decentralized network. From 1919–1920, this led many associations—including the RCGNA—to consolidate into the Minnesota State Registered Nurses Association. Despite its evolution, the former nurses of the RCGNA—now part of the state association’s Fourth District—echoed in their charter the vision Theresa Ericksen had described two decades earlier. No matter the name of the organization, their cause was the same. Their purpose remained “[t]o establish and maintain ethical standards among nurses, and to promote the educational and social standing of the nursing profession.”","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/R2.2 r87 original.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246087,"name":"Health and Medicine","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/professionalization-nursing-minnesota-1898-1920"},{"alt":"Charles Hausler","author":[{"name":"Greg Gaut","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/greg-gaut"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"April 13, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Hausler, Charles A. (1889–1971)","postbody":"Over his long career, the architect Charles A. Hausler had a major impact on the built environment of St. Paul. As the first person to hold the office of city architect, he designed many ...","searchtext":"Over his long career, the architect Charles A. Hausler had a major impact on the built environment of St. Paul. As the first person to hold the office of city architect, he designed many public buildings, including the three branch libraries funded by Andrew Carnegie. He also designed churches, commercial buildings, and homes in a variety of styles, including Classical Revival, Prairie School, and Art Deco. Hausler was born in St. Paul’s West Seventh Street neighborhood in 1889. After attending Mechanic Arts School for a few years, he apprenticed for several of the top architects in the Midwest, including Clarence Johnston in St. Paul, Harry Wild Jones in Minneapolis, and Louis Sullivan in Chicago. This was all before he was twenty, by which time he had returned to St. Paul and begun practicing architecture. He worked with a number of young, talented partners, including Percy Bentley, who became one of the leading Prairie School architects. St. Paul created the office of the city architect in 1914, and Hausler, who was only twenty-five, was the first person to hold the position. Under his direction, the office designed schools, fire houses, police stations, garages, and park buildings. In 1915, Hausler hired Clarence “Cap” Wigington as the office’s senior draftsman; this was the beginning of Wigington’s distinguished career as a municipal architect in St. Paul. One of Hausler’s first duties as city architect was overseeing the construction of the main branch of the library on Rice Park. Electus Litchfield of New York designed the building, and it was Hausler’s job to make sure it was built according to plan. A few months after he was appointed, Hausler inspected the building site and determined that the contractor was using substandard bricks in the walls. He ordered the contractor to replace them. The contractor went to the mayor to demand that Hausler be fired, claiming that he was “inexperienced and unqualified.” The city stood by the young architect, and the contractor agreed to remove the questionable bricks from the building site. Hausler saw the construction of the new library through to its completion. Meanwhile, Andrew Carnegie donated money to St. Paul to build branch libraries in the Arlington Hills, West Side, and St. Anthony Park neighborhoods. Hausler designed each of these in the Classical Revival style, and in 1984, they were added to the National Register of Historic Places. As of 2018, the St. Anthony and Riverside (West Side) buildings still operate as public libraries; East Side Freedom Library has operated inside the Arlington Hills building since 2014. Hausler also designed several St. Paul public schools in Classical Revival style, including the Como Park Elementary School at 730 Wheelock Parkway West and the Randolph Heights Elementary School at 348 Hamline Avenue. He designed Prairie-style buildings for the city, including a variety of park structures. One of them—the pavilion in St. Paul’s Mounds Park— became a popular picnicking site. During Hausler’s years as city architect he continued his private practice, specializing in Prairie-style home designs. Examples include the homes at 1058 St. Clair Avenue in Summit Hill, 633 Holly Avenue in the Summit-University neighborhood, and his own home at 526 Grace Street in the West Seventh neighborhood. Hausler’s eight-year tenure came to an end in 1922 when he was elected to the Minnesota Senate. He represented St. Paul in the Senate until 1939, starting out as a progressive Republican and ending up as a member of the Farmer-Labor Party. His architectural practice thrived during this period, and he enjoyed success designing Art Deco buildings. Two of these—the Minnesota Building in downtown St. Paul and the Minnesota Milk Company Building on University Avenue in Frogtown—are listed on the National Register. Although Hausler remained centered in St. Paul, he designed buildings throughout the Midwest into the 1950s. A significant part of Hausler’s practice involved churches, which he used to experiment with Gothic, Romanesque, and Byzantine Revival styles. One of these, St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Hague, North Dakota (built 1930), was listed on the National Register as part of a historic district. It is a Romanesque Revival building with Byzantine touches, designed for a German-Russian parish that had lost its original church to fire.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Chas_A_Hausler_001.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/hausler-charles-1889-1971"},{"alt":"SPAM bank","author":[{"name":"Mary Laine","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/mary-laine"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"April 11, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"SPAM","postbody":"In 1937, the George A. Hormel Company, a meat-packing business in Austin, Minnesota, introduced SPAM luncheon meat to use up an excess of pork shoulder in their inventory. In the eighty ...","searchtext":"In 1937, the George A. Hormel Company, a meat-packing business in Austin, Minnesota, introduced SPAM luncheon meat to use up an excess of pork shoulder in their inventory. In the eighty years since its introduction, SPAM has fed millions of people and is available in more than forty countries and in over fifteen varieties and sizes. George A. Hormel, a child of German immigrants, was born in Buffalo, New York, in 1860. After working in the meat packing industry, he moved to Austin, Minnesota, and started the George A. Hormel Company at the age of thirty-one. His one son, Jay, became company president when George retired after leading the company for thirty-six years. (In 1993, the company’s name changed to Hormel Foods Corporation.) In the late 1930s, Jay Hormel awarded Kenneth Daigneau a $100 prize for suggesting the name SPAM for the company||s new pork product. Daigneau’s original intended meaning is unclear, but it is thought to be an abbreviation of Spiced Ham. It could also be an acronym for Spiced Ham Austin Minnesota, or Shoulder of Pork And Ham. During severe World War II-era rationing in Britain, it was also known as Supply Processed American Meat and was greatly appreciated by the citizens who used it to supplement sparse meals. In the 1940s, Hormel supported the World War II effort by shipping more than one million cans of SPAM abroad to feed Allied troops and civilians. It is ideal for mass feeding since it does not require refrigeration and has a long expiration date. SPAM was so readily available for military meals, often two or three a day, that many would not eat it when they returned home to their civilian lives. In an early recycling program, flattened SPAM cans were soldered on airplane bomber wings and fuselages to cover and patch bullet holes created by enemy bullets. The cans were also reshaped to make military cookware. During World War II, 1,751 Hormel employees were in the military; sixty-seven of them died while serving. Early advertising used catchy phrases and full-page color ads to promote SPAM. A 1960s advertisement stated that “you can serve it cold, you can serve it hot, you can slice it, dice it, bake it, fry it.” As time progressed, the varieties of SPAM produced by Hormel expanded to match the tastes of their fans and worldwide markets. A can of SPAM Classic, the original SPAM, consists of pork, ham, and five other basic ingredients—salt, water, potato starch, sugar, and sodium nitrite. Other varieties include turkey, hickory smoke, hot and spicy, jalapeno, teriyaki, chorizo, Portuguese sausage seasoning, and mezclita (Puerto Rican-inspired, with red pepper and cheese). When visiting Hawaii, a Minnesotan may be surprised to find musubi in convenience stores and on restaurant menus alongside pizza and hamburgers. Composed of fried SPAM and a cake of rice in a wrapper of seaweed, musubi is a popular Hawaiian food, as are other SPAM creations that use Asian or tropical ingredients. Hawaiians have eaten SPAM ever since World War II, and they consume more than seven million cans a year. Sales of SPAM in South Korea rank second worldwide, with the United States first. Introduced in Korea by Americans during the Korean War, budae jjigae (army stew) is made with SPAM Classic, hot pepper paste, onions, ramen noodles, and kimchi. The Great American SPAM Championship is an annual contest sponsored by Hormel and held at twenty-six state and county fairs throughout the United States. Entrants use any variety of SPAM, and up to ten additional ingredients, to create a recipe judged for taste and simplicity. The cooks compete for prizes at the local level and for a trip to the SPAM Jam Festival, held each year in Hawaii. In 2016, the winning recipe at the festival, Gemütlichkeit SPAMwich, was made with SPAM, bacon, a pretzel bun, cabbage slaw, and mustard. In 2016, Hormel moved its SPAM museum—open since 1991—to a building in downtown Austin. Featured are displays about SPAM and World War II, the history of SPAM throughout the world, the history of other Hormel Foods and products, and a gift shop with a variety of SPAM-related products, such as whimsical SPAM-can earrings.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/2010.86.1.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/spam"},{"alt":"Miss Miyazaki doll","author":[{"name":"Adam Scher","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/adam-scher"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"April 09, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Miss Miyazaki Japanese Friendship Doll","postbody":"Concerned by the anti-Japanese atmosphere in the United States in the 1920s, Dr. Sidney Gulick established the Committee on World Friendship Among Children and began sending friendship ...","searchtext":"Concerned by the anti-Japanese atmosphere in the United States in the 1920s, Dr. Sidney Gulick established the Committee on World Friendship Among Children and began sending friendship dolls to Japan. Japan reciprocated by sending friendship dolls to the US in 1927, with Minnesota receiving a doll known as |||Miss Miyazaki.||| With the arrival of many Japanese immigrants in the early 1900s, undercurrents of discrimination and resentment began to surface in the United States. Several events marked this anti-Japanese movement. Among them were the founding of the Asiatic Exclusion League, the defeat of a proposal for racial equality at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, and President Calvin Coolidge’s signing of the Immigration Act of 1924, which ended Japanese immigration to the United States. In the midst of these anti-Japanese sentiments, Congregational minister Dr. Sidney Gulick made his voice heard. Gulick, an American missionary who had lived in Japan for twenty years, knew that Japanese children had a special love for dolls. In 1926 he established the Committee on World Friendship Among Children and began a mission of friendship that involved sending dolls from America to Japan. Over 12,000 friendship dolls were sent to Japan, each with its own passport, train and boat tickets, and handwritten letters from American children. In the Japanese tradition of reciprocation, fifty-eight torei-ningyo (return-gesture dolls) were sent to the United States in 1927. Following a national goodwill tour the dolls were exhibited in museums and public libraries across the country, with most states receiving at least one doll. A doll named “Miss Miyazaki,” named after the prefecture on the island of Kyushu, was given to Minnesota and deposited with the Minneapolis Public Library in 1931. Yoshitoku Doll Company manufactured both the doll and her thirty-four-piece trousseau. The figure itself is an example of the itchimatsu style of dolls designed to resemble children and often given to children as gifts. It stands thirty-two inches tall and features gofun (shell-white) skin, painted features, human hair, an open-mouthed expression, and inset glass eyes. It wears a vibrant red kimono with a flower and bird motif, a silk brocade obi (belt), an obi age (a scarf that supports the obi) and an obi jime (a supportive string). The haneri (collar) is white with an embroidered floral design. The doll’s outer kimono is embellished with gold-colored thread and covers two under layers: a pink kimono with a floral design and a reddish orange under-kimono with a gold-colored pattern. While the obi is tan with an embroidered floral pattern, the obi age is red and white with a checked pattern. End tassels and an embroidered floral design decorate the white obi jime. The doll wears only white tabi (socks), though the original ensemble included shoes. Her thirty-four-piece trousseau includes a dresser, a chest of drawers, a sewing chest, a porcelain tea set, a fan, and a mirror. The doll remained in Minneapolis Public Library storage until 2016, when a librarian at the network’s Ridgedale branch confirmed its location. She and a colleague at the Central Library branch enlisted a Japanese doll expert to verify the doll’s provenance and evaluate its condition. In 2016 the Hennepin County Library transferred both the doll and her trousseau to the Minnesota Historical Society. Only two items—a parasol and slippers—were missing. In 2017 Miss Miyazaki was meticulously restored in Tokyo by Yoshitoku, Company, Limited, the same company that had made her ninety years earlier. Minnesota Doll Jamboree Council and Minnesota Go-fer Dollies Club donated money that funded the restoration.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/10399353.640x640.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/miss-miyazaki-japanese-friendship-doll"},{"alt":"Thomas Brown","author":[{"name":"Carole Butcher","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/carole-butcher"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"April 06, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Execution of Thomas Brown","postbody":"The only documented hanging held in Clay County occurred on September 20, 1889, when Thomas Brown was hanged for the murder of Moorhead Patrolman Peter Poull. Newspapers across the country ...","searchtext":"The only documented hanging held in Clay County occurred on September 20, 1889, when Thomas Brown was hanged for the murder of Moorhead Patrolman Peter Poull. Newspapers across the country reported on the sensational event; the Los Angeles Herald called it “a quiet execution.” Thomas Brown was probably not the man’s real name. He spent much of his adult life in prison and was known as Tommy Ryan as an inmate of the Dakota Territorial Prison in Bismarck. He had served time in a Wisconsin jail under yet another name. In the fall of 1888, Brown was with a group of vagrants near Hillsboro, North Dakota. No record exists of what caused an altercation, but someone pulled a gun. A shot was fired, and one of the men lay dead. A farmer reported the incident to the Fargo Police Department and described the culprit’s appearance. With this information, Fargo police tracked down and detained a suspect, but the man evaded their surveillance and escaped. An off-duty Fargo police officer named Benson (his first name is not recorded) then spotted the suspect at a dance at Erickson’s Hall in Moorhead. Benson identified him as Thomas Brown, the man wanted for the vagrant’s murder. Since Officer Benson did not have jurisdiction in Moorhead, he enlisted the help of Moorhead police patrolman John Thompson before continuing the pursuit. When Brown saw Benson and Thompson approaching him, he pulled his gun. He told the officers to go downstairs, then followed them with his gun raised. When they reached the bottom of the stairs and went out into the street, Benson dodged into a hotel bar and hid. Brown kept a gun on Thompson and demanded to know what Benson had said to him. While they were talking, a bystander who had seen Brown pull a gun on the officers found Moorhead Patrolman Peter Poull and told him that Thompson was in trouble. When Poull ran to help, Brown shot him, and he died in the street where he lay. Thompson shot and wounded Brown, who collapsed and surrendered. Poull’s murder came as a shock to the citizens of Moorhead. People knew he was survived by a young wife, and that their baby was only two weeks old. Brown had been taken into custody, but he was by no means safe. Rumors began to circulate of a plan to administer instant justice and lynch Brown. Sheriff Jorgen Jensen had no plans to allow a lynching in his town. Before vigilantes could break into the jail, Jensen was on his way to the Hennepin County Jail with Brown in his custody. Shortly after the men left town, an angry crowd descended on the jail in Moorhead. The officers there allowed a few men to search the jail. After they were convinced that Brown was gone, the disgruntled vigilantes quietly left. Brown was returned to Clay County, where he stood trial for murder in January 1889. In his defense, he maintained he had never meant to kill Poull, only to frighten him. The jury conferred for three hours before delivering a guilty verdict, and Brown was sentenced to death. The hanging was scheduled for June 1889. The Minnesota Supreme Court granted a stay of execution, but Brown was denied a new trial. His new execution date was set for September 20. Public executions were the rule in Minnesota until 1889. Though intended to deter criminal behavior, they were often drunken and rowdy affairs, with spectators gathering for entertainment. In 1889, Minnesota passed the John Day Smith Law, which required executions to be held privately and at night. State representative John Day Smith, the law’s sponsor, said it was meant to promote public morality. But since the law forbade newspapers from printing descriptions of an execution, they could only report that it had happened. Furious newspaper editors called it the “midnight assassination law.” The editor of the New Ulm Weekly Review said it was “a mighty queer and outrageous check on the freedom of the press.” Brown was hanged at 4:30 a.m. on September 20 and buried in Moorhead, in St. Joseph’s Catholic Cemetery. His grave remained unmarked.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Thomas Brown  001.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246060,"name":"Crime and Punishment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/execution-thomas-brown"},{"alt":"Izaak Kolthoff","author":[{"name":"Paul Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/paul-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"April 04, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Kolthoff, Izaak Maurits (1894–1993)","postbody":"Izaak Maurits Kolthoff was a professor of analytical chemistry at the University of Minnesota from 1927 to 1962. He published over a thousand papers, wrote more than a dozen books, and ...","searchtext":"Izaak Maurits Kolthoff was a professor of analytical chemistry at the University of Minnesota from 1927 to 1962. He published over a thousand papers, wrote more than a dozen books, and created and edited the first comprehensive treatise of analytical chemistry. He also played a key part in the development of synthetic rubber during and after World War II. He is known as the “father of modern analytical chemistry.” Izaak “Piet” Kolthoff was born in Almelo, the Netherlands, in 1894 and received a rigorous education there. He took an intense interest in chemistry at an early age and specialized in analytical chemistry (the science of identifying and measuring chemical compounds) at the University of Utrecht. He published his first scientific paper at age twenty-one and got his PhD at twenty-four. In 1927 Dean Samuel Lind of the University of Minnesota’s Institute of Technology―himself a distinguished chemist―recruited Kolthoff to build an analytical chemistry program there. Kolthoff set about the task with determined energy. He wrote, he published, he taught, and he recruited a succession of graduate students who went on to important careers at major universities all over the United States. His work at Minnesota was part of an even bigger personal project―the modernization and elevation of analytical chemistry from what it had been, a collection of laboratory techniques, to a major branch of chemistry, equal in stature to biochemistry and the physical, organic, and inorganic branches. During World War II the War Department recruited Kolthoff as part of a “second Manhattan Project” to meet the nation’s critical need for rubber. The Japanese controlled the world’s supply of natural rubber, and production of synthetic rubber amounted to only a few hundred tons a year. Kolthoff turned the University of Minnesota into a research center in that successful effort. By war’s end the United States produced some 920,000 tons a year, using a “cold rubber” recipe to which Kolthoff made vital contributions. The recipe permitted mass production of a rubber as good as or better than natural rubber, using less energy. America’s post-war rubber production was based on that recipe. Kolthoff had an intense personal interest in an Allied victory in World War II. During the war he lost contact with his family, Jews trapped in the Nazi-controlled Netherlands. Only in 1945 did he learn the truth: almost all, including his mother, were murdered by the Nazis. Only a brother survived. In politics, Kolthoff was a committed internationalist and believer in international cooperation and academic freedom. After the war he traveled extensively in the Soviet bloc and maintained relationships with scientists there. The FBI investigated him and in 1951 the House Committee on Un-American Activities named him―along with Paul Robeson, Albert Einstein, Leonard Bernstein, Linus Pauling, and many other distinguished citizens―a subversive for his association with six civil rights and world peace organizations. In response, Kolthoff wrote to the committee chair telling him the committee had missed three more organizations he belonged to. He briefly lost his security clearance but never his stature as a scholar or the support of the University of Minnesota. In the mid-1950s Kolthoff undertook a project of daunting scope: a comprehensive treatise of modern analytical chemistry. The result, thirty volumes published over twenty-eight years, engaged 295 authors and ran to 17,000 pages. His Treatise on Analytical Chemistry cemented his reputation as the father of modern analytical chemistry. He had a motto: Theory guides, experiment decides. Izaak Kolthoff never married, and from 1927 until shortly before his death he lived on the university’s Minneapolis campus, first in Coffman Union, later in Comstock Hall. He was an avid athlete in tennis, swimming, and horseback riding, and a fearsome bridge player. Kolthoff received almost every major award in chemistry short of the Nobel Prize: the Nichols Medal (1949), the Fischer Award (1950), the Willard Gibbs Award (1964), and, in 1967, the Kolthoff Gold Medal Award in Analytical Chemistry. In 1972 the University named its new chemistry building on Northrup Mall Kolthoff Hall. In 2014 the American Chemical Association designated Kolthoff and modern analytical chemistry a national chemical landmark.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/una570271.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056210,"name":"Education","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246052,"name":"Science and Technology","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/kolthoff-izaak-maurits-1894-1993"},{"alt":"Clara Barton Club ice cream social","author":[{"name":"Carolyn S. Van Loh","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/carolyn-s-van-loh"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"April 02, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Clara Barton Club","postbody":"Nurses organized the Clara Barton Club at Westbrook’s Schmidt Memorial Hospital in 1948 with three goals: to study the health needs of their community, to keep themselves updated about new ...","searchtext":"Nurses organized the Clara Barton Club at Westbrook’s Schmidt Memorial Hospital in 1948 with three goals: to study the health needs of their community, to keep themselves updated about new drugs and evolving nursing methods, and to support their hospital. Westbrook nurses set their standards high when they named their club after Clara Barton, the nurse whose fame was established during the American Civil War. Later in life, during the 1890s, she traveled to Cuba to nurse and distribute supplies to American soldiers wounded in the Spanish-American War. One of her most lasting achievements was the establishment of the Red Cross on May 21, 1881. Westbrook-area nurses in Minnesota, anticipating the construction of a hospital, met on July 9, 1948, and formed the Clara Barton Club. In October of the next year, a three-member committee met to organize a Westbrook Hospital auxiliary. On November 29, community women wanting to support their soon-to-be hospital met and organized. The stage was set, and the nurses’ group was ready to act on its goals. Topics of their monthly meetings have kept up with evolving medical and health issues over the years. They have included hospital supervision, doctor shortages, agriculture and health, and, more recently, car seats for young children, adult daycare, and Medicare. The group kept up with evolving medical issues and “covered topics from A to Z,” according to a long-time Clara Barton Club member. Special speakers addressed concerns like tuberculosis, Mad Cow disease, and HIV/AIDS. Some presenters explored issues using video tapes or demonstrations. Members also read written articles and led discussions on their topics when they met. Medical healthcare in Cottonwood County—and across Minnesota—has changed drastically since the Clara Barton Club organized. In the early 1940s, before the club formed, it was typical for Westbrook nurses to earn only $5 a day while working twenty-four-hour private care shifts that allowed only four hours for sleeping. Earning $40 a month was considered a good wage by local nurses, even though there were no benefits or paid vacations. The only living member of the original club (as of 2018) recalls using sulfa drugs when she began her work. During World War II, hospitals sometimes needed to borrow penicillin from other facilities. It was necessary to reserve most drugs for the military. The member also recalled the job of sharpening needles on a whetstone before sterilizing them. Needles were then ready for giving patients their needed injections. Fundraising events for hospital supplies and equipment often centered around food. Bake sales, lunch counters at farm auctions, pie socials, and food stands at the annual Hospital Days celebration all brought in money for the hospital. Preparing food for events involved extra work on the nurses’ off hours, but they volunteered to do the baking. A personal concern for nurses working at the new hospital was the condition of their lunchroom. The club not only contacted individuals from the community to do the work but also paid for supplies. For example, the $59 cost of plastering four walls came from the Clara Barton Club treasury. Club members didn’t limit their financial support to local needs. They donated money to health organizations like the Sister Kenny Institute, CARE packages to Korea, Ronald McDonald House, Gillette Hospital, and to Minnesota state hospitals in St. Peter, Willmar, and Hastings. Club activities encouraged members to relax and enjoy getting to know each other; their relatives joined them at annual summer picnics. Outings for members provided health-related tours and trips to tourist sites like the Jeffers Petroglyphs and the End-O-Line Railroad Park & Museum in nearby Currie. The group’s focus changed in 1995 when Schmidt Memorial Hospital affiliated with the Sioux Valley Hospital system in Sioux Falls. Then, in 2007, the hospital’s name changed to Sanford Westbrook Medical Center. After it was renamed, the hospital continued to depend on local nurses but received funds from the Sanford Health system.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Clara Barton Pie Social.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246087,"name":"Health and Medicine","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/clara-barton-club"},{"alt":"Minnesota Centennial Showboat and performers","author":[{"name":"Linda A. Cameron","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/linda-cameron"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"March 30, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Minnesota Centennial Showboat","postbody":"University of Minnesota professor Frank M. |||Doc||| Whiting brought a unique type of theater entertainment to the Twin Cities with the opening of the Minnesota Centennial Showboat in 1958. For ...","searchtext":"University of Minnesota professor Frank M. |||Doc||| Whiting brought a unique type of theater entertainment to the Twin Cities with the opening of the Minnesota Centennial Showboat in 1958. For more than fifty years the showboat presented a variety of student theater productions, from melodrama to Shakespeare, in a floating venue on the Mississippi River. In 1956, the Minnesota Centennial Commission began to plan for the 1958 state centennial celebration. Frank Whiting, director of the university||s theater program, saw an opportunity to realize his dream of a showboat theater on the Mississippi. He proposed a Minnesota Centennial Showboat. The commission agreed, and the search began for a suitable boat. Finding a paddleboat wasn||t easy, and building one on an existing river barge proved too costly. In 1957, Whiting and the Centennial Commission||s Tom Swain learned that the US Army Corps of Engineers planned to retire the General John Newton, a 175-foot sternwheeler towboat built in 1899. Minnesota Senator Edward J. Thye helped to arrange its transfer to the university for just one dollar. The paddleboat arrived in St. Paul on April 3, 1958. The university had less than three months to prepare it for the season opening on June 26. Students helped to recreate the atmosphere of an 1890s showboat by painting walls, sewing curtains, reupholstering old theater seats, building scenery, and sewing costumes. The first season opened with a production of Augustin Daly||s 1867 melodrama Under the Gaslight. Miss Minnesota Diane Albers, assisted by Doc Whiting and Centennial Commission Chairman Peter Popovich, christened the boat by breaking a bottle of champagne across the bow. James S. Lombard of the commission||s arts committee cut the ribbon to open the gangplank. Mayor Joseph E. Dillon of St. Paul rang the ship||s original bell to invite the theater||s first patrons aboard. In its early years, the showboat traveled up and down the river. It stopped for scheduled performances in Minneapolis, St. Paul, Stillwater, Hastings, Red Wing, Wabasha, and Winona. The student cast, numbering about fifteen, performed one or two plays each season. Each show featured vaudeville-style olios (lively song-and-dance numbers) between acts. In addition to performing, the actors cleaned the boat, greeted visitors, and took tickets, among other tasks. 1969 marked the last season the boat toured. Following that season, it made an appearance in the Swedish film The Emigrants before settling into a stationary mooring site on the river||s east bank, below the university campus. In 1995, the ninety-six-year-old paddleboat moved to St. Paul for $2 million in needed repairs. Fire destroyed the boat on the evening of January 27, 2000, just months before its scheduled reopening on Harriet Island. Only the paddlewheel and burned-out hull remained. University theater professor C. Lance Brockman led a campaign to obtain a new showboat. In December 2000, the university agreed to a partnership with the City of St. Paul, the St. Paul Riverfront Development Corporation, and the Padelford Packet Boat Company to build a new showboat. Construction began the following spring in Greenville, Mississippi. Christened the Frank M. Whiting, the new Minnesota Centennial Showboat arrived at Harriet Island on April 17, 2002. It opened on July 4 with a production of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The Minnesota Centennial Showboat exposed students to a unique type of theater. Student actors embraced the over-the-top style of melodrama. Designers and student crews met the challenges presented by a small performance space. Audiences joined the fun by booing and hissing at the villain and applauding the hero. The showboat program earned the Tourism Partner of the Year Award from the St. Paul Convention and Visitors Bureau in 2004. The Padelford Packet Boat Company joined the university||s Department of Theatre Arts & Dance to create the C. Lance Brockman Showboat Scholarship later that year. The final curtain came down on the Minnesota Centennial Showboat at the end of the 2016 summer season. The university||s fifteen-year agreement with the City of St. Paul expired, and the university cut the program for budget reasons. Fittingly, the final season featured a revival of Under the Gaslight. The university sold the boat to the City of St. Paul for one dollar. In 2018, a nonprofit group in Winona purchased the boat and, in September 2019, it was towed to its new home on the Mississippi River.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/HE5 11M r27_edited.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246053,"name":"Transportation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/minnesota-centennial-showboat"},{"alt":"Sign advertising Westbrook Hospital Days","author":[{"name":"Carolyn S. Van Loh","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/carolyn-s-van-loh"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"March 27, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Westbrook Hospital Days","postbody":"Between 1968 and 2001, supporters of Dr. Henry Schmidt Memorial Hospital in Westbrook combined work and pleasure to organize Hospital Days, an annual public event that raised money for ...","searchtext":"Between 1968 and 2001, supporters of Dr. Henry Schmidt Memorial Hospital in Westbrook combined work and pleasure to organize Hospital Days, an annual public event that raised money for hospital equipment and community amenities. People of all ages were invited to attend, participate in activities, and enjoy good food. Fundraising for Westbrook’s Schmidt Memorial Hospital did not end on January 23, 1951, when doors opened to patients for the first time. The hospital’s auxiliary volunteers, divided into twenty units, continued working together to assist their hospital. The first “official” Hospital Benefit Days, held in September 1968, was organized by the hospital auxiliary and the Community Club. Festivities began on a Friday with auxiliary volunteers serving lunch in the city’s fire hall. Prior to the event, industrious women cleaned the hall to make it suitable for a lunchroom after fire trucks and equipment found a temporary home elsewhere. On Saturday, the event’s second day, volunteers served food, including grilled burgers with all the trimmings in the fire hall at noon and a catered evening meal in the city park. An auction brought in $1,500, a sale of promotional buttons raised one dollar per button, and a rummage sale netted $1,000. In total, the hospital received $5,000 from the weekend’s activities. By 1971, when the event was officially named Hospital Days, the gathering had become a rite of summer that people looked forward to. The auxiliary’s food stand became, and remained, a mainstay. Flies, oppressive heat, and humidity did little to hamper the spirits of those enjoying delicious meals topped off with pieces of home-made pie at the fire hall. In 1991 the auxiliary food stand found a new home in the Community Center: no flies, no adverse weather conditions, and ample air conditioning. The Sanford Westbrook Health Center provided a free picnic of grilled burgers and hotdogs on the eve of Hospital Days to show appreciation for the support it received from the community. In about 2000, organizers introduced a new Thursday-evening event to Hospital Days: Night of Praise, in which the local Kiwanis organization sponsored an inspirational music presentation from individuals, ensembles, or choirs. After an hour of entertaining music, Kiwanis members served pie with ice cream and coffee. The social hour, like the health center picnic, gave people a chance to socialize with neighbors and friends. Parades were one of the most appealing elements of Hospital Days. Military veterans led the route carrying the American flag as well as American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars (VWF) flags. Spectators rose to attention as the flags passed by. The next unit was the noisemakers—fire trucks and ambulances. Individuals and married couples were honored for their service to the Westbrook community and invited to ride along the parade route in a vintage convertible. For many years, bands provided festive marching songs for the parade, but organizers removed them from the event’s schedule when the cost became prohibitive. Some Hospital Days attractions appeared for a few consecutive years before disappearing. A partial list of by-gone entries includes mud wrestling, dunk tanks, rummage sales, one-act plays, and a comedy variety show patterned after the television show Hee Haw. Most Hospital Days included a pageant that named a young contestant “Miss Westbrook” or a similar title. The last Hospital Days took place in 2001, after which organizers renamed it Westbrook Fun Days. The Westbrook Women’s Club sponsors the event and donates the funds it raises to maintaining community amenities like city parks and swimming pools.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/IMG_5010.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246079,"name":"Cities and Towns","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/westbrook-hospital-days"},{"alt":"Hudson’s Bay Company storehouse, Georgetown","author":[{"name":"John Hest","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/john-hest"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"March 26, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Hudson’s Bay Company Trading Post, Georgetown","postbody":"In 1859, the Hudson’s Bay Company built a trading post and steamboat landing near the meeting point of the Red and Buffalo Rivers in Minnesota. They named the post and the surrounding town ...","searchtext":"In 1859, the Hudson’s Bay Company built a trading post and steamboat landing near the meeting point of the Red and Buffalo Rivers in Minnesota. They named the post and the surrounding town Georgetown. The traders left the post during the US–Dakota War of 1862 but returned when the war ended. When the Northern Pacific and other railroad companies built lines through Clay County in the 1870s, the Hudson’s Bay Company abandoned its post at Georgetown. In 1857, the US government granted the Hudson’s Bay Company a license to trade furs and other goods in the United States. Since the company already had a factory (headquarters) on the Red River in Canada, it made sense for it to build a post on the Red River in the United States as well. This new post would help connect its Canadian fur trading operations with a global market. The company chose a site near where the Red River meets the Buffalo River in northwestern Minnesota. There, in 1859, it built a fur warehouse, store, and boat landing. It named the post, and the town that grew around it, Georgetown, after Sir George Simpson. Simpson ran the Hudson’s Bay Company from 1820 to 1860. Before building the post at Georgetown, the Hudson’s Bay Company and other traders shipped goods by ox cart from St. Paul to Fort Garry. After building the post, it could ship goods by cart or stagecoach to Georgetown before loading them on steamboats to make the rest of the trip to Fort Garry. This reduced the time it took to ship freight from about a month to closer to two weeks. Although moving goods this way was faster in theory, bad weather often delayed the process. When the roads were dry enough for the stagecoaches to make it to Georgetown, the Red River was often too low for the steamboats to navigate it. The Red River north of Georgetown was barely navigable for steamboats at the best of times, and low water levels made it impassable. Inclement weather often stranded freight and passengers at Georgetown or Fort Garry for weeks. Additionally, the Red River’s frequent flooding meant that any crops the residents of Georgetown tried to plant were at risk; in 1861, after they planted their first crop, a flood destroyed it. Legally unable to own property in the United States, the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) hired St. Paul resident Anson Northrup to operate a steamboat on its behalf along the Red River south of Canada. Northrop built the company’s first American boat in 1859 and named it after himself. His namesake vessel, however—the Anson Northrup—was heavy and hard to maneuver; it struggled to navigate the winding and shallow Red River before sinking in 1861. Another group launched a replacement, the International, in the spring of 1862. The Burbank brothers’ Minnesota Stage Company (a second proxy for the HBC) operated most of the stagecoaches that transported freight and people from St. Cloud to Georgetown. It also bought the Anson Northrup and began operating it as the Pioneer. In 1862, war broke out in the Minnesota River Valley between white settler-colonists and a group of Santee Dakota. When news of the battles of New Ulm and the deaths of some colonists spread to those living at Georgetown, they fled. The residents of Georgetown returned in 1864 and reopened the post. The Northern Pacific Railroad connected Fargo–Moorhead to St. Paul in 1871. This was a boon for the steamboat business in Georgetown. The Red River steamboats transported colonists looking to move to Canada as well as supplies to extend the railroad to Winnipeg. The building of the railroad to Fisher’s Landing, Minnesota, in 1876 meant that Georgetown was no longer a convenient stopping point for stagecoaches or steamboats. After the rail connection to Winnipeg was completed in 1878, sending freight or passengers by steamboat was no longer the cheapest method. The Hudson’s Bay Company soon left Georgetown, but the town remained.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/MC6.9 GT p2.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/hudson-s-bay-company-trading-post-georgetown"},{"alt":"Sign at entrance to Neuhof Hutterian Brethren Colony","author":[{"name":"Elaine E. Kroeker","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/elaine-e-kroeker"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"March 21, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Hutterian Brethren, Cottonwood County","postbody":"South Dakota Hutterite families with roots in the Anabaptist Reformation of the sixteenth-century moved to Minnesota||s Cottonwood County in 1994. There, they established the Neuhof ...","searchtext":"South Dakota Hutterite families with roots in the Anabaptist Reformation of the sixteenth-century moved to Minnesota||s Cottonwood County in 1994. There, they established the Neuhof Hutterian Brethren Colony and the Elmendorf Hutterian Brethren Colony south of Mountain Lake, Minnesota. Hutterites follow the teachings of Jacob Hutter, a sixteenth-century Austrian who urged reform during the Radical Reformation. Tenets of Hutterite faith include separation of church and state, observance of the Lord’s Supper, and adult baptism upon confession of faith in Jesus Christ. Anabaptist convictions include the principle of nonviolence, which precludes participation in military service of any kind. Hutterian colony life is based on the principle of mutual care as expressed in Acts 2:42–45 and 4:32–35. This is practiced through communal meals, shared property, and daily spiritual fellowship. Hutterites speak a Carinthian-Austrian dialect called Hutterish in addition to English. They accept modern technology and have their own craftsmen and quilters who construct creative works with superior quality. The first group of Hutterites immigrated to the United States in 1874 and settled near Tabor, South Dakota, where they formed Bon Homme Colony. In 2018, over a century later, colonies are scattered throughout the northern prairies of the United States and the prairie provinces of Canada. When Hutterite colonies grow to about 130 people, they search for a site to purchase where they can establish a daughter colony. Then, after building homes, meeting places, and a school and creating a local economy, several families from the mother colony move to the new location. The daughter colony is nurtured in the spiritual and business realm to become self-sufficient. All colonies are patriarchally organized, with women wielding no formal power in voting process. In 1988, Upland Colony formed in Letcher, South Dakota, as the daughter colony of Spring Valley Colony, South Dakota. Upland Colony residents, looking for ways to diversify their livestock operation and provide for their growing families, purchased the Glen Harder turkey farm southeast of Mountain Lake, Minnesota, in 1994 and continued the turkey-farming operation on the property. The resulting colony became Elmendorf Hutterian Brethren Colony. It became independent from Upland Colony in 1998. Neuhof Hutterian Brethren Colony formed with families from several South Dakota Hutterian Brethren colonies. Families purchased a turkey farm from Ben Adrian south of Mountain Lake, Minnesota, in 1994 and continued the ongoing enterprise. Amos Decker Sr. and his wife, Dora, became the first residents. Others soon joined them. Each Hutterite colony, though founded on shared Christian principles and cultural practices, has its own distinct characteristics. Elmendorf, also known as Elmendorf Christian Community, is uniquely known among the colonies for taking in non-ethnic Hutterite families and incorporating them into their daily lives.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Neuhof Picture - Lisa Decker Wollmann.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246089,"name":"Religion and Belief","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/hutterian-brethren-cottonwood-county"},{"alt":"Map of Clay County","author":[{"name":"Kirbie Sondreal","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/kirbie-sondreal"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"March 16, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Norwegian Immigration to the Buffalo River, 1870–1872","postbody":"The Norwegians who made their homes along the Buffalo River in 1870 were among the first European settler-colonists to live in Clay County. The timing of their arrival, before the land had ...","searchtext":"The Norwegians who made their homes along the Buffalo River in 1870 were among the first European settler-colonists to live in Clay County. The timing of their arrival, before the land had been surveyed, helped to draw other immigrants to the area. In 1861 a group of Norwegians traveled to the United States and came to Houston County, Minnesota. Many Europeans had already immigrated to this area of the state, which made land difficult and costly to attain. After a few years in the area, many of the Norwegians wished to find a less populous place to live. In 1869 Paul Hjelm-Hansen wrote a series of articles promoting immigration to the Red River Valley that was published in a Norwegian American paper based in Wisconsin. These articles sparked the interest of a few of the Norwegians in Houston County, and soon they made plans to move to the Red River Valley. By May of 1870 three families and four single men left Houston County in a train of prairie schooners. They planned to travel as far as Otter Tail County, Minnesota, or Grand Forks, North Dakota. Olav Thortvedt was the leader of this group. At this time, few European immigrants lived in the Red River Valley. Georgetown, a Hudson Bay Company trading post, was the only non-Native/Métis enclave in Clay County. Europeans who arrived in the 1850s had abandoned the area after the US–Dakota War of 1862. Only a few remained, including R. M. Probstfield, who ran the post at Georgetown. By some accounts, Probstfield was the only settler-colonist left in Clay County after the war. Thortvedt and his group made their way northwest across Minnesota, traveling on old stagecoach roads and the trails of Red River oxcarts. By July of 1871, after a four-hundred-mile journey, Thortvedt’s group reached Georgetown. There, they decided to cross into Dakota Territory to look for an area to live permanently. The group wanted to be near a river where both water and fuel were easily attainable. They deemed the Red River Valley too low-lying for farming, however. Disappointed, they stayed a few days in Dakota Territory and considered returning to Houston County. When crossing back into Minnesota, the group met Probstfield near Georgetown. After hearing the group’s complaints about the Red River Valley, Probstfield told them about the nearby Buffalo River area, which had not been surveyed yet. He then offered to show Thortvedt the location. The land around the Buffalo River was higher than the land around the Red River, and the group decided to establish farms there. The group began work at once to create a colony. The families were allowed to pick their land first, and the single men chose their plots afterwards. Thortvedt chose to homestead in the center of the community since he was the group’s leader but also because he owned the only grindstone. The entire colony used this stone almost daily to sharpen their plows, axes, and other tools, so they all wanted to be within reasonable distance of the essential item. Life on the prairie was difficult, and the colonists often wondered if they had made the right decision to live in the area permanently. The Thortvedts decided that they would stay for ten years, and if no other immigrants had come to the area by that time, the family would move again. Not long after the Thortvedts’ pact, a railroad surveyor approached the colony and announced that the Northern Pacific Railroad was planning a line just a few miles from their location. The colonists were overjoyed, and soon, more families and neighbors from Houston County relocated to the Buffalo River. After the railway was complete in 1872, immigrants flooded the area, creating booming communities across the prairie. Supplies became easier for colonists to attain, and the Buffalo River colony continued to grow and thrive.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Clay County Map.png","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/norwegian-immigration-buffalo-river-1870-1872"},{"alt":"Mrs. Thomas Yamazaki with her daughters Luanne (left) and Aveline (right) at the St. Paul Resettlement Hostel","author":[{"name":"Krista Finstad Hanson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/krista-finstad-hanson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"March 16, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"St. Paul Resettlement Committee","postbody":"The St. Paul Resettlement Committee formed in October of 1942 to assist with the relocation of Japanese Americans from the concentration camps established by the US government in March of ...","searchtext":"The St. Paul Resettlement Committee formed in October of 1942 to assist with the relocation of Japanese Americans from the concentration camps established by the US government in March of 1942. It was one of thirty-five such committees that operated across the country during World War II. As early as August 1942, the International Institute of St. Paul received letters from Japanese Americans in US concentration camps who wanted to relocate to Minnesota. The Japanese American Resettlement Committee was organized at the institute soon afterward, on October 5, 1942. Bess L. Beebe was its first chair; members represented social service agencies and interfaith churches in St. Paul. The committee helped coordinate services for Japanese Americans leaving the concentration camps, and the local YWCA and YMCA offered short-term stays for single women and men. The International Institute of St. Paul, meanwhile, assisted with housing, job, and casework services. A War Relocation Authority branch office led by Clement White opened in Minneapolis in March of 1943. Minneapolis also started its own resettlement committee. Denominational colleges in St. Paul, including Macalester, Hamline, St. Thomas, and Bethel enrolled Japanese American students. Churches welcomed new residents, raised money, and offered jobs and housing. The first Japanese American couple to resettle in Minnesota was Ruth and Earl Tanbara, who came from California. They relocated to Minnesota in August of 1942 with letters of introduction from their former employers and an offer of a place to stay. Ruth Tanbara worked for the St. Paul YWCA and served on the St. Paul Resettlement Committee (SPRC). She also gave talks in the community to educate residents about the resettlement process. In March of 1945, the SPRC reorganized as an official Council of Social Agencies Committee. Its legal counsel, Warren E. Burger, assisted with leasing a second-story hotel at 191 West Kellogg Boulevard in St. Paul, next door to the International Institute. The St. Paul Resettlement Hostel opened in December of 1945. Martha Magraw was the SPRC||s chair; Tomiko Ogata, a Japanese American, was its dietitian; and Elizabeth Evans, a former missionary to Japan, was its director. The hostel had seventeen rooms; organizers planned to rent ten from the hotel for the total sum of $200 per month. They raised funds from Japanese Americans living in St. Paul, local churches, and generous community members. Japanese American soldiers at Fort Snelling volunteered their labor to paint the rooms, build a kitchen, and install furniture. The SPRC planned parties for residents and those who were soldiers in the Military Intelligence Service Language School (MISLS) at Fort Snelling. Prior to 1940 there had been eleven Japanese living in St. Paul, with a total of about fifty living in Minnesota. By March of 1945 there were about 1,000 people of Japanese descent in the state. Of these, 350 lived in St. Paul. In September 1946, Evans reported to the SPRC that there were “eighteen residing [at the hostel], including Mrs. Ogata and myself.” However, at a September 11, 1947, committee meeting, she reported that five rooms at the hostel were vacant. Over a two-year period, 150 people had been furnished with lodging at the hostel. At a May 5, 1948 meeting, SPRC member Father Daisuke Kitagawa said there was “no further influx of the Japanese and he feels there is no further need of the Hostel.” There was discussion about keeping the hostel open for the “displaced persons” evacuating from Europe. However, the committee decided to let its lease on the hostel expire. In 1949, the SPRC decided to expand the scope of its mission to help Native Americans move from reservations in Minnesota to the Twin Cities. It also helped establish the Japanese Community Center, which opened in February of 1950 and was located at 2200 Blaisdell Avenue in Minneapolis. However, legislation to assist in the resettlement of Native Americans did not transpire, and fundraising efforts to continue the committee did not succeed. At the November 28, 1952, annual meeting of SPRC, a proposal for dissolution of the organization was presented and the committee voted to approve the motion. The SPRC then gave college scholarships to three Native American women and donated the remaining balance of $300 to the Japanese Community Center in Minneapolis.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/New WACS at Snelling  007.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246079,"name":"Cities and Towns","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/st-paul-resettlement-committee"},{"alt":"LeDuc Historic Estate","author":[{"name":"Samuel Meshbesher","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/samuel-meshbesher"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"March 14, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"LeDuc Historic Estate","postbody":"Finished in the mid-1860s after years of logistical and financial challenges, the LeDuc Historic Estate in Hastings is an excellent example of the Gothic Revival style. It is also one of ...","searchtext":"Finished in the mid-1860s after years of logistical and financial challenges, the LeDuc Historic Estate in Hastings is an excellent example of the Gothic Revival style. It is also one of the few surviving homes designed by influential architect and horticulturist Andrew Jackson Downing. Immediately after their marriage in 1851, Mary and William LeDuc travelled west by river from Mount Vernon, Ohio, to the small town of St. Paul, where William started a legal practice and the city’s first bookstore. After some success as a lawyer, political booster, and land speculator, LeDuc staked his livelihood on a quarter share of what was to become the town of Hastings, also receiving a prime spot across from the town’s mill in exchange for legal services. This was to be the site of his family’s new home. The LeDucs ultimately turned to the home plans of Andrew Jackson Downing, a renowned horticulturist and amateur architect who started the movement for great urban gardens like New York’s Central Park and DC’s National Mall. August Knight and Abraham Radcliff modified Downing’s plans to suit available resources; walls made of local limestone would render the home’s tower even more imposing while providing contrast to the steep gables and elaborate Rhineland Gothic bargeboards. The home’s parlor would look out through a covered porch onto the front yard, while the library where William and Mary would write correspondence was to be dominated by a massive bay window. There would be a fireplace in every room on the first and second floors except the kitchen, where servants would prepare meals, and a red-stained veranda where the LeDucs could sit on summer afternoons. Just when they were ready to start building, the Civil War began. In 1862, William packed up his bags for Washington, where he joined the Quartermaster Corps. After months of struggling to manage his home’s construction along with his duties in camp, William returned to Hastings on furlough, hiring Eri Cogshall to turn the so-far convoluted project around in January of 1863. The young carpenter proved an invaluable liaison and site manager, getting the home’s two-foot-thick walls done by September in spite of labor problems. Cogshall proudly wrote to William that he believed the home to be “as good a one as there is in the state.” Financial setbacks plagued the LeDucs, largely because they insisted on having all the trappings of refinement on a limited budget. The plan called for seven fireplaces with fine marble mantles; Cogshall had to use pinewood—a cheaper material—for all of them. While they shipped in specialty limestone for the windows and doors, Mary had to choose between sending their daughter Minnie to school in new shoes and paying next month’s bills. The LeDucs finally moved into their home late in 1865, and construction continued through the year’s end. When finished, the home had fifteen rooms and fifty-two windows, and was fifty feet tall. William had estimated at the start of construction that the home would cost five thousand dollars in all; it ended up being closer to thirty thousand. The LeDuc mansion contained many signifiers of wealth in the Gilded Age. The master bedroom had a cord William or Mary could use to ring the servants’ quarters on the third floor. Their larder was almost as well-stocked as their library and was cooled in the summer months with ice from their private icehouse. Along with servants’ quarters, the home’s roughly finished third floor had an art studio and a small room in the tower where William escaped for contemplation and panoramic views. In the summertime, Mary hosted parties in the backyard orchard, and card parties in the parlor were popular in all seasons. Following William’s death in 1917, his daughters moved to a smaller house in Minneapolis. Their childhood home doubled as a summer home until 1940, when they sold it to Carroll Simmons, who established an antique shop on the ground floor. In 1958, Simmons donated the home to the Minnesota Historical Society (MNHS), on the condition that he could run the store until his retirement. When he retired in 1986, the house sat empty for almost two decades. After extensive repairs and renovations, the home reopened for tours in 2005, and was transferred to the City of Hastings by MNHS.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/leduc_house_front_facade.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/leduc-historic-estate"},{"alt":"William Gates LeDuc","author":[{"name":"Samuel Meshbesher","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/samuel-meshbesher"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"March 12, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"LeDuc, William Gates (1823–1917)","postbody":"William Gates LeDuc played a variety of parts in Minnesota’s transition from territory to statehood. A “jack of all trades” who never found great success in one endeavor, he counted former ...","searchtext":"William Gates LeDuc played a variety of parts in Minnesota’s transition from territory to statehood. A “jack of all trades” who never found great success in one endeavor, he counted former presidents, governors, generals, and supreme court justices among his friends by the time of his death in 1917. LeDuc was born in 1823 to a family of farmers in Wilkesville, Ohio. Educated in Greek and Latin at Kenyon College, he met Mary Elizabeth Bronson at a picnic in 1848 and took a law clerkship in nearby Mount Vernon in hopes of running into her more often after he graduated. Mary and William shared a love of letters and wrote to each other for the next fifty years. After marrying in the spring of 1851, William and Mary travelled by river to the small town of St. Paul, where William started a legal practice and Minnesota’s first bookstore. He befriended rising politicians like Alexander Ramsey and Henry Sibley and harnessed his Ohio connections to become a successful booster for Minnesota Territory. In 1853, he represented the territory at the World’s Fair in New York City and successfully lobbied for a railroad connecting St. Paul to Missouri. The next year, he financed the state’s first commercial flour mill, across the river from the site where he planned to build his new home in Hastings. Just when LeDuc was ready to start construction, the Civil War began. He packed his bags for Washington and volunteered for the Quartermaster Corps, helped by a letter of recommendation from a childhood friend of Edwin Stanton, the secretary of war. Like most Northerners, LeDuc expected the war would be over shortly, and was excited to return to Hastings to live in a house that lived up to his long-suffering wife’s expectations and befitted his status as a man of high military rank. But the war dragged on, and his post was not nearly as exciting as he had imagined; logistical challenges, incompetent and drunken staff, and red tape took up much of his time. Nevertheless, LeDuc proved himself to be a capable quartermaster. In October of 1863, he used a steamboat to sneak supplies upriver from Bridgeport to General Hooker’s army, allowing them to reinforce General Rosecrans’ position at Chattanooga. William noted later that one of his failed businesses finally showed dividends here: “I had once owned a fourth interest in a steamboat, and fooled away considerable money and time with her.” In spite of rapids, engine breakdowns, and close calls with Confederates along the riverbanks, LeDuc brought 40,000 rations up the Tennessee River to the starving troops. He was later awarded the rank of brevet brigadier general and went by “General” for the next fifty years. When LeDuc returned to Minnesota in late 1865, his Hastings mansion was close to completion, but at great cost. The home was six times more expensive than he had anticipated, leaving the LeDucs on the brink of bankruptcy for years. Good returns on wheat from the farmland LeDuc owned paid for the family’s basic cost of living, but most of his other businesses were as unsuccessful as they were eccentric. He operated a mine near Salt Lake City that barely covered his expenses. He later bought a sawmill in Brainerd. He lectured for a few dollars a speech at grange halls. LeDuc came close to success with a Hastings railroad company but was sold out at the last minute by his associates. His luck improved when he was appointed commissioner of agriculture in 1877 by another friend from Ohio, President Rutherford B. Hayes. LeDuc’s most significant measures were his attempts to make the US less dependent on foreign imports by researching the production of sugar from sorghum in the Midwest, and by attempting to establish tea farming in the South. Neither of these efforts succeeded and were criticized as a waste of taxpayer dollars. When James Garfield became president, the LeDucs returned to Hastings. Over the next twenty-five years, LeDuc travelled extensively and pursued many failed business ventures. After his wife’s death in 1904, he became involved in the spiritualist movement; he even wrote a book in 1906 recounting talks with long-dead Civil War generals during seances. LeDuc died at the age of ninety-four in 1917.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/por 14623 p2.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/leduc-william-gates-1823-1917"},{"alt":"Photograph of the interior of a traditional Somali home, recreated for the Somali Museum of Minnesota","author":[{"name":"Ibrahim Hirsi","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/ibrahim-hirsi"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"March 08, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Somali Museum of Minnesota","postbody":"The Somali Museum of Minnesota was founded in 2013 to preserve Somali culture and tradition through art exhibits, educational programs, and dance. Since then, the Minneapolis-based ...","searchtext":"The Somali Museum of Minnesota was founded in 2013 to preserve Somali culture and tradition through art exhibits, educational programs, and dance. Since then, the Minneapolis-based nonprofit has become more visible to Somali Americans across the United States as it expands efforts to showcase its growing artifact collections and traditional Somali dance across North America. In 2009, Osman Ali began collecting traditional Somali artifacts and displaying them in the basement of his Minneapolis café, Sanaag Coffee and Restaurant. His goal was to give customers glimpses of the history, culture, and tradition of Somali Americans. The museum’s collections grew over the years. The café||s basement, where they were stored, became a popular destination for those who wanted to experience both Somali cuisine and Somali cultural artifacts in a single place. Then, one day in 2012, Ali learned that someone more prominent was coming to the restaurant: US Senator Al Franken, who wanted to try Somali food and see the collections. But Ali felt that taking the senator to the basement to see the artifacts wasn’t “a good thing.” To solve this problem, Ali transferred the items to a building next door, where he created a makeshift mini-museum. Before long, it displayed more than 150 artifacts, including traditional milk jars and containers, wooden bowls, and spoons, as well as woven prayer mats and wall rugs. That temporary shift inspired Ali to do something no other Somali had—or has, to date— done in the United States: he created a museum that houses the culture and tradition of the East African community. That meant moving his collections to a permanent space at 1516 East Lake Street, where a larger number of visitors could access them to learn about the nomadic Somali lifestyle. From that process was born the Somali Museum of Minnesota in 2013. It aimed to preserve Somali culture and traditions and to share them with Minnesota residents interested in learning about the community. In 2018, the nonprofit organization boasts more than 700 artifacts. It also displays traveling exhibitions at major events across the country and provides educational programs in Somali history, culture, art, and dance. In addition to its general hours (3:00–7:00 p.m. on Tuesdays and Fridays; 1:00–5:00 p.m. on weekends), the museum offers personalized visits for individuals interested in learning more about the culture. Over the years, the museum has received invitations from communities and schools in Minnesota, Ohio, Texas, California, Canada, and Mogadishu, where Ali and his team have either presented on Somali history or displayed cultural artifacts. Each year, since 2014, the museum hosts more than 1,000 people to commemorate its founding anniversary, bringing together world-renowned Somali artists, educators, and historians from across the United States, Canada, and Europe. In 2017, the museum received the Innovation Award—which recognizes the achievements of Somali organizations and professionals worldwide—at the International Somali Awards in London.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/somali_museum152.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/somali-museum-minnesota"},{"alt":"Photograph of John J. OConnor’s chief-of-police badge","author":[{"name":"Edward J. |||Ed||| Steenberg","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/edward-j-ed-steenberg"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"March 07, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"St. Paul Police Department Reform, 1933–1940","postbody":"After the intense violence of the first few decades of the twentieth century, the St. Paul Police Department (SPPD) experienced a period of steady growth and relative social calm in the ...","searchtext":"After the intense violence of the first few decades of the twentieth century, the St. Paul Police Department (SPPD) experienced a period of steady growth and relative social calm in the 1930s. During these |||quiet years,||| the department expanded, reformed its policies, and experimented with new ideas and technologies. Three developments in the mid-twentieth century converged to bring about the greatest changes in the policing of St. Paul during the 1930s. The first was the repeal of Prohibition on December 5, 1933. With the end of Prohibition, mobsters|| primary revenue streams stopped flowing and then dried up altogether, signaling the death knell of what had become known as the gangster era in the city of St. Paul. Reform-minded community groups and public officials came to the forefront, and under a new, progressive administration, the police department began to reshape its image as a |||reform||| agency. St. Paul was no longer a sanctuary city for big-spending mobsters; the John J. O||Connor Layover Agreement was a thing of the past. The second major development was the creation of the first crime laboratory in the state on October 5, 1935, just three years after the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) established its own lab. The new laboratory improved criminal investigations by using up-to-date techniques and equipment. Under the direction of Dr. John B. Dalton, the new lab could analyze chemicals, examine documents and firearms, and compare handwriting samples and fingerprints, as well as study photographic and microscopic evidence. St. Paul offered the use of its crime lab to surrounding police agencies, including the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA.) whose own forensic science laboratory did not become operational until January 1, 1947. The third and final development—probably the most important for police administration— took place on June 15, 1936, when the City Charter Tenure Amendment was passed. The amendment changed the process for the selection of a chief of police, thus eliminating the political favoritism of former years. Sometimes referred to as |||appointment by revolving door,||| the old process had granted the mayor total hiring authority. In the period from 1920 to 1930, ten police chiefs or acting police chiefs were hired in St. Paul by direct appointment, some with no previous police experience. In the two years prior to the tenure amendment, six chiefs were appointed. Under the new guidelines, an independent committee established qualifications for the job. It examined candidates prior to an appointment to a six-year term, subject to removal for |||just cause.||| The police chief now had civil service protection like the kind granted to rank-and-file employees since June 1, 1914. In July 1935, St. Paul police completed a year-long internal investigation of the department that included wiretapping. As a result of the evidence gathered, the department disciplined several high-ranking officials. On June 5, 1936, the St. Paul City Council appointed Assistant Chief of Police Gustave H. “Gus” Barfuss the city’s commissioner of public safety. Barfuss instituted reforms and lobbied to end the department’s susceptibility to political pressure. Three months later, Clinton A. Hackert was appointed the city’s chief of police for a six-year term. His appointment followed the guidelines established by the Tenure Amendment four months earlier. Like his friend and ally Assistant Chief Barfuss, Hackert was a reformer who fought against corrupt officers with ties to organized crime. Although officers came to refer to the period between 1933 and 1940 (and later) as |||the quiet years,||| the implementation and evolution of new units, procedures, and technology left an indelible mark on the department||s operational structure. New squad cars replaced old, high-mileage vehicles. Advances in communications technology increased efficiency and mobility. Like other police departments around the country, the SPPD introduced new training programs at the entry level and in-service training for those already on the job. Through these actions, the SPPD took significant steps toward becoming a truly professional police department.","src":"https://www3.mnhs.org/hubfs/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Photograph%20of%20John%20J.%20OConnor%E2%80%99s%20chief-of-police%20badge.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246060,"name":"Crime and Punishment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/st-paul-police-department-reform-1933-1940"},{"alt":"Scan of cover of Chicano Studies 1975 departmental brochure of classes (University of Minnesota)","author":[{"name":"Jessica Lopez Lyman","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/jessica-lopez-lyman"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"March 05, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"1971","name":"Department of Chicano and Latino Studies, University of Minnesota","postbody":"Founded in 1971, the Department of Chicano and Latino Studies at the University of Minnesota is the first of its kind in the Midwest. Rooted in social justice, the department is committed ...","searchtext":"Founded in 1971, the Department of Chicano and Latino Studies at the University of Minnesota is the first of its kind in the Midwest. Rooted in social justice, the department is committed scholastically and pedagogically to centering Chicana/o and Latina/o histories and experiences. During the 1960s in the United States, people of color mobilized to challenge oppressive systems, including the educational system. Despite two historic court cases that sought to desegregate schools, Mendez v. Westminster (1947) and Brown v. Board of Education (1954), school injustices persisted. Working-class, Mexican American students often received a poor-quality education. For example, they did not have up-to-date textbooks and typically were not taught about their history or culture. In 1968 students throughout California organized a massive walk-out. Commonly referred to as the “Blowouts,” this moment sparked a movement for educational reform. One year later, at the height of the Chicano Movement, in 1969, the Chicano Coordinating Council on Higher Education wrote “El Plan de Santa Barbara.” El Plan served as a blueprint to build a Chicano Studies discipline at the university level. That same year, a cross-racial group of students at the University of Minnesota (U of M) took over Morrill Hall to demand academic change. The protest resulted in the establishment of the African American Studies Department and the American Indian Studies Department. The latter was the first of its kind in the nation. Inspired by national and local actions, Chicanas and Chicanos in the Twin Cities worked to create a department of their own. In 1970, Latin Liberation Front, a student group at the U of M, and community leaders hosted the Midwest Chicano Conference. The three-day conference brought together 180 participants from across the nation and provided a platform for organizers to share strategies. At the conference, the community’s plan to start a Chicano Studies department at the U of M blossomed. Even though the community desired a department, the administration did not comply with the request. On October 26, 1971, twenty students lead by Ramona Rosales, then president of the Latin Liberation Front, took over Morrill Hall, demanding that the university agree to build a Chicano Studies department within seventy-two hours. Otherwise, she said, the group would call for a strike. The College of Liberal Arts committee agreed to the students’ demands, and the Department of Chicano Studies was established. The first classes were held in fall 1972. In 2012, the department changed its name to the Department of Chicano and Latino Studies to reflect the influx of students from South and Central America, most of whom are more accurately called Latino or Latina than Chicano or Chicana. For over forty-five years the Department of Chicano and Latino Studies has offered a wide range of courses in subjects including literature, history, politics, and art. Grounded in the spirit of the Chicano Movement, the department furthers social justice movements both locally and transnationally. The department works in partnership with several community organizations including schools, labor rights centers, and youth groups. Since the department was birthed from the community’s vision, faculty and staff are accountable to the community and work to ensure that the department actively contributes to the empowerment of Chicana/o and Latina/o people. Students who major and minor in Chicano and Latino Studies gain critical thinking and communication skills. Alumni have become city council members, directors of non-profits, founders of elementary schools, and community organizers. Despite the department’s success, it has consistently lacked institutional support. For several decades, the department had only one or two full time faculty, making it, at times, the smallest department on campus. In 2003, the student organization La Raza held several meetings to address the university’s lack of support. Over a decade later, in 2015, students continued to see a pattern of neglect. As their predecessors had done in the 1960s, fifteen students involved with Whose Diversity?, a cross-racial undergraduate and graduate student group, occupied Morrill Hall to demand racial and gender justice. Thirteen students were arrested. Their protest resulted in the hiring of two new faculty members and a third new hire the following year. In 2017, the Department of Chicano Studies had the most tenure-track, full-time faculty in its history to date.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/3_Chicano Studies Brochure 75_lightened_0.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056210,"name":"Education","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/department-chicano-and-latino-studies-university-minnesota"},{"alt":"Photograph of he Great Western Band, St. Paul, 1868.","author":[{"name":"Janet Meyer","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/janet-meyer"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"March 02, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Great Western Band of St. Paul","postbody":"The Great Western Band of St. Paul, formed in 1860, was one of the earliest and most popular brass bands in Minnesota through the late nineteenth century. This group of amateur musicians ...","searchtext":"The Great Western Band of St. Paul, formed in 1860, was one of the earliest and most popular brass bands in Minnesota through the late nineteenth century. This group of amateur musicians helped to bring a measure of sophistication to early St. Paul as it played for a variety of civic and private events. The band was busy during the 1870s and 1880s, but toward the end of the century, it faded from view. A new version formed in 1977, and over the next ten years, St. Paul residents enjoyed some of the same band music that the city’s early residents had enjoyed a century earlier. During the late nineteenth century, amateur brass bands were very popular in America. In 1856, the Munger brothers, Russell and Roger, started the Old Gents’ Band, the first military band in Minnesota. The Old Gents’ Band merged with the Pioneer Guards Band, and from this, the Great Western Band of St. Paul (GWB) was formed in 1860. Russell C. Munger (1837–1901), co-owner of the Munger Brothers Music Store in downtown St. Paul, was well qualified to lead the band due to his musical abilities. Munger led it for seven years, after which George Seibert (1836–1897), a band member, became the leader. The music of brass bands enhanced many of St. Paul’s public events. In the fall of 1860, the GWB played at political campaign rallies. When Civil War soldiers returned home in 1864 and 1865, the GWB played on the St. Paul docks as the soldiers disembarked and marched to the official reception at the Minnesota State Capitol. The band played at the reception for General Ulysses S. Grant’s visit in 1865. It marched in the parade celebrating the completion of the Northern Pacific railroad in 1883. After Grant’s death in 1885, it led the funeral procession of dignitaries that marched in Grant’s honor from Seven Corners to the capitol. During the summer, the band played weekly or biweekly at some of St. Paul’s popular parks, including Union, Central, Rice, Summit, and Como. It met the steamships that brought dignitaries and prospective residents to St. Paul, and it provided onboard entertainment for excursion boats. Beginning with the 1863 State Agricultural Society Fair, held at Fort Snelling, it played at many state and local fairs, including the agricultural fair at the White Earth Indian Reservation in 1879. In the private sector, the GWB played for dances, skating parties, church suppers, and funeral processions. It provided music at athletic events organized by groups such as the Twin Cities Turners, a gymnastics club. Groundswell organizations invited the GWB to provide entertainment for its gatherings. In 1869, these included the Convention of Colored Citizens of the State of Minnesota and the North Star Grange, which hired the band for its Fourth of July picnic. Compared to similar brass bands of the time, GWB was considered by the Minneapolis Tribune to be the best “…west of Chicago.” To meet the demand, Seibert asked Frank Danz Sr. to start a similar band, the Great Western Band of Minneapolis, in 1880. Sharing music and uniforms, the two bands performed together or separately as needed. As other types of musical groups became more prevalent by the late 1890s, the band’s popularity decreased. Many years later, Paul Maybery, a University of Minnesota graduate student who discovered them while researching the music of nineteenth-century Midwestern brass bands, revived the group. He organized a brass quintet to play period music at the Minnesota Historical Society’s 1977 annual meeting. The popularity of this performance inspired the group to expand and take the name “New Great Western Band of St. Paul.” For almost ten years, it played at Twin Cities locations and revived the music of the original band. One of its last performances was at a celebration of Historic Lowertown in 1988. To end at a historic venue was fitting for a band whose namesake was an important part of St. Paul’s early history.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/N5.21 p101, 40.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/great-western-band-st-paul"},{"alt":"Photograph of Ilhan Omar","author":[{"name":"Anduin Wilhide","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/anduin-wilhide"}],"categoryTag":[],"date":"February 27, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Somali and Somali American Experiences in Minnesota","postbody":"Although the first Somalis to arrive in Minnesota were students and scholars, the majority of Somalis who live in the state in the 2010s came as refugees fleeing a civil war in their ...","searchtext":"Although the first Somalis to arrive in Minnesota were students and scholars, the majority of Somalis who live in the state in the 2010s came as refugees fleeing a civil war in their homeland. Like earlier immigrant communities, Somalis have struggled to figure out where they belong and how to maintain cultural traditions as they adjust to living in a new place. They have faced unique challenges as African Muslims living in a historical moment (post-9/11) when their religion is being scrutinized and their home country is in the news for instances of Islamic terrorism and piracy. Somalis face discrimination both as Africans in America and as Muslims in America. In spite of these challenging conditions, they have forged livelihoods and created a thriving community in Minnesota for more than twenty years. Somalia Somalia is located in the Horn of Africa, on the continent’s east coast. Traditionally, Somalis are nomadic pastoralists, though agricultural systems developed in the nation||s southern river valleys. The capital city of Mogadishu and other urban areas have been important sites for industrial development and trade. The more than 1,880-mile coastline of Somalia has supported a fishing industry and been a center for maritime trade for centuries. Somalis have used these trade routes to migrate to the Middle East, Asia, and Europe in search of economic and educational opportunities. The first Somalis in the United States were a small group of sailors who settled in New York City in the 1920s. Since the 1960s, Somali students have come to the United States to pursue educational opportunities. In the early twentieth century, European governments gained control of Somali lands and divided up the area. The British claimed northern Somalia, now known as Somaliland; the Italians seized southern Somalia (including the city of Mogadishu); and the French took northwestern Somalia, now known as Djibouti. Somalis resisted foreign occupation but failed to gain independence until after World War II, when both Italy and England were pressured to end their colonial regimes in Africa. Somalia became a democratic nation in 1960 through a peaceful transition of power. In 1969, however, General Mohamed Siad Barre led a military coup, forcing Somalis into political, economic, and social turmoil. Many groups in Somalia organized a resistance movement that escalated in the late 1980s and forced Barre out of office in 1991. A civil war engulfed the country for more than two decades as clans, “war lords,” and then the Islamic Courts Union controlled parts of Somalia. In 2010, the Transitional Federal Government, backed by the United Nations and the African Union, gained control in Somalia, and in 2012, the first parliamentary elections were held for a permanent and internationally recognized Somali federal government. Migration And Resettlement Since the civil war began, the United Nations has reported that more than one million Somalis have left the country as refugees or asylees and that there are 1.5 million people who are internally displaced within Somalia. The United States began issuing visas to Somali refugees in 1992. For those who received a visa, the decision to leave families and homes in East Africa was painful, but many did leave and resettled in the United States. Somalis started arriving in Minnesota in 1992. Some came as refugees while others arrived as immigrants through the sponsorship of family members, or relocated to Minnesota from other parts of the United States. Refugee resettlement agencies like the International Institute of Minnesota and World Relief Minnesota, non-profit faith-based service organizations like Lutheran Social Services and Catholic Charities, Somali-led organizations like Somali Family Services and the Confederation of Somali Community in Minnesota, and Somali individuals and families helped facilitate the migration and resettlement of Somalis in Minnesota. In 2018, Minnesota hosts one of the largest Somali communities in the Somali diaspora. The exact number of Somalis living in the state is difficult to determine, and estimates range from 30,000 to 100,000. Census data from 2015 offered an estimate of 57,000. The majority of Somalis in Minnesota live in the Twin Cities metropolitan area, while others have settled in smaller towns throughout the state. Many Somalis have chosen Minnesota because of their social networks, for educational and employment opportunities, and to access an array of services. Somalis also cite Minnesota’s high standard of living and a reputation for martisoor (hospitality). Somalis arrived in Minnesota with social and cultural resources to help them adapt. They have built extensive social and professional networks that have helped them find housing, employment, and educational opportunities. They have faced challenges, too, including separation from family and friends, learning English while preserving their native language, and maintaining cultural and religious practices in a multicultural society. Some struggle to obtain housing that meets their needs, to find jobs that meet their skill levels, and to succeed in secondary and higher education systems. Somali Experiences In Minnesota Oral history plays a vital role in telling the history of the Somalis in Minnesota. Their stories show the everyday experiences, individual agency, and decision-making processes of Somalis who left their homes in East Africa, journeyed to America, and made new homes in Minnesota. Fortunately, the Minnesota Historical Society has gathered several oral histories from Somalis in Minnesota (quoted below) so public audiences can learn about their experiences. Leaving Home Like many Somalis, Aden Amin Awil and his family fled their home in the early 1990s, when conditions reached a low point. “There was looting everywhere in the cities,” Awil later recalled. “We did not have services, education, health, communication, infrastructure of any kind.” His family and many others sought safety in nearby countries, hoping that the civil war would end quickly. While Awil headed to a city in Ethiopia, others fled to refugee camps in Kenya. There, they received food and shelter, though there were often shortages. Many faced desperate conditions in the camps involving starvation, rape, and violence. Others sought refuge in Nairobi, Kenya, but experienced difficulties there, too. The Somalis in Minnesota represent a cross-section of Somali society—they were teachers, civil servants, nomads, farmers, entrepreneurs, students, professors, and merchants in their homeland. They represent all regions of Somalia. Abdisalam Adam came with a student visa in 1990 and first lived in Washington, DC. “I used to hear about Minnesota as a very cold state, the snow and the ice. […] But, also, I heard that it’s a state that’s very welcoming. Its people are friendly. It has good education. It has very understanding people who, you know, are tolerant of other cultures and values and so on. When I came here, I did find all that to be true.” Mohamed Jama’s family left Mogadishu in the late 1980s as violence escalated. “The country was not stable. There was a fear of young males like me getting recruited to fight against...to be a part of the coup, that is a child soldier. […] My mother did not want to see me end up like that […] she had to find a safer place for her young people to grow up.” Jama’s family fled to Nairobi and in 1992 they were granted resettlement in the United States. Mohamed’s family was one of the first to arrive in Minnesota and settled in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood of Minneapolis. Hared Mah and his family survived several years of the civil war in Somalia but eventually fled to Kenya in 1999. Though they lived in Nairobi, as Somali refugees they faced harsh treatment by Kenyan police and found it difficult to get an education or employment. Mah’s father obtained a visa to the United States, and in 2001 he was able to sponsor Hared, his sister, and his mother, for resettlement in Minnesota. Most Somalis ultimately chose to settle in the Twin Cities because there were opportunities for employment, housing, services and education. Early on, however, some came for jobs in agricultural and meat processing industries, many of which offered entry-level positions and did not require English proficiency. Some of the first Somalis in Minnesota settled in Marshall to pursue employment at a turkey-processing plant. The Cedar-Riverside neighborhood hosts the largest concentration of Somalis in Minnesota and has become a hub for the Somali community because of its many organizations, mosques, and businesses. The Confederation of Somali Community in Minnesota was established in the neighborhood in 1994 and was the first Somali organization to help refugees resettle in Minnesota. Rebuilding Lives Leaving homes in East Africa, traveling thousands of miles, and arriving in Midwestern America could be a bewildering experience. As Saida Hassan, a young refugee, explains, “It was hard for me to come here, and when I stepped off the plane into America I knew that everything was gonna change, I knew that nothing was gonna be the same. It was hard for me, you know, seeing all these different people.” While Somali refugees share experiences with earlier immigrants, many have faced a different adjustment process because they have dealt with multiple traumas; they have survived a civil war, life in refugee camps, and resettlement in a country with very different cultural and religious traditions. Like many immigrants before them, Somalis faced language and cultural barriers when they first arrived in Minnesota. Many arrived with proficiency in multiple languages: Somali, Arabic, and sometimes Swahili, French, or Italian. But gaining English proficiency has been challenging and made the transition to America difficult. As Somali refugee Hared Mah explains, “Everything you need you have to ask for. […] You have to ask someone to translate, so it was kind of like you cannot do anything. You are like a little kid that cannot even speak.” Somali elders have had more difficulties learning English than Somali youth, who are exposed to English at school and through popular media. Because of this language barrier, many Somali elders struggle with isolation, which can be a major obstacle to adjusting to a new culture. Older Somalis also are concerned that Somali youth are losing their Somali language skills. They understand, however, that they are surrounded by English in American society. Somali families have addressed this concern by creating charter schools that cater specifically to the Somali community. Being Muslim in Minnesota Many Somalis see their Islamic faith as an integral part of Somali identity. Somalis make up one of the largest Muslim communities in Minnesota, a state that has been largely comprised of Protestant (especially Lutheran) and Catholic communities for most of its history. When Somalis arrived in the 1990s, many in Minnesota were not familiar with Islam or the religious practices of Muslims. There has been a long period of adjustment as Somalis have sought to educate Minnesotans about Islam and as Minnesotans have gained more familiarity with Muslim religious practices. Somalis have faced barriers to practicing their faith in Minnesota. For example, Muslims are expected to pray five times a day and to fast from sunrise to sundown during the holy month of Ramadan. For many, finding space for the daily prayers while at school or at work is a recurring challenge. In addition, carrying out ablution—the ritual of cleansing one’s hands and feet before daily prayers—requires space and time. This is difficult in a society that is not used to accommodating prayer in schools or workplaces. Muslims are expected to avoid pork and alcohol and to eat foods that are halal (processed according to Islamic law). The number of halal markets and restaurants is growing, but pork remains a staple in the Midwestern diet. Bars and liquor stores form part of the social life of every neighborhood. Muslim women are expected to dress modestly and to wear the hijab, or head covering. Many Somali women choose to wear the hijab but have faced religious discrimination at school, at work, and in public for doing so. Other Somali women have decided not to wear the hijab. Increasingly, Minnesotans have tried to accommodate the needs of Somalis and other Muslims in schools and in the workplace. Many public schools have removed pork from their food menus or have provided options for those students who cannot have pork products. Many schools and workplaces have tried to accommodate the practice of daily prayers by providing space for students and employees to pray during the day. Since the founding of Dar Al-Hijrah, the first mosque in Minnesota, in 1998, the number of mosques has grown to accommodate the growing Somali population. The events of September 11, 2001, impacted people around the world, including Somalis in Minnesota. Fear of terrorism led the US government to scrutinize anything that it believed had connections to the terrorist network Al-Qaeda. Money-wiring businesses in the Twin Cities were closed because of suspicions that they were connected to terrorist groups in Somalia. Many Somalis used these wire transfer businesses to send funds to family members still living in Somalia or in Kenyan refugee camps and did not know about any links to a terrorist network. The possible connection of a wire service to Al-Qaeda, described in a 2001 Minneapolis Star Tribune article, might have even spurred attacks on a few Somalis in Minneapolis. The Somali community was outraged at these allegations and quick to assure the Minnesota community that it did not in any way support the mission of Al-Qaeda. The US government has continued to investigate possible links between Somalis in Minnesota and the terrorist groups Al-Shabaab and Islamic State (ISIS). From 2007 to 2008, approximately twenty young Somali men left Minnesota and returned to Somalia. The reasons they left remain unclear (many think it was to fight against Ethiopian troops), but the young men were recruited to join Al-Shabaab. Recruitment has been an ongoing tragedy for many Somalis in Minnesota as they have struggled with the loss of sons, nephews, and friends while the FBI has investigated the situation. In 2016, nine young Somali American men pleaded guilty to or were convicted of conspiracy to fight for the terrorist group ISIS in Syria. The trial was the largest of its kind in the United States and left the Somali community deeply troubled by the radicalization of Somali youth in Minnesota. Most Somalis strongly disagree with the ideas and practices of violent extremists and terrorist organizations like Al-Shabaab, Al-Qaeda, and ISIS. The majority of Somalis advocate for Islam as a religion of peace. Several Somali faith leaders and organizations have supported de-radicalization initiatives and programs among Somali American youth. Somalis have created their own organizations and networks to help each other navigate their way in Minnesota. They have also used a wide array of social, economic and health resources made available by state, county, and community organizations. Some have begun to purchase homes as they decide to settle in Minnesota. Islamic law, however, restricts Muslims from paying interest on loans, a major obstacle for Somalis who need mortgages to buy a house. A Somali-led organization, the African Development Center, provides interest-free loans for Somalis and other Muslim Minnesotans to start businesses and buy homes. Somali youth are pursuing educational opportunities in many higher education institutions. The Somali Student Association at the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities serves over 500 Somali students on its campuses. Many Somali youth see education as a way to achieving a better quality of life. Many Somali adults could not transfer their degrees or professional training to jobs in the Minnesota economy. Some, however, have participated in the education and health fields as well as the transportation sector. The Somali business community has earned an international reputation for successful, small-scale entrepreneurship. Balancing Cultures As Somalis adjust to their lives in Minnesota, many are concerned about what parts of Somali culture they will hold on to and what parts of American culture they will adopt. But as Maryan Del sees it, “I have two homes—my American home and my Somali home. I have two cultures, two languages. This is part of my life because I grew up having my life here.” There is much concern about a growing divide between Somali elders and Somali youth. Many Somali youth feel like they are combining American and Somali culture. As Mohamed Jama, a Somali youth leader, put it, “Most of our young people are not losing culture, but they are entwining with the culture.” Both Somali elders and Somali youth, however, recognize the importance of Somali cultural preservation. As Sumaya Yusuf, a young Somali woman, explains, “We have to keep that part of our traditions very important to us. I’ll be the first to admit that I can’t speak Somali as well as I would like to. I would love to learn.” As Somalis hold on to their traditional culture, they also embrace opportunities to get involved in American society through joining or creating civic, cultural, and political organizations. Younger Somalis are running for public office. Abdi Warsame joined the Minneapolis City Council in 2013, and in 2016, Ilhan Omar became the first Somali American elected to the Minnesota Legislature. Staying Connected to Somalia As Somalis focus on their lives in Minnesota, they also maintain transnational connections to Somalis living in Somalia and in other parts of the world. Many send remittances to family members that play an important role in Somalia’s economy. Somalis also travel around the world to visit relatives who have been displaced. They maintain connections with other Somalis in the diaspora as they reunite their families and help each other in places like Europe, North America, and Australia. Somalis in Minnesota are deeply concerned with questions of how to unify and rebuild Somalia after decades of political, social, and economic instability. Some have returned to help, while others have participated in rebuilding the nation’s political, social, and economic infrastructure. The Minnesota-based Somali organization Somali Family Services (SFS), for example, built the Puntland Library and Resource Center in northern Somalia. Thousands of people who live in the region use the library, and SFS uses the space to provide trainings and workshops for civil society organizations. Even as they build new lives in Minnesota, many Somalis hope that peace will return to Somalia. Some plan to return. As of 2018, however, the Somali federal government struggles to establish a safe and secure country. The desperate social, political, and economic conditions in Somalia prevent many Somalis from returning there, and many try to bring family members to Minnesota as they decide to make the state their new home.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/ilhan_omar_edited.jpg","topicsTag":[],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/somali-and-somali-american-experiences-minnesota"},{"alt":"Photograph of St. Louis County Courthouse and Duluth City Hall","author":[{"name":"Emma Dill","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/emma-dill"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"February 26, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Jenson v. Eveleth Taconite Co.","postbody":"Lois Jenson and her coworkers Patricia S. Kosmach and Kathleen Anderson filed the lawsuit Jenson v. Eveleth Taconite Co. in 1988, after years of harassment at Eveleth Mines on the Mesabi ...","searchtext":"Lois Jenson and her coworkers Patricia S. Kosmach and Kathleen Anderson filed the lawsuit Jenson v. Eveleth Taconite Co. in 1988, after years of harassment at Eveleth Mines on the Mesabi Iron Range. The case became the first sexual harassment class action tried in US federal court and set a precedent for future harassment trials. In 1975, Lois Jenson became one of the first women employees at Eveleth Mines Forbes Fairlane Plant. Jenson, a single mother, applied because the job paid $5.50 an hour and offered insurance. Male miners saw the women as a threat. They looked at Jenson “like they’d never seen a woman before.” On her second day, a miner told Jenson, “You ... women don’t belong here. If you knew what was good for you, you’d go home, where you belong.” Others subjected the women to unsolicited touching, grabbing, and kissing. Some women were threatened and stalked. Men drew pornographic cartoons on the walls and decorated workspaces with pin-ups. In 1983, a senior engineer sent Jenson a relentless series of suggestive letters. Although she filed a complaint, the mine did little to respond. Jenson had had enough. In 1984, she filed a union grievance and submitted a complaint to the Minnesota Department of Human Rights. In 1987, the state asked Oglebay Norton Company, the mine’s management, to pay $6,000 in punitive damages and $5,000 to Jenson for mental anguish in addition to adopting a sexual harassment policy. When Oglebay Norton agreed to adopt the policy but refused to pay damages, the case moved to the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office and was given to Helen Rubinstein. After hearing the women’s similar experiences, Rubinstein agreed to bring the case as a class action, something that had never been done. Rubenstein had to find women to join Jenson. Though many feared workplace retaliation, Lois found a partner in senior union member Pat Kosmach. Ten months after taking the case, however, Rubinstein became overwhelmed, and Jenson and Kosmach chose Sprenger & Associates (later Sprenger & Lang) to replace her. Paul Sprenger—the only attorney interested in bringing the case as a class action—assigned Jean Boler to the case. On August 15, 1988, Sprenger filed a suit on behalf of Jenson, Kosmach, and a third woman, Kathy Anderson, in the US District Court’s Minnesota district. The filing, Lois E. Jenson and Patricia S. Kosmach v. Eveleth Taconite Co., aimed to certify the case as a class action and obtain an injunction forcing the mine to adopt a sexual harassment policy. Federal District Court Judge James M. Rosenbaum heard the trial, which began on May 13, 1991, in Duluth. In December, he granted class certification but denied the injunction. The remainder of the trial proceeded in two phases. First, a public hearing was held to determine whether Oglebay Norton was liable for maintaining a discriminatory work environment, began on December 17, 1992, before District Judge Richard Kyle. By then, fourteen other women had joined the class. On May 14, 1993, Kyle ruled that Oglebay Norton was liable. He issued the previously denied injunction and ordered the mine to educate employees about sexual harassment and address complaints. Second, a private hearing was held to determine monetary damages. Kyle allowed it to be tried before a special master, appointing retired federal magistrate Judge Patrick J. McNulty. The hearing||s discovery process was brutal. The women had led tough lives, and the mine’s lawyers explored painful personal details during depositions that probed into the women’s sexual histories and childhoods. Jenson and some of the other plaintiffs had developed post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from their experiences. Kosmach, who had been diagnosed with ALS in January 1989, died on November 7, 1994, two months before the trial began. On March 28, 1996, McNulty awarded between $2,500 and $25,000 to each woman. Alarmed by errors they claimed McNulty had committed during the closed hearing, Sprenger and Boler appealed to Kyle. When he refused to act, they appealed to the Eighth Circuit, which rejected McNulty’s ruling and criticized the trial’s drawn-out process. The women and their lawyers prepared for another damages trial, but on December 31, 1998, weeks before the trial’s scheduled start date, the women settled with Oglebay Norton. Exact awards were not disclosed, but they rivaled the damages of other harassment suits.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/st_louis_county_courthouse.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246060,"name":"Crime and Punishment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/jenson-v-eveleth-taconite-co"},{"alt":"Scan of the cover of a 1985 calendar commemorating the 300th birthday of J. S. Bach","author":[{"name":"Robin Gehl","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/robin-gehl"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"February 23, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Bach Society of Minnesota","postbody":"The Bach Society of Minnesota was founded in 1933 by students at the University of Minnesota who wanted to perform music of the great Baroque composer Johann Sebastian Bach. One of the ...","searchtext":"The Bach Society of Minnesota was founded in 1933 by students at the University of Minnesota who wanted to perform music of the great Baroque composer Johann Sebastian Bach. One of the oldest Bach societies in the United States, the ensemble features the timeless music of both Bach and those he inspired. Johann Sebastian Bach died in Leipzig, Germany, in 1750, after a remarkable career. He composed sacred choral music, organ and keyboard music, and other instrumental works, and served as cantor and music director at St. Thomas Church, Leipzig. He wrote hundreds of church cantatas and performed during Lutheran Sunday services. He also composed longer, larger-scale choral works. These include the Saint Matthew and Saint John Passions, Mass in B minor, Magnificat, and Christmas and Easter Oratorios. Bach choirs, festivals, and societies emerged in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when scholars and singers renewed an interest in the composer’s artistry. His works were catalogued and published, inspiring a greater appreciation of the Bach corpus. Professional as well as amateur singers have loved the intricacy, timeless beauty, and profound meaning in Bach’s music and have gathered to perform it for generations. In 2018, several hundred Bach societies, choirs, and festivals exist around the world. They range from Brisbane (Australia) to Budapest (Hungary), and from Pretoria (South Africa) to Palo Alto (California). In 1933, University of Minnesota (U of M) music students of Professor Donald Ferguson suggested that members of two music fraternities, Phi Mu Alpha and Sigma Alpha Iota, prepare a Bach cantata under Ferguson’s direction. They then formed a society and rehearsed before performing at the university for the first time. Prior to Ferguson’s efforts, there had been since 1898 only one major Bach choir in the United States: the Bach Choir of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. The Bach Society, under Ferguson’s direction, met each week for rehearsal. Then, near the end of the year, it held an |||open rehearsal||| to which the public was invited. During April of its first year (1934) the society performed the Mass in B minor. This great work would be repeated many times throughout the history of the Bach Society. A fifty-three-member choir sang that first concert at Northrop Auditorium. Six years later, the society organized a four-evening Bach Festival. The event included a night of instrumental music, an evening organ recital, and two nights of choral works featuring Bach’s Saint John Passion and Mass in B minor. In 1950, nearing age seventy, Ferguson reached the mandatory retirement age for the U of M and retired from the Bach Society. (At the October 1983 ground breaking for a new School of Music building, Ferguson, age 101, was present. The new building was christened Ferguson Hall.) During the 1950s various attempts were made to revive the festivals during a period of transition. In 1959 Dr. David LaBerge, an associate professor of psychology at the university, reorganized the Bach Society into a large chorus of 100 singers and reinstated the annual festivals. Unlike Ferguson, LaBerge performed more than just the music of Bach. In the 1960s and 70s choruses grew even larger when the group performed regularly with the Minnesota Orchestra in Northrop Auditorium. At the time, the venue could seat nearly 5,000 people. When LaBerge retired in 1980, Henry Charles Smith became music director of the Bach Society in addition to serving as resident conductor of the Minnesota Orchestra. During the 1980s both organizations collaborated on annual concerts of Handel’s Messiah. In 1985 the society celebrated the 300th anniversary of Bach’s birth. At the urging of more recent artistic directors, the society reduced the number of singers in keeping with the performance practices of Bach’s time. As a result, only three or four performers sang per voice group of a SATB (soprano, alto, tenor, and bass) choir. Subsequent artistic directors include Paul Oakley, who succeeded H. C. Smith in 1987; Roderick Kettlewell, 1997; Myles Hernandez, 2000; Thomas Lancaster, 2004; Paul Boehnke, 2007; and Matthias Maute, 2016. Under Maute’s direction the society shares its mission to communicate “the depths and passions of Bach’s compositions through period instruments and historic practices.”","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Bach Cover.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/bach-society-minnesota"},{"alt":"Photograph of Women Airforce Service Pilot (WASP) Betty Strohfus, ca. 1940s.","author":[{"name":"Bethany Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/bethany-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"February 21, 2018","eraTag":[],"keydate":"","name":"Strohfus, Elizabeth (Betty) Wall (1919–2016)","postbody":"Elizabeth (Betty) Wall Strohfus fell in love with flying airplanes in the 1940s and became a Women Airforce Service Pilot (WASP) during World War II. She fought for WASP veteran recognition ...","searchtext":"Elizabeth (Betty) Wall Strohfus fell in love with flying airplanes in the 1940s and became a Women Airforce Service Pilot (WASP) during World War II. She fought for WASP veteran recognition in the 1970s, and from the 1990s until her death, she traveled across the country to tell her story and inspire others. Elizabeth Bridget Wall was born on November 15, 1919, in Faribault, Minnesota, to Daniel and Julia Anne Wall. After graduating high school in 1937, she worked at the Rice County Courthouse in the Register of Deeds office. It was there that she met a member of the local Sky Club, who introduced her to flying planes. In 1939, as the shortage of male pilots in World War II worsened, Jacqueline Cochran suggested using female pilots. Cochran, a pilot herself, had competed in air races and later became the director of the WASP program. Thanks to her support, the WASPs were created in 1943 so that women could fly planes at home while men went overseas. Wall joined the WASPs that same year. After meeting the required thirty-five hours of flight time, she went to Sweetwater, Texas, for her training. When the female trainees arrived at Avenger Field in Sweetwater, they encountered many who doubted their abilities and believed women shouldn’t fly. The WASPs set out to prove them wrong. They learned how to train male combat pilots and ferried planes across the country. Wall trained in Sweetwater until February 1944. From there she went to the Las Vegas Army Airfield gunnery school and got a job as an instrument instructor. The WASPs officially disbanded on December 20, 1944. Wanting to continue her flying career, Wall applied for a job at Northwest Airlines, only to be told that women did not fly commercially. From there, she went to air traffic control school in Kansas City and then worked in Nebraska. It was a lonely job, however, and Wall decided to quit. She held several jobs after the WASPs disbanded but was unhappy and returned to Faribault. Soon after, Wall’s old boyfriend Arthur Roberts asked her out, and they were married on December 27, 1947. They had five children in five years. While raising them, Betty worked at the courthouse, volunteered with the Cancer Society, and participated in American Legion Auxiliary activities, among others. Her first husband died in 1969. She later married Francis Langeslag and Martin Strohfus, both of whom died before her. Impacted by her mother’s and sister’s deaths from cancer, Wall worked for the American Cancer Society in New York from 1972 until 1979 and travelled around the country. WASPs didn’t receive recognition for their service for many years. In 1976, newspapers reported women flying military planes in Panama for the first time in history. However, the WASPs knew that they had been first. Many sent letters to congressmen while others, like Wall, went to Washington, DC, to speak out. After many decades without recognition, the WASPs were granted veteran status on March 8, 1979. After being interviewed by teacher Cheryl Young in 1991, Strohfus travelled around the country to tell her story and inspire others. She presented at schools, clubs, museums, and a 1997 banquet for Northwest Airlines, which had rejected her decades before. In April 2001 she was inducted into the Minnesota Aviation Hall of Fame. She died on March 6, 2016, at the age of ninety-six.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/strohfus_1940s.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246053,"name":"Transportation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/strohfus-elizabeth-betty-wall-1919-2016"},{"alt":"Photograph of the interior of Fred Ambs’s saloon, ca. 1890s.","author":[{"name":"Kate Savageau","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/kate-savageau"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"February 12, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Moorhead’s Saloon Era, 1890–1915","postbody":"For twenty-five years, between 1890 and 1915, Moorhead, Minnesota, was infamous for being a rough and rowdy saloon town. The reputation was well deserved, as alcohol sales were the city’s ...","searchtext":"For twenty-five years, between 1890 and 1915, Moorhead, Minnesota, was infamous for being a rough and rowdy saloon town. The reputation was well deserved, as alcohol sales were the city’s number one industry Since the arrival of the first settler-colonists in the Red River Valley in the 1870s, there had been a moral, political, and economic fight in Moorhead between the “Drys,” who wanted alcohol restricted or banned, and the “Wets,” who advocated for alcohol. Their argument echoed a concurrent national debate over the proper place of alcohol in American social life. In 1890, the Drys scored a major victory when North Dakota outlawed alcohol sales. Thirsty North Dakotans simply went across the Red River to Minnesota border towns, where alcohol was still legal. “Let the saloons come,” said Moorhead mayor and brewer John Erickson in 1888. “The more the better it will be for us. They pay more in taxes than anyone else. How many temperance people…pay $500 a year in taxes?” By 1900, Moorhead, had forty-seven saloons and a brewery to serve its population of 3,732 people. One in ten Moorhead families gained its income from the alcohol industry, and saloons were clustered along the two bridges over the river. While most of them were simple places with wooden bars and spittoons on the floor, the North Bridge district became famous for its over-the-top “beer palaces.” John Haas’s Midway boasted 400 electric lights. The Rathskeller over the Rhine had polka bands on an arcaded porch and an international reading room downstairs. The Three Orphans’ Saloon boasted that its forty-eight-foot bar was the longest in the country. A few saloons had their own “jag wagons,” horse-drawn taxis that transported people from Fargo to Moorhead. Many of the saloons were “tied houses”—bars owned by a brewery that served only that brewery’s beer. Duluth Brewing and Malting Company’s saloon was the Rex Hotel. There were enough saloons owned by the Theodore Hamm Brewing Company of St. Paul that part of the South Bridge saloon district was known as Hamm’s Row. With a few exceptions (notably, Anheuser-Busch from St. Louis), most beers sold in Moorhead were made by the regional beer giants of Minnesota and Wisconsin. Saloon owners bought whiskey in bulk and rebottled it under their own labels, such as Pederson Mercantile’s Black Buffalo Rye and Detroit Lake Rye, Jacob Keifer’s Metropolitan, and W. H. Diemert’s 31. While selling alcohol was illegal within North Dakota, North Dakotans could legally purchase alcohol by mail order from Minnesota. Moorhead quickly became one of the largest alcohol distribution centers for North Dakotans, including many who were operating illegal saloons called “Blind Pigs.” Moorhead businesses such as W. H. Diemert & Co. and Pederson Mercantile were primarily liquor wholesalers who shipped much of their product to Dry North Dakota. There was a downside to Moorhead’s saloon industry. According to Moorhead Police records, nearly 75 percent of the arrests in the early 1900s were alcohol related. Arrests spiked during harvest season as thousands of farm hands descended upon the city to spend their paychecks; while in town, they sometimes also fought and were mugged by local gangs. Like crime, political corruption was widespread in 1890s Moorhead. Local business and political leader Solomon Comstock observed, “There were always many Moorhead citizens who were against the liquor traffic, but on the other hand if they took the forty-seven saloons out of Moorhead, what was left? Why[,] liquor was the principal business of Moorhead…Moorhead’s greatest problem was whether to be pure or prosperous.” By 1914, all of Clay County had voted to ban alcohol sales under local option laws except the cities of Moorhead and Barnesville. In 1915, Minnesota State Senator F. H. Peterson of Moorhead introduced “county option” legislation that allowed the whole county to vote on the alcohol issue. On May 17, 1915, the voters of Clay County voted to outlaw alcohol. Moorhead saloons closed with much pomp and fireworks on June 30, 1915, twenty-five years to the day after Fargo’s saloons closed in 1890. Many Moorhead bartenders and saloon owners continued to sell alcohol illegally during Prohibition, and reopened the city’s first legal bars as soon as Prohibition was repealed.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/interior_fred_ambs_saloon.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246079,"name":"Cities and Towns","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/moorhead-s-saloon-era-1890-1915"},{"alt":"Photograph of Hamm||s Beer bank and calendar, ca. 1960","author":[{"name":"Mary Laine","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/mary-laine"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"February 07, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Hamm||s Bear","postbody":"If you were a child in Minnesota during the 1950s and 1960s, one of your early memories may be watching a black-and-white cartoon bear in the Hamm’s Beer television commercials. The Hamm’s ...","searchtext":"If you were a child in Minnesota during the 1950s and 1960s, one of your early memories may be watching a black-and-white cartoon bear in the Hamm’s Beer television commercials. The Hamm’s bear became one of several iconic characters linked to well-known Minnesota products and legends. The popular and award-winning Hamm||s commercials, part of the Land of Sky Blue Waters advertising campaign, featured the clumsy and appealing bear, a catchy jingle, and a drumbeat. Theodore H. Hamm, a butcher in Germany, emigrated to the United States at the age of twenty-eight. In 1856 he moved from Chicago to St. Paul; in about 1865 he acquired the Excelsior Brewery when a friend could not repay the brewery mortgage that Hamm held. Located on Phalen Creek in St. Paul, the brewery expanded through the years and was renamed the Theodore H. Hamm Brewing Company in 1896. Early advertising for the Hamm Brewery included an eagle on items such as metal beer trays, signs, glassware, calendars, and bottle labels. Early graphic art included children, women, and families and claimed that drinking beer could improve health. In the 1930s, following the repeal of Prohibition, newspaper advertisements described the beer as smooth, mellow, and refreshing. In 1945, Campbell-Mithun of Minneapolis became the advertising agency for the Hamm’s company. To extend the beer’s appeal outside of Minnesota and to promote where the beer was brewed, the Land of Sky Blue Waters advertising campaign was created. It featured lakes and waves, the moon and stars, and the north woods, but no humans or animals. A jingle was added with a distinctive drumbeat and the lyrics, “From the land of sky-blue waters, from the land of pines, lofty balsams, comes the beer refreshing—Hamm||s, the beer refreshing. Hamm||s!” The phrase “land of sky-blue waters” is a loose translation of Mni Sota Makoce, a name for the homeland of the Dakota people; the jingle’s lyrics were inspired by Longfellow’s poem “Song of Hiawatha.” Controversy exists about who first “created” the bear. Most agree that the character was born in 1952 at Freddie’s restaurant in Minneapolis at a meeting with Cleo Hovel, creative director for Campbell-Mithun, and Howard Swift, an animator who worked for the California TV production company Swift-Chaplin. Hovel usually gets the credit for drawing the bear on a napkin in response to the idea to add an animal character to the Sky Blue Waters campaign. Throughout the decades, however, many others were involved and credited with drawing the bear and creating the Hamm’s commercials, including Red Lake Ojibwe artist Patrick DesJarlait. An early memorable television commercial featured a birling (log-rolling) bear trying to balance on a log cut down by a beaver. Through the years, the bear, often with forest friends, was the star in many commercials. He was a sportsman and bowled, played hockey and baseball, golfed, skied, fished, and camped. He also was a magician and played the accordion. The commercials were so popular that newspapers printed the television broadcast schedule so fans could watch them. Like other ad campaigns of the 1950s, parts of the Hamm||s campaign that featured the bear drew on racial stereotypes―in this case, of Native Americans. Some TV commercials featured a caricature of a Native man. Most, however, evoked a generic Native “atmosphere” only through the jingle and its vocals. The bear appeared on a wide variety of Hamm’s promotional products, including calendars, playing cards, placemats, napkins, coasters, and salt and pepper shakers. Red Wing Potteries, a Minnesota company, produced a Hamm’s bear bank. Sports memorabilia was popular, with the bear appearing on baseball, football, and hockey team schedules. In 1969, Heublein, then the owner of Hamm’s, ended the Campbell-Mithun advertising contract. With that, the classic bear commercials ended because Heublein wanted to focus on the brewing process and not an animated bear or other wild animals. The cartoon bear returned in the early 1970s to revive the Hamm’s brand, then disappeared. In 1973, a live, male Kodiak bear named Sasha, with his trainer, appeared in Hamm’s advertising. In the same year, a new bear, Theodore H. Bear or T. H. Bear, was introduced but was short-lived. In 2000, Miller Brewing Company—an owner of Hamm’s after Heublein—discontinued using the bear in advertising. Although the bear never drank a beer in a commercial, a controversy had developed about the use of animals and cartoons to sell adult products and their impact on children.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/73.57.37.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/hamms-bear"},{"alt":"Photograph of Hospital Days lunch in the Westbrook Fire Hall","author":[{"name":"Carolyn S. Van Loh","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/carolyn-s-van-loh"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"February 06, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Schmidt Memorial Hospital Auxiliary","postbody":"The Cottonwood County village of Westbrook is home to the smallest hospital in Minnesota: Dr. Henry Schmidt Memorial Hospital. Four months before it opened in January 1951, a women’s ...","searchtext":"The Cottonwood County village of Westbrook is home to the smallest hospital in Minnesota: Dr. Henry Schmidt Memorial Hospital. Four months before it opened in January 1951, a women’s auxiliary officially organized and immediately began gathering supplies for the new facility. In the 1940s, the community of Westbrook in southwestern Minnesota pulled together to fulfill the dream of Daniel Schmidt and his son, Dr. Henry Schmidt, who died during the influenza epidemic of 1918. Even before Henry Schmidt Memorial Hospital opened its doors to patients in January 1951, people banded together to do what they could for the hospital. One such group, the Clara Barton Club, started by area nurses, formed an official Women’s Auxiliary. According to the group’s constitution, its purpose was “to render any assistance to the hospital which may lie within its powers, including the receiving and giving of gifts.” On November 29, 1949, interested women met to form the auxiliary. Any woman living in the area interested in the hospital was eligible to join; annual dues were fifty cents. Some of the first supplies gathered to help reduce expenses included sheets, hand-made pillowcases, and canned goods. The first auxiliary president used a room in her home to store donated supplies until the hospital welcomed patients. The auxiliary was divided into twenty working groups called units. Members paid dues when their units met once a month. All units brought assigned items such as linens, towels, packages of Jell-O, and cans of food to each meeting. Members took their objective seriously and followed strict rules. For example, members who were tardy to a meeting might be fined or required to give a speech to the group. Auxiliary members discovered creative ways to raise funds in their small, rural community. An annual apron-sale event was held for many years. As years passed and the popularity of aprons declined, baked goods and other sweets found their way to the auction block. Women also brought canned goods and baked products to be auctioned off by a volunteer auctioneer. The first auction raised $315.00. The final auction, in 2004, raised more than $2,000. Money donated to the hospital was designated for specific pieces of medical equipment. Auxiliary members worked hard to produce talent contests, variety programs, and one-act plays that raised funds for the hospital. One fundraising event that evolved into an annual gathering called Hospital Days brought people to the community for a good time and good food. Fire trucks found a new home for a few days so auxiliary members could clean and use the old fire hall as a concession stand and eating area. No one went away from Hospital Days hungry. A potato salad with a “secret recipe” was always a big hit at the auxiliary food stand. It accompanied grilled burgers, beverages, and pies made by auxiliary members. Visitors also traveled to the annual celebration to watch a parade and witness young women competing in a pageant for a chance to reign over the weekend’s activities. Westbrook’s celebration of Hospital Days between June 29 and July 1, 2001, was also its last. The hospital had become a part of the Sioux Valley Hospital system; it was no longer an independent hospital, and the auxiliary’s membership continued to decline. Motivation for supporting the hospital dwindled as local support became less necessary. The Westbrook Women’s Club stepped up and continued the annual event. The name was changed to Westbrook Fun Days in 2002. Each year, the club picks a different dollar-amount goal for raising money. Westbrook’s medical facility has the Clara Barton nurses’ group and the hospital’s auxiliary to thank for their support during the hospital||s early years. With regret, the auxiliary’s remaining four members voted in 2006 to make the organization inactive. The ever-popular fundraising social event, the apron auction, also ceased. In 2018, the hospital remains a major part of Westbrook but no longer depends on the donations of local residents to cover its operating costs.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/IMG_5029.jpeg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246087,"name":"Health and Medicine","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/schmidt-memorial-hospital-auxiliary"},{"alt":"Photograph of Bert Onsgard with Billy the deer, Lake Superior Zoo, 1923.","author":[{"name":"Lake Superior Zoo","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/lake-superior-zoo"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"February 05, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Lake Superior Zoo (Duluth Zoo)","postbody":"Since its opening in 1923, the Lake Superior Zoo has evolved into a modern attraction accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) with hundreds of animals from around the ...","searchtext":"Since its opening in 1923, the Lake Superior Zoo has evolved into a modern attraction accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) with hundreds of animals from around the world. Zoo staff work to provide close-up animal experiences that inspire connections to wildlife and action towards conservation in northern Minnesota and around the world. The Lake Superior Zoo (Duluth Zoo) began in 1923 with a pen built by Bert Onsgard for his pet deer. He envisioned a zoo in West Duluth. The Pittsburgh Steel Company donated fencing, local citizens donated exotic animals, and school children raised money to buy a pair of lion cubs. During the Great Depression years, the Works Progress Administration built bridges over Kingsbury Creek and enclosures for the animals. The zoo||s popularity increased in the 1930s and 1940s as more animals made their debut, with some reaching celebrity status. Crowd favorites included Bessie the elephant and Valerie, a Himalayan black bear that flew as a mascot on bombing missions in World War II. An Indian mongoose named Mr. Magoo arrived in Duluth on a merchant ship and caused a stir when it was given to the zoo in 1962. It was illegal to have a mongoose in the United States. The US government ordered the animal euthanized, but public pressure resulted in an official pardon from President John F. Kennedy. The zoo||s exhibits grew to include polar bears, jaguars, a hippopotamus, hyenas, chimpanzees, and other animals. For a time, the zoo served as a polar bear breeding facility. Bison, black bears, and other North American animals became popular attractions. In the 1960s and 1970s, families enjoyed Thornton’s Kiddieland and riding the steam-powered train that ran in Fairmount Park next to the zoo. The 1980s brought a new movement, led by the AZA. Zoos built natural habitats for animals and gave them toys and activities to enrich their lives. The Duluth Zoo||s message grew beyond wildlife conservation to include concern for the environment. With better animal welfare, education, and conservation efforts, the zoo earned its first accreditation from the AZA in 1985. The zoo||s name changed to the Lake Superior Zoo in the mid-1980s to reflect its regional value. In 1987 officials shared a master plan for a modern zoo that required major renovations. The state legislature, the City of Duluth, and citizens invested $7 million dollars in improvements. Projects included natural habitats for large cats and bears and a new Australian exhibit building. The original Elephant House became the Polar Shores exhibit in 1990, housing the zoo||s polar bears, harbor seals, and other arctic animals. In the 1990s, the updated main building contained a new primate exhibit, classrooms, and other features. An observation deck overlooked the Amur tiger exhibit and zoo park. Other new facilities included a snow leopard exhibit, a primate conservation center, and the Willard Munger Animal Care Center to provide modern veterinary care for the zoo||s animals. The zoo lost its accreditation status with the AZA in 2006 but regained it in 2011 after the City of Duluth turned the operation of the zoo over to the non-profit Lake Superior Zoological Society. On June 20, 2012, torrential rains caused Kingsbury Creek to overflow its banks and flood portions of the zoo. Fourteen animals lost their lives. Two harbor seals and a polar bear escaped their exhibits but were recovered. Due to extensive damage to the Polar Shores habitat, the zoo moved the harbor seals and polar bear to Como Park Zoo & Conservatory in St. Paul. The Great Lakes Aquarium in Duluth gave the North American river otters a temporary home. The zoo reopened on July 13, 2012, but visitation and revenue fell. After the flood, the zoo renovated its WPA-era bluestone open-air pavilion into an indoor classroom and special event venue. The city started a new master-planning process that was completed in early 2016. During that time, the zoo moved forward with construction of a new silver fox exhibit, new enclosures for its raptors, and renovation of the two-story primate exhibit. New exhibits featuring Bennett’s wallabies, sugar gliders, and critically endangered turtles opened in the Australia and Oceania building. Grants and donations allowed the zoo to purchase a “Zoomobile” van and other equipment, and expand educational programs.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Onsgard with Billy the deer 1923.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/lake-superior-zoo-duluth-zoo"},{"alt":"Sanford Westbrook Medical Center","author":[{"name":"Carolyn S. Van Loh","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/carolyn-s-van-loh"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"February 02, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"1998","name":"Dr. Henry Schmidt Memorial Hospital","postbody":"Members of the small southwestern Minnesota community of Westbrook worked together and raised money to open a hospital in 1951. Since then, the hospital has seen changes and challenges but ...","searchtext":"Members of the small southwestern Minnesota community of Westbrook worked together and raised money to open a hospital in 1951. Since then, the hospital has seen changes and challenges but continues to meet community health needs as the smallest hospital in the state. Westbrook physician Henry Schmidt and his father, Daniel Schmidt, shared a dream of opening a hospital. Before they could realize that dream, however, Henry died, in 1918, during the influenza epidemic. Daniel died in 1949. Their vision finally came true in January 1951 when the Dr. Henry Schmidt Memorial Hospital opened its doors to patients. Daniel Schmidt had continued promoting the idea of a hospital after his son died. He farmed south of Westbrook and realized the importance of having a hospital close by so that doctors and patients wouldn’t have to travel twenty-five miles or more for medical care. When the retired farmer’s health was failing, he began talking to community leaders about building a hospital, in honor of his son, to benefit the community. In 1943 he drew up a will that included a $21,000 donation for a medical facility. That action motivated leaders to pursue the project. In 1946 and 1947 the Westbrook Commercial Club went forward with plans to build a hospital. Businesses closed for the day on March 6, 1947, when a fund drive began. A temporary board was appointed and functioned until articles of incorporation were completed in June 1947 and a hospital board was organized. Construction started in July 1949, and the final cost was $110,000. Community members dedicated the finished building, Dr. Henry Schmidt Memorial Hospital, on November 26, 1950. One of the honored guests, Hazel E. Schmidt, was Dr. Schmidt’s widow, who had continued to live in Westbrook after her husband’s death. Dr. George A. Earl of the Minnesota State Medical Association delivered the dedication address. He told the attendees that they had acquired the third major community necessity with their hospital. (He placed the church first and the school second.) Schmidt Memorial opened its doors to patients on January 23, 1951. Costs have increased greatly since the first fees were established for the thirteen-bed hospital. In its first year of operations, the hospital charged $7.50 per day for a double room; $12.00 per day for a private room; and $25.00 per case for an operating room. Two major factors contributed to the success of the small, rural hospital. One was the longevity of medical personnel. Dr. Wilmot F. Patterson served the Westbrook area from 1908 to 1933, except for a few years during World War I. Dr. J. V. Carlson practiced medicine from 1932 until his retirement in 1982. Dr. Jeff Cassel arrived in 1980 and is semi-retired as of 2017. The second factor is the quality of the personnel. Specialists from Sioux Falls regularly schedule appointments with their patients at Sanford Westbrook Medical Center. Community support has also been vital to the success of Westbrook’s hospital. Before the building was a reality, people and organizations donated money, supplies, and equipment needed in the future hospital. Nurses formed a local organization named the Clara Barton Club. On November 29, 1949, fifty women interested in contributing to the future hospital met in the local school auditorium. Guided by Clara Barton Club members, the Women’s Auxiliary of the Schmidt Memorial Hospital was born. Both organizations raised funds and gathered hospital supplies. Over the years, the hospital has dealt with, and overcome, challenges. Changing needs, government regulations, and insurance requirements have resulted in adjusting operations to meet demands beyond the hospital’s control. In 1968, when new Minnesota State Board of Health standards denied the small hospital Medicare, the facility faced closure. A letter-writing campaign from area residents, township boards, and even the Cottonwood County Board of Commissioners succeeded in keeping the hospital open. Dr. Schmidt Memorial Hospital has expanded and adapted its policies to meet the needs of area residents. In the process, its name has changed more than once. In 2007 it became known as Sanford Westbrook Medical Center, a name suggesting the purpose of the facility: wellness. Some of the modern equipment has found a home in a former patient room, so the center is licensed for eight patient beds.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Sanford Westbrook Health Clinic.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246079,"name":"Cities and Towns","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246087,"name":"Health and Medicine","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/dr-henry-schmidt-memorial-hospital"},{"alt":"Photograph of the Carson Male Chorus, 1949","author":[{"name":"Elaine E. Kroeker","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/elaine-e-kroeker"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"January 31, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Carson Male Chorus","postbody":"The Carson Mennonite Brethren Male Chorus, known for singing gospel songs in four-part harmony, performed together for thirty years and managed a radio ministry through radio station KWOA ...","searchtext":"The Carson Mennonite Brethren Male Chorus, known for singing gospel songs in four-part harmony, performed together for thirty years and managed a radio ministry through radio station KWOA in Worthington, Minnesota, from October 12, 1947, until December 8, 1963. The Carson Mennonite Brethren Church Male Chorus has its roots in the vision and passion of Jacob D. Wiebe’s love for music. In June 1921, at the age of sixteen, Wiebe attended the dedication ceremony of Mountain Lake Hospital and heard the Bethel Mennonite Male Chorus sing. Deeply impacted by the music, he soon invited his friends Pete Ewert, Frank Woyke, and Ben Friesen into his home to sing. The vigorous choral singing of the German Mennonite Congregation had instinctively taught them four-part harmony, and they formed a quartet. Jacob H. Bartsch later replaced Woyke. Rev. Henry H. Flaming invited the Wiebe Quartet to sing at American Sunday School Union meetings. Other singing engagements included a community Sunday School rally and annual meetings of the Bingham Lake Shipping Association and the Farm Bureau Association. A year later, the Bingham Lake Mennonite Brethren Church (later known as the Carson Mennonite Brethren Church) asked them to sing at a Sunday evening Christian Endeavor program. After several years of singing with the quartet, Wiebe organized a glee club that included about twenty community men. They purchased eight copies of the Clover Leaf Quartet at thirty-five cents per copy and had regular ninety-minute practices. Area churches and organizations invited them to sing. Initially, they sang in German; after younger, non-German speakers joined the group, they sang in English. Wiebe’s community glee club merged with the Bingham Lake MB Church’s male chorus in 1928, and Wiebe was then elected their director. Ben B. Klaassen accompanied them, first on the church pump-organ and then on a piano the men purchased for the church in 1934. The merged male chorus took the name Carson Male Chorus, named after the township where most of them lived. J. D. Wiebe, as he was often called, studied music at Tabor College in Hillsboro, Kansas, and sang in both the college choir and a male quartet. This prepared him for thirty years of choral leadership in both the Carson Male Chorus and the church choir he directed. Lydia Kienitz and Jake Wiebe married on September 2, 1931, in the Bingham Lake MB church with Rev. Jacob H. Ewert and Rev. H. F. Wiens as officiants. The church choir and male chorus, now both directed by Wiebe, sang at the wedding celebrations. During a visit to Reedley, California, the Wiebes attended a local radio station’s live broadcast that inspired them to arrange a similar event in Minnesota. When KWOA Worthington started in 1947, Wiebe visited the manager, Mr. Shephard, requesting a broadcast for the Carson Male Chorus. KWOA invited the singers to broadcast weekly at 4:00 p.m. at a cost of $20 per week, granting one free Sunday each month. October 12, 1947, marked the first of seventeen consecutive years of weekly programming under the name Faith, Hope and Cheer. It included a brief meditation by John A. Wiebe, brother to Jake Wiebe and missionary to India. Subsequent programs included a six-minute meditation by the pastor at the time of broadcast. For several years, the entire chorus group drove to Worthington on Sunday afternoons to record a live program. The Carson Male Chorus’ signature song, “Serve Ye the Lord with Gladness,” opened every broadcast. Every program concluded with the song, “The Lord Bless You and Keep You.” When the Bingham Lake Mennonite Brethren Church moved into a new building in Delft, the congregation officially changed their name to Carson Mennonite Brethren Church. The choir loft area, designed with a recording studio to accommodate the weekly radio broadcasts, allowed for recordings to be made in the church and driven to Worthington at a convenient time. Wiebe mentored young adults in the chorus. As a result of Wiebe’s influence, chorus member Larry Feil became a band instructor at Tabor College, Hillsboro, Kansas, as well as an academic dean. Wiebe continued to lead the chorus until he moved to Hillsboro, Kansas, in 1967. No one replaced him as director and the chorus disbanded. Its final broadcast was held on December 8, 1963.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/CMC1949.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/carson-male-chorus"},{"alt":"Survivors of the Chandler–Lake Wilson Tornado inspect damaged property in the aftermath of the storm, June 1992.","author":[{"name":"Anita Talsma Gaul","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/anita-talsma-gaul"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"January 29, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Chandler–Lake Wilson Tornado, 1992","postbody":"On June 16, 1992, an F5 tornado devastated the towns of Chandler and Lake Wilson in Murray County. It was the most powerful tornado recorded in the US that year and the eighth F5 to touch ...","searchtext":"On June 16, 1992, an F5 tornado devastated the towns of Chandler and Lake Wilson in Murray County. It was the most powerful tornado recorded in the US that year and the eighth F5 to touch down in Minnesota, reaching wind speeds in excess of 260 miles per hour and causing over $50 million in property damage. It was one of 170 twisters that hit the Northern Great Plains during the June 1992 tornado outbreak, one of the largest such outbreaks in US history. The most powerful tornado in the United States in 1992 first touched down around five o’clock in the evening in northwest Nobles County, near the town of Leota. After destroying several rural residences and farm sites, it continued northward to Murray County, growing in size and strength. When the tornado hit Chandler at 5:18 p.m. it was an F5. At the time, meteorologists ranked tornadoes based on estimated wind speeds using the Fujita scale. An F5 tornado was the top of the scale, with wind speeds of 260 to 320 miles per hour. (In 2007 the scale was recalibrated and became known as the Enhanced Fujita scale. On this recalibrated scale, EF5 tornadoes are those with wind speeds greater than 200 miles per hour. However, tornadoes measured on the old scale were not reclassified, so the Chandler–Lake Wilson tornado remains an F5 storm.) The twister that hit the town of Chandler (population 316) was three-quarters of a mile wide, with wind speeds greater than 260 miles per hour. Nearly every structure in the town sustained some sort of damage. Twenty-five homes were completely destroyed and another ninety were severely damaged, as were ten businesses, a church, and much of the Chandler-Lake Wilson (C-LW) High School. After the storm, the high school was rendered unusable. Rather than rebuild, the C-LW school district consolidated with nearby Slayton to form Murray County Central. The remaining portion of the high school building was repaired and sold to Chandler Christian Elementary School in 1993. After striking Chandler, the tornado traveled another five miles north and hit the town of Lake Wilson (population 319). Although by this time it had decreased in intensity to an F4 tornado, it was still a powerful storm. Many buildings were damaged and twenty-nine of Lake Wilson’s 137 homes were destroyed. The tornado decreased to an F2 but remained on the ground for another twenty miles before dissipating in southeast Lyon County, just south of the town of Garvin. In total, the tornado remained on the ground for over an hour, traversing nearly forty miles through three counties. It caused over $50 million in property damage and was responsible for one death and many than thirty injured persons. The storm was part of a massive tornado outbreak on the Northern Great Plains, one of 170 twisters that occurred over a five-day period in mid-June 1992. It was one of the largest tornado outbreaks in US history. The storm also made the record books in Minnesota. It was one of twenty-seven tornadoes that touched down in the state that day, setting a new record. (This record was broken on June 17, 2010, when forty-eight tornadoes hit the state in a single day.) The Chandler–Lake Wilson tornado was the eighth EF/F5 tornado to occur in Minnesota. Less than one-tenth of one percent of all tornadoes in the United States are EF5 tornadoes.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Lake Wilson 1.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246079,"name":"Cities and Towns","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/chandler-lake-wilson-tornado-1992"},{"alt":"Field of hybrid corn, ca. 1945.","author":[{"name":"Vernon B. Cardwell","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/vernon-b-cardwell"}],"categoryTag":[],"date":"January 26, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"1943","name":"Corn Production in Minnesota, 1866–2016","postbody":"The story of the transformation of Minnesota’s landscape from the earliest European immigration to the twenty-first century is a story about corn. Although the yearly increments of change ...","searchtext":"The story of the transformation of Minnesota’s landscape from the earliest European immigration to the twenty-first century is a story about corn. Although the yearly increments of change in production practices and yield were small, their aggregate impact was astounding. They can be broken into three major phases: mechanical, chemical, and biological. Indigenous people, including the Dakota and Ojibwe, grew corn in present-day Minnesota before the arrival of the first European immigrants. In the 1800s, two major events encouraged these immigrants to move to the region to grow corn and other crops. First, the introduction of the steel moldboard plow, developed by John Deere in 1837, permitted the breaking of the dense prairie sod. Second, the passage of the Land Grant Act of 1862 provided access to cheap land. During this period, farmers cultivated one row of corn at a time, by hand. Check-row planting allowed them to cultivate both parallel and perpendicular to the row. To achieve check rows, they planted corn in hills with three or four plants per hill, and with equidistant spacing of hills in the row and between the rows. It saved labor to plant three or four seeds in spaced hills instead of separating holes for each seed. Planting in hills also reduced lodging (stalk breakage from wind damage), to which early varieties of corn were susceptible. It also made hand harvesting easier. Mechanical planters were developed in 1834 but were not widely used until after the Civil War. Farmers continued to prefer the hill-planting method for purposes of cultivation, reduced stalk breakage, and ease in hand picking. Mechanical planters were adapted to drop seeds within rows at spacings of fifteen to twenty inches between hills. Although this eliminated the opportunity to cross cultivate, it provided better stand ability than was achieved by drilling (dropping single seeds). Hybrids and improved plant-stalk strength allowed corn to be “drilled” as single seeds by the late 1980s. Plant density (the number of plants per acre) remained low as long as farmers picked corn by hand. One big ear was easier to pick than several small ears. The advent of hybrid corn (with stronger stalks) and of mechanical pickers favored higher plant densities. The improvement in yield is in part a reflection of the ability of modern hybrids to produce good ears on every plant, even as plant populations have increased to over 30,000 plants per acre. The number of plants per acre has almost tripled since the 1800s. Plant nutrients were initially provided by the mineralization (breakdown) of organic soil matter. The virgin prairie soils averaged 8 to 10 percent. Plowing aerated the soil, allowing micro-organisms to release about twenty pounds of nitrogen per percent organic matter in the soil. Soil fertility was, in part, sustained by a crop rotation of wheat, oats, barley, flax, and hay crops. Oats, barley, and hay crops provided feed for draft animals. After World War II, large quantities of manufactured nitrogen, used in making explosives for the war, became available for farm use. The depleted soils and the new corn hybrids responded well to the manufactured nitrogen. The use of manufactured nitrogen for crop production expanded rapidly in the 1970s and 1980s. Fertilizer use leveled off after the 1980s, however, due to environmental concerns. Time and method of application and the forms of the fertilizer applied increased fertilize use efficiency. Breeding for greater uptake and use by corn plants allowed yields to double from 85 bushels per acre (Bu/A) with ninety-eight pounds nitrogen per acre (N/A) in the 1970s to 170 Bu/A with 125 pounds N/A in the 2010s. During World War II, scientists had also developed herbicides to control weeds in growing crops. In 1946 the herbicide called “2,4D” (2,4-Dicholorophenoxyacetic acid), was the first of its kind available to farmers to kill broadleaf weeds in a grass crop like corn. Another chemical, atrazine (1,3,5-Triazine), became available in 1959. Atrazine controlled broadleaf weeds as well as many common grass-type weeds in corn. After more than fifty years of use, both chemicals still rank among the top corn herbicides. The development of Roundup Ready corn in 1998 made Roundup (glyphosate) the chemical most commonly applied to corn. Roundup effectively controls most common grass and broadleaf weeds as well as volunteer crops at many stages of growth, without injury to corn. Chemical weed control has changed the frequency of mechanical cultivation from three or four times a season to less than one, with many acres receiving no row cultivation. This method saves time, labor, fuel, and soil. Corn had no major insect pests until the European corn borer was introduced into the United States in 1917. It reached Minnesota in the 1940s and by 1948 had spread throughout the entire corn-producing area. Early control efforts focused on burning, shredding, and chopping the stalks as well as plowing during the fall, which buried overwintering larva. As of 2016, annual losses since 1950 are estimated to be 3.5 to 6 Bu/A /year, or about 5 percent annually, even with insecticides. Another insect, the corn root worm (Diabrotica speciosa), is endemic to Minnesota. Losses occur primarily when corn follows corn in the crop rotation cycle as the adult lays its eggs at the base of tasseled corn plants. The eggs hatch only when stimulated by new corn roots the next year. Losses in fields of corn-after-corn averaged up to 7 percent, or about 11 Bu/A. Most of the yield gain in 1996 was due to the planting of Bt corn—a genetically modified organism (GMO) designed to improve pest tolerance. The era of genetics and biotechnology began in the 1870s with research on inbred lines of corn and the recognition that progeny had “hybrid vigor” when crossed. It took until the 1930s to develop a system of seed production called “double crossing” to make seed affordable for farmers. This involved four different inbreds. Inbred A was crossed with B to give single cross, AB. Inbreds C and D were crossed to give a single cross, CD. The single crosses, AB and CD, were crossed to produce a double cross, AB X CD. This development gave rise to our modern seed industry. Minnesota farmers began planting hybrids in the 1920s, and by the mid-1940s, over 80 percent of the corn acreage was planted to hybrids. The average corn yield of the 1940s was 134 percent of the previous decade. Multiple factors contributed to this increase, including the drought of the 1930s. But most research indicates that half of the gain in yield was due to hybrid vigor and improved genetics over the older, open-pollinated varieties. By 1970, virtually all of Minnesota’s corn acreage was planted to hybrids. Improved hybrids, coupled with earlier planting, more fertilizers, herbicides, insecticides, narrower rows, and higher plant densities, boosted state corn yields to 107 Bu/A in the 1980s. Since 1955, annual yield gains have exceeded 1.5 Bu/A, with an increase in corn acreage of 138 percent. Minnesota corn yields have increased by 368 percent to date (2016). The total amount of corn produced in Minnesota has increased from 299.3 million bushels to 1.54 billion bushels—a 440.4 percent increase. Annual yield gains have exceeded 1.5 Bu/A/year over the last fifty years, with an increase in corn acreage of 138 percent. For a person born in 1955, the Minnesota corn yields have increased by 368 percent to date (2016). The total amount of corn produced in Minnesota has increased from 299.3 million bushels to 1520 million bushels—a 508 percent increase.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/SA2.3 p18.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246091,"name":"Agriculture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/corn-production-minnesota-1866-2016"},{"alt":": Garrison Keillor and the Guy’s All-Star Shoe Band on stage at the 2011 Minnesota State Fair before a live performance.","author":[{"name":"Emma Dill","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/emma-dill"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"January 24, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Prairie Home Companion","postbody":"Host Garrison Keillor pushed the boundaries of radio in the 1970s to develop A Prairie Home Companion, National Public Radio’s Saturday-night staple. The variety show’s features included ...","searchtext":"Host Garrison Keillor pushed the boundaries of radio in the 1970s to develop A Prairie Home Companion, National Public Radio’s Saturday-night staple. The variety show’s features included Keillor’s Lake Wobegon monologue, fictional sponsors, music, and dramas. A Prairie Home Companion (APHC) evolved from a live morning radio show hosted by Gary “Garrison” Keillor. When Keillor began hosting for Minnesota Educational Radio (MER) in 1969, he was a freelancer for the New Yorker supporting his family with income from his radio job. The show played classical music, but Keillor introduced rock ’n’ roll and folk. Later, he hosted live musical guests; he introduced a fictional sponsor, Jack’s Auto Repair in Lake Wobegon, in 1971. Keillor’s hosting gigs were sporadic. He took breaks to focus on writing and temporarily left after a manager suggested that his music alienated supporters. The show’s name wavered, too, changing from The Morning Program to A Prairie Home Companion and The Prairie Home Morning Show. Keillor based the names on Prairie Home Cemetery, a graveyard he noticed after giving a reading at Moorhead State University in 1971. Keillor recorded three holiday specials in 1973 and The Minnesota Grain Show in 1974 as experimental previews of APHC. Both programs featured songs, poetry, Jack’s fictional sponsorship, and Keillor “just talking.” As Keillor developed the components of APHC, Bill Kling, president of MER, proposed a “Saturday version of A Prairie Home Companion specializing in live music” in 1973. According to Keillor, however, he did not consider a variety show until he attended the final 1974 Grand Ole Opry performance at the Ryman Auditorium on assignment for the New Yorker. He returned to St. Paul inspired, and APHC debuted on July 6, 1974, from the Janet Wallace Auditorium at Macalester College. Twelve people attended. Nevertheless, the show made the World Theater in St. Paul its home on March 4, 1978. Minnesota Public Radio (MPR, MER’s successor) purchased the World in 1980, renovated it in 1985, and renamed it after F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1994. In 1980, MPR began to broadcast APHC nationally. Satellites allowed stations to broadcast their own shows, shifting National Public Radio (NPR) away from its educational roots with programs like APHC. NPR, however, did not broadcast APHC, fearing its audience was “too regional.” APHC’s increasing popularity prompted MPR to join four other stations in 1982 to found American Public Radio, an alternative national distributor. The show began to travel and in 1981 held its first live broadcast outside of the Midwest. As Keillor||s audience and celebrity grew (he appeared on a November 1985 Time magazine cover), his schedule became overwhelming. In 1987, he ended APHC to “resume the life of a shy person.” The Walt Disney Company televised APHC’s final shows. Keillor moved to Denmark in June 1987 but returned to New York in September. Two years later, he formed the American Radio Company of the Air (later American Radio Company, or ARC), a program mirroring the APHC format. ARC broadcast from Brooklyn using actors from the Broadway Local Radio Theater. After three seasons, ARC moved to St. Paul, and the next year, APHC was reborn. Keillor and voice actors Sue Scott and Tim Russell performed dramas and advertisements for fictional sponsorships, including “Guy Noir, Private Eye,” “The Lives of the Cowboys,” “Beebop-a-reebop Rhubarb Pie,” and “Powdermilk Biscuits.||| Sound effects artists Tom Keith and Fred Newman added sonic color to Keillor’s stories. Keillor’s regular Lake Wobegon monologues evolved from Jack’s fictional sponsorship. Lake Wobegon became central to APHC in 1979, and Keillor began referring to it as his hometown in 1983. As Lake Wobegon evolved, the monologue lengthened from three to twenty minutes. Keillor assembled the Guy’s All-Star Shoe Band, an eclectic group led by music director Richard Dworsky who joined APHC in 1986. Keillor left the music up to the band, often writing “MUSIC” into a script with little elaboration. APHC hosted music legends, including Doc Watson, Willie Nelson, Renee Fleming, and Randy Newman, but the focus was never on popularity. Instead, APHC showcased “musical roots.” In July 2015, Keillor announced his retirement, naming mandolin player Chris Thile his successor. Thile became the permanent host in 2016. Though the show continued, MPR changed its name from A Prairie Home Companion to Live From Here in late 2017 after reviewing allegations of sexual misconduct against Keillor.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/APHC_stage_2011.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/prairie-home-companion"},{"alt":"Wheaties box featuring athlete and Olympic gold medalist Jim Thorpe, 2001.","author":[{"name":"Michael J. Lansing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/michael-j-lansing"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"January 22, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Wheaties","postbody":"The Washburn-Crosby Company first developed Wheaties in the early 1920s and introduced the product to consumers in 1924. Over time, the breakfast cereal changed the milling industry even as ...","searchtext":"The Washburn-Crosby Company first developed Wheaties in the early 1920s and introduced the product to consumers in 1924. Over time, the breakfast cereal changed the milling industry even as it helped to transform American breakfasts. During the 1870s and 1880s, companies such as Pillsbury and Washburn-Crosby harnessed the energy produced by falling water at St. Anthony Falls to make high quality white flour. By the 1890s, they expanded the market for Minneapolis-made flour to Europe and other parts of the globe. Minneapolis’s reputation as the flour-milling center of the world lasted into the early 1920s. Then, the hard spring wheat grown across the Northern Plains that fed the city’s mills became less dependable due to climatic shifts and plant diseases. Collapsing crop prices forced thousands of farmers to diversify. Finally, the Minneapolis millers’ energy monopoly ended with the rise of electrical power. Electricity freed mills from waterfalls and made it possible for rival companies to make flour profitably nearly anywhere. In the early twentieth century, thousands of Americans suffered from constipation, acid reflux, indigestion, and even ulcers. Health reformers insisted that people could improve their digestive health by adding more fiber to their daily meals. Through this advice, breakfast became a primary way to add more bran to one’s diet, and cold cereals made from grains doused in milk offered relief. In the 1900s and 1910s, products such as Grape Nuts and Corn Flakes started replacing meat and eggs on American tables. Washburn-Crosby’s Wheaties, introduced in 1924 as the company’s first non-flour food product, emerged as a response to these intersecting crises. Its eventual success made it a prime example of a new strategy premised on diversification and value-added processing. As the first successful cold cereal product made by a Minneapolis-based milling company, Wheaties represented an effort to expand product offerings and adapt to changing environmental contexts. It also helped transform Washburn-Crosby into General Mills—one of the largest makers of packaged foods in the world. Research on the cereal started in 1921, in response to the interest of a local sanatorium owner who accidentally dropped wheat gruel on a hot stovetop. Researchers failed, however, to develop the idea into a salable breakfast product. Then, in 1922, James Ford Bell put miller George Cormack to work on improving the wheat flake cereal. At the same time, the company invested in a Chicago-based cereal factory. The factory opened in 1923. Its employees drew from the process used by corn flake manufacturers and tried thirty-six different varieties of wheat in various combinations. Eventually, after multiple experiments, they created a physically uneven flake that combined cracked wheat kernels with malt syrup, sugar, and salt. The fourteenth cereal sample finally held up in taste testing and in the package. The company first sold the product as Washburn’s Gold Medal Wheat Flakes. After an employee’s wife won a renaming contest, the cereal was named “Wheaties.” Touting the “right amount of bran” for “proper digestion” as well as the “full food value of the wheat berry” retained in the “whole wheat flake,” salesmen began selling the new product. Sales remained flat despite Washburn-Crosby’s sizable investment. The tide turned only after the company hired a Minneapolis-based barbershop quartet to sing the world’s first radio advertising jingle. On Christmas Eve, 1926, the foursome made their debut on the firm’s WCCO radio, singing: “Have you tried Wheaties? / It’s whole wheat with all of the bran.” Profits slowly began to improve locally. Once executives determined a connection between advertising and sales, the quartet’s catchy rhymes went national. When Washburn-Crosby became General Mills in 1928, the company began investing heavily in advertising all of its products. Intensive radio promotions throughout the 1930s cemented Wheaties’ popularity. General Mills advertised Wheaties during popular serial programs such as Jack Armstrong and The Lone Ranger. Most famously, Wheaties-sponsored radio broadcasts of professional baseball games cemented the product’s association with sports. Player endorsements further ensured its status as “the breakfast of champions.” By 1941, Wheaties made up 12 percent of all breakfast cereal sales in the United States. In the years that followed, General Mills used its experience with Wheaties to develop and market innumerable other cereals even as the product became an iconic American breakfast food.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/2012.131.1.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/wheaties"},{"alt":"Cedar Bog Lake","author":[{"name":"Tom Beer","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/tom-beer"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"January 17, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246048,"name":"1585–1763 (Colonization)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056201,"name":"1754–1800 (Revolution and a New Nation)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056203,"name":"1792–1861 (Expansion and Reform)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":203519472229,"name":"Pre-1585 (Before European Contact)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve","postbody":"Dr. William S. Cooper, head of the botany department at the University of Minnesota, urged a newly formed committee of the Minnesota Academy of Science to purchase part of the Anoka Sand ...","searchtext":"Dr. William S. Cooper, head of the botany department at the University of Minnesota, urged a newly formed committee of the Minnesota Academy of Science to purchase part of the Anoka Sand Plain in 1937. The Cedar Creek Forest was a bit of natural Minnesota worthy of active protection from disturbance, he believed. He and others would help establish and protect what became the Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve, about thirty miles north of the Twin Cities. Named for the creek flowing through it to the Rum River, the Cedar Creek Forest contains lakes, bogs, sedge meadows, marsh, mixed pine and hardwood forests, savanna, prairie, and small farm fields. The retreat of the last glacier about 11,000 years ago created a diverse landscape where three biomes meet: prairie, coniferous forests, and deciduous forests. The area is rich in human history. Native people have lived in and traveled through it for thousands of years. The Dakota and Ojibwe fought a battle at nearby Bethel in Isanti County in 1857. Soldiers from Fort Snelling scavenged the forest and cut down white pine for firewood in the 1820s and 1830s. Much of the area was later sold to the Lake Superior & Mississippi Railroad Company. Although farming was difficult, early settler-colonists planted rutabagas, wheat, and potatoes in the area. Marsh, swamps, and open water were drained for haymaking and the grazing of dairy animals. Scientists began surveying Cedar Creek Forest’s plants, animals, and geology by the late 1920s. Raymond Lindeman’s influential research from 1936 to 1941 at Cedar Bog Lake was encouraged by Dr. Cooper and launched the field of ecosystem science. His work on the flow of energy through food webs proved it was possible to measure the relationships that connect organisms to each other and to their environment. The Minnesota Academy of Science initially purchased 160 acres of the forest, including Cedar Bog Lake, the site of Lindeman’s research. Private citizens also helped. Local resident Cora Corniea invited academy members to her cabin to see the area. She had researched tax-forfeit tracts and would purchase 600 acres herself, most of which she later gifted to the university. The Academy of Science suggested the university take ownership of its holdings in 1940. The university then created a joint agreement on best-use policies and practices with the academy. Representatives from the university, Carleton and Macalester Colleges, and Saint John’s University formed a first advisory committee, with the goal of fostering cross-discipline collaboration at the forest. The University of Minnesota Graduate School would administer the effort. Metro-area development after World War II moved the university to seek funds to acquire and protect more of the forest. It was helped by a significant grant from the Max C. Fleischmann Foundation of Nevada in 1954. Large-scale ecosystem research at Cedar Creek expanded within the forest’s approximately 5,400 acres. By 1960, research included studies of small mammals, the energy of plant communities, and deposits of pollen in peat bogs. Eleven Minnesota colleges and universities held classes, organized field trips, or conducted specialized studies at Cedar Creek. Dozens of scientific papers on reserve-related subjects were published. Hundreds of local, state, national, and international guests visited. Over the next fifty years, Cedar Creek continued to lead in the field of ecology. The use of radio telemetry to track animals automatically was pioneered at there. Controlled burning of abandoned farm fields and oak savanna remains one of the longest-running fire experiments in the world. World-famous long-term experiments in biodiversity, local ecosystem succession, and climate change are ongoing at the site. Citizen-science initiatives, including the Red-Headed Woodpecker Recovery Project, provide opportunities for the community to contribute to scientific research. Cedar Creek has earned national recognition and is part of multiple worldwide science and research networks. Jobs and training opportunities for hundreds of young professionals have been created. In 2017 the Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve celebrated seventy-five years of conservation, research, and education. Scientists, students at all levels, teachers, and the public at large come to Cedar Creek for birding, animal monitoring, citizen-science festivals, book clubs, and biology classes. They gather to look at ferns, stars, wetlands, and other curiosities, and to do world-class ecosystem research.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/photo5.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/cedar-creek-ecosystem-science-reserve"},{"alt":"Water slide with roller rink in the background, Bean Lake Resort, 1929","author":[{"name":"Carolyn S. Van Loh","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/carolyn-s-van-loh"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"January 16, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Bean Lake Resort","postbody":"Bean Lake Resort, a forerunner of twenty-first-century theme parks, was a popular entertainment destination from the early 1920s to 1947. People from areas around the lake in northwestern ...","searchtext":"Bean Lake Resort, a forerunner of twenty-first-century theme parks, was a popular entertainment destination from the early 1920s to 1947. People from areas around the lake in northwestern Cottonwood County gathered there to enjoy band concerts, water activities, roller-skating, and other activities. P. H. (Peter Henry) Peterson added an amusement park to his farm on the southern shore of Bean Lake, a few miles northeast of Westbrook, around 1920. Bean Lake Resort quickly became a popular destination for all ages after it opened to the public in the early 1920s. The trail to the resort passed through the Petersons’ cattle yard. When the resort was open, the cattle were locked out of the yard and the gates were left open for resort visitors. The completed lakeside center provided a large water slide, bath houses, a 14-by-108-foot enclosed roller rink, and space for ball games. Water activities available included a tall water slide, boating, fishing, and swimming. People who came unprepared for swimming could rent wool bathing suits from the resort. Henry’s sons, Ernie and Albert, ran the resort in the 1930s and 40s. Their sister Rose fried burgers in a food stand. An evening at the roller rink cost skaters about $0.25; the cost included a skating entry fee and rental fee for clip-on skates. The resort drew large crowds for band concerts on Sunday afternoons, creating deserted streets in nearby Westbrook. People sometimes drove long distances to spend the afternoon at the resort and to hear performances from local bands. Water activities were not possible during the summers of 1936 and 1937 because the lake was completely dry. People of all ages appreciated free entertainment during the Depression years, but after World War II, the atmosphere changed. Visitors tended to be rowdy. Henry Peterson closed the resort in 1947 and tore down the roller-skating building. Laura Peterson Byers (P. H. Peterson’s granddaughter, who was a young child when the resort closed) made family scrapbooks for her two children. She included photos, articles, and personal memories of her family’s colorful history related to the resort. Her son Bruce Byers, his wife, Paula, and their three children live on the Peterson farm. They can still see reminders of earlier days when their farm was the center of attention. Bruce is proud of a sturdy wooden toboggan people used to descend the tall water slide. The resort was more than a place for recreational activities. Lasting friendships and relationships began there. Bruce’s grandparents, Hilda and Harvey Byers, lived close by. They had their first date at the roller rink. Bruce said that, until the early 2010s, strangers might stop in at their farm and ask to visit the site of the resort, a place where they had enjoyed memory-making activities. The lake is named after Joseph F. Bean, the first homesteader in Cottonwood County after the US–Dakota War of 1862. He served in Company F of the Second Minnesota Volunteer Cavalry. In 1864 he traveled with a squad of soldiers who were scouting westward toward Lake Shetek. One night he and the other soldiers stayed on the north side of the lake. In 1866 Mr. Bean returned, visited the nearest land office, and claimed 171.95 acres by the lake. He moved his family there three years later. Oral tradition says that most of the Bean family moved farther west prior to 1885 because Joseph wanted to live in the open spaces instead of having people around him. He found a home in Montana, where he died in 1911.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/IMG_4961-water slide.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246054,"name":"Sports and Recreation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/bean-lake-resort"},{"alt":"Card advertising Ole Alesen’s Brewery in Moorhead, 1900. From the Fargo and Moorhead Directory―1900 (St. Paul: Pettibone Directory, 1900), 222.","author":[{"name":"Nicholas Miller","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/nicholas-miller"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"January 10, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Moorhead Brewing Company","postbody":"The struggles and ultimate failure of the Moorhead Brewing Company, which operated between 1875 and 1901, reflect Minnesotans’ changing attitudes toward alcohol in the late nineteenth ...","searchtext":"The struggles and ultimate failure of the Moorhead Brewing Company, which operated between 1875 and 1901, reflect Minnesotans’ changing attitudes toward alcohol in the late nineteenth century. The nineteenth century was an exciting time for American family brewers. Saloons were thriving, small businesses were booming, and brewers used local ingredients, which attracted loyal customers. But one brewery in Minnesota struggled to find long-term success. In the Red River Valley, the Moorhead Brewing Company would change ownership three times before permanently closing its doors. The Moorhead Brewing Company was founded in April 1875, by George and Joseph Larkins, two brothers from Winnipeg, Manitoba. Moorhead was a desirable location for a brewery because the Red River Valley offered plenty of water and farmland for local ingredients. The city was also attractive since it faced little regional competition. Most of Minnesota’s beer was produced more than 200 miles away from Moorhead, in Minneapolis and St. Paul. Although Moorhead was across the Red River from Fargo, that city did not present competition because it was in North Dakota, which regulated alcohol. Despite these advantages, the Larkins did not achieve success with their brewery. The reasons for their failure are unclear. One factor may have been that the brewery did not offer lager, the beer of the times. As American immigrants moved westward, a temperance movement sprang up. After a resulting backlash and increase in criminal activity, Prohibition advocates searched for a compromise. They found one in America’s German immigrants, who were hard-drinking but otherwise respected. Americans believed that German beer, known as ‘lager,’ was non-intoxicating, so both lawmakers and average Americans approved of the drink. Lager also had a longer shelf life than other beer and was more stable for transport. Although lager’s brewing process was relatively complicated, by the time Moorhead Brewing Company opened in 1875, Americans preferred lager over any other beer. The brothers, however, could not make lager when they first opened for business because they did not arrive in Moorhead until the spring. They were too late to cut winter ice for their brews, which was required for making lager. This forced the Larkins to brew ales at first. Another problem was that their beer wasn’t high quality. The Moorhead Red River Star reported, “The Larkins’ beer by some is preferred to the impure article frequently shipped from St. Paul to country dealers” The brothers’ business collapsed within a year and the brewery was foreclosed and sold at auction. In 1876, John Erickson took over the business, and he offered lager. Erickson, a Swedish immigrant to Moorhead, was a skilled businessman. He ran a hotel owned a dry goods store and up to three thousand acres of farmland; he also served two terms as Moorhead’s mayor. Erickson’s brewery was never a large success, but it managed to run on and off for nearly twenty years. It operated seasonally, employing between six and twelve employees from winter to summer. At maximum capacity, the brewery could produce 4,000 thirty-one-gallon barrels a year. In 1881, Moorhead experienced an economic downturn, and the brewery faced sale at a sheriff’s auction at least twice. That same year, Erickson hired Fred ‘Fritz’ Wachsmuth, an experienced German brewmaster. In 1884, Erickson fired Wachsmuth and hired a new brewmaster. A few days later, Wachsmuth committed suicide near the brewery. By 1895, Erickson’s business prospects had collapsed. Fargo National Bank foreclosed the brewery that same year. In the spring of 1897, Ole Aslesen bought the brewery. Aslesen was the former co-owner of the Fargo Brewing Company in Fargo. After North Dakota voted to ban alcohol sales, Aslesen built a saloon and beer warehouse across the river in Moorhead, then moved his entire enterprise over to the Moorhead brewery. Aslesen, along with his son Albert, operated the brewery for another four years, making improvements and introducing regular production. In August of 1901, disaster struck at 10:55 PM, when the brewery was reported burning. By 11:30 PM, Aslesen arrived to find his business a smoldering ruin. With insurance only covering $3,000 out of the $10,000 business, Aslesen was forced to retire from brewing, and the Moorhead Brewing Company came to an end.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Aslesen Ad 1900 001.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/moorhead-brewing-company"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of a shipbuilding crew at Port Cargill, Savage, ca. 1941.","author":[{"name":"William Ellis","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/william-ellis"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"January 08, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Savage Shipyard","postbody":"In 1942, the US military re-purposed the Cargill shipyard at Savage to produce ships to serve in World War II. By the end of the war, the Savage shipyard had produced twenty-two ships. In ...","searchtext":"In 1942, the US military re-purposed the Cargill shipyard at Savage to produce ships to serve in World War II. By the end of the war, the Savage shipyard had produced twenty-two ships. In 1975, many of these were scrapped, but some eventually saw service overseas. The Navy’s decision to build ships at Savage was a consequence of the skill of local shipbuilders. Shipbuilding in northern Minnesota was a tradition that dated back to the early 1870s. Prior to World War II, Cargill, Inc. had become known for building large barges to haul grain. This reputation, combined with the large local labor pool, prompted the Navy to select Savage as the site for a new military shipyard in 1942. The shipyard was also chosen for its strategic location, which protected it from foreign attack. Even so, there was a constant military presence at Savage, including FBI agents to monitor security. In order to handle the new, larger ships that would be constructed at the shipyard, the Minnesota River had to be dredged. The river was normally only 3.5 feet deep, but it was dredged for fourteen miles to a minimum depth of nine feet. This work cost $250,000. The shipyard’s original contract stipulated that just six ships would be built at the site. However, by 1945, Savage employed 3,500 people during peak times, and workers had built eighteen ships and four tugboats. Most of the ships built at the yard were Patapsco-class auxiliary oil and gas carriers (AOGs). These large ships had crews of 131. They were 310 feet long and forty-eight feet wide, with a draft of fifteen feet. They could carry a large amount of fuel and ammunition—up to 1,880 tons—and cruise at 15.5 knots. The yard’s first ship, named the USS Agawam, was laid down in 1942 and launched the next year. Once the ships left Savage, they sailed down the Mississippi River to New Orleans, where they were fitted with their final equipment. Then they sailed out to the South Pacific. The type of aluminium (6061-T6) used for welding rivets on the tankers was later used to repair corrosion on F-16 airplanes and build receivers for contemporary rifles like the AR-15. The wartime labor shortage led to women being allowed to work in shipyards for the first time, and they made up a quarter of the workforce at Savage. The ships were launched publicly, to increase morale. At one such event, five identical sisters launched five boats simultaneously. The internationally famous young women were the world’s first surviving quintuplets, and the event drew some 15,000 people. Savage was one of several plants set up by the military during World War II. There were six yards in the area, and together they produced more than 230 ships for service. The most notable yards were Marine Iron and Shipbuilding, Inland Waterways, Zenith Dredge Company, Scott-Graff Lumber Company, and Industrial Construction Company. After the war, with military contracts drying up, the yards were converted to build civilian ships. Even so, many closed, and the Savage yard was used for the shipping of grain. Hundreds of trucks now visit the site every day to haul away the corn, wheat, and soybeans grown in Minnesota. The ships made at Savage had long and colorful careers. Many served in the US Navy for years, supplying fuel and ammunition during the Korean and Vietnam Wars. The USS Kishwaukee had a particularly long military life, supporting other ships in Okinawa and then delivering fuel for Navy planes in Vietnam. In 1975, with the ships showing signs of their age, most were scrapped. However, a handful were transferred to other navies around the world, and some saw service in the Greek, Colombian, and Taiwanese Navies. The USS Nemasket was the last to be scrapped by the US Navy, in 2006. The USS Pecatonica and the USS Elkorn served the Taiwanese Navy until 2008. In the 2010s, the Savage yard is the subject of much historical interest. Emma Weisner, a student at St. Louis Park High School, represented Minnesota in 2013 at the opening of a new pavilion at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans by presenting her historical work on the Savage shipyard and others near it.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/HE5 5 m1_Shipbuilding crew.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246053,"name":"Transportation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/savage-shipyard"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of a starving farm family who appealed for aid, Hollandale, Freeborn County, 1929.","author":[{"name":"Linda A. Cameron","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/linda-cameron"}],"categoryTag":[],"date":"January 05, 2018","eraTag":[],"keydate":"1910","name":"Agricultural Depression, 1920–1934","postbody":"Minnesota farmers enjoyed a period of prosperity in the 1910s that continued through World War I. Encouraged by the US government to increase production, they took out loans to buy more ...","searchtext":"Minnesota farmers enjoyed a period of prosperity in the 1910s that continued through World War I. Encouraged by the US government to increase production, they took out loans to buy more land and invest in new equipment. As war-torn countries recovered, however, the demand for US exports fell, and land values and prices for commodities dropped. Farmers found it hard to repay their loans—a situation worsened by the Great Depression and the drought years that followed. The onset of World War I in 1914 sparked an economic boom for farmers in the United States. Demand for agricultural products soared as the war-ravaged countries of Europe could no longer produce needed supplies. This created a shortage that drove up prices for farm commodities. In Minnesota, the season-average price per bushel of corn rose from fifty-nine cents in 1914 to $1.30 in 1919. Wheat prices jumped from $1.05 per bushel to $2.34. The average price of hogs increased from $7.40 to $16.70 per hundred pounds, and the price of milk rose from $1.50 to $2.95 per hundred pounds. To meet the demand, the US government encouraged farmers to produce more. In 1916, Congress passed the Federal Farm Loan Act, creating twelve federal land banks to provide long-term loans for farm expansion. Believing that the boom would continue, many farmers took advantage of this and other loan opportunities to invest in land, tractors, and other new labor-saving equipment at interest rates ranging from 5 to 7 percent. By 1920, 52.4 percent of the 132,744 Minnesota farms reporting to the Agricultural Census carried mortgage debt, totaling more than $254 million. After the US entered the war in 1917 and continuing into the post-war years, 40 million acres of uncultivated land in the US went under the plow, including 30 million acres in the wheat- and corn-producing states of the Midwest. In Kittson County alone, wheat acreage increased from 93,000 acres prewar to 146,000 acres. Minnesota farmers had nearly 18.5 million acres under cultivation by 1929. The demand for land inflated the price of farm real estate, regardless of quality. The average price of Minnesota farm land more than doubled between 1910 and 1920, from $46 to $109 per acre. After the end of the war, relief efforts kept the demand for US agricultural products high. Gross exports of all grains in 1918–1919 totaled 525,461,560 bushels. During that period, the US shipped more than 2.9 billion pounds of pork, 1.1 billion pounds of beef, and nearly 8.8 million pounds of dairy products to allied countries, various relief programs, and American Expeditionary Forces overseas. Farmers continued to produce more, expecting demand and prices to remain stable. As Europe began to recover from the war, however, the US farm economy began a long downward trend that reached a crisis during the Great Depression. Minnesota farmers|| gross cash income fell from $438 million in 1918 to $229 million in 1922. In 1932, it fell to $155 million. With heavy debts to pay and improved farming practices and equipment making it easier to work more land, farmers found it hard to reduce production. The resulting large surpluses caused farm prices to plummet. From 1919 to 1920, corn tumbled from $1.30 per bushel to forty-seven cents, a drop of more than 63 percent. Wheat prices fell to $1.65 per bushel. The price of hogs dropped to $12.90 per hundred pounds. As surpluses mounted, the federal government promoted lowering production. It also created programs designed to help stabilize prices. The goal was to achieve parity – to bring prices back to prewar levels and equalize the prices farmers received with the prices they paid for goods. The passage of the Capper-Volstead Act on February 18, 1922 legalized the sale of farm commodities through farmer-owned cooperatives. Co-ops cut out the middlemen who often underpaid farmers for their products. Congress passed the Agricultural Appropriations Act later that year, creating the US Bureau of Agricultural Economics for economic research. Foreign trade restrictions, such as the Fordney–McCumber Tariff (1922) and the Hawley–Smoot Tariff (1930), imposed high taxes on imports in an attempt to protect US farms and industry. International trading partners reacted by increasing import fees on American goods. US export of farm products declined, surpluses grew, and prices continued to drop. In 1932, Minnesota corn prices fell to twenty-eight cents per bushel, wheat dropped to forty-four cents per bushel, and the price of hogs fell 75 percent to $3.20 per hundred pounds. With less demand for land, real estate values plunged to an average of $35 per acre by the late 1930s. Farmers struggled to repay loans for land that had lost its value. Rising property taxes, freight rates, and labor costs added to the financial hardships facing many farmers. In Minnesota, the average tax per acre increased from forty-six cents in 1913 to $1.45 in 1930. The west-central counties of Minnesota suffered from the severe drought conditions of 1933–1934. A combination of poor farming methods and drought caused extensive soil erosion. A grasshopper infestation compounded crop losses in many western counties. Farmers across the country began to default on their loans. An estimated sixty of every 1,000 farmers in the US either lost their farms or filed for bankruptcy. From 1926 to 1932, 1,442 farms totaling 258,587 acres were lost to foreclosure in Minnesota. Marshall County had the highest number of foreclosures during this period with 191. It was followed by Kittson County with 127 and Pennington County with 123. From 1922 to 1932, 2,866 Minnesota farmers declared bankruptcy. In spite of the hardships, Minnesota||s rural population increased during the 1930s. Many who lost farms to foreclosure remained on the property as tenants. Others moved from urban areas to the country. On July 29, 1932, farmers met in St. Cloud to organize the Minnesota Farmers Holiday Association. Members staged a thirty-day strike to call a moratorium on foreclosures. The following April the state legislature passed a bill declaring a state of emergency for Minnesota farmers and approving a mortgage moratorium. Congress passed several farm relief measures in 1933. The first Agricultural Adjustment Act established the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) and gave it the power to pay subsidies to farmers who voluntarily reduced production. The Federal Emergency Relief Act (FERA), the forerunner of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), provided relief for both urban and rural residents through work projects. The Resettlement Administration (RA), begun in 1935, moved 300 families from poor quality land in northeastern Minnesota to better farms through programs like the Beltrami Island Project. The RA was replaced by the Farm Security Administration in 1937. The Supreme Court ruled in 1936 that the AAA was unconstitutional and suspended farm subsidies. Congress, in turn, responded with the Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act. In 1938, a second AAA bill passed that controlled crop production through acreage allotment and soil conservation. By December 1934, 18 percent of Minnesota||s total population was on some form of relief and had received a total of $67,619,854 in benefits. From 1933 to 1936, rural and urban residents in seventy-seven Minnesota counties received federal aid payments. By the late 1930s, the US farm economy finally began to improve.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/MNopedia/MNopedia%202026/Agricultural%20depression%20rescans/E440%20p13_resized.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246091,"name":"Agriculture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/agricultural-depression-1920-1934"},{"alt":"Color image of Immanuel Baptist Church, 2017.","author":[{"name":"Carolyn S. Van Loh","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/carolyn-s-van-loh"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"January 03, 2018","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Immanuel Baptist Church, Westbrook","postbody":"The European immigrants who moved into southwestern Minnesota in the mid-1800s brought their religious faiths with them. The founders of Immanuel Baptist Church in Westbrook (Cottonwood ...","searchtext":"The European immigrants who moved into southwestern Minnesota in the mid-1800s brought their religious faiths with them. The founders of Immanuel Baptist Church in Westbrook (Cottonwood County) moved into the first church building erected in the village after the members of that original congregation moved on to other areas, leaving the building vacant. Immanuel Baptist Church traces its origin to the grasshopper plagues of the 1870s. The Danish Baptist Church of Clarks Grove, a few miles north of Albert Lea, gathered provisions for people in Cottonwood County who were struggling with the grasshopper disaster. The Danish Baptist Church commissioned two men to deliver the supplies to settler-colonists living in the future Storden area. Upon their arrival, the two men provided for the community’s physical and spiritual needs. On July 12, 1879, a group of local Baptists organized First Scandinavian Baptist Church and called J. M. Nelson, one of the men who had come from Clarks Grove, to be their pastor. The arrival of the Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis, & Omaha Railway motivated the congregation to dismantle their place of worship around 1899 and rebuild closer to the Currie Line Railroad. Settler-colonists living closer to the newly incorporated village of Westbrook, five miles west of Storden, preferred to worship in Westbrook. In 1901 the village of Westbrook donated a plot of land for a new Baptist congregation and erected a church building. Mr. Hubbell, a farmer living south of the village, donated $500 to build the structure. A group of Baptists used the money to build Calvary Baptist Church at the corner of Sixth Street and Ash Avenue. About five years later the congregation disbanded when several families moved from the area. The Baptists east of Westbrook held services in homes until September 6, 1908, when they called a meeting to organize a congregation. Two months later the group met at the former Calvary Baptist Church with the intent of purchasing the building. On November 17, 1908, twenty-two charter members (eighteen from the Storden church and four from Calvary) celebrated the founding of Immanuel Baptist Church. Mr. and Mrs. O. C. Andersen and Mr. and Mrs. Walter Larson from the former Calvary Baptist Church joined with ten couples who chose to worship in Westbrook rather than Storden. Settling on a meaningful name for the new Baptist church posed a major challenge to the small group of worshipers. They chose Immanuel because the word means “God with us.” Rev. N. H. Byers answered the unanimous call to be the church’s first pastor. He served in that capacity until 1915, when he moved to a new ministry. Grandchildren and great grandchildren of Pastor Byers still live in the Westbrook area as of 2017. Ten men served as pastors of Immanuel Baptist from 1908 until 2004, when Rev. Robert Adams began his ministry. Many changes implemented over the years enhanced the 1901 building. In 1913 the first addition involved digging a basement, adding a bell tower, and installing a furnace and a baptistry. A thirty-two-by-twenty-six-foot addition, including a new kitchen, was added in 1948. The building grew with the addition of an educational wing in 1969. In the same year, the congregation updated the auditorium. In 2001 a major building project added facilities for Westbrook Christian Day School, which had opened its doors to ten students on September 5, 1978. The large classroom on the first floor and activity center in the basement of the new addition met the needs of the growing school. Church members sacrificed time and finances so students could receive their academic training from a biblical perspective. Enrollment reached a peak of forty students, but the school closed in 2006 because of falling enrollment. In 2017, Immanuel Baptist Church continues ministering to the Westbrook area and supports ministries around the world. Once a month, Sunday worship services appear on the local TV cable channel. People whose lives have been impacted by the church’s ministry are scattered from coast to coast in the United States as well as on the continents of South America, Europe, and Asia.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Immanuel Baptist Church 2017.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246089,"name":"Religion and Belief","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/immanuel-baptist-church-westbrook"},{"alt":"Color image of the reenactment of courthouse battle during the Murray County sesquicentennial celebration, 2007.","author":[{"name":"Anita Talsma Gaul","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/anita-talsma-gaul"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"December 28, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Murray County","postbody":"Murray County was established in 1857 and formally organized in 1872. Although Currie was the original county seat, the city of Slayton won a contentious battle for that title in 1890. ...","searchtext":"Murray County was established in 1857 and formally organized in 1872. Although Currie was the original county seat, the city of Slayton won a contentious battle for that title in 1890. Agricultural production has been (and continues to be in the twenty-first century) the county’s primary industry. The area established in 1857 as Murray County by the Minnesota Territorial Legislature is a thirty-by-twenty-four-mile rectangle consisting of 720 total square miles in southwest Minnesota. It was named after William Porter “Pitt” Murray, a member of the Territorial House of Representatives. Archeological evidence confirms the existence of people in the area during the Late Prehistoric Period (1000–1700 CE). Named for the excavation site that yielded evidence of an early settlement, the Great Oasis People occupied a small woodland area surrounded by a complex of lakes in the northwestern corner of the county. The fate of this group is unknown, and the region appears to have been abandoned by 1200 CE. By the time the first white people arrived in the area, the Sisseton and Wahpeton Dakota were its primary inhabitants. In 1831 Philander Prescott was the first European to visit. In 1832, the American Fur Company established a trading post at the Great Oasis site, which Métis trader Joseph LaFramboise managed from 1833 to 1838. The first white immigrants in the county lived around Lake Shetek. When the US–Dakota War began in August 1862, the small settlement at Lake Shetek was drawn into the conflict when a small band of Dakota warriors attacked on August 20. Fourteen immigrants were killed, and the rest either fled or were taken prisoner (all were subsequently released). White immigrants were slow in returning to Murray County. The 1870 census indicates the presence of 210 persons. But the trickle of newcomers soon became a flood. In 1880 there were 3,604 people living in the county, and by 1900 there were 11,911 persons. Many of these were New England Yankees, but there were also Scandinavians, Germans, and Canadians of French or Scotch ancestry. Immigration increased with the establishment of two Catholic colonies. The first was Avoca (which included the towns of Iona and Fulda), founded in 1878 by Bishop John Ireland through the Catholic Colonization Bureau. The second was the Sweetman Catholic Colony in Currie, founded in 1881 by John Sweetman and the Irish-American Colonization Company. The colonists were primarily of German and Irish origin. As the population grew it became necessary to formally organize the county. In 1872 the county was platted, the first five townships organized, and commissioners elected for the first time. Currie, the county’s first town, was designated the county seat. An additional fifteen townships (for a total of twenty) were organized over the course of the following decade. Besides Currie (1872), Avoca (1878), Iona (1878), and Fulda (1881), another seven towns were founded in the county: Hadley (1879), Lake Wilson (1883), Chandler (1886), Slayton (platted in 1881, incorporated in 1887), Lime Creek (1888), Dovray (1904), and Wirock (1909). The arrival of two railroad lines in 1879 promoted immigration and development of the county. Most of the county’s towns founded in the 1880s and early 1900s originated as depots along these routes. A third terminal branch line that ended in Currie was completed in 1900. In 1886 a petition was filed to relocate the county seat and courthouse from Currie to Slayton, marking the beginning of a contentious four-year battle. After a series of public petitions, elections, and court cases, the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled in favor of removing the county seat to Slayton in June 1890. The number of farms increased along with the growing population. Agricultural production has been (and continues to be) the county’s primary industry. In 1870 there were just fifteen farms totaling 2,407 acres. By 1900 there were 1,713 farms totaling 385,061 acres. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, wheat was the primary crop, along with oats and barley. Corn replaced small grains as the county’s primary crop in the 1920s. Soybeans, which first appear as a Murray County crop in the 1930 US Agricultural Census, were the county’s second major crop by the mid-1960s. Increased agricultural production was made possible partly through the large-scale drainage of the county’s wetlands in the early twentieth century. In about 1904 farmers filed the first petition requesting the construction of county ditches that would drain wetlands in order to put more land into agricultural production. This initiated a twenty-year period of intense ditch digging, resulting in the draining of nearly 40,000 acres of wetlands in the county. Population continued to increase in the twentieth century, peaking in 1940 with 15,060 residents. New businesses expanded the county’s economic base. These included the Des Moines River Cement and Tile Works (known as the Phelan Tile Factory) and the Silvernale Tile Factory in Currie, Huisken Meat Center (now Monogram Foods) in Chandler, and the short-lived Slayton Boat factory in the 1950s. The US Air Force operated the Chandler Air Base from 1951 to 1969. Teepeotah Resort and Valhalla Island resort on Lake Shetek attracted tourists from the 1890s onward. Changes in agriculture prompted changes in the economy and demographics of Murray County as the twentieth century progressed. Mechanization and technological advances, improved livestock breeding, as well as the development of hybrid seeds, crop genetics, fertilizers and pesticides resulted in increased agricultural production. Farmers became more specialized, resulting in increased efficiency. Hog confinements, beef feedlots, and large-scale dairy operations replaced small, diversified farms. The size of the average farm increased in size from 210 acres in 1940 to 339 acres in 1992. While the size of the average farm grew, the number of actual farms declined and with it the number of farmers. The number of farms peaked in 1940 with 2,100. By 1974 that number had fallen to 1,228 and by 2012 it was just 895 total farms—about half as many as there had been in 1940. From its peak of 15,060 residents in 1940 the county’s population also began a slow but steady decline, losing from a few hundred residents to a few thousand per decade. In 2010, the county’s population was 8,725. A shrinking number of students prompted the realignment of the county’s school districts through closures and consolidation. Most one-room schools closed in the late 1950s and students bussed to schools in nearby towns. All four of the county’s Catholic schools—in Iona, Fulda, Avoca, and Currie—closed as well. In 1992 a tornado extensively damaged the Chandler-Lake Wilson High School, resulting in the district’s consolidation with Slayton and the creation of Murray County Central school district. As of 2017, two private and two public elementary schools and two high schools (Fulda and Murray County Central) remain. The late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries brought more changes to Murray County. Its population has become more diverse. In 2016, just over 5 percent of the county’s residents were of Latino or Hispanic origin. Agriculture continues to be the main industry, but there are other businesses as well, including Finley Engineering and the Murray County Medical Center in Slayton. Renewable energy has also diversified the county’s economy. The Chanarambie Wind Farm near Chandler, established in 2003 and comprising over sixty wind turbines, produces more than 80,000 megawatts of electricity annually.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/County Sesquicentennial.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246079,"name":"Cities and Towns","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/murray-county"},{"alt":"Bisexual pride flag","author":[{"name":"Stewart Van Cleve","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/stewart-van-cleve"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"December 26, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Bisexual Organizing Project","postbody":"The Bisexual Organizing Project (BOP) is a nonprofit group that has supported Minnesota’s bisexual, pansexual, fluid, queer, and unlabeled (bi+) communities since 1999. BOP promotes bi+ ...","searchtext":"The Bisexual Organizing Project (BOP) is a nonprofit group that has supported Minnesota’s bisexual, pansexual, fluid, queer, and unlabeled (bi+) communities since 1999. BOP promotes bi+ identities as an option for those who do not fit under gay, lesbian, or straight labels. Through its flagship event, the annual BECAUSE conference (Bisexual Empowerment Conference, A United Supportive Experience), it provides one of the nation’s key forums for the discussion of bi+ issues. BOP also represents the bi+ community at Twin Cities Pride and other events of interest to LGBTQ+ communities. In 1991, the Gay and Lesbian Community Action Council (GLCAC), a political advocacy group that later became OutFront Minnesota, published a needs assessment for bisexuals in Minnesota. The assessment’s author, GLCAC intern Joe Duca, collected survey responses from members of the bisexual community. The survey results outlined the isolation, misrepresentation, and hatred that Minnesota bisexuals faced from gay men, lesbians, and straight people. The survey respondents wanted to join gay men, lesbians, and transgender people in an LGBT coalition. The group they proposed would meet shared goals, including new human rights laws and protections from hate crimes. They recommended adding “bisexual” to the names of existing organizations and events, such as the Twin Cities Pride event. The added term would improve bisexual visibility and affirm the coalition. Survey participants also wanted an annual event to bring the local, regional, and national bisexual communities together. In 1992, community organizers hosted the first BECAUSE conference in Minneapolis. Conference attendees learned about the diversity of bisexual experiences and enjoyed professional networking and socializing in a space that was expressly designed for bisexuals. Throughout the 1990s, Scott Bartell, Bill Burleson, Arthur Freeheart, Lou Hoffman, Elise Mattheson, and other organizers helped BECAUSE grow into one of the nation’s biggest bi+ community events. From its inception, BECAUSE sought to include transgender issues in its programs. In 1999, BOP officially incorporated and became the “fiscal agent” responsible for hosting BECAUSE. In 2000, BOP sought to commemorate the bi+ community’s progress over the past decade. It sponsored an oral history project that included a questionnaire based on the Kinsey Scale. Created by pioneering sexologist Alfred Kinsey, the scale became famous after Kinsey used it in two landmark studies of American sexuality: Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953). The scale ranges from zero (exclusively heterosexual) to 6 (exclusively homosexual). In his studies, Kinsey discovered that almost half of those he surveyed fit somewhere in between zero and six. Bisexual activists have pointed to this study as evidence that bi+ behavior is more prevalent than society admits. In 2002, BOP opened Minnesota’s first—and only—bisexual community center near the intersection of Lyndale Avenue and Lake Street in South Minneapolis. The center hosted social events and meetings and served as a resource center. Though short-lived, the center showed BOP’s great ambitions. In 2004, BOP organized the 8th International Conference on Bisexuality at the University of Minnesota, which further helped the group become a global leader of the international bi+ community. BOP’s influence is evident in a 2005 book by Bill Burleson, a veteran BOP organizer. Bi America: Myths, Truths, and Struggles of an Invisible Community (Rutledge, 2005) focused on the bi+ community’s accomplishments across the country. It also highlighted how the community continued to face invisibility and hostility from the gay, lesbian, and straight majority. After a three-year hiatus, BECAUSE returned in 2008 and sought to focus on becoming a national, rather than regional, conference for bisexual activism. In a 2012 interview with the Huffington Post, past and current BOP organizers shared their hopes for the group’s future. “The future of BECAUSE is in the hands of the people who volunteer to run it,” Lou Hoffman noted. Lauren Beach added that it continued to work toward a national focus while maintaining its role as an information center for bi+ people who seek to “come out” to their friends, family, and community.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/pride_flag.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/bisexual-organizing-project"},{"alt":"Color image of Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church in Minneapolis, May 10, 2012","author":[{"name":"Courtney Gregar","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/courtney-gregar"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"December 20, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church, Minneapolis","postbody":"Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church in the St. Anthony Falls area of Minneapolis is the oldest continuously used church building in the city. It was a source of ethnic pride for immigrant ...","searchtext":"Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church in the St. Anthony Falls area of Minneapolis is the oldest continuously used church building in the city. It was a source of ethnic pride for immigrant families from France after its founding in 1877. In 2017, it is a restored and renovated country-Gothic (Gothic Revival and French Provincial) structure that looks like a medieval temple of faith. The first part of the church that became Our Lady of Lourdes was built between 1854 and1857 by the First Universalist Society in the Village of St. Anthony at a cost of more than $15,000. It was made of native limestone and modeled after a Greek temple, rectangular in shape. At the time, it was considered to be the finest church building in Minnesota. French Canadian settler-colonists in the St. Anthony area had wanted to found a new parish that would offer religious instruction in French. Many neighborhoods in the area already had churches that reflected the nationalities of their residents. The French Canadians had previously worshipped at St. Anthony of Padua, the original French parish in St. Anthony. Pope Pius IX agreed to appoint Father John Ireland coadjutor bishop of St. Paul in 1875. Thomas Grace, the bishop of St. Paul, received news of the appointment while visiting Lourdes, France. To show his gratitude, Bishop Grace vowed to place the next church dedicated in his diocese under the protection of Our Lady of Lourdes. On July 24, 1877, the new corporation of Our Lady of Lourdes, which included priests and representatives of the French Canadian population, bought the First Universalist Society||s building for $5,000. It became one of the first churches in the United States named in honor of Our Lady of Lourdes, also known as Notre Dame de Lourdes. The first Mass was celebrated on July 29th, 1877, by Rev. Pascal U. Brunel, the church’s first pastor. In February of 1880, the congregation agreed to update the original structure to accommodate the large number of French Canadian parishioners. The subsequent renovations included putting in an addition, building a pastor||s residence, changing the roof by adding a transept and apse, adding a steeple, and purchasing a 2000-pound bell. The total cost was about $12,645. As a result of these changes, Our Lady of Lourdes doubled its seating capacity and gained a large-enough sanctuary. On the exterior, it was a narrower, small country-Gothic structure that resembled a medieval temple of faith. The parish became a source of ethnic pride for new immigrant families from France. In 1888, the site for Our Lady of Lourdes School, a few blocks from the Church, was acquired for $4,000. The school was staffed by the Grey Nuns of the Cross from 1888–1906. In 1906, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet were placed in charge of the school. The decades between 1880 and 1900 were a time of growth for the parish, and the number of registered families rose to 400. In 1917, the Marist Fathers, at the request of Archbishop Ireland, took charge of the Parish of Our Lady of Lourdes. In 1934, Our Lady of Lourdes was designated as a United States Historic Landmark, protecting the Church||s future in the growing St. Anthony Falls area of Minneapolis. In 1968, due to the church||s poor physical condition and the steady decline of registered families, the building was scheduled for closure by the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis. The Minneapolis City Council persuaded Archbishop Binz and Coadjutor Bishop Byrne to keep the Church open until the area around it could be developed. (The Riverplace complex and several businesses in the St. Anthony Main area opened in the mid-1980s.) A renovation of the church||s interior and exterior, completed in 1997, restored the beauty, strength, and splendor that the original architects had envisioned. Inside the church are two statues of the Blessed Virgin appearing to St. Bernadette at Lourdes; the interior also features painting and carpeting that highlights the modern Catholic liturgy, but also incorporates classical French designs. By the beginning of the twenty-first century, the number of registered families at the parish grew to around 600. In 2017, Our Lady of Lourdes celebrated its 140th anniversary as the |||Little French Church with a Big Heart!|||","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Our_Lady_of_Lourdes_Catholic_Church_wikimedia.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246089,"name":"Religion and Belief","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/our-lady-lourdes-catholic-church-minneapolis"},{"alt":"Color image of the Westbrook Depot, home of the Westbrook Heritage House Museum, 2017. Photograph by Dave Van Loh.","author":[{"name":"Carolyn S. Van Loh","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/carolyn-s-van-loh"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"December 18, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"1940","name":"Currie Line Railroad","postbody":"Railroads played an important role in the development of Cottonwood County. The 38.6-mile railway called the Currie Line hastened the growth of agriculture and establishment of towns in the ...","searchtext":"Railroads played an important role in the development of Cottonwood County. The 38.6-mile railway called the Currie Line hastened the growth of agriculture and establishment of towns in the northern part of the county in only a decade. In 1870 the St. Paul & Sioux City Railroad arrived to serve the Bingham Lake area in southeastern Cottonwood County. On July 28, 1875, the village was incorporated. The 38.6-mile Currie Line, built in the 1890s, originated in Bingham Lake and stretched north to Delft. The unincorporated community of Delft is a direct result of the Currie Line, a branch of the Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis, & Omaha Railroad. Delft had been established in 1892 as a railway station and named after a city in the Netherlands. After the railroad came through, the Inter-State Land Company platted the village on June 18, 1902. The new line angled northwest toward Jeffers, the next stop. The village was platted on September 19, 1899, and incorporated on September 28, 1899. A post office opened in 1900. Storden, six miles west of Jeffers, became the next stop for the Currie Line. The community of Copenhagen had been established a mile west and a mile north of Storden’s eventual location on Minnesota Highway 30. As the railroad gradually expanded farther west, many Copenhagen business owners tore down their buildings and rebuilt them closer to the rail line. Three elevators and three lumberyards were built as soon as the railroad was certain to pass through the area. The village of Storden was platted on July 8, 1903, but was not incorporated until 1920. Five miles farther west, the village of Blue Eagle had begun in 1870. The arrival of the Currie Line caused the small village’s demise. It was replaced with the village of Westbrook, named after one of two creeks flowing through the eastern and western edges of the township. The first year of the twentieth century saw the completion of the railroad, the platting of Westbrook on June 8, and the sale of lots on July 11. In July and August, the De Moines Valley Railway Company built a railroad depot for the village. Stations in the Murray County communities of Dovray and Currie completed the Currie Line. A turntable in Currie reversed the direction of the engine so the train could make the return trip to Bingham Lake. Communities developed under the direction of railroads and were laid out in similar patterns. Grain elevators, business districts, and a freight house were built in relationship to the railroad tracks and depot. Towns throughout southwestern Minnesota follow a similar pattern. The Currie Line, short though it was, transformed life in the four villages of northern Cottonwood County. They grew because of the role played by the trains stopping each day. The depots of yesteryear can be compared to the airport terminals of the twenty-first century. A local depot was the gathering place to bid farewell to departing family and friends or to eagerly await the arrival of long-lost family from back East. A glimpse at business in Westbrook conducted through the Currie Line reveals the benefits of using the railroad. During the first quarter of 1902 forty-five rail cars of livestock and nearly six million pounds of merchandise left the area by train. Close to five million pounds of merchandise reached Westbrook and was unloaded. Chicken farmers lined up with wagonloads of crated birds awaiting shipment to the Chicago market. The arrival of trucks and cars on the transportation scene gradually eroded the major role railroads played in the growth of agriculture and other businesses of Cottonwood County. In January 1972 the Chicago & Northwestern Railroad closed the Westbrook and Jeffers depots, the last of the six original depots along the Currie Line. Eight years later the Chicago & Northwestern Transportation Company, owner of the Omaha railroad, abandoned the track and sold the right-of-way. In 2017, the depot in Westbrook is the only one on the Currie Line still standing on its original site. The building is on the National Register of Historic Places and houses the Westbrook Heritage House Museum.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Depot-museum 2017.jpeg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246053,"name":"Transportation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/currie-line-railroad"},{"alt":"Color image of MCLA staff visit Willmar, Minnesota, for a listening session with residents, June 6, 2017. Used with the permission of the Minnesota Council on Latino Affairs.","author":[{"name":"Jessica Lopez Lyman","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/jessica-lopez-lyman"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"December 15, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Minnesota Council on Latino Affairs","postbody":"The Spanish Speaking Affairs Council, later renamed the Minnesota Council on Latino Affairs, was established in 1978 to serve as a liaison between state government and Minnesota||s Chicana/o ...","searchtext":"The Spanish Speaking Affairs Council, later renamed the Minnesota Council on Latino Affairs, was established in 1978 to serve as a liaison between state government and Minnesota||s Chicana/o and Latina/o communities. Its purpose then, as today, was to advise the governor and legislators on issues pertinent to Chicana/o and Latina/o communities. The Minnesota Council on Latino Affairs is a bipartisan entity, meaning it is not allowed to advocate for any specific political party. Instead, it works with Republicans, Democrats, and third-party members to ensure that Chicana/o and Latina/o issues are represented. The council is made up of fifteen voting members, eleven of whom are appointed by the governor. Three are at-large representatives, and the remaining eight represent each of the congressional districts. The council||s origins lie in the 1960s and 70s, when activists working as part of the Civil Rights, Native American, and Chicano social movements lobbied for reform of local and national government agencies. Leaders strived to elect more people of color, Native people, and women of all races. They worked to create policies that reflected the issues important to their communities and make government processes more transparent. In Minnesota, their organizing led the legislature to establish six state councils designed to advocate for marginalized residents. They hoped that these councils would serve as a bridge between state government and the communities they represented. The Spanish Speaking Affairs Council was established under the 1978 Minnesota Law, Chapter 510. Decades later, 1996 Minnesota Law, Chapter 420, changed the council’s name to the Chicano Latino Affairs Council (CLAC). On July 1, 2015, the council was restructured once again, under Chapter 77, Article 2, Section 2, and renamed the Minnesota Council on Latino Affairs (MCLA). In the council’s first few years, the Chicana/o and Latina/o community actively shaped its vision. At times, over fifty people attended council meetings, which rotated among community spaces. During one month, members met at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in St. Paul; during another, they gathered at the University of Minnesota, Crookston. In May1980, the council hosted “Somos Uno, Somos Familia: Hispanic Leadership Conference,” which resulted in three main areas of focus: employment, economic development, and women’s rights. (These issues continue to shape the council in the 2010s.) During the 1980s, the council initiated several key partnerships for Latina/o advancement. It supported the development of Aztlán Cultural Organization, an education and mentorship program for inmates at the Minnesota Correctional Facility in Stillwater. It also worked to create the Limited English Proficiency (LEP) Program, which was the state’s bilingual education program. During the Cuban Refugee Crisis, the council aided resettlement for Cubans from the island with over 1,200 people coming to Minnesota. The council prioritized resources for women. In March 1981, it organized “Un Primer Paso” (First Step), a two-day conference that eventually became a college-ready leadership program for Latina high school students in Minnesota in partnership with St. Catherine University. Another program, Casa de Esparanza (House of Hope), provided shelter for domestic abuse survivors. To reach its diverse and geographically distant constituency, the council created Al Día, a newsletter spearheaded by the council’s community liaison, Elsa Vega-Perez. The newsletter included council updates, reports on Latina/o issues, artwork, poetry, and a community calendar. In 2016, the MCLA reframed its mission to focus on four main areas: education, health, immigration, and economic development. In each area, MCLA staff investigate these issues across the entire state. Oftentimes the Twin Cities, as an urban epicenter, receives more attention and resources than rural spaces. The council staff work hard to build partnerships with institutions and leaders across the state to ensure that all constituents are heard. This requires staff to have a strong understanding of educational concerns in Minneapolis as well as, for example, Willmar. While there are similarities between the cities, suburbs, and rural towns, there are also several differences that must be reflected in state policies. Working collectively with residents, organizations, and elected officials, MCLA ensures that Chicana/o and Latina/o contributions to Minnesota are recognized and that issues faced by the community are supported. As the formal liaison between the legislature and residents, MCLA’s ultimate goal is to empower people to become agents of change in their state government.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/2_Wilmar Meeting MCLA_.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/minnesota-council-latino-affairs"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Old Main, the first building at Gustavus Adolphus College, St. Peter, 1877.","author":[{"name":"Linda A. Cameron","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/linda-cameron"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"December 13, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Gustavus Adolphus College","postbody":"Gustavus Adolphus College, the dream of Swedish immigrants, began as a humble secondary school in Red Wing with one student in 1862. Relocated to St. Peter in 1876, it has flourished as one ...","searchtext":"Gustavus Adolphus College, the dream of Swedish immigrants, began as a humble secondary school in Red Wing with one student in 1862. Relocated to St. Peter in 1876, it has flourished as one of Minnesota||s private liberal arts colleges. In 1862, Swedish Lutheran immigrants donated twenty dollars to establish a church school in Goodhue County. The coeducational Minnesota elementarskola—Swedish for |||secondary school|||—opened in a Lutheran Church in Red Wing that fall. Reverend Eric Norelius served as the sole instructor of a single pupil. The school moved to East Union in Carver County in 1863. It expanded in 1865 and became St. Ansgar||s Academy. The churches within the Augustana Synod provided funding for the school, but resources fell short. In 1873, the Lutheran Minnesota Conference considered moving the school to Minneapolis in the hope of increasing church support. A financial panic that year caused the conference to move it to St. Peter instead. The school reincorporated as the Gustavus Adolphus Literary and Theological Institute (later Gustavus Adolphus College), named for King Gustav II Adolf of Sweden. Educating teachers and clergy remained the school||s primary focus. Classes began October 16, 1876, in a new stone building (later |||Old Main|||) with fifty-one students and two teachers. Eight male students received the first bachelor||s degrees awarded by the school in 1890. Rising enrollment and more course offerings prompted ongoing construction. By the 1920s the college had added dormitories, an auditorium, a central heating plant, a student union, and a gymnasium. The post-World War II housing crunch called for temporary living space for veterans and more residence halls. The first coed dorm, later called Norelius Hall, welcomed students in 1967. The Alfred Nobel Hall of Science, completed in 1963, hosted the first annual Nobel Conference two years later. During the 1970s–1990s the college renovated several older buildings, expanded student housing, built the Schaefer Fine Arts Center, enlarged the Folke Bernadotte Memorial Library, and much more. More recent additions include the Curtis and Arlene Carlson International Center and Beck Academic Hall. Extracurricular activities in the early years consisted of literary and forensic societies. In the 1920s, these groups became fraternities and sororities with social and service functions. The Greys and the Reds, secret societies once banned from campus, became fraternities with official recognition from the college. In the wake of a harsh hazing incident in 1988, the Board of Trustees voted to revoke the charters of all Greek societies. Most frats and sororities were reinstated in 1993, with stricter rules governing activities. Sports teams at Gustavus gained popularity in the early 1900s. The Golden Gusties football team won their first official game in 1902 against Mankato Normal School. The college||s first basketball team—a women||s team—lost its first game to Mankato in 1903. Admission to the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference in 1920 prompted the construction of a football stadium and fieldhouse. Newer athletic facilities include the Lund Center for Physical Education and Health, the Swanson Tennis Center, and a new football stadium. Gustavus has been closely identified with the Lutheran Church throughout its history. To appeal to a more diverse student population in the 1960s, the church connection became just one part of the school||s mission. Student attendance at daily chapel services, formerly held in the old auditorium, became optional when Christ Chapel opened in 1962. Religion classes, reduced in number, reflected a variety of beliefs. International students started coming to Gustavus in the 1940s. The Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s highlighted the need to further diversify the student body. School officials worked to recruit black students in southern states. The Black Student Organization, started in the late 1960s, provided a welcoming community for African American students and encouraged others to enroll. A Diversity Center opened on campus in 1999. ACT and SAT scores became optional for admission in 2006 partly to encourage diversity. During spring break in March 1998, an F3 tornado devastated the St. Peter community. The storm downed more than 2,000 trees on campus and caused serious damage to many buildings. The college rebounded quickly, resuming classes within three weeks. Gustavus celebrated its sesquicentennial in 2012. A visit from King Carl XVI Gustav and Queen Sylvia of Sweden kicked off the event in October 2011.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/MN2 9 SP5 2G r2.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056210,"name":"Education","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/gustavus-adolphus-college"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Warren and Mary Amanda Braman, ca. 1880s–1890s. From the collection of CarrieJo Cowler.","author":[{"name":"Alan W. Slacter","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/alan-w-slacter"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"December 11, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Jewish Immigrants in Brook Park","postbody":"The village of Brook Park supported a small but vital Jewish community for a brief period in the mid-1890s. That community dispersed after the Great Hinckley Fire destroyed the village on ...","searchtext":"The village of Brook Park supported a small but vital Jewish community for a brief period in the mid-1890s. That community dispersed after the Great Hinckley Fire destroyed the village on September 1, 1894, just months after many of the immigrants had arrived. Starting in 1893, the Kelsey-Markham Land Company recruited immigrants to Pokegama, the site of a former lumber camp. The company sold land for eight dollars per acre. Its co-owner, Chauncey Almer Kelsey, was a doctor, businessman, entrepreneur, and land speculator who envisioned developing the township into an idyllic village. Kelsey was instrumental in changing the township’s name from Pokegama to Brook Park—a name that he thought would attract more buyers. He then moved to recruit new residents, including Jewish families he met while attending the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago. Kelsey himself arrived in Brook Park with his family in the summer of 1894. Jewish families started arriving in Brook Park in 1893, some via indirect routes. Samuel and Anna Misel left Russia in 1892 for Argentina, where their daughter, Lily, was born. They then moved on to the United States, where their son, Henry, was born in St. Paul on May 15, 1894. Samuel Misel was nineteen years old and Anna eighteen, making them the youngest of the new Jewish residents of Brook Park. Anna shared a mother’s maiden name, Reznick, with Sophie Finer, indicating a possible familial relationship. Ben and Sophie Finer had emigrated from Courland, Latvia, around 1885. They resided in New Jersey and Illinois before moving to Minnesota in 1893. Their third son, Sollie, was born in Brook Park on May 19, 1894. By 1894, the Jewish enclave at Brook Park consisted of eighteen adults and seventeen children (thirty-four Russian immigrants and one German American). The village was described as having “no police court, jail or saloon, or abominations known in modern crowded city life.” By the fall of 1894, its total population was approximately 135. The Jewish families’ next-door neighbors included Mary Amanda Braman and Warren Braman, a Civil War veteran and cooper who had come to Brook Park from Ashland, Minnesota, in 1893. Along with Kelsey and others, Braman was an investor in Brook Park’s newly constructed boarding house. On the morning of September 1, 1894, a fire flared up to the south of Brook Park—part of what became known as the Great Hinckley Fire. By 2 pm, it had reached the village. Braman saved many of the villagers by leading them to a pond next to a lumber mill by Pokegama Creek, where they stood in a pool of water out of reach of the flames. According to Finer family oral history, Sophie Finer and her two youngest sons, David and Sollie, were among those who sought refuge in the pond. David, age three, drowned while Sophie clutched Sollie to her chest. Ben and Louis Finer, age five, survived in another location, though Louis received burns on his legs. A total of twenty-six Brook Park residents died in the fire—many of them because they failed to reach Pokegama Creek. Warren Braman’s twenty-seven-year-old son, Jay, was among the dead. Rescuers identified his body by his new pair of boots. The surviving villagers spent two days sheltering in train cars before being transported to Mora and from there to St. Paul. Governor Knute Nelson’s Commission for Relief of Fire Sufferers assisted survivors with food, shelter, clothing, and transportation. Five of the Jewish men stayed in Pine County after the fire and rebuilt their homes. Joe Coblin and native New Yorker Jake Greenberg received construction materials and are found in the 1895 census residing in Brook Park. Abe Chapman and Reuben Osternick, who had families still living in Europe, along with Israel Rosenberg, obtained acreage north of Hinckley, where they rebuilt and resided for approximately one year. Joe Chipris is identified in the 1895 census as a resident of Duluth and employee of Bloom’s Furniture store. By 1897, all of the Jewish residents of Brook Park had dispersed. The Finer, Misel, Shapiro and Raphael families, who had come from Chicago, returned home one month after the fire. The Israel Rosenberg and Charles Smith families became permanent residents of St. Paul’s West Side neighborhood. Abe Chapman moved to Minneapolis where he married and started a new family while Reuben Osterneck relocated to Pennsylvania and arranged to bring his entire family from Ukraine.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/03.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246079,"name":"Cities and Towns","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246089,"name":"Religion and Belief","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/jewish-immigrants-brook-park"},{"alt":"Color image of Old Westbrook Church, 2017. Photograph by Dave Van Loh.","author":[{"name":"Carolyn S. Van Loh","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/carolyn-s-van-loh"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"December 06, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Old Westbrook Lutheran Church","postbody":"The history of Old Westbrook Lutheran Church is the history of Cottonwood County since its organization in 1870. The earliest settler-colonists in the county were the same people who later ...","searchtext":"The history of Old Westbrook Lutheran Church is the history of Cottonwood County since its organization in 1870. The earliest settler-colonists in the county were the same people who later organized the first Lutheran parish west of New Ulm. After the US–Dakota War, military personnel who had passed through the future Westbrook and Storden areas spread the word about available prairie lands. Immigrants soon started arriving from all directions. By 1870, thirty families and seven unmarried men, mostly Norwegian and Danish Lutherans, had moved to northern Cottonwood County and wanted to establish a church. In April 1870 Rev. John C. Jacobson walked on foot from St. Paul to Madelia. From there he walked to Westbrook via Windom to help organize a Lutheran church. He conducted the first services in a log house belonging to Morton Engebretson. On May 12, 1870, fifteen men met in the Engebretson home and organized Westbrook Norse Lutheran Congregation, the first church established in Cottonwood County. Lars Lund had immigrated to the United States from Norway in 1868. He was attending Augustana Seminary in Paxton, Illinois, when he received the call to become the first regular pastor of the young congregation. He accepted the call and served from 1871–1876. Churches rose up in every community in the county as soon as enough individuals of a particular faith joined their efforts to start a church congregation. It was common for people of different Protestant faiths to hold union meetings. Church buildings were built when enough worshipers and funds were available. A grasshopper plague challenged southern Minnesota farmers in the mid-1870s. L. O. Pederson (pastor 1878–1881), Lund’s successor at Westbrook Norse Lutheran, saw the dreaded pests as a spiritual challenge. He said, “…from an economical point of view the grasshoppers retarded the growth of the church, but the people were very patient and uncomplaining, living as sparingly under the meager circumstances as it was possible to do. But from a spiritual point of view, I maintain that the grasshoppers served to promote growth. If there had been sent out dozens of evangelists and the people had lived in plenty, yet they would not have been able to do any better evangelistic work than the grasshoppers did because the people received the plague as a chastisement from the Lord’s hand and caused the people to seriously meditate and open their hearts for God’s quickening grace.” The first Ladies’ Aid fellowship began in a home near the church in 1874. After organization, one directive stated meetings would be held in homes with board floors. Several families still lived in dugouts. Three more ladies’ and young ladies’ groups were functioning before the turn of the century. The twentieth century brought a foreign and home missions group, the Ruth Evening Circle (founded 1947), Prayer Circle (1951), and Dorcas Circle (1989). Other church groups include a choir (1912), Old Westbrook Lutheran Brotherhood (1937), and Luther League (1904). Because local residents walked or traveled by wagons, they wanted a church congregation close to home. Westbrook Norse Lutheran Church soon became the mother congregation for four more church groups: Highwater Township (1901), Amo Township (1887), Bethany in Storden (1886), and Trinity in Westbrook (1901). One pastor served all five churches until they were able to support their own ministers. Changing demographics has influenced Old Westbrook church activities. In the twenty-first century the ladies meet once a month for a WELCA ladies meeting. There is no official organization for men of the church. As of July 2017, there were not enough teens to conduct Luther League. Rev. Arthur O. Aadland, pastor from 1963 until 1977, designed, built, and gave a pipe organ to the church in 1968. One of many unique features is that the organ action is made almost entirely of walnut harvested from the Dutch Charley Creek woods near the church. An annual Old Fashioned 4th of July Celebration began in 1965. Activities held over the years include picnic dinners, games, parish band performances, guest music concerts, and fireworks displays. The annual event ended with its fiftieth anniversary in 2015.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/IMG_4956_Old Westbrook Church.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246089,"name":"Religion and Belief","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/old-westbrook-lutheran-church"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of the International tied up at Moorhead,early 1870s.","author":[{"name":"Megan Lynn Even","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/megan-lynn-even"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"December 04, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Red River Steamboats","postbody":"Beginning in 1859, steamboats on the Red River linked St. Paul, Minnesota, and Winnipeg, Manitoba (Fort Garry), for over fifty years. The boats are credited with helping Winnipeg grow ...","searchtext":"Beginning in 1859, steamboats on the Red River linked St. Paul, Minnesota, and Winnipeg, Manitoba (Fort Garry), for over fifty years. The boats are credited with helping Winnipeg grow quickly in the 1870s. Eventually, railways and motor vehicles replaced Red River steamboats, but the network that the steamboats strengthened still exists in the twenty-first century. The St. Paul Chamber of Commerce prompted the construction of the first steamboat for use on the Red River. People in St. Paul had been trading with Fort Garry using Red River carts, but the chamber looked to steamboats to reduce travel time. In 1858, it offered $1,000 to the first person to put a steamboat on the Red. This challenge was met by St. Paul resident and steamboat captain Anson Northup. Northup won the prize money—by then raised to $2,000—but his boat was not known for its quality. One of its captains referred to it as “a lumbering old pine basket…which you have to handle as gingerly as a hamper of eggs.” Northup’s steamboat was eventually taken apart, and its engines were used for a sawmill. The first steamboat on the Red for commercial purposes was built from the remains of John Davis’s steamboat, the Freighter, which had run aground near Big Stone Lake. The Hudson’s Bay Company hired J. C. Burbank & Company of St. Paul to turn the Freighter into a working vessel. Burbank & Company built the International, which, at 137 feet, was one of the largest steamboats on the Red River on the US side. At Moorhead, the Red was only three feet wider than the boat. The International first reached Fort Garry in 1862, but it would take another nine years for steamboating to become common. Steamboating was delayed because of low water, lack of freight, the American Civil War, and the US–Dakota War of 1862. After the Northern Pacific Railway reached Moorhead (by early 1872), trade and travel by steamboat took off. The organization of Manitoba as a Canadian province the year before had also prompted settler-colonists to migrate. Many going to Canada went through Fargo-Moorhead, which would become the head of steam navigation. The head had started in Breckenridge, Minnesota, but it moved further and further downstream: to McCauleyville, from there to Moorhead, and finally to Georgetown, Minnesota. By the time steamboating became popular, the International was owned by the Hudson’s Bay Company, which had a free trade agreement with the US Treasury. The company had the first monopoly on international trade on the river, but the Hills–Griggs Company introduced competition in 1870. This prompted Hudson’s Bay to expand services to those outside the company. By 1873, the competing companies had joined forces to create the Red River Transportation Company. In 1875, another company, the Merchants International Steamboat Line, introduced more competition with the steamboats Minnesota and Manitoba. That same year, the International ran into the Manitoba, which sank. This incident fueled people’s unease toward the Red River line’s tight hold on steamboating on the Red. In the same year, the Merchants Line launched its first steamers, the company was bought out by the Red River Line. People who resided by the Red River, on both the Canadian and American sides, often complained about the Red River Transportation Company’s monopoly and high shipping rates. Another drawback of steamboating on the Red was the difficulty in navigating the river—it was shallow and muddy, and had sharp bends. Still, people continued to use the steamboats. Canada exported mainly furs and buffalo robes, and exports from Minnesota included everything from flour and bread to printing presses and church organs. New immigrants also arrived in the Red River region via steamboat, and trips on the steamers were fashionable in the summer. In all, at least eighteen steamboats were built for use on the Red River, plus hundreds of flatboats. By 1878, Winnipeg had railways and no longer had to rely on the steamboats on the Red River. But the switch to railways took time, and steamboats were used for years after. Stopping steamboat traffic between the US and Canada would take another thirty years.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/HCSSCC.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246053,"name":"Transportation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/red-river-steamboats"},{"alt":"Color image of a commemorative sign erected in 1949 to mark the site of the Zierke family cabin, ca. 2010. Photograph by Dave Van Loh.","author":[{"name":"Carolyn S. Van Loh","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/carolyn-s-van-loh"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"November 29, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Zierke, Carl “Dutch Charley” (1828–1865)","postbody":"In the late 1850s, Carl Zierke arrived in Cottonwood County with his wife and three stepchildren. Known to some as “Dutch Charley,” he witnessed key events in the U.S.–Dakota War of 1862. ...","searchtext":"In the late 1850s, Carl Zierke arrived in Cottonwood County with his wife and three stepchildren. Known to some as “Dutch Charley,” he witnessed key events in the U.S.–Dakota War of 1862. His memory is preserved in two Cottonwood County place names: Dutch Charley Creek and South Dutch Charley Park. Carl Zierke, born in Schwerin Mecklenburg, Germany, arrived in the Cottonwood County area with his wife (Christine) and two stepchildren (John and Henry) in 1857 or 1858. Dakota people living in the area nicknamed him “Dutch Charley,” partly because of his accent (they called white men like Zierke who spoke halting English “Dutch”) and partly to connect him with Brown County Germans instead of the French. Carl built the first log cabin in Cottonwood County along the east bank of a creek in the southeast portion of Ann Township. That creek bears his Minnesota name, Dutch Charley, today. Christine Zierke gave birth to Eliza (ca. 1857) and Mary (ca. 1859), the first white children born in the county. The state’s 1858 census does not list Carl Zierke. The federal census of 1860, however, records his name and the names of his family members. The 1860 agricultural schedule of the U.S. census (non-population) states that in that year he owned twenty acres of unimproved land, four oxen, four milk cows, seven other cattle, and four hogs. He sold eggs, cheese, and butter in nearby New Ulm, and his livestock had a value of $250.00. A military road joining Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and New Ulm passed close to Carl’s property. This proximity to the road proved to be important for Carl and his family in August 1862 during the U.S.–Dakota War. After fighting began on August 21, two white farmers from the Lake Shetek area, sixteen miles west of the Zierke cabin, fled their home and reached Dutch Charley’s property on foot, via the road. When they arrived, they told Carl about the fighting occurring to the west. Conflicting stories tell of the Zierke family’s fate. According to one story, Carl became separated from his wife and children while they fled to New Ulm with the two men from Lake Shetek. In this account, after traveling apart for several days, he and the rest of the family separately reached Mankato, where they were reunited. In a 1930 reminiscence, Charles and Christine’s grandson John does not mention a separation but recounts that “soldiers or state militia” prevented a group of Dakota from taking Christine hostage. The Zierkes moved to New Ulm later in 1862. A baby son arrived in April 1863, but Eliza and Mary died the same year. Carl died of untreated jaundice in 1864 or 1865, according to his stepson. The city clerk’s office didn’t keep detailed records of burials prior to 1870. It is believed that Zierke family members were buried in a section of the New Ulm cemetery reserved for “pioneers.” More than 100 years later, area residents may not recognize Carl Zierke’s given name, but they know his nickname. In 1968, a grant from the U.S. Bureau of Outdoor Recreation provided funding for the purchase of twenty-five acres of land northeast of Westbrook for South Dutch Charley Park. A creek running through the park also carries Zierke’s name.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/IMG_4933_Dutch Charley Creek Plaque.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/zierke-carl-dutch-charley-1828-1865"},{"alt":"Color image of the Fisher IOOF main hall, interior.","author":[{"name":"Kristina Gray","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/kristina-gray"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"November 27, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Independent Order of Odd Fellows in Polk County","postbody":"The Independent Order of Odd Fellows (IOOF) is a service-oriented fraternal organization. Started in England in the 1700s, it spread to the US in the early 1800s and to Minnesota in 1849. ...","searchtext":"The Independent Order of Odd Fellows (IOOF) is a service-oriented fraternal organization. Started in England in the 1700s, it spread to the US in the early 1800s and to Minnesota in 1849. In Polk County, though Crookston Lodge No. 73 disbanded in the 1910s, members of Fisher Lodge No. 87 met regularly for over a hundred years. Like other fraternal groups of its era, such as the Maccabees, Lady Maccabees, Workmen, Sons of Herman and Ladies Auxiliary, Eagles, Royal League, and Ancient Woodsmen, the IOOF focused on public service. Members of each IOOF lodge followed basic principles of good will toward others and gave charity to those in need, with no intention of being recognized. They also promised to care for their neighbors by visiting the sick, relieving the distressed, burying the dead, and educating orphans. The IOOF emblem consists of three interconnected links that symbolize friendship, love, and truth. Although women could not join the IOOF, they participated in its sorority equivalent: the Daughters of Rebekah Lodge, created by the Grand Sovereign Lodge in 1851. Rebekah Lodge members followed rules and bylaws similar to those of the IOOF. Although many members came from Judeo-Christian backgrounds, both the IOOF and Rebekah lodges were open to people of all religions. They remained neutral in their religious practices and remained independent of any one political party. Minnesota’s first IOOF lodge officially formed in Stillwater in 1849. Members of an early incarnation of IOOF Lodge No. 87 formed in the village of Fisher on March 2, 1882. By the 1890s, they convened in a lodge hall located at W 1/2 Lot 5, Block 3. The property was worth $1,250 and the lodge’s furniture and regalia were valued at $310 in 1893. The auxiliary lodge for Fisher’s IOOF women, known as the Pleiades Rebekah Lodge No. 103, was founded in 1894. Lodge No. 87’s record book kept track of deceased members as well as those who had been denied membership or expelled from the lodge. When members did not pay their dues or attend meetings, they were suspended. For example, S. H. King was listed as an IOOF Lodge No. 87 member as of August 3, 1893 and had paid his dues of $1.50 per month. However, by June 30, 1894, the IOOF organization suspended King for nonpayment of dues. By May 25, 1895, it had expelled him. Crookston IOOF Lodge No. 79 formed in 1880. Lodge officers purchased the old Polk County Courthouse in 1901, moved into the new location, and dedicated the space on December 19 of that year. The building was destroyed by fire on December 17, 1910; subsequent records do not mention any IOOF activity in Crookston. According to Polk County newspaper articles from the late 1800s and early 1900s, Odd Fellows were some of the more active members of their communities. A notice in an 1897 issue of the Polk County Journal affectionately mentioned members by name, calling them |||odd enough to be odd―and glad of it|||; |||odder than Dick||s hat band|||; and |||just as odd as any odder fellow.||| Their lodges were expensively furnished and equipped. In May 1890, Crookston IOOF No. 79 hosted 300 dignitaries at a banquet held in their lodge. Existing members and new initiates into IOOF lodges were documented in annual reports and when attendance was taken. Some members were admitted by answering questions on an application card; others transferred from different lodges. During meetings, the lodge’s main halls displayed the colors of the order. Noble Grand and Vice Grand officers sat at elaborately decorated stations. Odd Fellows granted the title of “Grand Master” to their highest-ranking elected leader. Some Grand Masters expected members to wear expensive uniforms and jewelry during meetings. Other elected offices included Chief Patriarch, Senior Warden, High Priest, Scribe, Treasurer, Junior Warden, Captain of the Degree Team, Recording Secretary, Finance Secretary, Inside Guardian, Outside Guardian, and Chaplain. The members of Fisher Lodge No. 79 continued to meet until the early 1970s, when it disbanded due to declining membership. The last documented meeting of the lodge took place on September 30, 1973. Fisher’s Rebekah Lodge disbanded at about the same time; their members’ last documented meeting was held on October 21, 1972.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/IOOF Fisher hall interior.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/independent-order-odd-fellows-polk-county"},{"alt":"Color image of First Avenue nightclub, 2005. Photograph by Wikimedia Commons user Mulad.","author":[{"name":"Ehsan Alam","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/ehsan-alam"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"November 21, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"First Avenue & 7th Street Entry","postbody":"In the late 1960s, Allan Fingerhut and Danny Stevens leased the old Greyhound Bus Depot in Downtown Minneapolis with the plan to open a rock club. Since then, First Avenue & 7th Street ...","searchtext":"In the late 1960s, Allan Fingerhut and Danny Stevens leased the old Greyhound Bus Depot in Downtown Minneapolis with the plan to open a rock club. Since then, First Avenue & 7th Street Entry has nurtured a diverse group of musicians, both local and national, and brought together people from various backgrounds. It remains one of the most highly regarded music nightclubs in the country. The club opened in 1970 as the Depot. Over the next two years, it hosted national acts such as the Kinks, B. B. King, Frank Zappa, and the Ike and Tina Turner Revue. By 1971, however, it had closed due to money issues. In 1972, Fingerhut sold controlling interest to American Events Company (AEC) and the club was renamed Uncle Sam’s as part of a franchising agreement. During this period, live music took a back seat to DJs playing disco music. However, in the late 70s, manager Steve McClellan began booking live bands such as the Ramones and Pat Benatar, whose shows sold out well in advance. This pointed out the direction that the club would take in the future. As the disco trend waned, AEC sold its interest back to Fingerhut who, in turn, gave McClellan managerial control. After a two-year stint as Sam’s, the club changed its name one last time to First Avenue. These changes coincided with the evolution of two music styles in the Twin Cities music scene: punk and R&B. First Avenue became a focal point for both movements. Underground rock had already found a home at Jay’s Longhorn and Duffy’s in the late 1970s, giving rise to acts like Hüsker Dü and the Suburbs. But when the coat room for Sam’s was transformed into the 7th Street Entry—a club within the club—indie bands began playing there, making it well known as a punk and indie rock venue. The Replacements became one of the most notable, and even notorious, of these bands. Their unpredictable performances created an excitement that drew people to the club and strengthened the band’s legendary cult status. In the early 1980s, the Minneapolis music community was distinctly segregated, with African American musicians unwelcome at downtown clubs. First Avenue was an exception. One of its unique characteristics, especially at that time, was its integrated line-ups. It fostered a regular clientele from various backgrounds who were, in turn, exposed to a variety of musical cultures. In a single night, a concertgoer could be exposed to punk, funk, world music, and any number of different genres. McClellan regularly booked black R&B acts like the Time, Flyte Tyme, and Prince, for whom the club became a kind of home. He played shows there and demoed unreleased material to see how it sounded in a club, and to gauge the audience’s response. In the fall of 1983, he rented the club for the filming of scenes for Purple Rain. The enormous success of the film shot Prince into international superstardom. It also boosted First Avenue’s profile and generated badly needed revenue. While First Avenue helped cultivate a lively local music scene, it also provided a stopping point for alternative bands on their way to becoming stadium bands. R.E.M., U2, New Order, and Nirvana, as well as lesser known acts, played at the club during the early parts of their careers. First Avenue continued, and continues, to support local music. It has been the stomping ground for bands like Soul Asylum, Babes in Toyland, the Jayhawks, Semisonic, Atmosphere, Brother Ali, Lizzo, and Doomtree. Its initial success as a center for innovative music was, in part, the result of McClellan’s drive to showcase talent—often at the expense of commercial potential. Because of this stance, threats of closure and financial troubles were never far off, even after Fingerhut and club accountant Byron Frank purchased the property in 2000. In 2004, Fingerhut fired McClellan and the managerial team. Shortly afterward, he closed the club and filed for bankruptcy. Amid public outcry, and with the help of Minneapolis mayor R. T. Rybak, McClellan, Frank, and Jack Meyers purchased the club’s assets and reopened it. After the reopening, First Avenue expanded its operations, purchasing the Turf Club, managing the historic Palace Theater in St. Paul, and booking clubs and theaters.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/mulad_wikimedia.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246079,"name":"Cities and Towns","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/first-avenue-7th-street-entry"},{"alt":"Prince performing “Purple Rain” at First Avenue, 1983.","author":[{"name":"Kristen Zschomler","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/kristen-zschomler"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"November 17, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Prince (1958–2016)","postbody":"Prince was a Minnesota-based singer, songwriter, musician, studio engineer, actor, director, dancer, and music legend. Over his nearly forty-year career, he sold more than100 million ...","searchtext":"Prince was a Minnesota-based singer, songwriter, musician, studio engineer, actor, director, dancer, and music legend. Over his nearly forty-year career, he sold more than100 million albums; he also won seven Grammys and an Oscar. He was the main creator of the Minneapolis Sound, a blending of rhythm and blues, funk, rock, pop, punk, and new wave that defined the music of the 1980s. Prince Rogers Nelson was born in Minneapolis on June 7, 1958. Growing up on the city||s Northside, he taught himself the piano, guitar, bass, drums, and other instruments at a young age. His early musical influences included R&B, funk, rock, and soul music. Older local musicians and neighbors, like Sonny Thompson, exposed him to rock—an important component in his development of the Minneapolis Sound. After Prince landed a major recording contract with Warner Brothers at nineteen, his first albums—For You (1978) and Prince (1979)—made their mark on the R&B charts but did not see the crossover to white audiences that he wanted. His early recordings did show his musical virtuosity and included the soon-to-be-common credit “produced, arranged, composed and performed by Prince.” Prince’s commercial and critical success grew in the early 1980s with the release of albums that solidified the Minneapolis Sound: Dirty Mind (1980), Controversy (1981), and 1999 (1982). His videos with his “multicultural, rainbow-coalition” and mixed-gender band, The Revolution, on the new music channel MTV, helped define the fashion, dance moves, and sounds of the new decade. With no number-one hits and only one top-ten album (1999) under his belt, Prince pitched the idea of a major motion picture to his label. While initially unsure, Warner Brothers eventually backed the artist’s effort, and Prince spent much of 1983 and early 1984 writing and recording songs for, and filming, the movie Purple Rain. Prince and The Revolution recorded three of the soundtrack’s songs live at the Minneapolis nightclub First Avenue in 1983 and shot over half of the movie at the venue. The film and soundtrack, released in June 1984, were instant commercial and critical successes. Prince’s impact on music, fashion, and sexuality made him a cultural icon in league with Michael Jackson and Madonna. During the last half of the 1980s, Prince continued to explore new musical sounds and switched between collaborative and solo works. He disbanded The Revolution in 1986 after the release of Parade. He returned to his roots by completing his next studio album (Sign o’ the Times) alone, but he also collaborated with other side bands and projects. He ushered out the most successful decade of his career with a number-one soundtrack for the Tim Burton movie Batman. In 1991, Prince formed his next band, The New Power Generation, and began incorporating hip-hop and rap into his work, which he had previously resisted. With his superstar status, he took on the music industry’s contracting procedures, changing his name to an unpronounceable symbol to escape his recording contract with Warner Brothers. He often appeared with the word “slave” drawn on his face to underscore the unfair practices he saw in the recording industry. In the early 2000s, Prince influenced the business side of the music industry more than the sonic landscape of the times. With slipping record sales but continuing success touring, Prince found innovative ways to distribute his albums and reach number one, such as selling them with concert tickets (Musicology) and giving people the chance to enter a sweepstakes to win a private performance (3121). Prince was an early supporter of directly streaming music to his audience. He changed his mind, however, when he saw his work pirated on the internet. He eventually came to terms with the new technology and released albums online via a subscription service, which sold his music as well as tickets to his shows. He continued to collaborate extensively, including with his last band, 3rdEyeGirl, and performed massive worldwide tours as well as more intimate performances at his Paisley Park compound in Chanhassen. Prince died at Paisley Park on April 21, 2016, from an accidental overdose of the opioid fentanyl. He was fifty-seven years old.","src":"https://www3.mnhs.org/hubfs/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Prince%20performing%20%E2%80%9CPurple%20Rain%E2%80%9D%20at%20First%20Avenue%2c%201983..jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056216,"name":"African Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/prince-1958-2016"},{"alt":"Abdi Farah (Abdi Phenomenal), Safiya Tusmo, and Awil Ali Waarabe","author":[{"name":"Ahmed Ismail Yusuf","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/ahmed-ismail-yusuf"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"November 14, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Somali Poetry in Minnesota","postbody":"Somali poetry is a unique art form with an ancient history and a living legacy. Since 1991, it has connected Somali and Somali American refugees living in the United States with those who ...","searchtext":"Somali poetry is a unique art form with an ancient history and a living legacy. Since 1991, it has connected Somali and Somali American refugees living in the United States with those who remain in their East African homeland. In the twenty-first century, Somali Minnesotans have kept their poetic traditions alive by forming arts groups, organizing public performances in the Twin Cities, and encouraging young people to become poets. Historically, the most popular and powerful genre of Somali poetry has been gabay, one of several genres within the overall field of poetry (maanso). Poets turn to gabay to list, announce, and remember times of plenty as well as hardship, and to grieve over as well as celebrate the tumult of life’s uncertainties. Somali poetry follows strict rules that dictate scansion, alliteration, and pacing. Social etiquette grants writers some poetic license while guiding them away from using their gifts for inappropriate topics. For example, a poet would not dare to compose a poem in order to libel women, the disabled, elders, or children. Usually, poets refrain from writing a maliciously ill-willed poem (guhaan) in order to harm someone. This custom shows that Somali people respect poetry not just as a means of artistic expression but as a tool with the power to inform, alert, and, at times, provoke. Originally, Somali poets were spokesmen for their clans, but in the early 1900s, the art form evolved to serve a nationalist purpose. During the war against colonial Britain, Somali warrior Mohammed Abdullah Hassan used his words as weapons. For the first time, Somali poetry travelled thousands of miles away to Europe with an ominous warning: don’t mess with us in gabay. Refugees fleeing the Somali Civil War in the 1990s brought their poetry traditions with them to their new homes. Many came to the Twin Cities and kept those traditions alive in the early 2000s. Legendary poet and playwright Said Salah Ahmed, for example, began teaching Somali language at the University of Minnesota in 2010. At the same time, he started offering workshops and teaching summer-school classes with a focus on Somali poetry in order to pass on his commitment to poetry. Each year, he visited Somalia to refresh his sense of local culture. He also traveled to Europe to give public presentations and receive feedback from like-minded Somalis. In Minnesota and other parts of the US, gang-related violence and terrorist recruitment enveloped some Somali youth in the late 2000s. A young man named Abdi Farah (aka Abdi Phenomenal) and his friends took it upon themselves to change the narrative. As his forefathers had done in Somalia, Farah picked poetry as his weapon of choice. In 2007, at the age of twenty-five, Farah and his friends founded Ka Joog, a nonprofit organization. Ka joog means “stay away from it” in Somali. Thus, the group’s name carries a clear message to Somali youth: stay away from trouble. In its first few years, Ka Joog concentrated on performing and facilitating poetry sessions in the Twin Cities that engaged local youth. As the group gained a name for itself, it began spreading the word in English via poetry performance videos published on a digital poetry hub called Poet Nation. In the 2010s, Ka Joog grew into a social justice advocacy organization that earned recognition throughout the United States. Young Somali Minnesotans have answered the call to take up the poetic legacies of their relatives. Abdullahi Hassan Ganey, the son of poet/playwright Xasan Cabdullahi Xasan (Xasan Ganey) and artist Cadder Kaahinis, is building a poetic reputation as strong as his father’s. Ganey, who arrived in Minnesota from Somalia in 2007 at the age of twenty-one, delivers his tailored words with a thundering voice. His poems fill the mind with lingering echoes that listeners savor long after they hear them. Ganey writes in Somali, but some members of the next generation—including women—are adapting maanso to the rhythms of English. The spoken word artist Hodan Ugas, granddaughter of the poet Rage Ugas, has written poems in English about the challenges Somalis face in the diaspora. Ugas appeared with Abdi Phenomenal, Said Salah Ahmed, and others in the film Somalia: A Nation of Poets, which premiered on Twin Cities PBS in January 2017.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/composite_0.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/somali-poetry-minnesota"},{"alt":"Color image of 4-H club member Hannah Rolf showing off her three-year-old Holstein dairy cow at the Minnesota State Fair, 2015.","author":[{"name":"Kristina Gray","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/kristina-gray"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"October 26, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"1960","name":"4-H Clubs, West Polk County","postbody":"Since their origin in 1902, 4-H clubs have helped American youth explore various professional fields—many related to farming—while mastering practical skills. In Minnesota’s West Polk ...","searchtext":"Since their origin in 1902, 4-H clubs have helped American youth explore various professional fields—many related to farming—while mastering practical skills. In Minnesota’s West Polk County, 4-H branches formed in the late 1920s to train and inspire the next generation of local farmers. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, much of the US was still agricultural. Young people, however, were leaving their families’ farms to look for jobs in cities. The first 4-H clubs were part of an effort to keep these young people involved in farming. 4-H began in 1902 in multiple states as a loosely connected network of community clubs in rural areas. Over time, the network expanded to encourage young people’s development in cities as well. 4-H clubs began to appear in West Polk County in the late 1920s. They formed in the Crookston area and in small towns like Eldred, East Grand Forks, and Neilsville; there, they spread throughout the region. By 1947, there were nineteen clubs; by 1952, that number had increased to twenty-eight. Some clubs, like Angus 4-H from Angus, Minnesota, represented local towns and villages. Others, like Cottonwood Shelter, Worthwhile, and North Star, chose more symbolic names. By 1979, West Polk County had 425 4-H members. Young people were important members of their 4-H clubs, but their leaders were also key participants. Parents often shared responsibilities in guiding members in different projects. They, along with club leaders, worked towards the goal of developing each member’s potential. Carl Ash, the Polk County Extension Agent during the 1930s and 1940s, attended an annual 4-H recognition banquet every November to give credit to each of the West Polk County clubs and their leaders. During the summer season, many 4-H members in West Polk County toured other members’ work sites to observe the progress of their projects. Participants engaged in a wide range of activities according to their personal interests. Some sewed and gardened; others trained horses or dogs while learning cooking techniques. All members kept records throughout the year to track project developments. Participating in the West Polk County Fair, held every summer in Fertile, Minnesota, was another goal for 4-H members, who practiced their project presentations at monthly club meetings in order to prepare. Those who won purple ribbons qualified to go on to the Minnesota State Fair in August. Members also gathered annually at an Achievement Day event to present their projects. West Polk County 4-H leaders introduced club members to the latest in agricultural technology. In competitions and contests, young members exhibited at fairs with the incentive of receiving ribbons or prizes. In the early twentieth century, activities were separated by gender. Boys entered gardening contests and showed their livestock to judges while girls learned how to sew, cook, bake, and efficiently preserve food through canning. The 4-H emblem, a four-leaf clover, symbolizes the club’s origins in agriculture. The 4-H colors are green, which represents springtime, life, and youth, and white, which represents purity and idealism. The pledge recited at each monthly meeting references the four core entities for which the club is named: head, heart, hands, and health. The key life skills of citizenship and leadership are built into every 4-H project, activity, and event. Members take on leadership roles as officers after yearly elections. Roles may differ from club to club, but common offices are president, vice president, secretary, treasurer, reporter, song leader, and historian. The 4-H motto is “To Make the Best Better.” In the 2010s, opportunities for 4-H members have expanded to include art, music, communications, leadership, career development, home improvement, and computer technology. In total, the organization’s programs reach 7 million youth worldwide. 4-H programs are active in both rural and urban settings throughout the US as well as in other countries of the world. They remain focused on developing future citizens and leaders committed to making their best even better.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/5624 DairyShow Registered Holstein    3 year old Hannah Rolf Polk-L.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246091,"name":"Agriculture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/4-h-clubs-west-polk-county"},{"alt":"Color image of Dorothy Molter at the door of her summer tent on Knife Lake, ca. 1985.","author":[{"name":"Laura Hanson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/laura-hanson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"October 25, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Molter, Dorothy (1907–1986)","postbody":"Pennsylvania native Dorothy Molter spent over fifty years in Northern Minnesota, where she helped to run the Isle of Pines resort and provided nursing care for those in need. From the 1950s ...","searchtext":"Pennsylvania native Dorothy Molter spent over fifty years in Northern Minnesota, where she helped to run the Isle of Pines resort and provided nursing care for those in need. From the 1950s through the mid-1980s, she made batches of homemade root beer at her cabin on Knife Lake that drew thousands of tourists, anglers, and canoeists each summer and earned her the nickname “the Root Beer Lady.” Dorothy Molter was born in 1907 to a working-class family in Arnold, Pennsylvania. Her mother died when she was young, so Dorothy and her five siblings were placed in a Cincinnati orphanage. This allowed the children to stay together and allowed their father, Cap Molter, to visit them when he was on leave from the railroad. Years later, when Cap remarried, the family moved to Chicago, Illinois, where Dorothy and her siblings grew up and attended high school. As a child, Molter was quiet and athletic. She was active on her Calumet High School tennis, swimming, basketball, and rifle teams. In an era when women were expected to be wives and mothers, she sought out medical training at Auburn Park Hospital Nursing School. After she graduated from nursing school in 1930, Molter joined her family on a fishing vacation at Bill Berglund’s Isle of Pines resort on Knife Lake in Northern Minnesota. One long day of train, car, and boat travel transported Molter to the pine-studded islands and fish-filled waters of Knife Lake. At first, Molter spent as much time exploring this northern paradise as she did fishing. She learned about the native plants, animals, fish, and people around Knife Lake. With each yearly visit to Isle of Pines she became more adept at living in the wilderness and caring for herself and others. By 1934, Molter started living and working at Isle of Pines. Berglund taught her skills such as portaging a canoe, dog sledding, and ice cutting. She used her sharpshooting prowess to hunt and her natural curiosity to find the best fishing and camping sites for visitors. In turn, Molter provided nursing care to Berglund, helped him manage his diabetes, and assisted paddlers with first aid issues ranging from sunburns to fish hooks in their fingers. Outfitters started marking Isle of Pines on canoe maps as a place to stop for medical help. For this reason, Molter became known as the Nightingale of the Northwoods—a reference to English nurse Florence Nightingale. Berglund died in 1948, leaving forty-one-year-old Molter to run Isle of Pines by herself. Even though she was happy living on her own, not everyone thought Molter should continue to live at Isle of Pines, which was located in the Boundary Waters Canoe and Wilderness Area (BWCAW). Federal laws were passed that authorized the U.S. Forest service to acquire more land, including the Isle of Pines resort, but Molter refused to sell. After President Truman’s 1949 executive order restricted planes in BWCAW, all of Dorothy’s supplies had to be hauled in over fifteen miles of lakes and overland portages from the nearest road at Moose Lake. A group of local residents called “Dorothy’s Angels” helped Molter by bringing mail and supplies as they traveled by her home. Even with their help, Molter could no longer pack in bottles of pop. Then she had an idea that would make her famous as the Root Beer Lady. Molter began to make her own pop at Isle of Pines with sugar, root beer extract, and crystal-clear water from Knife Lake. All of these ingredients were stirred with a canoe paddle for an added touch of pine flavor. Molter’s father, her sisters, and her nieces and nephews all helped the Root Beer Lady with her famous brew. Dorothy’s fame grew when the October 1952 issue of the Saturday Evening Post published an article about Dorothy Molter titled, “The Loneliest Woman in America.” Dorothy, however, was anything but lonely. Her log book recorded as many as six thousand visitors who paddled to Knife Lake each summer to drink root beer and meet the famous Root Beer Lady. Molter’s kindness, medical expertise, and root beer drew people to her home on Knife Lake for fifty-six years, until her death in 1986. She was seventy-nine years old.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/molter_in_door_frame.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/molter-dorothy-1907-1986"},{"alt":"Color image of the Hjemkomst and crew on open water during their voyage to Norway, 1982. From the Tom Asp Collection, Historical and Cultural Society of Clay County.","author":[{"name":"Angela Beaton","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/angela-beaton"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"October 25, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Hjemkomst (ship)","postbody":"While recovering from a fall in 1971, Moorhead Junior High School guidance counselor Robert Asp read a book on Viking shipbuilding. This sparked the thought that he should build and sail ...","searchtext":"While recovering from a fall in 1971, Moorhead Junior High School guidance counselor Robert Asp read a book on Viking shipbuilding. This sparked the thought that he should build and sail his own Viking ship. After ten years of planning, building, and training, the ship named Hjemkomst sailed from Duluth, Minnesota, to Oslo, Norway. Robert Asp dreamed of building and sailing a Viking ship as a way to connect with his Norwegian heritage. He read several books on the subject while recovering from a broken leg after a fall. Once recovered, he began working on the ship in earnest. Asp chose for his ship the name Hjemkomst, a Norwegian word that means homecoming, and set his plan to sail the Atlantic Ocean into action. In July 1972, the first lumber was milled at Harvey Engen’s sawmill north of Viking, Minnesota. Asp personally selected each White Oak tree that was milled. He estimated that fifteen trees would be needed to build a Viking ship; ultimately, over one hundred were needed. He chose an old potato warehouse in Hawley, Minnesota, to house the ship and leased it from the city for ten dollars per year. Renovations transformed the Welter Potato Warehouse into the newly minted Hawley Shipyard. Asp was diagnosed with leukemia in 1974 but never lost sight of finishing his dream ship. It took six years for him and his volunteers to complete. The finished ship featured the horned head of a dragon, which the crew named Igor, at the bow. Sleeping quarters, along with a stove, water, food, sea anchor, and inflatable life boat, were all outfitted on the ship. The center mast was 63 feet tall and supported a thirty-foot-by-forty-foot main sail and a ten-foot-by-thirty-foot top sail. On July 17, 1980, the Hjemkomst made her debut and was presented to a cheering public. The ship was towed overland from Hawley to Duluth and first set sail in Duluth Harbor on August 9, 1980. Over 4,000 spectators witnessed the maiden voyage. The crew trained for weeks on Lake Superior for their journey to Norway. Robert Asp took his last trip on his dream ship in Duluth Harbor on September 27, 1980. He died of leukemia later that year on December 27. After his death, his family and friends remained committed to keeping his dream of sailing the Hjemkomst to Norway alive. In May of 1982, a crew of thirteen, including four of Robert’s children, began the voyage from Duluth to Norway. The first leg of the journey took them through the Great Lakes, where they stopped in several port cities for celebrations. The Hjemkomst arrived in New York City on June 8, 1982. The ship sailed around the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor and then embarked on its cross-Atlantic journey. A few days out of New York, the crew encountered a storm. When the winds and waves caused damage to the ship, including a crack that ran fourteen feet along the keel, the crew considered turning around. However, their experienced Norwegian skipper determined that they could continue on. During the following weeks, the crew sailed and entertained themselves by writing in journals, playing cards, water skiing off the back of the ship, and playing guitar and singing. On July 19, 1982, the crew arrived in Bergen, Norway. Family and friends had flown to Norway to greet them and locals came out in large crowds. The crew was honored in many celebrations, including a royal visit with the king of Norway on his yacht. The Hjemkomst fulfilled Robert Asp’s dream by reaching its final destination of Oslo, Norway, on August 9, 1982. The Hjemkomst was stored in Oslo for one year after the voyage, then transported from Norway to Cleveland, Ohio, aboard a freight ship in August 1983. It was towed from Cleveland to Detroit, Michigan, and transported by truck back to Minnesota. In 1986, the Asp family donated the Hjemkomst to the City of Moorhead. The city built a visitors’ center to preserve the ship, tell the tale of the voyage, and keep Robert Asp’s dream alive for future generations. The Hjemkomst was taken into the care of the Historical and Cultural Society of Clay County and installed in a museum (the Hjemkomst Center).","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Hjemkomst Sailing.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246053,"name":"Transportation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/hjemkomst-ship"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of an unidentified Métis fur trader of Indian and French Ancestry, ca. 1870.","author":[{"name":"Margaret Vaughan","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/margaret-vaughan"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"October 24, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186622056203,"name":"1792–1861 (Expansion and Reform)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Métis in Minnesota","postbody":"In the Minnesota region during the eighteenth to mid-nineteenth centuries, métis, or mixed-ancestry, people often acted as bridges between white and Native American communities. The Métis ...","searchtext":"In the Minnesota region during the eighteenth to mid-nineteenth centuries, métis, or mixed-ancestry, people often acted as bridges between white and Native American communities. The Métis cultural community of Pembina formed out of fur trade dynamics and influenced Minnesota during its territorial birth. The term “métis” [\\mā-tē(s)\\] has more than one meaning. One references a person with mixed ancestry (métis means “mixed” in French) and is usually written with a lowercase “m”. For example, in Minnesota before statehood, having one Dakota parent and one Scottish parent made one métis. Government officials kept special census records, like the “Sioux Métis rolls,” of mixed-ancestry persons. (In English, both versions of the word often appear without the accent mark, as metis and Metis.) Another meaning of the term identifies present-day members of the Métis Nation of Canada. This specific mixed-ancestry group practices distinct ways of life. People representative of both groups—the métis and the Métis Nation—were involved in the fur trade era in pre-territorial Minnesota and around the Great Lakes. Mothers of Métis and mixed-ancestry children of the Great Lakes region came from the Dakota and Ojibwe nations as well as the Menominee, Potawatomi, Meskwaki, Sauk, Ho Chunk, Odawa, Cree, and Assiniboine. Scottish, Irish, French, and British fathers lived during the French, British, and American periods of colonization. They were coureurs de bois (French or métis traders), voyageurs, artisans, merchants, soldiers, officers, and government workers. Additionally, some mixed ancestry children had one Black parent and one Native parent. Historical accounts describe marriages of men with African ancestry with Native women. James Thompson (eventually freed from slavery) married a Dakota woman in 1833. Joseph Godfrey escaped slavery and married a Dakota woman named Takanyeca in 1857. Pierre Bonga, a free man, married an Ojibwe woman, and their son George Bonga married Ashwewin, who was Ojibwe as well. These men lived and died in close association with their wives’ communities. Marriages with Native women allowed the men to build bonds with their wives’ extended families. These husbands tapped into new economic opportunities, accessed hunting areas, influenced trading, and benefited from the many skills and kinship ties of their Native wives. The women themselves also gained social status, influence, and access to resources. Some of these marriages were á la façon du pays, French for “according to the custom of the country.” In some cases, the European and American colonial powers legally recognized marriages as well as divorces. Some fathers were committed to raising their mixed-ancestry children; others abandoned them. Historically, métis lived with complicated identities. In pre-territorial and territorial Minnesota, mixed-ancestry people acted as translators, guides, teachers, farmers, traders, missionaries, and entrepreneurs. The métis were able to use different parts of their identity in order to survive day to day. This made for a variety of life stories. Jane Lamont, the Scottish and Dakota granddaughter of the Dakota leader Mahpiya Wicasta (Cloud Man), lost both her parents before she was nineteen years old. She was at first a teacher, then chose homesteading and marriage to the nephew of the missionary Samuel Pond. On the other hand, Mary Taliaferro Woodbury, another métis woman, lived with her children in St. Paul. She lost her husband, a soldier, in 1863, then moved her family to a reservation in 1887 or 1888 to live with her Dakota relatives. In the 1820s, the number of mixed-ancestry families and children in Minnesota soared. This began to change in the mid-to-late 1800s, when the need for the métis as go-betweens declined. At this time, métis faced increasingly negative reactions from society for being persons of mixed ancestry. Social options for the métis became more limited. Some mixed-ancestry people tried to join mainstream, Euro-American ways of life (at least outwardly). Others moved with Native relatives to reservations. Native nations often looked after their mixed-ancestry relatives. Pelagie Faribault, a woman of mixed Dakota ancestry, received land through an 1820 treaty with the Dakota. Roughly between 1830 and 1851, the Lake Pepin region contained land set aside by treaty for mixed-ancestry families. Much of it was lost to white colonists or exchanged for land certificates (scrip) in other locations. A draft of a U.S. treaty with the Pembina and Red Lake Ojibwe—written in 1851 but never ratified—included a sum of money for mixed-ancestry relatives. Various mixed-ancestry families usually lived near fur-trading sites from the late 1700s into the 1800s. Many raised children next to each other. Some lived near Fort Snelling and in Mendota, Prairie du Chien, and, later, Lake Pepin (on the Mississippi River). Many of them knew the Red River and Pembina Métis and often interacted with them. International and state borders shifted during the nineteenth century so that the Pembina Métis community was sometimes in Canada and at other times in Minnesota, Dakota, and Iowa Territories. Minnesota played a geographically important role to the culturally distinct Métis in Canada. The distinct Plains Red River Métis, or “La Nation,” routinely traveled on oxcart routes starting in the 1820s. These routes went through what is now Prairie du Chien in Wisconsin, Fort Snelling in St Paul, Pembina in North Dakota, and the Red River Colony in Manitoba, Canada. These Métis traded and conducted business of various kinds. Minnesota Territory, before statehood, actually included Pembina. Pembina also had a Minnesota Territorial representative, Joseph Rolette, who had married into a culturally Métis family. Brigades of Métis hunters with ox-drawn wooden carts went after buffalo until the mid-nineteenth century. The hunting of buffalo sometimes caused conflict with nearby Native American nations. A form of seasonal food gathering continues to the present day in Métis communities. Louis Riel, the famous leader of the Canadian Red River Métis, visited a relative in Minnesota in 1878 and, for a short time, lived in Saint Paul. He approached John Ireland, the city’s Roman Catholic Bishop, and asked for help in resettling “Canadiens” to the United States. Some were probably Métis. Ireland did not help Riel. In 1885, the Canadian government ordered his death for his role in organizing Métis armed resistance. The French Canadian town of Gentilly, Minnesota, mourned the execution as a symbol of the oppression of French speakers. In the Red River Valley and Pembina, Métis intermarried and passed on a culture combining what their parents had brought from their own backgrounds. Certain symbols persist in the present day as markers of Métis life. Brightly colored sashes and the sash dance, floral beadwork, and the infinity symbol flag are symbols of Métis culture. Métis music and dance traditions include jigging, fiddling, and tunes such as the Duck Dance Fiddle Song. Some Métis families celebrate Easter and maple sugar season with specific foods, like crepes with maple syrup. Linguists recognize the French Métis language and Michif as official languages spoken in the United States and Canada. As of 2017, Canada and the United States maintain different Métis policies. Canada formally recognizes some Métis groups as having legal rights. The United States does not view métis peoples as a distinct group. Nonetheless, métis people in several states have formed organizations based on cultural heritage and métis rights.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/10348686.640x640.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246059,"name":"Native Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/m-tis-minnesota"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of a man and a Red River cart train, ca. 1859. Photograph by Martin’s Gallery.","author":[{"name":"Megan Lynn Even","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/megan-lynn-even"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"October 24, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186622056203,"name":"1792–1861 (Expansion and Reform)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Red River Carts","postbody":"Red River carts were used by the Métis for bison hunts and for trade between the heart of the Red River Colony (present-day Winnipeg) and St. Paul in the early 1800s. By the mid-1800s, ...","searchtext":"Red River carts were used by the Métis for bison hunts and for trade between the heart of the Red River Colony (present-day Winnipeg) and St. Paul in the early 1800s. By the mid-1800s, nearly continuous use of the carts had worn trails into the prairie grasses. These trails connected the hunting-farming culture of the Métis on the Red River with the growing industrial culture of St. Paul on the Mississippi River. Fur traders in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries used waterways to travel to the upper Great Plains. As they built posts further inland and west, however, they wanted easier land transportation. In 1801, Alexander Henry (the Younger), a trader for the North West Company, set up a post near present-day Pembina, North Dakota, and fashioned the precursor to the Red River cart. Henry wrote that the cart, made in 1801, had solid wheels “sawed off from the ends of logs whose diameter was three feet.” The design of Henry’s cart likely derived from the carts in French Canada, where many of the workers at Pembina were from. Henry would later write that each cart was worth four horses to them “as it would require five horses to carry as much on their backs as one will drag in each of these large carts.” After French Canadians introduced the cart to the Red River area, local Métis people started building and using what came to be known as the Red River cart. The Métis, people of mixed European and American Indian heritage, used the carts for their well-known buffalo hunts. After the establishment of the Red River Colony in present-day Winnipeg in 1811, they also used them for trade. The Red River cart was made entirely of wood. The only tools needed to build it were an ax and an auger. Rawhide, or wood found along the route, was used to mend breaks. The cart was suspended between two large wheels, each more than five feet in diameter. The wheels had spokes that angled outward from the hubs to the rim, which helped stabilize the cart. When the wheels were taken off, they could be lashed together and, concave side up, used as a raft to cross water. When they were used on land, their squeal could be heard from miles away because they could not be greased; grease would mix with the trail dust and either stop the wheels from turning or wear down the axle. The axle supported the cart’s weight and, even with grease, wore out quickly. Travelers carried spare axle on their journeys; a typical trip from Winnipeg to St. Paul would require four or five. Drivers used harnesses to hitch their carts to a horse or ox, whose head went through a collar. They attached the collar to the cart’s shaft with leather straps called tugs. Usually, the cart was pulled by one animal, but there are some records of carts being pulled by two. Horses were first used, but oxen, which could pull up to 1,000 pounds, also pulled carts after their introduction to North Dakota in 1821. The Métis regularly traveled from the area of the Red River Colony to St. Paul, organizing caravans with as many as 200 carts. They carried bison hides, fur, meat, and pemmican to trade, and they returned home with manufactured goods, ammunition, food, tobacco, seed, and other imports. In addition to carrying goods, the carts provided protection. Drivers hung hides or canvas on them to shield themselves from weather and parked them in circle formations around camps to guard against attack. There were no roads at first, so the Métis created their own trails with the carts. They created three main routes: the Woods Trail, the Plains Trail (on the east side of the Red River), and the Plains Trail (on the west side of the Red River). For a time, the trading routes were commercially and politically comparable to the Santa Fe Trail. Because expansion in the American north was not as successful as it was in the south, however, the significance of the Red River trails and the carts that made them is not as well recognized. In the 1850s and 1860s, steamboats and railways replaced the Red River carts as the region’s main modes of transportation.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/10395426.640x640.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246053,"name":"Transportation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/red-river-carts"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Dr. Henry Schmidt, ca. 1918.","author":[{"name":"Carolyn S. Van Loh","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/carolyn-s-van-loh"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"October 23, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Schmidt, Henry (1882–1918)","postbody":"Henry Schmidt’s dream of becoming a physician in his hometown of Westbrook, Minnesota, came true in 1910. His dream of opening a hospital, however, was postponed when he died during the ...","searchtext":"Henry Schmidt’s dream of becoming a physician in his hometown of Westbrook, Minnesota, came true in 1910. His dream of opening a hospital, however, was postponed when he died during the 1918 influenza epidemic. Schmidt’s father was instrumental in opening Westbrook’s Henry Schmidt Memorial Hospital in 1951. Henry was born on July 11, 1882, on a farm in Rosehill Township, eighteen years before the village of Westbrook was incorporated. He was a diligent student and spent much of his leisure time with his books. In 1899 he completed coursework at a Mountain Lake school on the east side of the county. He then attended and graduated from Windom High School in 1901. He qualified to enroll at the University of Minnesota but chose to teach in District 51, his rural country school, for one year before furthering his education. Schmidt entered the University of Minnesota in the 1903 fall term. He never failed an exam. When he wasn’t in school, Schmidt helped out as much as he could on the family farm. In 1907 he earned a bachelor of science degree and in 1909 a medical degree. He fulfilled his residency requirements at Ashbury Hospital in Minneapolis. Schmidt became the fourth doctor to practice in the Westbrook area when he started his medical practice late in 1910, after his parents helped him buy out Dr. W. E. Patterson’s practice. The young doctor married Hazel Bullard, a former Westbrook teacher, on August 27, 1918. Their plans for a future together were shattered when Henry succumbed to influenza less than two months later, on October 24. The obituary stated that he died from pneumonia, but Spanish influenza contributed to his death. The training Schmidt received on the farm instilled in him a strong work ethic that carried him through all levels of his education. This ethic also played a role in his early death, because the young doctor always put his patients first. Even when he felt influenza attacking his body, he continued working day and night in an attempt to save lives of those afflicted with the deadly disease. After Schmidt’s death, the State Board of Health ordered a private funeral. Rev. J. Lewis conducted the service, and Schmidt was laid to rest in the family plot at the Westbrook cemetery, a short distance northeast of Westbrook. Ottilla Schmidt Muller, Schmidt’s sister, died in February 1919. She is buried in the same cemetery. Katrina Schmidt joined her children in the family plot July 1943. Daniel Schmidt, Henry’s father, never forgot the dream of opening a hospital that he and his son shared. In 1943, it finally became a reality when he set aside a large sum of money in his will for the construction of a community hospital in Westbrook. He died in 1949—the same year work began on the hospital building. Dr. Henry Schmidt Memorial Hospital opened its doors to patients in January 1951. Though the hospital has seen many improvements over the years, in 2017 it remains the heart of the Westbrook community. Known since 2007 as the Sanford Westbrook Medical Center, the hospital has the distinction of being the smallest functioning hospital in Minnesota.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/IMG_3533_Dr. Henry Schmidt.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246087,"name":"Health and Medicine","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/schmidt-henry-1882-1918"},{"alt":"Color image of Gabe (Michael Sung-Ho) and Billy (Eric Sharp) in the Mu Performing Arts production of Middle Brother, written by Eric Sharp and directed by Robert Rosen, 2014. Michal Daniel, photographer.","author":[{"name":"Kim Park Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/kim-park-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[],"date":"October 20, 2017","eraTag":[],"keydate":"","name":"Korean Transracial Adoption in Minnesota","postbody":"Korean adoption to the United States began at the end of the Korean War and continues in the 2010s. Over 200,000 Korean children have been adopted worldwide, with over 120,000 joining ...","searchtext":"Korean adoption to the United States began at the end of the Korean War and continues in the 2010s. Over 200,000 Korean children have been adopted worldwide, with over 120,000 joining American homes. Minnesota has the highest concentration of Korean adoptees of any state, and its large and visible Korean adoptee population has made crucial contributions to local culture. Korean transnational adoption began soon after the Korean Armistice Agreement halted fighting on the Korean Peninsula in 1953. In the aftermath of the Korean War, transracial adoption was promoted in the United States and Europe as a way to provide homes for unwanted or orphaned children. As South Korea gradually stabilized, the number of mixed-race children and war orphans available for adoption dropped. Demand for adoptable children, however, continued to rise. As a result, Korean children born to poor families or to unmarried women became the most likely to be sent for adoption. In addition to Western demand, South Korean government policies and cultural norms were major factors in the availability of Korean children for overseas adoption. South Korea’s initial encouragement of transracial adoption was rooted in a belief that Korean society would never accept mixed-race children. Subsequent support for the overseas adoption of orphaned or displaced children reflected a broad Korean cultural bias against adoption. During the country’s rapid economic expansion in the 1980s and 1990s, the South Korean government prioritized economic growth over social welfare programs. As overseas Korean adoption continued to expand throughout the 1970s and 1980s, critics saw it as outsourcing of child-welfare functions that were not provided for in South Korea. During the peak years of Korean transracial adoption in the mid-1980s, the United States placed more than 6,000 Korean children annually. By 2017, the number of Korean overseas adoptions had dropped to a couple of hundred a year. Minnesota’s involvement in Korean adoption began in 1955 through a program run by Children’s Home Society of Minnesota (CHS). It increased when CHS and Lutheran Social Services (LSS) began Korean adoption programs in 1967 and 1969, respectively. The high rate of international adoption in Minnesota was noted as early as 1974 in a Minneapolis newspaper article. The article reported that 10 percent of all applications for foreign adoption in the U.S. that year had come from Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota. Put together, these states contained less than 2.5 percent of the country’s population. The high concentration of Korean adoptees in Minnesota is the result of several overlapping cultural, structural, and procedural factors. Progressive politics tended to favor social welfare programs such as state facilitation and regulation of adoption. Minnesotans have expressed progressive ideas through groups like the leftist Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party and the Citizens League. These have shaped the state’s child welfare policies since before the beginning of Korean American adoption. The state’s predominantly white population is made up largely of the descendants of immigrants from Scandinavia and Germany. In the past, both of those nations’ cultures have been more permissive of non-biological kinship than the nations of southern and eastern Europe. Sweden, for instance, has the highest concentration of Korean adoptees of any nation in the world. Minnesota was also the site of the first African American to white transracial adoption, in 1948. The state’s ethnic homogeneity may also have contributed to Minnesotans’ willingness to adopt transracially. Assimilative rather than separatist views of race relations have generally predominated. Public interracial conflicts were less prominent in mid-twentieth-century Minnesota than in other parts of the United States with more people of color. Several private organizations involved in adoption from Korea have roots in Minnesota. Lutheran Social Services of Minnesota traces its history to 1865, when the Vasa Lutheran Church took in four orphan children in Red Wing. In 1889, Children’s Home Society of Minnesota was founded to facilitate the adoption of children transported from the East Coast to the Midwest on “orphan trains.” South Korean Kun Chil Park did his graduate work at the University of Minnesota and interned at LSS before founding Korean Social Services (KSS), one of four overseas adoption agencies in South Korea, in 1964. By the 1970s, Minnesota’s high rate of Korean adoption created a snowball effect. As more Korean adoptees joined Minnesota families, parents interested in adopting noticed their arrival. This, in turn, led more Minnesotans to seek out Korean children. The large and growing population of Korean adoptees spurred the creation of community resources for Korean and other transnational adoptees and their families. Culture camps, for example, exposed children and teens to Korean culture and language. They included Korean Culture Camp (KCC) of Minnesota; Kamp Kimchee; Camp Choson; and Camp Moon Hwa. Arts groups for Korean adoptees, such as the Jang-Mi Korean Dance and Drum school and performance group, began to form in the 1980s. Minnesotan adoptive father Brian Boyd founded Yeong & Yeong/Koryo Books to cover topics related to adoption. And adoptee networking groups, including Minnesota Adopted Koreans (established in 1991, active through the late 1990s) and AK Connection (established in 2000) brought together adult Korean adoptees. The Asian American population in Minnesota is small but growing rapidly. Asian Americans made up less than one-quarter of one percent of the state’s population in the 1960s and 1970s. In 2017, they constitute 4 percent. Korean adoptees, who began to arrive in Minnesota in large numbers during this time, are one of the most established Asian American groups in the state. Together, they make up almost half of Minnesota’s Korean American population. The many Korean American adoptees in the state have been visible and important participants in cultural production and academic research, especially in the Twin Cities. Adult Korean adoptees have been especially prominent in the arts. The works of poet Sun Yung Shin and memoirist Jane Jeong Trenka have gained national and international acclaim. Korean adoptee experiences have figured prominently in works produced by the Twin Cities-based Asian American performance arts organization Theater Mu. Mu’s first season included Mask Dance (1993), a play authored by Mu cofounder and artistic director Rick Shiomi. It was based on conversations with local Korean adoptees. Subsequent Mu productions continued to address adoption. The Walleye Kid, coauthored by Shiomi and Minnesota Korean adoptee Sundraya Kase, premiered in 1998. Four Destinies, by (then) Minnesota-based Korean adoptee Katie Hae Leo, followed in 2011. Minnesotan Korean adoptee Eric’s Sharp’s Middle Brother debuted in 2014. The Twin Cities campus of the University of Minnesota (U of M) has produced a significant body of research focusing on issues related to Korean adoption. It includes at least fourteen doctoral dissertations and three master’s theses in the departments of Psychology, American Studies, Social Work, Theater Arts, English, and History. The U of M’s hospital system is home to the first adoption medical clinic in the U.S. Established in 1986, it specializes in health issues related to international adoption. The Social Welfare History Archives of the U of M Libraries has the largest holdings of adoption-related social service administrative records in the nation.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Middle Brother image.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/korean-transracial-adoption-minnesota"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of the Wiens family homestead, ca. 1950s","author":[{"name":"Elaine E. Kroeker","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/elaine-e-kroeker"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"October 20, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Mennonite Migration to Cottonwood County","postbody":"Believing that war and violence are inconsistent with Jesus’s teachings to love one’s enemies, a group of people from Molotschna Colony, Russia—Mennonites of Dutch descent—searched for a ...","searchtext":"Believing that war and violence are inconsistent with Jesus’s teachings to love one’s enemies, a group of people from Molotschna Colony, Russia—Mennonites of Dutch descent—searched for a permanent home in the early 1870s. They found such a place, where they could follow their faith without persecution, in Minnesota’s Cottonwood County. Menno Simon, a Dutch Catholic priest born in 1496 in Witmarsum, Friesland, Holland, was part of the Anabaptist Reformation of the sixteenth century. Simons taught nonresistance, advocated a Christ-centered lifestyle, and claimed that the teachings of Jesus held the most importance in the Bible. He also taught that baptism should follow (rather than precede) a person’s commitment to Jesus Christ. People who followed the teachings of Simons were called Mennonites. To escape persecution, the original Mennonites immigrated from Western Europe to Prussia in the 1600s. From there, they moved to Russia in the 1700s. By 1789, 228 Mennonite families had settled in the village of Chortiza, the first Russian Mennonite colony. Other colonies formed as Mennonites migrated to Russia to avoid persecution in Prussia. In 1810, 400 families lived in the Molotschna Colony, which was made up of sixty villages. It is from this group that the Carson Mennonite Brethren Church founders came. Czar Alexander II reformed the Russian military after losing the Crimean War in 1856. He terminated many of the privileges given to Mennonites by Catherine the Great, including military exemption. Mennonites, believing that participating in war compromised their faith, sent delegations to explore emigrating to North America. The first Mennonites from Russia to arrive in Cottonwood County came in 1873, when thirteen families immigrated to Mt. Lake from the Crimea. In April 1874, Minnesota senator William Windom introduced a bill (S. No. 655) in the U.S. Senate which urged the United States to establish permanent settlements for Mennonites. He emphasized their integrity, work ethic, and need for a place to live out their religious tenets peaceably. Mennonites from Russia began migrating to southwest Minnesota as this bill, which ultimately failed in a series of very close votes, was being debated. At about the same time, the U.S. federal government gave land to railroad companies. William Seeger, Minnesota State Treasurer and Secretary of the Board of Immigration, met Mennonite delegates from Russia seeking land. Like Windom, Seeger recognized the potential of the Mennonites as a prosperous and hard-working group. As a result, he tried to set up financial assistance programs to make Minnesota more appealing to them. Concerned that they would emigrate to Canada instead, which already offered inducements to Mennonites, Seeger took them through southern Minnesota, encouraging them to buy land near the railroads and emphasizing the quality of the farmland. The Homestead Act of 1862 allowed families and citizens older than twenty-one to qualify for 160 acres of frontier land in return for a nominal registration fee if they lived on the land for five years. This act, and the offer of land next to the railroad, attracted Mennonite immigrants to southwest Minnesota. In 1875, Mennonite families in Cottonwood County began meeting in the home of Jacob and Anna Funk Wiens for Bible study and fellowship. Their farm was located 4.5 miles north of present-day Highway 60 on County Road 2. On February 11, 1877, they organized into a formal congregation affiliated with the Mennonite Brethren Conference. Charter members included Jacob and Anna Funk Wiens, Peter and Maria Martens, Peter and Marie Penner, Friedrich and Aganetha Strauss, Daniel and Katharina Bergthold, and Heinrich and Anna Boldt. The congregation’s first meetinghouse, called Bingham Lake Mennonite Brethren Church, was built in 1885, four miles north of Bingham Lake in the center of Carson Township. It served them until 1949. After relocating to Delft, the congregation changed their name to Carson Mennonite Brethren Church. They continued to meet until 2005, when the church closed. The ministry had lasted 130 years.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Site of Bible studies that led to  formation of Bingham Lake Mennonite Brethren Church - Jacob and Anna Funk Wiens.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246089,"name":"Religion and Belief","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/mennonite-migration-cottonwood-county"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of research and development division, Economics Laboratory, 1938.","author":[{"name":"Catherine Kirkland","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/catherine-kirkland"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"October 19, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"1978","name":"Ecolab, Inc.","postbody":"Ecolab, Inc., is a public company that provides hygiene, water, and energy products and services. It was founded in 1923 as Economics Laboratory in St. Paul. By 2017, it employed 38,000 ...","searchtext":"Ecolab, Inc., is a public company that provides hygiene, water, and energy products and services. It was founded in 1923 as Economics Laboratory in St. Paul. By 2017, it employed 38,000 workers in over 170 countries, served customers in more than 1.3 million locations, and reported annual sales of $13 billion. It counted among its employees 1,600 scientists and held 6,300 patents. Ecolab’s founder, Merritt J. Osborn, began his career as a salesman. In 1923, a stain in a hotel carpet convinced him of the need for a rug-cleaner that would not require removing the carpet. Osborn set up an office in the basement of the Endicott Building in St. Paul. He then hired one-time St. Paul Winter Carnival princess Ida Koran as a secretary and assistant. He called his new company Economics Laboratory (EL). EL first developed, produced, and marketed Absorbit, a carpet cleaner. Soon after, Osborn recruited University of Minnesota graduate student Leonard Englund to develop the formula for Soilax, a dishwashing and all-purpose cleanser. Managed by the Osborn family, EL expanded its customer base to include restaurants, food processors, and dairies. During World War II, it developed one of the first detergents that killed germs and distributed it to U.S. forces to sterilize mess kits. In addition to chemicals, from its earliest days the company also produced dispensers and equipment. In 1946, for instance, EL developed the first electronic dispensers for commercial dishwashers. Its comprehensive customer service included training and product maintenance in addition to equipment and products. EL became a publicly traded company in 1957. It acquired Klenzade in 1961 and the Magnus Company in 1964. It then added petrochemical processing, metalworking, transportation, and laundering to its services. It also developed a cleaning system for car and bus fleets, a dairy cow sanitizer, and a rinse aid for dishwashers. When EL’s first employee, Ida Koran, died in 1967, her will established a trust fund for EL employees in need. It was one of the first such employee assistance programs in Minnesota. Beginning in 1984, the trust also sponsored scholarships for the children of employees. In 1978, the Osborn family gave up management of the company. In 1986, EL changed its name to Ecolab, Inc., and launched the Ecolab Foundation to seek out and fund charitable initiatives. Related projects involved water, education, the arts, conservation, and civic development. During the 1980s, Ecolab sold off its pulp-and-paper division and several plants. It acquired pest control and extermination businesses and broadened its laundry offerings. The 1987 acquisition of ChemLawn, a lawn care service provider, proved unprofitable. Ecolab sold it for a loss in 1992. The late 1980s and the 1990s witnessed Ecolab’s expansion around the world. It increased its presence in Latin America, Europe, Africa, the Asian Pacific, and the Middle East. In 1991, it entered into a joint venture with German firm Henkel KGaA that combined their European businesses. Ecolab also purchased Henkel’s Latin American and Asian Pacific businesses. The joint venture lasted until 2001, when Ecolab bought out Henkel’s 50-percent stake. Acquisitions continued to extend Ecolab’s reach. The 1994 purchase of Kay Chemicals, a company in North Carolina, expanded its restaurant services. The 1996 acquisition of Indiana-based Huntington Laboratories, a producer of infection-control chemicals, added to its hospital and medical offerings. Nalco Holding Company, Inc., a water and energy services company based in Illinois, became a wholly owned subsidiary of Ecolab in 2011. Ecolab acquired Champion Technologies, a Texas-based company focusing on petroleum and energy chemicals, in 2013. Ecolab’s focus on water safety and sanitation attracted the attention of Microsoft founder Bill Gates. Through his investment vehicles, Gates was Ecolab’s largest shareholder in 2012, owning 10.8 percent of outstanding shares. That year, Ecolab amended its stockholder rights plan to allow Gates’ investment entities to acquire and own up to 25 percent of the company’s outstanding shares. In 2015, Ecolab purchased the former Travelers Tower in downtown St. Paul for $47 million. The developer PAK Properties bought the former Ecolab headquarters, at 370 Wabasha Street, in 2017 for $3.6 million.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/HD4.7 r2.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246052,"name":"Science and Technology","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/ecolab-inc"},{"alt":"Color official judicial portrait of Harry Blackmun, ca. 1975.","author":[{"name":"Paul Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/paul-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"October 18, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Blackmun, Harry A. (1908–1999)","postbody":"Harry Blackmun was the third Minnesotan to serve on the US Supreme Court, after Pierce Butler (associate justice, 1923–1939) and Warren Burger (chief justice, 1969–1986), and he stayed the ...","searchtext":"Harry Blackmun was the third Minnesotan to serve on the US Supreme Court, after Pierce Butler (associate justice, 1923–1939) and Warren Burger (chief justice, 1969–1986), and he stayed the longest: twenty-four years. He was little known outside legal circles until he wrote the decision in Roe v. Wade (1973) that established Constitutional protection of abortion. Harry Andrew Blackmun grew up in difficult circumstances in St. Paul’s Dayton’s Bluff neighborhood. His father, Corwin, worked as a fruit dealer, with frequent absences from home and little worldly success. His mother, Theo, suffered from depression. Young Harry attended Van Buren School, where in kindergarten he befriended another Dayton’s Bluff lad, Warren Burger. The two remained friends for seventy years, but not to the end of their lives. Blackmun attended St. Paul’s Mechanic Arts High School, where he was a top student, a prize-winning public speaker, and president of his senior class. A verse in the 1925 Mechanic Arts yearbook predicted that he would one day become US ambassador to Germany. At sixteen Blackmun got a scholarship to Harvard University, where he graduated summa cum laude in mathematics and won Phi Beta Kappa honors. He continued there for law school, graduating in 1932. Later he wrote that what he most enjoyed about Harvard was singing in the Glee Club. After Harvard, Blackmun returned to St. Paul to clerk for US Court of Appeals judge John Sanborn. Then he took a job with the Minneapolis law firm that many years later became the powerhouse Dorsey & Whitney. He specialized in the law of taxes and trusts and estates. In 1950 Blackmun was persuaded to move to Rochester, Minnesota, to work as resident counsel for the Mayo Clinic, a job that suited him in part because he had once seriously considered going to medical school instead of law school. This was the happiest period of his life. In 1959 President Eisenhower appointed Blackmun to the Eighth US Court of Appeals, based in St. Louis. He served that court diligently and without controversy. His decisions demonstrated careful scholarship, restraint, and deference to established authority. In 1970 President 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, and the Senate confirmed this appointment 94–0. Chief justice then was Warren Burger, and because the two had grown up together in St. Paul (and were both Republicans) they were often referred to as the Minnesota Twins. On the Supreme Court Blackmun was non-ideological and pragmatic; he had no big ambitions. Then came Roe v. Wade (1973), in which the Court—by a 7–2 majority that included Warren Burger—found that the right to privacy implied in the Constitution prevented state governments from making abortion within the first trimester of pregnancy a crime. Blackmun wrote the majority opinion. The decision provoked both praise and fury and exposed Blackmun to a fame (or notoriety) that he neither sought nor enjoyed. His legal reasoning in Roe has been analyzed, criticized, and often condemned, but the core of it—that pregnancy is a private matter in which state power to intervene is strictly limited—survived nearly fifty years of determined attacks until 2022, when it was overturned by Dobbs v. Jackson Women||s Health Organization. Blackmun served another twenty-one years on the Supreme Court and participated creatively in many important cases, regarding the implications of Roe (he never stopped defending a woman’s right to abortion), commercial speech, the Pentagon Papers, affirmative action, sex discrimination, and, increasingly, the death penalty. Though Blackmun opposed it personally (as he did abortion) he had consistently voted to sustain death penalties. In Callins v. Collins (1994) he changed his position. He announced that he would “no longer…tinker with the machinery of death” and that “the death penalty experiment has failed.” The increasing conservatism of the Court during the Reagan and George H. W. Bush years made Blackmun uneasy, and his friendship with Burger did not survive. The election of Democrat Bill Clinton as president in 1992, plus Blackmun’s advanced years, opened the way to retirement. He left the court in August 1994. Harry Blackmun died on March 4, 1999, and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/blackmun_official-photo.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246060,"name":"Crime and Punishment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/blackmun-harry-1908-1999"},{"alt":"Color image of the interior of the Confederation of Somali Community in Minnesota (CSCM), 2017. Photograph by Ibrahim Hirsi.","author":[{"name":"Ibrahim Hirsi","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/ibrahim-hirsi"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"October 17, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"1994","name":"Confederation of Somali Community in Minnesota","postbody":"Founded in 1994, the Minneapolis-based Confederation of Somali Community in Minnesota (CSCM) is one of the oldest Somali-operated nonprofit organizations in the state. For more than two ...","searchtext":"Founded in 1994, the Minneapolis-based Confederation of Somali Community in Minnesota (CSCM) is one of the oldest Somali-operated nonprofit organizations in the state. For more than two decades, it has provided job and education services as well as health care and legal assistance to members of the community who face language and cultural barriers. At the end of 1991, the first wave of Somali refugees escaping the bloody civil war in their East African country began to start a new life in Minnesota. Back then, many newcomers spoke little or no English. Because of the language barrier, most of them struggled to find jobs and access social services. Around the same time, other Somalis who had immigrated to other parts of the United States before the civil war began moving to the state to join the new refugees. They came from as far away as California, Texas, and New York. By 1993, the number of Somali residents in Minnesota reached into the hundreds. Many of them were in dire need of basic social services. They needed assistance filling out housing and job applications, making doctors’ appointments, enrolling children in schools, and using public transportation. In 1994, a group of Somali refugees banded together to respond to the growing needs of community members. Many of them had worked as educators and public servants before the civil war in Somalia. The result was the CSCM, a nonprofit organization that provides Somali residents with job training and then connects them to job prospects. The group also offers members of the community housing and education services. CSCM has served as a cultural and language bridge that connects Somali refugees and immigrants to employers, school officials, and housing authorities throughout the state. These services have made CSCM a one-stop social service hub that draws between 200 and 250 clients each month. A majority are new Somali residents of the Twin Cities metro area with limited education or English skills. CSCM provides diverse services. Two of its signature programs are the Newcomer Academy and Shaqodoon Employment Solutions (introduced in 2016). Through the Newcomer Academy program, the organization works with Somali students entering local public schools to offer after-school support services to help them graduate on time. Through its Shaqodoon Employment Solutions, CSCM assists Somali youth and unskilled immigrant job-seekers in the Twin Cities metro area. CSCM staff teach them how to write resumes, apply for jobs, and prepare for job interviews. The program also connects residents to employers with low-skill job vacancies. Aside from its education and employment programs, CSCM, which is led by executive director Mohamud Noor, helps people with housing needs and language barriers as well as those facing immigration issues and deportation. Its mission is “[t]o strengthen the capacity of Somalis in Minnesota to become contributing members of society, while keeping their culture.” Since it was founded, CSCM has been based in Minneapolis’ Cedar Riverside neighborhood. The area has special significance in the community as the home of the largest concentration of Somali people in the US. It has produced both the nation’s first Somali American legislator, Ilhan Omar, and its first Somali American city council member, Abdi Warsame.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/InsideCSCM_straightened.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/confederation-somali-community-minnesota"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of a Mexican American migrant farm worker harvesting asparagus near Owatonna, ca. 1955.","author":[{"name":"Jessica Lopez Lyman","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/jessica-lopez-lyman"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"October 04, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Migrant Workers","postbody":"Throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, migrant workers, mainly from Mexico, have played a vital role in Minnesota’s economy, often working in low-wage farming and ...","searchtext":"Throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, migrant workers, mainly from Mexico, have played a vital role in Minnesota’s economy, often working in low-wage farming and food-processing industries. Prior to colonization in the Americas, Indigenous peoples migrated across the continent. In what is known today as the Midwest United States, it is believed Natives traded and traveled up and down the Mississippi River, reaching sites as far away as the Caribbean. For example, in Wisconsin, archaeologists have recovered shells found only in the Caribbean. This serves as evidence of Indigenous people’s advanced technology and trade systems. When settler-colonists arrived in the Americas, they created human borders that restricted previous migratory patterns. After the Mexican–American War, in 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo restructured the south to create our present-day US–Mexico border. In 1924, Border Patrol was established, heightening the enforcement of the borderlands. Despite the nation’s boundary, people from Mexico, Central America, and South America continued to migrate to the United States —with and without authorization—in hopes of better opportunities. Since its inception, the United States’ economy has relied on migrant labor. Whether it was the forced enslavement of Africans or the recruitment of Mexicans and Chinese, the country depended on low-wage workers to bolster its agricultural and industrial systems. During the early twentieth century, Mexican nationals and US citizens of Mexican descent served as the foundation for migratory labor in the Midwest. Mexican migrant labor to the Midwest was fueled by the railroad, sugar beet, and meat packing industries. The first to initiate hiring Mexicans in Minnesota, railroad companies often went into Mexico or Texas to recruit workers. The housing arrangements provided by the railroad companies were atrocious. According to a 1927 national housing survey, boxcars provided by the Burlington Railroad Company in Inver Grove Heights, a St. Paul suburb, were the worst in the entire nation. Even decades later, in 1946, a survey conducted by the International Institute reported that of all St. Paul residents, Mexicans lived in the poorest conditions. The largest industry to hire Mexican migrants was the sugar beet companies. The most prominent company, American Beet Sugar, was founded in 1899 and changed its name to American Crystal Sugar in 1934. American Beet Sugar recruited Mexican workers, known as betabeleros, from neighboring states and along the US–Mexico border with the promise of housing and credit at neighborhood stores. In northern Minnesota and North Dakota, the Red River Valley’s rich soil generated a vast number of sugar beet farms. The majority of beet workers came from Texas. This movement from Texas to Minnesota became a common migratory pattern and continues in the twenty-first century. During Minnesota winters, American Beet Sugar encouraged Mexicans to move to urban areas, such as St. Paul, where they would remain until the following beet season. This allowed them to appease white, rural Minnesotans who feared having a stationary Mexican population living near them after the harvest season. Compared to other Midwestern states, whose migrants were mainly single men, Minnesota early on had a high concentration of women and child migrants due to the lack of enforced labor laws. This changed the social fabric of the state. Mexican women contributed to the economy by working outside of the home and becoming positive role models for their children. Like farm labor, factory work bolstered migration. Urban Midwest cities saw migration growth due to the expansion of the meat packing industry. After World War I, meatpacking plants dominated employment of Mexicans in St. Paul. This trend increased migration to urban areas, moving families away from farms to the West Side neighborhood. Meatpacking industry jobs were considered the most stable and sought after because they were year round. In the twenty-first century, these positions continue to flourish and attract numerous migrant workers to maintain the factories. Migrant workers have faced several challenges in Minnesota. First, they often work in awful labor conditions. In the early twentieth century, prior to the Jones–Costigan Amendment (also known as the Sugar Act of 1937), child labor was common. Laws did not specify a required minimum wage for farm labor. After the amendment was passed, migrant children under the age of fourteen were no longer allowed to work in the fields. Children between the ages of fourteen and sixteen were allowed to work only limited hours. Despite legislation to improve labor conditions, the enforcement of these policies is difficult. Due to their transient life and precarious migration status (sometimes workers do not have documentation to work or their visas expire), migrant workers are viewed as a vulnerable population. Employers take advantage of this situation by not providing humane living conditions and failing to pay workers for their labor. This is called wage theft. Second, migrant workers sometimes experience racial and class discrimination. Even if migrant workers are US citizens, they are stereotyped as foreign because of their racial identity. Workers’ families are also subject to discrimination. Children of migrant workers who attend schools and participate in youth activities are not always welcomed by their peers. Often, these experiences create feelings of isolation, especially if families only stay in the area for the short growing season. Discrimination against migrant workers decreases and heightens depending on the country’s political moment. For example, during the Great Depression, starting in 1929, thousands of Mexican migrants and US citizens of Mexican descent were forced to leave the US and move to Mexico. Because the country was in an economic crisis, they were seen as less valuable than other Americans. A decade later, during World War II, the United States suffered a depletion of low-wage workers. In 1942, the Bracero Program was created to solve this problem. A partnership between Mexico and the US, the program brought millions of Mexicans to the country as migrant workers to labor in the fields and factories. Several thousand worked their way to Midwestern states, including Minnesota. In spite of these struggles, migrant workers are resilient and contribute to Minnesota’s economy. In the early 2000s, it was estimated that 20,000–30,000 migrants traveled to Minnesota every year to work in the food processing plants and farms. In order to support this vibrant population, several organizations were created throughout the state. One prominent group, Centro Campesino, was formed in the fall of 1998 by migrant workers in Southern Minnesota. As a member-based organization run for and by farm workers, Centro Campesino strives to empower workers to create systematic change. The continuous demand for low-wage labor ensures migrant workers and their families will continue to shape Minnesota, especially the rural areas, well into the twenty-first century.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/SA4.59 p21.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246055,"name":"Labor","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/migrant-workers"},{"alt":"Color image of Minneopa Falls, Minneopa State Park, October 21, 2010. Photograph by Wikimedia Commons user McGhiever.","author":[{"name":"Karin Green","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/karin-green"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"October 03, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186622056203,"name":"1792–1861 (Expansion and Reform)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Minneopa State Park","postbody":"Minneopa State Park in Blue Earth County is Minnesota’s third-oldest state park. It was created in 1905 to preserve Minneopa Falls, a two-tiered waterfall once described as nature’s ...","searchtext":"Minneopa State Park in Blue Earth County is Minnesota’s third-oldest state park. It was created in 1905 to preserve Minneopa Falls, a two-tiered waterfall once described as nature’s masterpiece. The park has since expanded to include Minnesota River frontage, the historic Seppman stone windmill, and a herd of American plains bison. The name Minneopa, a contraction of mni hinhe nunpa, is most commonly translated from the Dakota language as “water falling twice.” The park is situated in the Minnesota River Valley, which formed 12,000–9,000 years ago when glacial meltwater from Lake Agassiz drained south, creating the massive Glacial River Warren. This erosive force created a valley 320 miles long, up to five miles wide, and 250 feet deep. Also, beginning over 14,000 years ago, the erosion of limestone moved Minneopa Falls upstream about three-quarters of a mile. It’s still moving. The first Euro-American settler-colonists began arriving in the area in 1853 by small steamboat and by wagon. Local newspapers and settler-colonists’ diaries describe a Dakota village, Makatosa, on the west bank of Minneopa Creek and just north of what became US Highway 68. Records tell of interactions with the Dakota leaders Sitomni Duta (Red All Over) and Wahpe Duta (Red Leaf). Minneopa Falls, first owned by William R. Price, quickly became a popular local picnicking and gathering area. The first resort, called Minneinneopa, opened in 1858 just east of the falls. Prominent artists took photos; newspapers and immigration brochures promoted the area. In Euro-American literature from the 1860s and 1870s, the falls is referred to as Minne-inne-o-pa and interpreted as “singing waters where the elk play.” In 1870, the St. Paul and Sioux City Railroad reached Minneopa Falls and scheduled several daily trips from nearby Mankato. Excursions from churches, schools, and businesses came for the day. Large camp meetings (Christian religious gatherings, with attendance as high as 5000) came for multiple days. The upper falls area was said to be a natural amphitheater. In 1903, Orange Little, the newest owner of Minneopa Falls, spoke of wanting to cut the trees and graze cattle. Alarmed by this possibility, local business leaders formed a committee to preserve Minneopa Falls by designating it as a state park. In 1905, Ezra Gates, a Minnesota state representative, introduced a bill to create Minneopa State Park. Some dissenters thought it should be a locally owned park. But this was an era when the state government had already created other state parks and historical monuments, setting a precedent. The bill passed. From 1905 to the early 1960s, Minneopa State Park grew minimally. Local commitment to the park remained strong, and the site maintained its popularity (45,000 visitors were reported in 1935, a year of heavy rains). Between 1937 and 1940, the WPA (Works Progress Administration; later, Works Projects Administration) built seven rustic-style structures that were later added to the National Register of Historic Places. Also during this era, the state park administration began to rethink what a state park should be and whether the minimum size should be 500 acres. By 1967, Minneopa State Park had just over 145 acres. Should it expand or should it revert back to local control? Local sentiment supported expansion. Expansion supporters formed the Mankato Active Community Thought (ACT) Minneopa Expansion Subcommittee. They mobilized around three facets: the Minnesota state legislature and Governor Harold LeVander; US Senator Walter Mondale and the Department of Interior; and a local “Expand the Park” fundraising campaign. By these actions, they added almost 800 acres to the park. It expanded to the Minnesota River and the state-owned historical site Seppman Mill. In 2015, eleven American plains bison were reintroduced to the park. The bison are part of the Minnesota Bison Conservation Herd, which includes the Minnesota Zoo and Blue Mounds State Park. These herds are unique: they are considered genetically pure, largely free of genetic material that would have come from cross breeding with cattle. The bison reside on 332 acres of native prairie. Minneopa State Park in 2017 consists of 2,599 acres. The southern, smaller section of the park includes Minneopa Falls and the WPA structures. The northern section borders the Minnesota River and includes the drive-through Bison Range, historic Seppman Mill, and camping facilities. Interpretive services include geocaching, birding, and naturalist programs.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/MinneopaFalls2010.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/minneopa-state-park"},{"alt":"Site map of Little Round Hill, 1992.","author":[{"name":"Lina Belar","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/lina-belar"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"October 03, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186622056201,"name":"1754–1800 (Revolution and a New Nation)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Little Round Hill Trading Site","postbody":"Ojibwe oral tradition identifies Little Round Hill, a small elevation on the banks of the Crow Wing River, as the location of a late-1700s French fur trading fort and a skirmish between ...","searchtext":"Ojibwe oral tradition identifies Little Round Hill, a small elevation on the banks of the Crow Wing River, as the location of a late-1700s French fur trading fort and a skirmish between Ojibwe hunter-traders and Dakota warriors. Located in Old Wadena County Park at the confluence of the Partridge and Crow Wing Rivers, it was the site of the first intensive archaeological excavation within Wadena County. Wadena is an Ojibwe word meaning |||little round hill.||| During the eighteenth century, this area was just north of a contested zone between Ojibwe and Dakota territories. For this reason, it was a risky area for travelers to pass through. However, the presence of fur-bearing animals and the many Ojibwe people in the area made it appealing to eighteenth-century fur traders, especially independent ones. In 1852, historian William Warren related the story of a leader of the Ojibwe band of Pillagers. The leader, whose name was Eshkibagikoonzh (Flat Mouth), said that when he was a child he had been at a trading house when it was attacked by a large party of Dakotas. The trading house was occupied by an independent French fur trader known to the Ojibwe as Awashtoyaa (the blacksmith) who traveled with several traders and ten-to-fifteen Ojibwe hunters and their families. Wadena County bought the Little Round Hill property in 1968, and archaeologist Douglas Birk first visited it in 1972. Based on his observations, the site was nominated for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Sites. There were two other known archaeological properties in the area, including another fur trade site, the winter encampment of Jean-Baptiste Cadotte. The first excavations were done by Douglas Birk and the Institute for Minnesota Archaeology in 1992. The materials they discovered supported the idea that the site might be related to the story of Awashtoyaa. In that excavation, a number of historic artifacts were found. They included two small white glass seed beads, which were popular trade items, and a small piece of ferrous sheet metal that appeared to have been reworked to form a hair pipe. Also found were a small piece of mirror glass, a small misshapen lead musket ball, and a modern 22-caliber shell casing. Some of the most important materials discovered through excavation were animal bones indicating a place where food had been prepared and consumed by a large number of people. Most of the identified bones were from white-tailed deer and elk. Birk concluded that enough artifacts had been found to give some preliminary ideas about the content, preservation, and internal structure of the site. There were identifiable ancient American Indian components. The collections of raw bone and historic materials he found seemed to support the idea of an occupation, such as the one described at Awashtoyaa’s winter camp. In Birk||s opinion, nothing was found that refuted the story. Further excavations were recommended. In addition, years earlier, a number of artifacts had been found at Little Round Hill by a relic hunter using a metal detector. They included an iron ferule, a piece of fire steel, a rosehead nail, a fragment from the bottom of a kettle, and an axe head. In 2009 and 2010, another series of excavations were carried out at the request of the Wadena County Historical Society. This time, Dr. Katherine Hayes and students from the University of Minnesota spent two years studying two historic sites at Old Wadena County Park: the Little Round Hill site and the trading post of Jean-Baptiste Cadotte. The Little Round Hill site showed evidence of pit-style dwelling depressions and an activity area centered between the dwellings which comprised a hearth feature. There were also many artifacts, including faunal materials, lithic debris, and European trade items such as musket balls, glass beads, pipe fragments, and a small number of imported ceramic sherds. Some of the items found during the excavations were displayed as part of a First Contacts exhibit at the University of Minnesota’s Bell Museum in 2011. Items included knives, rings, trading beads, and other artifacts that had been retrieved from the site.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Map of Little Round Hill.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246059,"name":"Native Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/little-round-hill-trading-site"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of the West Side Milling District, Minneapolis, ca. 1920. Photograph by Hibbard Studio.","author":[{"name":"Mark Haidet","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/mark-haidet"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"October 02, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Minneapolis Flour-Milling Industry During World War I","postbody":"The Minneapolis flour-milling industry peaked during World War I when twenty-five flour mills employing 2,000 to 2,500 workers played a leading role in the campaign to win the war with ...","searchtext":"The Minneapolis flour-milling industry peaked during World War I when twenty-five flour mills employing 2,000 to 2,500 workers played a leading role in the campaign to win the war with food. Minneapolis-produced flour helped to feed America, more than four million of its service personnel, and its allies. In 1880, Minneapolis surpassed St. Louis as the nation’s leading flour-milling center. Production increased from two million barrels in 1880 to 15.4 million barrels in 1910. Minneapolis became “the Flour-Milling Capital of the World.” Milling peaked in 1916 when mills near St. Anthony Falls produced 18.5 million barrels of flour—over 20 percent of the nation’s output. Three firms controlled 90 percent of the daily milling capacity. They were the Washburn-Crosby Company (eight mills and 37,300 barrels), the Pillsbury Company (six mills and 29,300 barrels), and the Northwestern Consolidated Milling Company (six mills and 15,960 barrels). The Pillsbury “A” Mill—the world’s largest mill—boasted a daily capacity of 12,000 barrels. More than fifty grain elevators storing nearly fifty million bushels of grain supplied the mills. When war erupted in 1914, Germany’s invasion of Belgium and the British blockade created an aid crisis. People in the occupied territories desperately needed supplies, especially food. With the approval of the warring nations, Herbert Hoover organized the private Commission for Relief in Belgium. Minneapolis millers were among the first to respond. William C. Edgar, editor of the Northwestern Miller, organized the Millers Belgian Relief Movement in November. In January 1915, a ship delivered 283,120 forty-nine-pound sacks of flour and other supplies to Rotterdam. Minneapolis millers and industries provided nearly 25 percent of the cargo. Fueled by record wheat harvests in 1914 and 1915, local mills operated near full capacity. Between 1914 and 1919, they produced an average of 17.3 million barrels of flour a year. Buffalo, Minneapolis’ nearest competitor, averaged 6.3 million barrels a year. When the United States entered the war in April 1917, President Woodrow Wilson urged all Americans to become “citizen soldiers” supplying food for our armies and our Allies. “Food will win the war” became the rallying cry. In his April 28, 1917, Message to the People of Minnesota, Governor J. A. A. Burnquist declared that it was up to Americans to avert a global famine. He urged Minnesotans to uphold “their patriotic duty…to maintain the greatest possible yield of foodstuffs from Minnesota for the world.” A poor wheat crop in 1916 (636 million bushels compared to 1.1 billion bushels in 1915), a disastrous harvest in Argentina, and predictions of a poor 1917 American harvest resulted in steep price increases for wheat and flour. Panicked buyers hoarded supplies, and a bread riot broke out in New York City. Many American millers favored government intervention to stabilize the situation. President Wilson created the Food Administration, led by Herbert Hoover, to stimulate food production and encourage food conservation. Hoover named Washburn-Crosby executive James Ford Bell to head the Milling Division of the Food Administration. The Food Administration implemented rules designed to stretch the supply of wheat. Millers were required to register with the government, operate under price controls, and mill whole wheat flour instead of refined flour. They were also required to mill |||substitute flours||| for use in Victory Breads —breads containing at least 20 percent non-wheat flour. Between April 1917 and June 1919, the US sent 6.2 million metric tons of flour to Europe. Because the Minneapolis mills and grain elevators were critical to the war effort, military units protected the milling district from potential sabotage by pro-German agents. In April 1917, arson was suspected in fires that destroyed two local grain elevators. In 1921, Minneapolis flour production slipped below seventeen million barrels. It steadily declined thereafter. By 1930, Buffalo, which benefited from closer proximity to eastern and foreign markets and favorable rail shipping rates, became the nation’s leading flour milling center. Although no longer the leading center of flour production, Minneapolis remained the headquarters of the nation’s two leading flour millers: Pillsbury and General Mills (the successor to Washburn-Crosby Company). Their capital investment powered Buffalo’s rise. In 1927, Washburn-Crosby (which built its first mill in Buffalo in 1904) and Pillsbury accounted for 52 and 26 percent, respectively, of Buffalo’s flour capacity.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/MH5.9 MP3.1W p103.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/minneapolis-flour-milling-industry-during-world-war-i"},{"alt":"Black and white postcard picturing the dedication of Stephens Hall, with James J. Hill, in 1908.","author":[{"name":"Kristina Gray","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/kristina-gray"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"September 27, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Origins of the Northwest School of Agriculture (NWSA), 1905–1940","postbody":"By the late 1890s, bonanza farming had stopped bringing good incomes to large landowners. Immigrants who arrived in northwestern Minnesota learned quickly that the Red River Valley soil was ...","searchtext":"By the late 1890s, bonanza farming had stopped bringing good incomes to large landowners. Immigrants who arrived in northwestern Minnesota learned quickly that the Red River Valley soil was some of the richest in the state. An experiment station was started in 1895 that led to the founding of a boarding high school to train young people to work on farms as farmers and homemakers. In 1895, Superintendent Torger A. Hoverstad established the Northwest Experiment Station in the Crookston area. Great Northern Railroad baron James J. Hill donated 476.61 acres for the station’s use. In ten years, Hoverstad hoped, there would be a school in place nearby to teach young people how to work the soil. Hoverstad’s plan proceeded on schedule, and thirty-one students attended the school’s first year of classes in 1905. Senator A. D. Stephens encouraged the Minnesota legislature to appropriate $15,000 for Crookston’s first school building, which offered space for classes, a library, an office, a dining hall, and a dormitory. The building was completed and opened as the Northwest School of Agriculture (NWSA). In October 1908, Hill visited the NWSA campus to help dedicate Stephens Hall in honor of Senator Stephens and speak to local farmers. A year later, the first class (eight students) graduated, and that fall, 129 students enrolled. Farming parents were actively involved with the NWSA during the winter months. In 1910, the school held its first Annual Farmer’s Week and Women’s Meetings and Red River Valley Winter Shows. Students featured their farm crops and presented exhibits in the newly constructed Kiehle building. With each passing year, more students enrolled in the school, and the Minnesota legislature funded the construction of more NWSA buildings. By 1915, the Red River Valley Winter Shows attracted visitors with crops and livestock expositions. Leading farmers started forming associations dedicated to different kinds of products: Red River Valley dairy; crops and soils; northern Minnesota poultry; and Red River Valley livestock. In 1918, the Minnesota legislature appropriated $10,000 for a concrete road between the NWSA campus and Crookston. Deep ruts in the muddy roads used at the time made it nearly impossible to travel from campus to the city, which was only two miles away. After the turmoil of World War I, the year 1920 was a good one for the NWSA. First, a short-term course for women brought 200 participants to the NWSA campus in June for a week of study and recreation. In a significant shift, many farmers stopped using horsepower for tillage and invested their money in internal-combustion-engine tractors. In the same year, a University of Minnesota regent toured the campus to investigate road conditions, which continued to be poor. Eventually, the Minnesota legislature granted more funding for road improvement. It was not until August 1925 that paving of the campus roadway began by the company with the lowest bid: $2.12 per square yard. In 1923, Superintendent Selvig wrote a play titled “Pageant of Prosperity” related to Red River Valley history and agriculture. It was presented on the twentieth anniversary of the founding of the Red River Valley Dairyman’s Association. Two hundred people participated in the production at Crookston’s downtown Armory. In 1926, NWSA enrollment for the fall term reached an all-time high: 228 students. That same year, however, Selvig was elected to the U.S. Congress. As a result, he resigned his position in 1927, and Austin A. Dowell became superintendent of NWSA in his stead. The Great Depression affected farm families who had difficulty paying for NWSA room and board plus tuition. By 1936, the worst of the Depression may have been over for others in Minnesota, but it remained dire for those living in the Red River Valley. The first seven months of 1936 broke records for heat, cold, and drought. In January 1937, it was 51 degrees below zero; for 45 consecutive days, the temperature remained below zero. Despite these economic hardships and extreme weather conditions, NWSA student enrollment broke records in 1936 with 384 students. By 1937, the Depression had ended for farmers after rainfall returned to normal. In 1939, the NWSA had the largest graduating class in its history: 115 students from its regular class and 62 from its advanced class.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/12 - Stephens hall Hill speaks_edited.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246091,"name":"Agriculture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056210,"name":"Education","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/origins-northwest-school-agriculture-nwsa-1905-1940"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Klingensmith with one of her aircraft, a Waco biplane, ca. 1930.","author":[{"name":"Kaci Johnson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/kaci-johnson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"September 25, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Klingensmith, Florence “Tree Tops” (1904–1933)","postbody":"The first licensed female pilot in North Dakota and a pioneer of aviation, Florence “Tree Tops” Klingensmith made a name for herself in air racing circuits, winning several prizes and ...","searchtext":"The first licensed female pilot in North Dakota and a pioneer of aviation, Florence “Tree Tops” Klingensmith made a name for herself in air racing circuits, winning several prizes and setting records. At a time when women were expected to stay at home, Klingensmith followed her own path. Florence Gunderson was born on September 3, 1904, in Oakport Township, Minnesota, to Gust and Florence Gunderson. In addition to owning a small farm, Florence’s father, Gust, worked as a janitor and bus driver at the school Florence and her three siblings attended. A career change for Gust moved the family to Moorhead in 1918. Florence, a gutsy and athletic fourteen-year-old at the time, scandalized her neighbors as she motorcycled down Moorhead streets. When Florence was twenty-two, she met and married Charles Klingensmith. The marriage lasted for only a year and a half before ending in divorce. When Charles A. Lindbergh touched down at the Hector Air Field in Fargo on August 26, 1927, Florence Klingensmith was there to witness the event. Watching him, she decided in that moment to become a pilot—a radical career choice for a woman at the time. The first licensed female pilot in the world had been France’s Raymonde de Laroche in 1910, but women had been taking to the skies for decades, since the earliest days of flight. Klingensmith wanted to join them. In early 1928, Klingensmith started taking classes at an auto school in Fargo, North Dakota, and worked as a mechanic’s apprentice at Hector Field. These experiences gave her a broad knowledge of airplanes and enabled her to take flying lessons. In the same year, Klingensmith’s instructor asked her to be his stunt girl in area flying exhibitions; she agreed to take the job in exchange for more lessons. Klingensmith’s first skydive was in June of 1928 and nearly ended in disaster. She was unconscious when she hit the ground, but survived. After the accident, she was more determined than ever to get back in the air. While she gained experience and knowledge with her stunt performances and lessons, Klingensmith was not making money. She realized she needed her own plane if she wanted to make a living as a pilot. She persuaded local Fargo businessmen to donate money for a plane in exchange for free advertising space on it. In April 1929, she bought a Monocoupe she named “Miss Fargo.” She earned a new nickname, “Tree Tops,” when she became the first licensed female pilot in North Dakota. In 1929, Klingensmith joined ninety-eight other female pilots to form the Ninety-Nines, an organization of female pilots still in operation in 2017. Now licensed, Klingensmith set out to break records. On April 19, 1930, she broke the women’s record for inside loops, completing 143. Since no officials witnessed the loops, however, the record stood at 46. It was later set at 980 by Laura Ingalls. On June 22, 1931, with 50,000 spectators and officials watching, Klingensmith flew for over four hours and completed 1,078 loops at Wold Chamberlain Field, an air field in Minneapolis. In addition to air shows, Klingensmith competed against men and women in various races throughout the country. In 1932, she was the first winner of the Amelia Earhart Trophy. On September 4, 1933, Klingensmith was in fourth place in the Frank Phillips Trophy Race outside Chicago. After completing the eighth lap, Klingensmith’s aircraft malfunctioned due to stress from the race. The Bee Gee Model Y Senior Sportster, modified by Klingensmith, was overpowered. She veered off course and flew steadily for several miles before the plane nose-dived from an altitude of 350 feet. Klingensmith was killed on impact. A parachute tangled in the fuselage indicated that she had attempted to evacuate. Even though her death was due to mechanical failure, not pilot error, the crash was used as an excuse to try to bar women from flying in future races. Klingensmith was brought home to Minnesota for burial. Her funeral was attended by dozens of her fellow pilots, and the Fargo businessmen who had financed her first plane served as her pallbearers. In June 2015, a monument to Klingensmith was placed at her grave site.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/florence with one of her airplanes.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246053,"name":"Transportation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/klingensmith-florence-tree-tops-1904-1933"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of a locomotive for the Hiawatha, Milwaukee Road. Photograph by Milwaukee Road News Bureau, 1935.","author":[{"name":"Aaron Hanson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/aaron-hanson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"September 20, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Milwaukee Road in Minnesota","postbody":"The Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad Company, better known as the Milwaukee Road, was a large railroad network that operated in the state of Minnesota for nearly 130 years. ...","searchtext":"The Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad Company, better known as the Milwaukee Road, was a large railroad network that operated in the state of Minnesota for nearly 130 years. It provided freight and passenger service to many communities, playing a vital economic role. In 2017, much of the Minnesota route survives as a part of the Canadian Pacific Railway. The Milwaukee Road in Minnesota grew out of a series of older, smaller, regional routes. It started as the Minneapolis and Cedar Valley on March 1, 1856, extending south from Minneapolis through Faribault to Iowa. The route sought to link Chicago and the Twin Cities through Wisconsin. Though the line lost its charter several times, construction continued, and the Cedar Valley became the Minnesota Central on February 1, 1864. As construction reached Owatonna by way of Prairie du Chien and building continued at Austin to the west, the company came under the aegis of the Milwaukee and St. Paul. This company also bought the St. Paul and Chicago, and by the early 1870s, there was a new, shorter route between Chicago and the Twin Cities that followed the Mississippi River. Although “Milwaukee” became associated with the Minnesota Central as early as 1866, it was on January 3, 1872, that the Milwaukee Road system officially came to Minnesota as the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul. Several smaller railroads also became part of the Milwaukee Road. These were more rural affairs, such as the Southern Minnesota to the south and east of the Twin Cities and the Hastings and Dakota to the south. A vital part of the Milwaukee was the Short Line, a small route that provided the Minnesota Central with a direct line into Minneapolis and connections to the Hastings and Dakota. Many branch lines made up the Milwaukee inside Minnesota. These lines were often lower density, linked smaller communities, and moved agricultural products on a smaller scale. They included the Minnesota Midland along the Zumbro Valley; the Cannon Valley line; the Caledonia, the Mississippi and Western in a small section of southeastern Minnesota; and the Stillwater and Hastings. The Fargo and Southern and the Chippewa Valley and Lake Superior also joined the line. There were other branches, such as the Hutchinson branch, and even a small resort line to service Lake Minnetonka, known as the Deephaven Line. Extensions were created for certain rural Minnesota communities, such as Mankato and Farmington. The last of the extensions brought under the Milwaukee Road orbit was built in 1926, offering additional service between Oakland and Hollandale. In addition to being an agricultural or “Granger” railroad in Minnesota, the Milwaukee enjoyed a reputation for legendary passenger service—particularly on its Hiawatha trains, whose rolling stock was named from the literature of Robert Louis Stevenson. The Milwaukee Road extended from Chicago to the Pacific Northwest coast, and this route was highlighted by the Olympian trains and electrified trackage through the Rockies. The line maintained its equipment at several shop facilities in the state, such as those in Austin and south Minneapolis. The Milwaukee Road depot was used as office space from 1971 until 2001, when Marriott International opened a restaurant and two hotels. The depot and the freight house were added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. The late 1960s were lean years for Minnesota’s Granger roads. Maintenance to trackage was deferred. Passenger trains were ceded to Amtrak in 1970. The Milwaukee was eventually forced to abandon its entire western extension starting at Ortonville with a filing for abandonment on May 15, 1981. The railroad proved to be a worthwhile asset for its competitor, the Soo Line, which assumed control of the ailing Milwaukee on February 19, 1985. Since 1992, the Canadian Pacific Railway has operated what is left of the Milwaukee Road in Minnesota.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/HE6.1M p4.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246053,"name":"Transportation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/milwaukee-road-minnesota"},{"alt":"Color image of the Helen Allison Savanna Scientific and Natural Area, Anoka County, ca. 2010.","author":[{"name":"Paul Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/paul-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"September 18, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246048,"name":"1585–1763 (Colonization)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056201,"name":"1754–1800 (Revolution and a New Nation)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056203,"name":"1792–1861 (Expansion and Reform)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":203519472229,"name":"Pre-1585 (Before European Contact)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"1850","name":"Oak savanna","postbody":"Oak savannas—open grassland studded by tall, spreading oak trees—once covered 10 percent of Minnesota, mostly in the southeast quarter of the state. They are an attractive ecosystem for ...","searchtext":"Oak savannas—open grassland studded by tall, spreading oak trees—once covered 10 percent of Minnesota, mostly in the southeast quarter of the state. They are an attractive ecosystem for animals such as deer, turkeys, and red-headed woodpeckers. Before European immigration, indigenous people valued the savannas for the good hunting they provided, fostering and maintaining them through the regular use of fire. In 2017, only about 1 percent of the savannas that existed 200 years ago remains. The oak savanna is a transitional ecosystem, between prairie and woods. In Minnesota it consists mainly of scattered bur oak trees amid grasslands. Historically, the state’s savanna lands existed mostly in a band from south of what became the Twin Cities to the Iowa border. This was the northern extension of savannas that covered most of present-day southern Wisconsin and southern Iowa, northern Missouri and Illinois, and large fractions of Oklahoma and Texas. Oak savannas can exist and persist only where there is regular fire. Without fire, the transition zones tend to fill with brush, shrubs, and fire-intolerant trees; the savannas turn into woods. Before large-scale Euro-American immigration, prairie fires took place regularly in Minnesota, but natural fires, caused by lightning, did not happen widely enough or often enough to maintain Minnesota’s vast savanna land. That oak savanna was a human creation. Before the arrival of settler-colonists, American Indians made frequent use of fire all across North America, for hunting and to create and maintain open land. Compared to oak savanna, forest was not good hunting country, nor did it produce much food. The great food-producing animals of the Midwest—bison, deer, and elk—fed well in the grasslands and savannas, where they were also the easiest to hunt. Indigenous people understood this, and set fires annually to preserve and extend open country. Fire also fertilized the grasslands, to the benefit of the animals and their human hunters. Minnesota’s oak savanna country occupied the territory between the Big Woods of the southeast and the open prairie of the southwest. The then-dominant tree species of southeastern Minnesota—elm, maple, basswood—did not tolerate fire well; regular fire keeps them in check. The mature bur oak, by contrast, tolerates fire well because of its thick, cork-like bark. It does best where the canopy is open and undergrowth is kept low. Regular fires eliminate competitive tree species and control undergrowth (browsing animals, such as bison, also help). Prairie, together with bur oaks (and, secondarily, red oaks) and regular fire form oak savanna. The oak trees create bountiful crops of acorns, a favorite food of turkeys, deer, and other animals, so the savanna made ideal hunting grounds. The indigenous people of southern Minnesota undoubtedly observed this and understood the relationship between their fire practices and the desirable savanna landscape. European farming practices and urban growth destroyed most of the savanna in the nineteenth century. Oak trees got in the way of the plow, and the crop farmer had no use for fire. There was no place for fire in towns and cities, either. And so the savanna melted away. The destruction of savannas drastically reduced habitat for the species best-adapted to them. The red-headed woodpecker, which prefers savannas over all other habitats, was hit particularly hard, its numbers vastly reduced. Audubon Minnesota reported in 2014 that the woodpecker’s population had dropped from 94,000 in 2004 to 20,000 in 2012, mostly due to continuing loss of oak savanna. In the late twentieth century the value of the savanna began to be recognized once again, and scattered efforts at preservation or restoration of oak savannas have been undertaken by the state, some city park departments, the University of Minnesota, and private groups like the Nature Conservancy. Conservation and renewal projects were undertaken at Agassiz Dunes in Polk County, the Helen Allison Savanna and Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve in Anoka County, and Ottawa Bluffs in LeSueur County. Still, the survival of oak savanna habitats remains in doubt.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/savanna landscape_edited.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/oak-savanna"},{"alt":"Google map of the Cadotte Post site with overlay of Douglas Birk’s 1972 sketch and an approximation of the location of the survey grid.","author":[{"name":"Lina Belar","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/lina-belar"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"September 13, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186622056201,"name":"1754–1800 (Revolution and a New Nation)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Cadotte Trading Post","postbody":"The Cadotte Post was a fur trade encampment in the late eighteenth century—one of three archaeological sites in Wadena County identified through Ojibwe oral tradition as a late-1700s ...","searchtext":"The Cadotte Post was a fur trade encampment in the late eighteenth century—one of three archaeological sites in Wadena County identified through Ojibwe oral tradition as a late-1700s trading fort. It stood just north of the Crow Wing River on its east bank, south and opposite the mouth of the Leaf River in what later became the Old Wadena County Park. In 1790, Jean-Baptiste Cadotte and others set out to winter on the Crow Wing River near hunting grounds claimed by both the Ojibwe and the Dakota. Cadotte was of mixed French and Ojibwe heritage and noted for his courage and fearlessness. He formed a party of sixty people consisting of traders and a few Iroquois who had assumed the habits and performed the labor of northern Great Lakes voyageurs. The party also included another independent trader, Jean-Baptiste Réaume, and his own men. After all were fully equipped for trading and trapping, they set out together late in 1791 to look for a site to build a winter encampment. As they traveled, the group discovered many signs of beaver along the Crow Wing River. They also discovered signs of the Dakota, on whose hunting grounds they were encroaching. As they proceeded up the Crow Wing River and cold weather set in, the party set up camp opposite the mouth of the Leaf River. They then built a substantial set of buildings, including log cabins, with fortifications. Cadotte ordered men to build a log fence around his cabin for defense against possible attack. The post was used as a base for hunting, trading, and diplomatic excursions. When a party of Dakota attacked the post to defend their hunting grounds, Cadotte gave them tobacco and ammunition as a sign of goodwill, and the two groups negotiated a truce. In spring, once the river was clear of ice, the group proceeded up the Leaf River to a portage that connected to the Otter Tail and then the Red River of the North, making a long circle that eventually brought them back to their starting point. Between 1848 and 1849, historian William Warren collected oral histories from Ojibwe elders that were eventually published in his History of the Ojibway People. One of them provided information about Cadotte’s post, including its buildings, the traders who lived there, and their interactions with nearby Dakota. By 1902, the area where the Cadotte Post had stood had become part of the timber lands owned by Potlatch Corporation. After it was logged over, it was acquired by the Wadena County and incorporated into its parks system. In 1972, archaeologist Douglas Birk visited the site. He documented the remnant signs of a military road, first used in the 1840s, that connected Fort Ripley with the Crow Wing area. He also noted a river landing cut into the steep river bank. At the site of the Cadotte winter encampment, he recorded several excellently preserved cellar depressions at the head of the landing and across the old road. Birk also noted surface finds, including lithic and ceramic materials, faunal remains, nail fragments, glass bottle shards, and one white glass seed bead. Later, he learned that individuals using metal detectors had already combed the grounds and collected knife blades, a rifle barrel, an awl point, a pair of scissors, nails, and an axe blade, among other items. Between 2009 and 2010, Dr. Katherine Hayes of the University of Minnesota led an excavation of the site of Cadotte||s post. At that time, two of the cellar depressions noted by Birk were still reasonably intact while a third had suffered extensive damage from logging activity. Several other depressions noted from Birk||s visit were no longer identifiable. To be certain, the team conducted shovel-test pits of the site. All thirty-six units indicated that logging removals had stripped all of the upper developed soils. All that was left was the sandy sterile subsoil. The test pits were thoroughly screened but very little was recovered. Nothing was left at the site that indicated a date of occupation. Because of this, no further excavations were conducted. In 2017, all that remains of the Cadotte Post are Ojibwe oral histories and the details recorded in Warren’s History of the Ojibwe People.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Map of Cadotte Post Site.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/cadotte-trading-post"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Lois Fankhanel teaching a class at a workshop for Farm Bureau women, 1960.","author":[{"name":"Kristina Gray","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/kristina-gray"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"September 11, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"West Polk County Farm Bureau","postbody":"In the late 1800s, as diversified farms began to replace large bonanza farms in Minnesota and across the U.S., Polk County farmers realized they needed help. National groups with local ...","searchtext":"In the late 1800s, as diversified farms began to replace large bonanza farms in Minnesota and across the U.S., Polk County farmers realized they needed help. National groups with local branches, like the Farm Bureau, formed to help farmers organize and improve their representation in laws and education. Farmers in the western part of Polk County—a particularly fertile area due to the Red River Valley’s rich topsoil—came to rely on their farm organizations as they adapted to the rising cost of transporting produce to city markets. The Polk County Farm Bureau officially organized on December 20, 1917, in order to secure a county agent. Its members knew that such an agent would help them learn the latest farming techniques and teach their children better, more cost-effective farming practices. There were 451 founding members, with annual dues set at two dollars per member. After they helped to create the necessary extension service, county agent R. W. Van Scoik was elected on February 15, 1918, and began work. In June 1926, the Bureau split into two different groups: one representing East Polk County and another representing West Polk County. Herman Skyberg served as the western branch’s first president. In the late 1920s, the West Polk County Farm Bureau gathered in Crookston for its first annual county meeting and picnic. The event drew over 1,200 people, including women and children. Aware that their families were crucial to their farms’ success, farmers encouraged their relatives to become involved with the organization’s inner workings. They also created resolutions during their monthly meetings that helped guide legislators to pass new laws. These eased the burden of expenses related to seeds, implements, hired help, and transportation. During and after the Great Depression, some Polk County farmers lost their farms. As a result, the Farm Bureau gained traction with dissatisfied farmers eager for change, many of whom also aligned themselves with the county’s 4-H clubs. In 1937, they expected 2,500 people attendees at their annual picnic. In the early 1940s, the West Polk County Farm Bureau profiled prominent farmers in local newspapers. Two of the organization’s sixteen directors were women. In 1948, it backed 90-percent-parity-price support (adjusting commodity prices so that farmers could earn incomes comparable to other workers’). A year later, Arnold Gredvig represented Polk County when he became the Minnesota Farm Bureau’s director. The Farmers Union was an organization that rose to prominence alongside the Farm Bureau. Unlike the majority-Republican Bureau, this new group was backed by Democratic Farmer–Labor lawmakers. On December 15, 1954, 125 West Polk Farm Bureau delegates met with Democratic legislator Coya Knutson from neighboring Red Lake County. In the 1950s, the Bureau’s membership tripled from its earlier numbers in the 1920s. In November 1964, the Farm Bureau criticized the Commodity Credit Corporation’s (CCC’s) sale of wheat on the open market, which kept farm-commodity prices low. The Farm Bureau took the position that the CCC should not sell farmers’ wheat at market price and urged it not to sell for less than $2.50 a bushel, plus storage and administrative costs. By the late 1960s, membership had fallen below its 1950s levels. Laws, economics, the world market, and the costs of doing farm business had changed. A delegation from West Polk County took a trip to Washington, D.C., to meet with leaders. West Polk County Farm Bureau members participated in workshops at Red River Valley Winter Shows (farming education exhibitions) in the 1960s and 1970s. The Bureau’s women remained active, organizing baking contests and hosting rural-urban banquets. Irene Wachter Jobe, the Bureau’s women’s chair, put out a call to action in the organization’s October 1967 newsletter. She encouraged members to draft sound resolutions at their annual meeting that would represent their needs to legislators. Political awareness, she argued, strengthened their commitment to “fighting for a fair shake for the farmer.” In the mid-1980s, the Farm Bureau and the Farmers Union both sent farm reform recommendations to President Ronald Reagan. Though the organizations disagreed along partisan lines, Farm Bureau and Farmers union members alike knew they needed a unified voice to express their concerns to government leaders. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, membership in Farm Bureaus declined as large, corporate family farms replaced smaller farms.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/1960 FB Miss Lois Fankhanel at  district workshop_edited.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246091,"name":"Agriculture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/west-polk-county-farm-bureau"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Mrs. Matzke, Miss Olson, and Miss Nelson present yellow carnations to initiates Luverne Sorenson, Deborah Hanson, Eloise Espe, and Clara Kelly at an initiation meeting for new BPWC members, 1966.","author":[{"name":"Kristina Gray","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/kristina-gray"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"September 08, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Business and Professional Women’s Club, Crookston, 1960–1975","postbody":"Crookston’s Business and Professional Women’s club (BPWC), started in 1921, was more politically active in the 1960s and 1970s than in its early years. BPWC members made sure to cast their ...","searchtext":"Crookston’s Business and Professional Women’s club (BPWC), started in 1921, was more politically active in the 1960s and 1970s than in its early years. BPWC members made sure to cast their votes for causes important to women, including equal pay for equal work and the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). At each BPWC meeting during this period, speakers gave talks to fit a designated monthly program. In April 1962, three local doctors answered questions about the King-Anderson bill— national legislation intended to provide medical services to the elderly through Social Security. The club went on record opposing it and urged members to write to their congressional representatives. Soon afterward, legislators voted down the bill in committee by a narrow margin. In October 1964, the Crookston BPWC’s Civic Participation Committee reminded members that November was a critical time to vote for state and national club officers. In April 1965, members were encouraged to lend their support to U.S. Senator (and Minnesotan) Eugene McCarthy. McCarthy had introduced a “Be-Kind-To-Spinsters Bill” designed to ensure tax equality for single people thirty-five years and older and for widows and widowers. Like the King-Anderson bill, the measure failed; if it had passed, it would have benefited members of the Crookston BPWC. Club members regularly added items about pending legislation related to equal pay to their newsletter, called Beep Chatter, and brought them up during meetings. Over time, the issue deepened a rift between the club’s single and married members. Married women maintained that employers discriminated against them when making new hires. Single members like June Shaver, however, pointed out that unmarried working women also faced disadvantages. In the October 2, 1967, edition of Beep Chatter, Shaver noted the “quixotic side effects” of tax relief laws that rewarded marriage. “A working single girl pays a higher tax than if she were married,” she wrote, with the result that “she is fined for remaining single.” In March 1969, Crookston BPWC leaders asked members to encourage their state senators to vote “yes” on an equal pay bill and to lobby the U.S. Senate Labor Committee in support of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). One of the amendment’s provisions stated that “equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account sex.” The approval of eight more states, however, was needed for national ratification. If the Equal Pay Bill failed to pass, supporters feared that the ERA would fail along with it. On May 28, 1970, the Equal Pay Bill became law. A little more than three years later, on February 9, 1973, Minnesota ratified the ERA. It was the twenty-sixth state to do so. The BPWC faced a setback on March 6, 1975, when a Western Union telegram sent from the club’s state headquarters notified Crookston members of a resolution intended to rescind the ERA in Minnesota. The BPWC president directed members to urge Minnesota legislators to vote against it. BPWC leadership reminded members that more than the Equal Opportunity Act of 1972 was in place to protect women’s rights as full and equal citizens of the U.S. On June 5, 1975, the resolution failed to pass. An entry in the edition of Beep Chatter published on December 4, 1975, expressed members’ continuing support for the ERA. Its author offered credit to “Libbers” (feminist activists) for drawing public attention to women’s issues. She also pointed out, however, that CBPW members “enjoy[ed] wearing pink long dresses” and shared a desire for legal equality rather than any specific set of personal choices or social codes. The statement revealed the club’s effort—made throughout the 1960s and 1970s—to distance itself from the second-wave feminist movement while keeping itself aligned with many of its priorities.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/1966 new members initiation.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/business-and-professional-women-s-club-crookston-1960-1975"},{"alt":"Gabriel Renville","author":[{"name":"Harlen LaFontaine","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/harlen-lafontaine"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"September 06, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186622056203,"name":"1792–1861 (Expansion and Reform)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Renville, Gabriel (1825–1892)","postbody":"Gabriel Renville was a fur trader, a farmer, and the leader of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Dakota from 1867 until 1892. Related by blood to multiple Dakota bands and mixed-ancestry families, he ...","searchtext":"Gabriel Renville was a fur trader, a farmer, and the leader of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Dakota from 1867 until 1892. Related by blood to multiple Dakota bands and mixed-ancestry families, he opposed Ta Oyate Duta (His Red Nation, also known as Little Crow) and other Dakota who fought against settler-colonists in the U.S.–Dakota War of 1862. His choice angered some of his relatives, who saw him as serving the interests of settler-colonists. After the war, he was one of many who worked to reacquire land for the Sisseton-Wahpeton people. Gabriel Renville, also known as Ti Wakan (Sacred Lodge), was born in about 1825, at a village west of Big Stone Lake (Bde Inyan Takinyanyan). His father was Victor Renville, of Dakota and French ancestry. His mother, Winona Crawford, was both Dakota and British. Through them, Gabriel’s family ties extended into the Mdewakanton band of Dakota. After Gabriel||s father died, Winona married Joseph Akipa Renville, a Wahpeton Dakota man. In 1835, Gabriel Renville met Joseph R. Brown, a fur trader. In 1840, Brown became his legal guardian as well as his brother-in-law (through marriage to Susan Frenier, Renville’s half-sister). When he was a teenager, Brown sent him to school in Chicago, but Renville quit after about a month. Along with Brown, Renville involved himself in various occupations, including fur trading. He did not, however, convert to Christianity. Instead, he continued to perform traditional ceremonies and spoke, and wrote, only the Dakota language. The 1851 Treaty of Traverse de Sioux and 1858 land cession treaties confined the Dakota to reservations and disrupted their traditional lifeways. Renville supported himself by farming, and by 1859 he had established a large farm near the Upper Sioux Agency. By then he had also married three Sisseton Dakota sisters (which Dakota custom allowed): Tunkan Mani (Walking Stone, also known as Mary); Tunkan Tiyo Mani Win (Walking Stone in Her Home, also known as Anna) and Hu Teca Win (New Bone Woman, also known as Sophie). Fifteen of the family’s children survived to adulthood. After the US–Dakota War of 1862 began at the Lower Sioux Agency in August 1862, Renville helped family, relatives, and friends, including Susan Frenier Brown, escape from potential danger. By September, Ta Oyate Duta and the Mdewakanton soldiers’ lodge that began the war had captured many white and mixed-ancestry women and children. Renville joined a peace party that worked for their release. The warring Dakota failed to defeat the army raised against them, and in late September, the war ended. Renville was at Camp Release on September 26 when the Dakota surrendered themselves and their captives to Colonel Henry Sibley. Although they had not fought in the war, roughly 1,600 Dakota were forced to move from the Lower Sioux Agency to Fort Snelling. Renville was among those who passed through the town of Henderson on the way to the fort. Renville described the Henderson experience as life threatening, noting that the route was filled with whites seeking to harm the Dakota as they passed. In late December 1862, U.S. military authorities confined the roughly 1,600 Dakota women, children, and old men at Fort Snelling. While there, Renville witnessed the deaths by disease of many of the children. News of the December 26 hanging of thirty-eight Dakota men in Mankato reached him and those held at the fort. In February 1863, Renville and other Dakota volunteered to serve as U.S. Army scouts under Sibley. They hunted those Dakota they labeled as |||hostiles||| who had fled west, including Ta Oyate Duta. After participating in Sibley’s “punitive expedition” into Dakota Territory later that year, Renville become Chief of Scouts in 1864 and, later, Superintendent of Scouts. In 1864, Renville and other Sisseton and Wahpeton men who had scouted for Sibley formed a community at Lake Traverse. Joseph Brown then recommended him as one of twenty-six delegates to travel to Washington, D.C. There, Renville and others signed the 1867 Lake Traverse Reservation treaty, which formally established and federally recognized a new home for the Sisseton-Wahpeton. In part to recognize his service and leadership, the U.S. government established Renville as chief, bypassing the hereditary chieftain process. In 1884, the Sisseton-Wahpeton chose him as chief for life. He died on August 26, 1892, at the home of Samuel Brown.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Princeton_Garbiel Renville.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246059,"name":"Native Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/renville-gabriel-1825-1892"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of a butter-making class, University of Minnesota School of Agriculture, 1889.","author":[{"name":"Katarina Sweeney","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/katarina-sweeney"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"August 30, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Origins of the University of Minnesota Extension Service","postbody":"The Agricultural Extension Service of the United States (AES) began as an educational component of land-grant universities. In Minnesota as in other states, the federally funded and ...","searchtext":"The Agricultural Extension Service of the United States (AES) began as an educational component of land-grant universities. In Minnesota as in other states, the federally funded and organized services of AES provide practical agricultural training to people outside of a university setting. Education is a core principle of AES. In order to understand the nature of extension work and its origins in Minnesota, it is important to look at efforts made to improve farming education, and methods, in the 1850s. After the territory of Minnesota was established in 1849, Euro-American immigrants started farms inside its borders. Subsistence agriculture and food preservation techniques were the topics of the day. The members of this agrarian community relied on traditional, informal education provided by parents to their children. As a result, there were no written records of farming instruction specific to Minnesota. Since young communities depended on reliable food supplies to survive, they began to create agricultural societies to study farming techniques, crop production methods, and livestock. Members then passed on their knowledge to friends and neighbors. These early groups were modeled after societies in New England, such as the Massachusetts Society for Promoting Agriculture. Oliver H. Kelley emerged as a leader for farmers across Minnesota Territory in the mid-1850s. He was a farmer himself, with a homestead in Elk River. In 1852, Kelley’s discussions with his peers led to the creation of the Benton County Agricultural Society, the first official agricultural society in the state. More societies followed in Ramsey County in 1852, in Hennepin County in 1853, and in others over time. The Minnesota Territorial Agricultural Society (MTAS) formed in 1854 to represent each of the new local groups|| interests. While county fairs had been held in Minnesota Territory in earlier years, the MTAS took over planning and execution of the annual fair, which offered education about crops, animal husbandry, and dairying. In 1855, a member of MTAS named Henry H. Sibley called for a federal regulatory body to oversee all of U.S. agriculture. Sibley was a representative of Minnesota Territory at the time, and had also advocated for the establishment of a local university to teach farming techniques. Afterward, more members of MTAS spoke out about the creation of an agricultural college to connect farming knowledge with the sciences and more formal instruction. At the same time in 1855, Justin Morrill was elected into the U.S. House of Representatives and began to share his ideas about farming education. In 1857, he introduced a land-grant bill to Congress that would allow all states to receive federal grants for the purpose of establishing an institution to provide formal training in agricultural techniques. President Abraham Lincoln signed the bill, known as the Morrill Act, in 1862. The Morrill Act provided money and land to states for the establishment of at least one college that offered classes in agriculture, mechanics, and military strategy. Morrill’s bill in its initial form had not included military instruction; the start of the Civil War undoubtedly inspired the 1861 amendment that added it. Two subsequent congressional bills strengthened the Morrill Act in the same year it was signed into law. The first created the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which further stimulated agriculture through federal support. The second, which created the Homestead Act, encouraged farmers to immigrate to western states and territories. In Minnesota, an agricultural college developed gradually. The University of Minnesota had opened its doors in 1851 as a preparatory school without agricultural courses. Due to money problems and a lack of enrollment, however, it closed its doors during the Civil War. State representative and university regent John S. Pillsbury, meanwhile, made sure that the school became the state’s official land-grant university under the Morrill Act and received the public funds tied to it. In part because of Pillsbury’s help, the school reopened in 1867 with plans to add an agricultural college and buy land for hands-on farming instruction. Unable to attract enough students for a farming course, the College of Agriculture at the University of Minnesota did not begin its service until 1888. Before the opening of the college, Minnesotans devised other ways to spread knowledge. Farmers’ institutes had been at the forefront of agricultural education in eastern states since 1853. The institutes organized public meetings and lectures for farmers that were often promoted by state agricultural societies. In Minnesota, farmers’ institutes and press releases spread farming instruction. Educational publications such as the Minnesota Monthly, the Prairie Farmer, the Minnesota Farmer and Gardener, and the State Atlas appeared in the 1870s and 1880s. In 1867, Oliver Kelley founded and led an organization called the Patrons of Husbandry, also known as the Grange. Its Minnesota branch, founded two years later, supported and educated farmers across the state. The Grange offered opportunities for both men and women to discuss agricultural topics. In 1887, Congress passed the Hatch Act, which provided funds for states to create farming experiment stations at colleges funded exclusively by land grants. It aimed to support research conducted on university farms that would test and improve production. The act gave the College of Agriculture at the University of Minnesota the momentum it needed to attract students interested in applying science to farming. Both students and professors of agriculture worked at the experiment station, an alliance that boosted both the practicality of instruction and faculty respect for farmers. In the years leading to the turn of the twentieth century, farming instruction in Minnesota and across the U.S. was dominated by expanding agricultural colleges. As farmers’ institute instructors had done before them, educators at these colleges provided demonstrations, hands-on training, short courses, and other practical solutions. It was common for groups of educators to visit rural areas to meet farmers. They called their units “movable schools” or “extension schools.” At the UMCA (University of Minnesota College of Agriculture) in 1910, staff organized an Agricultural Extension Division—a unit that oversaw all of the university’s extension efforts. Over time, the UMCA’s extension mission evolved to focus on providing short, in-field courses and demonstrations. U.S. Department of Agriculture and land-grant colleges began to plan a system to better control extension work across the U.S. in the early 1910s. The Smith-Lever Act, signed into law in 1914, organized AES services nationwide. The new law fostered cooperation between land-grant universities and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, whose federal funds were essential to AES administration, execution, and success.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/butter-making-class-CFANS.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246091,"name":"Agriculture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056210,"name":"Education","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246055,"name":"Labor","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/origins-university-minnesota-extension-service"},{"alt":"Engraving of the Como Shops published in Northwest magazine (April 1886, page 12).","author":[{"name":"Aaron Hanson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/aaron-hanson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"August 28, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Northern Pacific Railway Como Shops","postbody":"St. Paul’s Como Shops served as a major passenger-car repair facility on the Northern Pacific railroad between 1885 and the 1970s, providing employment to many St. Paul residents. The ...","searchtext":"St. Paul’s Como Shops served as a major passenger-car repair facility on the Northern Pacific railroad between 1885 and the 1970s, providing employment to many St. Paul residents. The durability of the shops’ construction guaranteed their longevity, and in 1985 the facility was listed as a historic district on the National Register of Historic Places. The Northern Pacific Railway was once one of the major railroads in the state of Minnesota. One unique problem encountered by the company was the lack of adequate terminal space in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. The railroad needed yard and terminal facilities to make up and break up trains in daily operations as well as space for servicing its fleet of railcars and locomotives. The company’s decision to construct shops was guided by financial necessity, and most towns welcomed the arrival of shops facilities for their positive economic impact. The Northern Pacific acquired thirteen acres for development in 1880, but this proved less than sufficient. It thus purchased 220 additional acres on January 4, 1883. It subsequently purchased 400 acres for facilities in the Trout Brook Valley section near Lake Como in St. Paul at rates ranging from $500 to $4,000 per acre. Two hundred acres near Lake Como were designated for a shops facility—one in which workers would conduct major repairs on Northern Pacific passenger railcars for nearly 100 years. The June 19, 1883 edition of the St. Paul Pioneer Press reported that the local firm of R. E. Patterson would build the Como Shops. Construction started after grading work with the creation of a wood-working shop, machine shop, new-car shop, coach shop, engine house, boiler room, blacksmith shop, freight-car repair building, paint shop, water tower, and a host of accessory buildings to aid in operations. For a time, Como would house the most extensive shops in the system, costing in excess of $500,000. The shops began operations in 1885. Designed to handle the construction, repair, and refurbishment of the Northern Pacific’s fleet of over 1,100 passenger cars, the facility was extremely large for its time. Construction of buildings continued in 1898, 1901, 1911, and later years as changing needs warranted expansion and redesign. Buildings were constructed using Minnesota materials—namely, yellow brick from Little Falls. They were designed with efficiency in mind; much like the clerestory roofs used in older passenger cars themselves, the shops’ monitor roofs allowed in as much natural light as possible. This made the dark, cavernous shop buildings much lighter and therefore safer and less dependent upon artificial light sources. The rear of the facility featured the woodworking shop, where car bodies were created. It was built in 1885 in a cross shape. To the south of this building was the paint shop, and to the east a shop for new cars. Next door was the blacksmith shop, noted for its large number of chimneys. In addition to at least one water tower, the shops featured a large transfer table, capable of transporting railcars to different working areas in the shop buildings via movable railroad tracks on a flat table structure. The adjacent yard tracks were expanded in 1896. All the buildings mentioned here, including remnants of the transfer table, survived into the twenty-first century. The Northern Pacific became part of a larger railroad system and discontinued passenger service after a gradual downsizing. Como Shops shrank in importance as this happened but continued to operate until 1982, when the architectural firm of Winsor/Faricy remodeled the facility. The former blacksmith shops came to be known as Bandana Square and served a new purpose for various commercial tenants, including Dino’s Gyros and the Dakota Jazz Club.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/MR2.9 SP3.1N p121.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246053,"name":"Transportation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/northern-pacific-railway-como-shops"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Former Crookston BPW presidents, 1942.","author":[{"name":"Kristina Gray","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/kristina-gray"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"August 23, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Business and Professional Women’s Club (BPW), Crookston, 1921–1960","postbody":"The Business and Professional Women’s Foundation (BPW/USA) was started in 1919 to improve job conditions and raise pay rates for working women. At the first meeting of the foundation’s ...","searchtext":"The Business and Professional Women’s Foundation (BPW/USA) was started in 1919 to improve job conditions and raise pay rates for working women. At the first meeting of the foundation’s Crookston chapter in 1921, over 100 women gathered. In its early years, the club donated volunteer time and money to local causes, including the Camp Fire Girls, Crookston’s Drum and Bugle Corps, and milk and medical aid for needy school children. The Crookston BPW club supported women at local, national, and international levels. Its initial goal, after World War I, was to encourage women in leadership roles to take on economic and political problems and to assure that they reached their full professional potential. Since it was a branch of the state-wide organization, the club sent annual member dues to the Minnesota BPW’s treasury. The BPW Club Collect, a creed written by Mary Stewart, states what members hope to achieve and emphasizes their commitment to kindness, tolerance, service, and generosity. The five symbols of the BPW emblem, representing light, health, peace, achievement, and victory, reiterate the group’s primary charitable goals. In the 1920s, the Crookston club extended its fundraising efforts to pay for war bonds, tuberculosis Christmas bonds, and the local chapter of the American Red Cross. In 1925, it organized a student loan fund to help women continue their educations as adults. Many members were elected to public offices at local and state levels. During the 1920s and 1930s, the Crookston BPW club provided entertainment for tuberculosis patients residing in Sunnyrest Sanatorium. In 1928 and 1929, the club also gave money to the victims of a devastating storm in Florida. They promoted plays such as Kathleen and Circus Solly (performed at Crookston’s Opera House) and contributed ticket sales to the student loan fund. In the early 1930s, during the Great Depression, the Crookston BPW club lost the funds it had invested in failed banks. Its deposits were indefinitely unavailable, which made it impossible to pay annual dues to the BPW state treasury. Even in the midst of the crisis, in 1930 and 1931, club members sent an affidavit to the BPW/USA national office documenting their continued campaigns in local newspapers to promote club activities and attract more members. In order to save money, the Crookston club voted in 1932 to send cards instead of flowers to ill BPW members and others in the community. The switch enabled them to save twelve dollars per month and use that money to provide milk for needy school children. In 1934, the Crookston BPW reported spending $300 in local shops and businesses to promote the city’s economy. They also invited guest speakers to give lectures on relevant topics once a month. In 1935, a local doctor, Dr. O. E. Locken, spoke on “The Effect of the Depression on Government.” Meetings were held in different venues based on the season and rental price. In 1936, Augusta Coss, a Crookston BPW member, donated her daughter’s subscription to Independent Woman magazine to the club’s library. This allowed it to cancel its group subscription and save the money for donating elsewhere. In 1937 and 1938, eighteen of the club’s sixty-eight members were original signers of the 1921 charter. By 1939, the Crookston club’s members—many of whom recalled the trials of World War I—resolved that America should keep out of World War II. In February of 1941, one member presented a sketch symbolizing the International Federation of BPW. It depicted twenty candles, five of which were lit. The remaining fifteen unlit candles represented countries with BPW chapters that had been invaded or oppressed during wartime. During World War II, the club sent clothes to war-torn nations via the BPW national office. In 1951, it honored ex-servicewomen for the roles they had played during the war. On November 6, 1956, the first Crookston BPW president, Ida Tvedten, gave a talk describing the first Armistice Day in France. The club’s second president, Mae Rideout, was honored in 1954 as “Woman of the Year.”","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/1942 Past pres. of Crookston  BPW.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/business-and-professional-women-s-club-bpw-crookston-1921-1960"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Solomon Comstock, ca 1890.","author":[{"name":"Kate Savageau","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/kate-savageau"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"August 21, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"1875","name":"Comstock, Solomon G. (1842–1933)","postbody":"Solomon Comstock earned his law degree from the University of Michigan in 1869 but worked with railroads when prospects of finding a job in his chosen career path seemed dim. In Moorhead, ...","searchtext":"Solomon Comstock earned his law degree from the University of Michigan in 1869 but worked with railroads when prospects of finding a job in his chosen career path seemed dim. In Moorhead, he began a law partnership and traded in real estate with the Northwest Land Company. In the 1880s, he worked with James J. Hill’s Northern Pacific Railway to plat townships across Minnesota. Comstock was born on May 9, 1842, in Maine. His father was in the lumber business, and from a young age, Comstock knew that was not what he wanted to do with his life. He attended the Maine Wesleyan Academy in Readfield, Maine—a school known for its law program—in his early twenties. Comstock received his first practical legal training in the law office of Judge Humphrey in Bangor. Two years later, he went to the University of Michigan to strengthen his education and prepare for the bar exam. He gained admittance to the bar in 1869 in Omaha, Nebraska. Railroads offered both adventure and employment opportunities to Comstock. The Southern Pacific Railway was laying track in Texas at the time and needed a bookkeeper for its construction crew. The company hired Comstock for the job but eventually went bankrupt. Not finding decent work elsewhere, he traveled to Minnesota. In 1870, he worked in Minneapolis as a licensed attorney for a while and then again was out of work. All was looking bleak for Comstock— until he moved to Moorhead. In 1871, Comstock found a position as a laborer on the Northern Pacific. The job brought him to the tent town of Moorhead, a hotbed of crime and violence. In 1872, Moorhead organizers began appointing officials and selected Comstock as the first Clay County Attorney on April 26, 1872. Comstock’s appointment stemmed from the aftermath of a gun fight concerning two outlaws: Dan “Slim Jim” Shumway and Edward Curran (Shang Stanton). After the incident, Stanton was unhurt; Shumway was shot through the stomach and later died. An innocent bystander, Daniel Thompson, was struck by a stray bullet in the groin and died. The City of Moorhead demanded law and order, and eventually Stanton was arrested. In part because Comstock was the only local resident with a law degree, he was appointed county attorney and carried out Stanton’s prosecution. Comstock served as the Clay County Attorney from 1872 until 1879. During this period, Moorhead grew from a shanty tent town into a railway town, and then into a regional trade center. Gambling houses and gun fights kept the fledgling legal system busy as Comstock sought to build Moorhead into a respectable town. Comstock was dedicated to his family as well as his city; in 1874, he married Sarah Ball, and the couple had three children: Ada, Jessie, and George. In 1875 Comstock was elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives, where he encountered railroad baron James J. Hill. Hill sought to control a bankrupt railway—the St. Paul and Pacific—and needed legislators on his side. Realizing how much Moorhead stood to benefit from a railroad, Comstock collaborated with Hill and helped him gain control of the St. Paul and Pacific. In return, Hill chose Moorhead as the site for his business. Comstock helped to open the Bishop Whipple School (later the site of Concordia College) by donating land for a campus. In 1885, when Moorhead needed another school to serve its increasing population under the 1858 Normal School Act, Comstock made another land donation. The six acres he offered were used to build Moorhead Normal School (renamed Minnesota State College in the 1950s and Minnesota State University Moorhead in 1975). Between 1883 and 1888, Comstock served four consecutive terms in the Minnesota Senate. After retiring from law practice in 1884, he continued to advance his political career and his real estate business and served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1889 until 1891. He campaigned for Minnesota attorney general in 1882 and lieutenant governor in 1884, but both bids failed. While working as a politician, he served as president of the Northwest Land Company, a real estate development firm that he helped found in 1883. Comstock died on June 3, 1933.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Comstock.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/comstock-solomon-g-1842-1933"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Helen E. (Davis) McMillan of Austin, ca. 1972.","author":[{"name":"Nicole Garnjobst","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/nicole-garnjobst"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"August 16, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"McMillan, Helen E. (1909–1984)","postbody":"As a legislator, Helen E. McMillan served Mower County for twelve years. She was also involved in the Red Cross, the Women’s League of Voters, the Human Rights Commission, and the United ...","searchtext":"As a legislator, Helen E. McMillan served Mower County for twelve years. She was also involved in the Red Cross, the Women’s League of Voters, the Human Rights Commission, and the United Council for Church Women. On July 6, 1909, Helen Elvira Davis was born in Ortonville, Minnesota. Growing up, she attended Marshall High School in Minneapolis and at eighteen left home to join the Albertina Rasch professional ballet troupe in Chicago. She was part of the troupe for three years before returning to Minnesota in 1930. After attending the University of Minnesota for two and a half years, she moved into a secretarial program. During her time working as a secretary Davis met Kenneth McMillan, an attorney, whom she married on July 10, 1938. During World War II, her husband left for Fort Snelling and ended up fighting first in France, then in Germany, and, finally, in England; he left the military as a sergeant. In 1945, after his return, the couple moved to Austin, Minnesota, where Kenneth was employed as a municipal judge. In Austin, Helen was involved in several different groups, including the Red Cross, hospital workers, and the Presbyterian Church. She was the secretary of the Governor’s Human Rights Commission, the vice president of United Council of Church Women, and the president of the Austin League of Women Voters for fifteen years. From 1953 until 1955, she served as the president of the Minnesota League of Women Voters. At the suggestion of the Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party (DFL), and after seeing how much she loved being president of the League, Kenneth McMillan convinced his wife to run for the Minnesota House of Representatives. Mower County had just been divided into two different sections, and one of them—district 31B–was largely comprised of Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party (DFL) voters. In 1962, McMillan was the first woman to be elected as a representative of Mower County. She was subsequently re-elected five times, and served for a total of twelve years. For some of that time, McMillan was the only woman in the Minnesota House of Representatives. McMillan continued to represent the DFL throughout her career. She served on multiple committees in the 1960s and 1970s, including the Health and Welfare Committee, the Employee Compensation Committee, the Recreation and Water Resources Committee, the Reapportionment Committee, the Legislative Retirement Study Committee, and he Crime Prevention and Corrections Committee, which she chaired in 1973. McMillan was passionate about education for the mentally ill and was well known for her work in women’s rights. In 1969, she co-sponsored an abortion bill that would have left abortion decisions in the hands of doctors and their patients. Though the bill never made it to the floor, it was later mandated by the U.S. Supreme Court in Roe vs. Wade. McMillan also co-authored Minnesota’s ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment in 1973 and was especially passionate about getting women into the legislature. She later stated that the five new women legislators in office when she retired were her greatest legacy. In 1970, Kenneth McMillan died while Helen was in office. They had no children. She continued serving for four more years before retiring in 1974 and was only the second woman to head a legislative committee in Minnesota history. To honor her, Mower County named March 18, 1975, Helen E. McMillan Recognition Day and held a dinner for her. At that dinner, Governor Wendell Anderson awarded her with a plaque commending her for her work in the legislature. Later in her life, McMillan moved into St. Mark’s Lutheran Home in Austin, where she lived until she passed away in 1984. At her funeral, Pat Piper, the current representative of district 31B, gave a tribute and read a letter from Senator Tom Nelson that praised Helen’s compassion, tenacity, and strength of character as qualities others should emulate. On February 28 1984, on National Women’s Day and Women’s History Week, representatives Phyllis Kahn and Pat Piper rose in the House during a session to pay tribute to McMillan.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/por 29822 r2.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/mcmillan-helen-e-1909-1984"},{"alt":"Color image of the excavation unit at Réaume site, 2011.","author":[{"name":"Lina Belar","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/lina-belar"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"August 14, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186622056201,"name":"1754–1800 (Revolution and a New Nation)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Joseph Réaume||s Trading Post","postbody":"Wadena County contains three known fur trade sites. One is located on private property along the Leaf River where Joseph Réaume, an independent fur trader, set up a winter camp in the late ...","searchtext":"Wadena County contains three known fur trade sites. One is located on private property along the Leaf River where Joseph Réaume, an independent fur trader, set up a winter camp in the late eighteenth century. Between 2011 and 2012, the University of Minnesota conducted archaeological surveys and excavations at this location. They confirmed a late-eighteenth century occupation, validating its association with Réaume||s 1792 wintering activities. Joseph Réaume was born at a wintering place on the Mississippi River in 1757. He was the son of Jean-Baptiste Réaume, a member of an important trading family. Jean Baptiste’s wife and Joseph’s mother, Marie Joseph, was most likely a Native woman. Like his father, Joseph became a successful fur trader and married an Indigenous woman. The early French fur traders were dependent on Native people for their help in procuring food and navigating the waterways of Minnesota. A marriage was an important alliance that helped provide access to trade networks. Réaume had a reputation as a popular and successful trader, particularly among the Ojibwe. In 1792, he and his trading partner, Jean-Baptiste Cadotte, took an exploratory party down the Mississippi in hopes of accessing the pelt-rich areas in a contested zone between Dakota and Ojibwe territories. He selected an area along the Leaf River to establish a wintering place. It was located near a navigable waterway and contained the necessary natural materials with which to build his fort. Most important, it was close to the villages of the people with whom he traded. In 1869, a state surveyor described an old fortification he had discovered on the Leaf River. One hundred years later, Douglas Birk and Douglas George, both archaeologists for the Minnesota Historical Society, visited the site while doing a statewide survey of archaeological sites. Their 1972 survey noted evidence of a stockade line as well as piles of rocks which were discovered to be collapsed chimneys. Over the next few years, they returned several times to study and survey the area. In 1999, they undertook a remote-sensing survey that indicated the presence of heated sediments and/or iron. In 2011, Dr. Katherine Hayes and graduate student Amélie Allard began a field school program at the site to introduce University of Minnesota undergraduates to archaeological research. This was the beginning of a three-year archaeological project to study the various relationships between European fur traders and Indigenous groups in the area. The project’s goal was to investigate some of the surface features that Birk had identified during a survey in the 1970s. Surface features included four large stone piles that he had identified as collapsed chimneys, two ditches running almost perpendicular to each other previously identified as a palisade wall, and various pits and depressions. One of the team’s main accomplishments in the first excavation season was to confirm Douglas Birk’s inference that at least two of the stone piles were collapsed chimneys. They also confirmed the existence of a palisade wall that surrounded the compound. The second season||s goals were to determine the layout of the building or buildings within the palisade walls, investigate an area rich in phosphorous soil, and test the presence of a second bastion on the western side. In the third season, remote sensing was done at the site to locate the walls. Next, small crews undertook a two-week excavation and were able to confirm the presence of multiple buildings as opposed to one long, barrack-like building. Architectural evidence and remote sensing surveys pointed to a European-style trading post, with up to four collapsed fireplaces lined with stone, wood and daub; at least two buildings; a stockade wall; and two bastions. The spatial distribution of artifacts suggested that one of the buildings was the store or trading house where the trader in charge lived and kept the trade goods, while another building served as the crew’s living quarters.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Excavation Unit at Reaume Site.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/joseph-r-aumes-trading-post"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of the second State Capitol, 1886.","author":[{"name":"Linda A. Cameron","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/linda-cameron"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"August 09, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Minnesota||s Second State Capitol","postbody":"Fire destroyed Minnesota||s first capitol building on March 1, 1881. The second capitol, completed in 1883, served as the seat of Minnesota state government for just ten years before state ...","searchtext":"Fire destroyed Minnesota||s first capitol building on March 1, 1881. The second capitol, completed in 1883, served as the seat of Minnesota state government for just ten years before state officials began planning a grander, more efficient capitol. The second capitol building stood on the site of the first capitol for fifty-five years until its demolition in 1937. The loss of the first capitol prompted quick action. On March 3, Governor John S. Pillsbury received an estimate from architect Abraham M. Radcliffe of $60,650 to rebuild the capitol, assuming the reuse of the walls of the old capitol. The legislature approved $75,000 to cover costs, and the governor issued a call for proposals in June. Architect Leroy S. Buffington won the contract. When the old walls proved unstable, the legislature approved an additional $100,000 for a completely new building. They transferred another $10,000, set aside for repairs to the old capitol, into the building account. The total budget came to $185,000 and carried the stipulation that costs could not exceed this amount. Exceeding the budget carried a misdemeanor penalty. Buffington designed the new three-story building in the shape of a Greek cross. It featured a foundation of cut stone and walls of red brick with Dresbach sandstone trim. Each wing measured 150 feet in length. The central dome reached 200 feet in height. The main entrance on Wabasha Street opened onto the first floor, where the governor, attorney general, auditor, treasurer, and secretary of state had offices. Two iron stairways led to the second floor from the rotunda. The Assembly (House of Representatives) chamber in the Tenth Street wing featured a twenty-five-foot ceiling with a large stained glass skylight. Eight windows provided natural light supplemented by two large chandeliers and four electric lights for evening sessions. A third-story viewing gallery ran across the south side of the room. The Senate chamber, finished in yellow birch and birdseye maple, took up the Wabasha Street wing. A stained glass skylight, wine-colored stained glass windows in the gallery, a large chandelier, and four electric fixtures lit the chamber. Stairways from the hallways led to an upper visitors|| gallery encircling the room. The Supreme Court chamber in the Exchange Street wing featured woodwork of cherry and Hungarian ash. The court wing included five private rooms for the use of the judges, a retiring and consultation room for attorneys, and a law library. The third floor housed House and Senate galleries, a large caucus room, and a committee room. The building had twenty meeting rooms on the upper two floors. The basement contained offices for the state historical society, supply rooms, a barber shop, and restrooms. To minimize the threat of fire, slabs made of ashes and cement covered floors and walls. Buffington designed stairways of iron and slate. He covered the hallway surfaces in tile set in cement to prevent fire from spreading from one floor to the next. He included a separate forty-foot-square red brick boiler and engine house on the northeast corner of the capitol square. Heat entered the main building through tunnels to radiators located throughout the building. The ventilation system of four large air shafts running from basement to the roof, thought to be state-of-the-art, proved the fatal flaw in the building||s design. Poor ventilation played a key role in the push for a new capitol building in 1893. Cost overruns dogged the project from the beginning. By March 1882 Buffington||s estimate had risen to $245,000. Governor Lucius Hubbard knew that costs had to stay within the $185,000 appropriation. He estimated that another $40,000 would finish the building enough for it to host the 1883 legislative session and made an appeal for the money. Donations came from the public without conditions, and the legislature met for the first time in the nearly completed capitol on January 2, 1883. To reimburse the private donors and complete the building, lawmakers approved another $175,000 during the 1883 session. State auditor reports from 1881 to 1884 show the total cost of the building as $359,897.60, nearly twice the original estimate. With the completion of the third state capitol in 1905, the state used the old capitol for meeting space, storage, and parking until its demolition in 1937.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/FM6.12 r3.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/minnesotas-second-state-capitol"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of the first State Capitol building showing enlargement of 1878. Painted by Alfred Palmquist & Company, 1879.","author":[{"name":"Linda A. Cameron","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/linda-cameron"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"August 07, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"State Capitol Fire, 1881","postbody":"As Minnesota state legislators met on the evening of March 1, 1881, two days before the end of their twenty-second session, two pages alerted them to a fire in the building. Quick action by ...","searchtext":"As Minnesota state legislators met on the evening of March 1, 1881, two days before the end of their twenty-second session, two pages alerted them to a fire in the building. Quick action by lawmakers and nearby residents saved important documents, furnishings, and historical collections. The fire took no lives but destroyed Minnesota||s first capitol building. The fire began above the Senate chamber in the dome, first appearing in the Senate gallery before spreading to the rest of the building. Lieutenant Governor Charles Andrew Gilman and Senator William Crooks tried to stem the panic. Gathering up what documents and belongings they could, some senators quickly made their way to the exits. Others threw what they could save out the windows before climbing down ladders to safety. People in the galleries dashed to the narrow stairway to escape the smoke and flames. The last few members left the chamber just before fire engulfed the room. In the House of Representatives, Speaker Loren Fletcher took responsibility for the safety of the young pages as the lawmakers rushed out of the chamber. At least one member chose to jump from the second story windows. Representative William Schmidt of Washington County leapt to the deep snow below, sustaining only minor scratches. The House clerks, credited with great presence of mind, remained at their desks long enough to save important session records. The fire drew a large crowd of onlookers, many of whom raced to help remove furniture, books, and documents from first floor offices and carry them out to the capitol square. The nearby Unity Church and owners of neighboring homes offered temporary storage for the recovered items. Those who valued art and history saved artwork and artifacts. Senator James Nathan Castle dropped a painting of the Falls of St. Anthony out of the chamber window, damaging the frame but saving the painting. Someone else rescued the portrait of Civil War General George H. Thomas that hung behind the Speaker||s desk in the House chamber. Senator Charles Powell Adams and Captain C. E. Davis saved the state||s military records and Civil War battle flags from the adjutant general||s office. The iron vaults in the offices of the governor and the clerk of the Supreme Court fell through the floor into the basement and survived with their contents undamaged. The holdings of the state treasurer||s safe, $2,090,000 in U.S. and State of Missouri bonds and $5,000 in currency and specie, remained intact. The large collection of historic newspapers kept in the Minnesota Historical Society||s vault also survived. J. Fletcher Williams, secretary of the historical society, estimated the society||s losses to be no more than $2,000. The state||s library suffered the greatest loss. The fire consumed more than 11,000 of 12,580 books. The state||s librarian estimated the collection||s value to be $65,000, with many rare volumes. The library carried only $10,000 insurance. The State Grange lost most of its books and papers. The fire destroyed a collection of natural history specimens stored in the basement that belonged to the Academy of Sciences. Members of the legislature took up a collection for a young man with disabilities whose stand for selling fruits and cigars in the rotunda was a total loss. The cause of the fire sparked much speculation. Some thought it began as the result of a gas explosion. With no gas lights located where the fire started, this theory proved unlikely. Some suspected the capitol||s flag-raiser of carelessly dropping a lit cigar, but the worker in question stated that he left the dome before the fire started. Capitol janitor Charles E. Chapel visited the dome between five and six o||clock that evening. He saw nothing unusual and locked the access door. Without a reasonable explanation for the fire, many believed arson to be the cause. Officials never solved the mystery. Volunteers worked through the night to prepare the new Market House at Seventh and Wabasha Streets, and the legislature reconvened there the morning after the fire. The loss of the first capitol building meant more to the people of Minnesota than the estimated $80,000 value of the structure. It represented the loss of an important part of Minnesota||s territorial and early state political history.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/10388990.640x640.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/state-capitol-fire-1881"},{"alt":"First Minnesota State Capitol, 1853–1872.","author":[{"name":"Linda A. Cameron","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/linda-cameron"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"August 02, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Minnesota||s First State Capitol","postbody":"Minnesota became a U.S. territory on March 3, 1849. After much debate, the new territorial government chose St. Paul as the permanent capital city. The first capitol building was completed ...","searchtext":"Minnesota became a U.S. territory on March 3, 1849. After much debate, the new territorial government chose St. Paul as the permanent capital city. The first capitol building was completed in 1853 and served as the seat of Minnesota||s territorial and early state government until it burned in 1881. Congress created Minnesota Territory when it passed the Organic Act of 1849. The act gave the president of the United States power to appoint a territorial governor, secretary, chief justice, and other officials; called for the election of a nine-member council and an eighteen-member House of Representatives; and provided for a temporary seat of government in St. Paul until a capital city could be determined. Congress approved $20,000 to erect government buildings in the new capital. The territorial legislature set up makeshift headquarters in the Central House Hotel in September 1849 and continued to meet in temporary locations during the next three sessions. It wasn||t until the second session that lawmakers turned their attention to the question of a permanent seat of government. After lively debate over an alternate location at St. Anthony, they chose St. Paul. The government accepted the offer from Charles and Annie J. Bazille of a building site bounded by Tenth, Wabasha, Exchange, and Cedar Streets for the token price of one dollar. On February 7, 1851, the legislature approved |||An Act to Provide for the Erection of Public Buildings in the Territory of Minnesota.||| The act created a Commission of Public Buildings to oversee finances and the hiring of contractors to build the capitol. Architect N. C. Prentiss drew up specifications for the new capitol that included digging a foundation measuring one hundred and twenty feet by sixty-five feet and a stone foundation four feet high by three feet thick. Exterior details included brick work, cut stone floors and steps for the porches, a wood pediment, wood Ionic-style columns, and a well-framed roof covered with fireproof material. Interior work called for Norway pine flooring and staircases of oak and ash with oak handrails and turned balusters. The plan for the House of Representatives featured a viewing gallery on three sides of the chamber supported by columns. The specifications required the contractors to complete the work in a |||good, substantial, workmanlike manner.||| The commission received proposals in the summer of 1851 and chose contractor Joseph Daniels to do the work. Daniels agreed to the sum of $17,000 for materials and labor. The federal funding fell short, and in March 1853 Congress approved another $12,500 to complete the building. In May 1853, the commission hired more contractors to finish the dome and interior details, including all lathing, plastering, and painting. The total cost came to $31,642.81. The legislature moved into the new capitol in time for the fifth territorial legislative session on January 4, 1854. As more people moved to the territory, the number of lawmakers needed to represent them grew. The population boomed when Minnesota became a state in May 1858, and the small capitol building needed improvements. Gas lighting replaced candles in 1867. Four years later, steam heat replaced wood-burning stoves and new plumbing brought city water into the building. The capitol expanded with a new wing on the Exchange Street side of the building in 1873 and a second wing facing Wabasha Street in 1878. Despite efforts to make the capitol fire-resistant, the threat of fire remained a concern. During repairs conducted a few days before the Minnesota Constitutional Convention in July 1857, a fire started on the west side of the cupola. There was little damage to the building, but the fire consumed some of the Minnesota Historical Society||s collections stored there. While legislators met on the evening of March 1, 1881, another fire broke out in the dome of the capitol and quickly spread. Legislators and nearby residents rescued furniture, many important documents, and historical collections. No lives were lost, but efforts to save the building failed. Newspapers estimated the total loss at $180,000. The newly completed Market House at Seventh and Wabasha Streets became the temporary home of state government the following day. The building housed government offices until the opening of a new state capitol in 1883.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/10316533.640x640.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/minnesotas-first-state-capitol"},{"alt":"Color image of the Banfill Tavern, now Banfill-Locke Center for the Arts, 2013. Photographed by Wikimedia Commons user McGhiever.","author":[{"name":"Anoka County Historical Society","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/anoka-county-historical-society"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 31, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186622056203,"name":"1792–1861 (Expansion and Reform)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Banfill–Locke House, Fridley","postbody":"The Banfill–Locke House in Anoka County stands on the east bank of the Mississippi River, just outside of downtown Fridley. The property has been used as many things since its original ...","searchtext":"The Banfill–Locke House in Anoka County stands on the east bank of the Mississippi River, just outside of downtown Fridley. The property has been used as many things since its original construction in the 1840s, including a tavern, a dairy farm, a private home, and an art gallery. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1976. Built in 1847 by John Banfill, the Greek Revival-style, two-story Banfill–Locke House initially served as an inn and base for logging operations northwest of St. Anthony Falls. Due to its proximity to Minnesota’s first Territorial Road and the Red River ox-cart trails, the inn became a welcomed wayside rest stop. Located on a wooded site near the East River Road along Rice Creek, the house features two chimneys, more than two dozen windows, gables with pediments, and a formal entry room with three parts. Its floor plan follows an “L” shape. Its owner, Banfill, was elected to the first Minnesota State Senate in 1848. An account provided by E. S. Seymour, a visitor to the tavern in 1849, reveals that in its first years of operation, the popular stop lacked adequate stable space. Consequently, many travelers’ horses and mules remained in the open during the winter of 1848–1849. By the time of Seymour’s visit, Banfill had expanded his stall space to accommodate forty horses and mules. Another visitor complimented Banfill on his “good old sparkling Madeira.” Travelers filled the Banfill house every night on their way to destinations along the road, including Fort Gaines (renamed Fort Ripley in 1850), a Chippewa (Ojibwe) Indian Agency, and trading posts, in addition to private homes. Between 1857 and 1875 it is uncertain who owned the property. In 1876, however, William F. Brown married Laura M. Locke and purchased it. The couple maintained a dairy herd and lived in the house while Brown also worked as postmaster until his death in 1887. His wife and children lived in the house until 1912, when Laura sold it to her brother, Cassius M. Locke. Locke and his wife, Roberta Pratt Locke, raised registered Jersey dairy cattle on the farm and used it as a summer home. They made a few additions to the house, including front and rear porches, kitchen and bathroom electrical service, a pump, a water closet, and a sewage disposal system. Most of these improvements took place in the 1930s. Locke died in 1947 and Roberta in 1959. The property remained unoccupied until 1967, when Anoka County purchased it. Currently the Banfill-Locke Center for the Arts uses the facility in support of established and developing artists by hosting speakers, classes, and residents in addition to gallery space. In 2017, both the interior and exterior of the home remain essentially unaltered. The interior consists of a large communal room on the first floor that contains an entryway, dining room, living room, kitchen, and service room. Seven inter-connected rooms make up the second floor. The entire structure lacks any form of modern central heating. Instead, stoves feeding into three chimneys provide warmth.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Banfill_Tavern.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/banfill-locke-house-fridley"},{"alt":"Black-and-white engravings of Dred Scott (at right) and Harriet Robinson Scott (at left) that appeared in the Jun 27, 1857 edition of Frank Leslie||s Illustrated Newspaper.","author":[{"name":"Tina Burnside","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/tina-burnside"}],"categoryTag":[],"date":"July 26, 2017","eraTag":[],"keydate":"","name":"African Americans in Minnesota","postbody":"African Americans have lived in Minnesota since the 1800s. The local African American population developed from individuals who were born in the state as well as those who migrated to ...","searchtext":"African Americans have lived in Minnesota since the 1800s. The local African American population developed from individuals who were born in the state as well as those who migrated to Minnesota from other states in search of a better life. Despite being subjected to discrimination and inequality, African Americans established communities and institutions that contributed to the vibrancy of the state. This article defines African Americans as Americans who are descendants of enslaved Black Africans in the U.S. and does not include immigrants or refugees from Africa (for example, Somali and Oromo people. Early Settler-colonists And The Black Population George Bonga, born near Duluth in 1802, is believed to be the first Black person born in Minnesota. His father was Black and his mother was Ojibwe. Bonga became a fur trader like his father and also worked as a translator as he was fluent in English, French, and Ojibwe. He married an Ojibwe woman, and they along with their children lived in the Leech Lake area, where they operated a lodge. Bungo Township in Cass County is named after Bonga’s family. Although slavery was not allowed in Minnesota, officers stationed at Fort Snelling, fur traders, and vacationing southerners brought enslaved people to the state in the late 1800s. Dred Scott and his wife, Harriet, lived at the fort in the 1830s. James Thompson, an enslaved man, lived at Fort Snelling in 1827 and was emancipated in 1837. He lived in St. Paul, where he worked as a carpenter. Eliza Winston, an enslaved woman who visited Minnesota with her owners from Mississippi, obtained her freedom in 1860 after a judge ruled she was a free woman. In 1862, Joseph Godfrey, an enslaved man born near Mendota, escaped and joined the Dakota, with whom he fought against white settler-colonists during the US–Dakota War of 1862. African Americans migrated to the state during the Civil War as Minnesota suffered a labor shortage. White Minnesotans who served in the U.S. Colored Regiments sent enslaved men and women who had escaped to Minnesota to work on farms and in the army. In 1863, the steamboats Northerner and Davenport brought enslaved people to Minnesota who had escaped from Missouri. The Mississippi River was a frequently traveled route connecting St. Louis and St. Paul. Reverend Robert Hickman and about seventy-five enslaved men, women, and children escaped from Missouri and traveled north to live and work as free persons. They were found adrift on the Mississippi River, where the Northerner encountered the raft and towed it to St. Paul. On May 5, 1863, when the Northerner reached St. Paul, an angry crowd threatened them, so the steamboat continued to Fort Snelling. Less than two weeks later, on May 15, 1863, the steamboat Davenport, escorted by the Union Army, brought over two hundred enslaved persons to work in St. Paul. At the end of the war, a few freed people followed soldiers returning to Minnesota to work as laborers. Many moved to cities and towns, and a few became farmers. The Black population in Minnesota has historically been small. According to the state census, in 1890 Minnesota’s total population was 1,310,283 and the Black population was 3,683—only 0.3 percent. The state’s Black population remained below 1 percent for many years. The Black population began growing significantly between 1950 and 1970 during the “Great Migration” of African Americans from southern states to the North, Midwest, and West. Although Minnesota’s Black population did not increase as much as the populations of other northern states, such as Illinois and Michigan, during this twenty-year period, it rose by 149 percent. The Black population continued to increase, but remained small. In 1980, the state’s total population was 4,075,970 and its Black population was 53,344. By 2010, the census reported Minnesota’s total population as 5,303,925, compared to the Black population of 274,412—only 5 percent. Struggle For Civil Rights Blacks were not allowed to vote until 1868, when voters approved the equal suffrage amendment to the Minnesota constitution, which gave voting rights to Black men. The amendment had been rejected twice—in 1865 and 1867—before passing. Minnesota granted Black men the right to vote two years before the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granted such a right in 1870. While Minnesota was considered a progressive state and had laws against discrimination, many restaurants and hotels denied service to Black people. In addition, restrictive housing covenants prevented Blacks from moving into many neighborhoods. African Americans experienced discrimination in housing, employment, and education, but they challenged discriminatory practices by filing court actions and creating organizations to fight for civil rights. In 1865, St. Paul segregated its public schools by opening a “School for Colored Children.” The St. Paul schools were the only education system in Minnesota that was segregated. In response to community and political pressure, the state legislature passed a law in 1869 banning school segregation in St. Paul. In 1885, Minnesota passed the Equal Accommodations Act, which guaranteed Blacks equal access to all public places and hotels. However, in 1887, William Hazel, a Black architect, was denied a room at the Clarendon and Astoria hotels in St. Paul because of his race. When he complained, he was arrested. Hazel filed a lawsuit and won. In 1897, Minnesota passed a civil rights law that was quickly tested by McCants Stewart, who filed suit in 1898 against a restaurant when he was refused service. The jury took only fifteen minutes to decide in Stewart’s favor. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, Blacks formed groups to fight discrimination. These included the Minnesota Protective and Industrial League, the Afro-American League, and the Minnesota Citizen Civil Rights Committee. In 1902, the annual meeting of the National Afro-American Council was held in St. Paul and attended by national leaders W. E. B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells, and Booker T. Washington. The meeting, organized by St. Paul attorney Fredrick McGhee, prompted a split between Du Bois and Washington, who had different ideologies and methods regarding Blacks’ pursuit of civil rights. Du Bois, McGhee, and others formed the Niagara Movement, which led to the creation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1910. The NAACP formed local branches in St. Paul in 1913 and Minneapolis in 1914. In 1919, during a “red summer,” race riots erupted in several American cities, resulting in numerous deaths and extensive property damage. Also during this period, the NAACP published a report examining lynching and sponsored anti-lynching legislation. In 1920, three Black men were lynched in Duluth. Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson, and Isaac McGhie were circus workers who were accused of sexually assaulting a white woman. They were dragged from jail, beaten, and hung from a telephone pole by a white mob while thousands of people, including the police, watched. The lynching led to the enactment of an anti-lynch law that had been lobbied for by an African American suffragist and civil rights leader named Nellie Francis. Soon, the Duluth branch of the NAACP was organized. In 2003, the City of Duluth built a memorial to honor the three men who were brutally killed. Housing discrimination was rampant in the Twin Cities, and incidents of racially motivated violence occurred when Blacks moved into white neighborhoods. Lena O. Smith, the first Black woman to become an attorney in Minnesota, challenged discrimination in the courts. But discrimination continued. In 1931, a Black family, Arthur and Edith Lee, moved into a white neighborhood in South Minneapolis. White residents tried to get them to sell their home, but they refused. A mob protested outside their house every night, throwing rocks and black paint, shouting threats and racial slurs, and leaving garbage and excrement on the lawn. The harassment continued for two years until the Lees moved to a historically Black neighborhood in south Minneapolis. The Lee house was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2014. There were other sporadic incidents of racially motivated intimidation against Blacks when they moved into white neighborhoods, including cross burnings. In 1967, during the “long hot summer,” hundreds of race riots erupted across the country. Racial tensions exploded along Plymouth Avenue in North Minneapolis when Blacks demonstrated against discrimination and police brutality. The Minnesota National Guard was dispatched to Plymouth Avenue for over a week. Employment discrimination was pervasive in Minnesota. While some Blacks worked in skilled trade jobs as stonecutters and bricklayers, many white employers refused to hire Blacks. This limited their opportunities to unskilled jobs as laborers, waiters, cooks, and porters in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Blacks who worked for the railroad as porters organized St. Paul Lodge No. 5 of the United Brotherhood of Railway Porters of North America in 1887. In 1925, A. Philip Randolph organized a national union, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters; Frank Boyd, who had worked as a Pullman porter since 1907, organized meetings for the Brotherhood in St. Paul. Boyd was fired for union organizing. In 1976, the City of St. Paul dedicated a park in his name. The St. Paul Urban League was founded in 1923 to address Black unemployment and race discrimination. In 1935, the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) encouraged workers to organize unions, but most labor unions barred Blacks from membership. Despite this prohibition, Anthony Cassius and Nellie Stone Johnson became prominent labor organizers in Minnesota. Cassius organized the all-Black waiters union at the Curtis Hotel in Minneapolis in 1935 after learning that white waiters made more money than Black waiters. The Hotel and Restaurant Workers Union did not accept Black members, so Cassius organized Local 614 of the Hotel and Restaurant Waiters Union. Cassius sued the hotel and won a $13,000 wage increase and $3,500 in back pay for Black waiters in 1940. Johnson helped organize Local 665 of the Hotel and Restaurant Workers Union at the Minneapolis Athletic Club. She later became the first Black elected official when she was elected to the Minneapolis Library Board in 1945, and she helped create the Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party (DFL). A school in Minneapolis is named after Johnson. Communities And Institutions In the twenty-first century, most Blacks live in Minneapolis and St. Paul. In 2010, of the 274,412 Blacks in Minnesota, Minneapolis had the largest population with 71,098, followed by St. Paul with 44,728. While some Blacks have achieved success, the Twin Cities continue to have problems with racial disparities and segregation. Due to restrictive covenants and discriminatory housing practices in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Blacks were limited to living in certain areas, which created distinct Black communities. In Minneapolis, Blacks lived on the near Northside along Sixth and Lyndale Avenues North; at Seven Corners, where Washington, Fifteenth Avenue, Nineteenth Avenue, and Cedar Avenue intersect; and on the Southside, between Nicollet and Chicago Avenues and Thirty-fourth and Forty-sixth Streets. A Black enclave also developed in the Shingle Creek neighborhood near Fiftieth Avenue and Humboldt Avenue North. In St. Paul, Blacks lived in the Rondo neighborhood, south of University Avenue from Rice Street to Lexington Parkway. In the 1960s, the Rondo neighborhood was destroyed and more than six hundred residents were displaced to make way for Interstate 94. The annual Rondo Days and Jazz Festivals commemorate its history. In the 1970s, some African Americans moved from Rondo and other historically Black neighborhoods to new areas in the Twin Cities and the suburbs. The first Black churches were organized in the 1800s. St. James African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in Minneapolis was organized in 1863 as a small prayer group; it became a church in 1869. Pilgrim Baptist Church was founded in 1866; St. Mark’s Episcopal Church was organized in 1867; St. James African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in St. Paul was organized in 1876; St. Peter’s African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church was founded in 1880; Bethesda Missionary Baptist Church was formed in 1887; and St. Peter Claver Catholic Church was organized in 1888. Blacks created business districts in Rondo; in South Minneapolis at Thirty-Eighth Street and Fourth Avenue; and in North Minneapolis along Plymouth Avenue. African Americans started community centers that provided housing and employment information and recreational activities. In Minneapolis, the Phyllis Wheatley House was founded in 1924 as a “settlement house,” and Sabathani Community Center was established in 1966. In St. Paul, the Neighborhood House was established in 1897, the Welcome Hall Community Center in 1916, the Christian Center in 1926, and the Hallie Q. Brown House (later renamed the Hallie Q. Brown Community Center) in 1929. Blacks also founded newspapers and publications. The Western Appeal and the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder were the longest running and most successful. The Western Appeal was published from 1885 to 1923, and John Q. Adams was its outspoken editor. Roy Wilkins, who led the NAACP from 1949 to 1977, also served as editor at the Appeal. The Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder (formerly the Minneapolis Spokesman and the St. Paul Recorder), Minnesota’s longest-published Black newspaper and Black-owned business, was founded in 1934 by Cecil Newman. In 2015, the paper celebrated its eightieth anniversary and was designated a historic landmark. From 1885 to 1974, there were almost twenty Black newspapers published in the state. In 2017, there are only two: the Spokesman-Recorder and Insight News. In addition to newspapers, Walter Scott Sr. published photo books featuring Blacks in Minneapolis between the 1950s and 1970s called the Minneapolis Beacon and Minneapolis Negro Profile. Blacks formed social clubs, fraternal organizations, bowling leagues and baseball teams but were historically excluded from private golf clubs and tournaments. In response, Jimmie Slemmons created the Minnesota Negro Open golf tournament in 1939 to give Blacks an opportunity to play and compete. The tournament was renamed the Upper Midwest Bronze Amateur Tournament in 1954 and attracted participants from around the country. Former heavyweight champion Joe Louis won the tournament in 1957. Outside of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Black communities developed in pockets around Duluth and Fergus Falls in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Blacks moved to Duluth in search of jobs created by the railroad, shipping, and mining industries. John Nichols, who moved to Duluth in 1884, owned and operated the City Hotel until his death in 1907. In 1890, Reverend Richmond Taylor founded St. Mark’s African Methodist Episcopal Church. Many social clubs established in the Twin Cities also had chapters in Duluth. There were Black newspapers: the World, published by P. O. Gray in 1895, and the Progressive News Review, published in 1904 by Henry Williams. In the 1920s, the U.S. Steel Corporation recruited Black laborers from the South to work in its Duluth plant. However, many workers left because of low wages, segregated housing, and cold weather. Duluth’s Black population was 1,946 in 2015. In Fergus Falls, Prince Albert Honeycutt was the city’s first Black resident (1872). He owned a barbershop, founded the local baseball team, and ran for mayor in 1896. In 1898, a group of eighty-five African Americans moved to Fergus Falls from Kentucky after being recruited by real estate agents. They started farms, opened businesses, founded a church, and built homes, but during the Great Depression in the 1930s, many families faced financial hardship and moved away. Descendants of the “First 85” gathered in Fergus Falls in 2010 for a reunion. In 2015, only 156 Blacks lived in Fergus Falls. Trailblazers African Americans contributed to and achieved success in medicine, education, law, business, politics, and the arts. Some Minnesota trailblazers were Dr. Robert S. Brown, the first Black doctor; Richard Green, the first Black superintendent of Minneapolis Public Schools; and Clarence “Cap” Wigington, the first Black municipal architect. Frederick Jones was the first Black inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. He created the Thermo King portable refrigeration unit, which allowed delivery trucks to keep goods cool. Archie Givens, a business owner and real estate developer, was the first Black millionaire in Minnesota. He and his wife, Phebe, established the Archie Givens Sr. Collection of African American Literature at the University of Minnesota, which consists of over 10,000 books, magazines, and pamphlets by or about African Americans. Blacks excelled in the field of law. Fredrick McGhee was Minnesota’s first Black lawyer; Lena Smith the first Black female lawyer; L. Howard Bennett the first Black municipal judge; and Stephen Maxwell the first Black district court judge. Pamela Alexander was the first Black female prosecutor and first Black female judge in Hennepin County. In addition, Alan Page was the first Black judge on the Minnesota Supreme Court; Michael J. Davis was the first Black federal judge in Minnesota; and Wilhelmina Wright was the first Black female federal judge in Minnesota. In politics, John Francis Wheaton was the first Black elected to the Minnesota legislature; Neva Walker the first Black woman elected to the Minnesota legislature; Van White the first Black elected to the Minneapolis City Council; Sharon Sayles Belton the first Black and first woman elected Mayor of Minneapolis; Bill Wilson the first Black elected to the St. Paul City Council; Jean Harris the first Black woman elected mayor of Eden Prairie; and Keith Ellison the first Black elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Minnesota. African Americans’ contributions to the arts transcended Minnesota and received international recognition. Prince Rogers Nelson (Prince), born in Minneapolis, was a legendary singer-songwriter, actor, multi-instrumentalist musician, philanthropist, and producer. He was also a best-selling artist who won Grammy, American Music, Golden Globe, and Academy awards. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004. He created the “Minneapolis Sound,” a mix of soul, dance, funk, and rock and roll music that featured synthesizers and drum machines. Jimmy “Jam” Harris III and Terry Lewis started their music careers in the Minneapolis band “Flyte Tyme.” The group later became “The Time,” which was produced by Prince. Harris and Lewis also wrote and produced hit songs for numerous artists, including Janet Jackson. Grammy-award-winning Sounds of Blackness, a musical ensemble, started in 1969 at Macalester College. Grammy-nominated band Mint Condition was started in the 1980s at St. Paul Central High School. Penumbra Theatre, founded in 1976 by artistic director Lou Bellamy, is credited with launching the career of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/dred_and_harriet.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056216,"name":"African Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/african-americans-minnesota"},{"alt":"Color image of members of the Dorcas Mission Society, ca. 1990s.","author":[{"name":"Elaine E. Kroeker","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/elaine-e-kroeker"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 24, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"1936","name":"Dorcas Circle, Carson Mennonite Brethren Church","postbody":"The Dorcas Circle, organized in Cottonwood County||s Carson Township in 1936 and later known as the Women’s Mission Society (WMS), served as the backbone of the Carson Mennonite Brethren ...","searchtext":"The Dorcas Circle, organized in Cottonwood County||s Carson Township in 1936 and later known as the Women’s Mission Society (WMS), served as the backbone of the Carson Mennonite Brethren Church’s strong missions program. Working in supportive capacities, members of the circle impacted church and community life without taking on pastoral roles. Women’s roles in the Carson Mennonite Brethren Church evolved over its 130-year history. Initially, men held leadership positions and made decisions while women served the family at home and provided supportive roles in the church. Records of the church’s October 1907 business meeting show the first reference to women members: a plea for “sisters” to teach in mission schools in India. Mary Epp Voth and her husband, John H. Voth, responded by accepting a conference appointment to become missionaries. They left for India in 1907. Prior to this time, however, women in the congregation had already served as missionaries. Maria Ewert Enns served as the first woman missionary from the newly formed Bingham Lake Mennonite Brethren Church (known later as Carson Mennonite Brethren Church) in 1896. She died, along with her husband Heinrich and infant son, one year after being sent to Cameroon, where the family was buried. Susanna Wiebe Hiebert and her husband, Nicholas N. Herbert, went to India in 1899 in response to a call for missionaries from Elder Heinrich Voth. When Nicholas became ill a year later, the couple returned to Minnesota and advocated for mission work in the Mennonite Brethren Conference. Although Mennonite Brethren congregations do not ordain women as pastors, the Carson Mennonite Brethren Church did conduct ordination ceremonies for women church members who served as missionaries. Elizabeth Dickman-Janzen, trained for medical work, received ordination on September 4, 1910.Her husband, Frank A. Janzen, was ordained with her, and they both traveled to India. After Frank died, Elizabeth came back home to Minnesota for a time and then returned to India in 1938. She remained there until 1946. Viola Bergthold, who had been raised in India as the child of missionary D. F. Bergthold and set down roots in the Carson Mennonite Brethren Church, married John A. Wiebe in 1926. They both received ordination for service to India on June 19, 1927. The ordination of John N. C. Hiebert and his wife, Ann Hiebert, took place on July 7, 1929. On November 12, 1936, Mrs. Lydia Balzer, President; Rosella Flaming, Vice President; Mrs. Sam Dick, Secretary; Esther Wiens, Treasurer; Martha Wiebe, Committee Member founded the Dorcas Circle, a women’s organization designed to foster spiritual growth and to support the missions program of the church. Members met monthly to sew blankets and layettes for relief, write letters, and provide prayer support for missionaries supported by the church. They annually auctioned off women’s hand-made projects at a Fourth of July Missions celebration to raise funds for missions. The organization’s name became the Women’s Missionary Society in the 1980s, but its mission remained the same. It remained active until the church closed in 2005. Encouraged to get advanced degrees, many young women from the congregation and all members of the Dorcas Society or Women’s Missionary Society, as it was later known, studied at Tabor College in Hillsboro, Kansas, and in other institutions of higher learning. Many became educators and nurses. Others married pastors and missionaries, including Susanna Ewert Wiebe, Linda Ewert Braun, Margaret Ewert Flaming, Berdina Balzer Emmert, Marlys Bartsch Friesen, Vera Lepp McDonald, Lucille Schultz Neufeld, Monica Espenson Totman, Carol Eytzen Janke, and Susan Orloske LeBoutillier. Susan Kroeker delivered the first message by a woman on April 10, 2005, and received ordination as a minister on April 5, 2011, through the Baptist denomination. A ladies’ chorus formed in the early 1900s and continued through the 60s, performing monthly for Sunday worship services. A ladies’ sextet formed in the 1960s and sang together for many years. As culture changed in the mid-to-late twentieth century, the church included women at every level of its operations except the clergy. They served as choir directors, Sunday School teachers, members of the Church Council, and deaconesses.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Women of Carson Church_edited.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246089,"name":"Religion and Belief","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/dorcas-circle-carson-mennonite-brethren-church"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Elder Heinrich Voth (right) and his wife, Sara Voth (left), ca. 1910.","author":[{"name":"Elaine E. Kroeker","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/elaine-e-kroeker"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 07, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Voth, Heinrich (1851–1918)","postbody":"Heinrich Voth, the first lay minister of Mennonite Brethren Church in Delft, baptized over 700 parishioners during his nearly forty years of ministry. Respected as an educator, he shared ...","searchtext":"Heinrich Voth, the first lay minister of Mennonite Brethren Church in Delft, baptized over 700 parishioners during his nearly forty years of ministry. Respected as an educator, he shared leadership with members of the congregation, freeing himself for evangelistic visits and travels to places in northern Minnesota and Canada. Voth was born on February 18, 1851, to Heinrich and Helena Fast Voth in the village of Gnadenheim in Russia’s Molotschna Colony. He lived most of his childhood five miles southwest in the village of Ruekenau, only later moving to Friedensdorf along the Regemtschrockrak River. Sick with a serious fever for most of his childhood but recognized for his ability to learn, Voth attended school until he was eighteen years old—four years longer than was considered normal for that time. Voth married Sara Kornelsen on June 12, 1873. The couple, both Mennonites, had seven sons and four daughters. When the Russian government threatened Mennonite settlers with military conscription, the Voths searched for land where they could live without fear of being forced to participate in the military against their beliefs. Voth left Russia with his wife, their two infant daughters (Helena, age two, and Sara, age six months), his parents, five siblings, and other Mennonite families on the Red Star Liner S. S. Vaderland. They arrived in Pennsylvania on July 28, 1876, and in Mountain Lake in August. One month later, Sara died. The family’s first home was an earth-sheltered dwelling on the south bank of Rat Lake in section twenty of Carson Township. The Voths were baptized upon confession of their faith on June 10, 1877. Heinrich was chosen to serve as minister of the Bingham Lake Mennonite Brethren Church congregation, later known as the Carson Mennonite Brethren Church, in Delft. He served the congregation from 1877 until 1916. A knowledge and understanding of the scriptures, combined with a spirit of evangelism and mission-building, made Voth a revered speaker at church conferences in the United States and Canada. In 1883, the Mennonite Brethren Conference commissioned him as an itinerant preacher and evangelist. His work resulted in the creation of multiple churches. After an initial trip to Manitoba, he returned numerous times and eventually included Saskatchewan in his travel itinerary. On November 1, 1885, he received ordination as an elder by Abraham Schellenberg of Buhler, Kansas. On March 2, 1887, Voth raised concerns of a need for humanitarian aid in India caused by a widespread famine. The church responded by donating money and by sending missionaries Nicholas N. and Susanna Hiebert to India in 1899. This resulted in the creation of the largest Mennonite Brethren Conference in the world. Voth organized a singing program in 1883 that officially became a choir in 1885. A year later, in 1886, he organized adult Bible classes held on Sunday afternoons. In 1895, he baptized sixty-seven men and women. He traveled to northern Minnesota in 1899 and succeeding years for evangelistic purposes, sometimes staying abroad for months at a time. He established a concentrated Bible course in the church in 1901. Concern for young people led Voth to start a group for young men in 1887, a women’g group in 1902, and Jungenverein, a young men and women’s society, in 1910. They met monthly for singing, recitations, and presentations on spiritual topics. During his forty-year ministry, one of sacrifice and placing preaching and evangelism above his farming occupation, Voth baptized over 700 men and women. He organized Bible conferences at the local church and spoke at schools throughout the United States, including Tabor College, a Mennonite Brethren institution of higher learning. He served as chairperson or assistant chairperson for the Mennonite Brethren Conference from 1901 until his death in 1918.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Voths.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246089,"name":"Religion and Belief","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/voth-heinrich-1851-1918"},{"alt":"Color image of a memorial inside Carson Mennonite Brethren Church Cemetery, August 25, 2013.","author":[{"name":"Elaine E. Kroeker","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/elaine-e-kroeker"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 07, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Carson Mennonite Brethren Church Cemetery","postbody":"The Carson Mennonite Brethren Cemetery, surveyed and platted in June 1900, has 185 recorded burials as of 2017. Some graves have been relocated from other sites. One half-acre of land for ...","searchtext":"The Carson Mennonite Brethren Cemetery, surveyed and platted in June 1900, has 185 recorded burials as of 2017. Some graves have been relocated from other sites. One half-acre of land for the cemetery of the Carson Mennonite Brethren Church (initially known as the Bingham Lake Mennonite Brethren Church) was originally donated by Heinrich Ewert of Carson Township. It was platted in June 1900, and the plat was certified by a surveyor, endorsed, and filed with the Register of Deeds in Cottonwood County on December 8, 1900. The cost of surveying the cemetery was $5.00; registration of its deed was $.90. The south section of the cemetery, added in 1958, was donated by David H. Ewert, son of Heinrich, who lived on the property after his father’s passing. Oak trees surrounding the cemetery and adjacent churchyard create an atmosphere of quiet reflection and tranquility for the final resting place of loved ones. Many grave markers are etched with scriptural and spiritual expressions of faith. John K. Dick, the first cemetery sexton, took responsibility for upkeep of the burial plots and grounds in the early twentieth century. David H. Ewert served as caretaker of the cemetery from 1920–1944. At a business meeting on December 28, 1944, trustees agreed to send letters to loved ones of those buried in the cemetery and request donations for cemetery maintenance. Until at least 1950, burial plots were furnished without charge to church members and their families. Although the cemetery’s first recorded burial was of Susan Eytzen in April 1908, Anna Funk Wiens, who died in 1904, is also buried there. There may have been initial burials before 1908 that cannot be confirmed. Some burials listed with a date before this may have been moved from initial burial sites when Carson Cemetery became available. Beginning in the 1920s, David H. Ewert kept records of burials as caretaker of the cemetery. Families unable to afford permanent grave markers used wooden ones instead. As markers deteriorated, Norman Ewert, David’s grandson, preserved his grandfather’s notes by welding the vital information onto disk blades. Completed disk blades, serving as temporary markers, marked grave sites until permanent markers replaced them. After the Mennonite Brethren Church Cemetery, south of Mountain Lake, was abandoned to widen County Road #1, thirteen bodies were moved to the Carson Cemetery and reburied in about 1947. By 1990, 154 burials were recorded at the Carson Cemetery; by 2013, the number had risen to 180. Upon closure of the Carson Mennonite Brethren Church in 2005, the cemetery was deeded to Community Bible Church of Mt. Lake, Minnesota—also a Mennonite Brethren church; Wes Kroeker became sexton. He designed a memorial marker and had it erected at the entrance of the cemetery in 2013. A dedication of the memorial took place on September 15, 2013. Kroeker presented a brief history of the cemetery, and former pastors John Klassen and Herb Schroeder led a devotional and dedicatory prayer. As of 2017, 185 bodies are interred in Carson Cemetery.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/IMG_1569_edited.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246089,"name":"Religion and Belief","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/carson-mennonite-brethren-church-cemetery"},{"alt":"Black and white aerial view of the Northwest Experiment Station and Northwest School of Agriculture grounds and buildings, 1939.","author":[{"name":"Amy Larson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/amy-larson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 07, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Northwest Experiment Station","postbody":"In 1895, on land provided by James J. Hill, the Northwest Experiment Station was founded to maximize the agricultural potential of the Red River Valley. Through many changes in the business ...","searchtext":"In 1895, on land provided by James J. Hill, the Northwest Experiment Station was founded to maximize the agricultural potential of the Red River Valley. Through many changes in the business of farming, the experimental farm continued to provide data on the most effective and efficient crops, livestock, and farming methods in the fertile land around Crookston. The facility was renamed Northwest Research and Outreach Center in 1999. Since its inception, the station has tested, researched, and provided valuable insight into the farming practices of the Red River Valley. The area’s potential was seen from the beginning, with former superintendent Conrad Selvig noting, “What a heritage. Do you know the potent powers of this soil and the wonders it can perform?” Less than twenty years after the incorporation of Crookston, the plentiful agricultural opportunities in the Red River Valley were already known around the state. Even Great Northern Railway magnate James J. Hill saw that the Crookston area held promise for farmers, with the right amount of research and experimentation. In the late 1890s, Hill donated 476.61 acres of land two miles north of Crookston to the state, with the provision that it be used for agricultural research and education. At that time, there was already a state experimental farm in St. Paul, run by W. S. Hays. Hays and the University of Minnesota Board of Regents were surveying land around the state to determine locations for sub-station farms. Having spent time in the Red River Valley while working in Fargo, Hays was also aware of the area’s potential and named Crookston as a possible site. In 1895, two legislators—Senator Peter M. Ringdal and Representative M. E. Craig—introduced bills to establish the Northwest Experiment Station in Crookston. Their bills led to an appropriation of $15,000 for the establishment of Crookston’s experimental farm, including $10,000 for equipment and $5,000 for two years of operations. The city of Crookston and Polk County also chipped in funds to develop new roads at the new facility. Torger A. Hoverstad was named superintendent of the station and joined Hays for the groundbreaking in August 1895. Hoverstad’s first few years on the station were difficult. The biggest barrier to developing a working farm was the extensive flooding. The area’s particularly flat land resulted in soggy fields with nowhere for the water to run. In 1903 and 1905, additional state appropriations were finally provided to improve drainage, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture and United States Engineers worked on the project through 1908. In those first years, Hoverstad focused on planting trees around the barren land and testing four-foot-by-four-foot plots of wheat. After the major drainage issues were addressed, everything from forestry, alfalfa, and sugar beet farming to clover, poultry, and dairy farming were tested on the grounds. In Hoverstad’s ten years as superintendent, he saw both growth and failure. In many years, wheat crops struggled due to weeds. But clover and alfalfa took off and were quickly adapted to the land in the Red River Valley. With economic development in mind, Hoverstad saw a natural fit—dairy farmers could become buyers of the plentiful clover and alfalfa to feed their cows. Education was a natural next step for the station. With the backing of Hill and Governor Samuel Rinnah Van Sant, the 1905 Minnesota legislature appropriated $15,000 to establish the Northwest School of Agriculture on the grounds of the experiment station. This school was rededicated as the University of Minnesota Technical Institute in 1966 and as the University of Minnesota–Crookston in 1988. In 1999, the Northwest Experiment Station changed its name to the Northwest Research and Outreach Center. Over the years, the experiment station grew in size. In 2017, the farm’s land totaled more than 1,500 acres. Research on soil, fertilizer, livestock, and crops—including sunflowers, sugar beets, and edible beans—helped farmers increase their efficiency and develop many of northwest Minnesota’s successful industries. Education and outreach were also part of the station’s mission. Farmers spent time on the grounds during annual visiting days, learning about the latest research to take back to their fields. These trainings later developed into the popular Red River Valley Winter Show, a large indoor showcase of the latest agricultural developments.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Aerial view of the Northwest Experiment Station.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246091,"name":"Agriculture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/northwest-experiment-station"},{"alt":"Color image of the Historic Post Office building in Anoka, 2008. Photographed by Wikimedia Commons user Elkman.","author":[{"name":"Anoka County Historical Society","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/anoka-county-historical-society"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 06, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"1978","name":"Anoka Post Office","postbody":"Designed by the famed Minnesota architect James Knox Taylor, Anoka’s oldest extant public building, built in 1916, is known for its classic Georgian Revival style. Irving Caswell, the ...","searchtext":"Designed by the famed Minnesota architect James Knox Taylor, Anoka’s oldest extant public building, built in 1916, is known for its classic Georgian Revival style. Irving Caswell, the city’s former post master, served as editor of the Anoka Herald in the early 1900s. In 1911, he encouraged Taylor to launch a series of newspaper articles lobbying for the construction of a post office in Anoka. Taylor prevailed, and construction of the post office began in 1916. Its façade displays key elements of the classical style—Neo-Palladian windows, a dentillated cornice, and a fan window over the main entrance. While it served as Anoka’s Post Office, the building reflected the steady growth of the community. By 1925, the number of addresses receiving deliveries inside the city surpassed 600. Consequently, the postal service added a second carrier to the staff and divided the delivery into two routes. They measured growth by the number of transactions logged. In 1933, the Anoka Post Office handled $23,193.80 in receipts. Five years, later that number increased to $60,000 and the facility employed eighteen workers. By 1954, the receipts totaled $103,055.94 and the facility’s employment had nearly quadrupled. The post office weathered more than just growth and expansion. In 1939, it was one of the few public buildings to withstand a devastating tornado that ripped through the area and served as gathering place for survivors of the destruction. During World War II, the office achieved a “first class” rating. The distinction made it a choice location to purchase not only postal stamps but also war bonds to support the U.S. military’s efforts overseas. The facility also served as a place for those of eligible age to register for the draft. Post-war growth and the demands of a vibrant community led to the construction of a new postal facility on Seventh Avenue. On October 22, 1977, the old Anoka Post Office delivered its last parcel of mail. In 1978, the federal government put the site up for sale, and a year later it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The initial price tag and the costs associated with renovating and repurposing the building, however, prevented many, including the Anoka County Historical Society, from purchasing it. Counselor Realty finally stepped forward with a bid and a plan to restore much of the old building to its original grandeur. The greatest obstacle remained the building’s old furnace, which required dismantling and updating from a coal heating system to a gas one. Over the next two years, the company spent $356,000 on construction and restoration. Throughout the 1990s, the building served as a multipurpose location. A number of businesses and firms cycled through the historic site, including a charter school, a Christian ministry center, a gym, a coin shop, and a real estate company (Counselor Realty). By 2000, the old post office had evolved once more into a retail space, creating a need for further updates to make the property attractive to shoppers. Interior fountains, along with mural paintings, were installed while the exterior received a flower garden that enhanced the landscape surrounding the building. Over the next fifteen years, the post office housed a tea room, a bridal shop, antique dealers, and a massage parlor. Throughout that time, Counselor Realty remained the one constant fixture. Anoka’s Post Office building made national news in September 2004, when President George W. Bush visited the site while campaigning for re-election. Bush spent twenty minutes signing autographs, visiting with the public, and posing for photos. Despite his presidential standing, he discovered his order for an egg salad sandwich at the site’s deli could not be fulfilled. Instead, he opted for the special of the day and appeared content. In 2002, the U.S. Postal Service officially recognized Anoka as a Sesquicentennial station. It produced a stamp featuring a design of the historic post office that became a coveted souvenir. Anoka County’s 150th anniversary, in 2007, created another opportunity for a special event and in 2016 yet a third as the building itself celebrated a centennial anniversary. Also in 2016, a set of four jack-o-lantern postage stamps was unveiled in the city plaza in recognition of Anoka’s title as “Halloween capital of the world.” A formal dinner sponsored by the Anoka County Historical Society followed the ceremony.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/postoffice2008.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/anoka-post-office"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of a woman and turkeys, ca. 1930. Photograph by Minneapolis Star Journal Tribune.","author":[{"name":"Linda A. Cameron","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/linda-cameron"}],"categoryTag":[],"date":"July 05, 2017","eraTag":[],"keydate":"","name":"Turkey Industry in Minnesota","postbody":"The Minnesota turkey industry began with small backyard flocks raised on family farms. The Minnesota Turkey Growers Association, the National Turkey Improvement Plan, and advances in ...","searchtext":"The Minnesota turkey industry began with small backyard flocks raised on family farms. The Minnesota Turkey Growers Association, the National Turkey Improvement Plan, and advances in disease prevention helped Minnesota rise to become the top turkey-producing state in the country. Scientists believe that the domestication of the turkey began with the ancient Maya in Central America, possibly as early as 300 BCE–100 CE. Early inhabitants of what is now the southwestern portion of the United States raised domesticated turkeys as early as 200 BCE–500 CE. Archaeological evidence suggests that early civilizations valued turkeys more for their feathers, likely used for ceremonial purposes and clothing embellishment, than for food. They may have used turkey bones to create beads, musical instruments, and tools. In the early twentieth century, Minnesota growers raised small flocks of turkeys on family farms. Between 1910 and 1920, U.S. farmers raised 3 million turkeys annually. With the introduction of large commercial incubators in the mid-1930s, the number of eggs hatched each year quickly grew and more farmers began to raise turkeys. Most eggs came into Minnesota from other states at that time, bringing with them egg-transmitted diseases. Diseases such as blackhead (histomoniasis) and avian tuberculosis posed serious threats. In the 1920s, Dr. Ruel Fenstermacher, the first director of the Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory at the University of Minnesota, and Dr. L. E. Jenkins worked with the Minnesota Board of Animal Health to develop programs to control these diseases. In 1935, the government started the National Poultry Improvement Plan with the goal of eliminating pullorum-typhoid, an infectious bacterial disease, from turkeys and other types of poultry. The disease first surfaced in Minnesota turkeys in 1928 and became a scourge over the next two decades. When fowl typhoid appeared in Minnesota in 1935, the university||s Diagnostic Lab began a study of salmonella bacterial infections in turkeys that led to a state-funded disease control program in 1943. Like all Minnesota farmers, early turkey growers gambled with the climate. Young birds started in brooder houses and then moved onto open ranges with limited shelter from harsh weather. The 1940 Armistice Day Blizzard caused large losses to Minnesota||s fledgling turkey industry. It wiped out many flocks and prompted the Farm Owners Mutual Insurance Company (later Farmers Mutual Hail Insurance) to begin offering fire and storm insurance on flocks in 1942. Insurance coverage encouraged the growth of Minnesota||s commercial turkey industry. In the late 1950s, growers adopted the Clinton pole barn and began to raise flocks indoors, which has since become standard procedure. The large metal buildings sheltered the birds in a temperature-controlled environment equipped with automatic feeders and water stations. They also prevented wild bird diseases and enabled growers to raise more flocks each year. As the industry grew, so did the need for information. University of Minnesota Extension veterinarian Dr. William M. |||Doc||| Billings led a group of farmers to form the Minnesota Turkey Growers Association (MTGA) in January 1939 during the University||s Farm and Home Week in St. Paul. The first board of directors included Billings and leading growers Clem Thurnbeck, Sven Ranelius, Graydon McCulley, and others. The organization elected Robert Bowden as its first president. MTGA secretary Roy Baumgartner initiated a monthly newsletter for members that grew into the Gobbles magazine. The National Turkey Federation (NTF) appointed a committee in 1941 to develop a National Turkey Improvement Plan. It set goals of expanding production, improving disease control, and increasing market quality. With the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture||s approval, it launched two years later. Minnesota adopted the plan in 1945 with supervision by the Minnesota Poultry Improvement Board. The University of Minnesota Diagnostic Laboratory then set up a breeder-hen research program. Over the next four decades, avian pathologists L. E. Jenkins, Benjamin S. Pomeroy, and staff made great strides in the area of disease diagnosis and prevention, particularly in the control of egg-transmitted diseases. In 1949, Graydon McCulley became the first Minnesotan to hold the office of President of the NTF. That November, he and a group representing his organization and the Poultry and Egg National Board traveled to Washington, D.C., to present President Harry S. Truman with a Minnesota-grown Thanksgiving turkey. The presentation has become an annual event. President John F. Kennedy started the annual turkey |||pardoning||| ceremony, sparing the birds from gracing a Thanksgiving table. Minnesota has a similar tradition, with a turkey presentation to the governor each November. Those birds don||t receive a pardon, however; they go to local food shelves for families to enjoy on Thanksgiving. The turkey industry has had a major impact on related Minnesota businesses. Millions of dollars|| worth of corn and soybeans becomes turkey feed. Seven meat processing plants in the state produce more than 1.2 billion pounds of turkey each year and provide thousands of jobs. The world||s second largest turkey processing company, Jennie-O Turkey Store, Inc., has its headquarters in Willmar. Earl B. Olson founded the company in 1949 and named it after his daughter, Jennifer. Hormel bought the company in 1986 and merged it with a later acquisition, The Turkey Store (formerly Jerome Foods, Inc.). Other Minnesota processing companies include Turkey Valley Farms and Northern Pride, Inc. Minnesota is also home to one of the largest turkey hatcheries in the world. In 1945, farmers Albert Huisinga, Albin Norling, and Herman Nelson started Willmar Poultry and Egg Company to process their own birds and produce turkey poults (baby turkeys) for local growers. The company acquired hatcheries in other states and merged with AgForte in 2009. The company merged with Aviagen in 2017 to become Select Genetics, with the capacity to produce 48 percent of U.S. turkey poults. It produces 137 million poults a year. In the 1950s, processors began to offer new products made from turkey, including ground turkey, hot dogs, sausage, turkey ham, and other items. More products meant more advertising. In 1956, the MTGA hired home economist Arlene Stansfield to promote turkey through cooking demonstrations and recipes. The MTGA auxiliary group, Minnesota Gal Gobblers (later Minnesota Women for Turkey), founded in 1976, actively promotes turkey products. The Minnesota State and Federal Crop Reporting Service began in 1949. This service keeps such records as the number of breeder hens and the number of turkeys raised for market. Minnesota turkey production soared from 3.6 million birds in 1950 to more than 14 million just a decade later. 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. Top turkey-producing counties in Minnesota include Kandiyohi, Stearns, Morrison, Lyon, Ottertail, Rice, Meeker, Becker, Redwood, and Brown. The industry generates a total of $866 million each year in cash receipts. Minnesota exports about eight percent of all turkey produced to such countries as Mexico, China, and Canada. In 2014, the value of these exports totaled $92 million. An outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza (bird flu) in March 2015 hit the industry hard. Growers lost more than 9 million turkeys on 110 quarantined farms in twenty-three counties. Governor Mark Dayton declared a peacetime emergency on April 23, activating the State Emergency Operations Center. The U.S. Department of Agriculture paid $60.8 million in compensation for healthy birds destroyed to prevent the spread of the virus.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/SA3.3 p35.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246091,"name":"Agriculture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/turkey-industry-minnesota"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of the Northern Pacific Railway’s collapsed concrete archway, 1909.","author":[{"name":"Emily Kulzer","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/emily-kulzer"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 03, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"August 1, 1907","name":"Construction of the Stockwood Fill, 1906–1909","postbody":"Construction of the Stockwood Fill in Clay County between 1906 and 1909 taught Northern Pacific Railway engineers a bitter lesson about building big on northwestern Minnesota’s ...","searchtext":"Construction of the Stockwood Fill in Clay County between 1906 and 1909 taught Northern Pacific Railway engineers a bitter lesson about building big on northwestern Minnesota’s former-lake-bottom soil. The Red River Valley straddles the border between North Dakota and northwestern Minnesota, a flatland that was once the floor of Lake Agassiz. The flat surface of the Red River Valley and wave-cut strandlines record the ancient lake’s presence. Below the valley’s surface lie weak lacustrine and fluvial sediments on top of glacial drift. Below this sediment package is a granitic bedrock floor. In 1872, the Northern Pacific Railway (NP) reached the Red River and crossed into North Dakota. Railroad tracks laid by the NP ran from east to west and created a steep grade between the towns of Glyndon and Hawley. The grade slowed railway traffic and required assistance from extra locomotives that could pull or push loaded trains from the bottom of the valley to the top. In 1906, NP engineers decided to construct an earthen embankment gradually rising eastward from Glyndon. Construction on this 7.3-mile stretch of track started in April 1906. The project had a budget of $2,133,000 and a deadline of two years. Railway engineers estimated that the trestle would require over 2 million board-feet of lumber and millions of cubic yards of dirt fill. At the beginning of August, it was discovered that the Stockwood Fill was sinking. Between August 7 and 13, the structure continued to settle. With each new settlement came compression ridges that appeared on each side of the fill. On August 8, a baffled S. A. McCoy (the project’s manager) ordered a geologic investigation of the soils beneath the fill. The investigation revealed unstable glacial sediment, including quicksand, gravel, and clay. The underlying geology of the Red River Valley had compromised the structure. Construction of the fill continued despite the problems induced by the quicksand below. Soon, the sag in the track became too steep for work trains to navigate. McCoy ordered a second trestle to be built over the sagging region. With new tracks in place, NP crews continued to dump dirt onto the trestle, only to watch it continue to sag. In December 1907, NP construction superintendent F. L. Birdsall took over the project. In the spring of 1908, he ordered the construction of a 3,000-foot-long permanent bridge over the same problem region, hoping to put an end to the sinking. Following construction of the new bridge, work progressed rapidly. The bridge allowed work trains to access the embankment once more, and the crew continued to bury the trestle. In May 1908, two more zones of the fill started to show signs of settlement. Eight hundred fifty feet of track sank nearly fifty feet in one week. Hoping that a wider base would support the heavy embankment, Birdsall proposed extending the width of the fill. The strategy worked well throughout the summer of 1908, and the project was on track to be completed by November 1. On October 10, 1907, a fourth zone of settlement appeared adjacent to a mile-long stretch of embankment opposite the Stockwood Depot and along the 3,000-foot-long permanent bridge. NP officials were devastated to hear that this new filling technique had failed, since the next part of the trestle to be filled included an $11,000 concrete archway. The 125-foot-long, 16-foot-high archway would allow local road access through the fill. Filling progressed eastward toward the archway. The ground continued to crack along the embankment and the ground stresses eventually reached the concrete arch. In July 1909, the fill of the trestle above the archway was almost complete when the embankment and arch began to sink. Under stress from the soil above and the compression ridges below, the archway broke at its center. Engineers saw no hope for the arch and abandoned it. Over the years, the arch continued to sink until it was completely swallowed by quicksand. In September 1909, the NP admitted defeat, and the company began to use the embankment as it stood. The project was two years behind schedule and $700,000 over budget. Additional locomotives were still required to assist eastbound trains out of the valley until the arrival of more powerful engines in the 1930s. Editor’s note: This article adapts material originally published in Donald P. Schwert and Mark E. Peihl||s Toils on Weak Soils: A Photo Essay on the Construction of the Stockwood Fill (1906–1909).","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/image001_0.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246053,"name":"Transportation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/construction-stockwood-fill-1906-1909"},{"alt":"Color image of group prayer during the purchase of a building for Dar Al-Hijrah, 2006.","author":[{"name":"Anduin Wilhide","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/anduin-wilhide"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"June 28, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"2006","name":"Dar Al-Hijrah Mosque, Minneapolis","postbody":"Dar Al-Hijrah was founded in 1998 in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood in Minneapolis and is the oldest Somali mosque in Minnesota. It signals the latest of many phases of immigration to the ...","searchtext":"Dar Al-Hijrah was founded in 1998 in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood in Minneapolis and is the oldest Somali mosque in Minnesota. It signals the latest of many phases of immigration to the state, from Scandinavians and other Europeans in the nineteenth century to East Africans in the 1990s and 2000s. The congregation has a unique commitment to civic education and advocates for the idea that Islam is compatible with democracy through its sister organization, the Islamic Civic Society of America. Somalis began arriving in Minnesota in the early 1990s, fleeing civil war in their homeland. At first they joined mosques that had been operated by other Muslim communities, mainly from South Asia or the Middle East. These mosques helped Somalis transition to new lives in Minnesota by providing religious space and community support. By 1998, Cedar-Riverside had become home to one of the largest concentrations of Somalis in Minnesota. Many Somalis wanted a mosque tailored to their specific language and cultural needs. They also wanted their mosque to be close to Riverside Plaza, a housing complex where many Somalis lived, including both elders and youth. Somalis opened up their first mosque, the Riverside Islamic Center, in a two-story brick building on Cedar Avenue. Previously, the building had housed a steam laundry and then a small knitting factory owned by Scandinavian immigrant Christian Nelson. The factory remained in operation until the 1960s. The Guild of Performing Arts School and Theater rented the space for almost a decade before it was left vacant in the 1980s. By the 1990s, multiple groups, including a police precinct safety center, Bedlam Theater, and the West Bank Karate Club, had adjusted the space to their needs. The new Riverside Islamic Center converted its first floor room to a prayer room for men (replacing the police center); a prayer room for women was established next door (next to Bedlam Theater). The second floor became offices, classrooms, and community meeting spaces. In 2000 it became the Dar Al-Hijrah (Home of Migration) Cultural Center in reference to “the experience of leaving your homeland to settle in another land that embraces you,” as mosque leader Abdisalam Adam puts it. In 2006, Somali community members raised $400,000 over five months to purchase the building outright from local land developer Vicki Heller. At the same time, the name was changed to Dar Al-Hijrah Islamic Civic Center, and in 2013 the name changed again to the Islamic Civic Society of America, which includes Dar Al-Hijrah Mosque. These changes reflect a unique commitment by Somali leaders to providing civic education along with religious guidance in their community. They went from seeing themselves as immigrants and refugees to seeing themselves as American citizens and their mosque as an American institution. Part of their process of integration into American society included understanding their Islamic faith as compatible with U.S. democracy. On January 1, 2014, a devastating, multi-building fire almost destroyed Dar Al-Hijrah, and it was closed for more than a year. Various neighborhood organizations offered assistance to Dar Al-Hijrah staff and members. Trinity Lutheran Congregation offered space for community meetings and offices in their building on 20th and Riverside Avenues. Worship services were held at the Brian Coyle Community Center. After extensive renovation to the interior spaces, the mosque reopened in the spring of 2015 with a new entrance on Cedar Avenue. However, the more popular entrance remains around the back of the building. The mosque is a multi-purpose space used for religious worship, weekend Islamic school (dugsi) and community gatherings.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Islamic Civic Society of America and Dar Al-Hijrah Mosque founders pray during purchase of 504 Cedar Avenue building, 2006.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246089,"name":"Religion and Belief","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/dar-al-hijrah-mosque-minneapolis"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of German prisoners of war outside a farm building in Moorhead, ca. 1943–1945. Used with the permission of the Historical and Cultural Society of Clay County.","author":[{"name":"Angela Beaton","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/angela-beaton"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"June 26, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"German Prisoners-of-War Camp, Moorhead, 1944–1946","postbody":"During World War II, prisoners of war helped relieve a severe labor shortage in many rural areas of the U.S. In Clay County, Minnesota, POWs worked on farms to plant, tend, and harvest the ...","searchtext":"During World War II, prisoners of war helped relieve a severe labor shortage in many rural areas of the U.S. In Clay County, Minnesota, POWs worked on farms to plant, tend, and harvest the crops that otherwise might have been lost. During the later years of World War II, many rural areas experienced a severe labor shortage after local young men joined the war effort. To help ease the pressure, the federal government shipped prisoners of war (POWs) to the United States to work as laborers. One of the major POW camps was in Algona, Iowa. From April 1944 to August 1946, Camp Algona was home to over 10,000 German POWs, most of whom were enlisted men who had surrendered to allied forces in Africa and Italy. They worked at branch camps throughout Minnesota and Iowa until the end of the war. From the base at Camp Algona, POWs were distributed to communities that requested help. To get POW laborers, locals would submit a contract detailing how many workers they needed, the job they would be doing, and the housing that would be provided. International rules governing the treatment of POWs required that their work could not be dangerous or related to the war effort; further, they had to be paid and given one day of rest each week. If the contractors met these rules, their request would be approved. In the spring of 1944, Moorhead-area farmers Henry Peterson and Paul Horn contracted for 150 prisoners to work on their vegetable farms. The first site selected for their housing was in town near the Red River. Locals objected to having the prisoners so close to their homes, so an old onion warehouse on the edge of town was finally chosen. The Moorhead site became known as Algona Branch Camp Number One. The first forty Germans arrived in Moorhead on Sunday, May 28, 1944. They spent the night in Moorhead in tents on a farm south of town. Afterward, they transformed an onion warehouse into barracks and built an eight-foot barbed wire fence around the camp. The remaining 110 prisoners arrived by train on May 31. Six days a week, trucks from the Peterson and Horn farms picked up the POWs and their guards and carried them to the fields. There the prisoners planted, hoed, and picked the vegetables or did general farm work. The farmers paid the government 40 cents an hour per prisoner for their labor. In turn, the government paid the prisoners 10 cents per hour in coupons redeemable only at the camp canteen. The remaining 30 cents went toward housing and feeding the POWs. Prisoners had access to church services, recreational activities, art supplies, and musical instruments during their free time. Several prisoners were expert wood carvers and carved toys, dishes, and other wooden objects that they gave to locals. Relations between the prisoners and the locals were generally positive. Henry Peterson was particularly well-liked by the prisoners. He bent camp rules by buying prisoners beer and taking them into town, including a trip to a movie theater and one to a local tavern. After the harvest in the fall of 1944, the prisoners returned to the base camp at Algona. The Moorhead site was not prepared to house them during the harsh winter. The following spring, a second but smaller set of POWs arrived for another season. In the fall of 1945, they returned to Algona for the last time. Through the two seasons of work at the camp, the POWs made lasting relationships that endured after the war. Several former prisoners wrote to Peterson, Horn, and other locals after they had returned to Germany to request help with becoming American citizens. Many expressed gratitude for the treatment they received during their time at the camp. One soldier noted that he had learned about Americans and American politics and would remember the farm where he had worked.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Florance Drury 004.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/german-prisoners-war-camp-moorhead-1944-1946"},{"alt":"Color image of the Anoka–Champlin Mississippi River Bridge carrying U.S. Route 169, 2013. Photographed by Wikimedia Commons user McGhiever.","author":[{"name":"Anoka County Historical Society","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/anoka-county-historical-society"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"June 23, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"1920","name":"Anoka–Champlin Mississippi River Bridge","postbody":"Constructed in 1884, the Anoka–Champlin Bridge 4380 was the first structural span of the Mississippi River between Anoka and Champlin. A 1920s renovation strengthened the bridge, replacing ...","searchtext":"Constructed in 1884, the Anoka–Champlin Bridge 4380 was the first structural span of the Mississippi River between Anoka and Champlin. A 1920s renovation strengthened the bridge, replacing the original’s stone materials with steel. The 1884 bridge consisted of four steel spans with a wooden deck measuring eighteen feet wide. One of the spans could rotate, allowing for the passage of steamboats and other large vessels. The bridge’s wood decking limited traffic capacity, and individuals received a fine of ten dollars if they crossed at a pace faster than a brisk walk. After the advent of the automobile at the turn of the twentieth century, the bridge became inadequate. The U.S. War Department determined that in the event of a national crisis, it would prove too narrow and weak to support military vehicles, and would impede the swift flow of river traffic. In 1926, engineers wrote proposals for a modern structure to replace the outdated and insufficient original. Until a new bridge could be completed, the State Highway Department set a definite load restriction of six tons and posted signs to that effect. But the signage, heavy fines, and even threats of criminal prosecution failed to deter drivers with excessive loads from inflicting damage on the bridge. During the 1920s, concrete gained popularity as a material for bridge construction since it was cheaper than stone yet similar in its compressive strength; in 1929, a new bridge replaced the old steel structure. Designers used an arch form and encased steel to compensate for the concrete’s low tensile strength. Since it did not require painting, as steel did, the bridge was considered relatively low maintenance. Construction workers built the Anoka–Champlin Bridge’s concrete arches using “falsework,” a term for scaffold and wooden forms used to pour concrete. This method proved time consuming, labor intensive, and expensive. In the 1950s, pre-stressed girders replaced this type of bridge construction. In 1979, the bridge was added to the National Register of Historic Places. National Register historians called it “a fine representative of the open spandrel concrete arch bridge”—a well preserved example of the style that was popular in and around the Twin Cities in the late 1920s. Workers replaced the top half of the bridge, down to the arches, between 1998 and 1999. The reconstruction did not alter its historic designation.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Anoka-Champlin_Mississippi_River_Bridge.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246053,"name":"Transportation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/anoka-champlin-mississippi-river-bridge"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Ethel Ray (later Ethel Ray Nance), 1917. From the 1917 Duluth Central High School yearbook, Zenith.","author":[{"name":"Heidi Heller","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/heidi-heller"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"June 19, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Nance, Ethel Ray (1899–1992)","postbody":"Ethel Ray Nance was an African American activist and writer. During the 1920s, she broke various racial and gender barriers in Minnesota, participated in the Harlem Renaissance movement, ...","searchtext":"Ethel Ray Nance was an African American activist and writer. During the 1920s, she broke various racial and gender barriers in Minnesota, participated in the Harlem Renaissance movement, worked as a secretary for the National Urban League, and contributed to Opportunity magazine. In later decades, she went on to work for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the San Francisco African American Historical and Cultural Society. Ethel Ray was born on April 13, 1899, in Duluth. She was the youngest of four children born to William H. Ray, an African American native of North Carolina raised in Iowa by a German family, and Inga Nordquist Ray, a Swedish immigrant. At the time of Ethel’s birth, Duluth had an extremely small African American population of about 200 people. Speaking to an interviewer years later, Ethel recalled that she had been lonely as a child. She and her family faced racism from neighbors and community members. Her father was a major influence in her life and often read to her and her siblings about African American struggles and the need to stand up to racism. During high school, Ethel was trained in stenography (a note-taking technique). In 1919, she began working as a stenographer for the Minnesota Forest Fires Relief Commission, which was helping the 50,000 victims of the 1918 Cloquet, Duluth, and Moose Lake Fires. In June 1920, a white mob in Duluth lynched three black men accused of raping a white woman. The men were hung four blocks from Ethel’s childhood home. The lynching prompted Ethel’s father to organize a branch of the NAACP for the city of Duluth. A year later, W. E. B. Du Bois, the famous educator and civil rights leader, came to speak at a Duluth NAACP meeting; Ethel was asked to accompany him from Minneapolis to Duluth. The meeting helped to form a life-long friendship between the two. By 1923, Ethel’s connections with the Minnesota Forest Fires Relief Commission led the Minnesota Legislature to hire her as a stenographer. Her position in the legislature—the first of its kind held by an African American—made national headlines and brought Ethel to the attention of the Kansas City Urban League. While working for the Kansas City Urban League in 1924, Ethel met Charles S. Johnson, who was director of research of the New York Urban League and editor of Opportunity, the League’s well-known magazine. He offered her a position in New York as his secretary and as a writer, researcher, and editor for Opportunity. After accepting the position, Ethel moved to New York, where her apartment became a gathering place for young writers and artists during the Harlem Renaissance. Four years later, the need to care for her sick mother brought Ethel back to Minnesota. After a short time in Duluth, she relocated to Minneapolis and took on the position of associate head resident at the Phyllis Wheatley House. In 1928, the Minneapolis Police Department formed the first women’s bureau and hired Ethel, making her one of the first African American policewomen in Minnesota. She continued to work until 1931, when acute arthritis forced her to retire. Ethel married her first husband, LeRoy A. H. Williams, in 1929. They had two sons; Thatcher was born in January 1933 and Glenn Ray in July 1934. They moved throughout the country, where Ethel worked various secretary jobs. By 1943, she had separated from her first husband and lived in Seattle. In February 1944, she married Clarence A. Nance; her two sons took his last name. By 1945, Ethel and her family relocated to San Francisco, where she became a secretary for Du Bois. He was working as a consultant to the American delegation at the founding of the United Nations. After a short stint working in New York, she returned to San Francisco and worked for the NAACP for ten years. Ethel went on to work for the San Francisco African American Historical and Cultural Society, where she wrote about her time working with Du Bois. In 1978, she became the oldest person to receive a bachelor’s degree from the University of San Francisco. Ethel died in San Francisco on July 11, 1992. She was ninety-three years old.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Ethel_Ray_Nance_LEAD_IMAGE.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056216,"name":"African Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/nance-ethel-ray-1899-1992"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of the interior of the Credjafawn Co-op Store, 678 Rondo Avenue, St. Paul, ca. 1950.","author":[{"name":"Ehsan Alam","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/ehsan-alam"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"June 14, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Rondo Neighborhood, St. Paul","postbody":"St. Paul’s Rondo neighborhood ran roughly between University Avenue to the north, Selby Avenue to the south, Rice Street to the east, and Lexington Avenue to the west. African American ...","searchtext":"St. Paul’s Rondo neighborhood ran roughly between University Avenue to the north, Selby Avenue to the south, Rice Street to the east, and Lexington Avenue to the west. African American churches, businesses, and schools set down roots there in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, creating a strong community. Construction of Interstate-94 (I-94) between 1956 and 1968 cut the neighborhood in half and fractured its identity as a cultural center. From the beginning, Rondo was a haven for people of color and immigrants. Its namesake, Joseph Rondeau, moved there in the late 1850s from a site close to Fort Snelling, where he had faced discrimination due to his wife’s mixed white and indigenous heritage. French Canadian immigrants followed Rondeau to the area in the late nineteenth century; later, German, Russian, Irish, and Jewish families found homes there. Beginning in the 1910s and 1920s, Rondo experienced a social and cultural boom. Music and theater flourished. African American newspapers such as the Appeal, the Northwestern Bulletin, and the St. Paul Recorder represented Rondo’s interests and needs. In 1913, St. Paul established its chapter of the NAACP, making it a center for civil rights activity. One member of the chapter, Rondo resident Roy Wilkins, later led the national NAACP. As Rondo’s Jews advanced economically in the first decades of the twentieth century, they moved to new areas. This left behind affordable housing for African Americans. By the 1930s, half of St. Paul’s black population lived in Rondo. Even during the Jim Crow era, blacks and whites mixed relatively freely; interracial dating and even marriage sometimes took place. Supported by the booming railway industry and local businesses, Rondo’s black families were upper-middle and middle class as well as working class. Integrated schools, such as Central High School, Maxfield Elementary School, and parochial schools, created a relatively high level of education and literacy among minority residents. This openness in turn attracted southern blacks who faced stark racial prejudice and violence. Several organizations arose to meet the growing community’s social needs. The Hallie Q. Brown House (later renamed the Hallie Q. Brown Community Center) provided social services and gave African Americans a place to meet and socialize. In 1928, the Credjafawn Social Club began to offer a social and recreational space for young blacks. It went on to create a food cooperative and a credit union that helped residents finance their homes and educations. The Sterling Club, founded in 1919, was a networking association for African American professionals who were often excluded from other professional groups. In the 1930s, commuters and city planners began to call for a highway linking the business districts of downtown St. Paul and Minneapolis. After World War II, city engineers chose St. Anthony Avenue as the route. This street was located between University Ave and Marshall Avenue, and went all the way to Minneapolis. When the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 promised funding, it set in motion plans to lay down the freeway through the heart of the Rondo area. Resistance to the freeway plan came quickly. In early 1956, Reverend Floyd Massey Jr. and Timothy Howard started the Rondo–St. Anthony Improvement Association. This group, speaking for threatened property holders, protested the proposed route and pushed for assistance for those forced to move. The Housing Authority offered to help if the Highway Department would pay $30,000 to cover costs, but ultimately contributed no funds. The St. Paul City Council rebuffed attempts at passing local open-occupancy laws. The association did, however, succeed in changing the interstate’s design from an elevated to a depressed highway with bridges joining the bisected sides, dividing the community in a less pronounced way. In September of 1956, when construction began, some Rondo residents continued to resist. Police forcibly removed Reverend George Davis from his home when he refused to evacuate and make way for wrecking crews. Construction proceeded, however, and I-94 opened in 1968. Although the African American community was injured, it maintained a strong identity. Playwright August Wilson lived in the Rondo area in the 1970s and 1980s and wrote many of his plays while living there, including several performed by the Penumbra Theatre Company. In 1983, the first annual Rondo Days Festival was held; in 2006, the Rondo Community Outreach Library opened with a mission to support community engagement.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/10413469.640x640.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056216,"name":"African Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246079,"name":"Cities and Towns","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/rondo-neighborhood-st-paul"},{"alt":"Color image of the Grand Theater outside, 2017.","author":[{"name":"Janna L. Dinkel","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/janna-l-dinkel"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"June 12, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Grand Theater, Crookston","postbody":"For over one hundred years, the Grand Theater of Crookston has kept up with the times, transforming itself from a venue for vaudeville and plays to a movie palace for silent films and, ...","searchtext":"For over one hundred years, the Grand Theater of Crookston has kept up with the times, transforming itself from a venue for vaudeville and plays to a movie palace for silent films and, finally, “talkies.” By evolving to keep up with technology and the demands of the public, the Grand has remained a vital part of Crookston community life. After the first upscale opera house in Crookston, on Main Street, was closed in 1908 due to new fire and safety regulations, the Commercial Club began plans to build a new opera house. Unwilling to lose business to surrounding towns, residents began contributing money from their own pockets to raise $10,000 in “bonus funds” to attract a builder. In April 1910, Theodore L. Hays and J. A. Van Wie of the Twin Cities Scenic Company of Minneapolis invested in the theater and became its proprietors. The structure, which cost $50,000, was built in classical style and was erected about one block from the major business district. The theater originally seated 875 people in four different areas, including a horseshoe-shaped balcony and box seats. The proscenium opening was thirty feet wide, and the height from the stage floor to the rigging loft was forty-two feet. There were nine dressing rooms. The first sign that the Grand would help bring prosperity to Crookston arrived in September of 1910, when the State Butter and Cheese Makers held their convention in the new building. Following that event, on November 5, 1910, the theater’s grand opening was held, featuring Margaret Illington of New York in the play “The Whirlwind.” As a convenient stopping-off point for players between the towns of Minneapolis and Winnipeg, the Grand in its early days hosted everything from vaudeville shows to operas. Magician Harry Blackstone appeared at the theater several times. The arrival of Charles “Ducky” Hiller with his wife, Louise Hanna Hiller, in 1918, marked a turning point in the ownership of the theater. The Grand would be in the hands of the Hiller family for the next eighty-seven years. Charles Hiller was a veteran of the vaudeville circuit. He played various instruments, including the saxophone, drums, and violin, before taking up theater management. During vaudeville shows at the Grand, Hiller would join the touring players’ orchestra if needed. Louise worked long hours making fudge and divinity to sell to the audience. By 1913, silent films from the Edison Film Company were added to live performances at the Grand. They were accompanied by piano music chosen to match the action. The 1929 advent of “talkies,” movies with synchronized sound, brought big changes to entertainment at the Grand. The Crookston Daily Times conducted a survey to determine the interest of Crookston residents in this new type of film. In response to the interest, in 1932 Hiller installed a new sound system and projection booth, with the resultant loss of the box seats. In the remodel, Hiller kept the classical plaster castings, but the new lighting and ceiling of the building took on the influence of the art deco period. The Hiller family was an active part of the community, sponsoring a benefit for the unemployed during the Depression and hosting an annual children’s Christmas party beginning in 1921. They offered free screenings of movies featuring the likes of the Three Stooges and Laurel and Hardy followed by a visit from Santa and candy and fruit for the children. To keep up with the times, they installed equipment to show films in Cinemascope in 1954. The first movie shown in this format was “The Robe.” Charles Hiller died in 1955, and the theater business was subsequently run by his son Ernotte, followed by Ernotte’s son Jeff. After Jeff’s death in 2005, the family sold the theater to Bob and Jan Moore. Jeff Hiller added a new section to the theater in 1984 called the Grand II. He also added one hundred and ten rocker-style seats and allowed for additional movies to be shown. In 1997, high school art teacher Gary Stegman painted an eye-catching mural on the theater’s back wall. The colors of red, brown, yellow, black, and white represent the different ethnic groups of the area—united yet retaining their identities.","src":"https://www3.mnhs.org/hubfs/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Color%20image%20of%20the%20Grand%20Theater%20outside%2c%202017..jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/grand-theater-crookston"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of the façade of the Opera House Block on South Main Street as it looked in 1910.","author":[{"name":"Amy Larson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/amy-larson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"June 07, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Opera House Block, Crookston","postbody":"Although the Opera House Block was short-lived as a theater due to its hazardous second-floor auditorium, it was the center of entertainment in Crookston for more than fifteen years and ...","searchtext":"Although the Opera House Block was short-lived as a theater due to its hazardous second-floor auditorium, it was the center of entertainment in Crookston for more than fifteen years and hosted a historic 1895 lecture by American humorist Mark Twain. The Opera House Block burned down due to undetermined causes in 1987. In 1884, Crookston was quickly expanding. It had been incorporated as a town just five years earlier, but residents had already built their first opera house. The Crookston Dramatic Company’s performance of The Streets of New York was the inaugural act when the opera house opened in June. The town buzzed with excitement about the new access to culture and entertainment. But questions about the quality of the space and its management soon filled the newspapers, and the opera house was sold shortly thereafter. In 1890, the town decided that a new opera house was needed and Thomas H. Bjoin stepped up to make it happen. Bjoin was a former alderman who worked in the livery and machinery business. He decided to erect a building the size of a full block on South Main Street. Designed by J. W. Ross of Grand Forks, North Dakota, the Opera House Block was made of solid brick with brown stone trimmings. Interior frescos and papier-mâché decorations surrounded the boxes, stage, and balcony. Hand-painted sets included a street, garden, horizon, chambers, and prison. The auditorium held 785 patrons between the floor, dress circle, balcony, and boxes. The unique design placed the 56-by-100-foot auditorium on the second floor of the building, allowing room for ground level retail space. Over the years, businesses included a restaurant, furniture store, grocery store, shooting gallery, and saloon. On April 13, 1891, the “city’s magnificent thespian temple” opened with a performance of Faust by the Hess Grand Opera Company. Ticket prices ranged from one to five dollars. Crookston’s mayor dedicated the new space and praised Bjoin for bringing such a high level of art and culture to Crookston. The opera house was a popular attraction, hosting touring concerts and plays from around the country. Its shining moment was in 1895, when a large audience turned up to hear the humorist Samuel Clemens, better known as Mark Twain. Twain was on a tour of the country by train and stopped in Crookston on July 29. He spoke to a large crowd for an hour and a half, sharing stories from his many published works. Management changed hands multiple times, with promises of renovations and improved acts at each turnover. By 1903, only twelve years after the block’s opening, discussions about building a better facility were already in the news. In 1904, city officials inspected the opera house and noted concerns with the wiring and fire escapes, particularly due to the auditorium’s unusual spot on the second floor. The fire chief called it “one of the biggest fire traps in the city.” In the fall of 1907, the curtains closed on the opera house for good. The city discovered that it did not comply with fire laws and the cost to appropriately renovate was beyond the owner’s ability. The city didn’t go long without a proper opera house, however, as the community rallied together around the “imperative” project of a new venue. On November 8, 1910, that new opera house became a reality. It still stands in 2017 and operates as the Grand Theatre. Over the years, the Opera House Block remained a large presence on Main Street and housed stores, offices, and apartments. But on the night of March 11, 1987, the ninety-seven-year-old building went down in “a spectacular blaze.” Firefighters from three cities fought the large fire, which could be seen from ten miles away. No one was injured, but the building was destroyed and many people lost their homes. One of Crookston’s iconic buildings, which received a designation on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984, was suddenly just an ice-covered façade. The final report stated that the fire started in the boiler room, and tests showed that there were no unusual substances present at the time. But the cause of the fire was still undetermined and classified as “suspicious,” leaving residents with plenty of questions about the fate of the historic Opera House Block.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Opera House Block.png","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/opera-house-block-crookston"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of officers-in-training building a trench at Fort Snelling, 1917.","author":[{"name":"Todd Adler","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/todd-adler"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"June 05, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Officers’ Training Camps At Fort Snelling, 1917","postbody":"At camps held around the country during World War I, the U.S. Army quickly trained the officers it needed to grow from a small defensive force into one of millions, ready to step onto the ...","searchtext":"At camps held around the country during World War I, the U.S. Army quickly trained the officers it needed to grow from a small defensive force into one of millions, ready to step onto the world stage. Fort Snelling hosted two such camps in 1917: one between May 11 and August 15 and another between August 28 and November 27. When America entered the war in 1917 it had only 200,000 soldiers. The country needed millions of troops to send “over there” to Europe. It also needed officers to lead the new recruits and show them how to hold a rifle, flank a machine gun position, and peel a potato. One site selected to train these new officers was Fort Snelling. Six thousand men applied for the two officers|| training camps; four thousand were accepted. Candidates submitted evidence and testimonials attesting to their character, loyalty, education, and business experience. In line with Army policy, the camp accepted whites only; African Americans trained at a camp in Iowa. Candidates came from all over Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota, and the National Guard. They were trained in infantry, artillery, and engineer skills in three-month courses. The career officers derided them as “ninety-day wonders” because they didn’t have the depth of experience of an officer who had been in the Army for decades. The first camp got underway on May 11, 1917. Candidates reported for training, went through a physical examination, marched off to the quartermaster’s department for a uniform and equipment, and joined squads based on height. From there, drill and training started in earnest. Reveille sounded at 5:15 AM and candidates were kept on the go until lights-out at 11 PM. In between, they did drills in the morning and received instruction in the afternoon. Thirty minutes of physical activity were followed by breakfast and drills. The afternoon was spent in more instruction and the evenings in studying the next day’s material. On Saturday mornings, all participants turned out for inspection. Candidates who passed were given leave for the remainder of the weekend. Many spent their precious off-hours studying, including three candidates who rented a hotel room in Minneapolis and spread maps out on the floor as they worked out tactical problems. Although alcohol was forbidden to officers-in-training, they drank beer as they worked. When an officer discovered them, he arrested them and made a report to the commanding general. Several days a week were devoted to marches, which developed into mock battles against a fictitious enemy. The men deployed in skirmish lines, sent out scouts, and dug into defensive positions against stiff resistance from their invisible enemy. There were several Battles of Pilot Knob across the river from the fort. The men took a ferry across the Mississippi River (the Mendota Bridge wasn’t built until 1926), then fought uphill in the heat, humidity, and bugs of a steamy Minnesota summer. Towards the end of this phase of the training, the men marched down to Bloomington, which was then a rural community of just over a thousand people. The next day they “fought” their way back to the fort, digging in against a tough enemy just south of the post along Bloomington Road. This heralded the next phase of the training, which moved from open or skirmish warfare to trench warfare training. Candidates learned how to dig in, assault, defend a trench line, and mount patrols into no-man’s land, among other exercises. The following Monday, on August 13, 1,551 commissions were granted. By the evening of August 15, the new officers went on their way to their assignments. The second officers’ training camp ran from August 28 to November 27. Because of the impending winter as well as a shift in instructional focus, less emphasis was placed on skirmish warfare and more on trench tactics. These included assaulting and defending a trench, grenade throwing, and bayonet drill. Of the 1500 candidates who started the camp, just 971 received commissions. Those who were assigned to the Signal Corps were given their commissions a couple of days early so they could leave the camp in secrecy and head overseas. By November 27, all of the newly minted officers had left Fort Snelling and the 36th Infantry Regiment moved into the barracks.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/E435.22 p4.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/officers-training-camps-fort-snelling-1917"},{"alt":"P2685 Mn Quilt Proj #76","author":[{"name":"Peter J. DeCarlo","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/peter-j-decarlo"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"June 01, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt display, Minneapolis","postbody":"Begun in the Castro neighborhood of San Francisco in 1987, the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt grew into a nationwide community art project memorializing those who had been killed by the ...","searchtext":"Begun in the Castro neighborhood of San Francisco in 1987, the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt grew into a nationwide community art project memorializing those who had been killed by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Lovers, families, and friends of people who had died sewed quilt panels; others created them for individuals they had never met. In 1988, the quilt embarked on a national twenty-city tour and arrived at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in Minneapolis on July 16. In 1988, there was little mainstream political will to combat the HIV/AIDS epidemic, which had been first identified in 1981. Though it affected all people, HIV/AIDS had been stigmatized as a disease associated only with gay men and drug users. NAMES Project director Cleve Jones, a leader of the gay rights movement and a human rights activist, stated that the objective of the quilt was not only to combat HIV/AIDS, but to fight the “ignorance, hysteria, and bigotry” surrounding the disease. A Minnesota NAMES Project committee formed in Minneapolis to coordinate the display of the quilt at the Metrodome. It secured funding and support from Minnesota businesses, organizations, and individuals. On June 25, ten local community centers, hospitals, churches, and schools held workshops for creating and stitching panels. In early July, the committee began collecting finished quilt panels. Every panel was unique, and poetry, written remembrances, and biographical information accompanied many of them. These stories had already been collected into a volume in order to preserve them. Organizers held fundraising events at gay bars and nightclubs—the Y’all Come Back Saloon and the Gay ‘90s in Minneapolis and Rumours in St. Paul. Over 1,000 volunteers worked at the Metrodome on July 16 and 17. They dressed in all white and wore color-coded bandanas representing the tasks they had been assigned. Some helped unfold twelve-by-twelve-foot quilt blocks, each made up of eight panels that displayed the names of individuals who had died of HIV/AIDS. The blocks were assembled into groups of four and laid out with pathways so the public could walk among them. In total, 109 twenty-four-by-twenty-four-foot squares were displayed, representing 3,488 people. The entire NAMES quilt represented the 36,864 people who had died of HIV/AIDS since the epidemic had begun. Weighing more than 11,000 pounds and larger than four football fields, it was one of the biggest public art displays in state history and the largest-ever indoor display of the quilt. A brochure for the event stated that the quilt was “a celebration of life and a way to unlock grief.” Among the quilt were eighty-one panels memorializing hundreds of Minnesotans. A panel at the center of the display was reserved for visitors to add names of their own. On July 16, local officials, religious leaders, physicians, and community members read the names on the quilt during a public ceremony. State Senator Allan Spear and State Representatives Lee Greenfield and Bruce Vento attended. Minnesotans who had created quilt panels were specifically acknowledged. On July 17, public viewing of the quilt continued; in the evening the local and national NAMES committees made their closing remarks. Regional panels were officially presented to the National Committee. At eight o’clock in the evening, the quilt display closed. Other events were held in conjunction with the display. On the evening of July 16 and in the afternoon of July 17, the Magic Circle Ensemble presented “Safe Sex” at the Pillsbury House to benefit the Minnesota AIDS Project (MAP). Beginning at ten o’clock on the evening of July 16, an all-night HIV/AIDS vigil was held at Metropolitan Mt. Sinai Medical Center Chapel. At noon on July 17, the AIDS Film Project held a fundraiser at the Uptown Theater. All of the money raised during the events supported the display of the quilt and HIV/AIDS services in Minnesota. In the following months, community gatherings were held in Minneapolis to thank volunteers and help people stay engaged in the cause. The Minnesota panels and remembrances traveled with the quilt as it continued on its tour, which culminated in a display on the Capitol Mall in Washington, D.C.","src":"https://www3.mnhs.org/hubfs/Dakota-2024/Images/P2685%20Mn%20Quilt%20Proj%20%2376.png","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246087,"name":"Health and Medicine","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/names-project-aids-memorial-quilt-display-minneapolis"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Allan Spear, 1997. Photographed by Minnesota Senate photographer.","author":[{"name":"Jack Matheson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/jack-matheson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"May 31, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Spear, Allan Henry (1937–2008)","postbody":"Allan Henry Spear was the first openly gay man in the United States to serve as a state legislator. In 1993, he won a twenty-year fight to include the LGBT community in Minnesota||s Human ...","searchtext":"Allan Henry Spear was the first openly gay man in the United States to serve as a state legislator. In 1993, he won a twenty-year fight to include the LGBT community in Minnesota||s Human Rights Act. He served as president of the Minnesota Senate for nearly a decade, taught history at the University of Minnesota for thirty-five years, and was a lifelong lover of travel, food, music, and literature. When Spear was launching his twenty-eight-year career as a Minnesota senator and beginning to come out as gay in 1972, he already had a lifetime of experiences behind him. Born to Esther and Irving Spear on June 24, 1937, in Michigan City, Indiana, he went on to participate in some of the most tumultuous events in American history. As a white, Midwestern Jewish man, Spear may have seemed an unlikely civil rights activist and scholar of African American history. But he became directly involved in the American Civil Rights Movement at a young age. In 1955, when he was eighteen, he visited a friend in Mississippi. While he was there, another teenager visiting from the north, Emmett Till, was brutally kidnapped and killed in an infamous incident of racist violence. Till’s murder left a lasting impression on Spear. While enrolled at Oberlin College, he was an officer in its NAACP campus branch and spent a semester at historically black Fisk University. After studying at Harvard Law School for a year in 1958, he earned his MA and PhD at Yale. In 1964, at the age of twenty seven, he took a position teaching in the History Department of the University of Minnesota and moved to Minneapolis. Spear later admitted that he started to realize he was “different” from his friends at about age twelve and began privately discussing his homosexuality with a sympathetic friend at age nineteen. He did not begin coming out, however, until 1972. This happened to be months before he ran for, and was first elected to, the Minnesota Senate. Spear publicly revealed his homosexuality two years later in an interview with the Minneapolis Star newspaper and became the first openly gay Minnesota legislator. After he came out, Spear endured political attacks from gay activists who found his approach lacking in defiance and aggression. In 1982, he uprooted his home to avoid running against a longtime ally after major redistricting. He represented Hennepin County districts fifty-seven (1973–1983), fifty-nine (1983–1992), and sixty (1993–2000) as a member of the Democratic Farmer–Labor Party before retiring in 2000. Spear’s tenure was defined by hard-earned respect and slow progress. His first draft of a gay rights bill failed to pass in 1975, but Spear was undeterred. He tried again in 1977, introduced a gay and lesbian human rights bill with Representative Karen Clark in 1981, and added protections for transgender people to the proposed legislation in 1991. It was not until 1993 that Spear succeeded in amending Minnesota||s Human Rights Act to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. While his work on queer and human rights may be the centerpiece of his career, Spear was determined not to be a single-issue senator. He became known for his work in judicial reform and was the first non-lawyer chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, serving from 1983 to 1992. Spear also focused on criminal justice and corrections reform, becoming the chair of the Crime Prevention Committee in 1993. Most notably, he served as president of the Minnesota Senate from 1993 to 2000 and earned a reputation as a fair leader who could work with both parties. In his personal life, Spear was deeply involved in his community and in social service. After he retired, Governor Jesse Ventura appointed him to the Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board. He also served on the boards of the OutFront Minnesota political action committee, the Schubert Club, and the Shir Tikvah Synagogue. In the early 1980s, Spear found the love of his life, Junjiro Tsuji. They shared a passion for travel, cooking, and entertaining and remained together for the rest of Spear’s life. Spear passed away in a hospital from heart-surgery complications on October 11, 2008. His memorial service was held on November 23, at Temple Israel in Minneapolis.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/MN_senate_photo_Spear.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/spear-allan-henry-1937-2008"},{"alt":"Images from a poster used by Minnesota Men of Color, ca. 2000. The organization’s founders, Nick Metcalf and Edd Lee, are pictured at the top right and bottom left. Photographs by Chuck Smith.","author":[{"name":"Lizzie Ehrenhalt","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/lizzie-ehrenhalt"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"May 30, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Minnesota Men of Color","postbody":"Minnesota Men of Color (MMC) was a non-profit organization that served gay and bisexual men of color, women of color, and gender-non-conforming people of color between 1998 and 2003. From ...","searchtext":"Minnesota Men of Color (MMC) was a non-profit organization that served gay and bisexual men of color, women of color, and gender-non-conforming people of color between 1998 and 2003. From its headquarters in Minneapolis, MMC reached clients that majority-white LGBTQ groups had overlooked, focusing specifically on those who were Native, Latinx, African American, and Asian American. MMC began as a social group for queer men of color. Nick Metcalf (Čhetáŋ Zí; Yellow Hawk), a Sičháŋǧu Lakota student from South Dakota’s Rosebud Reservation, had moved to Minnesota in 1994. There, Metcalf became involved in the Minnesota American Indian AIDS Task Force at its south Minneapolis headquarters. Metcalf identified as a two-spirit—a person with a non- or cross-binary gender identity who plays a crucial spiritual role in some Native traditions. By April 1997, Metcalf had met Edd Lee, a gay Korean American man working for the Council on Asian Pacific Minnesotans. The pair recognized the demand for an organization tailored to the needs of people of color in the Twin Cities. Together, they organized MMC’s first meetings, which were informal. In 1998, in one of its earliest projects, MMC surveyed residents across Hennepin and Ramsey Counties. It found that 160,000 Twin Cities residents identified as gay or lesbian; of those, about 33,000—20 percent—were people of color. (“Bisexual,” “transgender,” “genderqueer,” etc. did not appear as answer options.) The survey’s results confirmed MMC volunteers’ belief that their target population was growing and in need. MMC applied for tax-exempt status from the IRS as a non-profit 501.c3 organization and received it in March 1999. At about this time, they hired a handful of paid staff and moved into an office space at 1433 East Franklin Avenue in the Phillips neighborhood of Minneapolis—an address they shared with the Minnesota American Indian AIDS Task Force. MMC staff crafted a mission statement that expressed their commitment to social service, education, and empowerment. When MMC received formal recognition as a non-profit, its flagship programs—Somos Familias and Ikĉé Wiĉáŝa—had already been active for two years. Their non-English names (in Spanish and Lakota, respectively) reflected MMC’s intention to support people of color whose languages, ethnicities, and cultures were underrepresented by the white mainstream. Somos Familias (We Are Families) reached out to people living with HIV/AIDS by offering a bi-monthly educational series; a bi-monthly discussion group; a peer helper network; and a drop-in support group. MMC staff created an original Somos Familias curriculum, designed for classes of no more than eight people, that covered disease management, spiritual health, and medication adherence. Ikĉé Wiĉáŝa (Common Man) focused on HIV and STD prevention. With some components targeted at groups and others at individuals, the program followed a curriculum of its own that addressed coming out, intersectional identities, safer sex, body image, and drug abuse. Contrary to its name, MMC employed and served people who identified as women—both cisgender and transgender. Its staff collaborated with the Womyn of Color Building Project, and the two organizations shared office space on Franklin Avenue. An MMC-organized social group called Gender Girls welcomed members who had been assigned a male sex at birth but rejected masculine gender norms. They included trans women, drag queens, cross-dressing men, and genderqueer people. Between 2001 and 2003, MMC continued to create programs and build partnerships with other LGBTQ groups, from the local (Twin Cities Black Pride) to the national (LLEGÓ, an LGBTQ Latinx organization). In early 2003, it moved from its Phillips office to a space inside the Sabathani Community Center at 310 East 38th Street. Soon after the move, the Minnesota Department of Health cancelled its 2003–2005 funding contract with MMC. The Office of the Legislative Auditor reviewed MMC’s management of grant funds received between 1999 and 2003 and concluded that it had not complied with rules related to accounting, staffing, and oversight. Without its primary source of funding, MMC could no longer afford to operate and scaled back its projects. After a period of inactivity, it officially disbanded in 2009.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/poster_inset.png","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246087,"name":"Health and Medicine","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/minnesota-men-color"},{"alt":"Color image of the Camp Ripley cantonment area, 2015.","author":[{"name":"Jack K. Johnson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/jack-k-johnson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"May 24, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Camp Ripley","postbody":"Camp Ripley, a state-owned military reservation in central Minnesota, serves as the primary field training site for the Minnesota Army National Guard. It is one of the largest such ...","searchtext":"Camp Ripley, a state-owned military reservation in central Minnesota, serves as the primary field training site for the Minnesota Army National Guard. It is one of the largest such installations in the country. After World War I, it was clear that Minnesota needed a better camp for its National Guard. Camp Lakeview, the Guard’s campsite near Lake City, was much too small. The new camp had to be suitable for large bodies of troops, tactical maneuvers, and artillery ranges. In 1929, Minnesota’s adjutant general, Ellard Walsh, announced that such a place had been found: nearly 13,000 acres northwest of Little Falls on the west side of the Mississippi River. The U.S. War Department gave its approval and the Minnesota legislature agreed to purchase the necessary parcels. The site would be called Camp Ripley, after old Fort Ripley, an abandoned nineteenth-century army post that, by coincidence, was located on the property. Construction began in 1930. When the first troops arrived in June 1931, they were greeted by a water tower and a few buildings. By 1940, the post boasted an infrastructure capable of supporting up to 12,000 troops at one time during summer months. The federal Public Works Administration and its successor programs funded nearly all initial construction. Additional acreage was acquired in later years, bringing the reservation to 53,000 acres in 1961. Development of field training areas has been continuous since the post opened. There are numerous firing, tank, and gunnery ranges, specialized training areas for a wide variety of combat readiness skills, two aircraft runways, 6,000 feet of railway, and more than 250 miles of trails and roads. The post has always been important to the U.S. Army. Soldiers used it for large-scale field maneuvers in 1937 and 1940. When World War II broke out, it became a federal Army Service Force installation. From July 1942 to October 1943, thousands of troops received basic and advanced training at Camp Ripley. In the summer of 1943, the post also held a 250-bed tent hospital—the only one of its kind in the nation. The camp’s facilities, however, had not been built for Minnesota’s cold, snowy winters, and the army moved out in October 1943. Shortly thereafter, the post was returned to state control. Camp Ripley was initially designed as a summer-only post. Soldiers slept under canvas. Corrugated aluminum |||hutments||| gradually replaced tents in the 1960s. In the 1970s, crews began to build year-round barracks to accommodate winter training. A vigorous building and renovation program has been underway ever since, transforming Camp Ripley into a more diversified, state-of-the-art, year-round training and education facility for use by all branches of service and other government entities as well. Agencies such as the Minnesota Highway Patrol have always made use of Camp Ripley, but especially since the post was winterized. Terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, led to enhanced homeland security measures and increased U.S. military involvement in the Middle East. Training emphasis at Camp Ripley followed suit. New construction since 9/11 has produced a 26-building simulated “village” to support tactical training in close-quarter, urban settings; Improvised Explosive Device (IED) training lanes; a Medical Simulation Training Center for medics and civilian responders; an unmanned aerial systems (drones) facility; and a State Emergency Management Training Center. By 2015, the post’s infrastructure could fully support collective, combined arms training for large-scale federal, state, and local civilian emergency management. The camp could easily house up to 4,000 personnel at the same time during winter months. From its inception, Camp Ripley was designated as a state forest preserve and game refuge. Long committed to environmentally sound stewardship, the camp is a showcase for eco-friendly efforts and use of solar energy. The post supports several environmental initiatives in partnership with Minnesota’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and other agencies and organizations. The DNR trains its conservation officers at Camp Ripley.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/ripley aerial 2015.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/camp-ripley"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Wilhelm Pfaender, ca. 1880.","author":[{"name":"Jeanne Anderegg","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/jeanne-anderegg"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"May 22, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186622056203,"name":"1792–1861 (Expansion and Reform)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Pfaender, Jacob Wilhelm (1826–1905)","postbody":"As an active member of the Turner movement, Wilhelm (William) Pfaender proposed creating a town in Minnesota Territory specifically for German Americans. Together with other immigrants, he ...","searchtext":"As an active member of the Turner movement, Wilhelm (William) Pfaender proposed creating a town in Minnesota Territory specifically for German Americans. Together with other immigrants, he helped to found the town of New Ulm in 1857. Jacob Wilhelm Pfaender was born in Heilbronn, Germany, in 1826. Because his father, a craftsman who made barrels, was also named Jacob, his family called him by his middle name. He was influenced as a young man, first in Heilbronn and later in Ulm, by the Turner movement: an ideology (from turner, the German word for gymnast) that encouraged gymnastics and other forms of exercise while promoting nationalism, political and religious freedom, education, and equality. Pfaender left Germany amid the turmoil of the 1848 revolution. Traveling first to England, where he met Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, he settled in Cincinnati, Ohio. There he again founded a Turner Society and served as its first president. In 1851, he married Catherine Pfau, who had grown up in a Turner family. In 1855, Pfaender wrote a letter on “Practical Turnerism” for a national Turner newspaper. In it, he called for creating a German American colony. In such a town, Pfaender thought, Germans could live free from harassment by anti-German nativists. They could act on their Turner values and practice German customs. In response to his appeal, the Cincinnati Turner Society set up the Settlement Association of the Socialist Turner Society and named Pfaender as its leader. In 1856, Pfaender traveled throughout the Midwest in search of a location for the new town. Along the banks of the Minnesota River, the Chicago Land Association had already started to build a new town for German Americans in 1854. Pfaender decided to join in this effort, and the Cincinnati group united with the Chicago Land Association to form the German Land Association of Minnesota. With support from the Cincinnati Turner Society, they purchased more land and sold lots to their members. In 1857, the town of New Ulm incorporated. Together with fellow Turners, Pfaender founded the New Ulm Turner Society in 1856. They built a Turner Hall in the center of the town a year later. The German Land Association set up several businesses in New Ulm, including a mill and a store. Individuals soon took over ownership of these enterprises, and the German Land Association dissolved in 1859. Turner beliefs, however, in sound bodies and minds, freedom, fellowship, and the common good continued to influence the new town. New Ulm’s Turner Hall housed the town’s first school as well as many social and athletic activities. Strongly secular, the New Ulm Turner Society encouraged religious tolerance towards immigrants who joined the Forty-Eighters (as the participants in the failed 1848 revolution were called) in moving to New Ulm. When the first Turner Hall burned down during the US–Dakota War of 1862, the Turners quickly rebuilt it. The Turner Hall returned to its central place in New Ulm cultural life. Pfaender filled many important positions in New Ulm. He served as president of the new town’s city council and its postmaster. He performed the first marriage ceremony held in New Ulm, on March 17, 1857. As a member of the Electoral College, Pfaender cast a vote for Abraham Lincoln in the 1860 election. In 1861, Pfaender acted again on Turner values when he, along with other Turners, joined the fight for the Union. An officer in the First Battery of Minnesota Light Artillery, he fought at the battle of Shiloh, where he and his unit played a vital role. He returned to Minnesota during the U.S.–Dakota War of 1862. As a lieutenant colonel in the Second Minnesota Cavalry, he was in charge of Fort Ridgely until 1865. After the Civil War, Pfaender continued to take an active role in the civic life of New Ulm and Minnesota. By the time of his death on August 11, 1905, he had held a wide variety of offices, including mayor, state representative, and state senator. He also served two terms as Minnesota State Treasurer.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/MNopedia/MNopedia%202026/William%20Pfaender%20rescans/10778169_resized.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/pfaender-wilhelm-1826-1905"},{"alt":"Color image of a farm worker adjusting GPS equipment inside the cab of a planter, June 25, 2009. Used courtesy of the United Soybean Board.","author":[{"name":"Elise C. Rosengren","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/elise-c-rosengren"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"May 17, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Precision Agriculture","postbody":"Precision agriculture is a farming method that uses the global navigation satellite system (GNSS), sensors on the ground, and drones in the air to study individual farm fields. With these ...","searchtext":"Precision agriculture is a farming method that uses the global navigation satellite system (GNSS), sensors on the ground, and drones in the air to study individual farm fields. With these tools, farmers can fine-tune their approaches to planting, harvesting, and maintaining crops to save themselves time and money. Minnesota farmers have used the technology since the early 1990s to improve crop yields while protecting the health of their soil. Precision agriculture is also known as site-specific crop management, satellite agriculture, and as-needed farming. Although there are multiple definitions, the U.S. Department of Agriculture defines the method’s goal as making the most of “inputs for agricultural production according to the capability of the land.” In practice, this means considering the strengths and weaknesses of land before seeding it. Farmers have worked towards this goal in Minnesota and around the world for thousands of years. In the twenty-first century, however, they use satellites, ground sensors, drones, and real-time data collection to achieve it. The global navigation satellite system (GNSS) and related equipment allow farmers to look more closely at their fields. Satellites provide real-time data to tools like tractors, combines, mowers, and water sprayers. The tools, in turn, communicate via Global Positioning Systems (GPS) and Global Information Systems (GIS). The GPS units work with GNSS and ground stations across the globe to pinpoint exact locations; GIS methods help farmers map their fields. In this way, crop producers exploit technology in order to operate sustainably while increasing their yields. Sensors in the ground and attached to field equipment can measure soil conditions such as water or potassium content. The sensor data is combined with GNSS and GIS to create another type of field map—one that illustrates soil contents. Equipment can read the maps and, in response, apply the appropriate level of seeds, water, nutrients, or chemicals to each zone of the field. Farmers can also use the maps to adjust crop management and plan for future growing seasons. Drones are another key part of precision agriculture. After they fly over a field and survey its zones, farmers use the data they collect to create overhead images of their farmland that highlight areas with disease or pest issues. Patterns and colors not normally seen with the human eye may become visible. Individual Minnesota farmers began experimenting with precision agriculture methods in the 1980s. The first tools they used were soil sensors capable of measuring organic matter. In 1985, in a test of related technology, University of Minnesota researchers sprayed different amounts of lime on fields and measured their effect. By the 1990s, commercial farms had begun to take up the practice in large numbers. Since then, precision methods have become standard practice in Minnesota and throughout the upper Midwest. A 2006 survey of the Crop Ecology, Management, and Quality Division of the Crop Science Society of America (CSSA Division C-3) ranked precision technology one of the most game-changing farm tools developed between 1955 and 2005. Consulting firms began to form across Minnesota in the 2000s to assist farmers in collecting data. They also analyzed these findings to make recommendations about how they can increase crop yields. Jerry Johnson founded one such firm, Superior Edge, in Mankato in 2003. Clients in Minnesota and the Dakotas increasingly sought out Johnson’s help with farm software and data collection. Johnson formed a second company, Farmers Intelligence, in 2011 to sell drones that take aerial pictures of fields. By 2017, it had acquired more than thirty patents. A third Johnson venture—FourthWing Sensors—developed out of Farmers Intelligence to handle the drones’ design and manufacture. The Precision Agriculture Center on the University of Minnesota’s St. Paul campus was established in 1995 to meet increasing demand for information-technology training related to farming. It was the first project of its kind in the United States. Responding to a demand for greater understanding of site-specific techniques in Minnesota, the Precision Agriculture Center promotes collaborative research, education, and outreach programs. It also partners with companies, farmers, and academics to develop training modules. In the 2010s, it expanded its offerings to cover modules in yield map interpretation, intensive soil sampling, farm experiment design, and precision farming profit studies. The Center uses an area called Loveall’s Field in southern Minnesota for an ongoing research project. To demonstrate the value of site-specific soil fertility treatments, participants observe how sampling intensity and method affect fertility. They also evaluate the cost-effectiveness of intensive sampling. Throughout the process, they use site-specific data, often gathered with GNSS, GPS, and GIS, to make management decisions. In 2017, Minnesota firms like Farm Intelligence and Superior Edge continue to lead the industry. Rowbot Systems, based in Minneapolis, builds two-foot-wide robots that farmers can program to navigate cornfields and apply nitrogen to soil. Winfield United, a subsidiary of Land O’Lakes headquartered in Arden Hills, sells crop-protection products and management tools that draw from the principles of precision agriculture. Its name reflects the 2015 merger of Winfield Solutions, with United Supplies. Its flagship product, the R7 Tool©, allows farmers to apply seeds, nutrients, and crop-protecting treatments to fields at adjustable, customized rates. Members of the Agricultural Retailers Association named the R7 the winner of an industry-wide technology contest in October 2012. Winfield earned $4.8 billion in revenue during 2015. In 2016, it partnered with the Climate Corporation to integrate the R7 Tool© with Climate FieldView™, a proprietary platform that monitors soil chemistry. The ability of precision agriculture tools to accurately predict future conditions is likely to improve over time. Prediction accuracy in particular is helpful to farmers, since it can determine how they decide to plant and manage their fields. Prediction analysis helps them prepare their resources from season to season and year to year. As climate change accelerates and weather patterns become more extreme, monitoring annual changes will be increasingly important.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Farm worker adjusting GPS equipment.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246091,"name":"Agriculture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246052,"name":"Science and Technology","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/precision-agriculture"},{"alt":"Photograph of Joseph Israel Lobdell, also called Lucy Ann and La-Roi Lobell, ca. 1854.","author":[{"name":"Lizzie Ehrenhalt","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/lizzie-ehrenhalt"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"May 15, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Trial of Joseph Israel / Lucy Ann Lobdell","postbody":"Joseph Israel Lobdell, also known as La-Roi and Lucy Ann Lobdell, spent two years in Minnesota in the late 1850s. In 1858, a Meeker County attorney charged him with |||impersonating a man,||| ...","searchtext":"Joseph Israel Lobdell, also known as La-Roi and Lucy Ann Lobdell, spent two years in Minnesota in the late 1850s. In 1858, a Meeker County attorney charged him with |||impersonating a man,||| claiming that such an action was a crime. The judge trying the case disagreed, ruling that Lobdell (who had been assigned a female sex at birth) had committed no offense by dressing in men’s clothes. Lobdell was born in Westerlo, New York, in 1829, and lived the first twenty-four years of life as a woman—Lucy Ann—in the town of Long Eddy. Lucy Ann and a raftsman named George Slater were married around 1851 and had a daughter together, but Slater left town after the baby was born. By the autumn of 1854, Lobdell had left the child with family, crossed the New York border, and taken up residence in Bethany, Pennsylvania. Choosing the name Joseph Israel Lobdell, he began to present himself as a man for the first time. He found work at a music school, where he taught singing lessons, and became engaged to a local woman. When a visitor from Long Eddy recognized the young teacher and identified him as Lucy Ann, the townspeople forced him to flee. Lobdell left Pennsylvania for New York and then headed to Minnesota Territory. He again presented himself as a man, wearing a calico suit and hat and calling himself La-Roi. After arriving in St. Paul he met Edwin Gribble, a homesteader with a claim on the north shore of Lake Minnetonka. The two became friends and lived together on the lake over the summer. Lobdell moved after a few months, traveling westward for some seventy miles before stopping at a wintering place near the future site of the city of Kandiyohi. When summer came, Lobdell left Kandiyohi for a boarding house in Manannah. He introduced himself to the locals as La-Roi and lived peacefully among them for over a year. Then, in the summer of 1858, he was arrested, charged with the crime of |||impersonating a man,||| and put in jail. The circumstances of Lobdell’s arrest are unclear. The only extant eyewitness account comes from Abner Comstock Smith, a federal attorney at the local land office who became involved in the case. In a reminiscence published twenty years after the fact, he describes the incident in vague terms. “In the summer of 1858,” he writes, “by accident, ‘Satan, with the aid of original sin,’ discovered and exposed [Lobdell’s] sex.” As a result, Meeker County attorney William Richards filed a criminal charge of impersonation against Lobdell. Lobdell stood trial in Forest City, a farming colony of about fifty people seven miles northeast of Litchfield that had been platted only a year before. Reverend and Justice of the Peace John Robson judged the case. Ulysses Samuel Wylie, with Smith as co-counsel, acted as Lobdell’s defense attorney and entered a plea of “not guilty” on his behalf. The court found Lobdell not guilty. Citing the sixth-century Code of Justinian as a precedent, Judge Robson ruled that laws in previous eras had granted women the legal right to dress as men. Therefore, he reasoned, Lobdell had not committed a crime and was free to go. Meeker County paid the expenses necessary for him to return to his family in New York. Lobdell lived for another fifty-four years after his time in Minnesota. He married Marie Louise Perry in 1861, but police arrested the couple for vagrancy multiple times and sent them to jails and poorhouses. After an 1880 arrest in New York, the Court of Delaware County declared Lobdell a lunatic and sent him to Willard Asylum for the Insane. In 1892, he was admitted to Binghamton Insane Asylum, where he remained until his death, two decades later.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/IMG_5299_Lobdell.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246060,"name":"Crime and Punishment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/trial-joseph-israel-lucy-ann-lobdell"},{"alt":"Screenshot from opening menu of Oregon Trail for Windows, 1995.","author":[{"name":"Nicole Garnjobst","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/nicole-garnjobst"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"May 10, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Oregon Trail (computer game)","postbody":"First imagined in 1971 by Minnesota student teachers, Oregon Trail went on to become the longest-published and most successful educational game of all time. As of 2017, more than 65 million ...","searchtext":"First imagined in 1971 by Minnesota student teachers, Oregon Trail went on to become the longest-published and most successful educational game of all time. As of 2017, more than 65 million copies have been sold worldwide, and the game that began on a teletype machine remains popular in a version designed for smartphones. In 1971, three Carleton College student teachers in Minneapolis created the first version of what would become Oregon Trail. While searching for a way to get his students to participate in history, Don Rawitsch decided to create a game to teach students about Euro-American westward migration in the mid-1800s. His roommates, Bill Heinemann and Paul Dillenberger, suggested making a computer game out of what was then a rudimentary board game. At the time, each school in Minnesota had a teletype machine but no other computing hardware. On December 3, 1971, Oregon Trail debuted in Rawitsch’s class. Students played the game in groups of five; with only one machine, the groups had to take turns. One game lasted the entire class time allotted for the subject, so other students gathered around to watch. Players begin the game by selecting an occupation for their traveler out of three choices: banker, carpenter, or farmer. They then lead a party of migrants along the Oregon Trail, overcoming obstacles, deciding when to travel and rest, and keeping track of food rations. Players win by reaching the end of the trail with travelers still alive. The game’s popularity at the school was unexpected. Students came to class at seven o’clock in the morning and stayed until the last teacher left the building just to play the game. At the end of December, when the class ended, the creators shut the game down and took the printouts of the code with them. That code remained unused until Don Rawitsch accepted a job at the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (MECC). Rawitsch was a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War, and in order to avoid the draft, he needed a job that would be of alternative service to the country. MECC, created in 1973, was a government initiative to introduce technology to schools. After it hired Rawitsch in 1974, it held an open call for educational software that it could include in its timeshare software package. Remembering the program that he had created with his friends, Rawitsch dug up the old code for Oregon Trail with permission from Heinemann and Dillenberger. In 1975, Oregon Trail was officially added to the UNIVAC system. Rawitsch worked with the programmers to improve the game, even consulting the diaries of Oregon Trail travelers to ensure that the information was accurate. In 1978, MECC accepted a bid from Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak to provide Apple II microcomputers to Minnesota schools. It retooled Oregon Trail for the new Apple II machines and added the game to the software package provided to Minnesota’s public schools. Minnesota wasn’t the only state that was focused on providing technology for schools, but it did have the most organized and complete software package. Due to public interest, MECC began to sell the software to schools across the country. By 1989, almost every school district in America had a computer. That same year, at the height of the game’s popularity, one in every three school districts in the country had Oregon Trail in its classrooms. At this point, MECC was making so much money from its software sales that it no longer required government funding. In 1991, the state of Minnesota sold it to venture capitalists for 5.25 million. Oregon Trail II was released in 1995. The release party marked the first time that Rawitsch, Heinemann, and Dillenberger were acknowledged as the original creators of the game. The final, 1997 version of the game was the last to be released out of Minnesota and the last game to be released by MECC. Soft Key bought the company in 1995 and terminated it as a separate entity four years later. Oregon Trail was adapted into an iPhone game in 2008, and in 2014, the original version of the game was added to the Internet Archive. In 2016, it was inducted into the Video Game Hall of Fame.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/the-oregon-trail-1-2-for-windows_8.png","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056210,"name":"Education","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246052,"name":"Science and Technology","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/oregon-trail-computer-game"},{"alt":"Colorized postcard of Roosevelt High School, ca. 1910.","author":[{"name":"William Millikan","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/william-millikan"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"May 08, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Minnesota Public School Fund","postbody":"In 1854, the United States took the mineral-rich lands of northeastern Minnesota Territory from the Ojibwe Nation after the signing of the Treaty of La Pointe. Four years later, it granted ...","searchtext":"In 1854, the United States took the mineral-rich lands of northeastern Minnesota Territory from the Ojibwe Nation after the signing of the Treaty of La Pointe. Four years later, it granted to the new state of Minnesota sections 16 and 36 of every one of its townships, either to be held in trust or leased to support state schools. Close to three million acres were dedicated to a public school trust fund, and the iron ore and forest lands of the Ojibwe generated over 85 percent of its value. In 2017, it is worth over a billion dollars. In the fall of 1862, in the midst of the US–Dakota War, the first sales of public school lands began. Over 38,000 acres of prime agricultural land were sold for over $240,000. By 1875, school lands in the thirteen counties in the state’s southeastern corner were almost sold out; the public school fund had surpassed three million dollars. After his election in 1882, State Auditor and Land Commissioner William Wallace Braden realized that valuable state lands might be sold too cheaply if current laws remained in force. The public school lands stood to lose millions of dollars of iron ore deposits. Braden quickly stopped all sales of state land in Lake, Cook, and St. Louis Counties in northeastern Minnesota. He also reserved for the state the mineral rights on timber lands across the rest of the region. In October of 1883, Braden began selecting new public school lands on the Iron Range. He aimed to replace the over 500,000 acres of lands granted to the state but claimed by white immigrants before surveys marked the locations of sections 16 and 36. One of his early selections was the northeast quarter of section eight in Township 58 range 17. This selection concealed over sixty million tons of undiscovered iron ore. The Mesabi Iron Range contained the richest deposit of this ore on state land. After Braden opened the first round of a land-leasing program in March 1890, the Merritt brothers won over half of the available leases. They found evidence of iron ore on the Mesabi, then invested $35 to dig a test pit. They discovered a massive iron ore deposit, built a mine to extract it, and named it the Mesabi Mountain Mine. When production began, lease holders paid the state 25 cents per ton of iron ore, and the public school fund began to receive millions of dollars in royalties. In 1926, the Mesabi Mountain Mine was producing over five million tons of ore a year. The total royalties paid to the state had passed six million dollars. Fifteen years later, in 1941, production had surpassed sixty-nine million tons and the public school fund had received over sixteen million dollars. While over 85 percent of the public school fund had come from the iron ore deposits and white pine forests on Ojibwe lands, only 16 percent of the invested income went back into the public schools of northeast Minnesota. In Virginia, next to the giant pit of the Mesabi Mountain Mine, the public schools prospered from the massive property tax base provided by area iron mines. The school district was able to spend almost three times as much money on each student as the average Minnesota school district. When an enormous technical high school was completed in 1921, historians and education professionals proclaimed that Virginia schools were equal to any in the country. For the Ojibwe children of northern Minnesota, school was a very different experience. In 1899, the U.S. government opened an Indian boarding school near Tower on the Vermilion Iron Range. School staff took children from their homes and kept them isolated from their families for months. Some dressed them in poorly made uniforms and cut their hair short. Children endured severe punishment for speaking their own languages. In 1954, the federal government closed the Lake Vermilion Indian Boarding School. On August 24, 2016, ground was broken on a new Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig High School on the Leech Lake Reservation, replacing a thirty-year-old pole barn. Two years earlier, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources had reported that the public school trust fund’s balance was over one billion dollars.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/MS2.9 VG5.2 r13_0.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056210,"name":"Education","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246059,"name":"Native Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/minnesota-public-school-fund"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Nellie Francis, ca. 1924. Image is from Foster, Mary Dillon. Who’s Who Among Minnesota Women (1924), p. 111.","author":[{"name":"Paul Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/paul-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"May 03, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Francis, Nellie (1874–1969)","postbody":"Nellie Francis pressed the limits of what an African American woman was permitted to achieve in early twentieth-century Minnesota. She was a churchwoman, clubwoman, suffragist, organizer, ...","searchtext":"Nellie Francis pressed the limits of what an African American woman was permitted to achieve in early twentieth-century Minnesota. She was a churchwoman, clubwoman, suffragist, organizer, singer, civil rights worker, patriot, and wife to Minnesota’s first African American diplomat, William T. Francis. Nellie Griswold was born in Nashville in 1874 and came to St. Paul with her family in 1885. In 1891 she was the only African American graduate of St. Paul High School (the predecessor of Central High School) and one of eight students invited to give a graduation speech. Nellie chose as her topic “the race problem,” which she described as one that existed entirely in the minds of white Americans. They saw their black fellow citizens as somehow dangerous, when in fact they were just as hardworking, peaceful, and patriotic as anyone else. African Americans, she said, had recovered from slavery much faster than the Anglo-Saxons had risen to their preeminence. The St. Paul Pioneer Press judged her speech the best of the eight, and it won enthusiastic applause from a large crowd. Nellie was an accomplished singer—a contralto—and appeared in many events as a soloist and in ensembles, mostly at her church, Pilgrim Baptist. She often appeared there with another singer, William T. Francis. They married in 1893. Nellie worked for several years as a stenographer at the West Publishing Company, while her husband rose through the ranks at the Northern Pacific railway. In church she served for many years as teacher and superintendent of Pilgrim Baptist’s primary Sunday school and as president of its Aid Society; in 1909 she called on Andrew Carnegie at his New York residence and came away with $1100 for the church’s new organ. She ran the press office of National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs, was president of Everywoman Suffrage Club in Minnesota, and served twice as a delegate to state suffrage conferences. Nellie met President Taft in the White House in 1909 and President Harding in 1921; she knew both Booker T. Washington and his great rival, W. E. B. DuBois. In the mid-1910s, Nellie formed a singing group called the Folk Song Coterie, which performed exclusively African American music—in her view, the true American folk music. All the singers were black women from St. Paul. The Coterie performed often at patriotic events during World War I. After the infamous lynchings of three black carnival workers in Duluth in 1920, the Minnesota legislature passed an anti-lynching statute. Nellie was credited with writing the related bill and played a major role in getting it through the legislature with near-unanimous support. She was probably the first African American woman to lobby the Minnesota Legislature. In 1924, Nellie and William contracted to buy a house in an all-white part of St. Paul, at 2092 Sargent Avenue. In response, neighbors organized the Cretin Improvement Association, held noisy demonstrations, burned a cross on the house’s lawn, and offered the Francises a thousand dollars not to move in. They moved in anyway. In 1927, President Coolidge named William U.S. Minister and Consul to Liberia. The couple moved to Monrovia in November of that year. To the roles of singer, fundraiser, organizer, and political activist, Nellie added that of diplomat’s wife. It was not an easy assignment—Monrovia was a village with a sweltering climate, no paved streets or sewage system, and deep political intrigue. After eighteen months on duty, Nellie and her husband were scheduled for a sixty-day leave in the United States when tragedy struck. William fell ill in June of 1929, and after four weeks of intense suffering died of yellow fever on July 15. The ship he had booked to take them home on leave instead carried his body and his widow to New York. After a brief stop in St. Paul for services, Nellie returned to Nashville to live with and care for her 100-year-old grandmother, Nellie Seay. Years later she took a job as a secretary at Tennessee Agricultural and Industrial University, in Nashville. Nellie died in 1969 and is buried next to her husband in Nashville’s Greenwood Cemetery. The Woman Suffrage Memorial Garden on the grounds of the Minnesota State Capitol recognizes her efforts to secure voting rights for women.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/IMG_1017.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056216,"name":"African Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/francis-nellie-1874-1969"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Major General Gouverneur Kemble Warren, United States Army, ca. 1863.","author":[{"name":"Rick Magee","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/rick-magee"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"May 01, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186622056203,"name":"1792–1861 (Expansion and Reform)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Warren, Gouverneur Kemble (1830–1883)","postbody":"Gouverneur Kemble Warren, topographer, Civil War veteran, and accomplished engineer, served his entire career with the U.S. Army. During his service, he mapped the tributaries of the ...","searchtext":"Gouverneur Kemble Warren, topographer, Civil War veteran, and accomplished engineer, served his entire career with the U.S. Army. During his service, he mapped the tributaries of the Mississippi River and transcontinental railroad routes. As the first district engineer in St. Paul, he worked to preserve St. Anthony Falls and designed the nation’s first reservoir system. Glacial River Warren, which carved the Pleistocene channel now followed by the Minnesota River, is named for him. Warren was born January 8, 1830, in Cold Spring, New York, and entered the U.S. Military Academy at West Point at the age of sixteen. He graduated second in the class of 1850 and was commissioned an officer of the Corps of Topographical Engineers. In his first assignment, he assisted Andrew A. Humphreys’ survey of the lower Mississippi River. He then helped survey potential railroad routes across the northern plains and evaluated rivers, including the Minnesota and Mississippi. Warren became assistant professor of mathematics at West Point in August 1859. He left in April 1861 to organize and train the Fifth Regiment of New York Volunteers, known as Duryée’s Zouaves. Warren commanded the Zouaves at several early Civil War battles. Warren became the chief engineer of the Army of the Potomac in 1863. On July 2, 1863, he surveyed terrain south of Gettysburg and recognized that a hill known as Little Round Top was the key to defending the Union Army line. After he observed Confederate regiments advancing towards the undefended hill, he redirected the nearby Third Brigade, Fifth Corps, to defend it. Warren himself led the 140th New York Regiment up the hill. They arrived at the summit less than sixty seconds before a Texas regiment. Quick action by Union soldiers turned back the Confederate advance and saved the Union Army from a flank attack. It was Warren’s greatest military achievement. He was soon promoted to brevet major general and commander of II Corps, which included the First Minnesota Infantry Regiment. Warren was reassigned commander of V Corps in March 1864. He continued to serve until relieved of command in early April 1865 after the Battle of Five Forks in Virginia. Congressional legislation in July 1866 authorized the Corps of Engineers to maintain a four-foot-deep channel based on the record-low water level of 1864. Chief of Engineers Humphreys assigned Warren to open an office in St. Paul, Minnesota. Warren arrived in St. Paul on August 17, 1866. He surveyed the Mississippi River and reported to Congress that dredging was more effective than the traditional and unreliable wing dams at scouring river channels. He worked with Senator Alexander Ramsey to determine how to open and maintain shipping channels on the upper Mississippi. William D. Washburn of Minneapolis advocated a reservoir system to ensure navigation on the river during droughts. Warren surveyed the watershed to determine if “large reservoirs on the headwaters of the Mississippi [would] aid in keeping navigation at low stages.” His April 18, 1870, report recommended construction of up to forty-one reservoirs on the St. Croix, Chippewa, Wisconsin, and Mississippi Rivers. Warren reported in 1868 that the Falls of St. Anthony were in imminent danger of total collapse due to excessive and unregulated efforts by local businessmen to harness the water power. The predicted break in the falls occurred on October 5, 1869, when water broke into a tunnel dug by William Eastman and John Merriman. This prompted the first large-scale construction project by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Minnesota. The congressional authorization and appropriation of $50,000 requested by the St. Paul district came in July 1870, two months after Warren had been transferred to Newport, Rhode Island. The corps completed a concrete wall in 1876 to shore up the limestone cap over which the river flowed. They completed a concrete apron in 1880. Warren returned to Minnesota in the autumn of 1876 to inspect bridges across the Mississippi River between St. Louis and St. Paul. He died in Newport, Rhode Island, on August 8, 1882. A veterans’ organization erected a statue of him on Little Round Top on August 8, 1888. The G. K. Warren Prize was initiated in 1969 and is awarded every four years by the National Academy of Sciences for distinguished accomplishment in geology and related sciences.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/GKWarren.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246053,"name":"Transportation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/warren-gouverneur-kemble-1830-1883"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Anna Sheerin Lowe, ca. 1895–1900.","author":[{"name":"Anita Talsma Gaul","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/anita-talsma-gaul"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"April 26, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Lowe, Anna Sheerin (1861–1933)","postbody":"Anna Sheerin Lowe became Murray County||s first female sheriff (and the second female sheriff in the state of Minnesota) when the Murray County Commissioners appointed her to fill her ...","searchtext":"Anna Sheerin Lowe became Murray County||s first female sheriff (and the second female sheriff in the state of Minnesota) when the Murray County Commissioners appointed her to fill her husband’s unexpired term in 1923. Faced with the difficulty of enforcing Prohibition laws, Lowe fulfilled her duties as sheriff and won the respect and gratitude of the community for her three years of service. Anna Margaret Sheerin was born to Irish immigrants John and Anna Sheerin on March 15, 1861. From her birthplace near Waseca, Minnesota, she moved west with her family to Murray County when she was eight years old. There she grew to adulthood and at the age of nineteen married James “Jim” Lowe, a thirty-one-year-old Scots Canadian recently arrived in the area. After their August 2, 1880, wedding, James and Anna worked as farmers for the next decade. They quit farming and moved to the city of Slayton when James was elected Murray County Sheriff in 1890. A popular man who “performed the duties of his office fearlessly and honorably” according to a report in the Murray County Herald, James was re-elected in the next eight successive elections. During her husband’s long tenure as Murray County Sheriff, Anna assisted James in his duties while raising the couple’s nine children: Minnie, Vernon (who died in infancy), John, Miles, Harry, James, George Kenneth, Charles, and Florence. In the community she became known as “Aunty Lowe” because of her cheerful and helpful personality. Tragedy struck in August 1923 when James died of a sudden heart attack at the age of seventy-four. Six people applied to complete James’ unexpired term as sheriff: five men and one woman, Anna Lowe. By a 3-1 vote the Murray County Commissioners chose Anna for the position, making her the first female sheriff in Murray County and the second in the state of Minnesota (the first being Sadie Munroe, appointed Lyon County Sheriff in April 1922). News of her appointment spread across the nation, appearing in newspapers as far away as Pittsburgh and Virginia. These brief articles usually noted that, like her husband, she would not work while armed. However, local newspaper reports on her activities as sheriff never mentioned that fact. As Murray County Sheriff, Anna faced a number of difficult cases, including a bank robbery, the county’s first automobile theft, and the statutory rape of two local teenage girls. The greatest challenge, however, was the enforcement of the 18th Amendment (Prohibition). Local newspapers regularly reported police raids of suspected moonshiners and bootleggers conducted primarily by Deputy Sheriffs Miles Lowe and John Lowe (Anna’s sons) and Henry Stube. Although it appears that Anna rarely or never accompanied her deputies on these liquor raids, her office came under criticism for its policing of illegal liquor activity in the county. In March 1924 County Attorney A. W. Tierney and Sheriff Lowe called a community meeting to discuss the problem. County officials expressed frustration that local residents were not reporting those whom they knew were illegally manufacturing or transporting liquor. Community members demanded that law enforcement officials do a better job of enforcing the Prohibition laws, noting how difficult it was for them to “rat out” their neighbors, friends, relatives, or customers. Despite these difficulties, Anna remained a beloved member of the community and a popular official. When she announced in April 1926 that neither she nor her son would campaign for sheriff in the upcoming election, the editor of the Herald remarked that many would be disappointed. He called the Lowe family’s record in the sheriff’s office “one to be proud of,” marked by earnestness and efficiency. When Anna’s term officially expired in January 1927, J. V. Weber of the Herald again editorialized on the Lowe family’s service to the county. The paper’s staff and readers, he wrote, felt a “deep and abiding love for her and her deceased husband” and valued their combined thirty-six years of law enforcement. After her term as Murray County||s first female sheriff, Anna spent her remaining years in quiet retirement. She died of a stroke in June 1933 at the age of seventy-two. It was not until 2002 that the state of Minnesota elected (rather than appointed) another female sheriff: Terese Amazi of Mower County.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Anna Lowe.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/lowe-anna-sheerin-1861-1933"},{"alt":"Black and white group photograph taken outside a Red Cross hut by Red Cross worker Julia Gray, 1919.","author":[{"name":"Johannes Allert","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/johannes-allert"}],"categoryTag":[],"date":"April 24, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Welfare Work During World War I","postbody":"During World War I, branches of the Red Cross, YMCA & YWCA, and Salvation Army from across the U.S. collaborated with the Army and Navy to provide aid to service members. The work of ...","searchtext":"During World War I, branches of the Red Cross, YMCA & YWCA, and Salvation Army from across the U.S. collaborated with the Army and Navy to provide aid to service members. The work of Minnesotan volunteers not only maintained morale at the front but also provided a bridge of support between those overseas and their loved ones back home. Welfare agencies played a vital part in supporting the American war effort both at home and abroad. Lacking sufficient resources of their own, the military relied upon welfare workers to sustain troop morale throughout all stages of the conflict by offering relief, comfort, and recreational activities. The three groups with the greatest impact were the American Red Cross, the Young Men’s and Women’s Christian Association (YMCA & YWCA), and the Salvation Army. As soon as the U.S. joined the war in 1917, the Red Cross provided support. It recruited volunteers from all walks of life and all parts of Minnesota. They signed up as clerical workers, business administrators, warehouse workers, nurses, social workers, canteen workers, drivers, and entertainers. The military looked to the Red Cross to provide extra supplies, equipment, and personnel. On the Minnesota home front, Red Cross volunteers assisted displaced persons after the Cloquet, Duluth, and Moose Lake Fires of 1918. Lawrence Clark, a University of Minnesota student turned Red Cross volunteer, worked as a driver, delivering clothing and supplies to fire victims left homeless. Arriving in Moose Lake in late October, Clark sensed a “general air…of depression, devastation, and isolation.” He spent the following day as the lead procession driver for several funerals. By 1919, 6,728 residents of the state had sought assistance from the Red Cross. Commonly called the Y, the Young Men’s (and Women’s) Christian Association went to war confident it could deliver the same level of service it had provided during America’s previous conflicts. A Minneapolis Tribune report celebrated the Y’s success in supporting General John Pershing’s Punitive Expedition (also called the Pancho Villa Expedition) along the U.S.–Mexican border in 1916. The article heralded the planned construction of YMCA facilities near military training areas within the metro area, including one at Fort Snelling. Recruiters seeking experienced volunteers for the Y sometimes competed with other welfare groups. In other instances, volunteers moved between organizations. Minneapolis resident Gladys Eloise Vaughan worked for the Red Cross in her home town before traveling to France to be a canteen worker for the Y. She rejoined the Red Cross five months later when they discovered her training in biology. They sent her to Poland, where she worked as a bacteriologist. Volunteers like Vaughan were among the first women in American history to be actively recruited to provide wartime support. The women’s branch of the Y also played a vital role in supporting the needs of women in uniform serving overseas. It provided designated “huts” for women to relax and recuperate. In addition to offering recreational, vocational, and entertainment activities, the Y managed the military’s Post Exchange (commonly referred to as the Canteen) at the request of General John J. Pershing. Reverend William Rosecrans Palmer, a Methodist pastor from Jackson, Minnesota, reported in September 1917 to Fort Snelling, where he worked as a building secretary. In May 1918, the Y sent him overseas to France, where he served in both the 77th and 37th divisions. Over a period of twenty months, he served as a religious work director. On one occasion in July, he assisted medics with loading the wounded into ambulances. The Y promoted Benjamin Nathan Murrell, an African American pastor from St. Paul’s Pilgrim Baptist Church, through its ranks multiple times. By June 1919, he had worked as a religious secretary on the front lines with the 369th Infantry Regiment (Harlem Hell-Fighters) and as a regional secretary at various points near the western front. In his last position, Murrell directed the operations of 4,000 African American volunteers charged with burying all deceased Americans who had been involved in the war, both black and white, in national cemeteries. Like Murrell’s unit and the U.S. Army in general, most welfare organizations during World War I were segregated by race. The Y designated some huts “whites only” and prevented African Americans from entering. Discrimination also affected women of all races. Many welfare groups blocked them from leadership roles, though they made up the majority of the groups’ membership. Alice Swenson, an eventual resident of Delhi, Minnesota, traveled to Brest, France, during her term of service with the Y. When she arrived, however, she and other volunteers struggled to find accommodations. In response, Swenson and other Y staff arranged stays in “hostess houses”—homes that took in female welfare workers who could not find rooms in local hotels and homes. May Schultz, an Army Nurse from Minneapolis, and 200 of her coworkers also struggled to find housing after arriving in Brest and worked without toilet facilities. Conditions improved after they reached Alsace–Lorraine by train. Acknowledging the Y’s shortcomings, Y volunteer C. Arthur Carlson, a teacher from Minneapolis, observed after the war that too many welfare agencies were connected to the army. He argued that one well-organized body should be placed in charge. These observations proved to be prophetic. By 1941, the United Service Organization (USO) had incorporated the various welfare organizations into one body that would see to the needs of military staff and their families. The agency with the smallest footprint and the greatest impact was the Salvation Army. The organization adhered to the basics of providing aid and comfort. Paperwork and bureaucracy took a back seat to addressing needs and delivering service. Volunteers provided soldiers’ urgent needs first; spiritual counseling followed only if the soldier made an inquiry. In 1919, after the war had ended, Adjutant Charles Nelson and his wife, Anna, organized the Salvation Army Hostel in St. Paul. The two Scandinavian Americans attended to discharged servicemen seeking housing and counseling. Anna personally lobbied the state on behalf of veterans, requesting that they receive military bonuses for their efforts. Duluth resident and Salvation Army worker Anna Swenson followed the Army’s First Division to Cantigny and to subsequent actions at Chateau-Thierry, St. Mihiel, and the Meuse-Argonne. At first, she served doughnuts to the soldiers near the clearing stations. As fighting intensified, she was pressed into service providing first-aid. In April 1918, five months after the end of the war, a Minnesota War Records Commission convened to gather evidence of Minnesotans’ experience in the conflict. With the Minnesota Historical Society, the commission collected the wartime recollections of the former volunteers of various welfare agencies.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/11391099_10205160208578497_3804732050116810140_n[1].jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/welfare-work-during-world-war-i"},{"alt":"Postcard of the turntable, depot, engine house, and Grand Trunk Western caboose at End-o-Line Railroad Park and Museum, ca. 1980.","author":[{"name":"Anita Talsma Gaul","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/anita-talsma-gaul"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"April 19, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis and Omaha Turntable","postbody":"In August 1900, rail service to the community of Currie began with the completion of the Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis and Omaha branch line from Bingham Lake. A hand-operated turntable ...","searchtext":"In August 1900, rail service to the community of Currie began with the completion of the Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis and Omaha branch line from Bingham Lake. A hand-operated turntable was built the following year, expanded in 1922, and used until the advent of diesel locomotives in the 1950s. In 1972, a local 4-H club restored the historic turntable and preserved Currie’s railroad heritage through the creation of the End-O-Line Railroad Park & Museum. Founded in 1872, Currie was the first organized town in Murray County, but it lacked rail service for nearly thirty years. Finally, in 1900, the Des Moines Valley Railway Company completed a thirty-eight-mile branch line extending from Bingham Lake to Currie. The line was immediately purchased by the Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis and Omaha Railway—commonly called the Omaha Road. Regular rail service began in August of that year. Rumors that the railway would extend westward proved untrue, and Currie remained the terminus of the line known as the Currie Branch. A hand-operated turntable was constructed in Currie in 1901 in order to more easily turn the steam engines around and return them east to Bingham Lake. Constructed by the American Bridge Company of Chicago, the fifty-six-foot wood and steel turntable used a center-balanced (also called cantilever) construction style. This style consists of a plate-and-truss bridge carried on a single bearing known as a “sow in the saddle.” The outer wheels, which ride on a circular track built around the edge of the pit, support the bridge as the entire weight of the locomotive rests on the bearing (though they do carry some of the weight if the load is out of balance). The pit was lined with Mankato limestone. The stones were dry-stacked so carefully that no cement was needed to hold them in place. In 1922, workers expanded the pit and installed a longer, seventy-foot turntable to accommodate larger steam engines. As was the case with railways throughout the state, passenger traffic on the Currie Branch peaked in the early 1920s, then began a swift decline due to the advent of the automobile. In the mid-1920s, the passenger train to Currie was discontinued. Limited passenger service was provided by allowing people to ride in the cabooses of freight trains. In the 1950s, diesel engines began to replace steam locomotives, rendering the turntable largely unnecessary. However, it was still used occasionally to turn diesel engines around, according to local reports. Faced with declining freight traffic, the Omaha Road continued to reduce its rail service to Currie. By the mid-1950s, an agent no longer staffed the Currie depot, and the depot closed permanently in 1968. The Omaha Road itself ceased to exist as a corporation in 1972, when it was dissolved by the Chicago & North Western Transportation Company. (The Chicago & North Western had maintained stock control of the Omaha Road since 1882.) By then, few trains came to Currie. Consequently, the railroad yard, turntable and tracks fell into disrepair. The last train left Currie in April 1977, and the Currie Branch line was officially abandoned in January 1980. However, even before the Chicago & North Western officially abandoned the Currie line, local residents took the initiative to preserve the community’s railway heritage and its historic turntable. In 1972, the local Poco-a-Poco 4-H Club, led by adult leaders Louise Gervais and Dorothy Ruppert and youth leaders Colleen Illg and Roxanne Probst, launched a project to restore the turntable and repair the old depot. Their efforts ultimately led to the creation of the End-O-Line Railroad Park & Museum, part of the Murray County Parks Department, in 1975. The turntable was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1977. Since its beginnings in 1972, the End-O-Line Railroad Park & Museum has expanded and grown from the original 2.8 acres to its current twelve-acre campus. Over the years, the park has added an engine house, a Grand Trunk Western Railway caboose, a section foreman’s house, and a Georgia Northern steam locomotive, among other buildings and railroad artifacts. The turntable— the only exclusively hand-operated railroad turntable in its original location still operational in Minnesota—remains the highlight of the park.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/1980 Turntable Postcard.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246053,"name":"Transportation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/chicago-st-paul-minneapolis-and-omaha-turntable"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Entomology professor Henry C. Chiang (left) inspecting corn stalks for signs of corn borers with F. G. Holdaway and Jeanne Marie Hellberg, 1951.","author":[{"name":"Hannah L. Gray","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/hannah-l-gray"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"April 17, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Pest Management in Minnesota Agriculture","postbody":"Insect pests have harmed harvests in Minnesota country since European immigrants first arrived in the area. Most local farmers, however, did not actively manage pests. Instead, they planned ...","searchtext":"Insect pests have harmed harvests in Minnesota country since European immigrants first arrived in the area. Most local farmers, however, did not actively manage pests. Instead, they planned for the risk of losing some of their crop. It took both huge losses from the late 1800s grasshopper plagues and the industrialization of agriculture for Minnesota’s government to invest in pest management methods. American Indians have farmed parts of southern present-day Minnesota for hundreds of years. Dakota women grew squash, beans, and corn to add to hunted meat and gathered foods. There are no written records of what, if any, insect pests damaged crops on Dakota farms. In the early 1800s, European immigrants arrived and started farms that grew just enough food to take care of their families. These farmers thought insect pests were a punishment from God and that their damage was unpreventable. Due to this popular view, the study of insects, entomology, was more of a hobby than a job option. In 1823, Thomas Say was the first person in the state to study insects professionally. The 1862 Homestead Act attracted new farmers to Minnesota. Due to the resulting increase in trade of crops, investors and governments started to calculate the cost of food damaged from insect pests. (At the third annual meeting of insect scientists in America, held in 1891 in Washington, D.C., Professor James Fletcher estimated that it amounted to $380,000.) The Rocky Mountain Locust ruined many harvests across the Northern Plains in the 1800s. Minnesota was at the edge of the area in which the insects traveled. Parts of the state, including the Red River Valley, often lost harvests to the locusts. Between 1863 and 1878, the locusts came yearly and threatened thousands of farm communities with starvation. In 1877, locusts destroyed 302,895 acres of wheat. In 1887, an outbreak in Otter Tail County was so bad that some farmers lost all their crops; some younger homesteaders left. In 1888, the governor of Minnesota, Andrew Ryan McGill, declared a state of emergency and sent aid to farmers. In the same year, the University of Minnesota created the Division of Entomology, headed by Professor Otto Lugger. Working within the College of Agriculture, its staff created and demonstrated insect management methods for the people of Minnesota. In the 1890s, chinch bugs became a serious threat. Their numbers boomed as farmers planted more acres of wheat and corn. In 1895, the Minnesota Legislature granted $5,000 to state entomologists to destroy agricultural pests. Farmers used the money to spread a fungal disease among chinch bug populations. In the early 1900s, management of pest insects on Minnesotan farms fell into two categories: natural and artificial. Natural methods included cleaning up dead plants from field perimeters, planting crops earlier or later, and planting varieties that withstood insects. The government paid a one-dollar bounty (worth about twenty dollars in 2017) for every bushel of grasshopper eggs collected. Artificial pest management methods grew in popularity in the early twentieth century. Chemists created new toxins and products that could quickly kill insects. Many artificial control compounds contained ingredients that were also bad for people. Two of the main pesticides used, Paris Green and London Purple, contained the deadly poison arsenic. Scientists and farmers began to understand that many crop problems and diseases were caused by insects. In 1912, the university’s Division of Entomology offered its first course on insects and plant disease. In the Twin Cities, scientists and mill owners knew that the pest they were dealing with was the Mediterranean flour moth, but they did not know how to stop it from ruining flour. They worked together to develop cleaning protocols that prevented the moths from laying eggs in machine parts and stores of flour. In the early 1930s, droughts led to locust outbreaks across the Midwest—the worst seen since the 1880s. In 1932, Minnesota was the only state that provided financial support ($250,000) to control the locusts. Minnesotan researchers and farmers pioneered the use of insect surveys and weather forecasts to predict the number of infested acres and the amount of bait needed. Minnesota’s success in saving crops in 1932–1933 inspired national support for such programs. During World War II, chemists created new chemicals for use in warfare and medicine. One such chemical, DDT, protected troops from mosquito-transmitted diseases such as malaria and typhus. After the war, farmers started using DDT to control agricultural pests. It was so effective that many farmers and researchers turned away from natural methods to focus on developing other effective chemical pesticides. DDT is a broad-spectrum poison, meaning that it harms many different types of animals. In 1962, biologist Rachel Carson published Silent Spring, tracing the decline of many songbirds due to overuse of pesticides. DDT was the main problem, since farmers and mosquito control agents used it more than any other pesticide at the time. In the 1970s, the public demanded more programs to protect the environment. This led most insect researchers to focus on creating and promoting integrated pest management (IPM) programs. These programs focused on managing rather than killing all pests in agriculture. They worked with farmers to determine acceptable levels of crop damage and to create systems of control. These ranged from farm management methods to biological control (using natural predators of pest insects) to chemical pesticides. In 1995, U.S. farmers first planted a crop of potatoes that had been genetically engineered to produce Bt, a pesticide derived from bacteria. These new potatoes were unique because the pesticide was produced within the plant itself. Compared to other pesticides, Bt was relatively safe and effective. Scientists quickly added Bt traits to other crops that were vulnerable to butterfly larvae pests, including corn, cotton, and eggplant. By 2015, about 50 percent of the corn planted by Minnesota farmers contained Bt traits. Bt kills the corn root borer—one of the worst corn pests in the state. In the twenty-first century, more and more farmers are interested in attracting insect predators to their farms. With enough of these “good” predators, they can keep pest insect populations below levels that cause harm to the crops. Researchers at the University of Minnesota work with farmers to figure out which predators (including some adult beetles, lacewing larvae, and syrphid larvae) kept pest levels low. When a new pest comes to Minnesota, researchers look for its predators in its home state or country. The soybean aphid, native to areas in China, arrived in Minnesota in 2000 without its native predators. Before its arrival, soybean farmers in Minnesota did not have pest problems. In the 2010s, they apply pesticides in order to prevent up to 40 percent crop loss from aphid infestation. Bees are important “good” insects in agriculture. Farmers could not produce strawberries, broccoli, pumpkins, or apples without their pollination of flowers. Between 2005 and 2015, researchers showed that honey bees and native bees are also harmed by pesticides. Although popular pesticides do not kill bees, they sometimes make it harder for them to find their hives. In the 2010s, many bee hives have struggled to survive. Due to public concern, the Environmental Protection Agency implemented a new approval process that considers how “good” insects, like bees and some predators, respond to pesticides.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Entomology. Corn borer research.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246091,"name":"Agriculture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/pest-management-minnesota-agriculture"},{"alt":"Color image of the Hopperstad Stave Church Replica, 2011. Photograph by Flickr user Steve Borsch.","author":[{"name":"Kaci Johnson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/kaci-johnson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"April 12, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Hopperstad Stave Church Replica, Moorhead","postbody":"Built between 1996 and 2001, the Hopperstad Stave Church Replica in Moorhead, Minnesota, stands as a testament to Norwegian culture and heritage in the Midwest. It serves as an educational ...","searchtext":"Built between 1996 and 2001, the Hopperstad Stave Church Replica in Moorhead, Minnesota, stands as a testament to Norwegian culture and heritage in the Midwest. It serves as an educational tool in the local community and is operated by Clay County’s Historical and Cultural Society. Conversion to Christianity in Norway occurred by royal decree at the end of the Viking Age. Despite the declaration, many Norwegians still practiced their traditional pagan religion, which had not required structures of worship but did recognize sacred sites. Those same sites were used to build new Christian churches that blended together old and new, pagan and Christian, in a unique style. Scandinavian stave churches were built during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The name comes from the support pillars (staves) in their interiors. Structurally, stave churches combine a Catholic, medieval, basilica-style church and a traditional Scandinavian log building. Stylistically, dragons—pagan guards against evil—have their place next to religious art and crucifixes. Between 900 and 1000 stave churches were built in Norway. As of 2017, twenty-eight stave churches remain in Norway. One of these is the Hopperstad Stave Church, which for nearly 900 years has stood on the outskirts of Vik. It was this church that Guy Paulson chose to replicate in the 1990s. Gaylord “Guy” Paulson was born on June 23, 1937, in Haakon County, South Dakota, to Evelyn and Kristian Paulson. His paternal grandfather, Jens Paulson, emigrated from Norway with his family in 1904. The family made their living as farmers and practiced their Lutheran faith on the South Dakota prairie. Paulson married Beva Hill in 1960 and worked as a research scientist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, based in Fargo, North Dakota. When Paulson retired in the mid-1990s, he went looking for a project. Years earlier, Paulson had seen a replica stave church in his native South Dakota. The church inspired him, and an idea began to take shape—one that would use his twenty-plus years of woodcarving experience and pay homage to his heritage as the son of Norwegian immigrants. He would build his own replica. Paulson and Beva agreed that this was a way that they could give back to the Fargo-Moorhead community. Paulson was not alone in his dream to build the church. Beva, his siblings, and other family members helped at all points during construction. Family friend Dale Ruff, an architect in Moorhead, donated the time of his architecture firm. Don Guida of Straight River Log Homes in Park Rapids agreed to build the main structure. The team took several trips to Norway to study the original building and look at plans and drawings made during its restoration in the 1880s. It was decided in June of 1996 that the church would have a home at the Hjemkomst Center in Moorhead. The Center was already the home of the Hjemkomst Viking ship replica, which had sailed to Norway in 1982 and partially inspired the church project. After the decision, Paulson began the ornate carvings that would decorate the interior and exterior of the church, and pine trees were cut for materials. Construction on the main structure began in August 1997, with the first two staves being placed in October of that year. The replica was built on-site and dedicated in 1998 when it was nearly complete. Visitors from Vik came for the ceremony bearing gifts. The replica was given to the City of Moorhead as a gift. The church was far from complete, however; Paulson took another three years to complete the ornamental carvings. In total, five and a half years went into the construction of the Hopperstad Stave Church Replica. At seventy-two feet in height, the church is a full-scale replica of the original. There are eighteen staves, each standing twenty-seven feet tall. The main structure is made of pine from Minnesota, with the portal carving done in redwood; 24,000 Michigan cedar shingles adorn its roof. While modern construction methods and tools were used, Paulson did all the carvings by hand. Since its dedication, the replica has been used for tours, weddings, and other community events. Owned by the City of Moorhead, the Hopperstad Stave Church is interpreted by the Historical and Cultural Society of Clay County.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/5793475153_c4651d8bcd_z.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246089,"name":"Religion and Belief","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/hopperstad-stave-church-replica-moorhead"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Frederick Weyerhaeuser, ca. 1900","author":[{"name":"Courtney Gregar","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/courtney-gregar"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"April 10, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Weyerhaeuser, Frederick (1834–1914)","postbody":"Frederick Weyerhaeuser was a prominent, self-made lumber capitalist and millionaire in the Midwest during the Gilded Age. Nicknamed |||the Lumber King||| and |||the Timber King||| during a time ...","searchtext":"Frederick Weyerhaeuser was a prominent, self-made lumber capitalist and millionaire in the Midwest during the Gilded Age. Nicknamed |||the Lumber King||| and |||the Timber King||| during a time when lumber ranked alongside iron and the railroads as a source of industry, Weyerhaeuser created a syndicate that controlled millions of acres of timberland. The syndicate also controlled sawmills, paper mills, and processing plants. Frederick Weyerhaeuser was born on November 21, 1834, in Niedersaulheim, Germany. His family emigrated to the United States in 1852. In 1856, he arrived in Rock Island, Illinois; a year later he married Sarah Elizabeth Bloedel, with whom he eventually had seven children. In 1860, he partnered with his brother-in-law Frederick Carl Augustus Denkmann to purchase a lumber mill in Illinois that had gone bankrupt. One of Weyerhaeuser||s innovative ideas for the logging industry involved log marking. He realized that if a third party marked the logs that were rolled into the river with a unique symbol, timber men working downriver would more easily find their companies’ logs. This system, he predicted, would allow an operator to take out as many logs as he sent down. Before Weyerhaeuser’s idea, mills often lost profits by not getting back the equivalent of the timber they had initially processed. Part of Weyerhaeuser||s talent was his ability to organize large groups of men and implement industrial change. By 1872, he was named president of the Mississippi River Logging Company. He eventually became the president of the Weyerhaeuser Timber Company and other lumber companies, as well as head of the Weyerhaeuser Syndicate. In 1891, Weyerhaeuser moved his family and business offices to St. Paul, Minnesota. He bought a home at 266 Summit Avenue, close to the mansion of railroad capitalist James J. Hill. As a businessman and industrialist, he used many of Hill||s strategies and principles. Like Hill, he located property strategically, invested a low initial amount in development, built conservative financial structures, and, most important, supervised everything in person. He preferred to operate as a one-man holding company and worked to make the lumber industry steady, secure, and profitable. In 1900, Weyerhaeuser organized the Great Northern Railroad timberland purchase in the West. In this sale, he bought 900,000 acres of James J. Hill||s railroad holdings in Washington State for 5.4 million dollars, at an estimated price of six dollars an acre. Afterward, he owned more acres of standing timber than any other American. In 1906, a muckraking journalist called Weyerhaeuser “richer than Rockefeller” and claimed he had built his fortune by destroying forests and committing fraud. A year later, state congressional investigators studied whether the lumberman (and some of his peers) had violated anti-trust laws. Their findings led to a court order that dissolved his company’s General Paper subsidiary, among others. Weyerhaeuser denied that his holdings amounted to a monopoly on lumber. Testifying before Congress in 1911, he defended his business practices and insisted that his actions were lawful. In 2017, the family-run Weyerhaeuser Company is headquartered in Tacoma, Washington, with interests in the Midwest and the Pacific Northwest. It remains a major lumber producer and landowner, and a world leader in lumber sales. Weyerhaeuser preferred anonymity in his life despite his success. A religious man, he was born Lutheran and became Presbyterian. He raised his children in the Presbyterian faith. As a philanthropist, he donated money to the Presbyterian House of Hope, Macalester College, the Union Gospel Mission, the Weyerhaeuser Foundation, and other charitable causes. Weyerhaeuser died on April 4, 1914, in Pasadena, California, at the age of seventy-nine. He was buried in the Weyerhaeuser family mausoleum in Chippiannock Cemetery in Rock Island, Illinois. In 1978, he was inducted in the U.S. Business Hall of Fame for his contributions to the lumber industry.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/por 20649 r1.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/weyerhaeuser-frederick-1834-1914"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Dr. Padmakar K. Dixit, his wife, and their two daughters in Minnesota, 1962.","author":[{"name":"Preeti Mathur","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/preeti-mathur"}],"categoryTag":[],"date":"April 05, 2017","eraTag":[],"keydate":"","name":"From the Ganges to Ten Thousand Lakes: Immigration from India to Minnesota","postbody":"In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, job prospects in farming and on railroads drew the first Indian immigrants—mostly men—from Asia to the United States. It wasn’t until ...","searchtext":"In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, job prospects in farming and on railroads drew the first Indian immigrants—mostly men—from Asia to the United States. It wasn’t until the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, however, that Minnesota officially opened its doors to Indians. From 1965 through the early 1990s, many came for higher degrees and eventually settled into largely professional jobs. In the later 1990s and early 2000s, a technology boom and temporary visas for skilled labor brought hundreds of thousands of Indians; some of them eventually settled in Minnesota. This surge encouraged businesses such as grocery stores and restaurants to open and led to the establishment of new organizations and services. The Indian American population in Minnesota has grown steadily, doubling every ten years since 1980. By 2017, about 50,000 Indian Americans call Minnesota their home. Over 80 percent of them are educated professionals who have contributed to the state as doctors, engineers, scientists and entrepreneurs. Others, including the second generation, are making strides in other fields, such as politics, government, education, media, art, theater, the armed forces, and philanthropy. Diaspora and Resettlement Patterns In the 1960s, Indian Americans lived in and around both of the Twin Cities campuses of the University of Minnesota. But when they looked into buying houses, many chose suburbs—particularly ones with reputations for good schools and high academic standards. In the 1970s and 1980s, a large percentage of Indians lived in New Brighton. In the 2010s, the suburbs of Eden Prairie, Edina, Maple Grove, Plymouth, and Woodbury have seen significant growth in their Indian populations. While the majority of Indian Americans live in the Twin Cities, other Minnesotan cities also have pockets of Indian American populations, especially those with businesses that hire skilled professionals. Rochester, home of the Mayo Clinic and IBM, has a large enough Indian American population to warrant its own community organizations and places of worship. Other cities, such as Mankato, St. Cloud, Winona, Duluth, and even Soudan, report that 0.33 percent to 0.11 percent of their populations are Indian Americans. Not all Indian Americans came to Minnesota directly from India. Many came from former British island colonies such as Trinidad, Fiji, Guyana, and Malaysia, where their ancestors had been sent from India as indentured workers and laborers in the late 1800s. Another set of Indian immigrants came from East Africa, particularly Uganda, when Idi Amin expelled that nation’s Asian minority in 1972. While the latter immigrants have largely assimilated with other Indians in Minnesota, the ones from the West Indies have for the most part maintained their own identity by creating and maintaining different organizations and places of worship. When the Minnesota community was small in the 1960s and 1970s, people from different parts of India (who spoke different languages and had different customs) socialized together in a way they never would have in India. Events organized by the India Association helped. In later decades, however, as the community grew, Indians in Minnesota started to group together by language or region, and the community began to fragment. The First Wave (Pre–1965): Invited Students, Researchers, and Visitors The earliest call for young Indian students to study in the U.S. came in 1902, when Swami Rama Tirtha began touring the country, giving lectures on Hinduism and surveying universities to recommend. In 1915, a journal for Hindu students in the United States, the Hindusthanee Times, listed the University of Minnesota as one of the top American schools for foreign studies. The first known instance of an Indian moving permanently to Minnesota also marked the first enrollment of an Indian at the University of Minnesota. Hira Singh, a Sikh from Lahore (which was then a part of India), enrolled at the University of Minnesota in 1904 to study mining engineering. Singh was one of the few Indian men, and later women, who came to study at the university. In 1931, another student, Mohan Singh Sekhon, arrived on a Japanese freighter. He went to Hamline University and later to the University of Minnesota, where he earned a degree in medicine. Sekhon stayed in the United States; his daughter also became a medical doctor. Another early visitor to Minnesota was Paramahansa Yogananda, a Hindu spiritual teacher who visited the state several times to lecture and spread the message of kriya yoga, a yoga technique and part of a spiritual path. His visits and lectures encouraged the establishment of the Self-Realization Fellowship in California and, later, over 500 temples and retreats around the world, including one in Minneapolis in 1927. In the early years, most Indians seeking higher education abroad came from wealthy families. Since India was still under British rule, students went to the United Kingdom to study in prestigious institutions. But after India’s independence in 1947, many Indian students started to look to American colleges and universities for higher degrees. In the 1940s and 1950s, the University of Minnesota invited several Indian students to study, conduct research, and earn their PhDs. The university’s Indian student population rose from 94 in 1944 to 1,607 in 1964. These students (mostly men) and their wives formed the first Indian cultural organizations in Minnesota. Informally in 1943 and formally in 1946, they created a student organization called the Indo-American Club, which later became the Indian Student Association (ISA). Most of their early gatherings were potluck dinners that celebrated Indian festivals and were held in student apartments. Later, in the 1970s, as the student population grew, events such as cultural programs and film screenings moved to campus auditoriums. A handful of these students found jobs in Minnesota, mostly in the medical and technology fields. One of the earliest immigrants to Minnesota was biochemist Dr. Padmakar K. Dixit, who was offered a job in 1958 to run the anatomy lab at the University of Minnesota. In 1961, Dr. Dixit officiated the first Hindu wedding in Minnesota, which required the Minnesota Legislature to pass a special law. The Dixits’ house, bought in 1962 in Southeast Minneapolis, was the first house in Minnesota purchased by an Indian American. It served as a refuge for Indian students when they arrived in Minnesota. The Second Wave: After the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (1965–1990s) The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prompted immigration reform, and a year later, President Lyndon Johnson passed the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. This act ended the quota system based on national origins and established a new immigration policy designed to attract skilled labor to the United States. It also included provisions for reuniting immigrant families. For Indian students graduating with higher and professional degrees, this policy opened up new opportunities for working and settling in Minnesota. Due to their specialized degrees in technology, science, and medicine, many were hired by large Minnesota companies such as 3M, Honeywell, and Control Data, and by local hospitals and research institutions. To retain this highly talented pool of workers, employers sponsored them for green cards (permanent resident cards), which allowed them to stay in the United States indefinitely. In the early years, many of these students were men. With good jobs and green cards in hand, they traveled back to India to marry. Most of these marriages were arranged by their families, which made it easier for them to make suitable matches during the short vacations they were granted by their employers. Encouraged by the family reunification provision in the Immigration Act of 1965, several Indian Americans in Minnesota sponsored not only immediate family members but also parents and siblings to become permanent residents. This created a strong need to establish organizations and businesses to meet the needs of a diverse and growing population. In 1980, the first year in which the federal census asked people if they were Asian Indians, the population of Indian Americans in Minnesota was estimated to be 3,670. By 1990, it had grown to about 8,234. Many Indian organizations were established in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, including the India Club (later renamed the India Association of Minnesota, or IAM). Most of these were concentrated in the Twin Cities, where the Indian population was growing. Since India is a diverse country with many languages, ethnicities, traditions, and religions, immigrants from different Indian regions formed their own groups as their populations grew. These included the Bengali Association, Gujarati Samaj, Minnesota Sangeetha Kannada Koota, Minnesota Malayalee Association, Marathi Association of Minnesota, Minnesota Punjabi Society, Odisha Society of Minnesota, Tamil Association of Minnesota, and Telugu Association of Minnesota. Faith-based organizations such as Geeta Ashram, Hindu Society of Minnesota, Islamic Center, Jain Center, Meditation Center, Sikh Gurudwara, and Indian Christian churches of different denominations were started. Members first met in small gatherings in people’s homes or in community centers and later moved into their own buildings. To help children learn about their Indian heritage, the secular Bharat School/School of India for Languages and Culture (SILC) was formed, followed by other faith-based schools. On the music and performing arts side, the Indian Music Society of Minnesota (IMSOM) and Ragamala, Katha, and Nrityalaya dance schools as well as Pangea World Theater were formed. Minneapolis-based community radio station KFAI began broadcasting Indian music. As Indian Americans settled in and their population grew, entrepreneurs started businesses catering to Indian Americans. These included a couple of Indian grocery stores as well as a few restaurants serving mostly North Indian cuisine. Tandoor, the longest-running Indian restaurant in Minnesota, opened in Northeast Minneapolis in 1982. During this period, Indian Americans looked for ways to educate the broader Minnesota community about India and its diversity. In 1979, IAM and SILC started participating at the Festival of Nations to showcase Indian culture; in 1983, IAM introduced India Day (later named IndiaFest), a day-long festival focusing on Indian culture. In 1992, IAM collaborated with the Minnesota Historical Society and started an oral history project, recording the experiences of the earliest American Indian Immigrants to Minnesota (1950–1960s). Indian Americans who had acquired U.S. citizenship also became involved in American politics. They founded the Asian Indian American Republicans of Minnesota and Minnesota Asian Indian Democratic Association (MAIDA) in 1992 and 1994, respectively. The Third Wave: Y2K and the Technology Boom (Late 1990s to 2000s) The Immigration Act of 1990 approved the H1-B visa, which temporarily employed highly skilled, college-educated foreign workers in specialty areas such as technology, medicine, and the sciences. As the year 2000 approached and the need to fix computer programs to accurately reflect dates grew, this task was outsourced to Indian companies. As a result, the government granted several hundreds of H1B visas to software programmers for work in high-tech companies in Minnesota. The success of this effort led to additional software projects; soon, large numbers of skilled computer professionals began arriving in Minnesota. While many of them remained only for the duration of a project, others were able to change their visa status to permanent residency. By 2010, the Indian population in Minnesota doubled to 33,031. By 2014, it reached 40,000. This influx of both temporary and permanent Indian Americans changed the landscape of Indian American businesses and organizations. Indian grocery stores such as Pooja Grocers, Patel Brothers (later Little India) on Central Avenue, and others in areas with high concentrations of Indian customers opened for business. Dozens of restaurants offering a wide variety of cuisines from different parts of India also opened. IndiaFest, organized by IAM and held in August each year, grew large enough to require a move from the Landmark Center to the grounds of the state capitol. Additional regional and religious institutions were established, each catering to different Indian linguistic regions, spiritual practices, and their sub-sects. Places of worship (such as the Sri Venkateswara Temple), performing arts organizations, clothes boutiques, caterers, and tailors began to offer their services. SEWA-AIFW (Asian Indian Family Wellness) was created in 2004 to deal with challenges that came with population growth: protecting women in abusive relationships, providing health education, and caring for home-bound seniors and under-privileged people. Status, Education, Culture, Identity 35 percent of Indian Americans in Minnesota are naturalized citizens. This is the lowest among all Asians and may be due to a larger transient population temporarily here for work. 46 percent of Indian Americans are homeowners. This is also low compared to other Asians and again reflects a population that may be here temporarily. Indian Americans are, by and large, a prosperous immigrant group. They earn the highest median household income—$91,151—compared to $56, 456 for all Minnesotans and $61,000 for Asians. The poverty rate is less than 3.4 percent compared to 11 percent for all Minnesotans and 16.9 percent for Asians. Indian Americans report the lowest unemployment rate at less than 5 percent, compared to 9.3 percent for other Asians. Indians place a high emphasis on education and, like their counterparts in other states, have the highest educational qualifications of all ethnic groups in the U.S. Since it was higher education that brought Indians to Minnesota, it is not surprising that over 83 percent of Indian Minnesotans have bachelors’ or advanced degrees and over 47 percent have post-graduate or professional degrees. Many of their children, the second generation, have followed their parents’ footsteps in excelling and getting college degrees. Students from India make up the second-largest group of international students in the United States, choosing not just the University of Minnesota but also other prestigious institutions, including state and private colleges. Although Indian Americans assimilate well into the broader community, they also like to keep in touch with their heritage and families. Many visit their relatives in India regularly or invite them to Minnesota for extended stays. Indian Americans, like other Asian Americans, tend to view their achievements as collective rather than individual, and as reflections of their families and communities. Though a majority of Indian Americans are educated and fluent in English, they face various forms of prejudice and discrimination. This has ranged from overt hostility during and after national crises (like the Iranian hostage crisis, 1979–1981, and 9/11) to more subtle forms: being overlooked for promotion, stereotyped as illiterate, or treated as an employee rather than a supervisor. Many Indian Minnesotans felt fearful after the 2017 presidential inauguration, when anti-immigrant attackers committed acts of violence and harassment against Indian Americans in other parts of the country. Contributions to Minnesota As scientists and engineers, a large number of Indian Americans have contributed to Minnesota companies such as 3M and Medtronic. Indian American scientists and engineers hold patents and have conducted ground-breaking research. Others have started innovative high-tech companies. Several Indian Americans, such as Sam and Sumita Mitra, a husband-and-wife team of 3M research scientists, have won the highest technical awards offered by their companies. A high percentage of Indians work in medical fields, serving as doctors, surgeons, specialists, and educators at the Mayo Clinic, the University of Minnesota, and other hospitals and clinics. Many of them, like Dr. Amit Sood, from Mayo, are well known nationally and internationally for their contributions in their respective fields. Indian Americans operate an estimated 2,404 businesses in Minnesota. These businesses, which produce about $740 million in combined sales and an annual payroll of $140 million, provide jobs for about 4, 000 employees. One entrepreneur, Mahendra Nath, has been inducted into the Minnesota Business Hall of Fame. Indian Americans, particularly the second generation, have become increasingly involved in government and public service fields, contributing at both national and state levels. Gopal Khanna served in high-ranking positions in both President George W. Bush’s and Governor Tim Pawlenty’s cabinets; Professor Varadarajan V. Chari worked with the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. Two second-generation Indian Americans, Neel Kashkari and Narayana Rao Kocherlakota, became presidents of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. In 1996, Satveer Chaudhary became the first Asian American member of the Minnesota Legislature and the fourth person with Asian Indian ancestry elected to a state legislature in the United States. A few second generation Indian Americans have enrolled in the armed forces. Several Indian Americans are professors and heads of academic departments. Dr. Sri Zaheer (Carlson School of Management) and Dr. Bruce Corrie (Concordia University) have made significant contributions in their positions as dean and associate vice president of university relations, respectively. Indian Americans have also entered the K-12 education field as teachers and administrators. The media is another field in which Indian-Americans have made a mark and brought diversity. TV journalist Fred De Sam Lazaro has brought attention to India through his series Undertold Stories on PBS. TV personalities like Vineeta Sawkar and reporters such as Kavita Kumar and Neal Justin make regular mainstream contributions. Even though a large number of Indian Americans choose medical, law, or technology careers, many others have made a mark in Minnesota’s art and theater scenes and have exposed Minnesotans to Indian dance, theater, and music. Notable among these are the Ragamala, Katha, and Ananya dance theaters and Pangea and Dreamland Arts theaters as well as the Indian Music Society of Minnesota. Contributing to the food scene and exposing Minnesotans to dishes from all over India—not just the Tandoori and Punjabi dishes of the past—are several Indian restaurants, including a food truck called Hot Indian Foods. Also making great strides in educating Minnesotans and popularizing Indian food is Indian American chef Raghavan Iyer. Iyer has authored several cookbooks, including the first-ever Betty Crocker cook-book on Indian cuisine. Teachers such as Punjabhai Patel are active in promoting the ancient Indian traditions of yoga and meditation at temples and through private lessons. Indian Americans contribute to many philanthropic activities, both in India and in Minnesota. They serve on the boards of non-profits, and philanthropists such as Dr. S. K. Dash make generous financial contributions to social causes. The Shreya Dixit Memorial and the Compassionate Action foundations have raised awareness of the problems of distracted driving and animal exploitation, respectively. Many Indian Americans also regularly cook and serve in soup kitchens. Building on these contributions, renewable-energy companies from India such as Suzlon have started investing in Minnesota.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/dixit_family.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/ganges-ten-thousand-lakes-immigration-india-minnesota"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of the first Pillsbury Bake-Off in New York City at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, 1949.","author":[{"name":"Mary Laine","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/mary-laine"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"April 03, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Pillsbury Bake-Off Contest","postbody":"In 1949, the Pillsbury Company in Minneapolis celebrated its eightieth anniversary. To promote Pillsbury’s Best Family Flour, it created the Grand National Recipe and Baking Contest, later ...","searchtext":"In 1949, the Pillsbury Company in Minneapolis celebrated its eightieth anniversary. To promote Pillsbury’s Best Family Flour, it created the Grand National Recipe and Baking Contest, later named the Bake-Off, to discover the country’s best amateur bakers and recipes. The winning recipes were placed in Pillsbury flour bags as an incentive for consumers to purchase one of Pillsbury’s premier products. In 1949, the contest offered entrants six entry categories: breads, cakes, pies, cookies, entrees, and desserts. Hopeful bakers completed entry forms and sent in their recipes. If they included a seal from a Pillsbury flour bag, their potential prizes were doubled. Pillsbury home economists evaluated thousands of entries and selected one hundred finalists after baking and sampling the entries. The finalists’ prizes included a trip to New York City, a room at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel with breakfast in bed, and $100. They all also won a General Electric Stratoliner push-button range and a Hamilton Beach mixer. The grand prize of $25,000 was awarded after all of the finalists’ entries were prepared and judged. In the first contest year, there was only one division. In 1950, it was split into two divisions: junior (for ages twelve to eighteen years old) and senior (for those nineteen and older). Arthur Godfrey and Art Linkletter, well-known radio and television personalities, hosted the contest in the early years. Eleanor Roosevelt, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Mamie Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, and Margaret Truman were among the celebrities at early contests. Philip Pillsbury, company president and grandson of company co-founder Charles Pillsbury, led contestants to their stoves at the opening of each contest from 1949 until 1984. Memorable recipes from the Bake-Off include Dilly Casserole Bread (1960), French Silk Chocolate Pie (1951), Tunnel of Fudge Cake (1966), Peanut Blossoms (1957), and Chocolate Praline Layer Cake (1988). Peanut Blossoms cookies, with a chocolate kiss in the center, are still found on many Christmas cookie trays, but the Tunnel of Fudge Cake is probably the most famous. Baked by Ella Helfrich from Texas, it won second prize and was so popular that it created a demand for the Nordic Ware bundt pan. In 1969, Edna Walker from Minnesota won the grand prize with her winning recipe for Magic Marshmallow Crescent Puffs. The recipe was a milestone since it was the first winner to use a refrigerated dough product. Home bakers rushed to make the recipe. Grocery stores in the Twin Cities area soon ran out of cans of Pillsbury Refrigerated Crescent Dinner Rolls, the recipe’s key ingredient. Perhaps to attract the judges’ eyes, many contestants were creative in naming their entries. Examples from 1954 include Watermelon Tea-Ettes, Pear-adise Chocolate Dessert, Cranberry Coconut Holidainty, and American Piece-A-Pie. In 1949, there were three male contestants. In 1998, there were fourteen, which set a record. In 1996, Kurt Wait won the first million-dollar grand prize with his Macadamia Nut Fudge Torte. Twelve-year-old Richard Klecka won the junior division in 1962 with his Cheeseburger Casserole. The contest evolved as Americans’ food tastes and interests changed. Time available to spend in the kitchen lessened and convenience foods became available. Pillsbury home economists shortened and adapted winning recipes to include Pillsbury products such as cake, frosting, and hot roll mixes and cans of refrigerated dinner rolls and biscuits. In 2013, contest rules required that recipes have fewer than eight ingredients and take no longer than thirty minutes to prepare, not including baking time. From 1949–1956, the contest was held in New York City. After that, the location changed each year, but never in Pillsbury’s corporate home of Minneapolis. Each year, the hundred winning recipes were published in a cookbook that initially cost twenty-five cents. The first contest, in 1949, was so successful that it was held annually until 1976 and then every two years until the 47th competition in 2014. By then, winner selection had evolved along with the recipes themselves. In that year, the public voted online, without tasting the entries, and picked Peanutty Pie Crust Clusters as the winner. The other competitors for top prize were Cuban-style Sandwich Pockets, Creamy Corn-filled Sweet Peppers, and Chocolate Doughnut Poppers. As of 2017, the future of the contest is undetermined.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/1949 -- 1st Bake-Off begins (New York City, NY).jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/pillsbury-bake-contest"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Theresa Ericksen, ca. 1930.","author":[{"name":"Johannes Allert","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/johannes-allert"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"March 29, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"1898","name":"Ericksen, Theresa (1868–1943)","postbody":"After graduating from Northwestern Hospital’s School of Nursing in 1894, Theresa Ericksen led a life of service as a healer, teacher, and promoter of public health and nursing education. ...","searchtext":"After graduating from Northwestern Hospital’s School of Nursing in 1894, Theresa Ericksen led a life of service as a healer, teacher, and promoter of public health and nursing education. Her legacy has ties to the Minnesota Nursing Association, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Christmas Seals, and Fort Snelling National Cemetery. Ericksen was born in Oslo, Norway, in 1868. Orphaned at age six, she travelled with her uncle and aunt to destinations as far away as China and Japan before moving to Minnesota around 1880. She graduated from St. Paul’s Northwestern Hospital’s nursing school in the early 1890s, then quickly made her mark. In 1898, she and seven other nurses formed the Ramsey County Nurses Association (later renamed the Minnesota Nurses Association). In the same year, Ericksen volunteered as a contract nurse for the U.S. Army and served at Sternberg Army Hospital in Georgia. She later volunteered for service overseas in the Philippines in support of Minnesota’s 13th Volunteer Regiment. After taking her oath of service at the Presidio in San Francisco, she served as a Regular Army Nurse and the regiment’s only female member. Due to a shortage of nurses overseas, Ericksen remained in the Philippines longer than any of her fellow servicemen and women. After returning to the United States in 1901, she volunteered again for service as a dietitian in 1904. She worked at the U.S. Army’s main hospital in Manila until 1905. In 1918, Ericksen returned to the Twin Cities. There, she served in dual roles as Anoka County’s Public Health Nurse and the City of Anoka’s High School Nurse. During America’s involvement in World War I, Ericksen once again served overseas in France. Her first job involved treating casualties behind the lines near Chateau-Thierry. Following an Allied offensive, Ericksen briefly worked at an orphanage and later at an Army Hospital caring for soldiers who fell ill with influenza. She returned home in 1919. After World War I, Ericksen resumed work in public health, fighting tuberculosis in what she called her “fourth war.” Her longstanding advocacy for buying Christmas Seals to fund research in finding a cure for the disease culminated in a public ceremony in 1936. She became the first woman to receive Public Health’s Distinguished Service Award, presented to her by the famed Mayo Brothers. From 1926 until 1936, Ericksen served as superintendent of St. Paul’s Pleasant Day Nursery. While providing a safe, healthy, and structured environment for children, she acted on behalf of servicemen too debilitated from gas injuries to work or care for their families. Many men had been denied benefits from the government. Ericksen served many veterans|| groups during her career. In addition to the 13th and 17th Minnesota Volunteer Regimental Associations, she worked for the United States War Veterans, the American Legion, and, until 1921, the Veterans of Foreign Wars. While visiting a comrade on the grounds of the Veterans’ Home in Minneapolis in 1933, Ericksen injured herself on an icy walkway. Her injury required surgery and long-term rehabilitation. F. W. Pederson, the commandant of the facility and a fellow veteran, recommended that she recuperate in a warmer climate, but it remains unknown whether Ericksen left Minnesota. Mindful of her age and condition, Pederson asked where Ericksen wished to be buried if something dire occurred. She requested Fort Snelling Military Cemetery. Such a request, however, was impossible to meet, because the cemetery was reserved only for active service members attached to the post. Acting as Ericksen’s advocate, Pederson took the issue to state representatives. Together, they successfully lobbied for the creation of the state’s first National Cemetery. When the cemetery was completed in 1940, it benefitted not only Ericksen but a growing number of veterans from America’s recent conflicts. After her 1933 injury forced her into early retirement, Ericksen remained active, serving as a delegate to veterans’ organizations. She proved to be popular with the news media and received many letters from fellow veterans who recalled her devotion to duty. Ericksen died on August 31, 1943, and was laid to rest at Fort Snelling National Cemetery to the sound of taps and a twenty-one-gun salute on September 2. Her grave is in section A, block 11, grave 1884.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/por 5072 p2.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246087,"name":"Health and Medicine","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/ericksen-theresa-1868-1943"},{"alt":"Color image of the Stickney Inn and Store, looking east, July 2014. Photographed by Amy Lucas.","author":[{"name":"Suzan From","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/suzan"},{"name":"Amy Lucas","slug":"/mnopedia/search/index/author/amy-lucas"},{"name":"Barbara Smith Livdahl","slug":"/mnopedia/search/index/author/barbara-smith-livdahl"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"March 27, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Stickney Inn","postbody":"Horace Stickney built the Stickney Inn and Store in 1929 at mile marker 78.75 in Schroeder, Minnesota. The two-story Tudor Revival-style building is located on the south side of the scenic ...","searchtext":"Horace Stickney built the Stickney Inn and Store in 1929 at mile marker 78.75 in Schroeder, Minnesota. The two-story Tudor Revival-style building is located on the south side of the scenic North Shore Drive (Highway 61) near the west bank of the Cross River and is situated on .47 acres. After a 2002 renovation, the building became the Cross River Heritage Center, operated by the Schroeder Area Historical Society. In 1921, Horace T. Stickney (1885–1983) purchased a thirteen-acre parcel of land along the Cross River in Schroeder from Hedley Redmyer. The parcel had been part of the Schroeder Lumber Company’s logging camp. At the time of the purchase, the property included the logging superintendent’s frame house, a shed, an office building, and a log bunkhouse. Stickney called it a “depressed place” because of past logging and the burned landscape. His first store, built in 1922, burned down when the gas stove malfunctioned during food preparation. After the fire, local artisans and an unnamed architect helped Stickney build a new structure featuring prominent, half-timbered gables. On June 6, 1929, the Cook County News Herald reported that the Stickney Inn featured bedrooms and a large dining room as well as a confectionary and store. The first floor had a grocery store, a kitchen, a post office, a dining room, and a living room with a large stone fireplace. The second floor had seven tourist bedrooms for 15–20 people. It was one of the first buildings in Schroeder to have indoor bathrooms. Soon, Stickney received requests for cabin rentals. In 1930, he built a log cabin, measuring sixteen by twenty feet, behind the inn overlooking the Cross River. After he completed a second cabin, a Minnesota tourism pamphlet described the site as “Stickney’s Resort.” By 1936, Stickney had built eight cabins with views of the river and the shores of Lake Superior. The inn served as a Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) winter headquarters for workers who arrived on the North Shore in 1933. They constructed 135 miles of telephone line, forty miles of truck lines, thirty bridges, three dams, and sixteen Forest Service buildings. The single-lane steel bridge (built in 1915) over the Cross River was replaced in 1932. A small sign on Highway 61 advertised the Stickney Store and Cabins. It was a destination on the North Shore, and the Northland Bus Depot maintained a depot stop at the inn throughout the 1940s and 1950’s. The Stickneys did not offer organized activities; tourists were attracted to the hikes, trout fishing, and games of horseshoes. The inn did have an ample living room and a piano used for songfests and dancing. Author Florence Page Jacques wrote about her visit to the Stickney Inn and Store on November 13, 1942. She noted that she was surprised to see the inn’s three modern bathrooms and to stay warm in the snug, airtight building. Horace and Nell Stickney sold the inn to Horace’s nephew, Harry Stickney Lamb (1909–1971), in 1955. Harry and Doris Mae Lamb (1913–2003) moved to Schroeder in December 1954. After Harry Lamb became postmaster in 1955, they renamed the inn Lamb’s Resort. In the early 1950s, the Erie Mining Company started construction of a taconite loading facility 2.5 miles south of Lamb’s Resort. Harry Lamb made an agreement with the ore carriers to supply them with groceries. The third generation to live and work in the Stickney/Lamb store took over in 1965. Harry Lamb’s son, Horace “Skip” Lamb, purchased the resort with his wife, Linda. In 1976, the Lambs separated the Stickney Inn and Store from the resort property and sold the inn to Bill and Gloria Jordon. The Lambs moved the post office into the empty Pure Oil Station. The Jordons named their purchase Cross River General Store. The Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) condemned the inn and store in preparation for highway repairs and bridge replacement in 1998.The Schroeder Area Historical Society persuaded MnDOT to transfer the title of the Stickney Inn and Store building to the Town of Schroeder in 1998. With secured funding and volunteer support, the Schroeder Area Historical Society completed the building’s restoration in 2002 and began operating the building as Cross River Heritage Center.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Stickney Inn and Store, looking east, 2014.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/stickney-inn"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of William T. Francis, ca. 1904.","author":[{"name":"Paul Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/paul-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"March 22, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Francis, William T. (1869–1929)","postbody":"William T. Francis, Minnesota’s first African American diplomat, served as U.S. Minister and Consul to Liberia, West Africa, from 1927 until his death. He investigated and reported on ...","searchtext":"William T. Francis, Minnesota’s first African American diplomat, served as U.S. Minister and Consul to Liberia, West Africa, from 1927 until his death. He investigated and reported on Liberian government complicity in the forced labor of Liberian men and died in Monrovia of yellow fever on July 15, 1929. Born in 1869 in Indianapolis, William Trevane Francis came to St. Paul in 1887. He got a job with the Northern Pacific railway as a messenger, then a stenographer, then a clerk in the legal department. In 1901 he was named temporary chief clerk when a sudden vacancy appeared. Always ambitious, Francis enrolled in law school and got a law degree from St. Paul College of Law in 1904. He became the chief clerk in the railroad’s law department, making Francis one of the highest-ranking black employees of any Minnesota business. He practiced law for the Northern Pacific and also privately. In private life Francis was an accomplished singer, acted in plays and musical productions (including the great “Cuba” pageant of 1898), and was a member of Pilgrim Baptist Church. In 1893 he married Nellie Griswold, another singer from Pilgrim Baptist. They often performed together. In politics, Francis voted Republican. He ran for St. Paul city assembly in 1906 and the state legislature in 1912, losing badly both times. He admired Booker T. Washington and supported the mainstream civil rights organizations, often as an officer. He participated in the National Afro-American Council national meetings in St. Paul in 1902 and in Louisville in 1904. Though Francis faulted white Americans for the nation’s race problems, in public he took moderate positions and did not demand social equality. In 1911 Francis lobbied President William Taft for appointment as U.S. Minister to Haiti. Though he enlisted plenty of local Republican support, the appointment went to another. When his friend and mentor Fredrick McGhee died in 1912, Francis left the Northern Pacific and took over McGhee’s St. Paul law practice. He operated a solo practice in personal injury, criminal defense, divorce, probate, and business law. When the film Birth of a Nation, admired for its artistry but deplored for its racism, came to St. Paul in 1915, Francis lobbied the city council to ban it. (In a compromise, some offensive scenes were cut.) In 1920 Francis was appointed to the Minnesota Republican Central Committee, led the vote-for-Harding effort among black Republicans in the western half of the United States, and served as a presidential elector. In 1925 he and Nellie bought a house in an all-white neighborhood of St. Paul, inciting loud protests and cross burnings in their yard. They moved in just the same. When the position of U.S. Minister to Liberia came open in 1926, Francis marshaled his many powerful Republican friends to advocate for him. On July 12, 1927, President Calvin Coolidge appointed Francis U.S. Minister and Consul to Liberia. The Francises arrived in Liberia a few months later, at the time when the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company was developing vast new rubber plantations there. The U.S. government considered Firestone’s rubber venture vital to national security and prosperity: both peace and war ran on rubber. In 1928 Francis received an assignment from Secretary of State Henry Stimson to investigate rumors of Liberian official complicity in slavery and forced labor. Over the course of nine months, Francis conducted a confidential inquiry. He concluded that high government officials, including the president, vice president and postmaster general, had profited from supplying forced labor from Liberia to the Spanish cacao plantations on the island of Fernando Po (now Bioko Island). Thousands of young men had been taken from their villages for terms of labor service, with government officials receiving payment for each one. Many of the young men never returned. Within days of submitting his report, Francis fell ill with yellow fever. After four weeks of intense suffering, he died in Monrovia, Liberia, on July 15, 1929. Nellie Francis returned to her city of birth, Nashville, Tennessee, where she lived until 1969. Both are buried at Greenwood Cemetery in Nashville. Francis’s report helped force the government of Liberia to agree to a League of Nations investigation. After its publication, the president and vice president of Liberia were forced to resign.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/por 18701 p1.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056216,"name":"African Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/francis-william-t-1869-1929"},{"alt":"Image #3 3","author":[{"name":"Janna L. Dinkel","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/janna-l-dinkel"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"March 20, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"August 1932","name":"Crookston’s American Legion Auxiliary Drum and Bugle Corps","postbody":"Led by “Mr. Music,” Theodore W. Thorson, Crookston’s all-female drum and bugle corps won four straight American Legion Auxiliary state championships, from 1932 to 1935. Following World War ...","searchtext":"Led by “Mr. Music,” Theodore W. Thorson, Crookston’s all-female drum and bugle corps won four straight American Legion Auxiliary state championships, from 1932 to 1935. Following World War I, drums and bugles from military units were sold to organizations such as the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars. These groups used the instruments to form drum and bugle corps, which lent a celebratory air to local parades and provided a dignified presence for more somber events, such as Memorial Day services. From that initial purpose, statewide competitions evolved. The drum and bugle corps that formed across the country were a combination of military guards and marching bands. Color guards resembling military honor guards were used, as were drums, fifes, and bugles. A drum major directed both the music and the marching. Crookston originally had a male drum and bugle corps, but in 1930 T. W. Thorson formed an all-female unit to represent the American Legion Auxiliary. Max Raines took charge of the military drills. Thorson’s combination of military and musical experience made him the logical choice to train the corps. While a student at the University of Minnesota, he had played in both the University symphony and the University band. It was said that he could play every instrument in the band except the English horn. Enlisting in the Navy in 1917, Thorson became a bandmaster of the Naval band on the U.S.S. New Jersey during World War I. His training for that assignment included study under John Philip Sousa in the School of Instruction for Navy Bandmasters. He took over as municipal bandmaster in Crookston in 1929. Later he became the music instructor at Central High School and the director of both the Ninth District Legion Band and the Northwest Singers. The original female drum and bugle corps, which made its debut in 1931, consisted of twelve snare drummers, eight fifers, eight buglers, four color bearers, two bass drummers, two cymbalists, and a drum major, Lillian Raines. During the difficult Depression years, the women of the corps raised their own funds for uniforms and instruments by organizing rummage sales, card parties, and initiation fees. With the funds, they were able to buy novelty costumes for informal performances. They also bought formal white dresses for memorial services and commemorative drills. At the State American Legion Convention at Rochester on August 19, 1931, the drum and bugle corps from Crookston was, according to the Crookston Times, the star of the show. The spectators cheered so loudly at the formal exhibition drills that the marchers couldn’t hear the drum major’s whistle over the roar of the crowd. As a result, some of the women marched in the wrong direction, costing them the championship. The loss was their last at the state competition for the next four years. In 1932, at the state convention in Bemidji, the Crookston corps won the overall championship. They also received the title of “best-appearing women’s drum corps” in a related activity. The high point of the corps occurred in 1933, when the Crookston unit attended the national convention in Chicago. The Crookston corps was chosen over all other units in the country to appear before the president of the National American Legion Auxiliary. They also appeared at Soldier’s Field and at the World’s Fair. The women’s Auxiliary drum corps was so popular that Munn’s Jewelry Store displayed in its window twenty-nine celluloid dolls, one representing each woman in the corps. The dolls were arranged in formation and dressed in replicas of their black-and-white uniforms. The state American Legion Convention in Duluth in 1934 was another success for the Crookston drum and bugle corps. Individual championships were won by the drum major Jeanette Wright and by sisters Ruth and Belva Saugstad for bugling and drumming, respectively. Through the years of competition, the women’s corps was self-supporting, relying on a wardrobe of six different costumes. Merchants of the town financed trips to state and national conventions. After losing their drum major and drill master to relocation, the group voted to disband in April, 1936, thus ending a five-year phenomenon in Crookston’s history. Thorson formed a similar group at the high school in 1939, a tradition which continued until 1970.","src":"https://www3.mnhs.org/hubfs/Image%20%233%203.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/crookston-s-american-legion-auxiliary-drum-and-bugle-corps"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Charles E. Kiewel, ca. 1915.","author":[{"name":"Amy Larson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/amy-larson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"March 15, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Kiewel, Charles E. (1875–1969)","postbody":"Charles Kiewel continued his father Jacob’s brewing legacy by owning and managing multiple breweries, including Kiewel Brewing Company in Crookston. His diverse business interests, from ...","searchtext":"Charles Kiewel continued his father Jacob’s brewing legacy by owning and managing multiple breweries, including Kiewel Brewing Company in Crookston. His diverse business interests, from creameries to a farm to a bank, set him apart as one of Crookston’s most well-known businessmen. Kiewel was born in Moorhead, Minnesota on October 28, 1875, to Jacob and Rose (Niggler) Kiewel. He grew up in Fergus Falls and moved to Little Falls in 1893 when his father purchased a brewery there. Kiewel married Kathryn Blake in 1896 and they had two sons, Charles and Dewey. The Jacob Kiewel Brewing Company quickly expanded, adding a new malt house and bottling plant to support its White Rose beer brand. Kiewel learned the trade from his father. In 1899, he and Jacob added a business in Crookston. Crookston was growing rapidly, with a population that increased from 3,457 in 1890 to 5,359 in 1900. The Kiewels purchased the existing Crookston Brewing Company’s three-story brick building with an annual capacity of 20,000 barrels. Jacob sent Kiewel to Crookston to manage the new brewery. Early in their ownership of the Crookston brewery, arson destroyed the cooper shop and barn. Fire would become a recurring problem for Kiewel. His father’s original Fergus Falls brewery burned down, and fires damaged the Crookston brewery multiple times. These setbacks didn’t prevent Kiewel from growing his business. In 1899, he made plans to increase the size of the main building and add new machinery. He eventually brought capacity up to 30,000 barrels. With business booming, Kiewel announced a $15,000 investment in Crookston’s Main Street with the building of a two-story block made from Crookston brick. In 1906, the two Kiewel breweries were officially incorporated as the Jacob Kiewel Brewing Company (in Little Falls) and the Kiewel Brewing Company (in Crookston). Kiewel, his father, and his brother Frank were the incorporators in Crookston; Kiewel continued management of the brewery. In 1909, the brewery expanded its offerings to include a highly concentrated fermented malt tonic said to “build up the vitality”. Language touting medicinal benefits was not unusual in ads for Kiewel’s popular White Seal Beer and Cream of Malt Tonic. A 1909 advertisement called the beer “nectar for the gods” and praised it as a “fountain of youth and renewed vigor.” Kiewel became an active businessman beyond the brewery. He maintained a highly respected farm, featuring hogs (and a “hog barn that is worth taking a day off to see”), cows, crops, and an orchard. He also bought interest in Polk County State Bank in 1916 and the Crookston Creamery in 1918. With the onset of prohibition in 1919, Kiewel Brewing Company stopped beer production in both Little Falls and Crookston, but Kiewel kept working. He manufactured Cremo, a non-alcoholic beverage with the “health-giving properties of beer,” and White Seal Brew, which offered the same taste as White Seal Beer but with a legal alcohol content. He focused efforts on the Crookston Creamery, where one million pounds of butter was produced in 1926. Kiewel also expanded his endeavors to Canada. In 1924, he built a $250,000 Kiewel Brewing Company in St. Boniface, Manitoba. This proved to be a smart move, as the brewery made $700,000 in its first year. He sold the Crookston brewery buildings and shipped the machinery to St. Boniface. In 1927, Kiewel became managing director of the Toronto Brewing Company. Soon after, the large Canadian Brewing Company acquired his breweries in both Toronto and St. Boniface. Kiewel stayed on as manager in Toronto while his brother George ran the St. Boniface business. When prohibition ended, Kiewel became vice president and general manager, and later president, of the large Minneapolis Brewing Company, which produced Golden Grain Belt beer. Though no longer living in Crookston, he came back for a special visit in 1933 on a Golden Grain Belt Goodwill Tour of the state. Kiewel retired from the Minneapolis Brewing Company and from his post as president of Polk County State Bank. He then moved back to his Crookston farm. Despite retiring, he was still active on his farm and served as chairman emeritus of the bank’s board. Kiewel died on February 11, 1969, at the age of 93, preceded in death by his wife and son Charles.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Charles E. Kiewel.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/kiewel-charles-e-1875-1969"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of the dedication ceremony of the Immaculate Heart of Mary Catholic Church in Currie, held on September 23, 1883.","author":[{"name":"Anita Talsma Gaul","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/anita-talsma-gaul"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"March 13, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Sweetman Catholic Colony","postbody":"In 1881, John Sweetman brought forty-three immigrant families to farms near Currie and established the Sweetman Catholic Colony. Another nineteen families joined the colony in 1882, but two ...","searchtext":"In 1881, John Sweetman brought forty-three immigrant families to farms near Currie and established the Sweetman Catholic Colony. Another nineteen families joined the colony in 1882, but two unseasonably wet growing seasons made farming difficult. By the end of 1882, half of the colonists had abandoned their farms and left the colony. The story of the short-lived Sweetman Catholic Colony began in County Meath, Ireland, the home of John Sweetman. Sweetman was a wealthy Irish Catholic who sought to improve the lives of his impoverished compatriots. To do so, he created an assisted emigration program that would relocate poor Irish Catholics to farms in the United States. The incorporation of the Irish-American Colonization Company (IACC), Limited, in March 1881, realized Sweetman’s vision. Sweetman served as the company’s chairman and managing director; Bishop John Ireland of St. Paul was among those appointed to the company’s board of directors. The IACC purchased just over 17,000 acres of land near Currie and brought the first forty-three immigrant families to the colony in May 1881. Another nineteen families joined the colony in April 1882. The company provided each family with land (usually eighty acres), a small furnished home, farming implements and tools, seed, a cow, a pair of oxen and a wagon, and food for one year. These items were not donated but loaned to the colonists on generous terms of repayment. No down payment was required. After an eighteen-month grace period, a colonist’s first payment on the land—contracted for $6 per acre at 6 percent interest—was due, but only the interest. The first full payment of interest-plus-principal was not due until one year after the initial interest-only payment. Each subsequent payment was due annually for the next eight years until the loan was repaid in full. The colonists owed the company for all the other items it supplied (tools, housing, food, seed, etc.), but as a separate loan at 8 percent interest, subject to the same repayment schedule as the land loan. The majority of the colonists were Irish or Irish American, but a few among them were Scottish or English. Sweetman himself moved to the colony in 1881 and built (with IACC funds) a model stock farm called Buffalo Lake Farm four miles east of Currie. Sweetman also used company funds to build a new church in Currie, which he named Immaculate Heart of Mary Catholic Church. Bishop John Ireland and Bishop John Lancaster Spalding of Peoria, Illinois, officiated the dedication ceremony of the church on September 23, 1883. Sweetman’s intentions may have been good, but his timing was poor. The harsh winters of 1881 and 1882 were followed by unusually wet summers, resulting in dismally low crop yields. Farming in these conditions was challenging for even the most experienced grower. Inexperienced immigrants, unused to the unpredictable climate of the northern Great Plains and faced with the challenge of plowing and seeding virgin prairie, stood little chance of becoming successful farmers. Many of the colonists became discouraged, cancelled their contracts with the IACC, and left the colony within one year of their arrival. Most of those who left did so before they had made a single payment to the IACC for their land and supplies, resulting in heavy financial losses for the company. Of the sixty-two total families who moved to the Sweetman Catholic Colony between 1881 and 1882, only thirty remained by the end of 1883. These dismal results prompted Sweetman to reassess his project. Facing a 50 percent failure rate and mounting financial losses, Sweetman and his fellow directors effectively ended the assisted emigration program in late 1882. The IACC remained in operation but expanded its focus to real estate, offering the sale of its lands to any interested buyers, including non-Catholics. The first advertisement announcing farms for sale in the Sweetman Colony appeared in local newspapers in November 1882. Additional advertisements followed them in newspapers and periodicals around the nation. John Sweetman returned to his home in Ireland in 1892, leaving his cousin Walter Sweetman in Currie to manage the IACC and operate Buffalo Lake Farm. The last of the IACC’s land holdings sold in the early twentieth century, at which time the company ceased its operations.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Dedication.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/sweetman-catholic-colony"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Ellsworth D. Childs with wife Eliza (far left) and two unidentified women, ca. 1890–1900.","author":[{"name":"Janna L. Dinkel","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/janna-l-dinkel"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"March 08, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Childs, Ellsworth D. (1843–1927)","postbody":"A man of diverse interests and talents, Ellsworth D. Childs was a farmer, city councilman, businessman, entrepreneur, church planter, village planter, and writer. As all of these, and more, ...","searchtext":"A man of diverse interests and talents, Ellsworth D. Childs was a farmer, city councilman, businessman, entrepreneur, church planter, village planter, and writer. As all of these, and more, he profoundly influenced the development of the city of Crookston. E. D. Childs wrote his own story for the Compendium of History and Biography of Polk County, published in 1916. His family moved to Pierce County, Wisconsin, from Massachusetts in 1856. It was there that Ellsworth took over the family farm when his father died in 1864. In the Compendium, Childs describes his first visit to the small village of Crookston in 1877 and his decision in that year to form a firm of developers with W. G. Lytle and James Hill, both of Wisconsin. These men contracted to buy 10,000 acres of land in Polk County at a cost of $2.50 an acre. The land the firm purchased was part of the grant given to the St. Paul and Pacific Railroad, later reorganized under railroad magnate James J. Hill as the St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Manitoba Railway. Moving with his wife Eliza (McLorinan) and children to Crookston in 1878, Childs established a farm machinery business and brought the first shipment of wagons and combine harvesters to the area. Childs then formed a new firm—Sterrett, Hill, and Childs—and began building a line of elevators in northwestern Minnesota. These elevators would serve the farmers who flocked to the area after Hill brought his railway up the Minnesota side of the Red River Valley. In the early days of Crookston, it was unclear exactly where the railroad would establish a town site. Childs, who owned his acreage across the river from Crookston in Andover Township, hoped that the railroad company would choose to center its business there, just one mile south of Crookston. Childs began to plat a new town on his land. He named it “Carman,” after a Baptist missionary to India whom he supported. In the early 1880s, Carman competed with Crookston for the business of the area. It boasted a post office, Childs’ own general store, a Baptist Church, saloons, and hotels. Believing a good water supply would entice farmers to the area, Childs also established two artesian wells in Carman. After Crookston became a headquarters for the Great Northern Railway, Carman was incorporated into the city of Crookston, becoming the fifth ward in 1887. After this, Childs served as an alderman on the city council. Sometimes described as contentious by the local papers, Childs continued to fight for the interests of the fifth ward and frequently wrote letters to the editor of the local paper explaining his views. One of Childs’ major accomplishments occurred in 1883, when he persuaded T. B. Walker of Minneapolis to build a sawmill in Carman along the Red Lake River. He donated twenty acres of his own land for the mill. The business created hundreds of lumber-industry jobs that brought stability to the young town. In 1886, Childs presided over a four-county drainage conference sponsored by James J. Hill. As a result of this conference, with Hill’s financial and political backing, the Red River Valley received a much-needed drainage ditch. By 1881, Childs had left the elevator business and devoted his energy to farming. Believing in the value of diversification, he established a large dairy farm, cheese factory, and creamery in Carman and dominated the milk trade in Crookston. He specialized in prime Jersey and Holstein cows. In an 1899 edition of the Polk County Journal, Childs wrote an in-depth article about the advent of silos. He emphasized their usefulness in storing forage plants—particularly corn—for feeding his animals. Childs also helped to found the Baptist and Methodist Churches in both Carman and Crookston. Eliza Childs died in 1904. Shortly thereafter, Childs sold his dairy farm and creamery business for $20,000 and sold off all of his other holdings in Crookston. He stated that this was necessary to help pay off a large debt incurred by one of his business partners. Childs and his children moved to the Yakima Valley in Washington in 1907. He died there in 1927.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Childs_and_wife.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246079,"name":"Cities and Towns","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/childs-ellsworth-d-1843-1927"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Sinclair Lewis, ca. 1915.","author":[{"name":"Patrick Coleman","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/patrick-coleman"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"March 06, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Lewis, Harry Sinclair (1885–1951)","postbody":"Sauk Centre’s Sinclair Lewis, short story writer, novelist, and playwright, was the first American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Sinclair Lewis was born on February 7, 1885, in Sauk ...","searchtext":"Sauk Centre’s Sinclair Lewis, short story writer, novelist, and playwright, was the first American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Sinclair Lewis was born on February 7, 1885, in Sauk Centre, Minnesota. He was the youngest of three boys. Their father, Edwin J. Lewis, was the small town’s doctor; their mother, Emma Kermott Lewis, died when Sinclair was six years old. A year later, Lewis’s father married Isabel Warner, who became an important influence in his life. By all accounts, Lewis was an outsider in his home town. Perhaps because of that, he took comfort in reading as much as he could. He left Sauk Centre in 1902 to attend Oberlin Academy, a college preparatory school. In 1903 he entered Yale, where he began honing his skills as a writer. After taking time away from college to become part of Upton Sinclair’s communal experiment, Helicon Home Colony, Lewis graduated from Yale in 1908. Lewis’s first book —a young adult adventure novel—was published in 1912 under the pseudonym Tom Graham. During the rest of that decade, Lewis published four, more serious, novels: Our Mr. Wren: The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man (1914); The Trail of the Hawk: A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life (1915); The Job (1917); and The Innocents: A Story for Lovers (1917). He also earned a good income selling short stories to magazines such as the Saturday Evening Post. Lewis married Grace Livingston Hegger on April 15, 1914. He had met her while they were both working in New York; he was reviewing books for the Publishers Newspaper Syndicate, she was an editor at Vogue. The couple had a son, Wells, in 1917, and divorced in 1925. Lewis married again in 1928. His second wife was Dorothy Thompson, a well known newspaper columnist. They, too, had a son, Michael, in 1930. Lewis and Dorothy divorced in 1937. Wells died in World War II and Michael, an actor, died in 1975. Lewis’s breakthrough as a writer came in 1920 with the publication of Main Street: The Story of Carol Kennicott. The novel takes place in Gopher Prairie (a fictional Sauk Centre) and was loosely based on Lewis’s childhood experiences there; the strong female protagonist was based in part on his stepmother. The novel instantly made Lewis a wealthy man and an international sensation. It sold 180,000 copies in just over six months. It is estimated that two million Americans read it before his next book was published. The 1920s were extraordinarily successful for Lewis. He followed up Main Street with Babbitt (1922), Arrowsmith (1925), Mantrap (1926), Elmer Gantry (1927), The Man who Knew Coolidge (1928), and Dodsworth (1929). The decade also saw Hollywood produce five movies based on Lewis’s writings. Lewis won the Pulitzer Prize for Arrowsmith but he declined the award, objecting to the judging criteria. Lewis celebrated a career highlight in 1930 when he became the first American to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. The Swedish Academy especially admired the author’s 1922 novel Babbitt. Lewis’s Nobel Lecture, delivered on December 12, 1930, was titled “The American Fear of Literature” and was quite critical of American letters, stating that “…in America most of us—not readers alone but even writers—are still afraid of literature which is not a glorification of everything American…”. After his Nobel, Lewis wrote eleven more novels. They are not considered among his best work. Beginning in 1939, Lewis had a significant relationship with Rosemary Marcella Powers, thirty-six years his junior. He also taught, lectured, and continued to struggle with alcoholism. The mid-1940s found the habitual wanderer settled in Duluth, where he worked on Kingsblood Royal (1947), his novel about race in America based in a fictionalized version of his new home city. Lewis died in Rome on January 10, 1951. He was cremated and his ashes were buried in Sauk Centre. By the time of his death, Lewis’s reputation had fallen, and his 1961 biography by Mark Schorer, though thorough, did not enhance his legacy. Recent scholarship, however, has brought renewed attention to his writing. The 2016 presidential election helped make It Can’t Happen Here, Lewis’s 1935 dystopian novel about fascism coming to America, one of the top ten best-selling books on Amazon.com.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/por 11048 m1.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/lewis-harry-sinclair-1885-1951"},{"alt":"HS.1890s","author":[{"name":"Mary Laine","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/mary-laine"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"March 01, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Minnesota State Horticultural Society","postbody":"The year 2016 marked the 150th anniversary of the Minnesota State Horticultural Society. In its early years, the society was a small, male-dominated organization focused on fruit ...","searchtext":"The year 2016 marked the 150th anniversary of the Minnesota State Horticultural Society. In its early years, the society was a small, male-dominated organization focused on fruit production. Its mission shifted to become more educational as members taught each other, and the public, how to use plants to enhance their environments. In 1866, John Harris from La Crescent displayed twenty varieties of apples at the Minnesota State Fair, held in Rochester. His successful apple crop followed many attempts by growers to develop hardy apples and other fruit that would survive the state’s harsh winter. During the fair, the growers formed the Minnesota Fruit Growers Association. They set one-dollar annual membership dues and elected Daniel A. Robertson of St. Paul as their president. The organization’s name changed to the Minnesota Horticultural Society in 1868. Gradually, the society’s focus began to evolve from fruit to broader horticultural interests. In 1873, the organization’s name changed again to the Minnesota State Horticultural Society (MSHS). With legislative funding, MSHS began publishing the Minnesota Horticulturist in 1894. In 2000, the magazine’s name changed to the Northern Gardener, and it became the longest-published magazine in Minnesota. Topics of discussion during the early years were much the same as they are 150 years later. Members met to talk about soils, mulches, frost and winter damage to crops, varieties grown, pruning, crop yields, wind protection, and grafting. At an 1886 convention, one discussion focused on the challenging climate of Minnesota, with its temperature variation of 139 degrees. One speaker pointed out its similarity to that of central Russia, where a variety of apples and other fruit were successfully grown. Early in its history, MSHS collaborated with the state legislature and emergent University of Minnesota to develop and promote horticulture throughout the state. In 1878, the legislature provided $2,000 to purchase 116 acres for growing hardy hybrid apple and other fruit trees. In 1907, the legislature appropriated $16,000 to purchase a fruit-breeding farm for the University of Minnesota with the approval and ongoing oversight of MSHS. A 1915 brochure listed the following benefits of MSHS membership. They included a 536 page-book titled Trees, Fruits, and Flowers of Minnesota and a forty-page monthly copy of the Minnesota Horticulturist. Members also received several new fruit trees or plants every year. At the time, a lifetime membership was ten dollars. The annual plant membership benefit continued until 1948, when the mailing costs incurred by sending plants to thousands of members ended the program. Over the years, the program aided in expanding membership and testing new plant varieties in all areas and hardiness zones of the state. In the 1920s, MSHS membership grew to include amateur gardeners and garden societies. By 1959, it grew to 11,486 individuals and over 450 societies. These included florists; greenhouse, vegetable, and fruit growers; nurserymen; and homeowners. World War II prompted the government and MSHS to promote victory gardens to grow vegetables in home gardens to help address local food shortages and malnutrition. In 1942, an article by E. M. Hunt in the Minnesota Horticulturist reported that the government asked Minnesota citizens to plant 194,900 home gardens, an increase of 34,000 from the prior year. In 1955, an increased interest in ornamental plant material led the Society to help raise funds for an arboretum. In 1958, the Society’s donation of 160 acres and $25,000 to the University of Minnesota, along with a promise of on-going support, contributed to the development of the University of Minnesota Landscape Arboretum in Chaska. Since 1989, the Minnesota Green program has coordinated donations of plant materials and tools to support a variety of community projects, including vegetable gardens and efforts to beautify public spaces. In 2008, the Garden-in-a-Box program began supplying garden kits, knowledge, and resources to communities so that low-income families and children could learn how to grow vegetables in a raised bed. In addition to the community programs, the Society offers classes and participates in home and garden shows. It also exhibits at the Minnesota State Fair, trains flower show judges, provides speakers on horticulture-related topics, and offers travel tours. Through the years, the society’s focus changed as the population became more urban and interests expanded to growing vegetables, lawns, shrubs, native plants, pollinators, and organic crops.","src":"https://www3.mnhs.org/hubfs/Dakota-2024/Images/HS.1890s.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246091,"name":"Agriculture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/minnesota-state-horticultural-society"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of downtown Hanover seen from the Hennepin County side of the Crow River, ca. late 1800s.","author":[{"name":"Mary Coons","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/mary-coons"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"February 27, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Founding of Hanover","postbody":"In 1891, homesteaders in Hanover realized their dream of officially incorporating their farming community. It had been thirty-six years since Jacob Vollbrecht, a German immigrant, first ...","searchtext":"In 1891, homesteaders in Hanover realized their dream of officially incorporating their farming community. It had been thirty-six years since Jacob Vollbrecht, a German immigrant, first arrived by canoe from St. Anthony Falls (later Minneapolis) after coming to the area from New Orleans. Jacob staked his land claim in Minnesota Territory and made the area his home. He and his brother William, who followed in the next year, are credited with founding the village of Vollbrecht Mills, later renamed Hanover. Two resources lured Vollbrecht to Minnesota Territory: fertile farmland lying close to bodies of water and the Big Woods. Woodlands supplied cheap fuel, firewood for warmth, building materials for homes and barns, fencing for livestock, an abundance of nuts and berries, tree sap for making maple sugar and syrup, and plenty of wild game. In 1856, when Vollbrecht first stepped ashore at the future site of Hanover, Minnesota was not yet a state; Wright County had only been officially established the year before. In 1862, the U.S. government’s Homestead Act granted acreage to anyone over the age of twenty-one who promised to build a house and live on the land for at least five years. This policy, in part, enticed Germans, many of whom were farmers, to emigrate to America and Minnesota Territory. As more German families arrived in the 1870s, the town prospered. Its citizens began to seriously consider incorporating the village. The General Village Act of 1883 created a multi-step process. First, residents submitted a petition for incorporation to their district court. A judge then issued the order of incorporation, which was followed by a special election to confirm that the townsite wished to incorporate. In 1885, a change in the law transferred the responsibility of hearing and ruling on the incorporation petitions from the district court to the board of county commissioners. Certain criteria were required for incorporation, including a town census of at least 200 and land deeded by the owners to the townsite. On August 29, 1891, following the completion of the Wright County surveyors’ plat, town homeowners signed their names in joint agreement to confer their individual plats to form the “townsite of Hanover”. Documentation of the Plat of Hanover townsite indicates that those individuals who signed their names jointly agreed to grant public use of the town’s streets and alleys. They also agreed that Bridge Street would extend from the bridge over the Crow River to a point in the center of Main Street, where an iron monument would be erected at ground level. A deed laying out the new town’s boundaries was signed by its “owners and proprietors”: Herman Vollbrecht and his wife, Johanna; Henry Vollbrecht and his wife, also named Johanna; Johanna Vollbrecht, William Vollbrecht’s widow; George and Barbara Strunk; Edward and Augusta Strunk; William H. and Amelia Vollbrecht; and Max and Eliza Saenger. According to the May 16, 1891 Minnesota census, the rural community recorded 206 residents in that year, thus satisfying the final incorporation requirement. Following enumeration and the subsequent incorporation election in September 1891, Hanover’s officials presented a petition signed by thirty-four residents to county commissioners asking that the village be incorporated. The Wright County commissioners approved the election results on October 9, 1891, and Hanover, Minnesota was officially recognized. Jacob’s brother William was not alive to witness the event; he had died in 1889 at the age of seventy-three. In October 2016, the city of Hanover commemorated its 125th anniversary.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/downtown Hanover seen from Hennepin Cty side.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246079,"name":"Cities and Towns","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/founding-hanover"},{"alt":"Image #1","author":[{"name":"Janna L. Dinkel","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/janna-l-dinkel"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"February 24, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"1905","name":"Crookston City Hall","postbody":"At the southeast corner of Crookston’s historic downtown business district stands the old city hall, built in 1899 to house the booming city’s police department, fire department, and ...","searchtext":"At the southeast corner of Crookston’s historic downtown business district stands the old city hall, built in 1899 to house the booming city’s police department, fire department, and government offices. In 1898 the city of Crookston was growing in prominence as a railroad and lumbering town. As its population neared 7,000, officials recognized a need to expand city services. The architect chosen to design the city’s central public building, Emil H. Strassburger, presented his plans for approval in 1899. Born in Germany in 1853, Strassburger had emigrated first to San Antonio, Texas. He and three other German-born architects, Emil Ulrici, Albert Zschocke, and Herman Kretz, all moved from San Antonio to Minnesota between 1883 and 1877. They left their mark by designing many buildings in St. Paul. Strassburger moved to Crookston in 1899 and set up an office in the Fournet Block. He would go on to build at least two other business in Crookston: the Rolsch Block and the Minneapolis Brewing Company building. The city hall building Strassburger designed at 123 South Broadway was fifty feet wide and 130 thirty feet in depth. It was two stories high and built of Minneapolis pressed red brick. The original building featured a pyramidal roof and a bell tower on the southwest corner of the building, as well as Sullivanesque floral designs in the front. It cost approximately $20,000 to build. The Crookston Fire Department, led by Crookston’s first fire chief, jeweler Tom Morris, was housed in the front of the building, in a room thirty-nine feet by fifty feet in size. There was originally room for four horses and a hose storage space on this floor. In the original design, the police department was housed at the back of the building and was reached by a long hallway on the north side. Two men’s jail cells and one women’s cell were located in this area. In the basement were a boiler room, a gymnasium for the firemen, and an area where up to fifty itinerant workers could find temporary quarters. A large room on the second floor, forty-seven by fifty-five feet in size, was the meeting room of the city council. This room featured an ornate metal ceiling and a skylight. Also on the second floor were a municipal courtroom, the judge’s office, the city clerk’s office, and a band room. Unfortunately, by 1905, the city hall building began to demonstrate serious structural problems, including sprung doors, cracked walls, and a sagging second story. The city called upon architect Bert Keck to come up with a plan to renovate the building. Keck’s suggested improvements were approved by the city council in March of 1907. During a major renovation, workers eliminated the original stairway and built an eight-foot-wide staircase from the north entrance on Broadway up to the second floor. They also added one truss as well as a brick wall running through the building across the council chamber. Together, these changes served to support the roof over the chamber. The police department began bringing its prisoners to their offices via the Fletcher Street entrance. In addition, the fire department now provided second-floor sleeping rooms for the firemen. Gradually, the city hall was abandoned as a public building. The fire department received new quarters in 1968, followed by the police department and city offices by 1979. After the city offices moved, the local paper chronicled a discussion on what should be done with the vacant old city hall. Although some reportedly considered the building an eyesore, others wished to keep it alive to preserve a piece of Crookston’s history. It became part of Crookston’s Historic Commercial District and was named on the National Registry of Historic Places in 1984. The building was purchased by Eickof Construction for business purposes in 1979, and the pyramidal roof and bell tower were removed about this time. In 2006, Larry and Ellen Leake purchased the building and began using it as a gift shop, allowing most of the historic features of the building to be preserved.","src":"https://www3.mnhs.org/hubfs/Image%20%231.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/crookston-city-hall"},{"alt":"Colorized postcard depicting the Murray County Fairgrounds in Slayton, 1912.","author":[{"name":"Anita Talsma Gaul","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/anita-talsma-gaul"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"February 22, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Murray County Fair","postbody":"The first Murray County Fair was held in 1880. From 1884 through 1898 there were rival fairs, one in Currie and one in Slayton. Each claimed to be the official county fair, but both were ...","searchtext":"The first Murray County Fair was held in 1880. From 1884 through 1898 there were rival fairs, one in Currie and one in Slayton. Each claimed to be the official county fair, but both were discontinued at the turn of the century. In 1912 the Murray County Fair returned and has been held annually (with two exceptions) since that year. The first effort to hold a fair in Murray County began in 1878 with the formation of the Murray County Agricultural Society (MCAS). Two years later, in 1880, the society hosted the first annual fair in Avoca. The second annual fair was also held in Avoca, but rainy weather and poor road conditions reduced attendance. Until 1885 the fair was held in either Avoca or Currie. The MCAS established its official fairgrounds in Currie and held subsequent fairs there. Although Currie was designated the original seat of Murray County in 1873, citizens agitated in the 1880s to make Slayton the county seat. County residents fought over the issue at the polls and in the courts until the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled in Slayton’s favor in June 1890. Slayton also fought to become the site of the annual county fair. In 1884 Slayton residents formed a rival organization to the MCAS called the Murray County Agricultural and Mechanical Fair Association (MCAMFA). They held their own fair in Slayton in September of that year. For the next fifteen years, rival fairs competed in the county. One was hosted by the MCAS in Currie, another by the MCAMFA in Slayton. Both claimed to be the Murray County Fair. This situation continued through 1898—the last year the MCAS held a fair in Currie. As the new county seat, the city of Slayton had grown to become the commercial center of Murray County. As the city of Slayton had grown, so had its fair. By 1898 the Slayton Fair was the bigger and more well-attended event. It was no longer financially feasible for the MCAS to hold a fair in Currie, particularly since the state had awarded subsidy money to the MCAMFA and not the MCAS. The MCAMFA and the city of Slayton had won the battle for the Murray County Fair, but it was a short-lived victory. A lack of popular support led the MCAMFA to discontinue its fair after 1899. For twelve years there was no fair at all in the county. In 1912, however, a coalition of county residents, businessmen, and county commissioners reorganized the Murray County Agricultural Society, purchased thirty-six acres for new fairgrounds in Slayton, and restored the county fair. The society has hosted the fair every year since then (with a few exceptions). Fairs in the early twentieth century featured vaudeville-style shows, baseball games, carnival rides and games, and displays of open-class exhibits. Local Boys and Girls Clubs (the forerunners of 4-H) informally showed their pig projects for the first time in 1918. The 4-H program was officially founded in 1924, and in 1925 the Agricultural Society formally invited 4-H members to exhibit their club projects at the fair. 4-H has been an important feature of the Murray County Fair ever since. Drought, depression, and war reduced the size and scale of the fair in the 1930s and 1940s, yet it continued annually with just two exceptions. Due to wartime shortages, the fair was cancelled in 1942, the year after US entry into World War II. It was cancelled again in 1946 due to the polio epidemic. As popular entertainment tastes changed over the century, so did the fair. Beginning in the 1950s, musical acts, tractor pulls, demolition derbies, and enduro races replaced vaudeville shows and baseball games as grandstand entertainment. In the 1960s and 1970s, new buildings including a sheep barn (1968), 4-H exhibit building (1964), livestock arena (1963), FFA Farmyard (1973), and a commercial building (1979) were added to the fairgrounds. Construction of new buildings slowed during the 1980s and 1990s but rebounded in the twenty-first century. Planners added a new horse barn in 2002, a new 4-H building in 2005, and a new grandstand in 2008. Despite a declining number of farms and overall population in the region, the Murray County Fair remains a popular attraction, drawing thousands of attendees each year.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/1912 Fairgrounds.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246091,"name":"Agriculture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246054,"name":"Sports and Recreation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/murray-county-fair"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of a Williams Electric Kitchen model, ca. 1938. Photographed by the Lee Brothers.","author":[{"name":"Linda A. Cameron","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/linda-cameron"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"February 15, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Rural Electrification Administration in Minnesota","postbody":"On May 11, 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 7037 to create the Rural Electrification Administration (REA), a New Deal public relief program. The program provided ...","searchtext":"On May 11, 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 7037 to create the Rural Electrification Administration (REA), a New Deal public relief program. The program provided $1 million for federal loans to bring electric service to rural areas. It revolutionized life in rural Minnesota and across the country. Before the REA, there were pockets of rural electric service around Minnesota. In 1914, farmers in Yellow Medicine County formed the Stony Run Light and Power Company, one of the first electric cooperatives in the country. By December of that year, twenty-six farms had power obtained from the Granite Falls central power station. Farmers on the line paid for all equipment, including poles, line, transformers, and meters, at a per-farm cost of $400 to $750. By 1921 the number of farms on the line grew to fifty. Annual fees ranged from $30 to $75, depending on power usage. The Division of Agricultural Engineering at the University of Minnesota began a groundbreaking experiment in rural electrification in 1923. Known as the Red Wing Project, the program brought electricity to nine farms in Burnside Township near Red Wing and furnished electric agricultural and household equipment. Believed to be the first rural electrification project of its kind in the world, the study provided data on the impact of electricity on both farm economy and quality of life. Its success prompted twenty-three other states to conduct similar projects. The 1930 census reported 185,255 farms in Minnesota with 895,349 people living on them. Of that number, 23,342 farm homes had gas or electric lighting. Most families used kerosene lanterns in the house and in outbuildings and lived without indoor plumbing. Even so, by 1934, 6.8 percent of Minnesota||s farms had central station electrical service. Commercial power companies showed reluctance to pursue rural customers due to the high cost of building power lines. They believed that rural electrification would not be profitable. Farms with central station service paid a high price for electricity. Average rates ranged from ten cents to fifteen cents, per kilowatt hour for lighting, and ten cents for farm power service, beyond the reach of many farm families in the Great Depression. As a result, less than 11 percent of American farms had electric service in 1935 compared with 90 percent of city residents. U.S. Senator Henrik Shipstead of Minnesota understood his rural neighbors|| desire for affordable electric service. He too wanted service for his cabin on Lake Irene in Douglas County and advocated in Washington for reasonable rates for rural customers in 1934. He gained the support of President Roosevelt, who created the Rural Electrification Administration. The new, temporary New Deal agency was tasked with distributing loans to meet the demand for electric service on farms. The lack of support from commercial power companies prompted groups of farmers to work together to organize electric cooperatives. Each co-op||s board of directors drew up articles of incorporation and bylaws and registered with the State of Minnesota. The REA encouraged the inclusion of women directors, but only Beltrami Electric Cooperative in Bemidji and Wild Rice Electric Cooperative in Mahnomen had female members on their original boards. Once established, the co-ops applied for long-term loans from the REA. The funding covered the construction of generating plants, transmission lines, and wiring of homes and outbuildings. Farmers could use the money to purchase milking machines, cream separators, bale lifters, and other electric equipment and tools. The loans also covered the installation of indoor plumbing and the purchase of such labor-saving household items as refrigerators, washing machines, and electric irons. In spite of these benefits, many farmers were reluctant to join a cooperative. At the height of the Great Depression, many could not afford the price of shares at two to five dollars each plus the monthly charge for electricity. Some worried that the government would hold them personally liable for the loan. Others lacked confidence in the relatively new technology or thought it unnecessary to their operations. On September 13, 1935, the Meeker Cooperative Light and Power Association (MCLPA) became the first REA co-op organized in Minnesota. Nearly seven hundred farmers signed up at five dollars per share within twenty-seven days of incorporation. The following February the co-op received a $450,000 loan, and by November 28 of that year it powered up the first REA lines in the state. Taking a cue from an electrified farm project set up in the eastern United States, the MCLPA went on to establish a demonstration farm on the property of Charles Ness. Appliance and farm equipment manufacturers furnished sixty-seven pieces of equipment for the purpose of sharing the benefits of electricity with local farmers. The Ness family hosted 2,000 people at the farm during its grand opening on June 12, 1937. Within two years, more than 34,000 people had visited the farm from around the United States and abroad. Another early Minnesota REA co-op, the Douglas County Cooperative Light and Power Association (later the Runestone Electric Association), was incorporated in November 1935. Farmers paid $2.50 per share to join. On July 1, 1936, the co-op received a $50,000 REA loan at 2 percent interest to build fifty-six miles of power lines. Electricity reached the first forty-five farms – and Senator Shipstead||s cottage – in September 1937. The initial success of the program prompted Congress to pass the Rural Electrification Act on May 20, 1936. This measure made the REA a permanent agency. Three years later the REA became part of the Department of Agriculture. By 1939 the cost to construct one mile of rural power line dropped from about $2,000 to $600, spurring the rapid expansion of rural electrification. The 1940 U.S. Agricultural Census reported that 30 percent of farms in Minnesota had electricity. Just five years later, that number grew to 79.7 percent. The Census Bureau stopped including statistics on farms with electricity in 1959, and by 1963, 99 percent of all farms in the United States reportedly had power. Rural electrification has had a huge impact on Minnesota||s farm economy and the rural standard of living. Electricity found many uses on farms that helped to increase productivity, raise farm income, and boost the local economy. Electric motors drove milking machines, making it easier for farmers to manage larger herds and increase milk production. Motor-powered pumps enabled irrigation, which helped to increase crop yields and encouraged crop diversification. Electric lighting improved poultry operations by contributing to a significant increase in egg production. Better illumination on the farm helped to prevent accidents. Farm families enjoyed more leisure time and physical comfort. Electric lighting made it possible to read, sew, and do other activities at night. Brighter light helped to prevent eyestrain and had a positive effect on residents|| mental health. Indoor plumbing with hot and cold running water saved time spent hauling water from a hand pump and eliminated cold, dark trips to an outhouse. Electric ranges meant less time spent chopping wood. Electric refrigeration ended the need for cutting and hauling ice and provided safer food storage. Clothes washers and electric irons made laundry day less labor-intensive. Electric radios and telephones connected once-isolated farm families with the wider world. The government abolished the Rural Electrification Administration in 1994, and the Rural Utilities Service took over the REA||s functions. Forty-five electric distribution co-ops continue to serve Minnesota||s rural areas.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/GT2.23 p22.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246091,"name":"Agriculture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246052,"name":"Science and Technology","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/rural-electrification-administration-minnesota"},{"alt":"Michelle Leon, Lori Barbero, and Kat Bjelland perform at a warehouse party, 1989. Photographed by Katie O’Brien.","author":[{"name":"Lizzie Ehrenhalt","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/lizzie-ehrenhalt"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"February 13, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Babes in Toyland (band)","postbody":"Babes in Toyland grew out of the Minneapolis punk scene to become one of the most visible “alternative” bands of the 1990s. In their recordings and live performances, they honed an ...","searchtext":"Babes in Toyland grew out of the Minneapolis punk scene to become one of the most visible “alternative” bands of the 1990s. In their recordings and live performances, they honed an abrasive, commanding sound that attracted fans from across the United States and Europe. The band’s first lineup came together in 1986 with four members: Kat Bjelland, Lori Barbero, Cindy Russell, and Chris Holetz. They named themselves after the movie musical Babes in Toyland—one of Barbero’s childhood favorites. After a few months, Russell and Holetz left the band. Bassist Michelle Leon soon joined, and in 1987, the trio played their first show in the basement of a Minneapolis art gallery. Over time, they became regular performers at venues like the Cabooze and the 7th Street Entry. In contrast to their innocent name, Babes in Toyland’s music was mature, incisive, and aggressive. Bjelland’s lyrics sketched out vivid, sometimes violent images that dealt with sex, pain, assault, and anger. Her vocals—which ranged from a whisper to a full-throated scream—complemented Leon’s solid bass lines and Barbero’s urgent drumming. By 1989, Bjelland, Barbero, and Leon were touring the United States to support Babes in Toyland’s first single, “Dust Cake Boy” (backed with “Spit to See the Shine”). The song appeared on their 1990 debut album, Spanking Machine, along with “He’s My Thing.” Within months, DJs were playing both tracks on college radio stations. The band toured throughout 1990, opening for Sonic Youth in Europe and Skinny Puppy in the United States. English producer John Peel named Spanking Machine one of his favorite albums of the year. In 1990 and 1991, he recorded sessions with Babes in Toyland at BBC studios for his influential radio show. The song “To Mother” (from the 1991 EP of the same name) reached the top of the UK indie chart. Babes in Toyland were among the first of their peers to sign to a major label. After releasing both Spanking Machine and To Mother on the independent, Minneapolis-based label Twin/Tone (and on the Southern label in Europe), they contracted with Reprise, a division of Warner Brothers Records. As the band’s visibility grew, it attracted more fans—and misleading media coverage. Many journalists incorrectly assumed that the Babes were associated with riot grrrl, a punk feminist movement based in Washington, D.C., and Olympia, Washington. Others called them grunge, kinderwhore, and foxcore—labels the women rejected. In reality, the band was influenced by Midwest and West Coast punk groups, including Cows and the Wipers. They also drew on the support of the close-knit Minneapolis punk community. Between tours, they returned to Minnesota to play to home-town venues, revisit old haunts like the CC Club and Joe’s Chicken Shack, and reconnect with the local scene. After Leon left Babes in Toyland in early 1992 during the recording of their second album, Maureen Herman replaced her. Because the two bassists’ styles were noticeably different, some tracks were rerecorded. Fontanelle, produced by Bjelland and Lee Ranaldo and with sleeve art by Cindy Sherman, proved to the group’s best-selling record. The first track, “Bruise Violet,” became one of their most recognizable songs. MTV featured its music video on a 1993 episode of Beavis & Butthead as well as in its regular programming. The band recorded their third full-length album, Nemesisters, for Reprise in 1995. Working with Tim Mac as producer, they recorded twelve original songs (including the hit “Sweet 69”) and two covers: Eric Carmen’s “All By Myself” and Sister Sledge’s “We Are Family.” Herman left the band in 1996; Leon reunited with Bjelland and Barbero to perform in 1996 and 1997. Bjelland and Barbero continued playing as a trio with bassist Jessie Farmer before parting ways in 2001. By that year, in addition to three full-length albums, Babes in Toyland had released two EPs, seven singles, seven music videos, and eight compilation records. In 2015, after a hiatus of eighteen years, Bjelland, Barbero, and Herman reunited to play to a few hundred fans at a bar outside of Palm Springs, California. A sold-out performance at the Roxy in Los Angeles followed. In May, they launched an American and European tour that included an appearance at Rock the Garden, an annual summer concert at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/1989_performance.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/babes-toyland"},{"alt":"Elmer Uggen, music faculty, as shown in the 1926 Red River Aggie yearbook from the Northwest School of Agriculture.","author":[{"name":"Amy Larson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/amy-larson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"February 08, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Uggen, Elmer George (1891–1949)","postbody":"Elmer George Uggen was a musician, composer, conductor, educator, and music store owner who entertained American troops abroad during World War I with his score for the play “War is Hell.” ...","searchtext":"Elmer George Uggen was a musician, composer, conductor, educator, and music store owner who entertained American troops abroad during World War I with his score for the play “War is Hell.” He left a mark in Northwest Minnesota with the original words and music for “Crookstonian,” a march used as the official anthem of Crookston. Uggen was born in Calmar, Iowa, on October 29, 1891, to Erick and Dena (Hagen) Uggen. His family moved to St. Paul when he was a teenager. In 1914, Uggen started his musical career as a violin instructor and bass player at the North Dakota Agricultural College in Fargo. On March 20, 1915, he left for Chicago to study violin at the Metropolitan Conservatory of Music. He refined his skills under the instruction of two prominent violinists—Richard Czerwonky, former concertmaster of the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, and Harry Diamond. Uggen joined the Army on June 4, 1917, just two months after the United States entered World War I. With a rank of musician, second class, he served as assistant band leader of the First Infantry. Uggen brought entertainment to the soldiers with “War is Hell,” a play put on for troops throughout Germany. He composed, arranged, and conducted all the music for the eighteen-piece orchestra. They performed at the palace of the Prince of Wied for Generals John Pershing and Hunter Liggett. Uggen returned home in August of 1919. Back in St. Paul, Uggen worked as a music instructor and performed in the Auditorium Theatre Orchestra in Minneapolis. He also traveled with the Million Dollar Band as a guest violin accompanist. Uggen was lauded as a highlight of the performances, “considered by many to be worth the price of admission to the concerts.” In 1920, Uggen opened the Crookston Music House, selling pianos to residents of Northwest Minnesota. He also worked in the music department at the Northwest School of Agriculture. There he met Lucille Dokken, a piano professor. On July 28, 1924, he and Lucille married. Uggen sold the Crookston Music House and he and his wife set sail on the Empress of Asia on November 20, 1924. They made their way to Manila, the Philippines, to meet Uggen’s brother Arthur. Arthur owned Manila’s Lyric Music House; the Uggens went to help his business while Arthur visited the United States. However, they did not enjoy life on the island and returned to Minnesota in 1925. Uggen went back to work at the Northwest School of Agriculture as bandmaster and orchestra director. During this time, Uggen wrote the words and music to “Crookstonian.” The piece was commissioned for use at local gatherings, with the hope that all residents would learn the words and music to sing along. The march, in 2/4 time, sings the praises of the community’s work ethic and spirit. “Crookstonian” was printed in 1927 and sold in Crookston by women’s club organizations. Uggen was thanked for “the quality of his booster masterpiece” by the community in the Crookston Daily Times. The six-page sheet music also includes a history of Crookston and a variety of photos highlighting the city’s major sights. In 1929, Uggen edited “Crookstonian” and dedicated the piece to the Northwestern Minnesota Singers Association, who sang it at their winter concert. He added an orchestral arrangement and revised the text to make it specific to the choral group. Popplers Music of Grand Forks, where Uggen was then working as a department manager, donated the reprinted sheet music. In the early 1930s, the Uggens moved from Grand Forks to Fargo. Uggen sold band instruments for Conn Educational Bureau, then moved to Moorhead and became the band conductor at Moorhead High School. In 1937, the Uggens made their way to Minneapolis. Uggen held positions as salesman, vice president, and educational director at the Paul A. Schmitt Music Company. Several of Uggen’s arrangements for band were published by the Paul A. Schmitt Music Company, including “Built On a Rock (Fantasia On a Chorale)” by L. M. Lindeman; “Ocean Waves” and “Casey’s Old Time Waltz” by Casey A. Aslakson; and “Schmitt’s Playwell Trio and Quartet Folio”. Uggen died on June 30, 1949, at the age of fifty-seven, of coronary thrombosis. He is buried in Lakewood Cemetery in Minneapolis.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Elmer Uggen, Bandmaster and Orchestra Director.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/uggen-elmer-george-1891-1949"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of the Minnesota Freedom Riders on July 26, 1961.","author":[{"name":"Paul Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/paul-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"February 06, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Minnesota Freedom Riders","postbody":"The Freedom Rides of 1961 began with thirteen riders traveling on two buses through the South. Their goal was to end race segregation in interstate bus travel. The Rides grew to over fifty ...","searchtext":"The Freedom Rides of 1961 began with thirteen riders traveling on two buses through the South. Their goal was to end race segregation in interstate bus travel. The Rides grew to over fifty journeys and other actions, and attracted 436 Riders; six of them were from Minnesota. On June 11, 1961, six young Minnesotans took a Greyhound bus from Memphis to Jackson, Mississippi. All were white, but at the Jackson bus terminal they went straight to the waiting room marked “colored.” Police arrested them at the lunch counter inside on a charge of breach of peace. After staying in jail overnight, they were tried, convicted, fined, and sentenced to four months in jail. They were Freedom Riders, part of the project led by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), to take nonviolent action against racial segregation in the South. The Freedom Rides had their origin in the Journey of Reconciliation led by CORE and Bayard Rustin in 1947. Rustin and company took a bus journey through the Upper South, disobeying Jim Crow laws and customs. Then came Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the Montgomery bus boycott (1956), the Greensboro lunch counter sit-in (1960), and many similar events. In 1961, CORE, now led by James Farmer, decided to try again. They started with an experiment: thirteen people traveling by bus from Washington, D.C., to New Orleans, May 4–17. In Alabama, that journey exploded, with the bus set afire, riders beaten, and mobs abetted by the local police. The violence did not produce the desired effect; instead, the Freedom Rides multiplied. The Minnesota Freedom Riders were part of a second, expanded stage of the effort. Four were students at the University of Minnesota: Zev Aelony (the organizer and the one most deeply read in the theory and practice of non-violence), Claire O’Connor, Robert Baum, and Eugene Uphoff. Marvin Davidov, twenty-nine, was beginning a long career as an activist. The sixth Minnesotan was David Morton, whom Aelony called the university’s resident beatnik. CORE had made Jackson, a crucial Southern state capital, a special target. Fourteen groups of Freedom Riders had preceded the Minnesotans to Jackson—nine by bus, five more by air and rail. All 104 of those Riders had been arrested. They were foot soldiers in a battle of attrition between Freedom Ride leadership and the State of Mississippi. The organizers hoped to overwhelm local law enforcement with numbers. In this case, the authorities answered not with violence but with process: trials, maximum sentences, jail terms, appeals bonds, and court dates. After a few days in jail, the Minnesota men were transferred to the state penitentiary at Parchman, a prison famous for its harshness. They were held at first in maximum security, two to a six-by-nine cell, with no exercise, no visitors, and only Bibles to read. When it was hot, there was no ventilation; on cool nights the guards chilled them with fans. When they sang, the wardens took away their mattresses. Later, as more Riders were arrested, prison authorities moved them to dormitories. O’Connor spent about two weeks in jail. She was then transferred to Parchman’s women’s section, where she endured verbal abuse and a body-cavity search. She was released on July 3, the Minnesota men on July 24. All appealed their convictions and posted appeal bonds to pursue the strategy of stressing the Mississippi justice system. To stress them back, the court in Jackson required all Riders (by now 186) to return for new trials—two a day, starting August 15. A long standoff seemed likely. For the organizers, salvation of a sort came on September 21, 1961, when the Interstate Commerce Commission issued an order forbidding race discrimination on interstate buses and supporting facilities. This was victory; but it came from Washington, not Jackson. The Freedom Rides shifted focus to North Carolina (where Baum and Morton participated briefly) and ended in early December. The Minnesotans got on with their lives and educations. Uphoff eventually became a physician, O’Connor a community organizer, Aelony a businessman, and Baum a University of Minnesota bus driver. Davidov continued working as a political activist. Morton, according to Davidov, became Minnesota’s first hippie.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Freedom_riders_group_resized.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/minnesota-freedom-riders"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of U-Meet-Us, Black Senior Citizens Lounge, and Minneapolis Urban League, East 38th St and 4th Ave, Minneapolis, 1975.","author":[{"name":"Tina Burnside","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/tina-burnside"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"February 01, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Southside African American Community, Minneapolis","postbody":"Minneapolis historically has been home to a small but vibrant African American population. From the 1930s to the 1970s, an African American neighborhood flourished on the city’s Southside, ...","searchtext":"Minneapolis historically has been home to a small but vibrant African American population. From the 1930s to the 1970s, an African American neighborhood flourished on the city’s Southside, between East Thirty-Fourth and Forty-Sixth Streets and from Nicollet Avenue to Chicago Avenue. In the early twentieth century, restrictive housing covenants in deeds discriminated against Black people and limited them to living in certain areas. Homeowners and realtors refused to sell houses to them in white neighborhoods. As a result, three distinct Black neighborhoods developed in Minneapolis. The first two emerged on the near Northside and in Seven Corners. By the 1930s, African Americans had begun to move to South Minneapolis. They came along with an influx of Black people from southern states who were moving north in a demographic shift known as the “Great Migration.” The city’s third Black neighborhood developed on the Southside, between East Thirty-Fourth and Forty-Sixth Streets and from Nicollet Avenue to Chicago Avenue. The area, first populated by Swedes and Norwegians, now attracted many African Americans. In the 2010s, the Central, Bryant, and Regina neighborhoods make up what was historically known as the Southside. The Southside was a stable neighborhood of working and middle-class African Americans, many of whom owned their homes. Residents formed a tight-knit community with businesses, churches, and social clubs. The corridor along Fourth Avenue South was the Black community’s residential heart. Thirty-Eighth Street and Fourth Avenue was the center of the Black business district, with over twenty Black-owned businesses from the 1930s to the 1970s. One of the neighborhood’s first businesses was Dreamland Café, which opened in 1939 and was owned by Anthony B. Cassius. Later, Cassius operated a private club on the Southside called the Nacirema (“American” spelled backwards). Local artists performed at the Nacirema before they became famous, including Prince, Flyte Tyme (The Time), and Alexander O’Neal. Alvedia Smith, the daughter of Anthony and Florence Cassius, said the Southside was a nice neighborhood. Smith worked at Dreamland Café when she was a teenager, making sandwiches for customers. Her aunt owned Bea’s Beauty Shop, her father and uncle owned a real estate company, and her father was chairman of the Associated Negro Credit Union, which was established in 1937. Another pioneer Southside business was the 38th Street Delicatessen, owned by Donald (Pat) and Pearl Schofield. Sandra Schofield Miller said her father opened a bakery specializing in wedding cakes before closing it and opening the delicatessen in the 1940s. Miller and her sister, Marcia Schofield Dudley, worked at the restaurant, which was a community meeting place. Men stopped by for coffee in the mornings, and in the afternoons, students from Bryant Junior High ate the “blue plate special” lunch. Miller said out-of-town Black entertainers dined at the restaurant when they stayed with Black families on the Southside because they could not stay at white hotels downtown. Miller recalled that Frankie Lymon ate at the restaurant and kissed the back of her hand. The Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder (formerly the Minneapolis Spokesman and the St. Paul Recorder), the oldest continuously operated Black newspaper in Minnesota, was founded in 1934 by Cecil Newman. In 1958 it moved to 3744 Fourth Avenue South. In 2015, the Spokesman-Recorder building celebrated its eightieth anniversary and was designated a historic landmark. Construction of I-35W in 1959 razed more than fifty square blocks and divided Southside residents from one another. The neighborhood changed further in the 1980s and the 2000s, when it was negatively impacted by rising crime, harsh economic conditions, and the crack cocaine epidemic. The closing of the last local school, Central High School, in 1982, destroyed the neighborhood’s cohesiveness. All of the African American businesses closed except the Spokesman-Recorder. The demographics of the Central and Bryant neighborhoods changed as the white and Black populations decreased. The Hispanic population also increased, surpassing both the Black and white populations. In 2015, community members expressed interest in preserving the African American history in the neighborhood. The City of Minneapolis explored a historic designation for the Tilsenbilt Homes, a group of over fifty houses in the Bryant and Regina neighborhoods. They were built from 1954 to 1956 by Edward Tilsen and sold to Blacks with the assistance of Archie Givens and the Minneapolis Urban League. Another historic landmark in the neighborhood is the home of Lena O. Smith, who was the first female African American attorney in Minneapolis.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/MH5.9 MP5.3 p41.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056216,"name":"African Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246079,"name":"Cities and Towns","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/southside-african-american-community-minneapolis"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Socialist Workers Party members, ca.1941.","author":[{"name":"Anja Witek","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/anja-witek"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"January 30, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Smith Act Trial","postbody":"In 1941, Minneapolis leftists from the Socialist Workers Party and Teamsters union local 544 were accused of conspiracy to overthrow the government under the Alien Registration Act. ...","searchtext":"In 1941, Minneapolis leftists from the Socialist Workers Party and Teamsters union local 544 were accused of conspiracy to overthrow the government under the Alien Registration Act. Twenty-nine were indicted; eighteen were convicted and sentenced to prison. On June 28, 1940, the “Alien Registration Act” (or “Smith Act,” after its author, Virginia senator Howard W. Smith) was signed into law. In addition to requiring immigrant registration, the act outlawed “subversive activity”—that is, activity that seeks to undermine or overthrow the government from within. The first citizens accused of breaking this law were members of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and/or Teamsters local 544. Many SWP members had been leaders in the Minneapolis 1934 Truckers’ Strike and still held important union positions. J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI, worried that the SWP’s anti-war position and its ability to organize transportation workers threatened national security. If transportation workers were to strike, it could disrupt the national war effort. Hoover was given permission by the President to spy on those with leftist or communist politics. On June 27, 1941, FBI agents raided the SWP headquarters at 919 Marquette Avenue in Minneapolis and 138 East Sixth Street in St. Paul. On July 15, a federal grand jury indicted twenty-nine people for violating the Smith Act. The main defendants were James P. Cannon, Dr. Grace Carlson, Harry DeBoer, Farrell Dobbs, V. R. Dunne, Max Geldman, Albert Goldman, and Carl Skoglund. (Grant Dunne was also among the accused but committed suicide before the trial.) All the defendants had ties to the labor movement, mostly for involvement in the 1934 Minneapolis Truckers’ Strike and Works Progress Administration (WPA) strikes. The trial began on October 27, 1941, with twenty-eight defendants (the judge later dismissed charges against five). The prosecution, represented by Victor Anderson, began its case on October 29. They argued that the Trotskyists were using their influence in local 544 to disrupt the nation’s industrial sector as a precursor to revolution. They cited the existence of the “Union Defense Guard”—a unit formed to fight the fascist threat of the Silver Shirts—to argue that the defendants advocated violent resistance. According to Anderson, Marxist ideas were inherently seditious because they predicted and supported revolution. The defense, led by Goldman, argued that the socialists did not present a “clear and present danger” to the U.S. government. In the Supreme Court case of Whitney vs. California, Justices Brandeis and Holmes had found that citizens forfeited their right to free speech only if they presented a “clear and present danger.” The defense countered the accusation that they were planning violence by explaining their Marxist view that the fall of capitalism was inevitable and would involve violence. They did not advocate that violence; rather they predicted it. Furthermore, the SWP was a legitimate political party working within the government system. The accusation that their beliefs were illegal, they argued, was a violation of their first amendment rights to free speech. On December 1, 1941, after fifty-six hours of deliberation, the jury handed down its verdict. It acquitted five defendants and found the remaining eighteen guilty of alleging seditious speech, publications and associations. On December 8, the eighteen were sentenced to prison. The longest term served was sixteen months. During the appeals process, the eighteen spoke in public and raised funds through the Civil Rights Defense Committee (CRDC). Over two years, the CRDC took in $39,010 for defense and appeals. The defendants gained the support of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and more than a hundred labor unions and trade councils, representing over two million workers. Having lost their appeal to the Supreme Court, the guilty parties turned themselves in on December 31, 1943. Most went to Sandstone Federal Prison in Minnesota. Although some retired from political life after their release, Carlson, Dobbs and Dunne ran for office for the SWP. Through the early 1980s, the defendants sought a Presidential pardon. In 1981, Dobbs filed suit against the FBI for illegal surveillance; in 1986, after his death, the FBI admitted to its illegal acts.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/J1.6 r13_0.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246060,"name":"Crime and Punishment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246055,"name":"Labor","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/smith-act-trial"},{"alt":"Color image of the William Crooks locomotive, ca. 2000.","author":[{"name":"Aaron Hanson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/aaron-hanson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"January 25, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"St. Paul and Pacific Railroad","postbody":"The St. Paul and Pacific Railroad, or St. P & P, was one of Minnesota’s first major railroads. It was created in 1862 from the remnants of another bankrupt line and strengthened by ...","searchtext":"The St. Paul and Pacific Railroad, or St. P & P, was one of Minnesota’s first major railroads. It was created in 1862 from the remnants of another bankrupt line and strengthened by valuable land grants. It survived financial hardships to become a cornerstone of the Great Northern Railway system, a legendary transcontinental route and an integral part of Minnesota railroad history. The Minnesota territorial legislature issued a charter to the Minnesota and Pacific Railroad Company (M&P) in 1857. Construction of the line began the same year. The new railroad was to connect Stillwater and St. Paul through outlying communities. To the west, it would be built out to Breckenridge with a branch line extending to St. Cloud. The M&P was the first active railroad in Minnesota. The land grant it received from the territorial legislature—nearly 2,460,000 acres—ranked in the top ten of those awarded. However, finances were a problem from the beginning. The company lost money through speculation and was forced to sell its assets. It declared bankruptcy in 1860. The new state legislature purchased the M&P’s assets for $1,000. The company was reorganized in 1862 as the St. Paul & Pacific Railroad Company (St. P&P). Workers completed ten miles of track between St. Paul and St. Anthony but little else. The branch line reached Sauk Rapids in 1867, financed largely by bonds sold to Dutch investors. Only 210 miles of track were laid by 1865. Almost no track is recorded to have been built between 1867 and 1871. The Northern Pacific (NP) purchased the St. P & P in December 1870. When the NP was forced to declare bankruptcy after the Panic of 1873, one of its original chief stockholders bought it back. The NP’s Dutch investors, who had the line placed into receivership to little effect, held the majority of shares of St. P & P ownership. The line was significant for a number of firsts, despite its hardships. The wood-burning 4-4-0 locomotive William Crooks was the first railroad locomotive in the state. It hauled passengers between St. Paul and St. Anthony for an inaugural run in 1862 after being delivered upstream from La Crosse on the Mississippi River. The railroad attracted the attention of powerful investors for the potential that its land grants represented. Chief among them was steamboat magnate and Minnesota entrepreneur James J. Hill. Hill convinced other investors of the line’s potential and eventually formed a group to buy the St. P & P from the Dutch with a combined investment of $5.5 million dollars. The Dutch transferred their bonds to Hill’s investment group on March 13, 1878, thus giving up control of the company. Bonds were issued for renewed construction on the railroad. With the new bonds, the owner could receive up to $10,000 per mile of track completed. In February 1879, Hill’s group of investors bought out the Litchfield investor group, which had owned so much of the line since 1862. The St. P & P had showed a profit in excess of $500,000 for 1878. Two different courts permitted the company to exit bankruptcy status in 1879. The new investment group, having directed the St. P & P out of bankruptcy, formed a new entity to take over the company, and on May 23, 1879, they named it the St. Paul, Minneapolis and Manitoba Railway (St. P. M&M). The new company formally took over St. P & P assets in June 1879. A decade later, James J. Hill ushered in the era of the Great Northern Railway. He changed the name of the Minneapolis and St. Cloud Railway to the Great Northern on September 18, 1889. Ownership of the St. P. M&M, the Montana Central Railway, and other systems was transferred to the Great Northern on February 1, 1890. Most of the modest, original right of way of the St. P & P lives on in the twenty-first century as trackage of the BNSF Railway system, which is itself a large system created by a massive railroad merger in 1995.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/62.221.1.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246053,"name":"Transportation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/st-paul-and-pacific-railroad"},{"alt":"Color image of Iron Lake, Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, 2012.","author":[{"name":"Julia Lavanger","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/julia-lavanger"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"January 23, 2017","eraTag":[],"keydate":"","name":"Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW)","postbody":"The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness is located in the northern third of Superior National Forest. It is the most heavily used wilderness in the country, with about 250,000 visitors ...","searchtext":"The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness is located in the northern third of Superior National Forest. It is the most heavily used wilderness in the country, with about 250,000 visitors annually. The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW) has over 1,200 miles of canoe routes, over 1,000 lakes, twelve hiking trails, and more than 2,000 designated campsites. It also contains one of the largest contiguous areas of uncut forest left in the United States. Eagle Mountain, the highest point in Minnesota, at 2,301 feet, is within the BWCAW. Between 2.5 million and 10,000 years ago, glaciers from the last ice age shaped the lakes and rivers that the BWCAW became known for. Lakes and streams cover about 190,000 acres of its over-one-million-acre surface area. Before European exploration and immigration, Dakota, Ojibwe, and other Indigenous people lived on the lands that now make up the BWCAW. They lived off the large variety of plants, fish, and animals in this area, using canoes to navigate the vast network of lakes and streams. Around the seventeenth century, European explorers reached present-day northern Minnesota, followed by fur traders and French Canadian voyageurs. These groups also heavily utilized canoes in their travels. In 1902, the U.S. General Land Office set aside 500,000 acres of public lands as a forest reserve in northern Minnesota. In 1905, another 141,000 acres were set aside. Together, these lands became the Superior National Forest, dedicated by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1909. In 1926, the U.S. secretary of agriculture designated three roadless areas in the Superior National Forest. Four years later, Congress passed the Shipstead-Newton-Nolan Act, which prohibited the building of dams that would change the water levels of the border lakes region. It also banned logging within 400 feet of all shorelines. In 1934, President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the Quetico–Superior Committee to help the government protect and conserve the wilderness area. By 1936, due to boundary changes and new purchases, the federal government owned over two million acres of the Superior National Forest area. In 1938, the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) established the Superior Roadless Primitive Area. In 1948, the USFS also established a no-cut zone along the border. The same year, Congress passed the Thye–Blatnik Act, which allowed the government to purchase private holdings within the wilderness. In 1949, President Truman issued an executive order to designate an air-space reservation over the area. Inside the reservation, planes were barred from flying below 4,000 feet over the wilderness. The USFS changed the name of the Superior Roadless Primitive Area to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area in 1958. The National Wilderness Act was passed in 1964, and the BWCA became part of the National Wilderness Preservation System. A clause in the act allowed some logging and motor use within the wilderness to continue. In 1978, Congress enacted the BWCA Wilderness Act. The new legislation ended logging and snowmobiling, restricted mining, and allowed motorboat use on one fourth of the water area in the wilderness. In 1999, about 300,000 acres of the wilderness were damaged by a large blowdown of timber. Millions of trees blew down in the eighty to 100 mile-per-hour winds. In the early 2000s, PolyMet Mining Corp. and TwinMetals proposed open-pit and copper mines near the Boundary Waters wilderness. In 2013, an effort began to instate a federal ban on mining in the BWCA watershed. Out of this, a campaign called “Save the Boundary Waters” was created to work to protect the area from pollution caused by mining. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the BWCA faced controversy over conflicting ideas about how to use the wilderness. Since the early 1900s, it has been a popular fishing area. Many laws and acts of Congress prohibited the use of motorboats and airplanes, which provided easier access for recreational fishermen. Tourist resorts were also removed from the land within the wilderness after the Thye–Blatnik Act was passed. Many cities near the wilderness fought to bring the mining and logging industries back to the area. The Izaak Walton League and figures like Sigurd Olson were the primary preservation activists for the BWCA between the mid-nineteenth and twenty-first centuries.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/LakeGrant.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246054,"name":"Sports and Recreation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/boundary-waters-canoe-area-wilderness-bwcaw"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of John S. Bradstreet ca. 1900.","author":[{"name":"Katherine Goertz","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/katherine-goertz"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"January 20, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Bradstreet, John Scott (1845–1914)","postbody":"John Scott Bradstreet was a key tastemaker in early twentieth century Minnesota. As a designer of objects and interiors, he shaped the aesthetic tastes and parlors of the Twin Cities. ...","searchtext":"John Scott Bradstreet was a key tastemaker in early twentieth century Minnesota. As a designer of objects and interiors, he shaped the aesthetic tastes and parlors of the Twin Cities. Beyond his retail operations, Bradstreet’s work as an organizer and booster of the fine arts in Minneapolis was central to the development of art exhibitions and societies, and eventually led to the founding of the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Bradstreet was born on June 23, 1845, in Rowley, Massachusetts. In 1873, he moved to Minneapolis and began working for the furniture firm Barnard, Clark, and Cope. At the time, local decorative tastes tended toward the complicated flourishes of late Victorianism. Within a decade, Bradstreet would strongly influence these tastes and position himself at the center of the art world of Minnesota. The furniture sold by Barnard, Clark, and Cope was too old-fashioned and too ordinary for Bradstreet’s growing aesthetic vision. Bradstreet opened his own furniture store in 1875, selling furniture and decorations more in line with his interest in the Gothic Revival and English Arts and Crafts styles. After closing his store, he opened another in 1878, with Edmund Phelps, and another with different partners in 1884. Bradstreet split from his partners in the 1890s and started the solo operation John S. Bradstreet and Company in 1901. By then, Bradstreet’s interests had turned decidedly to the arts of Asia—Japan in particular. In 1903, Bradstreet’s showroom moved to an Italian-inspired residence on South Seventh Street. The building didn’t remain Italian inspired for long. Japan was the inspiration for the remodeled building, called the Minneapolis Crafthouse. The Crafthouse was Bradstreet’s gallery, sale floor, and museum. Aesthetically-minded Twin Citians crowded the rooms, and soon it became a tourist destination and cultural center for lectures and exhibitions. By the end of the decade, it was a large operation, with about eighty employees handling imports and creating objets de art, furniture, ceramics, and lighting fixtures. Visitors entered the Japanese-inspired grounds through a Japanese-style gate. The walls of the main hall were covered with Japanese frescoes, draped with imported gold textiles, and hung with paintings, prints, and carvings. The showroom next door was massive (fifty-six feet long) and stuffed with Bradstreet’s own pieces, reproductions of antiques, and imported Moorish, Middle Eastern, European, and Asian antiques. Of all that was displayed in the Crafthouse, Bradstreet is best known for his favorite and most distinctive product, a line of Japanese-inspired furniture and decorative objects called jin-di-sugi. His jin-di-sugi work was a synthesis of a Japanese carving technique with the American Arts and Crafts style, resulting in a distinctive curvilinear look based in natural forms. Today, many of the objects that once crowded the Crafthouse are recognized as part of American art history. Bradstreet was also a major player in the development of public art in Minnesota. In 1878, a hotel in Minneapolis hosted the city’s first real art exhibition. Bradstreet, enthusiastic about spreading the gospel of art and able to levy his relationships with the city’s elite, was involved with organizing and putting on the exhibition. His collection even provided an entire room filled with Asian art. Acting as a promoter, an organizer, a lender, and a donor for art in Minneapolis continued to be central to Bradstreet’s life. He was involved with the founding of the Minneapolis Fine Arts Society in 1883, with the many exhibitions put on by the Society, and, in 1915, with the founding of the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Bradstreet didn’t live to see the opening of the Institute. He died on August 10, 1914. Five months later, the John Scott Bradstreet Memorial Room opened with the rest of the Institute on January 7, 1915.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/por 18283 r1.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/bradstreet-john-scott-1845-1914"},{"alt":"Color image of the Sabathanites Drum Corps marching in parade in Minneapolis, ca. early 2000s. Photographed by Suluki Fardan.","author":[{"name":"Tina Burnside","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/tina-burnside"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"January 18, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Sabathanites Drum Corps","postbody":"The Sabathanites Drum Corps is the oldest existing African American drum corps in Minnesota. Started as a youth group in 1964, it has endured for decades, with some of its original members ...","searchtext":"The Sabathanites Drum Corps is the oldest existing African American drum corps in Minnesota. Started as a youth group in 1964, it has endured for decades, with some of its original members continuing to perform together for over fifty years. The Sabathanites Drum Corps was founded in 1964 as a youth organization affiliated with Sabathani Baptist Church, located at 3805 Third Avenue, in Minneapolis. Its pastor at that time, Rev. Stanley R. King, advocated for the church’s involvement in the community all week long—not just on Sundays. Thus, the Sabathanites Drum Corps was formed to give the youth in the neighborhood something to do and keep them out of trouble. To participate in the drum corps, members had to attend church at least once a month and maintain a C average in school. When the Sabathanites first started, they were led by Leon Lewis, a member of the Elks Ames Lodge Drum and Bugle Corps. The first Sabathanites corps had more than fifty members made up of youth from both South and North Minneapolis. They included snare, tenor, and bass drummers as well as bugle players and majorettes. Drummers said that before forming the Sabathanites, they listened to the Elks’ performances, then mimicked them by beating on makeshift drums created from garbage cans and cardboard boxes. Most of the drummers played by ear, but a few were also in their school bands. Northern States Power Company (NSP, later known as Xcel Energy) sponsored the Sabathanites, providing their instruments and uniforms. The Sabathanites were popular, and whenever they performed, they generated large crowds. On July 19, 1967, they performed in the Aquatennial Torchlight Parade in downtown Minneapolis. Hundreds of people marched and danced along with the group. The police—on high alert because of rumors of possible “riots”—overreacted and beat many people in the crowd, including some drummers. Later, violence broke out in North Minneapolis along Plymouth Avenue, where demonstrators set fires, threw rocks, and damaged properties. The Sabathanites denounced the police action and refused to perform in the Aquatennial parade—a protest that lasted forty-three years. On July 21, 2010, Minneapolis Mayor R. T. Rybak welcomed the group back to the Aquatennial parade and issued a proclamation declaring the day to be “Sabathanite Drum Corps Day in the City of Minneapolis.” Mayor Rybak encouraged Minneapolis residents to reflect on the Sabathanites’ history, perseverance, and strength, and called on all parade-goers to “get their groove on” to their music. The Sabathanites said they felt vindicated because they had not caused a riot in 1967 and were not doing anything wrong—just performing. The Sabathanites marched in the Aquatennial parade that night in honor of a long-time member who had recently passed away, and to inspire young people in the community. Throughout the years, the Sabathanites have performed across Minnesota at parades, competitions, grand openings, festivals, and celebrations. In 2014, they celebrated a milestone: their fiftieth anniversary. They were honored at the “Southside Back in the Day” celebration, held annually at Phelps Park in Minneapolis. People who lived or grew up on the Southside recalled hearing the Sabathanites practice every Saturday morning in the parking lot of Bryant Junior High (later Sabathani Community Center). In a tribute at the celebration, the Sabathanites were given an award stating, “We will never forget the feeling of pride in our heritage the Sabathanites helped to instill within our young hearts and minds.” While their numbers dropped over the years, in 2016 the Sabathanites continued to perform with some of their original members. They included Bernard Carter, Terry Danforth, Suluki Fardan, Jonathan Guilmant, Gary Hines, Gus Jenkins, Clarence Russell, Ira Russel, Walter Scott, Jr., and Maurice Tyner. In June 2016, the Sabathanites added a youth member, Xandrien Lyons.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/parade_2000s.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056216,"name":"African Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/sabathanites-drum-corps"},{"alt":"Color image of Derham Hall at St. Catherine University, July 26, 2009.","author":[{"name":"Sr. Joan Mitchell, CSJ","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/sr-joan-mitchell-csj"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"January 11, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"St. Catherine University","postbody":"St. Catherine’s University is a prestigious women’s university in St. Paul. Since opening in 1905, it has grown to include a student body of over 5,000, graduate programs, a Minneapolis ...","searchtext":"St. Catherine’s University is a prestigious women’s university in St. Paul. Since opening in 1905, it has grown to include a student body of over 5,000, graduate programs, a Minneapolis campus, and an extensive physical plant. The school’s inclusive atmosphere and diverse curriculum have made it one of the premier institutions of higher education in the United States. The College of St. Catherine opened its doors in 1905 to a handful of women students. All of them were housed and taught in a single building in what would become the Highland Park area of St. Paul. The school reached its first milestone in 1916 when it received full accreditation from the North Central Association (NCA). It did so despite its lack of the $500,000 endowment then required by the NCA. College dean (later president) Sister Antonia McHugh persuaded NCA officials to accept the contributed services of the Sisters of St. Joseph, who had founded and staffed the college, in place of a cash endowment. Sister Antonia showed her leadership during the building of the 800-seat Our Lady of Victory Chapel, one of Minnesota’s architectural jewels. In 1937, the school became the first Catholic college or university to be awarded with a chapter of Phi Beta Kappa (PBK), the country’s most prestigious honor society. It was only the third institution in Minnesota to acquire one (the University of Minnesota and Carleton College being the first). St. Catherine’s earned inclusion in PBK through its outstanding faculty and its commitment to the liberal arts. By the early 1930s, college enrollment had grown to nearly 600. Faculty held degrees from prestigious schools across the United States and Europe. Together, they implemented a curriculum featuring a full range of majors in the liberal arts and sciences. Career-oriented fields of study such as nursing, occupational and physical therapy, library science, business, and education all required a solid core of liberal arts training—a provision that continues to lend distinction to St. Catherine’s degrees in all fields. The college gained more recognition in the late 1930s when it was the only Catholic college among the twenty-two schools selected for the University of Chicago’s cooperative study to evaluate general education. Later in the decade, it also was the only Catholic college among the thirty-four selected by the American Council of Education to evaluate teacher education. The student body began to diversify in 1918, when two students from France enrolled. Students from across Europe, South and Central America, Asia, and the Middle East followed. In 1942, the college offered Japanese American women a chance to attend classes and avoid being sent to internment camps. In later decades, the college’s ambiance attracted women from Ethiopian, Hmong, and other immigrant groups. Outreach to non-traditional students expanded in 1979 with the introduction of Weekend College. It was Minnesota’s first baccalaureate program held in a weekend format for adult women (with no formal education beyond high school). At the time, 93 percent of adult women in the state were eligible. Curricular innovations included the Area Studies program, begun in the 1950s with funding from the Hill Family Foundation. In 1953, in collaboration with Hamline, Macalester, St. Thomas, and Augsburg, St. Catherine began offering interdisciplinary study of Russia, the Near East, East Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Faculty further extended college outreach by offering an Area Studies lecture series on KTCA-TV beginning in 1957. St. Mary’s Junior College, founded by the Sisters of St. Joseph in 1962, became the Minneapolis campus of St. Catherine’s in the mid-1980s.The new site enriched the curriculum with an array of two-year health-related programs. It also introduced innovative adaptations to the education of hearing-impaired students.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Derham Hall.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056210,"name":"Education","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246089,"name":"Religion and Belief","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/st-catherine-university"},{"alt":"Bert Keck as pictured in the Compendium of History and Biography of Polk County, published by W. H. Bingham and Company, 1916.","author":[{"name":"Janna L. Dinkel","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/janna-l-dinkel"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"January 09, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Keck, Bert D. (1876–1962)","postbody":"Bert D. Keck was an architect who moved to Crookston, Minnesota, in 1902. His Neo-classical and Romanesque designs for Crookston’s costliest and most significant public buildings changed ...","searchtext":"Bert D. Keck was an architect who moved to Crookston, Minnesota, in 1902. His Neo-classical and Romanesque designs for Crookston’s costliest and most significant public buildings changed the skyline of the town. Three of his structures are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Keck’s parents, Frederick and Susana (Harvey) Keck, immigrated to Louisa County, Iowa, in the 1850s, and later to Aledo, Illinois, where Bert grew up and attended school. Following high school, he studied architecture. He also learned the carpentry and construction businesses from the ground up, supervising construction crews at the young age of seventeen. In 1902, Keck and his wife Elsa (Hansen) moved to Crookston, Minnesota, a thriving railroad, lumbering, and agricultural center in the Red River Valley. Many of the downtown’s historic buildings were already in place, but Keck was able to add to the beauty of the town with his unique designs for hotels, business blocks, public buildings, and private residences. Keck opened an architectural office when he arrived. Soon, he became involved not only in business, but also in Crookston’s social and educational circles. At various times, Keck wrote letters to the editor of the local paper about the role of local architects, expressing his belief that building beautiful, structurally sound homes added to the growth and status of a community. Keck’s own home at 716 North Broadway was built in 1908 and was featured in Western Architect magazine in April of 1912. The article featured the floor plan and a description of his home. Keck was also responsible for the design of at least three other elegant homes in Crookston. Like his own home, two of these were influenced by the Arts and Crafts style, and were built for businessman Felix Fournet and realtor Clarence Lumpkin. In addition, Keck built a large two-story home for Crookston’s early bandleader, G. Oliver Riggs. While his earliest designs in Crookston were for hotels and business buildings, including the Morris Building for jeweler Tom Morris, Keck’s legacy rests on the public buildings he designed, some of which became landmarks in Crookston. The first of Keck’s public buildings was the Carnegie Public Library, designed in 1904 and completed in 1908. This building features a Classical Revival style, with Ionic columns inside and out. It was Keck who argued in the local paper that the library needed to be built on a large lot on a hill. His insistence on the site may have saved the building from nearly annual flood damage in nearby Central Park. The library, at 120 North Ash Street, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984. Between 1909 and 1916, Keck put his architectural skills to use in designing many of Crookston’s most unique schools, including Franklin Elementary School, Cathedral High School, and Crookston Central High School. Keck wrote a feature article about Central High School and submitted it to The American School Board Journal of New York in 1915. All of these school buildings were demolished in the 1980s and 1990s. The three-steepled red brick Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception was designed by Keck in 1912. This building, next to the Carnegie Library, has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1998. Keck also designed the highly touted Elks Building (1913), the Armory Building (1915), and the First Presbyterian Church (1914). Keck, who was a member of the Minnesota chapter of the American Association of Architecture, did not limit his work to Crookston. The northwestern Minnesota communities of Kennedy, Ada, Twin Valley, Middle River, Eldred, Humboldt, Trail, Warren, Halstad, Newfolden, Fertile, and Argyle hired Keck to design public schools and business blocks. In 1917, Keck moved his office and his family to Grand Forks, North Dakota. Then, in 1925, he followed the building boom to Stuart, Florida, where he continued to design public buildings and private homes and resorts. Keck continued to live in Florida until his death in 1962.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Image 1.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246079,"name":"Cities and Towns","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/keck-bert-d-1876-1962"},{"alt":"Color image of a Bundt cake pan, May 11, 2005.","author":[{"name":"Alli Hearne","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/alli-hearne"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"January 06, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Bundt Pan","postbody":"Many Americans can recognize a Bundt pan or have one at home. But few know that this iconic cake pan, created by H. David Dalquist, founder of the Nordic Ware Company, is rooted in ...","searchtext":"Many Americans can recognize a Bundt pan or have one at home. But few know that this iconic cake pan, created by H. David Dalquist, founder of the Nordic Ware Company, is rooted in Minnesota’s Jewish immigrant history. The design for the ring-shaped mold came from a pan called the Gugelhupf, which was brought to the United States by Jewish immigrants from Europe. Gugelhupf pans were made of cast iron, and each one weighed more than fifteen pounds. Jewish immigrants traditionally used them to bake heavy cakes similar to pound cakes. In the late 1940s, in Minneapolis, immigrants lamented not being able to find the pans. Three of them were Rose Joshua, Fannie Shanfield, and Mary Abrahamson from the Hadassah Society of Minnesota, a Jewish women’s volunteer organization. In 1950, the women approached H. David Dalquist to create reproductions of a pan the Abrahamson family brought to the United States from Germany. The group intended to use them to bake cakes to sell for a fundraiser. Hadassah held fundraisers to pay for schools and hospitals in Israel. Dalquist owned a small company called Northland Aluminum Products (later Nordic Ware) that manufactured die-cast aluminum Scandinavian kitchen items. He was unsure how successful this old world cake pan would be in the United States. However, Dalquist was not in a position to turn down business. Dalquist created a cast-aluminum version of Abrahamson’s pan and sold it to department stores. The Hadassah women decided that selling pans would be a better fundraiser than selling cakes, so Dalquist gave them the imperfect factory seconds. The word Bundt comes from the German word Bund, which refers to a gathering of people. Dalquist added the ‘T’ so he could trademark the name and also avoid being linked with the German American Bund, a Nazi organization. The pan was relatively unknown until 1966, when Ella Rita Helfrich of Houston won second place in the seventeenth Pillsbury Bake-Off Contest. She created a recipe for the Tunnel of Fudge cake, which was made in a Bundt pan with only five ingredients (plus Pillsbury dry frosting mix). The cake formed a soft fudge center as it baked. As the recipe became popular, Pillsbury received more than 200,000 letters from consumers asking where they could find a Bundt pan. Dalquist’s wife, Dotty, spent hours in the kitchen developing recipes for the Bundt pan. In October of 1969, David pitched the idea for a line of boxed Bundt cake mixes to two Pillsbury executives. Dotty baked the cakes for the pitch, which took place on her husband’s boat on Lake Superior. The pitch was well received. In 1971, Pillsbury launched the line of Bundt cake mixes that they continued to produce for fifteen years. In 1972, Pillsbury and Nordic Ware partnered to offer a promotion. They gave consumers the chance to buy a box of cake mix and a Bundt pan together at supermarkets for $1.98. Nordic Ware needed to invest in additional equipment to be able to produce enough pans for the promotion. The investment paid off and helped the business grow. Dalquist said the Pillsbury promotion helped Nordic Ware grow from a small, family-owned business into a medium-sized regional manufacturer and even, to some extent, a national manufacturer. Nordic Ware continues to produce Bundt pans in the United States, with more than 90 percent of its products still manufactured in Minneapolis. As of 2016, more than 70 million Bundt pans in 100 unique designs have been sold worldwide.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/bundt_cake_pan.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/bundt-pan"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of a depot on the DW&P at Orr, Minnesota, 1974.","author":[{"name":"Aaron Hanson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/aaron-hanson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"January 04, 2017","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"1975","name":"Duluth, Winnipeg and Pacific Railway","postbody":"The Duluth, Winnipeg and Pacific Railway (DW&P) was a Minnesota railroad that operated between International Falls and Duluth. It connected to the Canadian National at International ...","searchtext":"The Duluth, Winnipeg and Pacific Railway (DW&P) was a Minnesota railroad that operated between International Falls and Duluth. It connected to the Canadian National at International Falls and to the Northern Pacific at Duluth. As a subsidiary of the Canadian National for almost all of the twentieth century, it moved freight along an artery between the Canadian West and the American Midwest through Minnesota. The DW&P began in humble fashion, serving a sawmill and the lumber industry near Virginia. Construction of the line, first known as the Duluth, Virginia and Rainy Lake Railway, began at Virginia in 1901. The nascent railroad sought to provide service to its three namesake cities as well as to handle lumber as its main commodity for shipment out of Duluth. The Canadian Northern Railway (CN) bought the line and renamed it the Duluth, Rainy Lake and Winnipeg (DRL&W) before absorbing it on January 1, 1913. The CN became part of the Canadian national system, put in place because of that carrier’s bankruptcy during the financially difficult years of World War I. Construction on the DRL&W reached Ranier to the north in 1908, when the first passenger train crossed the Rainy River bridge into Fort Frances, Ontario. At Fort Frances, workers built a crucial interchange with the CN on its own line between Winnipeg, Manitoba and Port Arthur, Ontario. In 1909, the CN subsequently incorporated the line as the Duluth, Winnipeg and Pacific (DW&P). Construction continued to the south as far as Duluth, where rails were laid in 1912. Several interchanges were set up with other railroads, such as with the Northern Pacific at Duluth. The DW&P was thus in place as a small Minnesota railroad stretching 167 miles between International Falls and Duluth. It followed this route for the remainder of the twentieth century as a Minnesota short line. The DW&P continued to grow and develop until it was a vital link in the Canadian National system. Well over 800 million ton-miles of revenue freight moved annually from western Canada over the DW&P to the states of the American Midwest and the connecting railroads of the Great Lakes region. Workers improved the line to accommodate an increase in freight traffic. The railroad also added more unit trains—trains that carry a single commodity directly to a destination. Many of the line’s unit trains transported commodities that were especially important to the region, such as potash, lumber, and paper products. In 1970, the DW&P hauled 792 million ton-miles of revenue freight with no passenger service. It operated over a total line length of 170 miles. Counting sidings and yards, the railroad covered 232 miles of track. The DW&P’s subsidiary arrangement with the CN was also in place for the Michigan-based Grand Trunk Western. When the CN system was privatized in 1995, the DW&P changed dramatically. In the 1990s, the free trade agreements of NAFTA increased the volume of freight moving between Canada and the United States through Minnesota. This increase in traffic raised the profile of the DW&P as part of CN’s freight artery to Chicago and its connection to other railroads available at that city. CN reached agreements in the 1990s with competitor Wisconsin Central to haul freight between Canada and Chicago. These trains passed over the DW&P on their way to the markets of the American Midwest. The 1990s brought about a final change to the DW&P when its identity as a carrier was dissolved gradually, starting in 1993. Equipment was repainted, and further changes were implemented during the privatization process. The DW&P lingered on in name only—then officially disappeared into the CN system in 2011. In 2016, most of the original DW&P line remains in place and is operated as a part of the CN, with the busy main line connecting the western provinces to Chicago by way of Minnesota.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/MS2.9 OR p2.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246053,"name":"Transportation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/duluth-winnipeg-and-pacific-railway"},{"alt":"Glensheen","author":[{"name":"Paul Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/paul-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"December 30, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Glensheen Historic Estate","postbody":"Glensheen, a mansion and grounds completed in 1908 on the shores of Lake Superior in Duluth, was built by Chester and Clara Congdon. It is famous for its beauty inside and out, and as the ...","searchtext":"Glensheen, a mansion and grounds completed in 1908 on the shores of Lake Superior in Duluth, was built by Chester and Clara Congdon. It is famous for its beauty inside and out, and as the site of one of Minnesota’s most notorious murders. Chester Congdon and Clara Bannister, children of Methodist ministers, met at Syracuse University in New York in 1871. They married and moved to St. Paul ten years later. After a slow start, Chester prospered in the law and took to real estate speculation, mostly in the Pacific Northwest. Overall, he lost money on his investments. The family moved to Duluth in 1892 when Chester saw opportunity in the booming city and the newly industrializing Mesabi Iron Range. As a lawyer for the Oliver Iron Mining Company, he grappled with Andrew Carnegie and J. D. Rockefeller—a competition that drew national attention to Minnesota—and made millions of dollars. In 1901, he formed the Chemung Iron Company and made millions more. In 1903, the Congdons chose land three miles from downtown Duluth, facing Lake Superior, for a new residence. To design the house and grounds they selected Clarence H. Johnston (1859–1936), Charles Wellford Leavitt (1871–1928), and William A. French (1863–1942.) Johnston, designer of many Summit Avenue mansions, produced a thirty-nine-room giant in the Jacobean Revival style that mimicked English country houses from four centuries earlier. The outside appearance is elegant: an asymmetrical mass of brick, with granite trim and prominent gables. Johnston and the Congdons paid close attention to infrastructure; the estate had its own reservoir, a coal delivery system, and central humidification. Leavitt, from New York City, designed the grounds. He included formal gardens, lakeside terraces, a bowling green, walking paths and footbridges, more than thirty species of trees, and thousands of shrubs. The name “Glensheen” reflects the site. Glen, a Scots word for a narrow valley, refers to the ravines of Tischer Creek and Bent Brook, which frame the estate; “sheen” either comes from Sheen, the Congdons’ ancestral village in England, or from the reflection of light off the lake. Glensheen’s design star is French, a St. Paul interior decorator and designer. With the Congdons, he chose fine materials: silver for light fixtures, gold leaf for ceilings, oak and walnut woodwork, and Algerian marble. He used both art nouveau and Arts and Crafts styles, which were lighter and more elegant than the busy interiors of late-nineteenth-century mansions. The interior features hand-carved railings and art-glass windows. The dining room and library overlook the terrace and garden below and Lake Superior beyond. The breakfast room, designed by John Bradstreet of Minneapolis, is considered a highlight for its green tiled walls and floors, as well as for its lake views. Despite Glensheen’s luxury and size, architectural historian Larry Millett finds it “warm and livable,” with “a surprising sense of intimacy.” Because the house remained in the Congdon family until 1978, little has changed over time. Millett calls it the most intact house of its kind in Minnesota. Chester Congdon died in 1916, without completing his vision for a highway linking Duluth to Canada; it opened in 1923 as North Shore Scenic Drive. Clara lived in Glensheen until her death in 1950. Their daughter Elisabeth, the last of their seven children to die, lived there for the rest of her life. She never married but adopted two daughters, Marjorie and Jennifer, in 1932. On the night of June 26, 1977, Elisabeth Congdon and her nurse, Velma Pietila, were murdered by an intruder. Suspicion fell on Marjorie and her husband, Roger Caldwell. Marjorie had lived a troubled life and, before the murder, demanded money from Elisabeth. Caldwell was convicted of the murder in 1978; Marjorie was acquitted in 1979. The Minnesota Supreme Court reversed Caldwell’s conviction in 1983. In return for a sentence of time served, Caldwell admitted to the murders but refused to implicate his then ex-wife, Marjorie. He took his own life in 1988. Though Marjorie inherited part of the Congdon fortune, her life remained troubled. Her third husband died a suspicious death, and she served time in an Arizona prison for arson. Prior to the murder in 1969, the Congdon family willed Glensheen to the University of Minnesota–Duluth. It opened as a museum in 1979 and has become one of Minnesota’s top historic tourist attractions.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Glensheen.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/glensheen-historic-estate"},{"alt":"Postcard with photograph of AIM Patrol poster, 1991.","author":[{"name":"Brianna Wilson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/brianna-wilson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"December 28, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"1986","name":"AIM Patrol, Minneapolis","postbody":"Formed in August of 1968, the American Indian Movement Patrol (AIM Patrol) was a citizens’ patrol created in response to police brutality against Native Americans in Minneapolis. Patrollers ...","searchtext":"Formed in August of 1968, the American Indian Movement Patrol (AIM Patrol) was a citizens’ patrol created in response to police brutality against Native Americans in Minneapolis. Patrollers observed officers’ interactions with Native people and offered mediators that community members could call on for help. As of 2016, a similar but separate group operates under the same name. The United States policies of termination and relocation brought large numbers of Native Americans to urban centers between the 1940s and 1960s. Through termination, the federal government dissolved many Native American nations’ sovereign rights and absorbed their members into the U.S. mainstream. Through relocation, it encouraged Native Americans to move from their reservations to urban centers. This set the stage for Native people to confront issues commonly associated with cities, including police brutality. The American Indian Movement (AIM) is a national organization that formed in July 1968. Hundreds of people attended the first AIM meeting, on Plymouth Avenue in North Minneapolis. Originally called the Concerned Indian American Coalition (CIA), the group changed its name after an elder named Alberta Downwind insisted that they reclaim and repurpose the term “American Indian.” AIM members met regularly to advocate for Native civil rights, create community programs, and organize protests. The patrol, one of AIM’s first programs, formed during a meeting held in Minneapolis on August 19, 1968. Of the roughly seventy people who attended, 50 percent voted to create the patrol. They agreed that patrollers would cover an area along East Franklin Avenue in the Phillips neighborhood in South Minneapolis, where there was a concentrated population of Native people. Patrollers worked to decrease police brutality against Native people by limiting interaction between police and community members and offering itself as a crisis-resolution alternative. The patrol would also observe “any irregularities in police arrest procedures in the area” but would not physically interfere with police work. Citizen patrols like AIM’s formed across the nation during the late 1960s and 1970s. They included the Black Panther Party of Self Defense in California and the less well-known Soul Patrol in North Minneapolis. In its early days, AIM Patrol worked with other programs created by the American Indian Movement, including the Legal Rights Center, which helped find lawyers for Native defendants. It was staffed by volunteers. Though most of them identified as American Indian, membership was open to all races and ethnicities. Volunteers wore red jackets and red shirts with the AIM logo while patrolling. At first, they only patrolled on Friday and Saturday nights. Eventually, they expanded their hours to include weekday evenings. Five weeks after AIM Patrol was established, AIM leaders proclaimed that no Native people had been arrested—a dramatic reduction from the five to six arrests usually reported each day. A year later, AIM leaders claimed that twenty-two consecutive weeks had passed without any arrests of American Indians. During the 1960s and 1970s, patrollers used walkie-talkies, two-way radios, cameras, tape recorders, and cars to communicate with each other. They documented police interactions with Native people and monitored police dispatches. Local residents called AIM Patrol to assist in deescalating potential fights and preventing intra-community violence. Patrollers also worked as security for community events such as powwows, school dances, and basketball games, and encouraged youth not to engage in drug or alcohol use. The original incarnation of AIM Patrol disbanded around 1975. In 1987, however, AIM reinstated it after three high-profile murders of Native women in the Phillips neighborhood. This new incarnation of AIM Patrol was active throughout the late 1980s and 1990s, when gang violence in Minneapolis increased. In 1991, the offices of AIM Patrol moved into the newly opened Elaine M. Stately Peacemakers Center at 2300 Cedar Avenue South. Reports of continued police brutality towards Native people—such as the 1993 incident in which Minneapolis police officers forced two men into the trunk of police car—affirmed AIM Patrol’s existence and original goals. Leadership changes and community disagreements in the same year, however, led to the group’s decline in the mid-1990s. A new incarnation of the patrol, led by Mike Forcia, emerged in 2010. In 2016, although a group of Minneapolis community members continues to operate as AIM Patrol, it is not sanctioned by the American Indian Movement.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/10223973.640x640.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246059,"name":"Native Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/aim-patrol-minneapolis"},{"alt":"Color image of the exterior of the St. Paul Building (previously the Germania Bank), 2012.","author":[{"name":"Joan Mathison","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/joan-mathison"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"December 21, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"St. Paul Building (Germania Bank), St. Paul","postbody":"Since 1890, the tall brownstone building at the corner of Fifth and Wabasha has been a symbol of resilience in a changing world. Only ten years after building it, the Germania Bank was ...","searchtext":"Since 1890, the tall brownstone building at the corner of Fifth and Wabasha has been a symbol of resilience in a changing world. Only ten years after building it, the Germania Bank was forced to liquidate. Renamed the Ernst Building, then the Pittsburgh Building, it finally became the St. Paul Building in 1934. The young capital city was booming when the Germania Bank was chartered in 1884, with Alexander Ramsey as its president. The corner of Fifth and Wabasha Streets was a prime downtown location, and a design competition was held for the new building. From the eleven entries received, judges chose the design submitted by J. Walter Stevens, architect of several elegant Summit Avenue homes and Lowertown warehouses. Like many pioneer architects, Stevens’ only training had been a few years as an apprentice in his father’s office. But he became successful with the help of talented draftsmen who moved from city to city, following the money to construct their elaborate designs. Harvey Ellis, one of the finest architectural artists of the period, worked sporadically for Stevens after arriving in the city in 1886. Based on the evidence, some architectural historians believe that Ellis worked on the winning entry. An unsigned pen-and-ink rendering of the Germania Bank, dated 1888, was reproduced in American Architect in 1892. The design is a hybrid of the popular Richardsonian Romanesque style, incorporating an Italian Renaissance-style top story. This transitional style was becoming popular in Boston and Chicago, contributing to the evidence that the wandering Ellis helped design it. At eight stories, the building was much taller than its neighbors. Three other multi-story office buildings, however, were built downtown that year—of brick. Germania Bank was the last high-rise brownstone. The building’s cavernous entries and windows are supported by Roman arches in massive walls of rusticated red Lake Superior sandstone. Stone masons carved fanciful designs into the soft sandstone columns as well as the window and door trim. The upper third of the façade features a multicolored checkerboard pattern and colonnettes inspired by an Italian palazzo. Built by Lauer Brothers, the structure’s final cost was more than $165,000. The bank occupied the entire second floor, which featured a coffered wooden ceiling, intricately carved moldings and recessed arches, marble floors, and ornate iron grillwork at the tellers’ windows. In a “sketch for interior of a bank by Harvey Ellis,” published in Western Architect in 1904, J. Walter Stevens is identified as the architect. The Germania Bank building is the only bank Stevens is known to have designed. By 1902, the former bank had become the Ernst Building, taking the name of its new owner, Caspar Ernst. Five years later, it was renamed the Pittsburgh Building, perhaps because Penn Mutual Life Insurance held the note on the mortgage. The building became known as the St. Paul Building in 1934. Office tenants have included doctors, dentists, lawyers, and a dressmaker as well as Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency. Shops selling books, gloves, jewelry, cigars, candy, and shoes have occupied the street-level storefronts. According to historian David Page, F. Scott Fitzgerald may have rented a writing room in the building in the winter of 1921. On that visit home—his last—Fitzgerald kept the location a secret so he could write undisturbed. Soon, he started writing the short stories that would evolve into The Great Gatsby. Many of the bank’s design elements were lost to remodeling over the years, including after World War II, when the storefronts were “modernized” to attract trend-conscious customers. In 1977, however, the structure was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In the mid-1980s, its storefronts were restored to their original nineteenth-century appearance. Editor||s note: The Germania Bank was a separate structure from the Germania Life Insurance building (built in 1889), which stood on Fourth Street a few blocks away from the bank. The insurance building was torn down in 1970.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Germania_exterior_2012.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/st-paul-building-germania-bank-st-paul"},{"alt":"At the Foot of the Mountain Theater company, 1983.","author":[{"name":"Martha Boesing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/martha-boesing"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"December 19, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"1976","name":"At the Foot of the Mountain Theater","postbody":"The women||s theater movement began in the early 1970s and continued until the mid–1980s. Echoing the second-wave feminism sweeping the country, it fostered the growth of more than 185 ...","searchtext":"The women||s theater movement began in the early 1970s and continued until the mid–1980s. Echoing the second-wave feminism sweeping the country, it fostered the growth of more than 185 theaters, with an emphasis on women||s issues. One of these, At the Foot of the Mountain Theater in Minneapolis, made a lasting mark on the Twin Cities. Many of the women who created these theaters were involved in the radical politics of the 1960s. They had walked in the Civil Rights and peace movements, lived in communes, and created theater events that led their audiences shouting and singing into the streets. In the spring of 1976, a small group of actors, directors, and playwrights—lesbians, bisexuals, and straight women—met in a tiny Minneapolis apartment. They pledged to work together to transform At the Foot of the Mountain Theater, founded in 1974 by three women and three men, into a full-time, professional women||s company. They committed themselves to |||honoring women||s feelings and nurturing women||s values as the source of health for our planet||| and planned to produce plays by, for, and about women. They aimed to create an authentic art form from women||s experiences —a unique concept. The company described itself as a theater both |||of protest||| and |||of celebration.||| Standing behind the banner of the second wave of the women’s movement, the theater’s founders believed that the personal is political. They shared stories from their lives and dreams for the future, then translated these testaments into movement, language, and song. This process gave an undercurrent of life to the acting style for which they became known: one that was documentary-like, with gripping realism. Committed to a nonhierarchical approach, the theater’s members worked on their plays collaboratively. They shared research duties, creating the ideas for the characters, improvising the scenes, and discussing the issues that formed the spine of the production. As time went on, the theater’s members began to include the stories of people in the audience. They called on them to give testimony, often in the middle of a performance. They created a community of women with shared experiences who were no longer silent. At the Foot of the Mountain moved into its permanent home in the Peoples’ Center, a multi-purpose community center, in 1979. There, the company enjoyed twelve years of success. It played to sold-out houses in the Twin Cities and earned national attention through touring productions and performances at theater festivals. The company’s production budget, posted in the lobby, offered transparency to everyone, including the audience. A sliding scale of income-based ticket prices invited customers to choose a fair cost. An audience member who made less than $10,000 a year would pay five dollars for a ticket. Those with incomes of more than $40,000 paid fifteen dollars— a high price for avant garde theater in the 1970s. Most patrons were appreciative, supportive, and generous, and the theater never lost money. All staff received the same basic salary: 175 dollars per week. Those who held jobs that took more time and responsibility—for example, the artistic and managing directors—received an extra fifteen to twenty-five dollars. Those with children received an allowance of five dollars per child. Those who had more than three years|| service received an additional ten dollars per week. The company’s members celebrated their political focus. An interest in the economics of power supported their organizational structure and underpinned many of their plays. For example, Raped (1976) looked at rape culture as the natural outcome of a capitalist system. Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down (1982) challenged Cold War policies of nuclear stockpiling. Antigone Too: Rights of Love and Defiance (1983) examined the contributions of North American women who were willing to commit civil disobedience for their beliefs. Las Gringas (1984) explicitly criticized the U.S. government’s policy in, and invasion of, Nicaragua. Though the women||s theater movement produced a substantial body of women||s plays and rituals, it was short-lived. When At the Foot of the Mountain closed in 1991, it was the longest continuously operating women||s theater in the country. Women have since taken leadership roles in a majority of regional theaters.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/20161118113209933_0003.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/foot-mountain-theater"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Swan Turnblad, ca. 1915.","author":[{"name":"Julia Lavanger","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/julia-lavanger"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"December 14, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Turnblad, Swan (1860–1933)","postbody":"Swan Turnblad was a prominent Swedish Minnesotan and the manager, editor, and publisher of Svenska Amerikanska Posten, a Swedish American newspaper. He donated his family home and the ...","searchtext":"Swan Turnblad was a prominent Swedish Minnesotan and the manager, editor, and publisher of Svenska Amerikanska Posten, a Swedish American newspaper. He donated his family home and the newspaper to the newly founded American Institute of Swedish Arts, Literature and Science (later renamed the American Swedish Institute) near the end of his life. Swan Turnblad was born October 7, 1860, in Vislanda, Småland, Sweden. When he was about eight years old, he and his family moved to the United States, and eventually to Vasa, Minnesota. He was interested in printing from an early age, and in 1877 he obtained a printing press and printed a book on arithmetic after learning to set type on his own. In 1879, at the age of nineteen, Turnblad moved to Minneapolis and worked as a typesetter at various Swedish-American newspapers, including Svenska Folkets Tidning. He was a strong advocate for temperance, and around 1880 became the chief organizer of the first Scandinavian temperance society in Minneapolis. In April of 1883, Swan married Christina Gabrielsdotter, who was a fellow Swedish immigrant, and in 1884 their daughter, Lillian, was born. In 1886, he became the manager of Svenska Amerikanska Posten, which was struggling. By 1889, Turnblad had become the primary stockholder, and publisher, of Svenska Amerikanska Posten, which he helped develop into the largest Swedish American newspaper in the country. In 1894, he began to shift the focus of the paper away from prohibition and temperance to independent Democratic politics. This helped increase circulation from 1,400 to 40,000 by the end of the century and to 55,000 in 1915. Turnblad was an innovator, and became the first Swedish publisher to set his paper on a linotype machine. He was also the first owner of a Mergenthaler press and the first Swedish newspaper publisher to introduce political cartoons and color illustrations. In 1897, in a controversial deal, Christina Turnblad bought the paper from her husband. Turnblad then gradually bought stock from shareholders (who were under the impression that the business was failing) before buying the paper back from his wife in 1901. Once the paper’s success was apparent, many were upset and accused Turnblad of deceiving them. In the spring of 1899, Turnblad purchased a Waverly Electric car, which was the first commercially produced automobile owned by a Minneapolis resident. In 1899, Turnblad also purchased property that extended into what is now Loring Park in order to build a new house for himself and his family. The Minneapolis Park Board opposed his purchase. After a legal battle that reached the Minnesota Supreme Court, Turnblad conceded to the Park Board. He bought six lots on Park Avenue and began planning his new home in 1903. It was ready for occupancy in 1908. Turnblad was involved in a number of lawsuits from 1908 to 1911 in which shareholders claimed fraud and deception and sued him for various amounts of money. Turnblad avoided additional lawsuits in the years following 1911. 1915 was a milestone year for the paper and for Turnblad. The paper reached 55,000 subscribers and moved into its own building. In 1920, he sold Svenska Amerikanska Posten to Magnus Martinson for $150,000. After Martinson drove the paper to the brink of bankruptcy, the board of directors asked Turnblad to return as president, general manager, publisher, and editor in 1927. For many years, Turnblad expressed interest in donating his home to a Swedish cultural institution. After a series of conversations with the Swedish consul, Nils Leon Jaenson, and one letter of encouragement from the Crown Prince of Sweden, Turnblad decided to donate his mansion and Svenska Amerikanska Posten to the newly founded “American Institute of Swedish Arts, Literature and Science.” Turnblad served as the first president of the Institute from 1929 to 1933. Turnblad died on May 17, 1933, at the age of seventy-two, at Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis. The funeral was held on Saturday, May 20, at Lakewood chapel.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/mhs24224.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/turnblad-swan-1860-1933"},{"alt":"Map of locations important to the early 1800s fur trade in present-day Minnesota and Wisconsin. Drawn by David Geister, ca. 2000.","author":[{"name":"Jacalyn Bedworth","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/jacalyn-bedworth"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"December 12, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186622056203,"name":"1792–1861 (Expansion and Reform)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Sayer, John (1750–1818)","postbody":"John Sayer was a trader, a merchant, and a partner in several fur trade companies for more than thirty years. In the late 1790s, he became a partner of the North West Company and proprietor ...","searchtext":"John Sayer was a trader, a merchant, and a partner in several fur trade companies for more than thirty years. In the late 1790s, he became a partner of the North West Company and proprietor of their Fond du Lac district, supervising trade with the Ojibwe south of Lake Superior and west across what is now northern Minnesota. John Sayer is believed to have been born in England in 1750. He immigrated to the Canadian colonies in the first years after the conquest of New France by England. There, he completed his formal education and was apprenticed to a Montreal merchant. Sayer first appeared in the fur trade in the late 1770s, working in the Fond du Lac area south and west of Lake Superior. His success in establishing trading relationships with Ojibwe people may have been a result of his choice of marriage. He married Obemau-unoqua, a daughter of the Ojibwe leader Ma-mongazida. Obemau-unoqua had important ties to the local community and taught Sayer customs that would have strengthened his relationships with her people. Sayer became a wintering partner of the North West Company in 1798 and took over command of the Fond du Lac district. He traveled widely throughout the region, overseeing the operation of twelve wintering posts and up to eighty men. He also operated a regional supply depot and warehouse at Fort St. Louis, on the shores of Lake Superior near present day Superior, Wisconsin. During the winter of 1803–1804, Sayer took charge of the post on the Yellow River, near present-day Danbury, Wisconsin, in order to actively pursue competition from the newly organized XY Company. The following season, during the winter of 1804–1805, he wintered along the Snake River near present-day Pine City, Minnesota, where he oversaw the local merger and absorption of the XY Company into the North West Company. Most important, Sayer was responsible for the trading in his department. Although he followed general company policies, he negotiated directly with the Ojibwe. He gave gifts to encourage them to trade. He even altered the prices offered for furs. Sayer tightly controlled all of his department’s operations. During the winter of 1804, he closely supervised the activities of two other traders: Joseph “La Prairie” Duchene, who was wintering along the Yellow River, and Joseph Réaume, who was wintering at Namai Kowagon (Sturgeon Dam). Both were frequent visitors to Sayer’s post on the Snake River. In the winter of 1805, Sayer noted bitterly in his journal that La Prairie had acted against his orders by “giving large credits” to Ojibwe people. After it merged with the XY Company, the North West Company reduced the number of its trading posts. It also fired some of its voyageurs and cut the wages of others. The cost of trade goods increased, fur values decreased, and profits shrank. In the middle of all this change, Sayer was reassigned. For a couple of seasons, he traded for the company at Lac de Chats on the Ottawa River. Then, in 1808, after over thirty years in the business, he retired from active partnership in the North West Company. According to company policy, Sayer received title to a large farm within the district of Montreal in exchange for one of his shares in the company. He also was allowed to keep his second share as a source of income during his retirement. After working for a few years as a gentleman farmer, Sayer sold both his second share and the farm. He then relocated to the village of St. Anne’s on the island of Montreal. While living there, he was elected to the Beaver Club, an exclusive social club for North West Company men living in Montreal, but the group’s records do not indicate that he attended any meetings. Sayer’s retirement did not last long. He died in 1818, at age sixty-eight.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/NWfurpostmap.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/sayer-john-1750-1818"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Seth Eastman, ca.1860.","author":[{"name":"Julia Lavanger","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/julia-lavanger"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"December 07, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186622056203,"name":"1792–1861 (Expansion and Reform)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"1841","name":"Eastman, Seth (1808–1875)","postbody":"Seth Eastman was a painter and soldier best known for his depictions of the everyday life of Dakota and Ojibwe people around Fort Snelling in the 1840s. He stands out among other ...","searchtext":"Seth Eastman was a painter and soldier best known for his depictions of the everyday life of Dakota and Ojibwe people around Fort Snelling in the 1840s. He stands out among other nineteenth-century American artists—particularly those who also painted American Indian people—because of his commitment to realism. Unlike his peers, Eastman mostly avoided romanticizing the Native people with whom he lived. Seth Eastman was born in 1808 in Brunswick, Maine. He attended the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, where he was trained in topographical drafting and sketching. After graduation, he was sent first to Fort Crawford in Wisconsin and then to Fort Snelling in Minnesota. In 1830, during his first tour at Fort Snelling, Eastman married a Bdewakaŋtuŋwaŋ Dakota woman named Wakaŋ Inażiŋ Wiŋ (Woman Who Stands Sacred). She was a daughter of Maḣpiya Wic̣aṡṭa (Cloud Man), leader of the village at Bde Maka Ska (White Earth Lake, formerly known as Lake Calhoun). The couple had a daughter named Wakaŋ Tanka Wiŋ (God Woman/Great Spirit Woman). Wakaŋ Tanka Wiŋ—called Nancy or Mary Nancy in English—was the mother of author and lecturer Ohiyesa (The Winner, called Charles Alexander Eastman in English). After his first tour was completed, in 1833, Eastman left his new family and returned to West Point to teach drawing. Soon afterward, without officially separating from Wakaŋ Inażiŋ Wiŋ, he married Mary Henderson, a military surgeon’s daughter, in New York. She published a number of books and essays, most illustrated by Eastman. During Eastman’s time as a teacher, he published a Treatise on Topographical Drawing. He also became an increasingly skilled oil painter. Most of his paintings from this period were landscapes made around West Point, but he also created paintings based on previous sketches made during his time in Minnesota, like Fort Snelling on the Mississippi Near the Falls of St. Anthony. After being briefly stationed in Florida in the summer of 1840, Eastman returned to Fort Snelling. Between 1841 and 1848, he served as commander of the fort four times. He also produced a large number of oil paintings, drawings, and watercolors of his surroundings and the Native people of the area. Both Seth and Mary built strong relationships with their Dakota and Ojibwe neighbors and learned their languages. In 1848, Eastman was transferred to Texas and stayed there until 1849. He left Texas in September of that year and was granted a five-month leave to go to Washington. There, he worked on the illustrations for Henry R. Schoolcraft’s Historical and Statistical Information Respecting the History, Condition, and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States. The first volume was published in 1851. For this work, Eastman created eighty-five compositional drawings of Native life and more than 180 drawings of artifacts and maps. The subjects of these drawings included weapons, tools, clothing, pictographs, landscape views, and ceremonies. The images were then reproduced as engravings or colored lithographs for publication. Soon after he arrived in Washington, Eastman was asked by congressional delegate Henry Sibley to help design the Minnesota territorial seal. Eastman took on the job, and his version was adopted. From 1855 to the outbreak of the Civil War, Eastman was stationed throughout the country. In 1861, he was made a mustering and disbursing officer for Maine and New Hampshire. He officially retired in December of 1863. In 1867, Congress passed a joint resolution authorizing Eastman to paint decorations for the rooms of the committees on Indian affairs and military affairs in the House and Senate. He painted nine canvases for the House Committee on Indian Affairs—largely based off his work for Schoolcraft’s books—that can still be found in the U.S. Capitol building. Eastman also painted seventeen military forts for the House Committee on Military Affairs between 1870 and his death in 1875. He died of a stroke while painting his beloved alma mater, West Point.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/por 1403 r1.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246059,"name":"Native Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/eastman-seth-1808-1875"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Gertrude Brown with children at Phyllis Wheatley House, ca. 1924.","author":[{"name":"Heidi Heller","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/heidi-heller"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"December 05, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Phyllis Wheatley House, Minneapolis","postbody":"Founded in 1924, the Phyllis Wheatley House was the first settlement house to serve the social service needs of African Americans in Minneapolis. In the 1930s, it became a center of African ...","searchtext":"Founded in 1924, the Phyllis Wheatley House was the first settlement house to serve the social service needs of African Americans in Minneapolis. In the 1930s, it became a center of African American life at a time when racial segregation divided the city. In the late 1910s, a growing number of young, single women were moving to large cities like Minneapolis, looking for work. Concerns for these women’s personal and moral safety moved many social services agencies to provide them with housing, recreational activities, and other assistance. While there were many services for young, single white women, segregation prevented their African American counterparts from receiving the same help. In 1920, two social service agencies, the Council on Social Agencies and the Woman||s Christian Association (WCA), noticed the lack of programs for young, single Black women. After considering opening a boarding house for these women, the agencies realized that all of Minneapolis’ African American citizens lacked services. The WCA decided to open the first settlement house for the city’s small, but growing, Black community. Named after Phillis Wheatley, an eighteenth century enslaved woman who became a well-known poet, the Phyllis Wheatley House opened on October 17, 1924, in the old Talmud Torah (a Hebrew school) at 808 Bassett Place. It was located in a mostly Black neighborhood in North Minneapolis. The Wheatley House’s primary goal was to provide social services and a community center for African Americans. Its programs focused on recreation, education, music, and theater. W. Gertrude Brown, an African American social worker from Dayton, Ohio, was hired as the house’s first head resident. Ethel Ray Nance joined the house||s staff in 1926 as assistant head resident. Under Brown’s direction, and with guidance from its board of directors (all white women), the Wheatley House quickly outgrew its location on Bassett Place. It began fundraising to build a new building as early as 1926, and on October 17, 1929, a newly constructed Wheatley House opened at 809 Aldrich Avenue North. This larger building provided not only new space for recreational and educational activities but also a library, day care, a medical clinic, and lodging. By the late 1920s and early 1930s, the Wheatley House had become a center of African American life in Minneapolis and offered services that other settlement houses did not. It was a boarding house for Black college students blocked by segregation from living in the University of Minnesota dorms. It housed visiting Black luminaries, including Marian Anderson, W. E. B. DuBois, Langston Hughes, and Paul Robeson, who could not stay in Minneapolis hotels. It was a meeting space for Black groups like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Brotherhood of Pullman Porters, who were not welcome at other places in the city. The Wheatley House also fought for social reform. It provided many Black children with amenities they might not have otherwise received, such as summer camp, nursery school, and organized sports. Many of these children later described the Wheatley House as a home away from home—a place where they could build self-confidence. In spring 1940, Wheatley House staff worked with the Urban League to prevent a revival showing of the 1915 movie The Birth of a Nation in Minneapolis. During the 1950s and 1960s, as the federal government began providing more social services, the need for settlement houses decreased. By 1965, planners discussed a merger between the three North Side settlement houses: Wheatley, Unity, and Wells Memorial. They aimed to cut operating costs and coordinate their services. In the end, the merger never occurred; the Wheatley House continued to operate independently. In 1962, the Wheatley House became known as the Phyllis Wheatley Community Center. The construction of Interstate 94 led to the demolition of its building on 809 Aldrich Avenue North, in 1970. A joint project between the Wheatley Community Center, the Minneapolis Park Board, and the Minneapolis Public Schools funded the construction of a new building along Tenth Avenue North and Emerson Avenue North. In the twenty-first century, the Phyllis Wheatley Community Center continues to serve Minneapolis with various educational, early childhood, and family programs.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/10380093.640x640.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056216,"name":"African Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/phyllis-wheatley-house-minneapolis"},{"alt":"Color image of the August 30, 1905 issue of the Svenska Folkets Tidning, with an article detailing the history of the paper since 1881 on the front page.","author":[{"name":"Julia Lavanger and Jillian Odland","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/julia-lavanger-and-jillian-odland"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"November 30, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Svenska Folkets Tidning","postbody":"Svenska Folkets Tidning was a successful Minneapolis-based newspaper in publication from 1881 to 1927. It provided Swedish Americans with news from around the world but especially from ...","searchtext":"Svenska Folkets Tidning was a successful Minneapolis-based newspaper in publication from 1881 to 1927. It provided Swedish Americans with news from around the world but especially from Sweden, the greater United States, and Minnesota, all in the Swedish language. Launched on October 5, 1881 by the Swedish American Publishing Company of Minneapolis, Svenska Folkets Tidning was quickly popular among the Swedish-American community in the Twin Cities. The officers of the publishing company at the time were president Victor Berggren, treasurer P. J. E. Clementson, and secretary Alfred Soderstrom. Magnus Lunnow was the first editor. Before he joined Svenska Folkets Tidning he had served as the editor of two other Swedish American newspapers: the Minnesota Stats Tidning and the Svenska tribunen. The weekly newspaper attracted 3,000 subscribers during its first three months; by the second year of publication, its subscriptions had tripled. Important early contributors to the paper included notable Swedish American Minnesotans like Governor John Lind, Colonel Hans Mattson, and Albert Berg. Swan Turnblad of Svenska Amerikanska Posten worked as a typesetter in the early years of Svenska Folkets Tidning. The paper tended to be comparatively progressive and liberal, commenting on news and leading questions of the day with a moderate tone. In 1883, the paper was sold by the Swedish American Publishing Company to the three principal workers: Soderstrom, Lunnow, and Olaf Hoglund. In 1889, the Tribune Building that housed the Svenska Folkets Tidning was destroyed in a fire. Since their insurance policy had expired, the disaster resulted in a total loss to the owners. The paper fell into the hands of the newly incorporated Swedish Printing Company of Minnesota, which ensured it had up-to-date printing equipment, an enlarged plant, and increased financial support. During this time, Svenska Folkets Tidning also merged with two other Swedish American newspapers: the Iowa Svithiod and the New York Bifrost. In 1908, Svenska Folkets Tidning was purchased from shareholders by A. G. Johnson, who also served as an editor after he bought the paper. Both Johnson and the manager of the paper, Carl Ekman, contributed to its success during these years, which brought increased circulation and advertising sales. Johnson died in 1924. In 1927, the paper was absorbed by the Svenska Amerikanska Posten; it published its last issue on August 25.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/SFT_front_page.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/svenska-folkets-tidning"},{"alt":"Color image of the helmet worn by Minnesota Vikings safety Paul Krause in the late 1970s.","author":[{"name":"David Sandager","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/david-sandager"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"November 28, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Minnesota Vikings","postbody":"The Minnesota Vikings professional football club has competed in the National Football League (NFL) since 1961. The team ranks amongst the most successful franchises in the NFL, with ...","searchtext":"The Minnesota Vikings professional football club has competed in the National Football League (NFL) since 1961. The team ranks amongst the most successful franchises in the NFL, with seventeen divisional titles since 1970. They have reached the playoffs in twenty-nine of their fifty-seven seasons and made four Super Bowl appearances. Eleven former players, one coach, and one general manager from the Vikings have been inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, in Canton, Ohio. Minnesota became the fourteenth franchise added to the National Football League on January 28, 1960, at the NFL owners’ meeting in Miami, Florida. On September 27, it was announced that the team would be called the Minnesota Vikings in recognition of the Nordic traditions of the Northern U.S. The team||s official colors are the now-iconic purple and gold. The Vikings played their first regular-season home game at Metropolitan Stadium on September 17, 1961. Rookie quarterback Fran |||The Scrambler||| Tarkenton led the team to a 37-13 victory over the Chicago Bears. The team finished its first season with just three wins and eleven losses. By the end of the decade, however, the Vikings emerged as one of best teams in the NFL. The Vikings|| fortunes began to change in 1967 when Bud Grant, a former Golden Gopher standout athlete and four-time Canadian Football League Grey Cup winner, became the franchise’s second head coach. Coach Grant, with general manager and fellow Pro Football Hall of Famer Jim Finks, built winning teams in the late 1960s and 1970s that featured strong defensive play. The legendary “Purple People Eaters” defensive line and quarterback Fran Tarkenton anchored the team. The Vikings earned their first divisional title and playoff appearance in 1968. The team finished the following season with an NFL-best record of twelve wins and two losses. They won the 1970 NFL Championship 27–7 over the Cleveland Browns on January 4 at Metropolitan Stadium. This victory led to the first Super Bowl appearance for the Vikings. In 1971, defensive tackle Alan Page, the leader of the “Purple People Eaters,||| became the first defensive player in NFL history to be awarded the league’s Most Valuable Player trophy. By the 1979–1980 season, the Vikings had clinched eleven divisional titles along with the four Super Bowl appearances: 1970, 1974, 1975, and 1977. Five players from the 1970s teams would eventually be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. In 1982, the Vikings moved into their new home stadium at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in downtown Minneapolis. In 1988, the team made its fifth appearance in an NFC championship game. In 1989, star running back Herschel Walker was acquired by trade, and the Vikings won their twelfth divisional title. The Vikings earned their thirteenth and fourteenth divisional titles in 1992 and 1994 under the leadership of the team’s fifth head coach, Dennis Green. In the 1998 season, the Vikings offense led the way to a franchise record of fifteen wins while setting an NFL scoring record of 556 regular season points—a record that held until 2007. The offense was led by quarterback Randall Cunningham and featured Hall of Famers Chris Carter (wide receiver), Randall McDaniel (guard), NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year Randy Moss, South African-born place kicker Gary Anderson, and running back Robert Smith. On the defensive side, Hall of Famer John Randle (defensive tackle) helped the Vikings reach their sixth NFC Championship game, in which they suffered a 30–27 loss to the Atlanta Falcons at the Metrodome. The Vikings have continued to enjoy success in the twenty-first century. They played in six playoff series and appeared in NFC Championship games in 2000 and 2009, led by quarterbacks Daunte Culpepper and Brett Favre. The Vikings played their last game at the Metrodome on December 29, 2013. They played the next two seasons at TCF Bank Stadium at the University of Minnesota before moving to US Bank Stadium. The Vikings won the inaugural game at the new stadium on September 18, 2016, finishing with a score of 17-14 over the rival Green Bay Packers.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/2015.3.1.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246054,"name":"Sports and Recreation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/minnesota-vikings"},{"alt":"A color page of Svenska Amerikanska Posten from the “Sångarfäst=Nummer” edition from July 21, 1903.","author":[{"name":"Julia Lavanger and Jillian Odland","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/julia-lavanger-and-jillian-odland"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"November 22, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Svenska Amerikanska Posten","postbody":"Published in Minneapolis between 1885 and 1940, Svenska Amerikanska Posten (the Swedish American Post) was one of the largest and most popular Swedish-language newspapers in the United ...","searchtext":"Published in Minneapolis between 1885 and 1940, Svenska Amerikanska Posten (the Swedish American Post) was one of the largest and most popular Swedish-language newspapers in the United States. It catered to an urban, secular segment of the Swedish American community. The first issue of Svenska Amerikanska Posten was published on March 9, 1885, by the Swedish-American Publishing Company. It was the fourth Swedish-language weekly in Minneapolis. The paper began as a mouthpiece of the temperance movement, but by the 1890s it became a more independent, liberal newspaper. Similar to other Swedish American newspapers at the time, Svenska Amerikanska Posten reported on international, national, and local news. The paper’s first page reported general news about the United States and Minneapolis. The second featured editorials and a serialized novel; the third recounted news from Sweden; and the fourth was reserved for news about Swedes in Minneapolis and St. Paul. The paper struggled financially at first, due in part to a series of libel lawsuits filed in response to false editorials written by its controversial first editor, N. P. Lind. Finances revived under the leadership and initiative of Swan J. Turnblad, who took over management in fall 1886. Turnblad secured more advertisements and subscriptions and moved the paper away from its prohibition- and temperance-focused content. In 1889, he became the largest shareholder of the paper’s publishing company. Turnblad’s brother Magnus was named editor-in-chief in 1890 and held that post for twelve years. Swan Turnblad’s business acumen and drive to improve the paper’s content, circulation, and technology led Svenska Amerikanska Posten to great success. At the time, the paper was printed on a rotary press. By 1894, the type was set on a Mergenthaler machine—a first among the Swedish presses. The paper’s circulation and size grew quickly as Turnblad introduced innovations and conducted experiments. These included one of the first cartoons in a Swedish-language paper (1901); the English-language children’s supplement Posten Junior (1902); and English editorials. In 1907, Turnblad introduced another technological advancement: a Duplex rotary press with a color attachment. After twelve years as editor-in-chief, Swan Turnblad’s brother Magnus departed from the paper in 1902. In the following years, there was a large turnover in the paper’s staff. 1915 marked a banner year for Svenska Amerikanska Posten. The paper moved out of a rental space and into a building of its own, which was a symbol of the paper’s prosperity and success. It also reached a circulation of 56,000—the largest in the paper’s history. The paper declined during World War I, primarily due to increased anti-immigrant sentiment and rising production costs. The number of immigrants to the United States also decreased. Turnblad decided to step down as publisher and sold the paper in October 1920. The new publisher, Magnus Martinson, ran the paper from 1920 to 1927. He started a monthly book review journal called Hemmet that was published from 1925 to 1927. After Martinson had driven the paper to the brink of bankruptcy, Turnblad was asked to return to work as manager and publisher by the paper’s board of directors. In 1929, Turnblad included funds for the paper and its production plant in a donation to create the American Institute for Swedish Art, Literature, and Science, later known as the American Swedish Institute. Turnblad continued to lead the paper until his death, in 1933. The Depression caused more problems for Svenska Amerikanska Posten, affecting both readership and affordability. In 1940, publication ended when Turnblad’s daughter, Lillian, sold the paper to Chicago’s Svenska Amerikanaren–Tribunen, the last of the large Swedish American newspapers.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/postenpage.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/svenska-amerikanska-posten"},{"alt":"Color image of the Como Park Conservatory in St Paul, 2006.","author":[{"name":"Sarah Shirey","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/sarah-shirey"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"November 21, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Marjorie McNeely Conservatory (Como Park Conservatory)","postbody":"The conservatory at Como Park in St. Paul, which opened on November 7, 1915, is a well-maintained example of a Victorian greenhouse. While many similar “crystal palaces” have been torn ...","searchtext":"The conservatory at Como Park in St. Paul, which opened on November 7, 1915, is a well-maintained example of a Victorian greenhouse. While many similar “crystal palaces” have been torn down, St. Paul’s conservatory has remained a center for horticulture, recreation, and education for over a century. In 1873, the city of St. Paul purchased about 300 acres of land for a public park around Lake Como. When Frederick Nussbaumer became superintendent of the St. Paul parks in 1891, he enhanced the natural landscape of Como Park by balancing it with space for recreation, artistic floral displays, and exotic plants. Gardeners wintered or propagated some of the plants in a small lean-to-style green house. Since Como Park supplied the plants for the entire park system, however, Nussbaumer needed more indoor growing space. In 1891, the Park Board approved Nussbaumer’s plan for the first conservatory that would be attached to a new superintendent’s residence. Como soon became a leader in park floriculture, and by 1913, there were nine separate greenhouses. Some of them were badly in need of repair. That year, Nussbaumer proposed a plan for a single large conservatory to replace the collection of greenhouses. He designed a Victorian glass house reminiscent of the palm house at Kew Gardens near London, where he trained. The building rose seventy-two feet at the top of its dome, with wings extending to the north and south. It opened on November 7, 1915, as both a production facility for plants used across St. Paul and as a year round get-away for city residents. About 3,000 people visited on its first day. In 1918, the conservatory became the home of St. Paul’s annual fall chrysanthemum exhibition. Spring and holiday flower shows began in 1925. A sunken garden was added to the south wing in 1927. Workers rehabilitated the structure and replaced some of its glass between 1953 and 1957. In 1962, however, a hailstorm damaged over half the glass in the conservatory and many of the plants inside. The repairs cost about $75,000. Fiberglass replaced most of the damaged glass. The next year, the conservatory made headlines when its rare Agave Americana (called the “century plant”) unexpectedly bloomed. A shoot grew to be so long—thirty-five feet—that a panel in the roof had to be removed. After growing for months, the stalk bloomed into over 300 flowers. In 1974, the conservatory was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. It was in desperate need of repairs, and the public took action to help restore the building. Community groups took ownership by holding meetings and putting on shows. Volunteers gave tours and helped with fundraising. The conservatory increased its focus on education and began offering garden classes to the public in 1974. In 1978, St. Paul’s sister city of Nagasaki, Japan, gifted a design for a Japanese garden by landscape architect Masami Matsuda. The Ordway family donated the money to create the Como Ordway Memorial Japanese Garden outside of the conservatory. The city published The Como Park Master Plan in 1981, and The Como Conservatory Planning Advisory Committee published the Como Conservatory Master Plan for its restoration in 1984, which the Metropolitan Council approved. The $13.5 million first phase included restoration of glass and structural elements, as well as updated electrical, heating, ventilation, and water systems. On July 31, 1999, the conservatory received the HortLandmark Award from the American Society for Horticultural Science for its historical, scientific, environmental, and aesthetic value. It was only the third site to receive this landmark status. In 2002, the Donald McNeely family donated $7 million to the Como Conservatory, which renamed it the Marjorie McNeely Conservatory. This money helped open a new wing and a combined visitors’ center for the conservatory and Como Zoo. The visitors’ center connected the facilities, serving as the main entrance for both. It included a gift shop, classrooms for its educational programs, and other amenities. A Tropical Encounters exhibit opened in the visitor’s center in 2006. The new wing of the conservatory included an orchid house and fern room. Further additions included an edible garden in 2011, a year-round bonsai gallery in 2013, and a Centennial Garden in 2015 for the 100th anniversary of the conservatory. At this time, the conservatory managed nine gardens—six indoors and three outdoors.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Como_Park_Zoo_and_Conservatory-2006.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246054,"name":"Sports and Recreation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/marjorie-mcneely-conservatory-como-park-conservatory"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Dr. Albert Alonzo Ames, ca. 1890.","author":[{"name":"Tamatha Perlman","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/tamatha-perlman"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"November 17, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"1901","name":"Ames, Albert Alonzo “Doc” (1842–1911)","postbody":"Albert Alonzo Ames, called “Doc,” was mayor of Minneapolis four times, between 1876 and 1903. Though he earned notoriety as |||the shame of Minneapolis||| for his involvement in extortion and ...","searchtext":"Albert Alonzo Ames, called “Doc,” was mayor of Minneapolis four times, between 1876 and 1903. Though he earned notoriety as |||the shame of Minneapolis||| for his involvement in extortion and fraud during his last term in office, Ames also won praise for his work as a doctor and an advocate for veterans. Ames was just ten years old when he arrived in the township of St. Anthony in 1852. His father, Dr. Alfred Elisha Ames, was the area’s first civilian doctor. Young Albert followed in his father’s footsteps, graduating from Rush Medical School in Chicago at the age of twenty. He returned home shortly to join the Ninth Minnesota Volunteer Regiment. After enlisting, he served as a doctor—first in the U.S.–Dakota War of 1862 and then on the front lines of the Civil War. By the time he was twenty-two, he was promoted to surgeon major. Upon his return to Minneapolis, Ames developed a reputation as not only one of the best but also the most compassionate doctors in the city. Promising that “richer men than you will pay your bill,” he attracted patients to his office day and night. He also entered politics, winning a spot in the state legislature by promoting the rights of the Civil War veterans he had tended on the field. Still, his travels during the war left him restless, so in 1868 he moved his family to San Francisco, where he became editor of the famous Alta California newspaper. Ames loved life in California but felt obligated to return to Minneapolis to help his ailing father with his busy medical practice. Ames ran for mayor for the first time in 1876. Entering the race as a Republican, he jumped parties when he lost the nomination. The next night, Ames spoke as the |||tin-pail candidate,|||—a man for the working man—at the Democratic convention. He won the nomination and the election. Although his first term as mayor passed without dispute, Ames proved to be a more controversial mayor with each term. He believed in a “hands-off” approach to the regulation of saloons and gambling halls and gained many supporters during his frequent nights at these establishments. Until his final term as mayor, he maintained a general reputation as a charismatic and generous man, albeit one who freely imbibed. While citizens felt the need to elect a conservative mayor after each of his terms, they continually voted him back into office. But years of drinking and excess finally began to take their toll on him, both physically and mentally. During his final term as mayor, his habits and clouded judgment brought about corruption on a level never before seen in the city. Ames began his 1901 administration with a bold plan to profit off the saloons, gambling halls, and brothels that thrived in the city. Inserting his brother, Fred W. Ames, as chief of police, and replacing half of the police force with men of his choosing, Ames began a year of payoffs and corruption that shattered the public’s perception of its city as a moral and respectable home. When Ames was indicted for extortion, conspiracy, and bribe-taking in the summer of 1902, he quickly left town for West Baden, Indiana, where he remained for several months. Claiming he was too ill to travel and near death, he was able to elude capture. In 1903, Ames became one of the most famous men to hail from the state of Minnesota. Lincoln Steffens, the acclaimed “muckraker” journalist, published an article in the January issue of McClure||s Magazine titled |||The Shame of Minneapolis.||| In it, he recounted the Minneapolis mayor’s fourth and final term in office. In Ames||s absence, his brother Fred, |||Coffee John||| Fichette, and Irwin Gardner were among the men sent to prison for their parts in organized gambling, fraud, and prostitution schemes. Ames was caught and eventually convicted of bribery in May 1903. The Minnesota Supreme Court later overturned his conviction. In the end, Ames|| good deeds outlasted his crimes. He maintained his medical practice until the day he died: November 16, 1911. Mourners of all classes—many of whom remembered his generosity as a doctor, veteran, and volunteer fire fighter—lined up to pay their respects at his funeral.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/por 12709 r2_0.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246060,"name":"Crime and Punishment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246087,"name":"Health and Medicine","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/ames-albert-alonzo-doc-1842-1911"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Vincent R. Dunne, strike committee member, arrested and held at the provost guard stockade at the State Fair grounds, 1934.","author":[{"name":"Anja Witek","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/anja-witek"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"November 14, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"1928","name":"Dunne, Vincent Raymond (1889–1970)","postbody":"Vincent Raymond (V. R.) Dunne dedicated his life to improving the plight of workers. A leader in the 1934 Minneapolis Teamsters strike and convicted in the Smith Act Trial of 1941 for his ...","searchtext":"Vincent Raymond (V. R.) Dunne dedicated his life to improving the plight of workers. A leader in the 1934 Minneapolis Teamsters strike and convicted in the Smith Act Trial of 1941 for his involvement in the Socialist Workers Party, Dunne fought many battles in labor and politics. Dunne was born in Kansas City, Kansas, in 1889. He was the second eldest of nine children. At the age of four, he moved with his family to Little Falls (now Pierz), Minnesota. Vincent’s father worked on the streetcar line and was injured in an accident. To help support the family, V. R. left school; at the age of fourteen, he began to work. At fifteen, he went to North Dakota to harvest grain. There he found the Wobblies (the Industrial Workers of the World, or IWW), a radical labor union organizing in agriculture, mining, and lumber. Dunne worked as a lumberjack in Montana in 1905 and eventually moved west, where he organized with the Wobblies and was arrested several times for soap-boxing—speaking for the radical cause of the IWW. When his family moved to Minneapolis in 1908, Dunne returned to his home state. The biggest branch of the IWW was in Minneapolis, and Dunne stayed active as a union organizer while working as an express driver. In 1914, Dunne settled with his wife, Jennie Holme, in North Minneapolis. They had two children: Raymond Vincent, Jr., and Jeanette Adele. In 1920, Dunne joined the Workers (Communist) Party. In 1928, he was removed from the Communist Party for supporting Leon Trotsky over Joseph Stalin. The Trotskyists eventually founded their own party, the Socialist Workers (SWP). Dunne made several trips to Mexico City to visit the exiled Trotsky. In the early 1930s, Dunne had several jobs in the Minneapolis coal industry, including driving an express truck. The Teamsters were organizing truck drivers at the time, and Dunne became a leader in the struggle, along with his brothers, Miles and Grant. In 1934, Teamsters Local 574 went on strike several times. Eventually, after dozens of casualties, all of the workers’ demands were met, including a closed shop (union-only) hiring policy. The strike put Minneapolis on the map as a “union town,” with 6,000 members organized by Dunne and the Teamsters. By the end of 1934, Dunne was a renowned labor leader. Trotsky called him |||the most effective labor leader in America.” In 1941, a dispute arose between the president of the Teamsters, Daniel Tobin, and Local 544 (formerly 574). Feeling that Tobin was too dictatorial, 544 left the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and joined the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). Within the local, however, opposition formed against Dunne and the socialist union leaders. James Bartlett and Tommy Williams formed the “Committee of 100,” which worked with the government to ensure that Dunne’s cohort lost their prominent positions. Tobin immediately telegraphed President Roosevelt, and an intra-union struggle ensued. While Dunne faced opposition locally, the FBI spied on him. By the end of his life, his file was over 1,000 pages long. On June 27, 1941, the FBI raided the Socialist Workers headquarters at 919 Marquette Avenue in Minneapolis. They confiscated several boxes of papers, two red flags, and a picture of Trotsky. Under the Aliens and Sedition Act (the Smith Act) passed in 1940, Dunne, along with his brothers and twenty-five others, was charged with conspiring to overthrow the government. The U.S. had not charged individuals with sedition in peacetime since 1798; this case marked the first use of the Smith Act. The trial started on October 27, 1941. On December 1, the jury handed down its verdict: Dunne and others were guilty. They appealed the decision, but the Supreme Court refused to hear the case. On December 31, 1943, Dunne and his comrades surrendered to the authorities. Dunne spent sixteen months in Sandstone federal prison. Dunne’s conviction did not slow his political activity. He ran for mayor of Minneapolis in 1943 and 1947 and embarked on nationwide speaking tours in 1942, 1949, and 1957. In addition to fighting for free speech, he spoke out against the Marshall Plan and the Vietnam War. An active member of the SWP until the end, Dunne died in 1970.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/HG3.18T p79.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246055,"name":"Labor","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/dunne-vincent-raymond-1889-1970"},{"alt":"Color image of Morton gneiss used on the façade of the West Publishing Company building in St. Paul, 2016. Photograph by Paul Nelson.","author":[{"name":"Paul Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/paul-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"November 09, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":203519472229,"name":"Pre-1585 (Before European Contact)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Morton Gneiss","postbody":"Morton gneiss (pronounced “nice”), named for the town in Renville County where it has been quarried, is one of the oldest stones on the planet: about 3.5 billion years old. It is known for ...","searchtext":"Morton gneiss (pronounced “nice”), named for the town in Renville County where it has been quarried, is one of the oldest stones on the planet: about 3.5 billion years old. It is known for its beauty as an ornamental stone in buildings and monuments. The rock known as Morton gneiss started out as a gray granite, formed about 3.5 billion years ago deep beneath the surface of the Earth. Molten rock cooled slowly, forming grains (granite comes from granum, the Latin word for grain) of crystallized minerals. About a billion years later, two fragments of the Earth’s crust collided at the future location of southwestern Minnesota, subjecting the granite to heat and pressure. These forces melted it once again and allowed intrusions of molten pink granite. The two granites folded and twisted; when they hardened (very slowly), the twists and folds remained. Eight hundred million years later, another geologic heating event added additional color and texture. When cut and polished, Morton gneiss shows bands and swirls of black, pink, and gray, with white flecks, that sometimes look like galaxies and nebulae floating in the cosmos. The rock’s colors come from quartz (white), pink feldspar (pink), gray feldspar (gray), and biotite and amphibole (black.) About one hundred million years ago, geologic forces slowly pushed Morton gneiss to the Earth’s surface. The glaciers that advanced and retreated across southwestern Minnesota between two million and 12,000 years ago covered the rock with hundreds of feet of soil and rock. The last glaciers began receding about 12,000 years ago. A vast body of water known as Lake Agassiz formed in southern Canada, Minnesota, and North Dakota. When that water drained to the south, forming the River Warren, it carved out the Minnesota River valley. This powerful flow washed away hundreds of feet of glacial deposits and exposed some of the Morton gneiss. Workers began quarrying this gneiss at Morton, Minnesota, around 1884. In these early years, railroads used it for ballast beneath railroad tracks. In 1886, the Swedish immigrant John Anderson arrived in Morton and took a job as a foreman in the quarry. It was located in the village of Morton, between the railroad tracks and the Minnesota River. By 1900, Anderson owned the quarry. He sold it to Cold Spring Granite Company in 1930. Though Morton gneiss is as tough and durable as granite, it has rarely been used as a building stone. Architects have used it mainly in the lower floors of large buildings for its visual appeal. It enjoyed its greatest popularity during the Art Deco era of the 1920s and 1930s. Perhaps the most spectacular use of the stone can be found at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, completed in 1930. Around the country it was used prominently in New York, Detroit, Des Moines, Birmingham, Tulsa, Milwaukee, Hartford, Brooklyn, and Cincinnati. It figures in two buildings at Washington State University in Pullman: Holland Library (1950) and its addition, Terrell Library (1994.) In the Twin Cities, the stone was used by Northwestern Bell Telephone Company in its downtown Minneapolis and St. Paul headquarters. In downtown St. Paul, it was used at the street level of the West Publishing Company building on Kellogg Boulevard and in the original Ecolab Building at Fifth and Wabasha Streets. Since the mid-twentieth century, Morton gneiss has been used more for grave markers and mausoleums than for buildings. At the Bird Island Cemetery, in Goodhue County, a free-standing arch of Morton gneiss greets visitors. The Wellstone family marker at Lakewood Cemetery in Minneapolis uses a large, uncut stone. In Morton, the town’s welcome signs are made of gneiss, as are the front of the town liquor store and panels on the old high school. The stone is so plentiful there that it is used as riprap (erosion-reducing rubble) along ditches and streams. Zion Lutheran Church may be the only building made entirely of Morton gneiss. The State of Minnesota designated a huge outcrop of the stone, in Morton, the Morton Outcrops Scientific and Natural Area. Visitors there can see Minnesota’s oldest rocks, eroded but unquarried. Along with Kasota stone, St. Cloud granite, and Platteville limestone, Morton gneiss makes a distinctively Minnesotan contribution to the built environment.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/close-up of Morton gneiss - West Pub.-St. Paul.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246052,"name":"Science and Technology","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/morton-gneiss"},{"alt":"Color image of an early version of a Post-it Note, 1986.","author":[{"name":"Julia Lavanger","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/julia-lavanger"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"November 07, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Post-it Notes","postbody":"Introduced to the public in 1980, the Post-it Note has become one of the Minnesota-based 3M Company’s most successful products. In 1968, Spencer Silver, a scientist at 3M’s headquarters in ...","searchtext":"Introduced to the public in 1980, the Post-it Note has become one of the Minnesota-based 3M Company’s most successful products. In 1968, Spencer Silver, a scientist at 3M’s headquarters in Maplewood, was working to create a strong adhesive. Accidentally, he developed a new material that was light enough to easily remove and peel apart. Silver felt that he had invented something unique and useful but struggled to find what that use could be. He spent five years meeting with others at 3M, trying to find someone who could recognize the unique capabilities of his invention and create a new product with it. At this time, Art Fry, another 3M employee, was frustrated when his scrap-paper bookmarks fell out of the hymnal he used while singing in his church choir. As he was thinking of ways to make a better bookmark, Silver’s “not-so-sticky” adhesive came to mind as a way to make pieces of paper slightly sticky without adhering permanently. Fry realized that the sticky papers would work better as notes, and the product idea was solidified. Henry Courtney and Roger Merrill—two other members of the research team—found a way to make the adhesive attach to one piece of paper. Their changes allowed the note to stick to, and be removed from, other paper and objects. The product was originally called Press n’ Peel. After mixed success in market tests in several major cities, 3M almost decided to stop producing the Post-it Note. In a final effort to test the product’s potential, marketers decided to give it directly to consumers in Boise, Idaho. They wanted to see if giving consumers free samples would increase sales. This marketing test became known as the Boise Blitz and was wildly successful. About 90 percent of people who tried the product said they would buy it. In 1980, the Post-it Note was made available to customers in U.S. stores. It became hugely popular. The Post-it Note team was awarded the internal 3M Golden Step Award in 1981 and 1982 for their development of a profitable product that generated significant new sales. In 1981, they were also awarded 3M’s Outstanding New Product Award. Since their debut in 1980, Post-it Notes have become an office staple and entered pop culture. In 2000, they were available in twenty-seven sizes, eighteen colors, and twenty fragrances, and could be used in a variety of dispensers. In 1991, Minnesota Twins fans wrote Post-it notes of encouragement that contributed to a large mural in support of the team in the World Series. Post-it Notes have also been used to create works of art, and have been featured in museums like the Museum of Modern Art in New York City (MoMA). MoMA’s 2004 exhibit “Humble Masterpieces” displayed an example of the product from the museum’s permanent collection.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/1991.413.27.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/post-it-notes"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Frances E. Andrews, ca. 1907.","author":[{"name":"Marjorie Savage","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/marjorie-savage"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"November 02, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"1924","name":"Andrews, Frances (1884–1961)","postbody":"Frances Andrews worked as an advocate for social justice, education, and conservation in the early twentieth century. She called for preservation of the forests and lakes that became the ...","searchtext":"Frances Andrews worked as an advocate for social justice, education, and conservation in the early twentieth century. She called for preservation of the forests and lakes that became the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and experimented with land restoration in northwestern Wisconsin. Her legacy includes an endowment that continues to support social and environmental causes in the 2010s. The daughter of a wealthy grain merchant, Frances Elizabeth Andrews was raised in an expansive house in the Loring Park area of Minneapolis. Hired staff cooked, cleaned, gardened, and provided chauffeur service for the household. Her parents, Arthur C. and Mary Hunt Andrews, gave generously of their time and fortune to improve the growing Twin Cities. The Andrews family lived an upper-class lifestyle in one of the better parts of town. Each summer, however, they retreated to a rustic cottage on Isle Royale. There, Frances and her brother, William Hunt Andrews, hiked, fished, and gathered wild foods. By the time Frances was seventeen and William was fourteen, the two were spending time on their own at the island, and William was working as a hunting guide. Following her mother’s death, when Frances was twenty-seven, she took over responsibility for the Andrews|| household and social obligations. In that role, she developed her own portfolio of causes, mirroring her parents’ interests in the arts, social issues, and conservation. Just a few years after Mary’s death, William died following a long illness. To honor both Mary’s and William’s love of the outdoors, Arthur purchased a large tract of farm and forest land near Sarona, Wisconsin, and named the property Hunt Hill in their memory. Frances assumed oversight of the property with a goal of restoring the farmland and returning the majority of the site to a natural state. For the next thirty-five years, she put her vision of conservation into practice, planting nut trees, establishing wildlife habitat, and managing the farm sustainably. Starting in the 1920s, Andrews joined with other conservationists seeking to set aside Midwestern wilderness areas as sources of peace and tranquility for the common good. She was a contemporary and friend of the major players of the preservation project that eventually resulted in the designation of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, most notably Ernest Oberholtzer, Sewell Tyng, and Sigurd Olson. While the public face of the movement was overwhelmingly male, Andrews and several other women—including Minnesota progressives Frances Densmore and Gratia Countryman—played a vital but uncelebrated role. They wrote letters, developed strategies, and connected wealthy donors to the cause. Andrews also worked to protect the way of life of American Indians, fishing families, and backwoods dwellers in northern Minnesota, in Wisconsin, and on Michigan’s Isle Royale. In 1951, Arthur died, leaving his daughter as the last surviving member of the family. She took seriously her responsibility for determining the fate of the Andrews legacy with her inheritance of well over $1 million. To preserve her dreams for Hunt Hill, she deeded the property to the National Audubon Society. Her gift stipulated that it should be run as a nature camp for Minnesota and Wisconsin residents; that all flora and fauna should be left to live out their natural lives; and that year-round conservation research should be conducted in partnership with local organizations. Andrews died in 1961. Her will gave generous gifts to her closest friends and the employees who had worked for the family. She donated a large sum to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts in memory of her mother, and she gave to the Nature Conservancy in William’s name. She established the Minneapolis Foundation’s Andrews-Hunt Fund to support the Hunt Hill nature center. The fund also underwrites the Minnesota Orchestral Association, Planned Parenthood of Minnesota, Quetico Superior Foundation, and international exchange programs at Oberlin College and the University of Minnesota. The National Audubon Society received $125,000 to be used for Hunt Hill. That endowment still supports the nature center in 2016, while the board of directors continues to guide its work by Andrews’ stipulations.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/andrews_1.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/andrews-frances-1884-1961"},{"alt":"Color image of Jack-o||-lanterns covered in snow during the Halloween Blizzard, 1991. Photograph by Richard Sennott, RPA, Minneapolis Star Tribune.","author":[{"name":"Paul Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/paul-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"October 31, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Halloween Blizzard, 1991","postbody":"On October 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 October ...","searchtext":"On October 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 October 31—Halloween Day—and fell steadily for almost three days. When it stopped, snow measured over thirty inches in the eastern part of Minnesota, from Duluth to Dodge Center, breaking a record set in 1882. On October 29, the Minnesota Twins’ World Series victory parades in downtown Minneapolis and St. Paul drew hundreds of thousands of people. It was a chilly day, with a high temperature of 32 degrees Fahrenheit and cloudy skies. The only snow that day fell in the form of confetti. The next morning, meteorologist Paul Douglas’s column in the Minneapolis Star Tribune noted the rising of a warm front from the South and predicted snow on Halloween Day. A photograph in the following issue of the newspaper nevertheless showed snowmaking machines at work at a ski slope in Taylors Falls. Natural flakes began to fall around noon on the 31st along a north-south line from the Canadian border north of Duluth to Rochester in the south. Some trick-or-treaters were deterred. Paul Douglas predicted as much as ten inches. He underestimated. Snow fell harder and harder through the evening of the 31st and into the morning of the 1st. Temperatures fell and winds increased throughout the day. By the end of November 1, it was clear that this was a snowstorm of historic dimensions. A moisture-laden warm front from the Gulf of Mexico had, as Douglas predicted, collided with a Canadian cold front just west of the Mississippi valley. The cold front forced condensation of the water in the warm front and it fell—in the form of sleet and ice in Iowa and along Minnesota’s southern border. The storm moved rapidly almost due north, dropping snow in a fifty-mile-wide band along the Minnesota–Wisconsin border. The first flakes appeared in the Twin Cities at about 11:30 a.m. The snow reached Duluth ninety minutes later. By early evening, it was falling steadily across the eastern part of Minnesota, forcing most trick-or-treaters to return home disappointed. The airport recorded 8.2 inches that Thursday. It snowed all night and all day on Friday, November 1. The 20.4 inches that fell on Friday broke previous records for a twenty-four-hour period. Some 900 schools and businesses closed. Several people died shoveling snow or in car crashes. At St. Paul–Ramsey Hospital, surgeons treated eight men for parts of fingers mangled or lopped off in snow blower mishaps. By late afternoon, the State Patrol had counted over 400 snow-related traffic accidents. The storm had so far mostly spared the western four-fifths of the state. On Saturday, November 2, however, intense cold blew across the southern tier of the state, dropping temperatures into the teens and closing Interstate 90 from South Dakota to Rochester. Winds blew at thirty to fifty miles per hour, with gusts to sixty. Over 80,000 houses lost power. Governor Carlson declared a state of emergency in Freeborn and Mower Counties, where thousands slept in shelters. Temperatures fell to below zero on Sunday, November 3, and the snow stopped. Duluth had seen seventy-two continuous hours of snow and an accumulation of 36.9 inches—then a state record. The snowfall in the Twin Cities measured 28.4 inches. About twenty deaths were attributed to the storm, and economic losses were estimated at $11.7 million. One of the most remarkable aspects of the event was how tenaciously normal life resisted the storm. Metro Transit buses in the Twin Cities kept running until 8 p.m. Friday. The Twin Cities airport stayed open until 10:30 p.m. and reopened (to reduced operations) early Saturday. About 60 percent of USPS mail carriers in the metro area reported for duty on Friday. All state offices remained open except the Legislature. Out on the streets, countless thousands of people, armed with snow shovels and snow blowers, dug out their neighbors and stranded strangers. On Monday morning, November 4, almost the entire state opened for work and school at the usual times.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/40hallosnow103015.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/halloween-blizzard-1991"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra on stage, ca. 1959.","author":[{"name":"Janet Meyer","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/janet-meyer"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"October 26, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"St. Paul Chamber Orchestra","postbody":"In 1959, a new orchestra was formed in St. Paul in order to attract more people to downtown. The St. Paul Chamber Orchestra (SPCO) held their first concert on November 18, 1959, in the ...","searchtext":"In 1959, a new orchestra was formed in St. Paul in order to attract more people to downtown. The St. Paul Chamber Orchestra (SPCO) held their first concert on November 18, 1959, in the Central High School auditorium. Since their debut, the SPCO has won several awards and has become the only full-time chamber orchestra in the United States. Orchestra music was popular in the mid-1950s. Minneapolis had a symphony orchestra and several chamber-sized string groups, including the Flor String Quartet, the Trio da Camera, and the Variation String Quartet. Some of the large downtown hotels had orchestras to provide music for dancing after dinner. Although these groups existed, Ralph Burgard, president of the St. Paul Council of Arts and Sciences, thought that St. Paul needed another orchestra. He surmised that a chamber orchestra with professional musicians would draw people downtown because it was unique. Because it was smaller, it could succeed alongside the Minneapolis Symphony without competing for the same audience. Burgard organized the St. Paul Philharmonic Society in 1958 and hired Leopold Sipe to lead its music groups a year later. Groups within the Philharmonic Society included the St. Paul Civic Orchestra, a music camp for young people, and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. After the SPCO’s 1959 debut, John K. Sherman, a music critic for the Minneapolis Star, wrote that the new orchestra was producing some of the best recent music that originated in St. Paul. In another review, John H. Harvey noted that Minneapolis–St. Paul had gained something new, different, and very good. A chamber orchestra is smaller than a symphony orchestra. While a symphony orchestra may have as many as ninety musicians, the SPCO debuted with thirty-one musicians and has remained close to that size throughout its existence. Groups of this size play chamber music, so called because its players can fit into a single chamber. They can also perform in comparatively small settings such as churches, schools, and prisons. A New York Times reviewer noted that the SPCO’s success in small spaces was a result of the musicians’ ability to communicate with people of all ages and provided an example for similar orchestras. Travel was less expensive for a small orchestra than for a full-size orchestra. Size may have worked in the SPCO’s favor when the U.S. State Department sponsored the group on a month-long tour of Eastern Europe in October 1974. A trip to the Soviet Union in autumn of 1975 was also sponsored by the State Department. Without a large number of affluent private donors, finances were frequently tight for the SPCO. In each lean time, management usually found grants or endowments. In October 1993, however, Minnesota Public Radio sponsored a “radiothon” on behalf of the SPCO. This fund-raising drive, known as “S.O.S. (Save Our SPCO)” rescued the orchestra from bankruptcy. Fundraising on behalf of another organization was rare for a public radio station and required a waiver from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The event, however, proved effective; it raised a total of $700,000 in donations. Most orchestras are led by a man or woman who serves as a music director. In 1987, however, Deborah Borda, the orchestra||s president and managing director, made a decision that set the SPCO apart from other chamber orchestras. She chose to replace the outgoing music director, Pinchas Zukerman, with an artistic commission of three conductors, each with different roles. This innovative structure remained in place until the fall of 1992, when Hugh Wolff became the music director. By 2004, another group leadership model was put in place by then-president Bruce Coppock. The artistic partners model consisted of two committees: the Artistic Vision Committee and the Artistic Personnel Committee. These committees include both musicians and conductors.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/N5.1 p24.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/st-paul-chamber-orchestra"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of a 221 Yellowstone steam locomotive, 1940.","author":[{"name":"Aaron Hanson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/aaron-hanson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"October 19, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"1953","name":"Duluth, Missabe and Iron Range Railway","postbody":"The Duluth, Missabe and Iron Range Railway (DM&IR) was a small railroad that hauled iron ore and taconite from the mines of northern Minnesota’s Mesabi and Vermilion Iron Ranges to ...","searchtext":"The Duluth, Missabe and Iron Range Railway (DM&IR) was a small railroad that hauled iron ore and taconite from the mines of northern Minnesota’s Mesabi and Vermilion Iron Ranges to docks on Lake Superior at Duluth and Two Harbors. It operated in northern Minnesota and Wisconsin. The railroad was formed in 1938 with the merger of the Duluth, Missabe and Northern (DM&N) and several smaller area railroads. One of these, the Duluth and Iron Range (D&IR,) had been organized in 1874. Charlemagne Tower took control of the line in 1882 to haul ore from the self-named city of Tower to the newly established port of Two Harbors. The first shipment of iron ore from the large Soudan Mine took place on July 31, 1884. Illinois Steel acquired the railroad in 1887. The DM&N was formed in 1891 to haul ore from Mountain Iron to Superior and Duluth. The railroad shipped iron ore to Superior for the first time the following year. The Merritt brothers ushered in its creation when they discovered and began mining iron ore at Mountain Iron. The brothers, also known as the Seven Iron Men, were instrumental in the development of the iron range. The Merritts built a dock at Duluth for the railroad in 1893, but the expansion proved a considerable financial drain. Famous financier John D. Rockefeller was therefore able to maneuver the company into his hands in 1894. Both the DM&N and the D&IR were sold to Rockefeller’s U.S. Steel Corporation in 1901. The two railroads operated separately until 1938, when they were combined along with the Spirit Lake Transfer and the Interstate Transfer to become the DM&IR. The DM&N had already leased the other railroads since 1930. The new DM&IR had large docks at Two Harbors and Duluth to convey ore to ships on Lake Superior. It was operated in two divisions, based on the predecessor railroads. The western section, which made up the former DM&N, became the Missabe division. The eastern section was based on the route of the old D&IR and was known as the Iron Range division. Since its primary purpose was bringing iron ore to the docks for shipment or to connecting railroads at Superior, the DM&IR hauled considerable tonnage. The railroad hauled over 37 million tons of ore in 1941. Long trains could consist of well over 100 ore cars, or jennies, and weigh over 8,000 tons. The line also featured inclines such as Proctor Hill, a 2.2% grade from the company ore docks at Duluth to the large classification yard seven miles away at Proctor. To facilitate such large trains, the railroad utilized several different types of powerful steam locomotives. Most notable were the unique Yellowstone locomotives made by Baldwin Locomotive Works. They were exceptionally large locomotives with a 2-8-8-4 wheel classification. Although the railroad initially ordered eight in 1941, ten more of these giants were ordered to keep up with wartime ore movements in 1943. In 1953, the railroad hauled its record of 49 million tons of iron ore, and the first diesel locomotives appeared. The DM&IR came to rely heavily on the EMD SD9 for motive power. The last steam locomotive ran in 1961. Never a significant source of traffic on the line, the railroad ended passenger operations that same year. The amount of available iron ore had been drying up since the 1950s. Many facilities closed, and by 1963, the railroad had closed the docks at Two Harbors. In order to rectify the shortage, Minnesota passed the Taconite Amendment to the state constitution on November 3 of that year, limiting taxation of the nascent taconite mining industry. Taconite plants were constructed, new facilities opened, and by 1966, ships were once again receiving trainloads at the docks. In 1988, the railroad was sold off to a holding company of U.S. Steel and then sold off completely from them in 2001. The railroad was ultimately absorbed into the Canadian National Railway system in 2004.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/MNopedia/MNopedia%202026/Iron%20Range%20immigration%20rescans/Runk%202196_resized.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246053,"name":"Transportation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/duluth-missabe-and-iron-range-railway"},{"alt":"Color image of a pipe quarry pit, Pipestone National Monument, 2009. Photograph by the National Park Service.","author":[{"name":"Francis |||Bud||| Johnston","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/francis-bud-johnston"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"October 17, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":203519472229,"name":"Pre-1585 (Before European Contact)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Pipestone Quarry","postbody":"From ancient times to the present, a pipestone quarry in southwestern Minnesota has been a sacred gathering place for Native nations from all over North America. Modern highways following ...","searchtext":"From ancient times to the present, a pipestone quarry in southwestern Minnesota has been a sacred gathering place for Native nations from all over North America. Modern highways following traditional migration routes used by indigenous people intersect at this venerated place, designated a national monument in 1937. Dakota people called it―and still call it―Inyan Sa K||api, [the place where] they dig the red stone. Many roads that run across North America began as the original trade and migration routes frequented by indigenous people. Highway 75 marks the trade corridor that ran southward from Canada to Mexico; Highway 30 runs east to west from Wisconsin to Wyoming. These highways intersect at Pipestone, Minnesota, a place that has come to be known as |||the crossroads of the Indian world.||| Since the 1700s, the quarry has been particularly important to Dakota people. Oral tradition holds that it was used before that by the Mandan, and, between 1200 and 1300 CE, by the Iowa. These and other groups mined pipestone and traded flint, obsidian, and dried meat for pipestone items. Pipestone pipes and artifacts have been found across North America, from as far north as Manitoba to archeological dig sites at Tremper Mound in southern Ohio and Ocmulgee National Monument in Macon, Georgia. In 2012, University of Illinois scientists analyzed some of the artifacts, showing that their chemical makeup matched the stone from Pipestone. This proved that trade networks extended for hundreds of miles—or that people traveled an equal distance to quarry and trade pipestone. Europeans called the soft, red stone at the quarry catlinite after artist George Catlin, who visited the area and collected samples for analysis. It is commonly known as pipestone because of its traditional use in the creation of sacred ceremonial pipes. Contemporary Indigenous people maintain the tradition of hand-quarrying stone using only sledgehammers and wedges as tools. Native artisans carve peace pipes both for prayer rituals and for sale. They are taught to use all the quarried stone, if possible, or return it to Mother Earth. Pipestone has been a sacred place for millennia. Native nations agreed that fighting, warfare, and disputes of any kind would not be tolerated there. Because of the site’s cultural significance, the people of Pipestone worried about protecting its resources. According to the National Park Service, the idea of establishing a national park at the quarry gained traction in 1890, when local advocates petitioned the U.S. Congress to create a school for Native people nearby. The bill that created the school, however, did not include language that created a park. Another bill, proposing |||The Indian Pipestone National Park,||| was introduced in Congress in 1895, but died in committee. An 1858 treaty between the U.S. and the Yankton Dakota had reserved the quarry specifically for Yankton people, who continued to mine pipestone there. In 1899, Congress failed to ratify an agreement between the Yankton and the U.S. government that would have ceded the land around the quarry to the U.S. After the government obtained clear title to the land, it drafted another bill in 1932 that would have created an 81.75-acre park and grant quarrying rights to all Native nations. Superintendent James W. Balmer of the Pipestone Indian School took the proposal to the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) but met with objections. As a result, the local planning organization, composed of both white and Native American advocates, was renamed the Pipestone Indian Shrine Association. Its focus shifted to the historical significance of the site and its economic value to Native people. After receiving a positive response from the BIA, the National Park Service began to consider creating the proposed park. The Civil Works Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps–Indian Division, under Superintendent James W. Balmer||s direction, improved the quarry and surrounding area in the 1930s. Workers built roads, installed a dam, and planted trees. Senator Henrik Shipstead introduced a bill to establish the area as a National Park in 1934 and again in 1935, but neither effort succeeded. In 1937, Congress approved a National Park bill with a provision that granted Indigenous people exclusive quarrying rights. On August 25, 1937, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the bill to create the 116-acre Pipestone National Monument. In the 2010s, the quarry continues to be a gathering place. It draws an average of 75,000 visitors from all over the world each year.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/1024px-Pipe_quarry_pit_NPS image-wikimedia.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246059,"name":"Native Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246089,"name":"Religion and Belief","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/pipestone-quarry"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of the Graham Hall basketball squad, ca.1908.","author":[{"name":"Catherine Kirkland","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/catherine-kirkland"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"October 12, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Graham Hall, Minneapolis","postbody":"From 1900–1915, the girls’ preparatory school Graham Hall catered to well-to-do Minneapolis families with an elite pre-college curriculum. The school also offered a general course of study ...","searchtext":"From 1900–1915, the girls’ preparatory school Graham Hall catered to well-to-do Minneapolis families with an elite pre-college curriculum. The school also offered a general course of study and elementary education. Graham Hall was eventually reincorporated under a board of trustees as the Northrop Collegiate School, which, in turn, became a part of the Blake School. In the summer of 1900, the Minneapolis Classical School, a college preparatory school for boys at 2244 Nicollet Avenue in Minneapolis, announced the opening of a girls’ department, to be called Graham Hall. The school’s principal, Arthur D. Hall, tapped Carrie F. Bartlett and Smith College graduate Zulema Ruble to be associate principals in charge of the girls’ division. Named after Ruble’s mother, Graham Hall was intended to prepare girls for Wellesley, Smith, Wells, Bryn Mawr, and other women’s colleges. By the fall of 1902, the Minneapolis Classical School had ceased to use the names “Morgan Hall” and “Graham Hall” to refer to its separate boys’ and girls’ courses of instruction. That same fall, Ruble and Bartlett began to advertise Graham Hall as an independent girls’ preparatory school, at a “new and permanent location.” It would now comprise three buildings in what the school catalog termed “one of the best residence sections of Minneapolis,” which was on First Avenue between Eighteenth and Nineteenth Streets. Graham Hall offered three courses of study: a general course designed for girls “not desiring a college education,” a postgraduate course for its own alumnae, and a college preparatory course. A women’s college like Wellesley, in Massachusetts, required its entering freshmen to present credentials in English, Latin, and mathematics, as well as an additional foreign language or chemistry or physics. Graham Hall structured its college preparatory curriculum accordingly. A Graham Hall girl enrolled in this course studied English, history, French, German, Latin, Greek, mathematics, science, reading and speaking, and physical training. Elective courses in bible studies, household economics, music, and psychology were also offered. An all-female faculty taught all courses. Knowledge of Latin and Greek was essential for any girl aspiring to college, but Graham Hall also insisted that its students take gymnastics classes. Graham Hall athletics teams—especially basketball—practiced regularly and competed with other schools. Plays, dramatics, and music were also regular parts of school life. Graham Hall maintained a Junior School, which enrolled students beginning at age six. Both girls and boys could attend through the fifth grade. These younger students received a foundational education in speaking, writing, and spelling, endured daily “mental arithmetic” drills, learned French or German, and began Latin by the seventh grade. The cost of attending Graham Hall depended on the grade level and whether the student lived at school or at home. During the 1909–1910 school year, for instance, attendance in grades one through four cost $85 per year, while the “Academic Department”—high school—years were $150 per year. To live at school and attend classes cost $500 per year. Extra fees were charged for music lessons ($52 for a year’s worth of weekly piano lessons), laundry ($0.75 for a dozen pieces), a seat at church ($5), and lunch ($0.25 a day). In 1910, co-founder Carrie Bartlett left the school; her interest was taken over by Alyda MacLain and Isoline Lang. Two years later, Zulema Ruble ended her connection with the school. As a condition of the contract that bought out her interest, Ruble agreed not to own, operate, or “in any wise be interested in or connected with any other private school in Minneapolis, Minnesota.” MacLain and Lang were principals of the school for approximately two years. Louise Knappen, an associate principal, suggested that Graham Hall be reorganized under a board of trustees. She maintained her one-third interest in Graham Hall and remained until, in the summer of 1914, the all-male board purchased the interests of MacLain and Lang. At the end of the school year, Knappen departed to do graduate work at Columbia University. In the fall of 1915, Graham Hall became known as the Northrop Collegiate School, taking its name from Cyrus Northrop, president emeritus of the University of Minnesota. Following votes to merge by the boards of Northrop, Blake, and Highcroft Schools, Northrop became a part of the Blake School in 1972 .","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/7.BasketballSquad08-09_edited.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056210,"name":"Education","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/graham-hall-minneapolis"},{"alt":"The village of St. Paul, 1844. Etching by Charles William Post.","author":[{"name":"Paul Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/paul-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"October 10, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186622056203,"name":"1792–1861 (Expansion and Reform)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Murder of John Hays","postbody":"The first murder to reach the courts of what would become Minnesota took place during the early infancy of St. Paul, in the late summer of 1839. Though both victim and main suspect were ...","searchtext":"The first murder to reach the courts of what would become Minnesota took place during the early infancy of St. Paul, in the late summer of 1839. Though both victim and main suspect were quickly identified, the case was never solved. On September 27, 1839, Dakota boys found a body washed up under Dayton’s Bluff, near Carver’s Cave (Wakan Tipi). The victim had been beaten to death, almost every bone face smashed. An official party, summoned from Fort Snelling, recognized only the gray hair and distinctive long nose; they belonged to Army sergeant John Hays. Suspicion quickly centered on his cabin-mate and business partner, Edward Phelan. Hays and Phelan were both Irishmen—Hays from Waterford, Phelan from Derry. They had met in the U.S. Army at Fort Snelling. Hays, born around 1800, was slight and well-liked. Phelan, eleven years younger and a muscular private, stood over six feet tall and cultivated a reputation for violence. When the Treaty of 1837 opened the land just across the Mississippi from Fort Snelling to (legal) white immigration, Hays and Phelan made a deal. When Phelan’s enlistment expired, he would make two land claims, one for him and one for Hays, and build a shelter. Hays would supply the money and join Phelan when Hays’s army term ended. Phelan left the army on June 8, 1838. He duly claimed two land parcels in what later became downtown St. Paul, along the Mississippi from the foot of Eagle Street to the Robert Street Bridge. Only Pierre Parrant, the famous Pig’s Eye, who occupied a shanty near Fountain Cave, has an earlier claim to be the first resident of St. Paul. Hays joined Phelan on April 25, 1839. The two men took up farming. On September 8, Phelan reported to his neighbors Benjamin and Genevieve Gervais that he had not seen Hays since he had ferried him across the Mississippi in his canoe the day before. Hays, said Phelan, believed someone from the Dakota village Kaposia, a few miles downriver, had stolen a calf of his, and Hays wanted to pursue the thief. Two search parties followed Hays’s supposed path to Kaposia but found no trace of him. When Hays turned up murdered three weeks later, all eyes turned to Phelan. At that time, the future St. Paul consisted of perhaps twenty dwellings scattered between Hidden Falls on the west and Carver’s Cave on the east. The nearest law resided at Mendota, in the person of justice of the peace Henry Sibley. Sibley ordered Phelan arrested, then turned the case over to Joseph R. Brown. Brown represented the proper legal authority: Crawford County, Wisconsin Territory, the western point of which contained the future St. Paul. Brown held a hearing on November 1, 1839. The dozen witnesses mostly contradicted Phelan’s tale. Hays’s missing calf, never stolen, had soon returned. Four men had seen Phelan in his canoe at the time he said he ferried Hays across the river; all agreed that Phelan was alone. Observers had noticed a great quantity of blood and some strands of gray hair in trampled vegetation near the Hays–Phelan cabin. The only evidence supporting the story that Hays had gone off and been murdered by someone else, possibly Indians, came from Phelan, and his versions of the tale had varied. On November 3, Brown concluded that Phelan had likely committed the murder. He sent him to jail in Prairie du Chien, the seat then of Crawford County, to await a grand jury and likely trial. In the spring or summer of 1840, Phelan returned to his cabin and his disputatious life. In 1848, his neighbors elected him a delegate to the Minnesota Territorial Convention. In 1850, a grand jury indicted him for perjury. Rather than face charges, Phelan took off for the goldfields of California. He never got there; companions murdered him along the way. It remains unknown what happened to Phelan after he arrived at the jail in Prairie du Chien. Though the evidence against him was powerful, the grand jury may have declined to indict him, or he may have been acquitted at trial. All court records of his case have been lost. The namesake of St. Paul’s Lake Phalen, Phalen Creek, Phalen Boulevard, and Payne-Phalen neighborhood was almost certainly the city’s first murderer.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/AV1982.328.8.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246060,"name":"Crime and Punishment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/murder-john-hays"},{"alt":"Color image of Great Northern diesel locomotive number 400, 1966. Photograph by Myron T. Gilbertson.","author":[{"name":"Aaron Hanson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/aaron-hanson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"October 06, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Great Northern Railway","postbody":"The Great Northern Railway was a transcontinental railroad system that extended from St. Paul to Seattle. Among the transcontinental railroads, it was the only one that used no public ...","searchtext":"The Great Northern Railway was a transcontinental railroad system that extended from St. Paul to Seattle. Among the transcontinental railroads, it was the only one that used no public funding and only a few land grants. As the northernmost of these lines, the railroad spurred immigration and the development of lands along the route, especially in Minnesota. On September 18, 1889, Minnesota entrepreneur James J. Hill created the Great Northern Railway from the bankrupt St. Paul and Pacific and the Minneapolis and St. Cloud. On February 1, 1890, the Great Northern assumed control of his other railroad companies, among them the Montana Central Railway and the St. Paul, Minneapolis and Manitoba. Hill employed the strategy of purchasing bankrupt companies and revitalizing them until they were profitable. He began at the start of his career by purchasing small shipping companies. After acquiring the St. Paul and Pacific, which had gone bankrupt in the Panic of 1873, Hill expanded the line through trackage rights with the Northern Pacific. It was then renamed the St. Paul, Minneapolis and Manitoba in May of 1879. Hill expanded his nascent railroad network while upgrading existing lines. He built in stages, creating profitable lines first before undertaking further expansion, thus avoiding excessive debt. His companies sold homesteads to immigrants and furnished the trains by which they would reach their new homes. They solicited further immigration by advertising in European newspapers and hiring overseas agents, who sought out immigrants looking for their own farmland. The railroad reinvested profits into the company to fuel expansion and improve existing infrastructure. Hill brought in industries and strategically placed them along the network. This pattern continued throughout the 1880s as he expanded his empire over Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, and Montana. The railroad hauled goods and passengers, encouraged immigration along the route, and helped bring wheat harvests to market at Minneapolis. The Great Northern was to be a true transcontinental railroad. Beginning in St. Paul and crossing the Mississippi River over the Stone Arch Bridge at Minneapolis, the line extended westward through North Dakota and Montana. The Great Northern built to the north of the Northern Pacific route. It proceeded until the Rocky Mountains, where it used the recently discovered Marias Pass through the continental divide. The Marias proved to be an easier pass than the one used by the Northern Pacific, as it was the lowest crossing of the Rockies south of Canada. Taking the pass also shortened the overall length of the route. Building continued through Idaho and Washington and reached Seattle in 1893. Unlike other railroads, the Great Northern did not declare bankruptcy. Official completion was at Scenic, Washington, on January 6, 1893. Along the sparsely populated right of way through Minnesota, North Dakota, and Montana, the Great Northern bought land from the federal government. It rarely, however, resorted to land grants, instead selling parcels to newly arrived immigrants—most from Germany and Scandinavia. The railroad created special “colonist” or “emigrant” cars—passenger cars appointed in Spartan fashion—to inexpensively convey immigrants to their new farmsteads. The railroad advertised Minnesota land, and many immigrants bought plots reclaimed from swamps. The state granted over two million acres of swampland to aid in railroad construction. Some of the larger grants that became part of the Great Northern included lines from St. Paul to Duluth and from St. Cloud to Hinckley. Hill purchased large portions of real estate in Minnesota||s Mesabi Iron Range in 1898. This included mines and railroad lines. The Great Northern controlled many of the shipments of Minnesota ore to the steel mills of the nation. It obtained renown for its Empire Builder passenger train, which operated service to the west coast by way of Glacier National Park. Despite antitrust proceedings that forced Hill to divest from his other railroad interests, the Great Northern weathered economic downturns and proved to be a profitable railroad for most of the twentieth century. Ironically, the same railroads that Hill was forced to give up merged with the Great Northern in 1970 to form the Burlington Northern. This network merged with another historic railroad, and a considerable portion of the Great Northern now operates as the BNSF Railway. Amtrak continues to offer service on the Empire Builder passenger train.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/HE6.1G r4.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246053,"name":"Transportation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/great-northern-railway"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Jack Baker and James Michael McConnell applying for a marriage license in Minneapolis, 1970.","author":[{"name":"Sarah Shirey","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/sarah-shirey"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"October 03, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Baker v. Nelson","postbody":"When Jack Baker and Michael McConnell became the first same-sex couple in the United States to apply for a marriage license, in 1970, Hennepin County clerk Gerald R. Nelson rejected their ...","searchtext":"When Jack Baker and Michael McConnell became the first same-sex couple in the United States to apply for a marriage license, in 1970, Hennepin County clerk Gerald R. Nelson rejected their application. They then sued Nelson, claiming a constitutional right to marry in what would become a landmark Supreme Court Case. Baker and McConnell were introduced by a mutual friend in 1966. When Baker asked McConnell for a committed relationship, McConnell said he would agree only if they could be legally married. There had never been a legal same-sex marriage in the United States, but Baker promised to find a way. There was not a unified marriage equality movement within gay communities at that time; many activists rejected the quest for legal marriage and focused on liberation from straight society. In 1969, Baker enrolled in law school at the University of Minnesota. While doing research during his first semester, he discovered that the Minnesota marriage statutes did not mention gender, and therefore did not explicitly prohibit same-sex marriage. Baker and McConnell went to the courthouse to apply for a license on May 18, 1970. Hennepin County clerk Gerald R. Nelson allowed them to apply but refused to grant them a marriage license. The resulting publicity cost McConnell a job offer from the University of Minnesota libraries. Late in 1970, Baker and McConnell filed a case against the Hennepin County District Court. They argued that since same-sex marriage was not explicitly illegal under Minnesota law, they must be issued a marriage license. In January of 1971, the District Court judge denied their motion without comment. Baker and McConnell appealed their case, known as Baker v. Nelson, to the Minnesota Supreme Court, claiming a constitutional right to marry. Meanwhile, Baker discovered that adoption provides most of the legal familial benefits of marriage, and on August 3, 1971, McConnell adopted Baker. On the adoption papers, Baker legally changed his name to Pat Lyn McConnell. He chose a gender-neutral first name so that they could attempt to apply for another marriage license in a new county. There was no Minnesota law against marrying someone whom you had adopted. The pair moved in with friends in Mankato to establish residence in Blue Earth County and applied for another marriage license there. This time, McConnell went to the courthouse alone. The clerk asked no questions about the gender of his intended, Pat Lyn, and issued the license. Jack Baker (the name he used in practice) and McConnell married on September 3, 1971, by Methodist minister Roger Lynn. It was the first legal same-sex marriage in the United States. On October 15, 1971, the justices of the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled on Baker v. Nelson, unanimously rejecting the couple’s appeal. The court’s opinion denied their claims for a constitutional right to marry based on the First, Eighth, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments. Baker and McConnell appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, asking them to rule on the issue of same-sex marriage for the first time. On October 10, 1972, the Supreme Court dismissed the case “for want of a substantial federal question” and upheld the state’s decision. Baker and McConnell continued to be activists within their community. By 1980, however, they began to withdraw from the public eye to focus on their private life together and their careers. Baker practiced law and McConnell achieved the position of senior librarian within the Hennepin County Library System. On May 13, 2014, over forty years after Baker and McConnell first applied for a license, Minnesota legalized same-sex marriage. On June 26, 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the right to marry was guaranteed to same-sex couples by the due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. The majority decision declared, “Baker v. Nelson must be and now is overruled.” After same-sex marriage became legal in Minnesota, Baker and McConnell did not apply for a new marriage license, since to do so would be to admit that their 1971 marriage was not legal. Even though Blue Earth County never contested the marriage in court, in 2014 the county stated that they never officially recorded the marriage and could not recognize it retroactively. As of 2016, the couple was considering legal action against Blue Earth County.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/GT3.32 p3.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/baker-v-nelson"},{"alt":"Color image of a Bison jump site at Blue Mounds State Park, 1995.","author":[{"name":"Mary Laine","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/mary-laine"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"September 28, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":203519472229,"name":"Pre-1585 (Before European Contact)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Blue Mounds State Park","postbody":"Blue Mounds State Park, named for a long, high Sioux quartzite cliff, is located in southwestern Minnesota on the Iowa and South Dakota borders. The cliff, one and one-half miles long and ...","searchtext":"Blue Mounds State Park, named for a long, high Sioux quartzite cliff, is located in southwestern Minnesota on the Iowa and South Dakota borders. The cliff, one and one-half miles long and up to ninety feet high, appeared to be blue in color to the early Euro-American immigrants who saw it from a distance. A unique herd of bison, the largest North American mammal, makes its home in the park on 533 acres of native tall grass prairie, which escaped plowing due to poor soil quality. Located on 1,830 acres, the park is in an area known as Coteau des Prairies (in English, a hilly prairie upland). As high as 2,000 feet above sea level, the plateau runs from southeast North Dakota, through southwest Minnesota, and into northwestern Iowa. Dating to 1,700 million years ago, numerous Sioux quartzite outcrops and boulders, colored pink, red, white, and purple, can be seen in the fields. The old quartzite quarries in the park were owned and operated by the Luverne Granite Company. The stone was used to construct many local buildings, such as the Rock County Courthouse (1882), the old city hall (ca. 1890s), Trinity Episcopal Church (1891), and the Hinkly House in Luverne (1892). Before white immigrants came, the eastern cougar, elk, pronghorn antelope, grizzly bear, bison, prairie dog, and prairie chicken all inhabited the southwestern Minnesota prairie. Because of habitat changes caused by settlement, only bison, commonly known as buffalo, now live in the park. In 1961, the current herd of North American plains bison (scientific name Bison bison) began when three bison were relocated from the Fort Niobrara Wildlife Refuge near Valentine, Nebraska, to the park. Many of the bison in commercial herds in the United States carry cattle genes; however, DNA testing, using blood and tail hair, shows that the Blue Mounds herd is among the most genetically pure in the country. To promote healthy herds, increase genetic diversity, and prevent inbreeding, park staff participate in a national conservation program that exchanges bison among pure herds. The pasture in the park can sustain about seventy-five mature animals, and park visitors can view them from an observation platform. Running across 1,250 feet on top of the Blue Mound is a mysterious wall—as much as five feet in height in some places—composed of rocks and small-to-huge boulders. The sunrise and sunset on the spring and fall equinox closely align with the wall’s east-west orientation. Theories about the wall’s origin and purpose include that it was an early white-immigrant-constructed wall; a Minnesota equivalent of England’s Stonehenge; and a barrier to help Indians stampede bison off the cliff during hunts. Surveys and excavation of the wall in the 1980s, however, concluded that the wall was built after the mid 1800’s. In the 2010s, the issue remains unresolved. Beginning in 1938, workers in the WPA (Works Progress Administration) built five structures in the park: a latrine and the upper and lower dams on Mound Creek, which created Upper and Lower Mound Lakes. The rustic style of the structures features native materials such as locally quarried quartzite. Rustic-style architecture, as defined by the National Park Service, is labor intensive, finely crafted, and uniquely American. The Upper and Lower Mound Lakes were once the only lakes in Rock County. In 2014, over eleven inches of rain destroyed the lower dam. This caused Lower Mound Lake—then the only recreational lake in Rock County—to drain. In 2016, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources decided not to make repairs to the dam that would have restored Lower Mound Lake. Visitors to the park enjoy hiking on three main trails, biking, rock climbing, spotting bison, camping, birding, and exploring for flora and fauna. Campers can spend the night in a tipi and snowmobile in the winter. Native prickly pear cactus grows in the quartzite outcrops, and birders may spot the uncommon blue grosbeak. Mound Creek is home to the Topeka Shiner (Notropis tristis), a small minnow that is on the U.S. Fish and Wild Life Service’s endangered species list. The park is the only place in Minnesota where the lined snake (Tropidoclonion lineatum) is found.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/bison_jump.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246054,"name":"Sports and Recreation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/blue-mounds-state-park"},{"alt":"Color image of the world’s largest peace pipe, installed next to the Rock Island Depot in Pipestone. Photographed by Flickr user Josh Mattson, August 15, 2009.","author":[{"name":"Francis |||Bud||| Johnston","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/francis-bud-johnston"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"September 26, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"World||s Largest Peace Pipe","postbody":"The world||s largest peace pipe began with a vision shared by three spiritual people: one Lakota and two Anishinaabe. The pipe stands on the grounds of the historic Rock Island Railroad ...","searchtext":"The world||s largest peace pipe began with a vision shared by three spiritual people: one Lakota and two Anishinaabe. The pipe stands on the grounds of the historic Rock Island Railroad depot near the entrance to the Pipestone National Monument, home to the Keepers of the Sacred Tradition of Pipemakers. The location of the giant peace pipe is significant; the pipestone quarry nearby is known as |||the crossroads of the Indian world.||| The soft red stone from the quarry has been used by American Indians for thousands of years to create ceremonial peace pipes. In the 1990s, three spiritual people from different Native tribes had the same dream within a two-year period. Art Zimmiga, a Lakota from Pine Ridge, South Dakota, was the first. He came to Pipestone to write a business plan for the Keepers of the Sacred Tradition of Pipemakers. To wish success to the new organization, Zimmiga presented founder Bud Johnston (Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa) with an eagle feather from his medicine bundle. To many indigenous people, the eagle feather represents the gateway to the Creator. On his way back to Pine Ridge, Zimmiga had a day vision. He saw a huge pipe that could produce smoke. In his vision, elders were giving gifts. Each time they offered a gift, smoke came out of the big pipe. About six months later, a Midi Anishinaabe woman named Lisa Dietz from Sault St. Marie, Michigan, shared a similar vision. She was a member of a group of spiritual people who blessed the depot building upon the formation of the Keepers of the Sacred Tradition of Pipemakers in 1996 and presented an eagle feather. She also had a dream of a giant pipe and encouraged the building of it. A few months later, Bud||s oldest son, Bill, came home to Pipestone on a visit from Spokane, Washington. While visiting the depot, Bill had a vision about building a huge piece pipe. He sent his father a drawing of the pipe, and the two men discussed what it would take to build it. Bill envisioned the pipe to be about thirty feet long. He made a scaled drawing and determined that the it could be made out of steel well casing twelve inches in diameter and seven or eight inches where the bowl and stem fit together. Bill purchased the steel and his father flew out to Spokane to begin work on the sculpture. Bud invited his youngest son, John, a meticulous welder, to help with the creation of the pipe. The pipe was designed as a |||four winds||| pipe, with four rings welded onto the bowl to honor the four directions from which Native people have come to Pipestone. Once it was completed, finding a location for the pipe proved challenging. The City of Pipestone was reluctant to have the pipe installed on its historic Rock Island Depot property. After much debate, the Historic Preservation Committee finally approved the installation with the agreement that the pipe would sit on a foundation of cream-colored brick (to match the depot building) and red quartzite, in a bed of flowers. The Keepers of the Sacred Tradition of Pipemakers bought the depot building and adjacent land in January 1997. Getting the pipe from Spokane to Pipestone presented another challenge. Mike Ziebarth arranged for a trucker who delivered Bayliner boats across the country to haul it to Minnesota for the price of gas. The pipe arrived in Pipestone for installation in January 1999. John Johnston suggested that feathers be added to the sculpture, as Indian tradition holds that the feathers help to speed prayers to the Creator. The feathers were created and attached to the sculpture during an annual pow wow the following August. A local artist painted the pipe sculpture. A poem by Rona Johnston honoring all Native people who have made the journey to Pipestone is engraved on a piece of red quartzite and mounted below the pipe. The big pipe was featured in the May 2008 issue of Reader||s Digest. People come from all over the world to visit the quarries and have their picture taken in front of the world’s largest peace pipe.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/flickr_image_peace_pipe.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246059,"name":"Native Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/worlds-largest-peace-pipe"},{"alt":"Color image of the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, Minneapolis, 2007.","author":[{"name":"Linda A. Cameron","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/linda-cameron"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"September 23, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, Minneapolis","postbody":"As enthusiasm for professional sports grew in Minnesota during the mid-twentieth century, Metropolitan Stadium, designed for baseball, became too small and had too few amenities to continue ...","searchtext":"As enthusiasm for professional sports grew in Minnesota during the mid-twentieth century, Metropolitan Stadium, designed for baseball, became too small and had too few amenities to continue to attract professional teams. By the early 1970s, Minnesota||s teams, seeking greater profits, began to demand a bigger and better venue. The Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome (|||The Dome|||), a covered, multi-purpose stadium built in downtown Minneapolis, served this purpose for thirty-one years. In 1973, a Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce Stadium Task Force studied options for a new facility. The city of Bloomington made its case for keeping the stadium there. State legislators, however, were reluctant to approve financing; they felt taxpayers would be unwilling to pay for a new ballpark. The threat of the Twins and Vikings leaving Minnesota when their use agreements expired in 1975 prompted the legislature to reconsider the project. In 1977, State Representative Al Patton (DFL-Sartell) sponsored a no-site stadium bill. The bill authorized Governor Rudy Perpich to appoint a seven-member Metropolitan Sports Facilities Commission (MSFC) to choose a location and design for a new stadium. The commission had three options: to spend up to $25 million to remodel Met Stadium for all sports; to spend up to $37.5 million to remodel it for baseball and build a new football stadium adjacent to it; or to spend up to $55 million to build a domed stadium in a new location. The Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce Stadium Task Force created the Industry Square Development Corporation, which purchased a twenty-acre site on the east side of downtown Minneapolis for $14.5 million. The site strengthened the city||s bid for the stadium. The MSFC fielded eight proposals for the new facility. In December 1978, the commission voted 4–3 to approve the Minneapolis downtown site. The architectural firms of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and Setter, Leach & Lindstrom, Inc. won the building design contract. The engineering firm of Geiger Berger Associates designed the roof. Construction began in December 1979; Minnesota workers performed most of the labor. The ten-acre, air-supported domed roof took four months to build. Crews inflated it for the first time on October 2, 1981, using twenty ninety-horsepower fans. Made of two layers of woven fiberglass fabric separated by a cushion of air, the Teflon-coated roof proved to be no match for the heavy snow and ice of Minnesota||s winters. It collapsed four times, the first just six weeks after its completion. The completed structure, financed through bond sales and hospitality taxes, cost $55 million. Officials named the stadium in honor of former Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, an avid sports fan. On April 6, 1982, the Twins played their first regular season game inside the Metrodome against the Seattle Mariners. The Vikings’ first indoor season opened September 12 against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The Metrodome hosted many premier events, including the 1985 All-Star Game and, on October 17, 1987, the first World Series game ever played indoors. The Dome will always be associated with the Twins|| 1987 and 1991 World Series wins. The Minnesota Timberwolves basketball team played their 1989–1990 inaugural season there. The Dome welcomed Super Bowl XXVI and two National Collegiate Athletic Association Final Four basketball tournaments. Local college and high school athletes also played at the Metrodome. The University of Minnesota||s Golden Gophers played football, baseball, and softball there. Many high school games moved to the Dome when the Halloween Blizzard of 1991 closed outdoor fields. Rollerbladers, runners, and walkers took advantage of the stadium||s concourse during the winter months. The Metrodome served as a music venue for concerts by Paul McCartney, Pink Floyd, the Rolling Stones, and many others. It became a movie set in 1993 for the film |||Little Big League.||| By the late 1990s, the multi-purpose Metrodome no longer met the needs of Minnesota||s professional teams. The Twins played their last game on October 11, 2009, against the Yankees, moving to Target Field the following season. In 2009, the MSFC and the Vikings agreed to name the field, |||Mall of America Field.||| The Vikings won their last game at the Dome on December 29, 2013, against the Detroit Lions. Crews demolished the Metrodome in 2014 to make way for U.S. Bank Stadium.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/640px-051207-MPLS-006Metrodome-crop.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246054,"name":"Sports and Recreation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/hubert-h-humphrey-metrodome-minneapolis"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of The All-Star game at Metropolitan Stadium, 1965. Photograph: Gerald R. Brimacombe, Minneapolis Star & Tribune.","author":[{"name":"Linda A. Cameron","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/linda-cameron"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"September 21, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Metropolitan Stadium, Bloomington","postbody":"When local enthusiasts wanted to lure major league sports to Minnesota in the 1950s, they made plans to build an outdoor stadium in the cornfields of Bloomington. Metropolitan Stadium—|||the ...","searchtext":"When local enthusiasts wanted to lure major league sports to Minnesota in the 1950s, they made plans to build an outdoor stadium in the cornfields of Bloomington. Metropolitan Stadium—|||the Met|||—hosted Minnesota||s professional baseball, football, and soccer teams until the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome replaced it in 1981. Minnesotans had enjoyed baseball since the mid-1800s. Minneapolis and St. Paul, natural rivals, each had American Association minor league teams that played at Nicollet Park and Lexington Park, respectively. Built in the 1890s, neither park met the standards for major league baseball. Talk of a new stadium started in 1952. The next year, the state legislature approved the creation of Metropolitan Sports Area Commission (MSAC) to govern operations of the new stadium. A group called the |||Minneapolis Minute Men||| spearheaded a campaign to raise funds through bond sales. Aided by an investment house and Minneapolis businessmen, the fundraising campaign reached its $4.5 million goal in May 1955. A Major League Baseball committee appointed by the Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce purchased 164 acres of farmland in Bloomington for $478,899. Dignitaries broke ground on June 20 for the new stadium. Building the Met took less than a year, despite extreme winter weather and damage from two fires. The finished stadium could hold 30,000 people and had parking for 15,000 cars. Designed by the architectural and engineering firm of Thorshov & Cerny, Inc., the unique cantilevered construction offered fans a clear view of the field from every seat. The total cost came to $8.5 million, at no expense to taxpayers. On opening day, April 24, 1956, 18,366 people watched the Minneapolis Millers take on the Wichita Braves. The Millers lost 5–3. Major League baseball expansion in 1960 strengthened interest in bringing a major league team to Minnesota. The Washington Senators, owned by Calvin Griffith, moved to the state to become the Minnesota Twins. At the team||s request, stadium capacity increased to 40,000 seats for the inaugural season. On April 21, 1961, with 24,606 fans in the stands, the Twins played the new Washington Senators in the first American League game at the Met. The Twins lost 5–3. The Minnesota Vikings football team arrived in the fall of 1961. The Vikings played their first regular season home game on September 17, 1961, to a crowd of 32,236, beating the Chicago Bears 37–13. Removable bleacher seating for football games added in the mid-1960s increased the stadium||s capacity to accommodate the team||s growing following. On July 13, 1965, the Met hosted baseball||s All-Star Game. The American League team featured Twins players Earl Battey, Jim |||Mudcat||| Grant, Jimmie Hall, Harmon Killebrew, Tony Oliva, and Zoilo Versalles. More stadium highlights occurred when the Twins won the 1965 American League pennant and played in their first World Series, losing 2–0 on their home field to the Los Angeles Dodgers in game seven. The 1970s brought a new professional sport to the stadium. The Minnesota Kicks soccer team drew an estimated 20,000 fans to watch their first home game against the San Jose Earthquakes on May 9, 1976. The Kicks won 4–1. The enthusiasm of Minnesotans for events inside the Met fueled the growing popularity of tailgating outside the stadium. In all weather, hardy fans packed a lunch, loaded up their barbecue grills, and joined the tradition of the pre-game parking lot party. Metropolitan Stadium broadened its scope in the 1960s when it began to host music concerts. The Beatles played there on August 21, 1965, to 30,000 fans. A concert featuring the Eagles, Pablo Cruise, and the Steve Miller Band drew a stadium record crowd of more than 65,000 on August 1, 1978. The Met hosted Ella Fitzgerald, Arthur Fiedler, Andy Williams, the Beach Boys, and many others. By the late 1970s, the sports teams were no longer happy playing in an aging outdoor facility and made plans for an indoor stadium, the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome. The Twins played their final game at the Met on September 30, 1981. Following the final Vikings game on December 20, fans ravaged the stadium, taking everything from seats to pieces of the goal posts as souvenirs. Wrecking crews demolished the stadium on January 28, 1985, to make way for the Mall of America.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/MH5.9 BL4 p5.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246054,"name":"Sports and Recreation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/metropolitan-stadium-bloomington"},{"alt":"Color image of a roken headstone at Pioneers and Soldiers Memorial Cemetery in Minneapolis, 2016. Photographed by Paul Nelson.","author":[{"name":"Paul Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/paul-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"September 19, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Pioneers and Soldiers Memorial Cemetery, Minneapolis","postbody":"It began as Minneapolis (or Layman’s) Cemetery, a privately owned burial ground, in 1858. By 1919 it was full, with more than 27,000 bodies, and was closed by the City of Minneapolis. Only ...","searchtext":"It began as Minneapolis (or Layman’s) Cemetery, a privately owned burial ground, in 1858. By 1919 it was full, with more than 27,000 bodies, and was closed by the City of Minneapolis. Only a handful of burials have taken place there since. It is the oldest cemetery in Minneapolis. Farmers Martin and Elizabeth Layman came to Minneapolis in 1853. Like many early Minnesotans, they were born in New York and made their way west in stages—in their case, by way of Peoria County, Illinois. They bought land at what later became the corner of Cedar Avenue and Lake Street in South Minneapolis. The Laymans seem to have gotten into the cemetery business by happenstance when, soon after they arrived, a Baptist pastor asked to bury his infant son, Carlton Cressey (or Cressy), on their land. They opened Minneapolis Cemetery in 1858 and expanded it to ten acres in 1860. The Laymans, their farm, and the cemetery prospered, and the family built a stately house across from the cemetery gates on Cedar Street. Often known as Layman’s Cemetery, it grew to twenty-seven acres and eventually held around 27,000 remains. Both Laymans died in 1886, and their house burned down soon after that. The burials continued, but maintenance declined. By 1919, the cemetery had reached capacity; that year, the city closed it to new burials. Over the next several years, some 7,000 remains were dug up and taken elsewhere. In 1928, the City of Minneapolis took over ownership and changed the name to The Minneapolis Pioneers and Soldiers Memorial Cemetery. After multiple petitions, new burials were allowed on existing family plots on a case-by-case basis. The “Pioneers” part of the name is more apt than “Soldiers.” There are only about 190 identified veterans in the cemetery: one from World War I, at least two from the War of 1812, twenty-one from the Spanish-American War, the rest from the Civil War. About twenty-five are clustered in a small military plot, the rest scattered. Civil War veteran Oscar Vaughn (16th United States Colored Infantry) is one of many, perhaps hundreds, of African Americans buried at Pioneers and Soldiers. Almost all the cemetery’s remains belong to early residents of Minneapolis (some would call them pioneers), many of them immigrants of humble means. Some headstones are carved in Swedish and German. No one famous is buried there, and a striking feature of the cemetery is the absence of large monuments; only a relative handful stand as high as five feet. Many headstones are tilted, missing, or broken, and some have been crudely patched together. The headstones of old cemeteries often hint at sad stories—epidemics, industrial accidents, child mortality. Such stories are hard to find at Pioneers and Soldiers because so few markers can be read; most are marble, effaced long ago by time and the elements. Fortunately, in 2003 Susan Weir published a history of the cemetery, in Hennepin History magazine, based in part on its paper records. She uncovered many touching stories: August Smith and Ole Shay, workers killed in the Washburn A Mill explosion of 1878; Harry Hayward, hanged for the 1894 murder-for-hire of Kitty Ging; Anna Clark, a widowed mother of eight (and another eight dead in childhood) who took her own life on her husband’s grave in1909; twenty-five infants from the Cody Hospital, a so-called “baby farm,” who died there in 1908 and 1909. Weir also compiled some compelling statistics. Over half of the graves belong to children under the age of ten. A majority of all the burials resulted from communicable diseases that rarely kill people in the 2000s. Some 800 died from accidents (more than a hundred in railroad accidents) or homicide, and another 150 by their own hands. The cemetery silently testifies: Life in Minneapolis was shorter, harder, and more uncertain a century and more ago. The last known burial at Pioneers and Soldiers Cemetery took place in 1999. Though the cemetery is located in the middle of a busy, heavily trafficked neighborhood, the grounds are quiet. The low headstones, many unmarked graves, and tall trees give the place an open and park-like feel. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2002. The Friends of Minneapolis Pioneers and Soldiers Memorial Cemetery maintains a searchable online database of burials.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/broken_headstone.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246079,"name":"Cities and Towns","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/pioneers-and-soldiers-memorial-cemetery-minneapolis"},{"alt":"Color image of Minnesota Representative Terry Morrow (DFL) speaking on the House floor against SF 1308, 2011.","author":[{"name":"Lizzie Ehrenhalt","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/lizzie-ehrenhalt"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"September 14, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Minnesota Amendment 1","postbody":"On November 6, 2012, Minnesota voters rejected a proposed amendment to the state’s constitution. Minnesota Amendment 1, also called the Minnesota Marriage Amendment, would have limited ...","searchtext":"On November 6, 2012, Minnesota voters rejected a proposed amendment to the state’s constitution. Minnesota Amendment 1, also called the Minnesota Marriage Amendment, would have limited marriage to heterosexual couples. When the amendment failed to pass, Minnesota became the first and only state to reject a |||same-sex marriage||| ban through the will of voters rather than a court ruling. Calls to define marriage by amending Minnesota’s constitution date to 2003. At the time, state law already prohibited marriages between people of the same sex. Republican Michele Bachmann, however—then a state senator—urged legislators to add a passage to the state’s constitution that defined marriage in sex-specific terms. Bachmann introduced marriage bills in the Senate in 2004 and 2006. Both failed. On May 11, 2011, after they had secured majorities in both houses of the state legislature, Senate Republicans passed a bill that created a voter referendum on the definition of marriage. The House approved it on May 21. The bill (SF 1308) proposed adding a section to article XIII of the constitution that would recognize only marriages between one man and one woman. Representative Tim Kelly of Red Wing, a Republican, voted against it. He was one of four Republicans to do so. Democrats Lyle Koenen of Granite Falls and Denise Dittrich of Champlin voted their support. Though his office did not give him the power to block the bill, Governor Mark Dayton issued a symbolic veto on May 25. Legislators wrote a ballot question directing voters to vote “yes” or “no” on the amendment (Minnesota Amendment 1) in the November 2012 general election. It asked, “Shall the Minnesota Constitution be amended to provide that only a union of one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in Minnesota?” After the bill passed, advocacy groups mobilized to reach constituents. Leaders from Project 515 and Outfront Minnesota—two LGBT rights groups already active in the Twin Cities—joined to create Minnesotans United for All Families. Volunteers registered voters, held rallies, canvassed door-to-door, and explained what was at stake in the referendum. From its headquarters in Minneapolis, Minnesotans United for All Families raised more than $10 million. Its biggest opponent, Minnesotans for Marriage, raised more than $5 million. Organizers on both sides of the issue received strong support. Catholic groups were particularly involved in the “vote yes” campaign. By May 7, 2012, the Duluth diocese had donated $50,000 from a priest’s estate; the New Ulm diocese had given another $50,000. The largest contribution came from the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, which donated $650,000. On September 12, Public Policy Polling (PPP) reported that 48 percent of Minnesotans supported the amendment and 47 percent opposed it. Then the balance began to shift. By November 3, PPP predicted that 45 percent of Minnesotans would vote “yes” and 52 percent would vote “no.” On November 5, nearly three million people weighed in on the marriage amendment. About 48 percent voted in favor; about 51 percent voted in opposition. An estimated 40,430 people left the question blank. Since the votes in favor did not reach at least 50 percent of all those cast, the amendment failed. The referendum’s results revealed stark regional and generational divides. The Minneapolis–St. Paul metropolitan area produced the highest concentration of “no” votes.” About 64 percent of Hennepin County voters and 61 percent of Ramsey County voters rejected the amendment. Nine counties tallied at least 70 percent “yes” votes—six of them in the state’s rural southwest. More than 75 percent of Pipestone County voted “yes.” In all counties, a majority of seniors supported the amendment; most voters under the age of thirty opposed it. The amendment’s failure made Minnesota the first and only state to reject a |||same-sex marriage||| ban through the will of voters rather than a court ruling. Energized by the amendment’s defeat, marriage-equality supporters and legislators worked together to draft a bill that legalized marriage equality. Governor Dayton signed the bill into law just over six months later, on May 14, 2013. Having enlisted the help of more than 27,000 volunteers and 67,000 donors, Minnesotans United had accomplished its goal. The group dissolved on May 15.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Terry_Morrow.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/minnesota-amendment-1"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of a Luce Line passenger train to Lake Lillian. Image is from the Lake Lillian News, ca. 1930–1939.","author":[{"name":"Aaron Hanson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/aaron-hanson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"September 12, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Luce Line Railroad","postbody":"The Luce Line Railroad, known by several different names, was a small rural Minnesota railroad that operated through much of the twentieth century. It connected rural communities in western ...","searchtext":"The Luce Line Railroad, known by several different names, was a small rural Minnesota railroad that operated through much of the twentieth century. It connected rural communities in western Minnesota to the Twin Cities and offered transportation for passengers, lumber, grain, and other commodities. On August 7, 1908, Colonel William L. Luce and his son, Erle D. Luce, incorporated the Electric Short Line Railroad. Although late by most standards, the Luce family intended to build a railroad that would connect rural Minnesota communities that were still without rail service by creating a line to Brookings, South Dakota. Construction began in 1909 and continued slowly over the next four years. At this stage, the portion of the line east of Glenwood Junction in Minneapolis was the Electric Short Line Terminal Company, with new construction to the west called the Electric Short Line Railway. The distinction did not last long; nor did “electric” have any meaning, as the line could never afford overhead electrification. In 1913, rail was laid westward between Minneapolis and Parkers Lake. Construction continued from Glenwood Junction in Minneapolis to Stubbs Bay on Lake Minnetonka, then further west to the communities of Watertown, Winsted, and Silver Lake until reaching Hutchinson in 1915. By this time, the line offered passenger service through a small fleet of motorcars that ran in both directions along the line. It also ran freight trains using second-hand steam locomotives from larger railroads. By 1917, there were nearly seventy-one miles of track on the line, including areas that were double tracked. The Luce Line was built relatively late in comparison to other lines and serviced already-established cities. For this reason, it did not create new rural communities. The line would often build around the outskirts of existing towns instead. The line reached both Cosmos and Lake Lillian in 1923. The Luce family encountered financial difficulty in the form of foreclosure and reorganized the line as the Minnesota Western on May 1, 1924. Construction continued to Gluek in 1927, but by December of that year, the Luce family sold their interests to the Minneapolis, Northfield and Southern Railway. Although the line now extended 115 miles between Minneapolis and Gluek, additional construction ceased because continued funding was not available. The line did not reach Brookings, South Dakota, and never went any further west. Gluek was to be the permanent western terminus of the “Luce Line” or Electric Short Line, known by this time as the Minnesota Western. The line offered several passenger trains between both ends of the route and hauled freight in each direction, servicing a number of rural industries along the right of way. Not surprisingly, as rural roadways improved, the need for passenger service diminished. The communities served by the Luce Line provided few passengers. By 1942, passenger trains typically required only one railcar. The road thus became freight only as of September 10, 1947, when the last passenger train ran. Steam locomotives were phased out, and only diesel engines hauled freight. In 1956, the much larger Minneapolis and St. Louis Railway (the M&STL), a Midwestern agricultural carrier, purchased the Minnesota Western from the Cargill company. In early 1960, the M&STL renamed the Minnesota Western railroad the Minneapolis Industrial Railway. The Chicago and Northwestern (C&NW) purchased the Minneapolis and St. Louis itself later that year on November 1, 1960. The C&NW was a much larger company and therefore had little use for the small Luce Line. The company petitioned to abandon the segment of the railroad from Hutchinson to Gluek in 1967. The C&NW physically removed the line shortly after approval was granted. In the next year, the C&NW asked to abandon the railroad from Hutchinson to Plymouth. The state of Minnesota subsequently granted approval. By 1972, the line extended from Minneapolis to Plymouth, with the remaining 104 miles of the line to Gluek now abandoned and removed as scrap. The line to Plymouth eventually became part of the Union Pacific railroad, in April 1995. Most of the remaining right of way west of Plymouth became a public recreational trail for bicycling, snowmobiling, and horseback riding.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/luce_line_passenger_train.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246053,"name":"Transportation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/luce-line-railroad"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of John McGee, 1918.","author":[{"name":"Greg Gaut","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/greg-gaut"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"September 09, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"McGee, John Franklin (1861–1925)","postbody":"Conservative lawyer John F. McGee was the dominant personality on the Minnesota Commission of Public Safety, the body that governed Minnesota during World War I. Under McGee’s leadership, ...","searchtext":"Conservative lawyer John F. McGee was the dominant personality on the Minnesota Commission of Public Safety, the body that governed Minnesota during World War I. Under McGee’s leadership, the commission demanded unquestioning support for the war effort and suppressed possible German American dissent. After the war, McGee became a federal judge who was well known for the heavy sentences he imposed on bootleggers. McGee was the son of an Irish immigrant who farmed in Illinois. He “read” law with local lawyers and was admitted to the bar in 1882. The next year, he moved to Dakota Territory, where he built a successful law practice. In 1887, he moved to Minneapolis, where he tried complex commercial cases. Ten years later, still only thirty-six years old, he was appointed judge of the district court in Minneapolis. McGee resigned in 1902 for financial reasons (by then, he and his wife had a family of six children). He then opened a law office that handled cases involving banks and railroads. Although not involved in politics, he had close relations with conservative business leaders and Republican politicians like Senator Knute Nelson. He developed a deep hostility for the trade union movement, the Socialist Party, and the Nonpartisan League. The United States declared war on Germany on April 6, 1917. In response, the legislature created the Minnesota Commission of Public Safety (MCPS) and gave it sweeping powers to govern the state during the war. It was composed of Governor J. A. A. Burnquist, the attorney general, and five members selected by Burnquist, one of whom was McGee. In October 1917, the federal government appointed him the fuel administrator for the state. In this role, he had broad powers to guarantee that Minnesota had sufficient coal supplies. McGee quickly became the leading figure in the MCPS, setting its tone of intolerance to any form of dissent, labor agitation, or German cultural expression. Under McGee’s leadership, the MCPS demanded “100 percent loyalty” and held that anyone who criticized the government was a traitor. The Minnesota National Guard became part of the regular army when the war began. McGee took on the job of organizing the Home Guard to replace it. It eventually grew to twenty-one battalions across the state. The MCPS ordered many of these units to St. Paul to defeat a transit workers’ strike in the winter of 1917–1918. In some areas, units conducted “slacker raids,” during which hundreds of young men were arrested and required to prove that they were not avoiding conscription. In 1916, the Nonpartisan League won the elections in North Dakota. In 1918, it tried to do the same in Minnesota. It chose Charles Lindbergh Sr. to run against Governor Burnquist in the Republican primary. The governor and the MCPS branded the NPL as disloyal and made it difficult for Lindbergh to campaign in many counties. Local sheriffs and sometimes Home Guard units were called out to ban NPL rallies. Burnquist won the primary and went on to be re-elected governor. The MCPS was disbanded when the war in Europe ended. McGee then returned to his law practice. When Congress took up a bill to create a new federal judgeship for Minnesota, McGee campaigned for the appointment. Senator Knute Nelson supported him, but progressive senators like Robert La Follette opposed him because of his repressive record during the war. In the end, the United States Senate confirmed him, and he began hearing cases as a federal judge in 1923. McGee became known as a judge who worked overtime to try bootleggers. He was also known for the length of the sentences he imposed. His time on the federal bench was cut short, however, when he killed himself in his office on February 15, 1925. He left a note that said that he suffered from exhaustion and depression as a result of his heavy workload. The sitting governor and two former governors were honorary pall bearers at McGee’s funeral at St. Stephens Catholic Church, his local parish. He is buried at St. Mary’s Cemetery in South Minneapolis.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/por 14686 Lee 1.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/mcgee-john-franklin-1861-1925"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Evangeline Whipple, ca. 1896.","author":[{"name":"Tilly Laskey","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/tilly-laskey"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"September 07, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Whipple, Evangeline Marrs Simpson (1857–1930)","postbody":"At the turn of the twentieth century, Evangeline Whipple used her wealth to improve the lives of women, people of color, and the poor. She supported social justice for Native Americans in ...","searchtext":"At the turn of the twentieth century, Evangeline Whipple used her wealth to improve the lives of women, people of color, and the poor. She supported social justice for Native Americans in Minnesota, for African Americans in Florida, and for villagers and World War I refugees in Bagni di Lucca, Italy. Evangeline Marrs was born in Wayland, Massachusetts. Her father was an Irish immigrant who worked as a machinist and farmer; her mother was a first-generation immigrant from England. Her first marriage, in 1882, was to Michael Simpson, a textile industrialist forty-eight years her senior. When Simpson died two years later, Evangeline became a wealthy widow at the age of twenty-seven. Around 1889, Evangeline met Rose Elizabeth Cleveland (1846–1918), a sister of President Grover Cleveland. Since he had been unmarried, Rose had served for fifteen months as the First Lady of the United States during 1885 and 1886. The Minnesota Historical Society owns letters that document Evangeline’s long-term romantic and domestic partnership with Rose. Evangeline and Rose traveled together throughout Europe, the Middle East, and the United States. They met Bishop Henry Whipple (1822–1901) and his wife, Cornelia, during a winter visit to Florida. Whipple was the first Episcopal bishop of Minnesota and worked as an advocate for Indigenous people, intervening in Minnesota and U.S. politics on their behalf. He spent time in Florida for health reasons and to escape northern winters. Cornelia Whipple died in 1890, and six years later, Evangeline married Henry. Her vast financial resources and emotional care supported the elderly bishop during the last five years of his life, when Evangeline moved from Massachusetts to Minnesota and joined him in doing missionary and humanitarian work through the Episcopalian Church. She supported the church specifically and used her personal fortune to double the size of the Cathedral of Our Merciful Saviour in Faribault. Evangeline was also responsible for the construction of seven memorials after Bishop Whipple’s death in 1901, including a bell-tower addition to the cathedral. Evangeline remained committed to the humanitarian work Bishop Whipple had promoted. During 1886–1910, in Minnesota, she fought for equal education for women and financed St. Mary’s School for Girls in Faribault. In addition to teaching local girls, the school’s staff boarded Native American children. They taught them English and educated them with a Euro-American worldview. While the education was well intended, the repercussions of the boarding school system Evangeline supported had deeply negative effects on Native communities through the twentieth century and today. Evangeline supported Ojibwe and Dakota communities as well as their schools and churches. She received gifts from Native American friends, mainly women; by then, Minnesota was Evangeline’s home. She stayed in the state for nine years after the death of Bishop Whipple even though her fortune could have allowed her to live anywhere. She remained in Minnesota until her brother, Kingsmill Marrs, who was living in Italy, became ill. When Evangeline heard the news in 1910, she left the United States and never returned. Evangeline traveled with Rose Cleveland to Florence in 1910 and settled together in Bagni di Lucca, Italy, in 1912. During the 1910s, she purchased three homes and offered her extra rooms to friends, including Nelly Erichsen, an English artist and writer. In Bagni di Lucca, Evangeline used her Minnesota missionary experiences to create social service programs. She supported schools for Bagni di Lucca villagers, a hospital, a food pantry for the poor, and cottage industries for women to earn wages. Evangeline, Rose, and Nelly were involved in World War I Red Cross efforts in Italy from 1914 through 1918. The Spanish influenza hit Bagni di Lucca hard, and Nelly caught the flu while working in Bagni di Lucca’s hospital. She died on November 15, 1918. Rose Cleveland was infected while nursing Nelly and died one week later. Evangeline continued to live in Bagni di Lucca and serve the community after Rose’s death. The town’s mayor made Evangeline an honorary citizen in 1918 to thank her for her work. The community also named a major road after her—Via Evangelina Whipple. She published A Famous Corner of Tuscany, a history of Italy’s Lucca region, in 1928. Evangeline died in London in 1930 at the age of seventy-three. She is buried next to Rose Cleveland in Bagni di Lucca’s English Cemetery.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/por 20961 r1_0.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246089,"name":"Religion and Belief","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/whipple-evangeline-marrs-simpson-1857-1930"},{"alt":"Detail of a panoramic photograph of lumberjacks in lumber camp, including men standing near a ladder propped against a building and others sitting on the building||s roof.","author":[{"name":"Anja Witek","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/anja-witek"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"August 22, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"IWW Lumber Strike, 1916–1917","postbody":"In December of 1916, mill workers at the Virginia and Rainy Lake Lumber Company went on strike, and lumberjacks soon followed. The company police and local government tried to crush the ...","searchtext":"In December of 1916, mill workers at the Virginia and Rainy Lake Lumber Company went on strike, and lumberjacks soon followed. The company police and local government tried to crush the strike by running the lumberjacks out of town, but when the strike was called off in February, the company had granted most of the workers’ demands. In the summer of 1916, miners on the Mesabi Range spontaneously went on strike. The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) sent union organizers in support. Following the relative failure of the strike, many workers went into the lumber industry and began to organize a union there. Over the previous ten years, the IWW had successfully organized lumber workers in the Northwest. As an industrial union (as opposed to a craft union), the IWW sought to organize all workers in the lumber industry, from lumberjacks to mill workers. The Virginia and Rainy Lake Lumber Company was the largest white-pine mill in the world. The mill workers’ wages were between $2.50 and $3.00 per day. They worked twelve hours a day, seven days a week—the equivalent of eighty-four hours. In comparison, a common laborer in the city of Virginia earned the same amount in a fifty- to fifty-five-hour work week, working only six days. These inequalities gave the lumber workers in Northern Minnesota good reasons to organize. After witnessing the power of collective action during the miners’ strike, workers in the lumber industry (many of whom were miners in the summer season) looked to the IWW to help them build a union. The IWW sent in “job delegates”—union workers who took jobs in the industry to help organize. There were also seasoned lumberjacks, including Jack “Timber Beast” Beaton, who took a leading role in building the union among his fellow workers. IWW leadership was divided over whether workers were ready to strike. The secretary-treasurer of local 490 (the miners’ union), Charles Jacobson, urged that they hold off, while Beaton pushed ahead. On December 24, 1916, mill workers gathered at the Socialist Opera House to list their demands. They wanted a 25-cent-per-day wage increase, eight-hour shifts on the weekends, no work on Sundays, a shift change every week, and an end to union suppression. They presented the demands to the company on December 26 and gave the management one day to respond before they would stop production. When no response was given by noon on December 27, around 700 mill workers decided to strike. In the morning of Thursday, December 28, several hundred picketers went to the gates of the company; an estimated 1000 of the 1200 workers went on strike. As a result, one of the two main saw mills ceased to produce while the other only had sporadic production. As had happened with the iron miners’ strike, the company planned to bring in scabs (strikebreakers). However, if the lumberjacks joined the strike, there would be no wood for the mills. Once the lumberjacks agreed to strike, their demands were a $10-per-month wage increase, nine-hour days, cleaner living conditions, and an end to discrimination against union employees. “Flying squads” were organized to spread word of the strike to all the logging camps in the region, thus causing more workers to walk off the job. On Monday, January 1, the first lumberjacks walked out. One thousand left the camps first, followed by another thousand on Tuesday and more throughout the week. As a result, both large and small companies around northern Minnesota shut down. In an effort to break the strike, the companies employed the police to arrest IWW leaders. These men were released when there was nothing to charge them with, but the workers struggled to continue without their leaders. In addition, villages and the town of Virginia passed laws banishing all IWW members. On January 2, lumberjacks were told to leave by 4:00 pm, January 3, or face arrest. The strike was called off on February 1, but the union claimed a partial victory when conditions improved. Men received clean bedding, better food, and a wage increase larger than they demanded—they asked for $40 per month and received $45. Labor struggles continued in the region over the next several years, as did the repression of the IWW.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/76-C.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246055,"name":"Labor","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/iww-lumber-strike-1916-1917"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of a Hmong Celebration, Frogtown, 1993. Photograph by Wing Young Huie.","author":[{"name":"Sharon Park","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/sharon-park"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"August 22, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Indochinese Refugee Resettlement Office, 1975–1986","postbody":"Between 1975 and 1986, about 750,000 refugees from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos resettled in the U.S. They passed through two initiatives: the Refugee Parole Program and the Orderly ...","searchtext":"Between 1975 and 1986, about 750,000 refugees from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos resettled in the U.S. They passed through two initiatives: the Refugee Parole Program and the Orderly Departure Program. Voluntary agencies, sponsors, and programs managed by the Indochinese Refugee Resettlement Office offered help. As a result, Minnesota was one of ten states that accepted the largest numbers of refugees. The Indochinese Migration and Refugee Assistance Act of 1975 (and following amendments) allowed Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Laotian refugees to enter the U.S. It also established the Indochinese Refugee Assistance Program (IRAP). The IRAP allowed refugees to access local services that were distributed through the state and fully reimbursed by the federal government. According to Governor Wendell Anderson, the state of Minnesota had received the largest number of Southeast Asian refugees in the Midwest as of October 1975. Although Anderson acknowledged the efforts of Minnesota’s voluntary social agencies, he wanted to address longer-term resettlement issues, standardize refugee assistance, and offer follow-up services to refugees after their arrival. In December 1975, Anderson established an Indochinese Resettlement Office. This became the Refugee Programs Office in 1981. It coordinated the efforts of federal and voluntary agencies, such as the Lutheran Social Services, Church World Service, Catholic Charities, and American Red Cross Minnesota Area Chapter. Families, church groups, and community organizations, such as the Association for the Advancement of Hmong Women in Minnesota and the Lao Association of Mutual Association, Inc., participated in the resettlement process. They sponsored refugee families and helped them adjust to their new homes. Anderson also created an Indochinese Refugee Task Force to advise the Governor’s Office. It included representatives from social service organizations; the Vietnamese-American Association; the Cambodian refugee community; the Departments of Welfare, Employment Services, and Education; the Governor’s Manpower Office; and the private sector. The task force had two primary functions. First, it collected data about the Southeast Asian households in the state. Second, it provided information about classes, programs, and recent laws to the refugee community. For example, the Task Force conducted a statewide questionnaire in 1977. It also published a newsletter, Minnesota New Life, in English, Vietnamese, Khmer, and Lao. The Refugee Act of 1980 marked a turning point in both immigration policy and refugee assistance. Because the refugee admissions and resettlement processes were ad hoc, policymakers aimed to create a more comprehensive refugee policy. They sought to give Congress more control over the admissions of refugees into the U.S. Legislators also wanted to make resettlement more efficient and consistent. The act established a permanent Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), officially appointed a U.S. Coordinator for Refugee Affairs, and formalized the process of channeling federal aid to refugees for a period of thirty-six months. The ORR was authorized to use funds for cash, medical aid, and social services, and to reimburse state and local public agencies directly or through contracts. Along these lines, the Minnesota Refugee Programs Office negotiated contracts with various agencies, charities, and church groups in Minneapolis/Hennepin County. It organized refugee-specific job-creation projects, including the Hennepin County Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA), the Refugee Work/Training section, and the F. V. S. (Vietnamese M. A. A.) Employment Project. Although many refugees still needed employment, these projects served an estimated 1,478 refugee residents in Hennepin County, with 898 job placements by 1982. Special programs targeted unaccompanied minors and youth, since the demographics of Southeast Asian refugees were relatively young. Two thirds of the refugee population in St. Paul was under age twenty one. Despite the considerable success of these programs, the Refugee Program Office and caseworkers recognized that Southeast Asian refugees faced multiple challenges as newcomers, including racial discrimination in their neighborhoods, hiring bias, and language barriers. The lack of jobs and American neighbors’ hostile attitudes sometimes forced the refugees’ “secondary migration” to other cities. They gathered in rural and coastal areas where there were more farming and fishing jobs and larger Southeast Asian communities. The Refugee Programs Office and voluntary agencies tried to address these barriers to employment with language and job training programs.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Hmong Celebration, Frogtown, 1993.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/indochinese-refugee-resettlement-office-1975-1986"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Mrs. J. P. Mohan, Gold Star mother, with flag, St. Paul, 1918.","author":[{"name":"Sarah Shirey","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/sarah-shirey"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"August 17, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Gold Star Mothers in Minnesota","postbody":"During World War I, families began to hang flags in their windows that displayed a gold star for each relative killed in military service. The title “gold star mother” was used unofficially ...","searchtext":"During World War I, families began to hang flags in their windows that displayed a gold star for each relative killed in military service. The title “gold star mother” was used unofficially to describe a woman who had lost a child in service until the national organization American Gold Star Mothers, Inc., was established in 1929. Many Minnesota mothers claimed membership, and local Minnesota chapters followed. Robert. L. Queisser was the first to hang a flag in his window that displayed a blue star for each living family member serving in the United States military. A gold star replaced a blue one when a family member was killed in service. Queisser patented this “service flag” in 1917 after the United States entered World War I. The gold star symbolized the honor of each person’s sacrifice rather than the personal loss in traditional mourning symbols. In 1918, Grace Darling Seibold’s son, George Vaughn Seibold, was killed in France. Seibold organized a group of mothers who had also lost children in the war to support each other and devote their time to caring for hospitalized veterans. In 1928, she met with twenty-five mothers in Washington, D.C. to establish the American Gold Star Mothers, Inc. (AGSM). On January 5, 1929, the organization was incorporated. Minnesota mothers had been organizing under the “gold star” title as well. In 1921, a group of gold star mothers took part in a ceremony on Minneapolis’s Victory Memorial Drive. There, they helped to plant 555 trees to honor each serviceman and servicewoman on the Hennepin County Gold Star Roll. By 1930, Minnesota gold star mothers where eligible to apply for the national organization. Mina Blanch Hart Carlson of St. Cloud, whose son Herbert Leroy Hart died in France in 1918, was the first member accepted from Minnesota. Mothers from across the state joined the AGSM, but there was no Minnesota chapter at that time. One of the AGSM’s first actions was to lobby for a federally funded pilgrimage for gold star mothers to visit their children’s graves in Europe. On March 2, 1929, an act of Congress authorized funding for the pilgrimage. A War Department investigation revealed that 354 mothers and stepmothers from Minnesota were eligible to make the trip; ninety-one said that they desired to do so in 1930. The estimated cost was over 5 million dollars. Lizzie Schafman of New Brighton was one of the Minnesotans who made the pilgrimage. She visited the grave of her son, Walter Schafman, in France. The War Department segregated the pilgrimages by race, which caused conflict within the African American community. The NAACP called for a boycott of the pilgrimages, but 279 African American mothers elected to make the journey. In 1942, the AGSM opened membership to mothers who had lost children in World War II. They opened membership again for each subsequent conflict. The first Minnesota Chapter of the AGSM was chartered in Minneapolis on January 22, 1949, and was called the Southside Chapter. It had eighteen members. A Northside Chapter was chartered on May 7, 1949, and had twenty-five members. In the years that followed, gold star mothers established several more local chapters throughout Minnesota. In 1978, the AGSM celebrated its fiftieth birthday. Its members had served over two million hours in Veterans Administration medical centers by this time. By 1991, only three Minnesota chapters remained, with dwindling numbers. Since the Vietnam era, fewer mothers had chosen to join. By the first decade of the twenty-first century, all Minnesota chapters of the AGSM were inactive. With the beginning of the War on Terror, however, the number of gold star mothers in the state began to rise again. In the summer of 2009, a group of Minnesota gold star mothers asked the National AGSM Office for a new charter for a state chapter. The charter was granted on October 1, 2009. It included all of Minnesota and welcomed mothers from North and South Dakota as well, since those states did not have active chapters. Their goals are to honor their children by volunteering in their communities, assisting veterans, promoting patriotism, and helping each other heal. In 2014, Governor Mark Dayton declared Sunday, September 20, to be Gold Star Mothers|| Day.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/E435.19 r2.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/gold-star-mothers-minnesota"},{"alt":"Color image of the Hermann Monument, New Ulm, 2011. Photograph by Adam C. Smith.","author":[{"name":"Jeanne Anderegg","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/jeanne-anderegg"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"August 15, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"“Hermann the German” Monument, New Ulm","postbody":"On the bluffs above New Ulm stands a statue of Hermann, a first-century German chieftain who triumphed over Rome. This copper-sheet sculpture reflects the pride the early German American ...","searchtext":"On the bluffs above New Ulm stands a statue of Hermann, a first-century German chieftain who triumphed over Rome. This copper-sheet sculpture reflects the pride the early German American immigrants to Minnesota felt in their cultural background. Built in 1897 with funds raised from Sons of Hermann lodges all over the country, the monument is now owned by the City of New Ulm. Known locally as “Hermann the German,” the heroic figure stands ready to fight atop a dome in Hermann Heights Park in New Ulm. A member of the Cherusci tribe of Germania, the historical Hermann (or Arminius, as the Romans called him) served in the Roman Army. According to Roman sources, in September, 9 CE, Arminius led three Roman legions into a trap and defeated them. The Roman army suffered terrible losses. As a result, Rome gave up trying to conquer German lands east of the Rhine. Arminius brought together several tribes under his rule until his death about a decade after his victory. In Germany, Arminius gained folk hero status (and the name of Hermann) over the centuries. Songs, plays, and poems celebrated him. By the nineteenth century, Hermann had become a symbol of a strong, united country for Germans eager to define a national identity. In 1875, sculptor Joseph Ernst von Bandel completed a large monument to Hermann near Detmold, Germany, where he thought the battle had taken place. (Evidence now points to Kalkriese, a hill in Lower Saxony, Germany, as the site of the battle.) The Detmold sculpture inspired Germans on the other side of the Atlantic. Julius Berndt, one of the founders of New Ulm, persuaded a German American group, the Sons of Hermann, to fund a similar work to show pride in their ethnic heritage. An architect and founding members of the Sons’ New Ulm chapter, Berndt designed the monument himself. Sculptor Alphonz Pelzer of the W. H. Mullins Manufacturing Company in Salem, Ohio, made the statue from copper sheeting over a steel frame. After debate over the location, a cornerstone was laid in New Ulm on June 24, 1888. Although completed in 1889, the sculpture sat in storage for several years while Berndt raised enough money from individuals and Sons of Hermann lodges to finish the base. On September 25, 1897, the Sons of Hermann dedicated the monument at its national meeting, held in New Ulm. The town celebrated with weeklong events and a special beer, Hermann’s Brau. Special trains brought crowds to New Ulm for the festivities. Speakers extolled Hermann as a freedom fighter, in part in response to the growing prohibition movement, which disapproved of the German tradition of beer drinking. The foundation, base, cupola, and statue together reach a height of 102 feet. One of the largest copper-sheet statues in the United States, Hermann looks out over the town of New Ulm, a sword in his right hand, a shield in his left hand, and a foot placed firmly on a Roman helmet. Only New York City’s Statue of Liberty (151 feet) and Portlandia (almost thirty-four feet) in Portland, Oregon, are taller than Hermann (thirty-two feet from sword tip to toe). Ten pillars circle an open base with a spiral staircase in the middle that leads to the cupola. From a platform beneath Hermann’s feet, visitors can view the Minnesota River Valley. The base houses a small museum on Hermann and the history of the monument. In 1929, the City of New Ulm took over the site from the Sons of Hermann. The structure underwent significant repairs in 1999 with support from the Minnesota legislature. Jesse Ventura cited this project, which he viewed as government waste, as one of the reasons for his decision to run for governor. New Ulm has continued to restore the monument, adding four cast iron lions, part of Julius Berndt’s original design, to the base in 2001 and removing the statue in 2004 to make further repairs. Placed on the National Register of Historical Places in 1973, the Hermann Monument was designated as a symbol of the contributions of Americans of German heritage by the 106th U.S. Congress in 2000. Back on his pedestal in 2005, Hermann kept his watch once again, providing German-Americans with a link to their cultural past.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/flicker2011.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/hermann-german-monument-new-ulm"},{"alt":"Color image of a Platteville limestone seam in Fort Snelling State Park, 2016. Photograph by Paul Nelson.","author":[{"name":"Paul Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/paul-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"August 10, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186622056203,"name":"1792–1861 (Expansion and Reform)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":203519472229,"name":"Pre-1585 (Before European Contact)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Platteville Limestone","postbody":"Platteville limestone is a distinctive building stone of southeastern Minnesota and southwestern Wisconsin characterized by its gray color, rough texture, and many fossils. It was heavily ...","searchtext":"Platteville limestone is a distinctive building stone of southeastern Minnesota and southwestern Wisconsin characterized by its gray color, rough texture, and many fossils. It was heavily used in the early decades of the building of the Twin Cities and Faribault. In Minnesota, Platteville limestone is found only in eleven southeastern counties: Ramsey, Hennepin, Washington, Dakota, Rice, Goodhue, Wabasha, Dodge, Olmsted, Winona, Fillmore, and Houston. Like almost all limestones, the Platteville variety (named for a town in southwestern Wisconsin) is a marine creation. Platteville limestone formed between 488 and 436 million years ago, when what became southeastern Minnesota and southwestern Wisconsin lay beneath an ancient sea. This sea was heavily populated by shellfish and other invertebrates. As they died, their shells and other hard parts, made of calcium carbonate, fell to the ocean floor. Over the centuries, the weight of these deposits crushed the shell fragments and compressed them into stone. About 100 million years later, geologic forces raised southeastern Minnesota above the ocean surface. In the region that became the Twin Cities, the limestone was covered by thin deposits of shale and soil. Glaciers covered this region from 75,000 to about 12,000 years ago. When they finally melted, between 14,000 and 12,000 years ago, the released water carved the channels of the Mississippi, Minnesota, and smaller rivers through the layers of limestone, exposing some of it. When the United States Army began work on Fort Snelling in 1820, Platteville limestone was abundant and nearby. The fort site lay atop a great deposit of the stuff. It is an easy stone to quarry, as it breaks readily. Soldiers built almost the entire original fort, from foundations to the round tower, out of Platteville stone. It remains the largest complex of Platteville structures ever made. Like Fort Snelling, downtown St. Paul was built atop a Platteville shelf. Once the city moved beyond its early stage of flimsy and flammable wooden buildings, the local limestone came into heavy use. The first quarry went into operation in 1856. The Original Coney Island (1858), the Alexander Ramsey House (1868), and Assumption Church (1874) were all built in part or entirely from the local stone. Several fine examples of Platteville limestone’s use in private houses can be found in St. Paul’s Summit Hill district, including the Burbank-Livingston-Griggs House (1862), at 432 Summit Avenue; the Ambrose Tighe House, 314 Dayton Avenue (1888); and the Stanford Newell House, at 251 Dayton (built in 1864 with additions completed in 1886). The Platteville stone was quarried and used also in Minneapolis, though less of it survived there into the twenty-first century. Quarrying began in 1864 and builders used it for the original Customs House and City Hall (both 1873) and the original Central High School (1878). The most conspicuous survivor is the ruin of the Pillsbury “A” Mill, built in 1881, its walls all Platteville stone quarried on site. Outside of the Twin Cities, Willis Hall (1872), the first permanent building of Carleton College, Northfield, was built of Platteville stone quarried at Dundas, Minnesota. In Faribault, the Episcopal Cathedral of Our Merciful Savior and Bethlehem Academy, downtown, and the Chapel of the Good Shepherd and most main buildings of Shattuck School were also made of Platteville. (The Rice County stone tends to be a paler gray, often stained with light brown patches.) As a building stone, Platteville’s chief attraction was its availability; in St. Paul and Minneapolis it was often simply quarried on site. But it had limits. Coarse and crumbly, it could not be carved or polished to a smooth finish, and its gray color had limited appeal. With the spread of railroads in the 1870s, other, finer materials became available and affordable, including the red Lake Superior sandstone and the buff-colored Kasota stone (another variety of limestone) that were more attractive and easier to work with. Builders rarely used Platteville for major projects after the 1880s. Seams of Platteville limestone may be seen in many places in the Twin Cities area, most easily along the Mississippi River, in Fort Snelling State Park, in the Bruce Vento Nature Sanctuary in St. Paul, and at Mill Ruins Park in Minneapolis.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/fort_snelling_state_Park.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246052,"name":"Science and Technology","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/platteville-limestone"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Fredrick McGhee, c.1910.","author":[{"name":"Dave Kenney","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/dave-kenney"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"August 08, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Origins of the NAACP in Minnesota, 1912–1920","postbody":"In the years leading up to and immediately following World War I, African Americans in St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Duluth established separate chapters of the recently formed National ...","searchtext":"In the years leading up to and immediately following World War I, African Americans in St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Duluth established separate chapters of the recently formed National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). About seven thousand African Americans lived in Minnesota during the early decades of the 1900s. The vast majority of them resided in St. Paul and Minneapolis. In recent years, a small core of community leaders from the cities’ black professional class had established a series of organizations to promote civil rights, but those groups had all declined due to some combination of neglect, indifference, and ineffectiveness. It wasn’t until 1909, when a new organization called the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was formed, that significant numbers of African Americans in the Twin Cities began actively participating in a viable, nationwide civil rights movement. The NAACP was an outgrowth of the Niagara Movement, a civil rights organization founded several years earlier by prominent black leaders including W. E. B. Du Bois and St. Paul attorney Fredrick McGhee. On March 12, 1912, McGhee, physician Valdo Turner, and several other members of St. Paul’s African American community met to create a new organization called the Twin City Protective League. Despite opposition from members who objected to the activist policies of Du Bois and his allies, the new group voted to affiliate with the NAACP. McGhee died several months later, but his colleagues carried on his cause. In the fall of 1913, the St. Paul group applied for and received its NAACP charter, officially becoming a branch of the national organization. A few months later, another group of prominent black leaders including attorney Gale P. Hilyer established a separate NAACP branch in Minneapolis. Both NAACP branches struggled to build membership and raise funds during their early years. But they still managed to mount several high profile campaigns on behalf of the cities’ African Americans. Most notably, they fought to prevent public showings of the groundbreaking but blatantly racist motion picture The Birth of a Nation, in 1915. Gale Hilyer, for one, objected to the movie’s demeaning depictions of African Americans, calling it “prejudiced and unfair.” The two branches failed to stop the exhibition of the movie. They did, however, gain several concessions. In St. Paul, exhibitors agreed to cut two particularly offensive scenes from the film. In Minneapolis, Mayor Wallace Nye set up a board of censors to consider the black community’s objections. Other campaigns conducted by the two NAACP branches included an attempt to gain the release from prison of a black teenager convicted of forging a seventeen-dollar check, and a successful effort to reinstate an African American public school teacher in St. Paul. The two branches’ focus shifted with the United States’ entry into World War I. Although labor shortages on the home front forced employers to open positions that had previously been closed to African Americans, NAACP leaders feared hiring discrimination would return once the war ended. Minneapolis NAACP Secretary R. Augustine Skinner was among several Twin Cities black leaders who believed African Americans could best protect their wartime gains by demonstrating patriotism. He called for them to unite in support of the NAACP as an advocate for their rights. The Twin Cities NAACP branches played what may have been their most urgent early role in the aftermath of racial violence 150 miles north, in Duluth. On June 15, 1920, a mob broke into the Duluth city jail and lynched three black circus workers who were being held there as suspects in an alleged rape. In the days that followed, seven other black men were indicted in the rape, despite a lack of physical evidence. The NAACP branches in St. Paul and Minneapolis mobilized to defend them. The branches solicited donations and hired attorneys to represent the accused. In the end, the lawyers secured by the NAACP succeeded in getting charges against five of the men dropped. Of the two defendants who went to trial, one was acquitted and one was convicted. The Twin Cities branches’ efforts on behalf of the accused helped overcome skepticism about the NAACP in Duluth’s African American community and led to the establishment of that city’s NAACP branch in 1920.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/por 11265 p1_0.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056216,"name":"African Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/origins-naacp-minnesota-1912-1920"},{"alt":"Color image of the Dalles of the St. Croix River seen from the Wisconsin bank, July 2, 2009.","author":[{"name":"Mary Laine","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/mary-laine"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"August 03, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Interstate State Park","postbody":"The Interstate State Park, located on 295 acres in Taylors Falls, is the second-oldest state park in Minnesota. Created in 1895, its unique topography and geological history draw many ...","searchtext":"The Interstate State Park, located on 295 acres in Taylors Falls, is the second-oldest state park in Minnesota. Created in 1895, its unique topography and geological history draw many visitors to the area. It is the first park in the United States to be located in two states, Minnesota and Wisconsin, with the St. Croix River serving as the border. The two parks are operated separately by the states’ Departments of Natural Resources. Over one billion years ago, basaltic lava flowed out of the earth to form thick layers of the black rock found along the St. Croix River near Taylors Falls. More than 500 million years ago, an ocean ebbed and flowed over the area, depositing rocks and sea life and creating fossils. Deposits of ocean silt and sand formed shale and sandstone. Finally, ten thousand years ago, a much larger Glacial St. Croix River, fed by Glacial Lake Duluth, carved out the current river valley by gradually breaking up and eroding the basalt lava flows to create the 100-foot-tall vertical cliffs lining the river. Ten distinct lava flows, more than ten feet thick, exist along the Minnesota side of the river. The area where the river turns and runs through a narrow gorge was named the Dalles of the St. Croix by French explorers. Dalles, in French, means flagstone or slab of rock. The park’s most famous features are its potholes, which are recognized as the world||s deepest and most numerous (over 400) relative to their area. They are located in the area of the park once called the Glacial Gardens. Powerful glacial waters carried and swirled rocks, pebbles, and boulders that created depressions in the hard basalt. When trapped in the low spots, the swirling water and abrasive materials created deeper and deeper depressions that gradually became potholes. The potholes vary in size and depth. Some have fanciful names, such as bottomless pit, bake oven, devil’s parlor, hourglass, and devil’s alcove. The bottomless pit’s dimensions are twelve to fifteen feet wide and sixty feet deep. Additional potholes, filled with silt, sand, and other debris, await discovery and excavation. On June 13, 1886, a series of events led to what may be the largest recorded logjam in the world. Winter logging and a dry spring led to low water in the rivers and delayed transporting the logs to the sawmills. When heavy rain caused the rivers to rise, thousands of logs, dumped into the rivers that fed the St. Croix, led to a two-mile-long logjam at the Dalles. An estimated 125 to 150 million board feet of logs stuck in the narrow river gorge. It was made even worse by the ninety-degree turn in the river at Angle Rock. Two hundred men labored over six weeks to break up the jam using horses, steam engines, steamboats, dynamite, poles, and axes. This event boosted the local economy due to the thousands of visitors watching the activities and the lumberjacks spending their paychecks. In the late 1800s, several concerned citizens began to lobby the public and legislators to create a state park in the Dalles area. Official protection, they argued, would preserve its natural beauty and deter neglect, vandalism, and logging. In the spring of 1896, a series of lectures promoted the park and described the history of the Dalles area and its potential. Lecturers included the state botanist and geologist. George H. Hazzard, an active park advocate, was appointed as its first superintendent. In the 1930s, workers in the WPA (Works Projects Administration) and CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) built structures in two areas of the park: Glacial Gardens and the campground. Both are now on the National Register of Historic Places. The design of the structures, defined by the National Park Service as rustic style, features native materials such as basalt quarried from the area. Rustic-style architecture is labor intensive, finely crafted, and uniquely American. The original structures included a sanitation building, picnic shelter, shelter/refectory, drinking fountains, rest rooms, stone curb, retaining wall, and combination building (rest rooms, laundry, kitchen, utility). Visitors to the park enjoy geocaching, birding, picnics, kayaking, canoeing, hiking, camping, organized park tours, boat tours, and exploring for wildflowers and diverse flora and fauna. Rock climbing on the basalt cliffs is a popular challenge.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Dalles_Of_St_Croix.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246054,"name":"Sports and Recreation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/interstate-state-park"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of an audience at the American Legion National Convention, Minneapolis, 1919.","author":[{"name":"Ehsan Alam","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/ehsan-alam"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"August 01, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Origins of the American Legion in Minnesota, 1919–1922","postbody":"At the close of World War I, the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) was the only centralized veterans’ organization prepared to help returning soldiers re-enter civilian life and to assist the ...","searchtext":"At the close of World War I, the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) was the only centralized veterans’ organization prepared to help returning soldiers re-enter civilian life and to assist the families of the deceased. The American Legion formed soon after the war in order to serve veterans returning from Europe. Minnesota’s department of the Legion answered the call, creating programs that assisted veterans and led the way for the organization. As the American Legion was being set up at a caucus in Paris in March 1919, Minnesotans had just begun their own veterans’ organization, known then as the Loyal Legion. They quickly changed their name to the American Legion to align with the larger group and organized delegates to go to a caucus in St. Louis in May. Those delegates secured Minneapolis as the site of the first national convention, scheduled for November. In the period between the St. Louis Caucus and the convention, the Legion organized its Minnesota branch. After a temporary committee headed by Harrison Fuller was organized, member numbers rose. By November, the state had 35,000 members and 360 posts; Minnesota led the country in membership. While much of the early work was administrative, it helped veterans get war-risk insurance and legal advice. The Minneapolis Convention was held over three days at multiple sites along Nicollet and Hennepin Avenues, in the heart of the city’s downtown district. The gathering was productive. The Legion’s members approved a constitution; set up a legislative committee to lobby for veterans’ interests; created a Women’s Auxiliary; and passed several measures about the group’s platform. Most important, they established that the American Legion’s main duty was to help disabled veterans. African Americans joined the Legion in its early days and attended the Minneapolis convention. The national organization’s racist policy, however, allowed state and local posts to exclude non-whites. Members organized Minnesota’s first Legion location for African Americans, the Leslie Lawrence Post, in St. Paul in May 1922. (The state’s first integrated post did not form until 1946.) After the convention, the Minnesota branch of the American Legion was made permanent, with Fuller at its head. The organization began to implement programs to benefit veterans and their families. In addition to providing war risk insurance assistance, the Legion helped members access benefits provided by the State Bonus Bill of 1919. Later, it would investigate delays in payments and recommend improvements. At the national level, Minnesota Legion members played a leading role in passing the Sweet Bill of 1921. This law consolidated all veterans’ affairs under the Veterans Bureau. Previously, those services had been scattered among various agencies, leading to communication breakdowns and inefficiency. Later in that year, the Minnesota American Legion Hospital Association was organized. This program sought to provide all ex-servicemen and their dependents with medical care, free of cost. The Minnesota delegation to the New Orleans Convention, held in 1922, proposed that the hospitals leased by the government for the care of veterans (many of which were unfit, under-funded, and outside government control) should be reformed. As a result, the Veterans Bureau was given direct control of such hospitals. While the Minnesota Legion effected much change, especially at the policy level, a great deal of the hands-on work was conducted by the women of the Minnesota Legion Auxiliary. The Auxiliary was established at its own convention in Minneapolis in November 1920, making it the first state auxiliary convention in the nation. It quickly created a hospital visitation program in which volunteers visited patients and made lists of the veterans’ needs. They relayed this information through appropriate channels so that those needs could be met. The Auxiliary set up an artificial-flower manufacturing enterprise for discharged patients unfit for heavy work and later participated in a farm-colony program. Finally, the Auxiliary undertook a robust child welfare program focusing on education, legislation, and material relief. Together with the Minnesota Legion, the Auxiliary’s children’s project was a national effort. In its early years, the Minnesota branch of the American Legion and its affiliates focused on providing relief to Minnesota veterans and their families. By the mid-1920s, they were succeeding in this endeavor and proving themselves an example for other Legion departments.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/U3.1 p34, 5269.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/origins-american-legion-minnesota-1919-1922"},{"alt":"Color image of Indian Mounds Park, 2016. Photograph by Paul Nelson.","author":[{"name":"Paul Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/paul-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 27, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":203519472229,"name":"Pre-1585 (Before European Contact)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Indian Mounds Park, St. Paul","postbody":"The six burial mounds at St. Paul’s Indian Mounds Park are among the oldest human-made structures in Minnesota. Along with mounds in Crow Wing, Itasca, and Beltrami Counties, they are some ...","searchtext":"The six burial mounds at St. Paul’s Indian Mounds Park are among the oldest human-made structures in Minnesota. Along with mounds in Crow Wing, Itasca, and Beltrami Counties, they are some of the northernmost burial mounds on the Mississippi River. They represent the only ancient Native American burial mounds still extant inside a major US city. It is estimated that there were once tens of thousands of ceremonial, effigy, and conical mounds in the eastern half of North America. About a third of these were built in what are now Wisconsin and Minnesota; perhaps two thousand of them stood in sight of the upper Mississippi River. Conical mounds were often used for burials. The six that remain in St. Paul’s Indian Mounds Park are some of the tallest, oldest, and most distinctive of these. Archaeologists date the construction of the surviving mounds to between 200 BCE and 400 CE (a period called Middle Woodland) based on their similarity to mounds elsewhere in the Midwest. The tallest mound at the St. Paul site fits the pattern, observed elsewhere, of being the oldest. The size, contents, and location of the mounds suggest that they held great religious or ceremonial importance for their builders. Archaeologists have concluded that they were Native American people who shared some cultural characteristics with, or at least had contact with, the mound-building people of southern Ohio and western Illinois, and that the ideas and practices that motivated mound building moved north along the Mississippi. The cultural complex of these other mound builders bears the name Hopewell, from a farm in Ohio. The various peoples of North America maintained vast exchange networks: grave goods in the Upper Mississippi valley have included obsidian from Wyoming and shells from Florida. The mounds have been a sacred site for modern and early modern Native people—particularly the Dakota—since before the mid-1700s. The first person to map the St. Paul mounds, Theodore H. Lewis, began around 1880. He determined that there had once been fifty-eight mounds at the brow of what came to be known as Dayton’s Bluff, a promontory two hundred feet above the Mississippi River where it takes a turn south toward the Gulf of Mexico. At the top stood a group of eighteen, some of them tall and cone-shaped. The rest, most of them low, trailed along the bluff as it descended toward the north. Most of these were only a foot or two above the natural surface. When Lewis mapped them, only thirty nine remained. Developers destroyed many of the small mounds in the late nineteenth century in order to build the Dayton’s Bluff neighborhood. The City of St. Paul razed seven more mounds in 1895 in the grading of Mounds Park Boulevard and the creation of Indian Mounds Park. It preserved the six tallest, which are also believed to be the oldest. Looters, investigators, and road workers dug into at least seventeen of the mounds. Inside, they found wood and stone burial chambers, copper and stone grave goods, sea shell beads, mussel shells, and the remains of approximately fifty people, including a few children. The most remarkable object removed, in 1882, was a small child’s skull bearing a clay mask. The known excavations began in 1856 and ended in 1895, but looters may have been active both before and after. Some of the objects and remains taken from the mounds were destroyed in a fire at the state capitol in 1881. Others, held at Macalester College from 1887 until 1955, including a copper breastplate, were stolen by collectors. The Minnesota Historical Society holds the only known surviving artifacts from the St. Paul mounds: seventeen projectile points, a small earthenware vessel, a box of small shells, and a glass bottle of red ocher. Archaeologists completed a survey and some testing of the site in 1981, but the mounds themselves were not entered. In 2013, archaeologists used modern methods (including radar and magnetic gradiometry) to examine the mound site, with scant results. The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), which became law on November 16, 1990, regulates management of the remaining artifacts that had been acquired by museums and other public institutions.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Mounds.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246059,"name":"Native Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/indian-mounds-park-st-paul"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Civilian Conservation Corps workers building a road near Roosevelt, Minnesota, ca. 1933. Photographed by J. A.Gjelhaug.","author":[{"name":"Linda A. Cameron","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/linda-cameron"}],"categoryTag":[],"date":"July 25, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Civilian Conservation Corps in Minnesota, 1933–1942","postbody":"The U.S. Congress paved the way for the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) when it passed the Emergency Conservation Work (ECW) Act in March 1933, at the height of the Great Depression. This ...","searchtext":"The U.S. Congress paved the way for the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) when it passed the Emergency Conservation Work (ECW) Act in March 1933, at the height of the Great Depression. This New Deal program offered meaningful work to young men with few employment prospects. It resulted in a lasting legacy of forestry, soil, and water conservation, as well as enhancements to Minnesota||s state and national parks. Like other government programs launched during the Great Depression, the CCC was the brainchild of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR). Five days after Congress passed the ECW Act, he signed Executive Order 6101, creating the CCC. Several federal agencies had responsibility for the CCC program. The Labor Department handled recruitment. The War Department managed camp organization, induction, housing, food, and clothing. Army personnel supervised the camps. The Departments of Agriculture and Interior developed the work projects. The government set a nationwide quota of 250,000 young men ages eighteen to twenty-five. To qualify, candidates had to be healthy U.S. citizens, out of school, unemployed, unmarried, and on public assistance. Recruits reported to an assigned camp for a period of six months. Those with a good work record had the option to sign up for a second six-month term. Each man received thirty dollars per month. Enrollees were required to send twenty-five dollars home to their families, and kept five dollars for personal use. The CCC program permitted African American men to enroll, but it became harder for blacks to be accepted into the program as white enrollment increased. According to historian Barbara W. Sommer, African Americans made up only about 10 percent of all recruits. Once enrolled, they found that the camps followed the U.S. Army||s racist segregation policies. Most black men served in all-African American camps at such locations as Fort Snelling State Park and Temperance River State Park. Those sent to white camps lived in segregated barracks and ate their meals apart from the rest of the recruits. Blacks in the CCC faced discrimination from local citizens and from some white camp commanders. Ignoring the program||s integration requirements, administrators stopped accepting blacks into Minnesota camps in 1938. They sent those already enrolled to camps in Missouri and other southern locations where Jim Crow laws were common, despite protests from the African American community in Minnesota. In April 1933, the government extended enrollment to older men known as Local Experienced Men. These men had useful knowledge of camp locations and offered more advanced skills for tasks such as stone masonry and forestry than their younger colleagues. The large number of unemployed veterans of World War I prompted FDR to further expand the CCC program. He created the Veterans Conservation Corps in May 1933 with an enrollment goal of twenty-five thousand men. On June 19, 1933, the Office of Indian Affairs within the Department of the Interior established the Civilian Conservation Corps-Indian Division (CCC-ID). Based on Minnesota||s Native American population, the government set a quota of four hundred workers for each enrollment period in the program. In less than one month, Minnesota||s first CCC-ID camp opened at Nett Lake. The Bureau of Indian Affairs administered the CCC-ID camps, instead of the U.S. Army, and provided work projects both on and off the reservations. In line with the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, many CCC-ID projects focused on preservation of Ojibwe and Dakota culture, including management of wild rice habitat and teaching modern methods of maple sugaring. These men also built roads and cleared diseased trees in local forests. The Grand Portage camp completed an archaeological study and reconstruction of the North West Company Fur Post historic site on Lake Superior. The result is one of the best-known examples of CCC-ID work. Minnesota||s camps were located in the Seventh U.S. Army Corps Area. This area included the Dakotas, Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, and Arkansas. Based on the state||s population, Minnesota was to have sixty-one camps with a total enrollment of six thousand men. The first Minnesota camp, Company 701, opened at Lake Gegoka (near Isabella) on May 8, 1933. Other camps quickly followed, including the first state forest and state park camps. Each camp had barracks to house two hundred men, a kitchen, a mess hall, and a camp canteen that sold personal items. Other camp structures included tool sheds, an infirmary, a reading room, and a recreation hall. A typical work day was eight hours, starting at 6:00 a.m. with exercises and breakfast. Morning and afternoon work sessions allowed for breaks for lunch and supper, with the noon meal sometimes served at the work site if it was located too far from camp. Evening hours provided free time for recreation and study, with lights out at 9:30 p.m. Many camps offered vocational training programs and church services. The men could join organized sports teams and play card games or billiards as leisure time activities. Minnesota CCC projects centered mainly on forestry and state and national park projects. They also supported soil and water conservation. The men in forest camps cut and cleared brush to help conserve existing forests and planted 123,607,000 trees. They participated in tree disease prevention programs, built roads, strung telephone lines, and fought forest fires. Fire prevention efforts included clearing deadwood and building water towers, ranger stations, and firebreaks. Park projects focused on the building of permanent |||rustic style||| structures of local stone and logs following National Park Service guidelines. The CCC built and improved camp grounds, picnic areas, parking lots, and scenic overlooks. They worked to restore historic structures, such as the commissary building at the Fort Ridgely historic site. Severe drought conditions in the mid-1930s, particularly in southeastern Minnesota, made soil and water conservation an important part of the work of the CCC. The enrollment quota increased to 350,000 in 1934, and to six hundred thousand the next year, to meet the program||s needs. The CCC planted windbreaks, built dams, dug drainage ditches and put up fencing. Working with local farmers, they created custom plans for each farm incorporating modern farming methods such as terracing, contour farming, and strip cropping. The accomplishments of the men of the CCC are evident throughout the state. Examples of rustic-style structures, many on the National Register of Historic Places, still stand in Minnesota state parks. The trees planted have revitalized Minnesota||s forests. Soil conservation measures adopted in the 1930s resulted in the passage of the 1937 Soil and Water Conservation Districts Law. Under this law, Minnesota farmers continue to use the methods promoted by the CCC to prevent soil erosion, water conservation, and flooding. The CCC program peaked in Minnesota in 1935 with 104 active camps. Enrollment nationwide began to decline in the early 1940s as young men joined the military for World War II and as the economy began to rebound. Despite efforts to make the CCC permanent, funding for the program ended on June 30, 1943. All of Minnesota||s camps closed in 1942. More than seventy-seven thousand Minnesota men found employment with the program. The CCC-ID program assisted more than twenty-five hundred Native American families in the state. The young men of the CCC credited the program with teaching self-discipline and leadership, instilling confidence and self-respect, and helping them to develop useful career skills.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/E445.2 r77.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246091,"name":"Agriculture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246055,"name":"Labor","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/civilian-conservation-corps-minnesota-1933-1942"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Eugene McCarthy, 1971. Photograph by Haines Photo Company.","author":[{"name":"Tom O’Connell","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/tom-o-connell"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 20, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"McCarthy, Eugene (1916–2005)","postbody":"Senator Eugene McCarthy challenged President Lyndon Johnson for the 1968 Democratic nomination, mobilizing a youth crusade against U.S. intervention in Vietnam and changing the course of ...","searchtext":"Senator Eugene McCarthy challenged President Lyndon Johnson for the 1968 Democratic nomination, mobilizing a youth crusade against U.S. intervention in Vietnam and changing the course of politics in Minnesota and the nation. Eugene McCarthy was born in 1916 in the small central Minnesota community of Watkins. A scholarly boy and talented athlete, he attended nearby St. Johns University, embracing the Catholic social justice tradition he encountered there. Returning from service as a code breaker for the Military Intelligence Division in 1946, McCarthy taught sociology and economics at St. Thomas University in St. Paul. He attracted a circle of young liberals and rose quickly in the Democratic Farmer Labor Party (DFL), winning election to Congress in 1948. McCarthy distinguished himself in the House of Representatives. Nicknamed “the Needle” for his sharp wit, he was widely respected for his ability to articulate the heart of complex issues. By 1957, he helped organize a caucus of young liberals known as McCarthy’s Marauders. The organization and its set of legislative principles formed the basis of the influential Democratic Study Group. In 1958, against the advice of many DFL Party insiders, McCarthy ran for the U.S. Senate, becoming the first Catholic ever elected to that position. Recognizing McCarthy’s legislative talents, the powerful Democratic majority leader, Lyndon Johnson, appointed him chair of the Special Committee on Unemployment Problems. The four-thousand-page report developed under McCarthy’s leadership became the blueprint for many of the domestic programs advocated by Presidents Kennedy and Johnson in the 1960s. Elected to a second term in 1964, McCarthy joined the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee. The war in Vietnam was continuing, with no end in sight. As the death toll mounted, he became increasingly critical of President Johnson’s continued escalation. When anti-war movement leaders sought a Democratic senator to do the unthinkable—challenge their party’s incumbent president— McCarthy was the only one willing to take up the call. The first contest took place in the New Hampshire primary. Most experts expected President Johnson to defeat McCarthy in a landslide. Buoyed by an army of college-age volunteers, McCarthy received 42 percent of the vote. Convinced that he could not win re-election with a party divided by the war, Johnson shocked the nation when he announced that he would not run again. McCarthy’s lonely challenge had sparked a movement—a “children’s crusade,” as the press referred to it. In his speeches, McCarthy mixed tough criticism of the administration’s war policies with poetry, philosophic musings, and sardonic wit. Some supporters looked for more passion and applause lines; others appreciated his unorthodox style as evidence of integrity. With Johnson out of the race, two new candidates entered: Robert Kennedy, the heir to the legacy of his slain brother, John F. Kennedy, and Vice President Hubert Humphrey. With Humphrey refusing to break from the president’s war policies, Kennedy and McCarthy battled it out for leadership of the anti-war movement. The decisive contest took place in California, where Kennedy’s passionate appeals to African American and working class voters proved decisive. His assassination, just minutes after his victory speech in a Los Angeles hotel, rocked the nation, splintered the anti-war movement, and made Humphrey’s nomination all but inevitable. In late August, a badly fractured Democratic Party met in Chicago. The violent clashes between police and protestors in the street paralled the frustrations of delegates inside the convention. A movement that had begun with such hope just six months earlier in New Hampshire ended in defeat and disarray. With Humphrey’s position on the war only slowly changing, McCarthy withheld his endorsement until the final days of the campaign. Humphrey narrowly lost to Richard Nixon. The campaign of 1968 was a turning point for McCarthy. In opposing the president, McCarthy drew inspiration from Sir Thomas More, who chose principle over king and paid with his life. Emotionally exhausted, McCarthy withdrew for a time from politics, disappointing his followers by refusing to run for a third senate term in 1970. He returned to writing, combining poetry with books on politics and public policy. Beginning in 1972, his maverick streak in full view, he ran a series of political campaigns, often as an independent or third party candidate. His wit and provocative intellect fully intact, he died of Parkinson’s disease in 2005.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/por 5860 p10.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/mccarthy-eugene-1916-2005"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Stephen Arnold Douglas Volk, 1908.","author":[{"name":"Katherine Goertz","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/katherine-goertz"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 18, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Volk, Douglas (1856–1935)","postbody":"Douglas Volk was an American painter and arts educator. He was the founding director of the Minneapolis School of Arts and provided two paintings to the Minnesota State Capitol. Volk was ...","searchtext":"Douglas Volk was an American painter and arts educator. He was the founding director of the Minneapolis School of Arts and provided two paintings to the Minnesota State Capitol. Volk was born Stephen Arnold Douglas Volk in Massachusetts on February 23, 1856. As the son of the noted sculptor Leonard Wells Volk, he was exposed to the art world at an early age. In 1873, Volk began studying art at Paris’s École des Beaux-Arts, the prestigious and influential art school that gave its name to the wide-reaching Beaux Arts movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He first exhibited at the famous Paris Salon for the first time at the age of nineteen, then quickly collected a series of honors and participated in exhibitions in Europe and the United States. In 1886, Volk became the first director of the Minneapolis School of Arts (later renamed the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.) When Volk arrived, the school’s home was an apartment in downtown Minneapolis. Three years later, it moved to the top floor of the new Minneapolis Public Library. During his tenure at the school, Volk oversaw the first exhibition of student work, at the Minneapolis Industrial Exposition. He also brought in art from more established American art schools with the aim of inspiring the students of Minneapolis. Volk is best known for his large-scale portraits and his idealized works on early American themes. Like many turn-of-the-twentieth-century realist artists, Volk’s work often had a sentimental bent, seen in many of his most lauded works. One of these, After the Reception, was painted in Minnesota in 1887 and acquired by the Minneapolis Institute of Art. It shows Caroline Thompson, the daughter of one of Volk’s friends, as an exhausted bride reflecting on her recent wedding. Another painting, also acquired by Mia, is Portrait of John Scott Bradstreet (1890). It presents Bradstreet, a pivotal figure in the Twin Cities art scene, posed among his collection of Turkish carpets, sculptures, and Moorish embellishments. The architect Cass Gilbert began work on the Minnesota State Capitol in 1896. It was done in the Beaux-Arts style and planned to include extensive artwork from well-known American artists. Volk, the only artist invited to participate who had lived and worked in Minnesota, contributed two paintings: Second Minnesota Regiment at Mission Ridge, Nov. 25, 1863 and Father Louis Hennepin Discovering the Falls of St. Anthony. Second Minnesota Regiment at Mission Ridge represents the 1863 battle in Tennessee with careful accuracy. In order to fully illustrate the reality of the battle and the location of the fighting, Volk studied Civil War-era photographs. He borrowed soldiers’ weapons and uniforms from the Minnesota Historical Society to show small details. Real participants in the battle, including Lieutenant Colonel Judson Bishop, commander of the regiment, are recognizable in the painting. Despite his tendency towards sentimentality, Volk’s skill, attention to detail, and historical accuracy temper the painting’s melodramatic elements. Volk painted several other military-themed works in his career. In 1919, he was one of eight American artists commissioned by the National Art Committee to create portraits of important World War I figures. Two of these are now in the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Volk also did several paintings of Abraham Lincoln using a life mask of the president made by his father, Leonard Volk. The National Gallery has two of these portraits; another hangs in the White House’s Lincoln Bedroom. Later in life, Volk continued to work, exhibit and teach. In the early 1900s, Volk and his wife, artist Marion Larabee Volk, started the Sabatos Handicraft Society in Lovell, Maine, which aimed to produce and preserve traditional New England textile arts. Many members of the American Arts and Crafts movement visited the Volks in Maine, including Minneapolis’s John S. Bradstreet. On February 7, 1935, Volk died in Fryeburg, Maine.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/MNopedia/MNopedia%202026/Douglas_Volk.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/volk-douglas-1856-1935"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Staples train depot, c.1929. Initial reports of damage at the depot proved to be exaggerated.","author":[{"name":"Dave Kenney","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/dave-kenney"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 13, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Staples Earthquake, 1917","postbody":"The earthquake that rattled a large portion of central and northern Minnesota on September 3, 1917, while small by historical standards, fascinated many Minnesotans. In the days after the ...","searchtext":"The earthquake that rattled a large portion of central and northern Minnesota on September 3, 1917, while small by historical standards, fascinated many Minnesotans. In the days after the quake, exaggerated accounts and faulty expert analysis reflected the state’s inexperience with geological convulsions. Sometime between 3:20 and 3:30 on the afternoon of September 3, 1917, people across a wide swath of central and northern Minnesota felt the ground move beneath them. Although the shaking initially confused many of the people who experienced it, its source soon became clear: an earthquake had hit Minnesota. Few Minnesotans had ever felt an earthquake before that day. Fewer still had ever felt one in their home state. The quake of September 3 was an instant subject of fascination. Dispatches went out from as far north as International Falls and as far south as St. Cloud after the earthquake struck. Most described the quake as nothing special. Residents in towns like Brainerd, Motley, and Little Falls reported hearing a “rumbling” or “roaring” noise similar to that of a passing truck or train. Glassware rattled. A paint can fell off a ladder. No one was hurt. But rumors of heavier damage proved hard to ignore. The day after the quake, the Minneapolis Tribune told its readers that “the worst shock,” lasting nearly thirty seconds, happened in Staples. It reported that the shaking knocked goods off store shelves and that shoppers made “miraculous escapes.” In Staples, the windows of the Northern Pacific train station shattered, and the depot’s concrete platform cracked. Before long, people were referring to the tremor as the “Staples earthquake.” But the initial reports of damage in Staples appeared to stretch the truth. Three days after the quake, the Wadena Pioneer Journal reported that the tremor had not, as earlier claimed, “demoralized” the working people of Staples. The editor of the Staples World pointed out that, contrary to the Minneapolis papers’ reports, the earthquake did not cause significant damage. The sensational coverage of the earthquake did not stop with Staples. The Brainerd Dispatch in particular seemed to relish embellishment. In its initial report, it described the fortuitous experience of one Ben Olson, who was fishing on Gladstone Lake when “the shock came” and “the waves rolled in.” The Dispatch claimed that Olson caught his limit of bass when the tremor caused hundreds of fish to swim in terror past his boat. Newspaper reporters were not the only ones to get their facts wrong. Seismology was a developing science in the early 1900s, and limited understanding of earthquakes led some experts to assume that the Staples quake was unique. They did not realize that Staples lay along a fault now known as the Great Lake Tectonic Zone. Even Warren Upham, the state’s preeminent geologist, was misinformed. He told the St. Paul Pioneer Press that Minnesota had not experienced an earthquake since at least the early nineteenth century, and possibly long before. But soon after his comments appeared in the newspaper, Upham began receiving letters from early settlers informing him that he was wrong. One reported that an earthquake had shaken Long Prairie in 1860 or 1861. In the years that followed, geologists determined that at least five earthquakes—including the one that hit Long Prairie in 1860 or 1861—shook Minnesota in the half century before the 1917 Staples quake. Several decades later, the Minnesota Geological Survey estimated that the Staples earthquake had a magnitude of 4.3, making it the strongest recorded tremor to shake the state until the 4.6 magnitude Morris, Minnesota, quake of 1975.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/MT6.9 ST8 r8.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246079,"name":"Cities and Towns","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/staples-earthquake-1917"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra on stage, c.1912.","author":[{"name":"Janet Meyer","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/janet-meyer"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 11, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Minnesota Orchestra","postbody":"The Minnesota Orchestra, originally known as the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, was created in 1903. It was co-founded by Emil Oberhoffer, the group’s first conductor, and Elbert L. ...","searchtext":"The Minnesota Orchestra, originally known as the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, was created in 1903. It was co-founded by Emil Oberhoffer, the group’s first conductor, and Elbert L. Carpenter, the first president. The group brought a new level of culture and sophistication to Minneapolis, the eighth American city to establish a major orchestra. Choral societies were popular in Minneapolis in the late 1800s, but the musicians were not reliable. This led the “Filharmonix” Choral Society, later renamed the Philharmonic Club, to organize a permanent orchestra with committed musicians. Their conductor, Emil Oberhoffer, understood the importance of community support and funding. He gained the backing of Elbert L. Carpenter, who, through his own wealth and the donations of local businesses, secured a guarantee fund of $10,000 annually for three years. The orchestra’s first concert was held on November 5, 1903, at the Exposition Building in Minneapolis. There were six different concerts (programs) in the initial season, each performed only once. The orchestra began to tour regionally in 1907 in order to broaden its reach and attract new supporters. Oberhoffer took the orchestra to Moorhead, Duluth, and Grand Forks, North Dakota. Because of these tours, the orchestra was praised in the media; in 1910, the Minneapolis Tribune reported it had a reputation as “the greatest body of musicians in the West.” The frequency of their tours earned the players the nickname “orchestra on wheels.” Within a few years, they had performed in several major U.S. cities, including Chicago in 1911 and New York City at Carnegie Hall in March 1912. In March 1923, the orchestra performed its first live radio broadcast; in April 1924, it made its first recording while on tour, in New York. Radio broadcasts and recordings helped to broaden the exposure of the orchestra. The group won a Grammy in 2014 for best orchestral performance for a disc of Sibelius’s Symphonies nos. 1 and 4. Volunteers have supported the orchestra since the beginning. The initial administrators were a committee of volunteers, and since then, volunteers have served on the board, helped raise funds, and organized outreach programs. The Woman’s Association of the Minneapolis Symphony began in 1949; by 1954, it had 1,500 members. Later renamed the Women’s Association of the Minnesota Orchestra, the group has been a major fundraising partner. Young People’s Concerts began as matinee performances during the orchestra’s early tours. The first such concert in Minneapolis was held on November 24, 1911. Because school principals purchased blocks of tickets for this concert, two thousand seats sold out in thirty minutes. A second, identical concert was offered so more students could attend. A group of community women known as the Young People’s Symphony Concert Association organized and funded these concerts. As early as the 1920s, Elbert L. Carpenter considered summer concerts. Because of a lack of funding, musical directors did not begin experimenting with summer options until the 1960s, when the orchestra performed several different types of summer concerts, including Music 60 and Summer Pops Jubilee. The festival, known as Sommerfest, debuted in July of 1980 and has become an annual event. In 1968, the administrative board (the Minnesota Orchestral Association, MOA) changed the group’s name from the Minneapolis Symphony to the Minnesota Orchestra. Although the board sought the change in order to reflect the expanding regional character of the Orchestra, the musicians objected. They were concerned that concertgoers would assume the two entities were distinct organizations instead of the same institution with a new name. The musicians made three attempts (in 1968, 1974, and 1991) to reinstate the former name. None succeeded. The orchestra’s early history includes several short strikes or lockouts. The length of the 2012–2014 lockout, however, was unprecedented, and caused the cancellation of the 2012–2013 season. The MOA and musicians reached an agreement in early 2014, more than a year after the lockout began. The orchestra has been directed by Emil Oberhoffer (1903–1922), Henri Verbrugghen (1923–1931), Eugene Ormandy (1931–1936), Dimitri Mitropoulos (1937–1949), Antal Dorati (1949–1960), Stanislaw Skrowaczewski (1960–1979), Neville Marriner (1979–1986), Edo de Waart (1986–1995), Eiji Oue (1995–2002) and Osmo Vänskä (2003–current).","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/N5 1 r1.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/minnesota-orchestra"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Governor Elmer Benson speaking at a Farmer-Labor state convention in Duluth, 1938.","author":[{"name":"Tom O’Connell","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/tom-o-connell"}],"categoryTag":[],"date":"July 08, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party, 1924–1944","postbody":"Minnesota||s Farmer-Labor Party (FLP) represents one of the most successful progressive third-party coalitions in American history. From its roots in 1917 through the early 1940s, the FLP ...","searchtext":"Minnesota||s Farmer-Labor Party (FLP) represents one of the most successful progressive third-party coalitions in American history. From its roots in 1917 through the early 1940s, the FLP elected hundreds of candidates to state and national office and created a powerful movement based on the needs of struggling workers and farmers. The history of the FLP unfolded in four stages: emergence (1917–1924), consolidation (1924–1930), high tide (1930–1938), and decline (1938–1944). In the first stage, two broad-based organizations, the Farmers’ Non-Partisan League and the Working Peoples’ Non-Partisan League, joined forces. Together, they challenged Minnesota’s ruling Republicans by running their own slate of candidates in the primary elections. In the fall of 1917, organizers from the League crisscrossed the state. They registered fifty thousand farmers for an anti-monopoly program patterned after the successful effort made by North Dakota farmers the year before. In response, the administration of Republican governor J. A. A. Burnquist carried on a campaign of harassment. His staff branded both farm and labor participants as unpatriotic and even jailed leaders for disloyalty. Refusing to back down, farmers and workers continued to organize. In 1918, Congressman Charles Lindbergh came within 51,000 votes of defeating Burnquist in the Republican primary. In the general election, the Farmer-Labor coalition elected thirty three of its members to the state legislature and replaced the Democrats as the main rivals of Minnesota||s Republican Party. Maintaining its alliance in 1920 and 1922, the FLP continued to elect state and local officials. These included two U.S. senators: Magnus Johnson and Henrik Shipstead. In 1924, a second stage began when the two organizations founded the Farmer-Labor Federation. (It was replaced by the Farmer-Labor Association the following year.) The association was the educational and organizational center of the movement. The FLP was its electoral arm. In the Republican-friendly 1920s, the FLP found itself swimming upstream. With its large network of committed members in both city and country, however, the party continued to elect candidates. It remained the strongest opposition party to the Republicans. In 1930, the steady work paid off. Floyd B. Olson defeated the Republican and Democratic candidates for governor, beginning the third and most successful period of Farmer-Labor history. A gifted orator, Olson voiced the feelings of Minnesotans struggling with unemployment and economic hardship. Voters re-elected Olson as governor in 1932 and 1934. He was a sure winner for the U.S. Senate before he died of a stomach tumor in 1936. Olson’s success, combined with skillful organizing, sparked dramatic growth in Farmer-Labor participation. Dues-paying membership in the party’s association rose to almost forty thousand as organizers set up clubs across the state. Hundreds of Farmer-Laborites held elected offices at all levels of government, from city council to U.S. Senate. In 1936, the FLP captured six of nine congressional seats, the governorship, and a solid majority in the state House of Representatives. Although the FLP controlled the governorship for eight years, it was never able to win a majority in the state senate and enact their full agenda. Pieces of its platform, however, did become law. These included a moratorium on farm foreclosures, relief for the unemployed, banking reform, a state income tax, and thirteen new state forests. The glory days of the Farmer-Labor movement ended in 1938. Harold Stassen, a young and energetic Republican reformer, defeated Olson’s successor, Elmer Benson. FLP candidates for statewide office continued to outpoll the Democrats in Minnesota. They finished far behind the Republicans, however, in 1940 and 1942. When the U.S. entered World War II and the American economy improved, support declined for the FLP’s Depression-era policies. Committed to re-electing Franklin Roosevelt to a fourth term, most Farmer-Laborites agreed to merge with the Democrats in 1944. This merger created the Democratic Farmer-Labor Party (DFL). Unity between the two wings of the new party did not last long. Many in the DFL opposed President Harry Truman’s military build-up and growing anti-communism at home and abroad. When the DFL endorsed the independent presidential candidate Henry Wallace in 1948, the Democrats, led by a young Hubert Humphrey, united behind Truman. In a fierce, six-month battle fought in precinct and district caucuses across the state, the Democrats defeated the Farmer-Laborites. The Farmer-Labor wing never recovered its influence. The FLP was far more than an electoral party. It was a genuine social movement with its own educational and cultural outlets. Thousands participated: farmers, workers, professionals, and owners of small businesses. The movement included militant farm organizations like the Farm Holiday Association, groups representing the unemployed, labor unions, and cooperatives. These movements often connected directly to the Farmer-Labor Association as affiliates. Even when they did not, the collective energy of popular protest in Minnesota built support for Farmer-Labor candidates and programs. The Farmer-Labor movement reflected diverse social traditions. Some Finnish and Scandinavian immigrants brought socialist ideas with them to their new homes in Minnesota. Temperance and suffrage activists transferred their crusading spirit to the FLP. Generations of rural populists passed on the tradition of farmer solidarity and opposition to the railroad and grain monopolies. Communist Party members, often skilled organizers, also participated. Their involvement caused internal conflict and, eventually, drained public support. The FLP developed a political viewpoint that was to the left of both the New Deal of the 1930s and the Democratic Party of the early 2000s. FLP activists supported a more equal distribution of wealth through an economy based on small businesses, cooperatives, and public ownership. Above all, Farmer-Laborites believed that educated and organized citizens sustained a strong democracy. The FLP movement continues to influence Minnesota politics. Its progressive populism led to the liberalism of such DFL leaders as Humphrey, Walter Mondale, and Eugene McCarthy. Three decades later, the re-discovery of the FLP tradition spurred a larger renewal of grass roots organizing that led to the election of Paul Wellstone to the U.S. Senate in 1990. Nor was its influence limited to Democrats. Responding to the FLP challenge in 1938, Harold Stassen forged a brand of moderate Republicanism that lasted until President Ronald Reagan’s presidency in 1980. Indeed, Minnesota’s continuing reputation as a relatively liberal state partly reflects its more radical FLP tradition.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/J2 1938 p2.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/minnesota-farmer-labor-party-1924-1944"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of cars on Dan Patch line of Minneapolis, St. Paul, Rochester & Dubuque Traction Company, 1910.","author":[{"name":"Aaron Hanson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/aaron-hanson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"June 29, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Minneapolis, Northfield and Southern Railway","postbody":"The Minneapolis, Northfield and Southern Railway (MN&S) was a Minnesota short-line railroad that operated between the cities of Crystal and Northfield from 1918 until 1982. It was a ...","searchtext":"The Minneapolis, Northfield and Southern Railway (MN&S) was a Minnesota short-line railroad that operated between the cities of Crystal and Northfield from 1918 until 1982. It was a profitable bridge line, routing traffic past the crowded freight yards of the Twin Cities onto connecting railroads at Northfield. The main route of the MN&S ran through the western and southern suburbs of Minneapolis. The southern terminus was at Northfield, with important connections leading from there to the Rock Island, the Chicago Great Western, and the Milwaukee Road. The financially unsuccessful predecessor of the MN&S was the Minneapolis, St. Paul, Rochester and Dubuque Electric Traction Company. It was known as the Dan Patch line for the famous racehorse owned by the company’s proprietor, Marion W. Savage. Colonel Savage owned the International Stock Food Company, a mail order supplier of animal feed. Contemporary advertisements attributed Dan Patch’s victories to the quality of Savage’s product. Construction of the line began in 1908. Savage created an amusement park at Lakeville in 1910 to increase ridership. He sold stock and continued to assemble local backers to provide needed capital for construction. Savage planned for the railroad to run from his farm on the south end of the metropolitan area north to Minneapolis. A small branch line would also extend to the edge of Minneapolis to serve riders who had reached the end of the Minneapolis streetcar system. Construction added several station stops, and the line reached Northfield in 1910. Plans for expansion halted when the city of Faribault refused the railroad right-of-way. As a result, the company sought trackage rights over other railroads in order to provide service to Faribault and Owatonna by using the existing physical plant of other railroads. The road was to be electrified and use a system of overhead catenary wires to provide power to locomotives. Freight traffic generally utilized steam locomotives instead. Passenger service was offered using “doodlebugs,” unique gas-electric hybrid locomotives that were ideal for providing limited passenger and even mixed-freight service over smaller railroads. Despite such changes, the company did not show a profit. Savage died in 1916, and the Dan Patch line entered receivership. The MN&S grew out of the defunct Dan Patch line under Henry E. Pence in 1918. The new railroad used trackage rights over the Chicago Great Western to extend service to Randolph and Mankato. Rights also extended to the Luce Line railroad, an agricultural sister line that extended to the rich croplands of western Minnesota. The MN&S also built an extension from its junction with the Luce Line west of Minneapolis northward to the rails of the Soo Line in Crystal. The MN&S was thus able to access Shoreham Yard, the Soo Line’s major local terminal in north Minneapolis. This also allowed the line an interchange with the nearby terminal of the Northern Pacific, the Northtown yard. The new line became a well-positioned road with access to the major carriers of the Twin Cities. The MN&S had a competitive advantage as a bridge line and offered many connections to virtually all larger freight carriers in the Twin Cities. The railroad built a servicing facility for motive power to the west of Glenwood Park(present-day Theodore Wirth Park)in Golden Valley, connecting it to the main line by a small spur. The line used 2-10-0 Decapod-type locomotives, having purchased seven in the 1930s and several more in the following decade. The doodlebugs maintained a limited passenger service over the route, and they came from several manufacturers, such as General Electric and the Wason Company. The MN&S eventually abandoned passenger service as less than profitable. The last run—a trip to Northfield—took place on April 30, 1942. The late 1940s saw the end of the steam era on the MN&S and the switch to diesel. The line received its first center-cab road switching locomotive from the Baldwin Locomotive Works in 1948. The railroad took subsequent delivery of the unique diesel units in 1949 and 1953, as well as other units from Baldwin and the Fairbanks-Morse Company. The company acquired motive power from the Electromotive division of General Motors. In June 1982, the Soo Line purchased the MN&S, and the line ran its last freight train. Most of the system continued to exist, operated in sections by several other railroads.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/HE4.2 r9.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246053,"name":"Transportation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/minneapolis-northfield-and-southern-railway"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of the front of the Great Northern Railway Depot, Minneapolis, 1914.","author":[{"name":"Aaron Hanson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/aaron-hanson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"June 27, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Great Northern Depot, Minneapolis","postbody":"The Minneapolis Great Northern Depot (also called the Great Northern Station) served as an important hub for passengers of several railroads throughout the state of Minnesota for more than ...","searchtext":"The Minneapolis Great Northern Depot (also called the Great Northern Station) served as an important hub for passengers of several railroads throughout the state of Minnesota for more than sixty-five years. Construction of the Minneapolis Great Northern Depot began in 1913. The building opened for operations on January 22, 1914, at an estimated cost of $1.9 million. It was to be a replacement of the Minneapolis Union Depot, which had served railroad passengers from its location across Hennepin Avenue for thirty years. The depot’s construction formed a part of the early-twentieth-century City Beautiful movement, which sought to establish social harmony through the beautification of architecture and civic space. The construction of the new station helped beautify its location in Minneapolis—an otherwise derelict area known as the Bridge Square. The Great Northern Railway built the depot according to the designs of architect Charles Frost. Frost had already designed the Milwaukee Road Depot in Minneapolis and would go on to design the St. Paul Union Depot. He also oversaw construction of Navy Pier in Chicago and a project at the Columbian Exposition of 1893. In addition to serving trains of the Great Northern and its signature Empire Builder passenger train, the station served trains of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy, including the Twin Cities Zephyr. Trains from a number of railroads originated in, terminated in, or passed through the station, including smaller lines such as the Chicago Great Western and the Minneapolis and St. Louis. The notable trains that served the station included the Twin Cities 400 of the Chicago and Northwestern and the North Coast Limited of the Northern Pacific Railway. The depot’s construction utilized design elements of the Beaux-Arts movement. Workers used steel and brick and faced the walls with light-colored sandstone of the Kettle River variety. The front was a Doric colonnade capped on both sides by arched entry pavilions. A third floor was used as an attic space. The interior featured a large waiting room for passengers between a pair of vestibules that led from outside to awaiting passenger trains on the concourse. The space also featured separate men’s and women’s lounge areas. The station had six elevators and six staircases, all leading to the passenger platforms. At their peak, these platforms saw around 125 trains per day. By the summer of 1916, 174 scheduled intercity passenger trains called upon the station in some capacity. The station could accommodate twenty thousand passengers each day. The waiting area was 11,540 square feet and could handle 240 passengers. There were eighteen telephone booths, eleven ticket windows, a newsstand, a dining room, and a barbershop. There was also a small infirmary on the premises. The two-story waiting room featured a clerestory window to allow in ample natural light. There were several large murals. Rails to the platform entered the train shed from the southeast and continued to the northwest. They passed under Hennepin Avenue in downtown Minneapolis after crossing the Mississippi River from the southeast over the Stone Arch Bridge. Another track served the station area by serving as a cutoff and crossing the river on a smaller bridge to the east. The increase in air travel and the development of the nation’s highway system began to impact rail travel by the 1950s. Over time, fewer trains stopped at the station as passengers began to rely on other forms of transportation. Some railroads ceased offering passenger service entirely. Amtrak, a new government entity, operated passenger service as of May 1, 1971, in most of the United States and in the state of Minnesota. A congressional act passed in October 1970 created the carrier. By that time, the depot served only a few trains per day. The new passenger railroad relied on much smaller stations for its scaled-back service offerings, and service in the Twin Cities was consolidated to one new station on March 1, 1978. It was a modern structure built in 1978 to serve railroad passengers in the Midway area of St. Paul. When it lost its train service, the Minneapolis Great Northern Depot also lost its purpose. That year marked the end of the depot, and its demolition, after more than sixty four-years of operation.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/MH5.9 MP8 p337.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246053,"name":"Transportation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/great-northern-depot-minneapolis"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Elof Wedin, 1958.","author":[{"name":"Katherine Goertz","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/katherine-goertz"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"June 22, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Wedin, Elof (1901–1983)","postbody":"Elof Wedin was a Swedish-born Minnesota painter active from the 1920s to the 1970s and best known for his abstract geometric style. On June 28, 1901, Wedin was born near the town of ...","searchtext":"Elof Wedin was a Swedish-born Minnesota painter active from the 1920s to the 1970s and best known for his abstract geometric style. On June 28, 1901, Wedin was born near the town of Härnösand in the central Swedish province of Ångermanland. In 1920, he immigrated to the United States and made his way to Minneapolis. Like other young artists in the Twin Cities, Wedin was unable to study art full time and so began his career by taking night classes at the Minneapolis School of Art. During the day, he worked as a laborer, covering pipes with asbestos. In 1926, Wedin spent a semester at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago before returning to Minnesota and his day job. On July 5, 1929, he was the subject of a front-page article in the Minneapolis Morning Tribune that stressed the compelling contrast between his job covering pipes and his life as an artist. Wedin participated in his first major exhibitions in 1926, at the Minneapolis Institute of Art and the Minnesota State Fair. After a decade of showing his work, he boosted his status as an artist in November 1936 when he showed twenty paintings at the Hudson Walker Gallery. This show, in the prestigious and gallery-laden district of midtown Manhattan, was a step up even from the best galleries in Minnesota. Although no works sold, the show’s reviews were positive and from well-known publications such as the New York Times and ARTnews. During his career, Wedin had several solo shows, including another at the Hudson Walker Gallery and seven in Minneapolis (five at the Harriet Hanley Gallery; one at the Kilbridge-Bradley Gallery; and one at the Walker Art Center). Like many other Minnesota artists of his time, Wedin painted in the American Regionalist style, sometimes tinged with his own version of geometric abstraction. In the 1948 work Beaver Bay, Wedin paints a standard landscape scene of Lake Superior, with slightly tilted and oddly proportioned shapes hinting at a more abstract treatment. Wedin is best known, however, for his more modernist works. At the very beginning of his career, Wedin showed the influence of modernism in works inspired by European masters like Paul Cezanne and the Italian modernist Amedeo Modigliani. As Wedin developed as an artist, his style evolved. His movement towards abstraction is evident in two other works, both also called Beaver Bay. In Beaver Bay (1935), boats, buildings, docks, trees, and water jumble together in a pile of shapes and lines. A similar use of line, shape, and especially color shows up in Beaver Bay (1949). Wedin’s use of jagged lines and interlocking planes of color is found in many of his works. In Self-Portrait (1939), his face and clothing jut toward the top of the frame, making it a different work than a portrait like his Wife and Son. Many of his works from the 1950s and 1960s are fully abstract. Boats and Fish Houses, Norway barely hints at the shape of a fishing shack, and Kinetic Rhapsody and Summer Landscape are simply strong lines of color. His career was not a progression from realism to abstraction but a decades-long mix of various styles. Wedin died in Minneapolis on February 28, 1983.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/por 12016 p1.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/wedin-elof-1901-1983"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Robert Koehler, c.1907.","author":[{"name":"Katherine Goertz","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/katherine-goertz"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"June 20, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Koehler, Robert (1850–1917)","postbody":"Robert Koehler was a German-born American painter, educator, and arts organizer known for his pivotal role in the development of arts exhibitions and arts education in Minnesota. He was the ...","searchtext":"Robert Koehler was a German-born American painter, educator, and arts organizer known for his pivotal role in the development of arts exhibitions and arts education in Minnesota. He was the director of the Minneapolis School of Fine Arts from 1893 to 1914 and was a central figure in the founding of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Koehler was born Robert Köhler in Hamburg, Germany, on November 28, 1850. Four years later, when he and his family immigrated to Milwaukee, they dropped the umlaut. By the 1870s, Koehler was working as a lithographer in New York City while studying art in night classes at the National Academy of Design. In 1873, Koehler left New York for art school in Munich. He stayed there for two years, studying with noted German artists. Many of his teachers belonged to the Munich School. The group worked in the style of academic realism, an idealistic approach to painting contemporary or historical real life. In 1875, Koehler returned to New York and to his studies at the National Academy. Later, he studied at the Art Students League. 1879 again found Koehler in Munich. For the next six years, he taught in private classes, and later in his own art school, and involved himself in the art world of the city. In 1883, he organized the American section of the Munich International Exhibition, then did it again in 1888. Koehler received bronze and silver medals at the Munich Academy and an honorable mention at the Paris Exposition Universelle in 1889 for one of his most famous paintings, The Strike. The painting had already drawn both praise and criticism at the National Academy of Design’s exhibition in 1886, a year of an international wave of labor strikes. Later, the Minneapolis Society of Fine Arts (MSFA) bought the work and promised to put it on permanent exhibition in the Minneapolis Public Library. The nine-foot-long painting remained in the library’s attic for decades and was eventually acquired by Berlin’s Deutsches Historisches Museum. In 1893, Koehler accepted an offer to come to Minneapolis to teach in the Minneapolis School of Fine Arts (later renamed the Minneapolis College of Art and Design). The school had been founded in 1886 by the then three-year-old Minneapolis Society of Fine Arts. At the turn of the century, Minneapolis galleries, art societies, and artists’ studios held exhibitions of local, national, and, increasingly, international artists. T. B. Walker’s public gallery was developing into the museum it would become in 1927: Walker Art Galleries (later renamed the Walker Art Center). Many of the works of fine European and Asian art then acquired by Minneapolis collectors would later find their way to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, founded in 1915. Minneapolis was poised to become the art center of the upper Midwest. Soon after Koehler arrived in the city, he became the director of the MSFA. The school’s profile and curriculum grew under his directorship. The curriculum was classical, like most other art schools, but the strains of modernism coming out of Europe and New York were not completely ignored. Koehler was a vocal proponent of Impressionism and later of Cubism and Futurism. After ten years as director, he resigned but was still recognized as an essential part of the school, referred to by staff and students as “Papa Koehler.” Koehler had a general enthusiasm for encouraging the Minnesota art world. In 1898, the Minnesota State Art Society was founded. Among its many goals was sending touring exhibitions around Minnesota to share fine art with those outside the Twin Cities. Koehler was the society’s first president. He founded the Artists League, an association of local artists whose exhibitions illustrated the talent of the Twin Cities to the satisfaction of both the local and national press. Finally, in 1915, he played a pivotal role in the creation of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Koehler continued to paint and exhibit, and to organize artists and exhibitions, until his death. On April 23, 1917, he died of a heart attack. The Minneapolis School of Fine Arts closed on April 25 to allow students and staff to attend the funeral.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/477px-Portrait_of_Robert_Koehler.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/koehler-robert-1850-1917"},{"alt":"Color image of the rocky shoreline in Lake Vermilion–Soudan Underground Mine State Park. Photograph by Minnesota Department of Natural Resources Staff.","author":[{"name":"Mary Laine","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/mary-laine"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"June 15, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":203519472229,"name":"Pre-1585 (Before European Contact)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Lake Vermilion–Soudan Underground Mine State Park","postbody":"The Lake Vermilion–Soudan Underground Mine State Park occupies over four thousand acres in the far northeast corner of Minnesota. The site contains a historic underground iron mine as well ...","searchtext":"The Lake Vermilion–Soudan Underground Mine State Park occupies over four thousand acres in the far northeast corner of Minnesota. The site contains a historic underground iron mine as well as the fifth largest lake in Minnesota and its surrounding habitat. Archeological evidence suggests that Native Americans lived near Lake Vermilion as early as 7000 BCE. Surviving dugout pits nearby were probably used for storing foods such as maize (corn). The presence of chert and chert chips, used to make sharp-edged tools, indicates that very early people mined in the area. The presence of stones, such as obsidian, that are non-native to Minnesota and from locations in Wyoming and North Dakota, supports the contention that Native Americans lived near Lake Vermilion and traded with other Native people hundreds of miles away. Campsite artifacts like a burned bone and a stone projectile point have been carbon-dated to six hundred years old and five thousand to seven thousand years old, respectively. In 1882, the first Euro-American miners arrived in the Lake Vermilion area to mine recently discovered iron ore. The discovery led to the development of Minnesota’s first open pit mine (converted to an underground operation soon afterwards) and to the modern tradition of iron mining in the state. Soudan was chosen for the mine||s name when a miner commented on how different Minnesota winters were from those in the Sudan region of Africa. When the mine closed in 1962 due to rising production costs, it was the oldest and deepest mine in the state, at 2,341 feet below the surface. In 1963, the United States Steel Corporation donated the mine, buildings, and surrounding twelve hundred acres to the state to create the park, which merged with Lake Vermilion State Park in 2014. The park is on the south shore of Lake Vermilion in a rugged terrain created by glacial action with a surrounding mixed hardwood and conifer forest. Scenic stands of old-growth pine and exposed rock formations, composed of red jasper, white to pink chert, and gray hematite, capture the visitor||s eye. When touring the underground mine, visitors wear hard hats and ride an elevator down the deepest mine shaft until they are half a mile underground. After climbing into rail cars, they then travel three quarters of a mile horizontally in a space called a drift (a kind of tunnel). Finally, they take a spiral staircase or elevator to an area called a stope (a cavern where the miners blasted and drilled the rock). The underground mine is also home to a physics research laboratory, which visitors can tour. The mine is useful in particle physics experiments because of its depth, which reduces the potential for protons on the earth||s surface to skew test results. In 2016, two projects began to phase out their long-term research, creating an opportunity for future tenants. A mural measuring twenty-five by sixty feet, created by Joseph Giannetti, decorates the laboratory||s rough rock wall. It depicts the universe, scientists, and atomic particles, and explains the science of mining and honors the miners who toiled there. The park contains several original buildings and pieces of equipment, including the headframe, engine house (1901), crusher house (1904), drill shop (1917), dry house (1925), and machine shop (1925). The dry house, which served as the locker room for the miners and as an office for the mine superintendent, later became a visitors’ center. Visitors to the park can attend nature programs on topics that range from bats to bees to wild edibles and trees of northern Minnesota. They also can enjoy hiking, biking, geocaching, picnic facilities, camping, shoreline fishing, boating, snowshoeing, and snowmobiling. Several long-distance trail systems run near or through the park and include the Taconite State, Arrowhead, and Mesabi trails. The diverse habitat of both lakeshore and forest in the park provides a unique opportunity for bird watchers. There have been sightings of over one hundred species of birds, including migrants passing through the park and well-known birds of Minnesota like the loon and eagle. Mammals in the park include timber wolves, bears, white-tailed deer, beavers, and other smaller animals. After the mine stopped operating, several thousand bats made the underground mine their winter home. This created a hibernaculum, or home for bats—one of the state’s largest. White-nose syndrome, a deadly bat disease present in the mine, is an ongoing concern.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/DSC_0313.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246054,"name":"Sports and Recreation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/lake-vermilion-soudan-underground-mine-state-park"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Florence Rood, c.1920s.","author":[{"name":"Steve Trimble","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/steve-trimble"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"June 13, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Rood, Florence (1873–1944)","postbody":"Florence Rood was one of the first Minnesota women activists in the Farmer Labor movement. She worked to improve the treatment of teachers and was active in their local and national ...","searchtext":"Florence Rood was one of the first Minnesota women activists in the Farmer Labor movement. She worked to improve the treatment of teachers and was active in their local and national organizations. Many of the successful struggles in which she participated informed the public of the importance of education and laid the groundwork for improved working conditions for educators. Florence Rood was born in rural Iowa, the fourth of six children. She attended a Congregational Church. The family valued education, and Rood was reading even before she attended school. She decided at an early age to become a teacher. In June 1888, the Roods moved to St. Paul. After a time at Franklin School, she entered St. Paul High School (later renamed Central High). She graduated in 1892 after only three and a half years. Rood taught at rural schools in Iowa and North Dakota and then returned to St. Paul to attend the Normal School, a teacher-training institution. She graduated in1894. She then taught at St. Paul’s Webster School for nineteen years. Teachers, administrators, and Normal school students alike came from around the state to observe her methods with kindergarten students. In 1898, Rood helped start the Grade Teachers’ Organization (GTO), a group that represented St. Paul teachers, who were predominately women. In June 1904, a group of kindergarten teachers applied for increases of pay before the Board of School Inspectors. The St. Paul Globe reported that Miss Florence Rood, the directress of Webster School, explained that kindergarten teaching required an education equal to that of grade teachers. Therefore, she argued, they deserved equal pay. During 1909, Rood, as a GTO lobbyist, successfully fought against a proposed state law that would have started a merit-based pay system. Under such a system, salaries are based on education level and seniority. The battle against merit pay had to be waged more than once. When the Minnesota Legislature passed an enabling act on pensions, Rood led a group of fellow teachers to take advantage of it. Together, they devised a St. Paul teachers’ pension plan that went into operation in 1910. In 1913, Rood was hired by the Normal School and became the head of its kindergarten department, where she developed its first kindergarten/elementary program. Between 1916 and 1917, she was supervisor of kindergarten for St. Paul schools. In 1918, St. Paul grade school teachers joined the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and formed Local 28 of the St. Paul Federation of Women Teachers. Rood became a key leader. The new four-hundred-member group soon affiliated with the St. Paul Trades and Labor Assembly. Rood believed in democratic supervision, a practice that empowered teachers and supervisors as co-workers who cooperated to improve classroom teaching. She was elected to the national AFT executive council in 1919. Four years later, she became the group’s second woman president. In 1920, Rood left teaching to become secretary-treasurer of the St. Paul Teachers’ Retirement Fund Association. She managed the plan continuously for two decades while staying politically active. In September 1920, she started writing a column for the St. Paul Union Advocate called |||The Distaff: A Department Devoted to Women||s Views on Matters of Public Concern.||| She also served on the newspaper’s first board of directors. Rood was also active in the Working People’s Non-Partisan League and served on its executive committee in 1921. In 1922, she became the first woman to preside over a meeting of the St. Paul Trades and Labor Assembly. Rood and other teachers pushed for legislation to grant tenure to elementary- and high-school teachers. They sponsored large meetings in 1917. They finally succeeded in 1927 and helped secure the passage of a tenure law for St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Duluth. Rood became active in the Farmer Labor Party, held statewide positions, and founded the Ramsey County Farmer-Labor Women’s Association. She was appointed a member of the state board of education by Governor Floyd Olson in 1933. Olson re-appointed her in 1936, but the State Senate refused to confirm the appointment, saying that she was a radical. Rood continued to head the St. Paul Teacher’s Retirement Association until 1939. She died in 1944 and is buried in Roselawn Cemetery.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Rood.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056210,"name":"Education","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246055,"name":"Labor","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/rood-florence-1873-1944"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Frank Boyd, c.1951.","author":[{"name":"Paul Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/paul-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"June 08, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Boyd, Frank (1881–1962)","postbody":"Frank Boyd was a celebrated organizer in Minnesota for the country’s most influential African American labor union, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, from 1926 to 1951. Boyd was born ...","searchtext":"Frank Boyd was a celebrated organizer in Minnesota for the country’s most influential African American labor union, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, from 1926 to 1951. Boyd was born on November 17, 1881, the oldest of four children. He grew up in Atchison, Kansas, a railroad town where he received seven years of schooling. Boyd and his wife, Hattie, came to St. Paul in 1904. In 1907, he got work as a Pullman porter, tending passengers on the Pullman Company’s sleeper cars. For an extra charge, porters provided travelers with beds and other comforts. It was a desirable job given the poor choices then available to black men. Pullman porters (all of them African American) had steady work, camaraderie, an identity, and community esteem—but these came at a price. Their wages were low, so they depended on tips, which, in turn—and by company design—demanded servility. They were required to seem grateful. All had to answer to the name George (for George Pullman). On the road, porters were on duty almost twenty-four hours a day, always on call; no overtime pay until they had worked four hundred hours in a month. The company charged them for their food, uniforms, and even the polish they used on passengers’ shoes. Still, by the early 1920s, the Pullman Company employed more African Americans than any other company in the country. Boyd took part in organizing attempts in 1909 and 1910 and a wage-increase petition in 1912. In 1918, he joined porters from the Milwaukee Road in the Railway Men’s International Benevolent Industrial Association. The early unions all failed. Another group formed the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters Protective Association in New York in 1919. Boyd attended its 1920 convention in Chicago; this union failed, too. The Pullman Company responded by forming a company union, the Pullman Porters Benefit Association. Seeing no alternative, Boyd joined the Benefit Association in 1921 and served for three years as a local officer. In the summer of 1925, a small group of Pullman porters persuaded the Harlem socialist A. Philip Randolph to lead the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP), another attempt to organize porters nationwide. Boyd quit the company union in September. In January 1926, despite warnings from his boss, Boyd held open BSCP organizing meetings in St. Paul. Boyd most likely knew he would be fired; this is what usually happened to Pullman porters who advocated for unions. No longer working for Pullman had one advantage: distance from the company’s many spies. But the cost was high; Frank Boyd never worked a steady job again. For decades he served as an unpaid organizer for the BSCP. Union achievements came slowly. The BSCP battled Pullman and lobbied Congress for a decade before gaining recognition in 1935. In 1937, it negotiated a contract with Pullman that cut monthly hours from four hundred to 240 and raised pay by twelve dollars a month to $100. From that point forward, the Brotherhood became the black workers’ premier union and A. Philip Randolph their most outstanding labor leader. By July 1948, base pay had risen to $230.50. If there are any surviving records of Boyd’s day-to-day work as a labor organizer, they have not been found. His devotion to his comrades in the struggle and the strength of his legacy, however, remain evident. In 1951, the BSCP’s leaders came to St. Paul to honor Boyd upon his retirement at age seventy. The St. Paul Recorder called him “almost a legend in the life of this state.” The BCSP’s newspaper, the Black Worker, devoted its January 1952 issue to Boyd, the “Black Labor Prophet.” Its four-page editorial called him fearless, aggressive, a scourge to the timid, and a terror to the stool pigeons. A. Philip Randolph went further; in a speech, he called Boyd a black revolutionist who would be remembered with Nat Turner and Frederick Douglass. Boyd moved to Los Angeles in 1959 and died there in 1962. Fourteen years later, the City of St. Paul named a new park for him, dedicated in May 1976. There is a bust of him there and beneath it a plaque that reads, “A fighter for / His union / His people / His class.”","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/por 16252 p1.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056216,"name":"African Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246055,"name":"Labor","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/boyd-frank-1881-1962"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of “intermediate” students inside a classroom at an Native American boarding school in Beaulieu, c.1900.","author":[{"name":"Dr. Denise K. Lajimodiere","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/dr-denise-k-lajimodiere"}],"categoryTag":[],"date":"June 07, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Native American Boarding Schools","postbody":"Native American boarding schools, which operated in Minnesota and across the United States beginning in the late nineteenth century, represent a dark chapter in U.S. history. Also called ...","searchtext":"Native American boarding schools, which operated in Minnesota and across the United States beginning in the late nineteenth century, represent a dark chapter in U.S. history. Also called industrial schools, these institutions prepared boys for manual labor and farming and girls for domestic work. The boarding school, whether on or off a reservation, carried out the government||s mission to restructure Native people||s minds and personalities by severing children’s physical, cultural, and spiritual connections to their tribes. On March 3, 1891, Congress authorized the Commissioner of Indian Affairs to create legal rules that required Native children to attend boarding schools. It also authorized the Indian Office to withhold rations, clothing, and other annuities from Native parents or guardians who would not send and keep their children in school. Indian Agents forcibly abducted children as young as four from their homes and enrolled them in Christian- and government-run boarding schools beginning in the mid-1800s and continuing into the 1970s. Captain Richard H. Pratt’s boarding school experiment began in the late nineteenth century. A staunch assimilationist, Pratt advocated a position that diverged slightly from the white majority’s. Convinced of the U.S. government’s duty to “Americanize” Native people, he offered a variation of the slogan—popular in the American West— that stated the only good Indian was a dead one. The proper goal, Pratt claimed, was to “kill the Indian…and save the man.” Pratt founded a school in 1879 at the site of an unused cavalry barracks at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, organizing the institution along rigid military lines. Pratt||s program of half days in the classroom and half days spent at some form of manual labor soon became standard boarding school curriculum. Government expenditures for boarding schools were always small, and the schools exploited the free labor of Native children in order to function. Minnesota had sixteen boarding schools that drew students from all eleven of the state’s reservations. The earliest was White Earth Indian School, begun in 1871. In 1902, St. Mary’s Mission boarded an average of sixty-two students, Red Lake School seventy seven, and Cross Lake forty two. At Morris, more than two thousand children attended the school during its history. White Earth had room for 110 students. Clontarf housed an average of 130 children from reservations in Dakota Territory. By 1910, Vermilion Lake held 120 students. Cass/Leech Lake opened with a capacity of fifty students. Pipestone housed children from Dakota, Oneida, Potawatomi (Bodéwadmi), Arikara, and Sac and Fox (Sauk and Meskwaki) tribes. A typical daily schedule began with an early wake-up call at 5:45 am, most often announced by a bugler or bells. Students marched from one activity to the next. Every minute of the day was scheduled; mornings began with making beds, brushing teeth, breakfast, and industrial call (“detail”). School began around 9 am. Afternoons were spent in school and industrial work, which were followed by supper, up to thirty minutes of recreation, a call to quarters, and “tattoo.” Pupils retired to the sounds of taps at 9 pm. Methods of discipline at Minnesota boarding schools were harsh. Some schools had cells or dungeons where students were confined for days and given only bread and water. One forced a young boy to dress like a girl for a month as a punishment; another cut a rebellious girl’s hair as short as a boy’s. Minnesota boarding schools recorded epidemics of measles, influenza, blood poisoning, diphtheria, typhoid, scarlet fever, tuberculosis, pneumonia, trachoma, and mumps, which swept through overcrowded dormitories. Students also died from accidents such as drowning and falls. Boarding school staff assigned students to “details”: working in the kitchen, barns, and gardens; washing dishes, tables, and floors; ironing; sewing; darning; and carpentry. The schools also extensively utilized an “outing” program that retained students for the summer and involuntarily leased them out to white homes as menial laborers. One of Minnesota’s most famous boarding school survivors is Native American activist Dennis Banks. When he was only four years old, Banks was sent three hundred miles from his home on the Leech Lake Reservation of Ojibwe, in Cass County, to the Pipestone Indian School. Lonesome, he kept running away but was caught and severely beaten each time. Another student, at St. Benedict’s, recalled being punished by being made to chew lye soap and blow bubbles that burned the inside of her mouth. This was a common punishment for students if they spoke their tribal language. Many students’ parents and relatives resisted the boarding school system. In letters sent to absent children, they delivered news from home and tried to maintain family ties. In messages sent to school administrators, they arranged visits, advocated for improved living conditions, and reported cases of malnourishment and illness. In 1928, the U.S. government released the Meriam Report, an evaluation of conditions on Native American reservations and in boarding schools. The critical study called the schools grossly inadequate. It presented evidence of malnourishment, overcrowding, insufficient medical services, a reliance on student labor, and low standards for teachers. As a result, the government built day schools on reservations. The original boarding schools began closing their doors as parents increasingly kept their children at home. By the end of the 1970s, most of them had shut down. As of 2016, though tribes and the Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) continue to run fifty schools nationwide, no Native boarding schools remain open in Minnesota. There has been scant recognition of the boarding school era by the U.S federal government and church denominations that initiated and carried out the schools’ policies. Neither has acknowledged, as the Canadian government did for its own boarding school program in 2008, that those policies’ purpose was cultural genocide or accepted responsibility for their effects. Pratt’s contemporaries viewed him and other enforces of assimilationist policies as heroes. A few Minnesota institutions, such as St. Benedict||s Monastery in St. Joseph, have apologized to the Native people they harmed. Few textbooks discussed Native boarding schools before the twenty-first century. In the 2000s, however, many historians study them as the tools of ethnic cleansing. The genocidal policies the schools’ staffs carried out aimed to destroy the essential foundations of the lives of American Native students. Their objective was the disintegration and destruction of the culture, language, and spirituality of the Native American kids under their care. The policies they implemented led to the deaths of thousands of students through disease, hunger, and malnutrition, and have left a legacy of intergenerational trauma and unresolved grieving in many boarding school survivors and their families across Indian country.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/10362048.640x640.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056210,"name":"Education","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246059,"name":"Native Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/native-american-boarding-schools"},{"alt":"Black and white publicity photograph of Hilda Simms, c.1955.","author":[{"name":"Leslie Moore","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/leslie-moore"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"June 01, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Simms, Hilda (1918–1994)","postbody":"Raised in a large Catholic family in North Minneapolis, Hilda Simms became a national celebrity for her leading role in the first all-Black performance of the Broadway show Anna Lucasta. ...","searchtext":"Raised in a large Catholic family in North Minneapolis, Hilda Simms became a national celebrity for her leading role in the first all-Black performance of the Broadway show Anna Lucasta. Frustrated by her struggling career and the lack of roles for Black actors, Simms worked as the creative director for the New York State Human Rights Commission to address racial discrimination in the entertainment industry. Hilda Moses was born in Minneapolis on April 15, 1918, the first of nine children of Creole parents originally from Louisiana. She won a posture award while attending St. Margaret’s Academy in Minneapolis and was well known by her neighbors for being an excellent singer. She began college as an English major at the University of Minnesota, where she also studied teaching, but had to quit due to financial concerns. She finished her bachelor’s degree at the Hampton Institute (later renamed Hampton University) while her first husband, Sergeant William Simms, was stationed in Camp Lee, Virginia, during World War II. At the institute, Simms assisted with a dramatic workshop that inspired her to pursue her own acting career. At the age of twenty five, Simms moved to New York City and joined the American Negro Theater. She helped with sound effects, props, and publicity and landed a role in the play Three’s a Family. She also worked jobs performing in radio dramas to gain more experience. In 1943, Simms’s career took off when she was cast as the lead in Philip Yordan’s Anna Lucasta. The play was about a middle-class woman’s fall into prostitution and her struggle to regain respectability and her family’s support. Though it was originally written for a white cast, the American Negro Theater’s adaptation was so popular that the show moved from Harlem to Broadway the following year. It was the first time that an all-Black cast performed a widely lauded drama that did not directly address issues of race. The success of Anna Lucasta earned Hilda Simms a review in Life Magazine and national fame. (In 2015, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported that her mother refused to see the play when it opened because she disapproved of her Catholic daughter playing the role of a prostitute.) The production traveled on to Chicago and then London and ultimately ran for 956 performances. Simms’s acting career did not align with her husband’s corporate career, and they divorced in the early 1940s (though she kept his surname as her stage name). While abroad, Simms married American actor Richard Angarola. The couple returned to the United States in 1953, when Simms was cast as Marva Trotter Louis in the movie The Joe Louis Story. Over the next decade, Simms acted in the television series The Nurses (1962—1964) and performed in other plays, including The Cool World (1960) and Tambourines to Glory (1963). She grew increasingly frustrated at the limited number of roles that were available for Black women. Those that did exist, Simms often thought, were racist and demeaning. She also told JET magazine that while her fair skin and features kept her from being cast in stereotypical Black roles, her race kept her from playing any white characters. Simms’s outspoken support of civil rights and alleged affiliation with the Communist Party in the early 1940s further impeded her career and placed her on the Hollywood blacklist. In 1955, the Department of Justice denied her passport and canceled her scheduled tour to visit U.S. Armed Forces stationed in Europe. She was not cast for either movie version of Anna Lucasta. In 1960, she wrote an article titled, “I’m No Benedict Arnold” for the Pittsburgh Courier and openly discussed these setbacks to her career. Simms refocused her attention on political movements and served as Creative Arts Director for the New York State Human Rights Commission in the 1960s. She went on to get a master’s degree in education from City College and worked for drug treatment programs in New York City. She died from pancreatic cancer in 1994 at the age of seventy five.","src":"https://www3.mnhs.org/hubfs/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Black%20and%20white%20publicity%20photograph%20of%20Hilda%20Simms%2c%20c.1955..jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056216,"name":"African Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/simms-hilda-1918-1994"},{"alt":"Color image of the Burbank-Livingston-Griggs House, St Paul, 2013. Photograph by Wikimedia Commons user McGhiever.","author":[{"name":"Joan Mathison","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/joan-mathison"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"May 25, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Burbank-Livingston-Griggs House, St. Paul","postbody":"The Burbank-Livingston-Griggs house, the second-oldest on Summit Avenue, was designed for a wealthy transportation entrepreneur by Chicago architect Otis L. Wheelock in 1862. Later, four ...","searchtext":"The Burbank-Livingston-Griggs house, the second-oldest on Summit Avenue, was designed for a wealthy transportation entrepreneur by Chicago architect Otis L. Wheelock in 1862. Later, four significant local architects left their mark on the landmark structure. The earliest trained architects came to St. Paul in 1857 but left the conservative city after a few years in search of more business. Summit Avenue was still only an oxcart trail five years later, when Wheelock arrived to build this Civil War-era mansion at the top of a steep hill. The picturesque country estate high on the Mississippi River bluff was constructed of massive blocks of limestone quarried across the river in Mendota. The site at 432 Summit Avenue overlooked the town, where owner James Crawford Burbank’s steamboats and stagecoaches carried mail, passengers, and goods. Burbank had come to St. Paul from Vermont in 1850 and built a financial empire from scratch, then reorganized the St. Paul Fire & Marine Insurance Company and served as its president. He was active in civic affairs, founding the chamber of commerce, establishing Como Park, and constructing a streetcar system. He served in public office as a Ramsey County commissioner and state representative. In addition to Burbank, the house is named after two important owners who led the early growth and development of the capital city: Crawford Livingston and Theodore Wright Griggs. Mary Potts Livingston, the wife of Crawford Livingston, was a niece of Henry H. Sibley, Minnesota’s first governor. Considered one of the finest examples of Italianate architecture in the state, the picturesque home features arched windows, a bracketed cornice, and a cupola topped with a finial. The floor plan is open and spacious, with the first wood parquet floor in the state as well as steam heat, hot and cold running water, and gas lighting. The rat-proof interior walls are lined with a layer of brick, providing an air chamber to insulate the house from the harsh winter cold. A stairway leads to the glass-enclosed cupola on the roof. Servants, including three maids, a coachman, a driver, and a gardener, originally lived on the third floor. In 1884, twenty years after the house was built, the Livingston family worked with architect Clarence H. Johnston, Sr., to replace the single window on the stairs with three arched windows of stained glass and install elaborately carved oak paneling in the entry. After those improvements, the home was relatively unchanged for many years. Mary Livingston Griggs inherited the house from her parents in 1925. She worked with architect Allen H. Stem to expand the living space with a two-story limestone addition and remodel the living room in the style of a seventeenth-century English Renaissance chamber. Her love for history and antiques inspired her to install whole rooms brought over from elegant French and Italian houses in Europe and furnished with antiques from the period. When Stem retired, Magnus Jemne began installing late-eighteenth-century French panels in the grand salon and bedroom suite. Edwin Lundie completed the complicated task of fitting the antique interiors in the dining room, two bedrooms, two sitting rooms, wardrobe rooms, and a small hallway. In the basement, he designed a glass-walled ballroom in the latest Art Deco style for the Griggs’s children. In 1968, Mary Griggs’s daughter, Mary Griggs Burke, donated the house to the Minnesota Historical Society and the St. Paul Junior League, which operated a house museum for many years with the assistance of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. The building was one of the first Minnesota properties nominated to the National Register of Historic Places, in 1970. It is also considered a contributing structure for the local Historic Hill District. In 1996, the Burbank-Livingston-Griggs House was sold and turned into three separate furnished apartments, once again becoming a unique place to live with a view and an impressive address.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/B_L_G_House_wiki.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/burbank-livingston-griggs-house-st-paul"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Martin Carlsted turning the handle of a manual corn sheller to remove kernels, c.1910.","author":[{"name":"Dassel Area Historical Society","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/dassel-area-historical-society"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"May 23, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Seed Corn","postbody":"From the time of statehood into the early 1900s, Minnesota||s climate discouraged the growing of corn. Many immigrants from Northern Europe disbelieved the skeptics and set out to prove them ...","searchtext":"From the time of statehood into the early 1900s, Minnesota||s climate discouraged the growing of corn. Many immigrants from Northern Europe disbelieved the skeptics and set out to prove them wrong by developing special varieties of seed capable of growing corn in cold conditions. They were successful, and by the late 1930s, Minnesota had become one of the leading corn-producing states. The ancestry of maize, the grain we know today as corn, dates back more than eight thousand years to a plant called teosinte. This plant grew in the hot, sunny climates of what became southern Mexico. It was such a critical food source for the Maya that they built temples in its honor and worshiped their god Yam Kaax, the patron of maize growers. The Inca and Aztec civilizations worshiped a sun god upon whom they depended for this vital food source. Over thousands of years, maize migrated northward with advancing civilizations. After American Indians introduced it to European colonists in the 1600s, its nutritional value made it the preferred feed for livestock and a popular grain for use in many food products. Undoubtedly, early Euro-American farmers saw corn as the grain of the future—a crop grown in the warmer areas of the continent, but not in colder Minnesota. Individual farmers and emerging seed companies took on the challenge of developing special corn seeds capable of growing in Minnesota. Beginning in the late 1800s, the central Minnesota community of Dassel accepted this challenge. During this period, immigrants, primarily from Scandinavia, came to the Dassel area. They were accustomed to cold weather and committed to farming. The immigrants planted corn seed in their fields. When the corn stalks matured to the extent they could in the climate, the farmers identified the strongest stalks that displayed the best root systems and the most mature ears of corn. The ears from these selected stalks would provide the seed for research the following year. However, using these kernels as seed depended upon reducing their moisture levels. If the seeds were not dried, their kernels would freeze during winter and lose their ability to germinate, or they would rot in the ground when planted. Without the convenience of electric power, the farmers found creative ways for drying the kernels. Some dried them by hanging the ears over wood-burning stoves in farm kitchens or in warm upstairs bedrooms. Once the kernels had dried, farmers removed them from the ears using hand-cranked shelling and grading machines. To determine how well these kernels would germinate, they placed a specific number in rags or sawdust and kept them damp. The percent that sprouted determined the germination rate. Farmers repeated the process of using specially selected kernels the following year. After several years, they developed new varieties of seed suited for Minnesota’s climate. Perhaps unknowingly, they had put into practice a variation of Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection: the species that survives is the species that adapts. Research conducted at the University of Minnesota aided these efforts. In 1893, using a similar process of selective reproduction, the university began work on early-maturing seed. One of the hardy varieties developed at the university was known as Minnesota 13. In 1905, the university made available limited quantities of its research seeds, including Minnesota 13, to emerging seed-corn businesses. As a result, several new varieties of Minnesota 13 seed became popular. Efforts of the Dassel-area seed-corn operations, working in concert with the University of Minnesota, proved successful in developing new seed varieties suitable for the northern states. By 1910, farmers throughout the upper Midwest grew corn from the varieties of seed produced in the Dassel area. More than twenty individual seed-corn companies operated in this area during the first half of the 1900s. Dassel became recognized as the |||Seed Corn Center of the Great Northwest.||| The traditional Corn Belt expanded to include portions of “cold” Minnesota.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/14.Shelling_ears_of_corn.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246091,"name":"Agriculture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/seed-corn"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Adolf Dehn in Paris, c.1926.","author":[{"name":"Katherine Goertz","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/katherine-goertz"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"May 18, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"May 19, 1968","name":"Dehn, Adolf (1895–1968)","postbody":"Adolf Dehn was a lithographer and watercolorist best known for his work in the American regionalist, modernist, and social-realist movements. An important American printmaker, Dehn ...","searchtext":"Adolf Dehn was a lithographer and watercolorist best known for his work in the American regionalist, modernist, and social-realist movements. An important American printmaker, Dehn demonstrated great skill in his works and, often, an irreverent sense of social commentary. Dehn was born in Waterville on November 22, 1895. In 1914, he began studying at the Minneapolis School of Art. His first work for a major publication appeared in the socialist-progressive magazine The Masses in 1917. That same year, he received a scholarship to study at the Art Students League in New York, where his teachers included Kenneth Hayes Miller and Boardman Robinson. When the United States joined World War I in 1917, Dehn expected to be drafted. As a socialist and a pacifist, he was initially unsure whether he would join the war or protest as a conscientious objector. Upon his arrival at boot camp in South Carolina, he handed a letter he had written months earlier to a staff sergeant. This letter, stating his pacifist convictions, resulted in Dehn’s imprisonment in the camp guardhouse. Back in Waterville, Dehn’s refusal to fight was a target for vitriolic pro-war and anti-German sentiment in local newspapers. Dehn and his family were harassed and threatened. Dehn spent four months in Spartanburg and eight as an art instructor in a hospital for war wounded in Asheville, North Carolina. He was discharged from the army in July 1919 and lived for a short time in Waterville, where he met with considerable hostility. He quickly returned to New York, where he developed his lithography skills and carried on a romance with Wanda Gág, another Minnesotan artist. He continued to be involved with political activism and socialism, contributing drawings and lithographs to the socialist magazine The Liberator. During the 1920s, Dehn traveled in Europe, mostly Vienna and Paris. He continued to contribute art to mainstream and radical publications and exhibited his work at New York’s Weyhe Gallery. In 1929, he returned to New York. Following the 1929 stock market crash, Dehn dealt with a parallel crash in the art market in an unusual way. In 1934, he started the “Adolf Dehn Print Club,” which allowed subscribers a choice of one of his prints a year. The strategy was successful and profitable until the mid-1930s, when major publications like the New Yorker and Vanity Fair began to publish his work. Dehn was based in New York for most of his career, although he often returned to Minnesota. While he is best known for his prints and didn’t print in color until the 1930s, many of his works done in Minnesota are bright watercolors of regional scenes. Pieces like Rainstorm in Minnesota, Hay Meadows, and Northern Minnesota Lake show his skill in painting. In their use of line and shape, they are similar to the rest of his work but more saturated with color. They also lack the satirical edge of his prints and are dramatically different in tone. Dehn is sometimes called the American George Grosz (a German artist known for his biting caricatures of Berlin life). This parallel is visible in prints like Applause, with its mix of sharp-featured and lumpy-faced audience members. Another work, Franky and Johnny in Paris, shows similarly pointed caricatures watching French burlesque dancers. In addition to his prints and journal illustrations, Dehn provided illustrations for books. In 1945, he illustrated the most famous stories of the French writer Guy de Maupassant. “Babette,” “The Marquis de Fumerol,” “Ugly,” and “Was it a Dream” are from this anthology. These prints show how the writer’s ironic style fit with Dehn’s work. Dehn exhibited widely and received many honors during his career. He wrote several books on art, including titles on printmaking and painting techniques. He twice won the Guggenheim Fellowship, an award for artists who demonstrate exceptional creative ability. In 1961, Dehn became an Academician of the National Academy of Design. The Minnesota Historical Society has a large collection of Dehn’s work, including 665 lithographs. He is represented in the collections of Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, among others. Dehn died in New York City on May 19, 1968.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/MNopedia/MNopedia%202026/Assorted%20rescans/10752471_Adolf_Dehn_resized.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/dehn-adolf-1895-1968"},{"alt":"Colorized postcard depicting the exterior of the University Club in St. Paul, c.1920.","author":[{"name":"Joan Mathison","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/joan-mathison"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"May 16, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"University Club of St. Paul","postbody":"Designed to hug the bluff, the University Club of St. Paul has offered one of the best views in the city since 1913. With one story descending below 420 Summit Avenue, the L-shaped ...","searchtext":"Designed to hug the bluff, the University Club of St. Paul has offered one of the best views in the city since 1913. With one story descending below 420 Summit Avenue, the L-shaped clubhouse overlooks the downtown and the Mississippi River gorge from the highest hill in the area. In the early twentieth century, ambitious community leaders of the young, prosperous capital city established three private social clubs modeled after the great cities of the American East Coast and Europe. Members of the Minnesota Club (1910), the University Club of St. Paul (1913), and the Saint Paul Athletic Club (1917) all built elegant buildings. Each club targeted different members. While the athletic club was a full-service urban sports facility, the Minnesota Club sought out high-society figures, politicians, and businessmen. The University Club welcomed graduates of colleges and universities. (A century later, only the University Club carries out its original mission.) The club’s architects, Charles A. Reed and Allen H. Stem, also designed Grand Central Station in New York City, the St. Paul Hotel, the St. Paul Athletic Club, and a number of homes in the Summit Avenue neighborhood. The Tudor Revival-style club house was modeled after the Oxford & Cambridge Club in London. Construction was completed in 1913. The new building’s facilities included dining areas, a library, squash courts, locker rooms, and a bar and grill. Asphalt shingles on an intersecting gabled roof topped the three-and-a-half-story structure. An outdoor pool and tennis courts were added to the grounds in the 1930s. To pay for these additions, the club took a creative approach. In return for a fifty-cent donation, members signed their names on the countertop of the bar; a burning process made the signatures permanent. F. Scott Fitzgerald grew up in the Summit Avenue neighborhood and attended many events at the University Club, although he was never a member. On his last visit home to St. Paul, he and his wife, Zelda, hosted a “bad luck ball” on Friday, January 13, 1922, at the club. The couple loved jokes and published a parody society section of a fictitious newspaper, the St. Paul Daily Dirge, for their guests featuring satirical stories about local people. After World War II, the University Club was the first of the three St. Paul social clubs to invite women to join. In 1976, the Hill District, including the University Club and other historic buildings along Summit Avenue, was added to the National Register of Historic Places. The American Planning Association named Summit Avenue one of the ten “great streets of America” in 2008. The club celebrated a hundred years of continuous operation in 2013. It is one of a prestigious group of similar clubs throughout the world—many chartered in the late nineteenth century.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/MR2.9 SP5.3 r47.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/university-club-st-paul"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of NFO farmers and creamery employees ride a bulk truck out to milk dumping site on the Martin Lampi farm near Annandale on March 7, 1963.","author":[{"name":"Therese Cain and Sharon Doherty","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/therese-cain-and-sharon-doherty"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"May 11, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"NFO Holding Actions in Minnesota","postbody":"Minnesota farmers were active in building the National Farmers Organization (NFO), a populist farm group dedicated to strengthening family farmers’ economic well-being. Unlike other farm ...","searchtext":"Minnesota farmers were active in building the National Farmers Organization (NFO), a populist farm group dedicated to strengthening family farmers’ economic well-being. Unlike other farm groups on both the right (the Farm Bureau) and the left (the Farmers’ Union), the NFO during the 1960s focused on direct economic action. The rise of industrial agriculture in the mid-twentieth century pressured American farmers to give up family farming in favor of the agribusiness model. The farm population decreased as highly mechanized corporate farms replaced smaller operations. Established in 1955 in response to these changes, the NFO was a “power-oriented social movement” that sought structural change and empowered small farmers to gain market power as a group. Minnesota NFO and county chapters encouraged farm communities to support each other and challenge the farm-product pricing system. The NFO changed its focus from legislative action to collective bargaining in 1957. Large agribusiness interests opposed the NFO’s goals, instead emphasizing economies of scale and supporting price control by processors. NFO leaders believed that family farmers, more effectively than industrial farmers, could “care for their land, for each other, and for their nation.” Through farm strikes, called holding actions, the NFO pursued collective bargaining between farmers and processors for such products as livestock, grain, and milk. When the organization voted to stage a holding action, farmers across the country stopped shipping the designated product or products. Like labor-movement strikes, holding actions involved confrontation between farmers in solidarity with the NFO and those opposing its approach. To NFO members, farmers who sold products during a holding action threatened the movement’s potential to collectively achieve long-term price increases. Some opponents saw the actions as radical and interfering with individual freedom. The conflicting sides became polarized. In 1959, the Minnesota NFO became one of the group’s first nine state charters. Local NFO groups used multiple strategies to build the movement. Minnesota’s county chapters, for example, negotiated contracts with processors. Farms displayed “LET’S GO! N.F.O.–COLLECTIVE BARGAINING” signs. To draw attention to issues, members organized protests, such as dumping large quantities of milk onto the ground. Minnesota emerged as a major NFO stronghold by 1964, when a national convention took place in Minneapolis. In that year, NFO members from six northern Minnesota counties donated hay to members in four drought-stricken counties in the southeastern part of the state. Granite Falls was one of the first American cities to back the NFO as a united front. Citizens and businesses supported the organization with a Chamber of Commerce-sponsored rally. Signs welcomed the NFO in windows throughout the town. This support was reciprocated on September 27, when between two and three thousand people came to Granite Falls for an NFO-organized “winter buying” day. Holding action conflicts intensified. NFO members and their allies blocked Highway 12 near DeGraff on Labor Day, preventing eleven cattle trucks from traveling to South St. Paul. On September 24, thirty-five NFO trucks clogged the South St. Paul stockyards’ hog chutes for several hours. These events were part of a forty-three-day national holding action in twenty-three states. Across the state that autumn, both NFO members and their opponents reported intimidating actions: shots fired, fences cut, and fires apparently set. Strikebreaking trucks’ tires were flattened and windows were broken. While no serious injuries on either side resulted from incidents in Minnesota, two NFO members in Wisconsin were killed when a cattle-truck driver ran over them as they attempted to stop him from entering a stockyard. After the Wisconsin deaths, the Minnesota highway patrol and county sheriffs began providing escorts to trucks shipping livestock in opposition to the holding action. Governor Karl Rolvaag approved the escorts but declined to call out the National Guard as NFO opponents had requested. Rolvaag supported the NFO as “a search by farm people to secure for themselves their just and fair share of the fruits of their labor” but became concerned about intensifying confrontations. Beginning in 1967, the NFO’s opponents initiated legal actions alleging that the group constituted a monopoly. Though the NFO eventually prevailed in court, receiving a $21.4 million settlement in 1990, its community-organizing momentum was disrupted. In the 1970s, the NFO shifted its focus away from challenging the agricultural power structure. Renamed National Farmers, the group remains active across the country in the 2000s, primarily in farm-product marketing.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/milk_truck.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246091,"name":"Agriculture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246055,"name":"Labor","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/nfo-holding-actions-minnesota"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Elsa L. Jemne working at an easel, 1922.","author":[{"name":"Katherine Goertz","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/katherine-goertz"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"May 04, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Jemne, Elsa Laubach (1887–1974)","postbody":"Elsa Laubach Jemne was a Minnesota artist active from the 1910s to the 1960s. Though skilled as an easel painter, she is better known for the murals she created for public buildings, ...","searchtext":"Elsa Laubach Jemne was a Minnesota artist active from the 1910s to the 1960s. Though skilled as an easel painter, she is better known for the murals she created for public buildings, including post offices and courthouses. Jemne was born Elsa Laubach on July 7, 1887, in St. Paul. While she was able to attend classes at the St. Paul School of Art beginning in 1910, financial circumstances forced her to work as a commercial artist—a job that she resented for its creative monotony. By 1912, she had saved enough money to go to Philadelphia to attend the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, one of most prestigious art schools in the country. In 1914, Jemne won a fellowship that allowed her to travel and work in Europe. It was Italy that truly impressed and influenced her. In viewing the country’s monasteries and churches, she became interested in the techniques and aesthetics of the fresco. Jemne stayed in Europe for only part of her planned trip. In July 1914 came the outbreak of World War I. Trying to get home ahead of the war, she was stuck in Switzerland for three weeks and later made it to Paris in time to see enemy aircraft attack the city. Back in Philadelphia a few months later, Jemne began her third year at the Academy. Further travel had to wait until the war ended. After graduating, Jemne came home to Minnesota. In 1917 came her first major recognition as an artist: a gold medal at the Second Annual Northwestern Exhibition for the painting The Red Haired Girl. An untitled painting done a few years later shows the same characteristics of Girl: a distinctive, flat, dreamlike style and the matte fresco-inspired technique that is a Jemne signature. In 1925, Jemne was hired by the Great Northern Railway to paint images of Glacier National Park and members of the Blackfeet tribe. These portraits and images of pristine landscapes were intended to be part tourist advertisement, part historical record, and part Wild West fantasy. The paintings illustrate Jemne’s attention to detail and accuracy and were painted from life, as seen in a 1926 photograph. The style of these paintings is less painterly than many of her other works, but a slightly wistful feeling is still evident. Jemne is well known as a muralist. Her first major work came in 1922, at the Stearns County Courthouse. The Art Deco-styled mural shows two figures riding in an idyllic landscape and is meant to be an imagining of Minnesota before Europeans arrived. Beginning in the 1930s, Jemne was commissioned to paint several murals under the Treasury Department’s Section of Fine Arts. A mural called Wilderness, installed in the Ely post office, shows a scene of Minnesota wildlife in the northwoods. In order to accurately portray the iron ore industry in the other Ely post office mural, Jemne traveled to the Pioneer Mine in Ely and descended to the thirteenth level in the miners’ cage. Another mural, in the Minneapolis Armory, was funded by the Works Progress Administration. Done in 1937 and titled Minnesota, it depicts an allegorical figure of Minnesota surrounded by the people and symbols of the state. Jemne’s characteristic style is evident, as well as the influence of famous muralists like Violet Oakley and Diego Rivera. Her last major mural, a Scandinavian-inspired work for the American Swedish Institute, was completed in 1954. Jemne was the wife and sometime collaborator of architect Magnus Jemne. One collaboration, the St. Paul Women’s City Club, was designed by the Jemnes in 1931 in the Art Moderne style. Now on the National Register of Historic Places, the building boasts decorative elements designed by Jemne. It was intended not only as a social club for elite urban women but as an intellectual gathering place for all Minnesota women. Until 1962, when Jemne suffered a stroke, she consistently worked and exhibited. She taught at the Minneapolis School of Art and returned to easel painting in the 1940s and 1950s. The Walker Art Center’s 1949 centennial exhibition of Minnesota art included two of her paintings. Three solo shows of her work were held in the late 1950s and early 1960s, including a retrospective at the Walker Art Center in 1957. Jemne died in St. Paul on June 26, 1974.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/MNopedia/MNopedia%202026/10667260_resized_Elsa_Jemne.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/jemne-elsa-laubach-1887-1974"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Hubert Humphrey, c.1968.","author":[{"name":"Tom O’Connell","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/tom-o-connell"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"May 02, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Humphrey, Hubert H. (1911–1978)","postbody":"Hubert H. Humphrey, a giant of Minnesota politics, was one of the most influential liberal leaders of the twentieth century. His political rise was meteoric, his impact on public policy ...","searchtext":"Hubert H. Humphrey, a giant of Minnesota politics, was one of the most influential liberal leaders of the twentieth century. His political rise was meteoric, his impact on public policy historic. His support for the Vietnam War, however, cost him the office he most sought: president of the United States. Born in Wallace, South Dakota, in 1911, Humphrey was deeply influenced by his public-spirited father and the daily hardships of farming and small-town life in the Upper Midwest. When the Great Depression struck, the young Humphrey interrupted his college education at the University of Minnesota to help his father run the family drug store. The experience made a lasting impression. Looking back in 1971, Humphrey declared he learned more about economics from one South Dakota dust storm than in all his years in college. Though he valued the educational benefits of his early years, in the late 1930s Humphrey had bigger things in mind. Returning to the University of Minnesota, he earned a bachelor’s degree in political science, added a master’s degree from Louisiana State University, and returned to Minneapolis. There, he began an almost instantaneous political rise. Minnesota was in a time of political transition. The state’s Farmer-Labor Party, a coalition of progressives, populists, and socialists, had dominated politics for much of the 1930s. By the 1940s, it was in decline. The smaller Democratic Party lacked the strength to compete with the Republicans. Humphrey—outgoing, a gifted (if notoriously long winded) speaker, and possessing a sharp political intelligence—soon developed a following. He wasted no time applying a lesson he had learned in political science class: power goes to those who seek it. In 1944, Humphrey took two crucial steps toward the power he sought. First, he was elected mayor of Minneapolis. He brought a reformer’s zeal to the office, establishing the city’s first fair-employment commission and effectively challenging the city’s ingrained discrimination against Jews. But it was the merger of the Democrats and Farmer-Laborites, a move he actively supported, that created an organization strong enough to support Humphrey’s larger ambitions. The seeds Humphrey sowed in 1944 were fully harvested in 1948. His impassioned address to the Democratic National Convention, broadcast on nation-wide radio, won broad liberal acclaim (and a walkout by segregationist delegates). “The time has arrived,” he famously declared, “for the Democratic Party to get out of the shadow of state’s rights and walk forthrightly in the bright sunshine of human rights.” Back in Minnesota, the two wings of the DFL split over the emerging Cold War. A staunch anti-Communist, Humphrey supported an aggressive approach to the Soviet Union and repression of Communists at home. Emerging victorious from the internal battle with the Farmer-Laborites, Humphrey was elected to the U.S. Senate, soundly defeating Republican incumbent Joseph Ball. It was in this campaign that Minnesotans first encountered Humphrey as the “happy warrior”—an irrepressible politician with a genuine love of people and an uncanny talent for remembering the names and circumstances of folks from Grand Marais to Blue Earth and every place in between. Humphrey’s arrival in the Senate as a rising liberal star was initially greeted with hostility by the Democrats’ entrenched Southern bloc. In response, Humphrey accepted the guidance of the Senate majority leader, Lyndon Johnson. He proved an adept student. He developed relationships across political parties and ideologies and—without sacrificing his core principles—learned how to use the system. From the 1950s until his selection as Lyndon Johnson’s vice president in 1964, Humphrey’s marriage of liberal conviction and political know-how yielded legislation on issues ranging from food stamps, civil rights, and the Peace Corps to arms control and humanitarian foreign aid. Near the end of his career, a poll of one thousand congressional staff named him the most effective U.S. senator of the previous fifty years. This remains his greatest legacy. In 1968, the fierce division over the Vietnam War cost him the presidency and the respect of a new generation of political activists. Re-elected twice to the Senate, Humphrey persisted, an unabashed liberal in an era of diminished belief in government. Humphrey died from pancreatic cancer in 1978, honored by world leaders and mourned by thousands of Minnesotans.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/por 4185 p7.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/humphrey-hubert-h-1911-1978"},{"alt":"Beaded bag made by Margeurite Metivier (Dakota), ca.1860.","author":[{"name":"Leah Bowe","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/leah-bowe"}],"categoryTag":[],"date":"April 27, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246048,"name":"1585–1763 (Colonization)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056201,"name":"1754–1800 (Revolution and a New Nation)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056203,"name":"1792–1861 (Expansion and Reform)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":203519472229,"name":"Pre-1585 (Before European Contact)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Evolution of Dakota Beadwork","postbody":"Dakota people in what is now Minnesota began using glass beads to decorate clothing, bags, and household items in the mid-nineteenth century. The practice both reinforced and transformed ...","searchtext":"Dakota people in what is now Minnesota began using glass beads to decorate clothing, bags, and household items in the mid-nineteenth century. The practice both reinforced and transformed Dakota art, allowing Native artists to preserve a creative tradition that continues in the twenty-first century. Before European trade introduced glass beads to North America around 1500, Dakota and other Native people made beads from shells, stones, bones, and teeth. Artists used long-bone beads called hairpipe (traditionally made from bison and later from cattle) to adorn clothing like breastplates. They worked beads made from teeth, as well as from shells acquired through trans-continental Native trade networks, into jewelry and dresses. The designs created in paint, quills, and Native beads carried over into beadwork made after European contact. The Dakota began to use hand-blown beads, then standardized “pony” beads, and finally smaller, factory-made “seed” beads. They turned to seed beads in particular to experiment with new techniques while maintaining and reproducing older styles. Beadwork, like quillwork before it, was the traditional domain of Native women. By the early nineteenth century, Dakota women were exchanging food, skins, and pelts with Euro-American traders in return for goods like cloth, silk ribbons, and glass beads. They ordered specific colors, sizes, and cuts on sample cards—small pieces of cardstock decorated with different manufacturers’ beads. By the 1830s, Dakota women had access to commercial glass beads in a variety of colors, sizes, and shapes. The new material posed new challenges, like using glass to mimic the subtle color gradations of dyed quills and beading the yoke of a dress without making it too heavy for its wearer. Over time, glass beads replaced both quills and handmade beads on Dakota objects because of their variety, convenience, and availability. By 1850, Dakota designs featured contrasting stripes; bilateral symmetry; and freestanding elements like stars, leaves, and flowers against bead-free backgrounds. Even when they used new designs and materials, Dakota artists fashioned objects that reflected Indigenous worldviews and made sense on Indigenous terms. Objects made from imported materials retained both Dakota aesthetics and Dakota uses. In this period, for instance, men’s formal shirts were often made with heavy cotton instead of brain-tanned deerskin; decorated with glass beads instead of porcupine quills; and cut in the style of Western waistcoats instead of traditional war-honors shirts. But they continued to highlight Dakota forms and carry forward the tradition of bestowing men with vests that essentially wrapped them in Dakota-ness. With the importation of Euro-American goods into Dakota life came an influx of Euro-Americans themselves. Over a few decades, white colonists displaced the Dakota within their homelands. The situation escalated in the summer of 1862 during the US–Dakota War. At the end of the war, the U.S. government forcibly transported most surviving Dakota to prison camps within Minnesota and Iowa and then permanently expelled them from both states. Most of the Dakota were forced west to live in Nebraska and Dakota Territory, closer to their Lakota kin; some remained in small communities in Minnesota. Almost no Dakota artwork survives from the decade after the U.S.–Dakota War. Many people barely survived. In unfamiliar places, often lacking food, shelter, and medicine, staying alive from season to season took precedent over making art. By about 1875, however, Dakota artists had renewed the beadwork tradition, with a noticeable change. While some continued to use traditional motifs, others started to reinterpret the distinctly Lakota patterns of their new neighbors. Without abandoning the delicate, bilaterally symmetrical, standalone pastel florals of pre-war Dakota work, Dakota women began to incorporate the geometry, bold colors, and repeated shapes of Lakota objects. They also beaded objects more heavily, in the style of Lakota pieces. By 1890, after the establishment of the reservation system and the end of the treaty-making era, traditional Native economies had largely collapsed. The U.S. government told the Dakota and other Native groups to abandon their old lifeways, assimilate into Euro-American culture, and live on single-family farms. The stark economic changes Dakota people endured are reflected in the artwork produced during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Increasingly, Dakota artists created beaded items not for tribal use but for sale to Euro-Americans. They produced miniature versions of utilitarian objects like tipis, clubs, and snowshoes as well as figures of Dakota people themselves—primarily because they were easy to transport. To appeal to tourists, they applied European motifs, such as representations of animals and people, to Euro-American items like fitted jackets and vests. European decorative items such as pincushions, fobs, and wall pockets became popular. Dakota artists fixed beads to items like bottles and doctors’ valises that had never been beaded before. They began to decorate objects with non-Native symbols, including American flags and Christian crosses. Ever adaptive, Dakota art and culture persisted in the midst of continued pressure on the Dakota to assimilate at the turn of the twentieth century. During the 1920s, Dakota people created cottage industries to sell handmade goods and curios to tourists without abandoning the old ways. Many of the objects made during this time are a mix of European and Native styles. The Arts and Crafts movement, which thrived between 1880 and 1920, drew from the designs of Dakota bags and other decorative items. Art historians are able to attribute specific objects to individual artists—rather than to tribal or regional groups—starting in the 1920s and 1930s. For example, Rebecca Bluecloud, a Dakota woman from the Upper Sioux reservation in Granite Falls, supported her family during hard times by involving them in the manufacture of beaded items, particularly dolls. To further break down communities and assimilate Native people into American culture, the U.S. government introduced a policy of relocation in 1956. Designed to lure Native workers away from their reservation homes and into cities like Chicago, Denver, and Los Angeles, this policy split the Native American population of the United States between reservation residents and urban dwellers. It also had the unintended effect of strengthening Native identity—and art traditions—through pan-Indian unity. In the mid-twentieth century, Dakota artwork shifted again. The survival of Dakota beadwork practices was itself a symbol of Indigenous resistance to assimilation. Partly inspired by the successes of the Black Power movement, a burgeoning Native rights movement was born. Its most organized form was the American Indian Movement (AIM), established in Minneapolis in 1968. The exchange of Native cultural traditions within American cities resulted in a mixing of styles in Native beadwork in general, and in Dakota beadwork in particular. Much of the Dakota beadwork from this period emulated Lakota and Western Plains styles. In the twenty-first century, many Dakota artists are reclaiming their culture by studying old techniques, including beadwork. Contemporary Dakota artists like Holly Young, for example, are reviving the bilateral symmetry and florals of pre-1862 beaded objects. Others, like Dallas Goldtooth and Gwen Westerman, are reviving quillworking and ribbonworking. Still others, like Bobby Wilson, are translating the old styles into modern media. Different stages in the development of Dakota beadwork find representation in pow-wow regalia pieces like breastplates, shawls, belts, shoes, and jewelry.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/8576_2_0.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246059,"name":"Native Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/evolution-dakota-beadwork"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Governor Elmer Benson, c.1938.","author":[{"name":"Tom O’Connell","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/tom-o-connell"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"April 25, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Benson, Elmer (1895–1985)","postbody":"Elmer Benson was elected in 1936 as Minnesota’s second Farmer-Labor Party governor with over 58 percent of the vote. He was defeated only two years later by an even larger margin. An ...","searchtext":"Elmer Benson was elected in 1936 as Minnesota’s second Farmer-Labor Party governor with over 58 percent of the vote. He was defeated only two years later by an even larger margin. An outspoken champion of Minnesota’s workers and family farmers, Benson lacked the political gifts of his charismatic predecessor, Floyd B. Olson. However, many of his proposals—at first considered radical—became law in the decades that followed. Elmer Benson was born in Appleton, Minnesota, in 1895, and raised on a strong brew of Midwestern populism. His father, Tom, was a member of the Non-Partisan League and an early supporter of the Farmer-Labor Party, which by the early 1920s had overtaken the Democrats in Minnesota. His mother was a granddaughter of a signer of the Norwegian Declaration of Independence and an even bigger free-thinker than her husband. After studying law at the St. Paul College of Law and serving in the U.S. Army during World War I, Benson returned to Appleton. There, he combined a career in banking with an avocation for progressive politics. He built a strong Farmer-Labor organization in Swift County and throughout the Seventh Congressional District. In 1932, the party’s popular governor, Floyd B. Olson, appointed Benson as Commissioner of Securities. On April 30 of the following year, Olson moved Benson to the crucial post of Commissioner of Banking. The reforms Benson implemented rescued hundreds of embattled small town bankers. With his devotion to Farmer-Labor principles and his growing support in rural Minnesota, Benson quickly emerged as a favorite among Party activists. In 1935, Governor Olson appointed Benson to a vacancy in the U.S. Senate. When Olson died of stomach cancer the following year, FLP leaders chose Benson as the party’s candidate for governor. As governor, Benson championed the most ambitious legislative agenda in Minnesota history. His platform combined support for the unemployed with New Deal-style social programs financed by increased taxes on big business and the wealthy. Most of Benson’s proposals passed the Farmer-Labor-controlled House of Representatives. Only a few, however, survived the Republican-controlled Senate. One critic famously pointed out that although Floyd Olson had made radical statements in the past, “this SOB [Benson] actually means them!” To an unprecedented degree, Benson used the power of his office to support the rights of labor. In the bitterly cold January of 1937, he ordered state officials to provide food and shelter to striking timber workers throughout northern Minnesota. That same year, he deployed the National Guard to protect the Newspaper Guild’s right to strike. He also refused to renew the notorious anti-labor Pinkerton Agency’s license in Minnesota. In perhaps the most dramatic intervention, Benson ordered Albert Lea’s anti-union sheriff to release striking workers from jail. He then personally took charge of talks between workers and a reluctant management. Actions like these endeared Benson to many Farmer-Labor activists. They also created opposition. The governor’s support of the new Congress of Industrial Organizations angered leaders of the American Federation of Labor as the two groups competed for membership and power. The involvement of Communists in the CIO and the Benson administration more generally heightened this tension. A bitter primary challenge from former Lieutenant Governor Hjalmer Petersen exposed these and other fissures within the FLP. In the 1938 general election, Benson was soundly defeated by Republican Harold Stassen. Stassen, a young reformer, promised a “middle path” between “rock-ribbed” Republican conservatism and alleged Farmer-Labor extremism. From 1938 to 1944, Benson remained the FLP’s most prominent leader. However, the Party, though still out-pacing Minnesota’s Democrats, failed to compete successfully with the Republicans. In 1944, Benson reluctantly supported the merger of the Farmer-Labor and Democratic Parties, creating the Democratic Farmer-Labor Party (DFL). In 1948, Benson broke with the Democrats to support the presidential campaign of Henry Wallace, a liberal opponent of the Cold War policies of Harry Truman. An epic struggle for the future direction of Minnesota progressivism ensued. Democrats, led by Hubert Humphrey and future DFL governor Orville Freeman, delivered a decisive defeat to Benson’s Farmer-Laborites. After Wallace’s landslide loss to Truman in 1948, Benson served as national chair of the Progressive Party, leading opposition to the emerging nuclear arms race and U.S. intervention in Korea. In August, 1951, suffering from encephalitis and under strict doctor’s orders, he retired to his home in Appleton. He remained out of the public eye until his death in 1985.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/por 14387 p3.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/benson-elmer-1895-1985"},{"alt":"Black-and-white postcard with a picture of the St. Paul Athletic Club, c.1917.","author":[{"name":"Joan Mathison","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/joan-mathison"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"April 20, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"St. Paul Athletic Club","postbody":"The St. Paul Athletic Club was designed in 1915 by architect Allen H. Stem, who with Charles A. Reed had recently completed Grand Central Station in New York City. Like Grand Central, the ...","searchtext":"The St. Paul Athletic Club was designed in 1915 by architect Allen H. Stem, who with Charles A. Reed had recently completed Grand Central Station in New York City. Like Grand Central, the Athletic Club was threatened with demolition in the 1990s but survived because preservationists valued its sound construction, central location, and fine craftsmanship. In 1884, the St. Paul Athletic Club organization started out in a gymnasium with a reading room nearby at Seven Corners. Thirty years later, in 1914, fundraisers promised that the new clubhouse would make club members and citizens of the prosperous young capital city proud. Early fundraising success encouraged the club’s board to add two more floors to the plan, increasing the total cost to $1 million—an astounding figure that had only been exceeded by, respectively, the costs of the second state capitol and the 1885 Ryan Hotel, which had seven stories and 335 rooms. (The Ryan Hotel was torn down in 1962, shortly before the modern historic preservation movement was born.) Concerns about World War I slowed the fundraising effort after 1914. Construction didn’t begin at the new site (340 Cedar Street) until 1916 and continued through wartime. The members of the St. Paul Athletic Club offered their new building as an emergency hospital for the returning wounded, but the war ended before it was needed. The St. Paul Athletic Club was the last neoclassical building of more than a few stories (it had thirteen) to be built downtown. Following the standard set by the great cities of the Eastern United States, the architects selected a Renaissance Revival-influenced Beaux-Arts style. The variety of window sizes on the thirteen-story façade reflects the range of amenities available to members, including two-story gymnasiums, a pool, a ballroom, and a lobby. There were also locker rooms, restaurants, a barber shop, and small guest rooms. The two-story lobby featured a baronial fireplace, ornate plasterwork, and unusual terra-cotta railings on the balconies made by artisans at the Brioschi-Minuti Studio, originally located on University Avenue. Stem had encouraged them to move their workshop to St. Paul from New York City. A two-day celebration was held for the city when the club opened in September 1918 with two thousand members. An editorial in the St. Paul Pioneer Press, pointing out that the club’s social functions made it more than a gym, called the club “one of the city’s biggest assets” and “an altar for friendship” for St. Paulites from all walks of life. After World War II, the urban club continued to grow, even as people and businesses were moving to the suburbs. In 1960, a glass-walled penthouse dining room was added. In the 1970s, as women became more active in the business community, they were invited to join as members. Membership peaked at four thousand in 1980 when an addition featuring squash, handball, and basketball courts was built. Over time, however, the debt load was too much for the organization to bear. The club closed abruptly in December 1989 after declaring bankruptcy. Thousands of people attended an auction for all items unattached to the building. Demolition was scheduled. A second auction to sell structural fittings—the artisan tiles, fireplace, carved wood, marble columns, and trim—was stopped an hour before it was to start. Wallace Orfield, Sr., purchased an option to buy the building and cancelled demolition. He later decided to waive his option. The building stood empty for years. In 1995, local developer John Rupp purchased and renovated the abandoned building for tenants and catering events. By 2008, he opened Hotel 340, an award-winning boutique hotel with fifty-six rooms. Renovation of the building continued, and in 2013 the new St Paul Athletic Club opened on six floors, an independent, locally owned health and social club.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/MNopedia/MNopedia%202026/Assorted%20rescans/10778462_resized.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/st-paul-athletic-club"},{"alt":"Black and white image of the editorial page of the Minneapolis Saturday Press, October 25, 1927.","author":[{"name":"Ehsan Alam","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/ehsan-alam"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"April 18, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Near v. Minnesota","postbody":"In early June 1931, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a little-known Minnesota statute was unconstitutional. The 1925 Public Nuisance Bill had been designed to close down newspapers deemed ...","searchtext":"In early June 1931, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a little-known Minnesota statute was unconstitutional. The 1925 Public Nuisance Bill had been designed to close down newspapers deemed obscene or slanderous. The court’s decision set a national precedent for freedom of the press and censorship issues. In 1925, as a reaction to personal attacks printed in John Morrison’s Duluth newspaper Rip-saw, State Senator Mike Boylan and State Representative George Lommen drafted a bill that quickly became law. The bill allowed a judge—without jury—to shut down a publication if it was deemed obscene or scandalous. Before the law could be used against Rip-saw, however, Morrison died. Two years later, Howard Guilford and Jay Near began publishing the Saturday Press in Minneapolis. The paper was vehemently anti-Semitic and purported to expose government involvement with the criminal underworld. In particular, it attacked Police Commissioner Frank Brunskill and County Attorney Floyd B. Olson. As a result, Olson filed a complaint against the paper. Backed by the 1925 law, in November 1927 Judge Mathias Baldwin issued a temporary restraining order against the Saturday Press. The case was brought to the state supreme Court on April 16, 1928. Near’s lawyer, Thomas Latimer, argued that the Public Nuisance Law was unconstitutional. He claimed that it violated the right to freedom of the press guaranteed by the First Amendment; to trial by jury, guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment; and to due process, guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment (made applicable to the states by the Fourteenth Amendment). The heart of the issue was the 1925 bill’s allowance for prior restraint of the press (e.g., enjoining a paper before it published anything slanderous). Existing libel laws punished publishers after the fact. The court, however, ruled in favor of the Public Nuisance Law; the order against the Saturday Press was thus upheld. Judge Baldwin made the temporary injunction against the paper permanent. This was then appealed at the state supreme court, which upheld Baldwin’s ruling. Around this time, the nascent American Civil Liberties Union and Robert McCormick (the influential publisher of the Chicago Tribune and a staunch defender of the First Amendment) became interested in the case. Through McCormick’s pugnacious efforts, the American Newspaper Publishers Association threw its support behind Near, bankrolling the legal team to argue the case. With its help, the case rose to the national stage. On April 26, 1930, Near v. Minnesota was docketed at the U.S. Supreme Court. It was the first time a First Amendment case involving prior restraints was heard at the court. The court itself had undergone significant change in March as a result of the deaths of Chief Justice William Howard Taft and Justice Edward Sanford. The Taft court was solidly conservative and would have likely spelled doom for Near’s case. Even after the appointment of two new justices, Owen Roberts and Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, the case was not a sure thing. Only Justices Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis Brandeis could be counted on to side with Near. On the other hand, four justices were certain to support the law—most notably Minnesotan Pierce Butler, who would go on to pen a scathing dissent in the case. In a strange twist, however, the Minnesota Legislature, prodded by Representative Lommen and newly elected governor Floyd Olson, discussed whether to repeal the law, which would make any Supreme Court ruling unnecessary. The house voted to repeal but was blocked by the Senate. Oral arguments were heard in late January 1931, and four months later the Supreme Court handed down its decision. By the smallest margin (five to four), the justices sided with Near; the Minnesota Public Nuisance Law was ruled unconstitutional. The decision established that prior restraint of the press was a direct violation of the First Amendment. Even more fundamental, it made clear that the Bill of Rights applied to the states and not just the federal government. The ruling is thus considered a landmark and has been cited regularly in other cases dealing with censorship and freedom of the press.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/The_Saturday_Press.gif","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246060,"name":"Crime and Punishment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/near-v-minnesota"},{"alt":"Color image of a line of houses on Milwaukee Avenue, 2014.","author":[{"name":"Sarah Shirey","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/sarah-shirey"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"April 13, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Milwaukee Avenue Historic District, Minneapolis","postbody":"The houses of Milwaukee Avenue were built in the 1880s as high-density homes for immigrant workers. When the Minneapolis Housing and Redevelopment Authority (MHRA) planned to demolish the ...","searchtext":"The houses of Milwaukee Avenue were built in the 1880s as high-density homes for immigrant workers. When the Minneapolis Housing and Redevelopment Authority (MHRA) planned to demolish the run-down structures in 1970, neighborhood residents successfully organized to preserve the avenue as a historic district. In 1883, real-estate agent William Ragan began developing land between Franklin Avenue and 24th Street in Minneapolis to construct low-cost housing for immigrants. To maximize his investment, Ragan turned the alley between 22nd and 23rd Avenues into a narrow street as well, and then divided it into half sized lots. As a result, Ragan placed forty-eight structures along the two-block, narrow stretch with almost no setback from the street. Ragan used a single plan for forty-six of the houses he constructed here, making the narrow street, then known as 22 ½ Avenue, unique in its uniformity. The workmen’s cottages all featured a brick veneer, wooden porches, and “gingerbread” ornamentation. The street became an ethnic enclave primarily for Scandinavian immigrants. In 1906, residents petitioned to have the name changed from 22 ½ Avenue to Woodland Avenue because they felt the “1/2” had a negative connotation. The name became Milwaukee Avenue instead, perhaps because many of the residents worked for the Milwaukee Railroad. By the second half of the twentieth century, the houses were run down. The neighborhood, known as Seward, housed mostly low-income residents. By the 1960s, professors, students, and artists began to move in. This educated, counter-culture class sought out the cheap housing voluntarily rather than out of necessity. In 1970, the MHRA planned to demolish the remaining Milwaukee Avenue houses, along with much of the western portion of Seward, as part of an urban-renewal project. They argued that the condition of the houses was beyond repair, the lot sizes were too small, and the street was too narrow for conventional traffic. Some Seward residents opposed the displacement of their neighbors. Many of them had honed their organizing skills during the social and political movements of the 1960s. These activists successfully campaigned to gain control of the Seward West Project Area Committee (PAC), the citizen organization advising the urban renewal process, in its 1971 election. The PAC believed that many of the houses were in good enough condition to save, that the narrow street was well suited for pedestrians, and that small houses were environmentally friendly. They also cited the block’s unique character as a reason for saving the buildings. The street held historical importance as a rare example of contiguous brick-workers’ houses. Milwaukee Avenue was probably one of the few intact “common man’s neighborhoods” left in Minneapolis. Preserving the street would also preserve part of “Minnesota’s social heritage.” After many months of tense negotiations, several PAC and MHRA members jointly formed the Milwaukee Avenue Planning Team in 1973. The team agreed to resurvey the area to determine if saving the buildings was feasible. In 1974, the Minnesota Historical Society nominated Milwaukee Avenue for the National Register of Historic Places. It received its designation on May 2. This protected the homes from demolition without a public hearing. Despite initial reluctance, the Minneapolis Heritage Preservation Commission also designated Milwaukee Avenue a historic district in 1975. With demolition unlikely, the MHRA reversed course and began to work with PAC members as allies. They cooperated with the planning team, who advocated saving most of the original houses and demolishing some that were beyond repair. They wanted new construction that would blend with the restored structures to replace the demolished buildings. They also called for a pedestrian walkway and greenspace to replace the narrow street. PAC members organized the Milwaukee Avenue Community Corporation to oversee the rehab process. They received funding from several public and private agencies to purchase select houses from the MHRA for restoration. The MHRA also offered grants for homeowner restoration and low-interest mortgages. This allowed some longtime residents and those unable to afford restoration themselves a chance to stay in the neighborhood. Restoration, to historic guidelines, began in 1975. Most of the houses were completed over the next several years. Nine replica houses replaced demolished ones, as did new townhomes that complemented the original architecture of the street. In 2007, for the thirtieth anniversary of the restoration, Milwaukee Avenue residents hosted a walking tour featuring eight of the restored homes.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/IMG_2005.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/milwaukee-avenue-historic-district-minneapolis"},{"alt":"Color image of a Northwest Orient Airlines menu, c.1970.","author":[{"name":"Linda A. Cameron","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/linda-cameron"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"April 11, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Northwest Airlines","postbody":"A few months before aviator Charles Lindbergh made his record-breaking transatlantic flight, Northwest Airways, Inc. began carrying airmail between the Twin Cities and Chicago. As Northwest ...","searchtext":"A few months before aviator Charles Lindbergh made his record-breaking transatlantic flight, Northwest Airways, Inc. began carrying airmail between the Twin Cities and Chicago. As Northwest Airlines, Inc., the company became a major international carrier before financial troubles forced its merger with Delta Air Lines, Inc. in 2008. Minnesota entrepreneur Colonel Lewis Hotchkiss Brittin incorporated Northwest Airways, Inc. in Michigan on September 1, 1926. He based his operations south of Minneapolis at Speedway Field with nine employees. The company||s airmail contract required that delivery start on October 1. Brittin rented two open-cockpit biplanes to make the twice-daily, eight-hundred-mile round-trip flight to Chicago. By November, the company owned three Stinson Detroiter closed-cabin planes. Northwest Airways began passenger service to Chicago on July 5, 1927. Stunt pilot Charles |||Speed||| Holman carried two passengers on the inaugural flight. Engine failure forced an emergency landing near Hastings, Minnesota, but a second attempt made it safely to Chicago at 2:30 a.m. on July 6. The airline carried 106 passengers in the first year, charging thirty dollars one way and fifty dollars round trip. The airline made its first international flight to Winnipeg in 1928 but discontinued the route after three months due to objections from the Canadian government. Minnesota investors purchased Northwest Airways in 1929. Its operations moved to St. Paul||s downtown airfield the next year, and routes expanded to the Dakotas, Montana, and Washington State. The company incorporated under Minnesota law on April 16, 1934 as Northwest Airlines, Inc. and introduced service to the east coast. During World War II, the company operated a bomber modification center at St. Paul||s Holman Field and flew military cargo missions to Canada, Alaska, and the Aleutian Islands. In 1947, Northwest flew the Great Circle Route over the Pacific Ocean to Japan, China, Korea, and the Philippines. It adopted the name |||Northwest Orient||| for advertising purposes. The airline||s Asian connections proved useful in 1950 when the U.S. government chose the airline for the Korean Air Lift mission. Northwest Airlines moved operations into new headquarters at Wold-Chamberlain Field (formerly Speedway, later Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport) in 1961. It introduced flights to California. In the 1970s, passengers could fly nonstop from Chicago to Hawaii and take advantage of computerized ticketing for flights to Asia. The Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 ended government control of airlines. Northwest continued to thrive in the more competitive market. In the following year, it added more than twenty domestic markets and began transatlantic service to Sweden and Denmark. NWA, Inc., a Delaware corporation, became the holding company for Northwest Airlines in 1984. The company||s investments eventually included Mainline Travel, Inc. of Minnetonka, a Northwest Airlink agreement with Mesaba Airlines, and Republic Airlines. In June 1989, Wings Holdings (later Northwest Airlines Corporation) acquired NWA Inc. at a cost of approximately $3.5 billion. Struggling with debt from the buyout, Northwest sought financial aid from the Minnesota legislature in 1991. Even with the help of $761 million in public funds, the airline teetered on the brink of bankruptcy in 1993. Relief came when pilots and other employees agreed to $980 million in wage and benefits concessions. The airline||s profits rose dramatically in the mid-1990s. It added flights to six Canadian cities, improved its |||WorldPerks||| frequent flier program, and expanded electronic ticketing service. Its fleet grew to more than four hundred planes. A partnership with KLM, a Dutch airline, provided financial stability by increasing the joint airlines|| global market share. Northwest experienced the first of several setbacks in 1998 when a pilots|| strike halted service for nearly three weeks. The September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks caused the company to reduce its flight schedule by an estimated twenty percent, lay off ten thousand workers, and heighten security. Northwest reduced its fares and offered special business perks to attract customers. In 2003 the company cut flights again due to unrest in Iraq. In 2005 Hurricane Katrina destroyed oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, causing the price of fuel to rise. Northwest responded by cutting wages and selling off aircraft. These measures failed to save the faltering airline. In 2005, Northwest filed for bankruptcy. It emerged from reorganization in 2007. Executives announced a merger with Delta Air Lines, Inc. the following year. Northwest officially became Delta on January 1, 2010.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/2013.96.8_menu.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246053,"name":"Transportation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/northwest-airlines"},{"alt":"Reverend Stephen Riggs","author":[{"name":"Howard J. Vogel","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/howard-j-vogel"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"April 06, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186622056203,"name":"1792–1861 (Expansion and Reform)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Riggs, Stephen Return (1812–1883)","postbody":"Stephen Return Riggs was a Christian missionary and linguist who spent forty years in the Minnesota River Valley, Nebraska, and Dakota Territory. In both these roles, he aimed to ...","searchtext":"Stephen Return Riggs was a Christian missionary and linguist who spent forty years in the Minnesota River Valley, Nebraska, and Dakota Territory. In both these roles, he aimed to “Christianize and civilize” the Dakota people he believed were caught in the “bonds of heathenism.” To further his project, he compiled the first printed dictionary of the Dakota language. Riggs’s work as a government translator and interpreter helped the United States remove the Dakota from their Minnesota homeland during the 1850s and 1860s. Riggs began his life’s work among the Dakota in 1837 at Thomas Williamson’s Lac Qui Parle Mission in the St. Peters (later Minnesota) River Valley. He established the Traverse des Sioux mission near present-day St. Peter in 1843. In 1850, he helped write the “Outlines of a Plan to Civilize the Dakota,” designed to break up the Dakota way of life and “community property system.” In 1856, he founded the Hazelwood Republic—a democratic community of Christian Dakota people who practiced Euro-American customs—near modern-day Granite Falls. Riggs firmly believed that Christianity and what he called “civilized ways” could be taught using the Dakota language. He learned oral Dakota so he could preach the Christian gospel to mission residents. Over several years, using the written version developed in the 1830s by Samuel and Gideon Pond, he translated the Bible into Dakota. He argued that illiteracy in English should not be a bar to citizenship and urged the Minnesota legislature to grant citizenship to “civilized” Dakota—a cause that was unsuccessful. In 1852, the Smithsonian Institution published a Dakota Grammar and Lexicon (dictionary), compiled by Riggs. Though he valued studying the Dakota language, Riggs did not work to preserve it and was deeply critical of Dakota culture in general. In 1850, he wrote a speech for the annual meeting of the Minnesota Historical Society that describes the language as “noble” but bound to disappear. In a letter accompanying the speech, he wrote that Dakota people had no future if they did not assimilate. The progress of “civilization,” he proclaimed, would either include and transform the Dakota or destroy them. By 1859, Riggs prohibited the Dakota children in the Hazelwood Community school from speaking their native language. He felt this would hasten their conversion to Christianity and break them from their “barbaric” way of life. The U.S. government enlisted Riggs to help carry out its policy of removing the Dakota people from their ancestral homelands so that white immigrants could take the land for farms. In 1851, officials summoned Riggs to Traverse des Sioux to serve as interpreter during treaty negotiations. In this role, he translated the English version of the treaty into Dakota. The accuracy of his work is disputed. Riggs left several provisions in the English copy untranslated in the Dakota version. The Dakota words he chose to describe the proposed “sale” of the Dakota homeland seem at odds with the Dakota view of the land as their relative—something that cannot be sold. At the onset of the U.S.–Dakota War of 1862, Riggs and his family fled from their Hazelwood home, never to return. Dakotas from the mission protected them en route to St. Anthony, where they resettled. When the war ended in September 1862, Riggs gathered statements from captured Dakota fighters. A military commission used them as incriminating evidence in the trials that followed. During the winter of 1862–1863, Riggs, Thomas Williamson, and other missionaries visited dozens of Dakota men in the Mankato prison and hundreds of non-combatant Dakota people in a concentration camp (a camp that confines people outside legal norms of arrest and often under harsh conditions) at Fort Snelling. During these visits, hundreds of Dakota people converted to Christianity. Riggs participated in some of the later religious services at the Fort Snelling camp and came to observe the result of the other missionaries’ work there. Though some doubted their sincerity, including Riggs himself, Riggs described these conversions as the fruit of the war and the many years of mission work in which he played a part. In 1865, the Riggs family moved to Beloit, Wisconsin. Riggs continued his mission work for twelve more years, traveling to Dakota reservations in Nebraska and present-day South Dakota. He died in Beloit in 1883.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/10324572.640x640.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246089,"name":"Religion and Belief","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/riggs-stephen-return-1812-1883"},{"alt":"Map showing the locations of the Vermillion, Mesabi, and Cuyuna Iron Ranges of Minnesota.","author":[{"name":"Fred Sutherland","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/fred-sutherland"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"April 04, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"February 5, 1924","name":"Cuyuna Iron Range","postbody":"The Cuyuna Iron Range is a former North American iron-mining district about ninety miles west of Duluth in central Minnesota. Iron mining in the district, the furthest south and west of ...","searchtext":"The Cuyuna Iron Range is a former North American iron-mining district about ninety miles west of Duluth in central Minnesota. Iron mining in the district, the furthest south and west of Minnesota’s iron ranges, began in 1907. During World War I and World War II, the district mined manganese-rich iron ores to harden the steel used in wartime production. After mining peaked in 1953, the district began to focus on non-iron-mining activities in order to remain economically viable. In the early 1880s, federal surveys noted magnetic anomalies near what would become the Cuyuna Range. No visible outcrops of iron ore were present at the surface. Henry Pajari and Cuyler Adams realized these magnetic anomalies could be buried iron ore deposits. Pajari was quickly frustrated in his search effort. Adams carefully mapped ore deposits over the next twenty years. By 1902, Adams began seeking outside investors to develop mines near the best locations. In June 1907, Adams and his business partners enticed the Rogers–Brown Ore Company to open the Kennedy Mine, the first active iron mine on the Cuyuna Range. In 1907, the nearest town was too distant from the richest iron ore deposits. Adams bought and sold land to developers near the largest iron deposits for new towns. Around 1910, immigrants from northern and southern Europe settled into newly built mining communities with the hope of finding work at mines. Demand for iron ore in the United States surged during World War I. Over thirty iron mines were operating at that time; most were underground operations. After the war, many of these Cuyuna Iron Mines closed. The few new mines of the 1920s were open pits that used large earth-moving equipment rather than shafts and tunnels to reach the ore. The Milford Mine was a struggling underground mine. On February 5, 1924, water from an adjacent lake rushed into the underground tunnels, killing forty-one miners within minutes. The official investigations into the disaster found no individual or company to be at fault. The report stated that hidden geologic features near the lake were weakened by tunneling and allowed the water to drain into the mine suddenly. By the early 1930s, the economic woes of the Great Depression affected mining in the Cuyuna Range. In 1932, the citizens of Crosby, the largest community in the region, elected Karl Emil Nygard as the first Communist Party mayor in the United States. Nygard’s city council opposed many of his relief policies. He spent much of his time stating his accom-plishments in speeches at political rallies outside the Cuyuna Range. In 1933, he lost his reelection bid. By the early 1940s, demand for Cuyuna Iron ore peaked. Manganese-rich iron ores were important for making very hard steels. The Cuyuna Range held the largest domestic supply of this ore. Demand for iron and steel continued throughout World War II and the Korean War. In 1953, production on the Cuyuna Range reached its highest point, at a little over three-and-a-half million tons. In that year, producing other resources, like manganese, also became a priority. The Manganese Chemical Corporation, based in Riverton, researched new methods to turn manganese ore into products for modern batteries. The patents filed for this process continue to be cited by major battery companies in the twenty-first century. The early 1960s saw a rapid decline in iron ore from the Cuyuna Range as seventeen mines closed between 1961 and 1965. The Manganese Chemical Corporation moved from Riverton to Baltimore, Maryland, in 1962. The passing of the Minnesota Taconite Amendment in 1964 incentivized production from other Minnesota iron ranges. By 1967, the last operating underground mine in Minnesota, the Armor #2 Mine near Crosby, was closed. By 1982, the last reported shipment of iron ore from the Cuyuna Range was made, ending the period of active mine operations in the district. In 1993, local and state representatives created a new type of park in Minnesota from the former mine lands of the Cuyuna Range. The Cuyuna Country State Recreation Area contains most of the former mining landscape in the Cuyuna Range. This park attracts visitors that hike and bike along former mine roads and piles of overburden.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Cuyunamap.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/cuyuna-iron-range"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Colonel Charles Augustus Lindbergh, c.1928.","author":[{"name":"Melissa Peterson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/melissa-peterson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"March 30, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Lindbergh, Charles A. (1902–1974)","postbody":"Charles A. Lindbergh, a native of Little Falls, became a world-famous aviator after completing the first nonstop, solo transatlantic flight in May 1927. Although his flying feats made him ...","searchtext":"Charles A. Lindbergh, a native of Little Falls, became a world-famous aviator after completing the first nonstop, solo transatlantic flight in May 1927. Although his flying feats made him an American cultural hero in the 1920s, his links to Nazism, support for eugenics, and publicly unacknowledged children in Germany tarnished his legacy in the decades that followed. Charles Augustus Lindbergh was born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1902. He grew up outside Little Falls on a 110-acre farm on the banks of the Mississippi River. Though they never divorced, Lindbergh’s parents, Charles August (C. A.) and Evangeline, were estranged. After the complete loss of their home to fire in 1905, they lived in separate homes. The Lindberghs built a smaller home on the original’s foundation. It became a summer residence for Lindbergh and his mother, who traveled to Washington, D.C., each winter for ten years following C. A. Lindbergh’s election to the U.S. House of Representatives. Charles Lindbergh attended college at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in fall 1920. After three semesters, he was dropped from the program and enrolled at the Nebraska Aircraft Corporation||s flying school. He spent time on the barnstorming circuit before purchasing his first plane, a Curtiss JN4-D, commonly called a “Jenny.” In 1924, Lindbergh enrolled in Army Flying School, where he graduated at the top of his class. Following graduation, Lindbergh went to Lambert Field in St. Louis, Missouri. There, he accepted a job with the Robertson Aircraft Corporation as chief pilot for the soon-to-be-awarded St. Louis–Chicago airmail route. In 1919, a French businessman, Raymond Orteig, offered a $25,000 prize to the first team to fly nonstop between New York, New York, and Paris, France. After learning of the prize, Lindbergh began to plan a flight to Paris. Lindbergh discussed his idea with St. Louis businessmen and aviation supporters who pooled their resources to provide Lindbergh with the funding to purchase an airplane that could make the transatlantic flight. Ryan Aeronautical Company in San Diego, California, built the Spirit of St. Louis—a single-engine monoplane powered by a Wright Whirlwind J-5C engine—for $10,580. Lindbergh worked alongside the designer and the construction crew. By the time Lindbergh was ready for his flight, six well-known aviators had already lost their lives in pursuit of the Orteig Prize. Undaunted, Lindbergh set out to break the record on May 20, 1927. At 7:52 a.m., after loading the plane with 450 gallons of gasoline, Lindbergh climbed into the cockpit and gave the go ahead to takeoff. Thirty-three and one-half hours later, he landed at Le Bourget Field, just outside of Paris. Upon returning home, Lindbergh continued to promote aviation by touring the United States, Central and South America. When he was in Mexico he met Anne Morrow, the daughter of the U.S. Ambassador. They married in 1929. Tragedy struck the Lindberghs in March 1932 when their first-born son, twenty-month-old Charlie, was kidnapped from the family||s home in New Jersey. The child’s body was found two months after he was taken. Bruno Richard Hauptmann was arrested for the crime in 1934 and convicted the following year. It was around this time that Lindbergh began to support eugenics, a racist doctrine committed to eliminating human populations judged to be “inferior.” In 1936, an American military attaché invited Lindbergh to Germany to help gather intelligence about the Third Reich. At a dinner in Berlin, German Air Minister Hermann Göring surprised Lindbergh with an award for his services to aviation. Many saw Lindbergh’s acceptance of the |||Nazi medal||| as a sign of his sympathies with the Third Reich, and he praised the Nazi government even as it persecuted Jewish people in the years before World War II. In 1941, he made speeches on behalf of the America First Committee, a nationwide organization that opposed American intervention in the war. The press and many members of the public accused Lindbergh of injecting anti-Semitism into his argument for neutrality, a claim that he denied. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Lindbergh did what he could to help the Allies. In 1944, he persuaded United Aircraft to designate him a technical representative in the South Pacific to study aircraft performances under combat conditions. Despite being a civilian, Lindbergh participated in fifty combat missions. Following World War II, Lindbergh served on the board of directors for Pan American Airways and developed a passion for protecting the environment. He wrote The Spirit of St. Louis, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for autobiography in 1954. Beginning in the late 1950s, Lindbergh had children (seven in total) with three different women in Germany. He kept their existence a secret for the rest of his life, and died in Hawaii on August 26, 1974.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/por 7789 r30.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246053,"name":"Transportation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/lindbergh-charles-1902-1974"},{"alt":"Collage of black and white photographs of Minnesota citizens and James-Younger Gang members, 1876.","author":[{"name":"Leslie Moore","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/leslie-moore"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"March 28, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Northfield Bank Raid","postbody":"When the James–Younger gang rode into Northfield on September 7, 1876, with the intention of robbing the First National Bank, they did not expect any trouble from the local citizens. ...","searchtext":"When the James–Younger gang rode into Northfield on September 7, 1876, with the intention of robbing the First National Bank, they did not expect any trouble from the local citizens. Unbeknownst to them, the townspeople would soon be nationally applauded for defending their town from some of the period’s most notorious outlaws. The James–Younger gang was from Missouri. After a decade of local robberies, they decided to go where no one would expect to find them. The Younger brothers—Cole, Jim, and Bob—traveled to Minnesota, as did McClelland “Clell” Miller and Charlie Pitts. Though never proven, it is generally accepted that Jesse and Frank James took part in the crime that followed. The eighth man is thought to have been Bill Chadwell, whom authorities initially mistook for a Minnesotan man named Bill Stiles. The gang rode into Northfield at 2:00 pm on September 7. Frank, Charlie, and Bob entered the First National Bank while Cole and Clell positioned themselves outside of the bank door to bar townspeople from entering during the robbery. Meanwhile, Jesse, Jim, and Bill waited in Mill Square to guard the gang’s escape route. J. S. Allen, a forty-year-old local man, noticed the strangers. He walked towards the bank to see if he could catch a glimpse of what they were up to inside. As soon as he reached the doorway, Clell grabbed Allen, pointed his revolver at him, and told him to stay quiet. Alarmed, Allen broke free and reportedly shouted, “Get your guns, boys! They’re robbing the bank!” Their cover blown, the gang rode up and down the streets firing their pistols at doorways and warning confused onlookers to get inside. Henry Wheeler, a medical student, grabbed a gun and ran to a third-floor window of the nearby Dampier Hotel. From there, he took careful aim and shot Clell Miller, who fell from his horse and died. On the other side of the street, Anselm Manning, the owner of a hardware store, crept around the corner and fatally shot Bill Chadwell. Nicolaus Gustavson, a recent Swedish immigrant who could not understand the robbers’ orders to get off the street, got caught in the crossfire and was shot in the head. He died several days later. With two gang members dead and more townspeople shooting and throwing rocks, Cole screamed at the robbers in the bank to hurry up. Inside the bank, however, things were going just as poorly as they were outside. The robbers had burst into the bank with their pistols drawn and demanded to know which of the three employees was the cashier. The cashier was out of town, so none of them answered. Frustrated, Frank grabbed Joseph Lee Heywood, the bookkeeper, and demanded that he open the safe. Heywood replied that the lock was on a timer and could not be opened. He lied; the lock was open during business hours but the bolts remained in place so that it appeared locked. Frank fired a shot above Heywood’s head, trying to scare him into cooperating. Noticing an opportunity to flee amid the confusion, Alonzo Bunker, the bank teller, sprinted for the back door. Charlie Pitts shot him in the shoulder but Bunker kept on running until he reached the doctor’s office. Hearing Cole’s desperate shouts from the street, Bob and Charlie grabbed the spare change they found on the counter and headed outside. Infuriated by their failure, Frank paused long enough to turn back and shoot Heywood in the head, instantly killing him. Just minutes after riding into Northfield, the surviving outlaws retreated from town. They left behind two dead gang members and fifteen thousand dollars still sitting in the bank. For two weeks, hundreds of volunteers combed southern Minnesota searching for them in what was then the largest manhunt in U.S. history. On September 20, the sheriff of Watonwan County and five local volunteers found the Youngers and Charlie Pitts near Madelia. Pitts died in the confrontation and the Younger brothers were sentenced to life terms in Stillwater State Prison. Jesse and Frank James managed to escape and for the rest of their lives denied ever having been in Minnesota.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/HV8.2 p17.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246060,"name":"Crime and Punishment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/northfield-bank-raid"},{"alt":"Color image of the Round Tower at Historic Fort Snelling, 2010. Photograph by Wikimedia Commons user Jonathunder.","author":[{"name":"Sarah Shirey","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/sarah-shirey"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"March 23, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186622056203,"name":"1792–1861 (Expansion and Reform)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Round Tower, Fort Snelling","postbody":"The Round Tower has been a symbol of Fort Snelling since its construction in 1820. Though the U.S. Army originally built it as a defensive point for the fort, the tower has served many ...","searchtext":"The Round Tower has been a symbol of Fort Snelling since its construction in 1820. Though the U.S. Army originally built it as a defensive point for the fort, the tower has served many different functions over its long history. The Round Tower was built during the initial construction of Fort St. Anthony (later renamed Fort Snelling). It featured limestone walls over twenty-five feet high with musket slits that faced both outside and inside the fort. These could be used to defend against an enemy that breached the fort’s walls and suggest that the tower was designed as a last-ditch point of defense. The tower’s original flat roof could accommodate mounted cannon for defense. Troops mounted a twelve-pound field-artillery piece during the U.S.–Ho-Chunk War of 1827. The fort, however, was never attacked and its cannons never fired in conflict. In the 1830s the tower’s interior was used for storage. By 1839, the fort’s flagpole had been placed on the tower’s roof. During the Civil War, the army added a conical roof made of sheet iron to the tower for ordinance storage. Round Tower lore states that Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, founder of the Zeppelin airship company, quartered in the Round Tower at Fort Snelling during the war as a German military attaché sent to observe Union Army operations. It is said he launched his first balloon flight from the top of the Round Tower. While Zeppelin claimed to have travelled through St. Paul during this time, there is no evidence to support the connection to the Round Tower. In 1869, a fire gutted the tower and prompted a restoration of the badly damaged building. The conical roof was removed for an open-air weather deck once again. Embrasures were added to the parapet, giving the tower a crenellated, medieval look, and the musket slits were widened into windows. Throughout the remainder of the nineteenth century, the army used the tower, at times, as a washhouse, guardhouse, prison room, and coal storage room. In 1904, the post quartermaster covered the tower, which he was using as an office, with stucco. A public outcry over the building’s changed appearance and cracking of the stucco led him to soon remove it. After World War I, the tower continued to be used as offices and living quarters. It was converted into a family residence by the 1930s and quartered Thomas Marcum, the post electrician whose wife ran a beauty shop there. The Marcums moved out in 1937 when the post commandant, Brigadier General Campbell B. Hodges, decided to convert the tower into a museum of Minnesota history under the supervision of the Minnesota Historical Society. Marion Snelling Hall, the great-granddaughter of Colonel Josiah Snelling, gave her support for the renovation. With the assistance of the Works Progress Administration, the Round Tower Museum opened on May 30, 1941. The interior walls featured a mural by Richard Haines. Its panels depicted scenes of American occupation of the region, beginning in 1805. The terrazzo floor contained an inlayed diagram of the fort as it appeared in 1840. The museum displayed rotating exhibits, including belongings of Josiah Snelling donated by Hall. Hall gave her consent for the remains of Josiah’s daughter Elizabeth, touted as the first white child born in Minnesota, to be moved into a crypt in the wall of the museum. In 1965, Elizabeth was reinterred in the Fort Snelling Chapel. In a ceremony on June 7, 1946, Governor Edward J. Thye removed a stone from the round tower to be sent to Australia and included in a war memorial building in Brisbane. The Australian government requested stones from each of the forty-eight states to honor American troops. In 1956, the Minnesota Highway Department proposed building a highway through a part of the old fort site known as the lower post. The highway’s cloverleaf would have encircled the round tower, cutting off access to it. Public concern sparked a successful movement to reroute the highway and restore the lower post. A team of archeologists excavated the Round Tower in 1965 and restored it to its 1820s appearance the following year. It has since stood among the restored and reconstructed buildings of Historic Fort Snelling, run by the Minnesota Historical Society.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/1024px-FortSnellingTower.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/round-tower-fort-snelling"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of West Publishing Company editorial offices, c.1920s.","author":[{"name":"Paul Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/paul-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"March 21, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"West Publishing Company","postbody":"The nation’s most innovative and most successful law-book-publishing company operated in downtown St. Paul from 1876 until 1992, when it moved to Eagan. In 1876, West Publishing Company ...","searchtext":"The nation’s most innovative and most successful law-book-publishing company operated in downtown St. Paul from 1876 until 1992, when it moved to Eagan. In 1876, West Publishing Company began publishing Minnesota State Supreme Court opinions; by 1887, its “reporter” system covered the whole country. In 1908, West introduced an indexing system for all American law. In 1975, it introduced Westlaw, a computerized legal research system. The company was sold to Thomson Reuters in 1996. John West (1852–1922) came to St. Paul in 1869, at age seventeen. The next year, he started in business as a salesman for a D. D. Merrill, a downtown St. Paul bookseller. In 1872, he went out on his own, selling law books to lawyers, mostly in Minnesota. West observed that lawyers wanted prompt access to the decisions of the Minnesota Supreme Court, but no system existed to publish and distribute them. In 1876, he invented one. It was called, at first, The Syllabi. When he expanded it to add the opinions of the Wisconsin Supreme Court in 1877, it became the North Western Reporter. This proved so successful that by 1887, West Publishing Company’s regional reporter system covered the entire United States. For reasons never revealed to the public, John West left the company in 1901. Control of the business passed to his older brother, Horatio West, and an early investor and executive, Charles W. Ames. Under their leadership, West expanded to publishing the opinions of all U.S. federal courts. Early in the twentieth century, West Publishing introduced its second innovation: a uniform indexing system for all American law, consisting of 412 main topics and 66,000 sub-topics. The system enabled a lawyer anywhere in the country with access to West’s reporters and indexes to find up-to-date court decisions on every point of law for every state and the federal courts. West’s offices and printing plant were built on the edge of the Mississippi River bluff in downtown St. Paul. They rose three stories above street level and descended six stories down, along the bluff side, to railroad tracks near the river’s edge. By the early twentieth century, West employed several hundred people in St. Paul as well as a nationwide sales staff. The business had two poles: editorial and production. The editorial side did the writing, research, and editing. The production side turned that work into countless tons of books and shipped them all over the country by rail. Though men dominated company leadership production, most employees were women. They did the clerical work, the proofreading, and the bookkeeping, and for most of West’s first century operated almost all the Linotype machines that made the printing plates. At the leadership level, West consistently promoted internally; every chief executive rose from within the company. Though unions had been present in West’s print shops in the early years, from about 1905 forward West became and remained a non-union company. Starting in 1900, it offered employees recreation facilities and clubs and, later, insurance against illness, disability, and death. Selected employees also received stock options. Over time, West Publishing expanded its array of titles to include state statutes and indexes, law school textbooks and treatises, and legal forms. By 1919, its catalog ran to 255 pages. Later, West became the official publisher of all United States statutes. West grew steadily throughout the twentieth century and dominated the law-book-publishing business nationwide. Its greatest business challenge came with the introduction of LexisNexis, a computerized legal research tool, by Mead Data Central in 1973. West countered with Westlaw in 1976. By this time, it had over two thousand employees in downtown St. Paul and needed still more space. In May 1974, West announced plans to build a new printing plant downtown, but it never did so. Instead, it began to acquire land in suburban Eagan. By 1990, those holdings had grown to 276 acres, and in July of that year West announced plans to move all of its St. Paul operations to Eagan. The move was completed in summer of 1992. In February of 1996, the Canadian company Thomson Corporation, later Thomson Reuters, bought West for $3.43 billion. The former West operations remained in Eagan.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Collection IV.8.16.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/west-publishing-company"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Clement Haupers in his studio, c.1930.","author":[{"name":"Katherine Goertz","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/katherine-goertz"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"March 16, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Haupers, Clement (1900–1982)","postbody":"Clement Bernard Haupers was a painter, printmaker, arts administrator, and arts educator active from the 1920s to the 1980s. He is best known for his directorship of the Minnesota Works ...","searchtext":"Clement Bernard Haupers was a painter, printmaker, arts administrator, and arts educator active from the 1920s to the 1980s. He is best known for his directorship of the Minnesota Works Progress Administration Federal Art Project and for his influence in the Minnesota art community. Haupers was born in St. Paul in 1900. In 1918, he began taking courses at the Minneapolis School of Art and joined the Art League of St. Paul, organized by the artist Clara Mairs. Haupers and Mairs started an unconventional relationship, which lasted until her death in 1963. For more than forty years they traveled, exhibited, and lived together as life partners. At the same time, Haupers pursued relationships with other women and men. Because of the difference in their ages and the ambiguity of their relationship, Mairs and Haupers remained always a bit of a Twin Cities scandal. In 1929, they established a home and studio in St. Paul’s Ramsey Hill neighborhood, a local artists’ enclave. The house itself belonged to Haupers while the land belonged to Mairs, so he had it moved from its original location on Randolph Avenue to Ramsey Hill. In 1923, with Mairs, Haupers traveled to Paris. The 1920s in Paris were known as Les Années Folles, the Crazy Years. It was a time and place of social and artistic experimentation. This was true especially in the studios, cafés, and nightclubs of the Montparnasse district, the center of Paris’s bohemian culture. Mairs and Haupers stayed in France for two years, attending classes held by notable artists such as the sculptor Émile-Antoine Bourdelle and the Cubist painter André Lhote. A photograph taken at the Académie Montparnasse in 1923 shows Haupers, seated on the floor, with a white tie. Mairs sits on the floor to his left. Haupers brought some of the style of Montparnasse to his work back in Minnesota. The 1926 work Two Girls, One Sailor shows the influence of Cubism and Jazz Age aesthetics in the angular faces and bodies and the strong shadows of the dancers, the violinist, and the sailor. The formal use of color and composition that Haupers developed in Paris can be seen throughout his works, from the angular red roofs of Provencale Landscape to the softer colors and trail of bright lights of View of Kellogg Boulevard From My Window. France also had an influence on other aspects of Haupers’ style. Works such as the drypoint print Three Graces show a decidedly French treatment of nudity and the body—slightly shocking to mid-century Minnesotan eyes. Haupers became the superintendent of the Fine Arts Department of the Minnesota State Fair in 1931, a position he held until 1942. Under the previous superintendent, these exhibitions featured works brought in from galleries in New York and Chicago. In 1931, a group of local artists protested this lack of local representation in one of Minnesota’s most important art exhibitions. During a meeting with Fair officials at St. Paul’s Lowry Hotel, Haupers was, in his words, “shoved” by fellow artist Cameron Booth into leading the department. Exhibitions under Haupers stressed the importance of the growing Minnesota art scene. Juried prize shows were reinstated, as were special exhibitions representing well-known and up-and-coming local artists. In 1935, the WPA Federal Art Project began supporting the visual arts, with Haupers as the director of the Minnesota division. Eighteen months later he became the regional director, overseeing the project in seven Midwestern states. In 1941, he moved to Washington, D.C., as the assistant to the national director, Holger Cahill. As the director of the Minnesota FAP, Haupers promoted public patronage of the visual arts and directed a program that sent art, artists, and art education all around Minnesota. He was a successful and indefatigable director and his devotion to securing projects and supporting young and established artists greatly influenced the growth of the arts in Minnesota. In addition to his work with the State Fair and the FAP, Haupers was well known as an art educator. He began teaching in 1930s at the St. Paul Arts and Crafts Center and the St. Paul Gallery and School of Art and continued teaching until his death. His influence on decades of young artists was as instrumental in developing the visual arts in Minnesota as his administrative roles. Haupers died on December 1, 1982, three months after his last solo exhibition.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/10341344.640x640.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/haupers-clement-1900-1982"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Clara Mairs, c.1930.","author":[{"name":"Katherine Goertz","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/katherine-goertz"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"March 14, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Mairs, Clara (1878–1963)","postbody":"Clara Gardner Mairs was a painter, printmaker, and decorative artist active from the 1910s to the 1960s. She is best known for her prints of children, animals, circus scenes, and Old ...","searchtext":"Clara Gardner Mairs was a painter, printmaker, and decorative artist active from the 1910s to the 1960s. She is best known for her prints of children, animals, circus scenes, and Old Testament stories, often with hints of satirical humor. According to her birth certificate, Mairs was born in Hastings on January 5, 1878. Although she insisted that this year was incorrect, she never provided an alternative year. Mairs received her early artistic training at the St. Paul Institute of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. In 1918, she organized the Art League of St. Paul to address the lack of figure models for local artists. It was likely at a League gathering that she met the artist Clement Haupers, who became her life partner. They had an unconventional relationship until her death. In 1923, Mairs and Haupers became part of the migration of international artists and writers to the cultural heart of Paris. The two stayed in France for two years, living, studying, and working among the artistic attractions of the fashionable Montparnasse district. Mairs attended classes in the district’s prestigious art schools, held by notable artists such as the sculptor Antoine Bourdelle and the Cubist painter André Lhote. A photograph taken in Lhote’s class in 1923 shows Mairs seated on the floor, wearing a white coat. Haupers sits to her right. Mairs and Haupers went back to Paris in 1928 to work with the printmaker Georges Gorvel. A year later, Mairs returned to Minnesota, where her idiosyncratic style and French-influenced nudes, animals, and scenes of Paris and the circus built her reputation as a printmaker. In 1929, she presented work at the Kennedy Galleries’ Comprehensive Exhibition of the Works of Living American Print Makers. She was also included in several publications, such as Fine Prints of the Year in 1930, 1932, and 1938. Leaping Leopards was especially well regarded and was reproduced in the 1930 edition of Fine Prints. The atmosphere of experimentation and the rigorous artistic education available in 1920s Paris noticeably affected Mairs’ artistic style, adding a new looseness in form and line. In Leaping Leopards, Mairs uses sinuous and jagged lines to create a sense of action. Perspective shifts and tilts throughout the image, especially around the boxes onto which the leopards leap. Tilted perspective and simplified forms were characteristic of Mairs’ work. Clara and Clem shows these simplified forms and Mairs’ equally characteristic pale color scheme. The painting also applies Mairs’ sense of artistic humor. Mairs stares directly at the viewer with a blank expression. Haupers mirrors her disinterested affect and body language. It is not a standard self-portrait or portrait of a loved one. In 1929, Mairs and Haupers established a home and studio in St. Paul’s Ramsey Hill neighborhood, an area considered quite bohemian for its popularity among artists and writers. The land on which the house stood was owned by Mairs; a house owned by Haupers was moved there from another location. Mairs and Haupers lived, worked, and exhibited together until her death on May 24, 1963. Mairs continued working and exhibiting throughout the 1940s and 1950s, including a major solo exhibition at the Art Center in La Jolla in 1949. In the 1950s, she returned to painting, and in 1961 she presented a solo exhibition of large-scale paintings at the St. Paul Gallery and School of Art. In the 1970s, several posthumous exhibitions of her work were held, primarily of her print work. She was a featured artist in the 2007 exhibition In Her Own Right: Minnesota’s First Generation of Women Artists at the Minnesota Museum of American Art.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/10247512.640x640.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/mairs-clara-1878-1963"},{"alt":"Color image of the the quadriga at the base of the Minnesota State Capitol dome, 2010. Photographed by Wikimedia Commons User Mulad (Mike Hicks).","author":[{"name":"Linda A. Cameron","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/linda-cameron"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"March 09, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Quadriga: |||The Progress of the State|||","postbody":"A gilded quadriga sculpture group titled |||The Progress of the State||| stands like a sentinel over the front façade of the Minnesota State Capitol. Architect Cass Gilbert commissioned Daniel ...","searchtext":"A gilded quadriga sculpture group titled |||The Progress of the State||| stands like a sentinel over the front façade of the Minnesota State Capitol. Architect Cass Gilbert commissioned Daniel Chester French, best known for the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., to do the work. He sculpted the chariot and human figures, and animal sculptor Edward Clark Potter created the horses. The quadriga (Latin for |||four-horse chariot|||) has greeted capitol visitors since its installation in December 1906. Gilbert drew inspiration for the third Minnesota State Capitol from the |||White City||| of the World||s Columbian Exposition, held in Chicago in 1893. His earliest drawings for the building included a quadriga sculpture group over the front entrance. Gilbert had seen a quadriga created by French for the Exposition and commissioned him to produce a similar sculpture for the capitol at a cost of $35,000. To stay within his limited budget, French created a steel frame covered with hammered copper sheets instead of casting the pieces in bronze. The quadriga measures twenty-one feet long, thirteen feet deep and stands twenty-five feet tall at its highest point. The estimated total weight of the group is four tons—two for the figures and two for the steel-framed base. Five pounds of tissue-thin, twenty-three-and-one-half-karat gold leaf applied over the copper gives the artwork its golden patina. Titled |||The Progress of the State,||| the sculpture group features a chariot pulled by four horses that represent the forces of nature: earth, wind, fire, and water. Two female figures holding the bridles control the forces of nature. They are |||Agriculture||| and |||Industry||| and together symbolize |||Civilization.||| The charioteer is |||Prosperity.||| He holds a staff bearing the name |||Minnesota||| in his left hand and cradles a horn of plenty filled with Minnesota produce in his right arm. The pineapples emerging from the hub of the chariot wheels are a symbol of hospitality. The forward motion of the group suggests the future progress of the state of Minnesota. The |||golden horses||| are a highlight for the thousands of students and other visitors who tour the capitol each year. When the artwork was new, however, Channing Seabury, vice president of the Board of Capitol Commissioners, thought the completed sculpture too bright and not in keeping with the design of the building. He advised Gilbert to tone it down. Gilbert originally specified a |||dull gold||| finish for the quadriga. French had intended the sculpture to have a wax coating containing a dark stain applied over the gold leaf to enhance the three-dimensionality of the piece and subdue the golden finish. Whether for economic reasons or simply an oversight, workers never applied the wax shading. Minnesota||s challenging climate has taken its toll on the quadriga over the years. The sculpture group underwent regilding in 1949 and again in 1979. In 1994, a thorough assessment of the figures by conservators revealed a substantial amount of structural damage. The state legislature provided $636,000 for a full restoration. On August 23, a crane removed each piece of the quadriga from the capitol roof and loaded them onto a flatbed truck bound for Fine Objects Conservation, Inc., in Westport, Connecticut. Conservator Linda Merck-Gould oversaw the work. The year-long restoration involved replacing the corroded steel supports inside each statue, repairing the copper sheeting, installing a new support system below the sculpture group, and applying a fresh layer of gold leaf. Following French||s original instructions, the restorers applied the wax coating containing a dark stain over the gold leaf to the recessed areas of each figure. The restored quadriga returned to its perch on June 21 the following year. During the total renovation of the Minnesota State Capitol, conservators brought the figure of the charioteer down again on September 23, 2014. Jensen Conservation Services Company in Omaha, Nebraska, restored the figure and workers reinstalled it on August 29, 2015. Each year, conservators examine the condition of the quadriga and make minor repairs or replace sections of the gold leaf as needed.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/1024px-Progress_of_the_State.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/quadriga-progress-state"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Young Mexican American women in Minnesota, c. 1950.","author":[{"name":"Jeff Kolnick","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/jeff-kolnick"}],"categoryTag":[],"date":"March 07, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Minnesotanos: Latino Journeys in Minnesota","postbody":"Since the early 1900s, Latinos have been a productive and essential part of Minnesota. Most of the earliest Minnesotanos were migrant farm workers from Mexico or Texas and faced obstacles ...","searchtext":"Since the early 1900s, Latinos have been a productive and essential part of Minnesota. Most of the earliest Minnesotanos were migrant farm workers from Mexico or Texas and faced obstacles to first-class citizenship that are still being addressed. They overcame the instability associated with migratory work by establishing stable communities in the cities and towns of Minnesota. Latinos faced, and still face, discrimination—both racial and the kinds common to all immigrants, migrants, and refugees. To overcome these obstacles, Latinos built institutions—from churches to unions to arts collectives to service organizations like CLUES and the LEDC—designed to create spaces for survival and organizing for first-class citizenship. The spread and success of these institutions have allowed for consequential organizing by Latinos for a visible and powerful place in Minnesota. Who are Latino and Latina Minnesotans? They are people with roots in Latin America—from many nations and with different experiences—who came to form an identity shaped by migrations, immigration, and struggles for first-class citizenship. Latino is a contested term and is best understood as an ongoing negotiation among the different groups that claim it. Since about one-third of the United States was once part of Mexico, many Latinos can trace their U.S. citizenship back to 1848, some ten years before Minnesota became a state. With the exception of Puerto Ricans, who are U.S. citizens by birth, there is considerable diversity of citizenship within all the other national groups that make up the category. In 2013, about 60 percent of Latinos in Minnesota were born in the United States. Indeed, many Latino families have within them people with different immigration status. Differences in religion, language, gender, sexuality, race, and class make Minnesota’s Latinos a rich and complex community. By far the largest and most established group of Latino Minnesotans is of Mexican heritage (70 percent). The next largest groups are from Puerto Rico (about 4.3 percent), Ecuador and El Salvador (2.9 percent each), and Guatemala (2.7 percent). Work, Immigration, and Migration Like most (im)migrants, Latinos moved to Minnesota looking for work. Historian Dionicio Valdés noted in 2005 that Mexicans in Minnesota have been largely working-class people. Though they came searching for a better life, only a few found one and stayed; the vast majority moved on and kept looking. What was true for Mexicans has been true for most other Latinos as well. The first Latino to make a permanent home in Minnesota was a musician, Luis Garzón. While touring with a Mexican orchestra in 1886, he fell ill in Minneapolis. After recovering, he fell in love with a Minnesotan woman and they made their life together in Minneapolis. Garzón’s case proved unique. Most Latinos arrived to work in the state’s extractive economies—especially agriculture, food processing, and transportation. More recently, they have worked in construction. Displaced by the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920) and later by poverty and instability (often caused or abetted by U.S. interventionism), Latinos were pulled to the U.S. by the promise of seasonal jobs and eventually permanent employment. Latinos moved to Minnesota haltingly at first. After 1990, their numbers increased. The sugar beet industry drove the initial Latino migration to Minnesota. During the early twentieth century, beet growers recruited Mexican and Tejano workers (betabeleros) to migrate north out of Texas and Mexico. Once in the United States, they helped with cultivation and harvest. With little paid work in the winter and facing considerable discrimination, most of them returned south every year. Historian Jim Norris wrote in 2009 of one immigrant’s experience bringing his family across the border. He had to pay an eight-dollar head tax for each of his family members. They endured being weighed, measured, washed like cattle, and photographed. After receiving a receipt for the head tax, they were allowed to cross the border. In this manner, more than two hundred thousand Mexicans, some of whom ventured north to Minnesota, legally entered the United States between 1920 and 1930. Men, women, and children alike did the hard work in the beet fields. It required working on one’s hands and knees when thinning the plants; bending over with a short-handled hoe when weeding; and stooping to harvest the four- to eight-pound beets by hand. All of this labor took place in the unpredictable Minnesota weather and in the company of mosquitoes. By 1928, more than seven thousand Mexican workers labored in the beet fields of Minnesota every year. Shortly after that, beet growers and American Crystal Sugar— a significant employer of Latinos— began to keep the migrant workers closer to Minnesota in order to save money and create a regular supply of labor. Soon, colonies of Mexican migrants established themselves in St. Paul and Minneapolis. There, they found substandard housing, limited work, and unfriendly locals. Some men found work at meat-packing plants in South St. Paul or on the railroad lines in Inver Grove Heights and Minneapolis. Most women could only find jobs as domestic help. Between 1930 and 1960, Mexican workers in the United States suffered forced deportations (repatriation), once during the Great Depression due to a glut of workers and again in the 1950s to deport undocumented immigrants. There is evidence that this impacted some Mexican residents in St. Paul. During World War II, the Bracero Program—a form of government-sponsored, un-free contract labor from Mexico—reversed the trend, but forced deportations began again after the war. After 1990, the Hispanic population in Minnesota rose from nearly 53,000 to more than 270,000. (Hispanic is a Census category which includes Latinos as defined above and people from Spain.) As in the past, migration was tied to work. But while migrant farm work drove the early comers, food processing, manufacturing, service sector work, and construction attracted more recent Latino migrants to Minnesota. By the 1990s, the Latino community of Minneapolis began to grow rapidly. Soon, it surpassed that of St Paul. Urban churches and commercial districts were transformed by the growing numbers of Latinos. This also happened in many rural places, such as Worthington, Willmar, Pelican Rapids, St. James, Le Center, and Madelia. In those communities, Latino families helped reinvigorate towns and schools. In the 2010s, Minnesota features large clusters of Latino families near meat- and poultry-packing facilities. More recent migrants are entrepreneurial and have started businesses all over the state. And though the vast bulk of Latinos remain working class, there are increasing numbers who have advanced degrees. They work in business, the law, government, nonprofits, education, the media, the arts, and healthcare. Institution Building and Culture Once Latinos began settling in Minnesota, they established institutions that helped them survive. In the process, they transformed the state. Among the earliest were five West Side St. Paul organizations founded by Mexicans: Luis Garzón’s grocery store, the Anáhuac Mutual Benefit and Recreation Society (Sociedad Mutua Benéficia Recreativa Anáhuac), Our Lady of Guadalupe Mission, the Guadalupanas, and the Congregation of the Sacred Heart. Established sometime in the early 1920s, Garzón’s “tienda” was a place for people to meet, shop, and speak in their own language. There, they also found foods and other reminders of home. In 1928, the St. Paul Pioneer Press reported that, sooner or later, every Mexican who stayed for any length of time in St. Paul visited the store. The Anáhuac Society, founded in 1922, provided a safe place for immigrants to gather. It offered advice about the neighborhood, announced employment opportunities, and nurtured the local culture. For dues-paying members, it also provided sickness and funeral benefits. Eight years later, the Guild of Catholic Women issued a report that led to the founding of the first Mexican mission in Minnesota. In 1931, they celebrated the first Spanish-language mass in the state at Our Lady of Guadalupe. Later that year, a group of West Side women formed the Guadalupanas, a service organization that supported both the church and the local Mexican community. By 1934, the men of the mission founded the Congregation of the Sacred Heart. Together, these organizations became spaces where Mexican immigrants were not only safe but also surrounded by familiar sights, sounds, smells, and tastes. In a foreign land, they helped foster community amidst the challenges of poverty, isolation, and racial discrimination. There, Latinos could speak their language, dance to familiar music, worship in accustomed ways, purchase ingredients to cook foods from home, and find fellowship with their compatriots (paisanos). Around the same time, an institution took on an outsized role within the local Latino population. Neighborhood House, a long-established settlement house serving immigrants on St. Paul’s West Side, welcomed newly arrived Latinos. It provided space for the Anáhuac Society and helped the newcomers navigate a strange land. Similar mutual-aid societies created by Mexicans in the early years of the twentieth century are being recreated in twenty-first-century Minnesota by Latino immigrants from Central and South America. As these institutions matured, Latino cultural expressions took on a more public face. In 1939, St. Paul witnessed the first of many Fiestas Patrias, holidays that celebrated Mexican Independence. The celebrations included a parade that traveled from the West Side to Downtown and back. Its route passed through Harriet Island, where there were musical performances, dance, and traditional foods prepared by the Guadalupanas. Alphonso de León, Sr., a Mexican migrant from Texas who came to work the beet fields in Minnesota and settled in St. Paul in 1929, remembered celebrating Las Fiestas Patrias so that Mexicans would not forget their native land. More visible manifestations of culture emerged when local people, with their own labor, built Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in the 1930s and rebuilt it in the 1961. Spanish-language media—radio, print, and television—expanded and led to the growth of a Spanish-language ad business. All of these intuitions and cultural outlets would play a role in the ongoing fight for equal economic opportunity. Only after stable communities emerged were Latinos able to build institutions of their own. At the same time, they formed meaningful alliances with the majority population that could serve as a necessary foundation in struggles for first-class citizenship. Struggles for First-Class Citizenship During the New Deal, the local labor movement started recruiting Mexican and Tejano workers. Historian Dionicio Valdés has noted that the AFL and the CIO organized the beet workers in St Paul and Minneapolis and quickly convinced most workers in both cities to join the union. This drive sparked hostility among the beet growers and American Crystal Sugar. In the 1950s, two national organizations began chapters in Minnesota: the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) and the American GI Forum. Both organizations were devoted to uplifting and assisting the local community. Neither was particularly militant, but both connected Minnesotanos to larger national movements and contributed to community stability and pride. The real struggle for equal rights and first-class citizenship coincided with the rise of the Chicano Movement in Minnesota in the 1960s and 1970s and continues in the twenty-first century. The term “Chicano” has derogatory origins but was appropriated by Brown Power activists in the 1960s and 1970s. It refers to a Mexican American identity and to a movement for social justice and cultural autonomy. In Minnesota, the Chicano Movement had its origins in the destruction and then rebuilding of the St Paul West Side community. For decades, that city’s Lower West Side, or the Flats, had been the heart of Minnesota’s Mexican community. In the 1960s, the Flats were slated for “urban renewal” and subsequently destroyed. It was during the reconstruction of the West Side community—amid national currents of Latino activism and sparked by the United Farm Worker strikes and a national grape boycott—that the Chicano Movement was born in Minnesota. The Chicano Movement took many forms. Brown Berets worked to create safe, drug-free streets on the West Side. Grass roots organizing led to the opening of La Clinica, a community health clinic for those who have difficulty accessing traditional health care, in 1969. Artists painted murals in St Paul streets and alleys that not only beautified Latino neighborhoods but, in their creation and in the stories they told, reinforced pride and insisted on inclusion. Chicano activism led to the creation of Aztec and folkloric dance troops and Latino theater companies that used their art to build community and share stories. In rural Minnesota, the Chicano activists addressed the challenges faced by farm workers and their families beginning in the late 1960s. In 1997, Centro Campesino was organized in Southeast Minnesota. The group set out to provide an organizing space and basic services for rural Latinos while advocating for better living and working conditions. Some of the most significant achievements of the Chicano Movement in Minnesota resulted from student activism. This effort led to the creation of the Department of Chicano–Latino Studies at the University of Minnesota (1971) and a minor in Chicano/a studies at St. Cloud State University (1995). Reluctant administrators created these programs and provided increased levels of support services for Latino students, faculty, and staff only after boisterous demonstrations and the occupation of Morrill Hall at the University of Minnesota, as well as a seven-day hunger strike at St. Cloud State University. In 1977, Conrado “Conrad” Vega became the first Latino to serve in the Minnesota Legislature, where he represented his Dakota County district in the senate until 1986. Edwina Garcia became the first Latina elected to the legislature in 1991 and served her Hennepin County district until 1998. In 1978, the Chicano Latino Affairs Council (renamed the Minnesota Council on Latino Affairs in 2015) was created as an official state agency to advise the governor and the legislature on issues of importance to the Latino community. It is worth noting that, given their small numbers, Puerto Rican Minnesotans have been particularly adept at gaining political office, at the legislative, county, and local levels. The political power of Latinos continues to grow in Minnesota, with men and women serving at all levels of government. We can understand much about Latino Minnesotans by looking at two organizations: CLUES (Comunidades Latinas Unidas en Servicio) and the LEDC (the Latino Economic Development Center). CLUES emerged in 1977 from the vision of a Latino graduate student who wanted to provide culturally and linguistically appropriate social services for the Latino population of the Twin Cities. At first, CLUES was an association of professional Latinos committed to the community. In 1981, it incorporated and hired an initial staff of four employees committed to bilingual and bicultural service delivery to Latino clients. Since then, CLUES has grown to include over ninety employees earning living wages and six hundred volunteers. It houses the Mexican consulate and provides services for thousands of Minnesotans each year, with offices in St. Paul, Minneapolis, and West St. Paul. In 1987, CLUES helped to form HACER, a community-based research organization affiliated with Ramsey County, Metropolitan State University, and the University of Minnesota. CLUES provides adult and youth education, a myriad of health care programs, citizenship training, a referral service, and elder housing, among other programs. Since its founding, CLUES has been an essential resource for Latino Minnesotans and for all Minnesotans seeking to understand and engage with Latinos. Like so much in the Latino community, the LEDC began when a small group of community members formed an institution deeply connected to culture. Sagrado Corazon de Jesus (Sacred Heart of Jesus) Catholic Church in South Minneapolis opened its doors in 1994. The small congregation immediately committed itself to the spiritual, social, and economic development of its community. With experience, congregants began to focus on economic self-sufficiency as a route out of poverty and toward inclusion. To that end, they began to seek allies and funds to open Mercado Central on Lake Street. The market opened in 1999 and remains a hub of economic and cultural activity for Latinos in Minnesota. In 2003, the LEDC was formed. In the 2010s, the LEDC has maintained its focus on economic self-sufficiency by assisting entrepreneurial Latinos. Its work has helped dozens of business, from auto repair shops to a tortilla factory, begin and expand. The LEDC also manages a successful scholarship project for Latino students and many endeavors in rural Minnesota. Like the early institution builders on the West Side some seventy years earlier, the LEDC represents progress though community organization and cultural self-knowledge. Latino workers had a mixed relationship with organized labor until the early 2000s. Progressive elements in the labor movement, led by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU, active in home healthcare, janitorial work, etc.), UNITE-HERE (hotels, restaurants, airports, textiles, etc.), United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) (meatpacking, grocery stores, etc.), and Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en la Lucha (CTUL, an organization of low-wage service sector workers) found willing partners in the Latino community. Together, they struggled for workplace justice, immigration reform, a living wage, and access to drivers’ licenses for undocumented Minnesotans. As the Minnesota working class has become diverse, elements of the labor movement have worked to become more inclusive. Latino organizing and activism continue in our own time. On April 9, 2006, thirty-five thousand Latinos and their allies gathered at the state capitol to demand comprehensive immigration reform. Organized within the Latino community through word of mouth and utilizing Spanish language media, the rally shocked most Anglo Minnesotans with its size, scope, and degree of organization. The event marked the maturity of Latino political power in the state. The struggle for immigration reform remains a major issue. Significant organization is being done in the state by student “Dreamers”—Latinos who moved to Minnesota as children without documents and seek to regularize their immigration status and that of their parents. Since 2008, organizations like Mujeres en Liderazgo and Mesa Latina have organized around the state to improve the lives of Latinos. Since 2015, they have been working to gain access to drivers’ licenses for undocumented Minnesotans. Editor’s note: Words in Spanish are gendered; Latinas are the female equivalents of Latinos. For the sake of simplicity, this essay uses the term Latino or Latinos to refer to both men and women.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/GT1.8 r50_0.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/minnesotanos-latino-journeys-minnesota"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Fort Ripley, 1862.","author":[{"name":"Jack K. Johnson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/jack-k-johnson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"March 02, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186622056203,"name":"1792–1861 (Expansion and Reform)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Fort Ripley","postbody":"Fort Ripley was a nineteenth-century army outpost located on the upper Mississippi River in north-central Minnesota. It was situated near government agencies for the Ho-Chunk and Ojibwe. By ...","searchtext":"Fort Ripley was a nineteenth-century army outpost located on the upper Mississippi River in north-central Minnesota. It was situated near government agencies for the Ho-Chunk and Ojibwe. By its very presence, however, the fort spurred immigration into the area by whites. Fort Ripley typified remote army posts during the mid-nineteenth century. The buildings were wooden, facing a quadrangle. It was on a navigable river and an important supply route. It was geographically remote from European-American population centers, but American Indians lived nearby. The Fort was built because the Ho-Chunk (Winnebago) had been moved from northeastern Iowa to a new reservation near Long Prairie, necessitating a military post nearby to guard the reservation and administer annuity payments. The government also hoped that the Ho-Chunk, and the fort, would serve as a buffer between the warring Eastern Dakota and Ojibwe. Construction began in November 1848. In April 1849, Company A of the Sixth United States Infantry arrived to take up quarters under the command of Captain John B. Todd. The post, initially named Fort Marcy, was briefly renamed Fort Gaines and in 1850 was renamed again after Brigadier General Eleazar W. Ripley, a distinguished soldier from the War of 1812. With occasional exceptions, daily life at Fort Ripley was uneventful. The geographic isolation, summer mosquitoes, and long, cold winters challenged everyone on post. Twice each year, the soldiers marched to the Long Prairie Agency to supervise government annuity payments of money and goods to the Ho-Chunk and then did the same for the Ojibwe at the Crow Wing Agency. In 1855, the Ho-Chunk were moved again—this time to a reservation in Blue Earth County. Thinking the post was no longer needed, the army withdrew the garrison in 1857. Almost immediately, disturbances broke out between white immigrants and some Ojibwe, prompting reactivation of the fort. Typical of nineteenth century army posts, Fort Ripley’s military reservation was huge. It encompassed nearly ninety square miles on the east side of the Mississippi, plus only a single square mile on the west side to house the garrison. This unusual configuration, chosen because the Ho-Chunk reservation abutted the west side of the river, caused much agitation among those who wanted the unused east side opened to homesteaders. The army agreed in 1857 to sell it in public auction, but local farmers, by mutual pact, underbid the property. The Secretary of War annulled the sale. In the meantime, however, many purchasers had begun to build homes and farm the land. The resulting confusion and litigation took twenty years to untangle. Military activity on the post intensified during the Civil War (1861–1865). Army regulars—sent south to fight Confederates—were replaced by companies detached from Minnesota’s volunteer regiments. Despite an undercurrent of mistrust, relations between European-Americans and Ojibwes had largely been peaceful in Minnesota. That nearly changed when the U.S.–Dakota War of 1862 broke out. Seizing upon that conflict as an opportunity to gain power and leverage for redress of grievances, Ojibwe leader Bagone-giizhig (Hole-in-the Day II) threatened to launch a simultaneous war in northern Minnesota. Fearful whites in the area flocked to Fort Ripley for protection. Additional soldiers were rushed in and the post was readied for battle. The threat was defused, thanks to cool-headed negotiating and the garrison’s strengthened defenses. For the next three years Fort Ripley became a base for western military campaigns that came on the heels of the U.S.-Dakota War. Activity reached its peak during the winter of 1863–1864, when four hundred cavalry troops and five hundred horses were quartered at the fort. On a sub-zero night in January 1877, fire destroyed three buildings. Believing the post had outlived its purpose, the War Department decided to permanently close it rather than rebuild. The troops moved out that summer. The buildings stood abandoned for many years. By 1910, the ruins of the powder magazine, built of stone, were all that remained. In 1929, the State of Minnesota announced that a new National Guard training site would be built in central Minnesota. The land had to be purchased and, purely by coincidence, the remains of old Fort Ripley were within the proposed boundaries. The new post—Camp Ripley—took its name from the old.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/MM7.7F p9.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/fort-ripley"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of the Street Railway Company strike, 1917.","author":[{"name":"Linda A. Cameron","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/linda-cameron"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"February 29, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Twin Cities Streetcar Strike, 1917","postbody":"When the Twin City Rapid Transit Company (TCRTC) refused to recognize the newly formed streetcar men||s union, employees took to the streets of St. Paul and Minneapolis in the fall of 1917 ...","searchtext":"When the Twin City Rapid Transit Company (TCRTC) refused to recognize the newly formed streetcar men||s union, employees took to the streets of St. Paul and Minneapolis in the fall of 1917 to fight for their civil liberties. The labor dispute challenged state jurisdiction and reached the White House before finding settlement the following year. The streetcar drivers of TCRTC formed a union when the company||s president, Horace Lowry, refused to meet their demand for better working conditions and a three-cents-per-hour raise for all employees. When the drivers threatened to strike, Lowry granted the raise but fired fifty-seven men identified as union agitators. The streetcar men, angered by Lowry||s anti-union stance, walked off the job at 1:00 a.m. on October 6. Rioting erupted in St. Paul that night with attacks on abandoned streetcars. Bracing for trouble, police in Minneapolis quickly deployed six hundred armed deputies of the Minneapolis Civilian Auxiliary to patrol the streets. Little damage occurred in that city. The Minnesota Commission of Public Safety (MCPS) stepped in on October 9 to prevent a general strike across trade unions and ordered the streetcar men to return to work. The commission reviewed the cases of the employees discharged for participating in the strike. It directed the company to reinstate them, and eventually forty-nine men returned to work. In defiance, Lowry organized the Trainmen||s Cooperative and Protective Association for loyal employees. Members received special buttons. The union countered by increasing recruitment efforts and issuing its own buttons. The buttons heightened the hostility between factions. The MCPS appointed a panel to review the union||s complaints. The panel recommended a ban on the wearing of both union and nonunion buttons and that all union activity on company property should cease. TCRTC posted the recommendations on November 21 and threatened to fire all who failed to comply. An estimated eight hundred men saw this action as a lockout and sought mediation. When Lowry and Governor J.A.A. Burnquist refused to negotiate, the union appealed to the federal government. On December 2, the St. Paul and Minneapolis Trades and Labor assemblies held a mass meeting in Rice Park. Labor leaders urged peaceful demonstrations, but an angry mob again attacked St. Paul streetcars. Windows were broken and fifty nonunion drivers were injured. City officials called in the Home Guard to keep order. Two days later, G. W. Ames of the MCPS met with Secretary of War Newton D. Baker, acting Secretary of Labor Louis F. Post, and Samuel Gompers of the American Federation of Labor in Washington to review the situation. They urged Governor Burnquist to suspend the MCPS order and reopen the case. There was growing concern that a wide-spread strike would impede the country||s ability to meet wartime demands. Burnquist held firm, insisting that reopening the case would weaken the state||s authority. On December 5, as many as fifteen thousand people assembled for a protest meeting in Minneapolis. They postponed the vote for a general strike until December 11 while labor leaders traveled to Washington, D.C., to meet with Gompers. Gompers brought the case to the attention of President Woodrow Wilson. The president, the secretary of labor, and the secretary of war refused to intervene, however, unless the situation spiraled out of the state||s control. E. G. Hall, President of the State Federation of Labor, was disappointed at the failure of the bid for federal intervention. He called for a general strike to begin at 10:00 a.m. on December 13. The strike lasted less than four hours. It was called off with the announcement that President Wilson||s Mediation Commission was coming to Minnesota to conduct hearings. Union leaders agreed to retract the order for a general strike. On February 14, the President||s commission recommended that TCRTC reinstate all union men at their pre-strike status and wages. It tasked the MCPS with enforcement, but both Lowry and the MCPS refused to comply. On June 12, the State Board of Arbitration (SBA) ordered TCRTC to follow the federal commission||s recommendations. Lowry again refused, and the streetcar men appealed to the newly created National War Labor Board. The strike ended on October 8 when the national board ruled that settlement of the streetcar dispute should remain under state authority, upholding the SBA||s order.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/HG3.18 p8 Strike image_1.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246055,"name":"Labor","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246053,"name":"Transportation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/twin-cities-streetcar-strike-1917"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Maud Hart Lovelace, Minnesota author, c.1928.","author":[{"name":"Andrea Reidell and Wendy Jones","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/andrea-reidell-and-wendy-jones"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"February 24, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Lovelace, Maud Palmer Hart (1892–1980)","postbody":"Minnesota native Maud Hart Lovelace captured her Mankato childhood in her Betsy-Tacy series of thirteen books. During her career, she authored six historical novels for adults as well as ...","searchtext":"Minnesota native Maud Hart Lovelace captured her Mankato childhood in her Betsy-Tacy series of thirteen books. During her career, she authored six historical novels for adults as well as five additional books for children. Maud Palmer Hart was born in Mankato in 1892. Her interest in becoming a writer was evident from an early age. When she was ten years old, her father privately published a book of poetry she created, and at nineteen she published her first short story in the Los Angeles Times. Hart kept diaries and compiled scrapbooks to document her childhood adventures with family and friends. These records would later form the basis for her Betsy-Tacy series of children||s books. Following her graduation from Mankato High School in 1910, Hart attended the University of Minnesota, where she worked on the Minnesota Daily and wrote for the Minnesota Magazine, but she did not graduate. Instead, she spent nearly a year traveling in Europe. She married writer Delos Lovelace in Minneapolis in 1917. Following his return from military service in Europe in World War I, the Lovelaces moved to New York City. He worked as a reporter, and she continued to write. Maud Lovelace published the first of six historical novels, The Black Angels, in 1926. Her second book, Early Candlelight, appeared in 1929. The book explores the lives of fur traders, Ojibwe and Dakota Indians, and soldiers at Fort Snelling. She coauthored her final historical novel, Gentleman from England, a story about English immigrants living in Martin County, with her husband, in 1937. Lovelace published thirteen Betsy-Tacy books between 1940 and 1955. The books follow the adventures of Betsy Ray and her friends. The action is set in the fictional town of Deep Valley, from the 1890s to post-World War I. Maud modeled Deep Valley on Mankato. She based the character of Betsy on herself and transformed her best friend, Frances |||Bick||| Kenney, into |||Tacy.||| The Betsy-Tacy series comments on fashion, music, theater, foods, social etiquette, and architecture. The books provide a detailed account of the late-Victorian culture and daily life that characterized Lovelace||s childhood. Like Betsy’s, Lovelace||s childhood home had no indoor plumbing. For entertainment, Lovelace and her family sang together in the parlor as her sister Kathleen played the piano, or read aloud from their favorite books and poems. Maud and her friends played with paper dolls, left |||calling cards||| at neighbors|| homes, dreamed up plays, and visited Heinze||s Ice Cream Parlor. They longed to wear the long, grown-up dresses sported by their older sisters, just like the characters in the books. Lovelace grew up during a time of tremendous change and growth in the United States, and her books reflect those changes. American demographics changed rapidly as immigration to the United States reached a record high during the turn of the century. Newcomers from southern and eastern Europe brought diverse languages, food, and customs to American cities. African Americans migrated in high numbers from the rural south to the urban north. American women achieved the right to vote. Automobiles began to replace the horse and buggy. New inventions, such as typewriters, moving pictures, and radio broadcasts, altered the way Americans worked, lived, and played during the author||s childhood. The Lovelaces had two children. Their first child, Thomas, born in 1925, did not survive. Their second child, daughter Merian, was born in 1931. After many years in New York, the Lovelaces retired to Claremont, California, where Maud died in 1980. Her grave is in Glenwood Cemetery in her hometown of Mankato. The Betsy-Tacy novels continue to be highly regarded for their rich historical detail and for their depiction of strong, creative, independent girls.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/por 11056 p1 MHL - 1928.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/lovelace-maud-palmer-hart-1892-1980"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of a Grand Avenue Streetcar, St. Paul, c.1910","author":[{"name":"Linda A. Cameron","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/linda-cameron"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"February 22, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Twin City Rapid Transit Company and Electric Streetcars","postbody":"Horse car and cable car systems in the Twin Cities spurred urban growth and gave residents more mobility. The coming of the electric streetcar in 1889 had an even greater impact. With cars ...","searchtext":"Horse car and cable car systems in the Twin Cities spurred urban growth and gave residents more mobility. The coming of the electric streetcar in 1889 had an even greater impact. With cars that could travel faster and farther, the system grew to become one of the nation||s finest public transportation networks before the dominance of automobiles and buses in the 1950s. The first electric streetcars were developed in the mid-1880s. The new mode of transportation caught on. By 1902, there were 21,902 miles of street railway tracks throughout the United States, with 97 percent of all lines powered by electricity. The electric streetcar earned the nickname |||trolley||| for the trolley wheel that ran along the overhead wires to power the car. When Thomas Lowry assumed control of both Minneapolis and St. Paul streetcar companies in 1886, he was reluctant to adopt electrification. The Minneapolis City Council forced Lowry||s hand when it approved the construction of an experimental line by the Thomas-Houston Electric Company. The city mandated that Lowry||s company purchase the line if the demonstration proved successful. Lowry agreed, and the new line entered service on Fourth Avenue South in Minneapolis on December 24, 1889. Archbishop John Ireland encouraged Lowry to build the first electric lines in St. Paul. The St. Paul City Railway||s first electrified route ran on Grand Avenue on February 22, 1890. Soon , a second line began service on Randolph Avenue. The public quickly embraced the new technology, but there was speculation about its safety. People were afraid of sparks flying from the wheels and worried that the wires overhead would attract lightning strikes. Drivers of horse-drawn vehicles thought their horses would be electrocuted if they attempted to cross the streetcar tracks. Skeptics believed that the first snowstorm would put the electric cars out of business. The popularity of the lines grew In spite of these concerns. By 1892, the newly incorporated Twin City Rapid Transit Company (TCRT) had converted all horse car routes to electric operation. The extensive three-year conversion required heavier, wider track, and wider streetcars. New power stations were needed, the first of which was located at the corner of Third Avenue North and Second Street in Minneapolis. The cost of conversion for the two cities totaled $6 million. The first interurban route began operation in December 1890, following the old horse car line down University Avenue. The Como–Harriet line opened in July 1898. It ran seventeen miles, from Como Park in St Paul to Lake Harriet in Minneapolis, and cost a dime—two zones at a nickel each. In 1906, the Selby–Lake Street line began service on a route crossing the newly built Lake Street bridge over the Mississippi River. The Snelling–Minnehaha line opened in 1909. That year, TCRT bought the St. Louis Park and Robbinsdale lines, expanding operations to the suburbs. To meet the power needs of the rapidly developing new system, TCRT leased two power stations near the dam just below St. Anthony Falls. The growth of the streetcar system gave riders convenient access to destinations from Wildwood Amusement Park in White Bear Lake to Lake Minnetonka, where it connected with a fleet of express and excursion boats. Electric streetcars reached their heyday in the 1920s, when TCRT had more than nine hundred cars running on more than 523 miles of track. Ridership peaked in 1920. That year, the company carried a record 238 million passengers, in spite of an increase in the fare from five to six cents—the first increase in TCRT||s history. Improved roads and the growing popularity of automobiles began to cut into streetcar revenues by the late 1920s. In 1929, TCRT shut down some of its lines and raised the fare to ten cents. To cover its losses, the company purchased local bus companies and a controlling interest in Yellow Cab. Diversifying gave TCRT a monopoly on public transportation in the Twin Cities. Encouraged by increased ridership during World War II, one hundred forty-one sleek new President||s Conference Committee cars entered service between 1945 and 1949. These were short-lived. Rapidly declining ridership in the post-war years prompted new TCRT management to replace streetcars with buses. The last streetcar made a final ceremonial run in Minneapolis on June 19, 1954.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/MNopedia/MNopedia%202025/10322076.640x640.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246079,"name":"Cities and Towns","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246053,"name":"Transportation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/twin-city-rapid-transit-company-and-electric-streetcars"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of a six-bench open car and trailer on the Selby Avenue line, St. Paul, 1894.","author":[{"name":"Linda A. Cameron","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/linda-cameron"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"February 17, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Cable Cars of the Minneapolis and St. Paul Street Railway Companies","postbody":"Before Minneapolis and St. Paul upgraded their street railway systems from plodding horse cars to modern electric trolleys, both cities flirted with the use of cable cars. Costly to build, ...","searchtext":"Before Minneapolis and St. Paul upgraded their street railway systems from plodding horse cars to modern electric trolleys, both cities flirted with the use of cable cars. Costly to build, only two lines operated in St. Paul before both cities converted to electric streetcar systems. Electrification of the street railways in St Paul and Minneapolis came hard upon the heels of the horse car system. The steam-powered cable car was developed in San Francisco in 1873 and was adopted by several larger cities around the country by the mid-1880s. Cable cars could carry more passengers, and could travel up to ten miles per hour—four miles per hour faster than the old horse cars. The cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis were looking for ways to improve the efficiency of their public transportation systems. Like San Francisco, the hills of St. Paul posed a serious obstacle to the expansion of the horse car system and service. Both city councils showed interest in the use of cable cars, although the Minneapolis council was skeptical about the efficiency of both cable and electric systems. Thomas Lowry, who had taken control of the Minneapolis and St. Paul street railway systems in 1886, was not yet convinced that either cable or electric systems would be an improvement. In 1887, ten representatives from both city councils made a tour of streetcar lines in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Cleveland, and Richmond. Their mission was to judge whether cable or electric cars would be the best system for the Twin Cities. St. Paul was the first to have cable line construction mandated by its city council. The initial line ran from St. Albans to Broadway via Selby Avenue, Third Street, and Fourth Street. A car barn and steam powerhouse were located at Selby Avenue and Dale Street. The line opened for passenger service on January 16, 1888 with a total of twelve cars. A tragic mishap occurred during the first days of operation, when a grip failed while a car was coming down a hill. The car jumped the tracks, killing one person and injuring several others. Undeterred, a second cable line opened along East Seventh Street, running from Wabasha Street to Duluth Avenue, in January 1889. The cost of both lines came to more than $1.5 million (approximately $39 million in 2014), and was paid for by bonds issued in 1887. The bond debt was not retired until 1947, long after the cable cars were gone. The Minneapolis City Council was still debating between cable and electric streetcars as the best option. In the summer of 1889, the council ordered the Minneapolis Street Railway Company to install six cable car lines. The company purchased materials at great expense, including the necessary steam engines. But the lines were never built. Shortly after approving the order for cable lines, the council passed a resolution to convert Fourth Avenue||s horsecar line into an experimental electric line. The line, built by the Thomson-Houston Electric Company, debuted on December 24, 1889. Its success convinced the city council that electric cars would be a better choice. Plans for the cable lines were scrapped. The Minneapolis Street Railway, under Lowry||s direction, turned its attention to building an electric railway. By 1892, all Minneapolis lines had been converted. St. Paul||s cable car lines were not in service long before they too were converted to electricity. The East Seventh Street line was electrified in 1893, and the Selby Avenue line in 1898. The conversion to the new system for both cities meant a complete overhaul, including new tracks and new cars. The total cost came to $6 million.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/HE4.1 r13 - Open cable car - Selby Ave. - 1894.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246053,"name":"Transportation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/cable-cars-minneapolis-and-st-paul-street-railway-companies"},{"alt":"Color image of The New Highway #61, c.1939. Watercolor on paper by Clement Haupers.","author":[{"name":"Katherine Goertz","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/katherine-goertz"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"February 10, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"WPA Federal Art Project, 1935–1943","postbody":"The Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project was a New Deal relief program to fund the visual arts. From 1935 to 1943, the Minnesota division of the FAP employed local artists to ...","searchtext":"The Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project was a New Deal relief program to fund the visual arts. From 1935 to 1943, the Minnesota division of the FAP employed local artists to create thousands of works in many media and styles, from large works of public art to posters and paintings. In 1935, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) was created by Franklin D. Roosevelt. This sweeping plan, one of the |||alphabet agencies” of the New Deal, was intended to employ millions of jobless Americans to carry out public works projects like constructing buildings, bridges, and roads. But the WPA didn’t just employ people to construct bridges and buildings; it also funded visual artists, writers, musicians, and performers. From 1935 to 1943, the WPA’s Federal Art Project (FAP) provided work and support for visual artists in many media. According to Holger Cahill, the FAP’s national director, the ultimate goal of the project was to integrate the fine and practical arts with the daily life of American communities. While supporting Minnesota artists was at the center of the FAP, the program didn’t only give funding to artists to create artworks. The project had three other goals: to promote and support art education, to produce research in art, and to focus on how art could serve Minnesota communities. Art production, the largest area of the FAP, was split into several divisions. Hundreds of works of art were created, in media including painting, sculpture, printmaking, murals, and photography. Some, like prints and oil and watercolor paintings, were made for exhibitions in galleries. Others, like large-scale murals, were made to enhance Minnesota buildings. There was also a division for posters and educational art. Poster artists designed and produced works that promoted public health and safety programs, advertised concerts and plays, and publicized the accomplishments of the WPA. Most FAP artists worked in a realistic style called American Regionalism. Their techniques, however, ranged from the scrupulously realistic to a looser, freer, more impressionistic style. The subject matter was mostly “the American scene.” Artists created landscapes and scenes of farms and working farmers. They painted cityscapes and Minnesota’s industries—lumber mills, factories, and iron mines–as well as its people. Many of Minnesota’s best-known artists were painters on canvas and paper: Clement Haupers, Dorothea Lau, Syd Fossum, Dewey Albinson, Cameron Booth, and Elof Wedin, to name just a few. Dorothea Lau’s Workers (1934–1941) is a quintessential FAP artwork. In her painting, workers (like those who were then building WPA projects) are painted in the soft strokes and realistic style typical of American Regionalism. Haupers, the director of the FAP in Minnesota, was well known for his colorful, expressive landscapes. Works like The New Highway #61 seem to pull the viewer into the frame of the painting and down a newly constructed road. In The Meeting, oil painter and printmaker Syd Fossum illustrated the role of the “ordinary man” in the Minnesota community. Printmaking was also important. Stanford Fenelle, Alexander Oja, and Clara Mairs were some of the best known printmakers. Oja’s Filling Stations is a good example of an FAP cityscape. Many FAP murals were also inspired by Minnesota. The mural program was intended to fulfill the FAP’s goal to serve local communities. It brought art to wide audiences and built the public’s awareness of art through installing large works of art in public places. Many of the themes in these murals drew inspiration and imagery from Minnesota themes. Subjects were generally optimistic and focused on straightforward scenes of everyday Minnesota life and history—landscapes, farming and farmers, workers, and Native Americans. Among the artists that painted murals were David Granahan, Miriam Ibling, John Socha, Elsa Jemne, Lucia Wiley, John Norton, André Boratko, and Richard Haines. Some FAP murals in Minnesota remained on display in government buildings, schools, zoos, and historical sites for decades. Granahan’s best-known work, painted with his wife, Lolita, in 1938, was for the St. Cloud Post Office. The mural, depicting the Stearns County granite industry, was aquired by the Stearns History Museum in 1979. After restoration, it was put on museum display in 1989. In the trophy room of the Minneapolis Armory are Lucia Wiley||s History of the National Guard, and Early Minnesota by Elsa Jemne. John Norton, a Chicago painter, depicted the founding and growth of St. Paul in four murals in the third floor Council Chambers of St. Paul City Hall and Ramsey County Courthouse. In addition to producing their own work, many FAP artists also taught in educational art centers established in Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Duluth. These centers offered low-cost art classes, lectures, and exhibition space. Like the public art programs, the art center program was intended to promote art and artistic creativity to wide audiences. In Minneapolis, the FAP worked to develop a regional art center, the Walker Art Center, using the collections of the lumber baron T. B. Walker as the starting point for what is now a major American collection of modern art. It was meant to serve as a “meeting place for all the arts”—to be a museum for the collection and a champion of new and innovative art for all. The Minnesota Artists’ Union (MAU; later the United American Artists of Minnesota – Local 86) was founded at the same time as the FAP and counted many FAP artists as members. The MAU lobbied for stable employment and relief for the artists working under the WPA, as well as for the promotion of Minnesota art and culture. In 1939, federal budget cuts resulted in layoffs and reduced funding for the WPA, causing a nationwide series of strikes and protests. Minnesota FAP artists joined these protests, setting up picket lines and rallies around the St. Paul WPA headquarters and the state capitol. Many of these artists, including the president of the MAU, Syd Fossum, were arrested and temporarily jailed. Also in 1939, as World War II was beginning, the New York World’s Fair opened, with a division dedicated to showcasing the WPA FAP. Represented at the Exhibition of Contemporary American Art were Haupers, Fossum, Wedin, Albinson, and other Minnesota artists. The non-defense-related activities of the WPA were scaled down quickly following the entrance of the United States into World War II. Across the U.S., art-related projects were incorporated into the war services division; many ceased to exist. In Minnesota, strong local support and efficient administration allowed the FAP project to continue on a smaller scale until June 30, 1943, when the WPA FAP program officially ended nationwide.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/AV1981.227.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/wpa-federal-art-project-1935-1943"},{"alt":"Black and white scan of The best way to settle it. Minneapolis Journal, April 12, 1889.","author":[{"name":"Linda A. Cameron","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/linda-cameron"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"February 08, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Twin Cities Streetcar Strike, 1889","postbody":"Wage cuts to employees of the Minneapolis and St. Paul streetcar companies in 1889 prompted a fifteen-day strike that disrupted business and escalated into violence before its resolution. ...","searchtext":"Wage cuts to employees of the Minneapolis and St. Paul streetcar companies in 1889 prompted a fifteen-day strike that disrupted business and escalated into violence before its resolution. In spite of public support for the strikers, the streetcar companies succeeded in breaking the strike with few concessions. In early April 1889, streetcar magnate Thomas Lowry announced a 15 percent pay cut for all company employees to help cover the cost of new cable car lines. Reductions ranged from one to four cents per hour, depending upon the position. Workers saw the cuts as a contract violation and a clear indication of Lowry||s anti-union stance. Local newspapers speculated that the streetcar drivers would strike during the busy summer season. It is possible that Lowry precipitated the strike by implementing the wage cuts in the spring to minimize revenue loss. 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. Most of the strikers were members of the Street Railways Employees|| Protective Association. Lowry indicated that the strikers could come back to work at the reduced wage if they agreed not to participate in union activity within the company. This stipulation made the strikers more determined. They hoped that public pressure would force Lowry to restore their lost wages. Labor leaders advised against violence, but the few streetcars that ventured out the next morning came under attack. An estimated ten thousand people gathered along the Washington Avenue line. They placed obstructions on the tracks and threw stones at the drivers. Police arrested five men, including two strikers. The violence prompted Minneapolis Mayor Edward C. Babb to place fifty special police on cars and at the storage barns to keep the peace. The following evening, a crowd of ten thousand gathered in Bridge Square in Minneapolis to hear labor leaders J. P. McGaughey, Tom H. Lucas, and labor journalist Eva McDonald. They favored arbitration, but because Lowry refused to cooperate, they chose a course of action calculated to end the strike quickly and favorably. Lowry||s franchise in each city depended upon all his streetcars operating on a regular schedule. The strikers reasoned that without drivers the cars couldn||t operate, which would force a forfeit of each franchise. They presented a petition with twenty thousand signatures to the Minneapolis City Council citing this operation requirement. Reluctant to act, the council submitted the strikers|| petition to Governor Merriam, who viewed the strike as a local government matter and declined involvement. Another violent protest on April 17 prompted the council to mandate that all streetcar lines must be up and running by noon on April 22 or Lowry would lose his franchise. The strikers felt assured of victory. The union||s cause suffered a blow on April 20 when thirty-eight armed |||cowboys||| arrived from Kansas as replacement drivers. The company offered the intimidating new drivers two dollars per week and protection. Public response was one of indignation and apprehension, which led to increased support for the strikers—and increased violence. As many as ten thousand people gathered by the tracks the next morning to greet the streetcars with a show of rocks, bricks, and bottles of acid. The mob tore up tracks and piled debris upon others. They overturned two cars, and destroyed the Riverside turntable. The protesters pulled one driver from his car and beat him. Police reinforcements arrived and made thirty-three arrests. Later that evening, union sympathizers tore up a section of the Riverside tracks and police took two more men into custody. The company ordered all cars back to the barns until morning. The strikers recognized that the violence harmed their cause and passed a resolution condemning it. They blamed the rioting on the presence of the |||cowboys||| and on the actions of angry citizens. By April 23, the strike had taken its toll on both cities and streetcar workers. Judge Isaac Atwater estimated the cost to the city of Minneapolis at five thousand dollars per day, plus losses to local businesses. The city also faced reparation costs of two thousand to three thousand due to Lowry for streetcar property damages. Strikers in both cities were back at work by April 25, and most streetcar lines resumed operation by the end of the month.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Journal_4-12-1889_1.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246055,"name":"Labor","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246053,"name":"Transportation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/twin-cities-streetcar-strike-1889"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of a horse-drawn streetcar in Minneapolis sign reads Sixth Street, Monroe Street and Eighth Avenue, c.1885. This photograph shows a second team of horses ready to relieve the team on the horsecar.","author":[{"name":"Linda A. Cameron","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/linda-cameron"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"February 03, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Horsecars of the St. Paul and Minneapolis Street Railway Companies","postbody":"With the rapid growth of the cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis in the mid-nineteenth century, the need for a reliable form of public transportation became apparent. Horse-drawn streetcars ...","searchtext":"With the rapid growth of the cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis in the mid-nineteenth century, the need for a reliable form of public transportation became apparent. Horse-drawn streetcars provided the answer and sparked the growth of what would become one of the most extensive streetcar systems in the country. Horsecars had been operating in New York City since 1832. The St. Paul Street Railway Company was incorporated in 1872 and began running horsecars in July of that year. The Minneapolis Street Railway Company followed suit three years later. The early Twin Cities horsecars were modest in size at just ten feet long and, at about one thousand pounds, were equivalent in weight to the average horse. Each car could accommodate up to fourteen passengers and ran at a maximum speed of six miles per hour, as mandated by city ordinances. For the comfort of riders in winter, heat was generated by a small iron stove placed in the middle of the car and the floor was covered with a thick blanket of hay. Signal lights were hung on each end, and an oil lamp provided light inside the car. The first horsecar lines were also modest. St. Paul||s initial line was two and one-half miles long, and the Minneapolis line just two and one-tenth miles. Minneapolis line construction cost $6,000 per mile, and the completed tracks were made of five-inch-square wooden rails, or |||stringers,||| with wooden crossties and bent iron plates spiked onto them. The inferior quality track sometimes caused a car to derail, at which point passengers disembarked to help push it back onto the track. Passenger power was sometimes employed to assist a car up a steep hill as well. The early streetcar barns housed both horses and cars and were staffed by a mechanic and a blacksmith. The first barn in St. Paul was located at Fourth and St. Peter Streets, and in Minneapolis at Third Avenue and Second Street. The public could ride anywhere within the city limits of St. Paul or Minneapolis for just five cents. Passengers would drop a nickel into the fare box located in the front of the car before taking a seat. The first day||s revenue for the Minneapolis Street Railway Company totaled $21.50, collected from four hundred thirty passengers. By 1877, the company was running eighteen cars and carrying an average of seventeen hundred riders daily, with receipts totaling up to $100. Maintaining the horsecar lines was expensive. The first cars cost $872 each. Six horses were needed for each car to keep them in operation for a full day. Horses cost $135 to $150 per head and were fed five times daily. Drivers (and later, conductors) worked twelve- to sixteen-hour days in all weather for $35–$54 per month. With such high overhead, the lines were not cost-effective and employees sometimes waited several weeks to be paid. While embraced by the commuting public, horse-drawn cars had serious drawbacks. The odor and health risks associated with horse pollution were a real concern. One horse can produce up to fifty pounds of manure daily. When dried, wind-blown manure dust contaminated the air. Health officials warned that the polluted air was responsible for the high occurrence of diarrhea, especially in children. Piles of manure attracted flies, and outbreaks of typhoid fever were a common problem for city residents. Rainy weather turned the dust into a sludge that made walking highly disagreeable. Worse yet, horses were sometimes injured in the line of duty or succumbed to the burden of their work, dropping in their harnesses on the street. Unable to move the heavy carcasses, drivers would leave them where they fell, and a cart was eventually sent to collect them. The carcasses posed health risks and blocked traffic. Electric streetcar lines were introduced in Minneapolis in 1889 and St. Paul in 1890. By that time, Minneapolis was running a total of two hundred eighteen horsecars with one thousand eighteen horses and mules on over 66.7 miles of track. St. Paul had one hundred fifty-nine cars with nine hundred horses and mules covering 53.3 miles of track. By 1892 all lines had been converted to electric operation.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/HE4.1 p2 - horse-drawn car Mpls..jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246079,"name":"Cities and Towns","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246053,"name":"Transportation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/horsecars-st-paul-and-minneapolis-street-railway-companies"},{"alt":"Color image of a National Eagle Center employee shows a bald eagle to visitors during a 2015 educational program.","author":[{"name":"Eileen Hanson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/eileen-hanson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"February 01, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"National Eagle Center, Wabasha","postbody":"The National Eagle Center is an educational, interpretive center located on the banks of the Mississippi River in Wabasha. Committed to fostering environmental stewardship and community ...","searchtext":"The National Eagle Center is an educational, interpretive center located on the banks of the Mississippi River in Wabasha. Committed to fostering environmental stewardship and community sustainability through education about eagles and the Mississippi River watershed, the National Eagle Center exhibits non-releasable bald and golden eagles and offers opportunities to view wild eagles throughout the year. The Upper Mississippi River Valley is home to hundreds of bald eagles; many build their nests in the tall trees along the river valley. Hundreds more migrate to the area in the winter months, since the Mississippi River remains free of ice year-round near Wabasha. Open water in the winter attracts bald eagles eager to feed on the abundant fish. In 1989, the National Eagle Center began as Eagle Watch, Inc. A group of local volunteers shared with visitors to Wabasha views of wintering bald eagles from an outdoor observation deck along the river. At this time, bald eagles were still rare and endangered. Wabasha was one of the few places where bald eagles could be seen in the wild. Birdwatchers and others interested in seeing the nation’s symbol flying wild flocked there to see bald eagles congregating along the river each winter. In 2000, the National Eagle Center opened a year-round interpretive center in downtown Wabasha. The first two eagle ambassadors, Harriet and Angel, arrived. These eagles were permanently injured and deemed non-releasable. They, and the other eagle ambassadors who have arrived in the years since, have become educators on behalf of their wild cousins. They educate the public about conserving the habitats on which eagles and other wildlife depend. In 2007, in a partnership with the City of Wabasha, the National Eagle Center opened a fifteen-thousand-square-foot interpretive center on the banks of the Mississippi River. At this facility, visitors enjoy views of wild eagles and meet the resident bald and golden eagle ambassadors. Through daily educational programs and interactive exhibits, visitors learn about the ecology, biology, and natural history of eagles and the Mississippi River watershed. The National Eagle Center educates visitors about eagles in North America, both bald eagles and golden eagles. The Golden Eagle Project is focused on learning more about the golden eagles that winter in the blufflands of southeast Minnesota, western Wisconsin, and northeast Iowa. Through annual surveys and GPS tracking of several birds, the project has expanded the world’s knowledge of golden eagles in the Midwest. The National Eagle Center also offers field trips with expert naturalist guides to view bald and golden eagles in the wild. Visitors from across the country and around the world come to the National Eagle Center to experience eagles up close. With an annual attendance of eighty thousand, the National Eagle Center is a regional tourist attraction and an important part of Wabasha’s economy. The center’s annual “SOAR with the Eagles” festival celebrates the spring bald-eagle migration with special programs and events in March. Each summer, hundreds of kids participate in Fishing on the Refuge to learn about responsible angling and offer their catches to feed the bald eagle ambassadors. In 2015, the National Eagle Center took its first steps toward a facility expansion, purchasing nearby property in Wabasha’s historic downtown.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/NEC educational program.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246079,"name":"Cities and Towns","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/national-eagle-center-wabasha"},{"alt":"Color image of a Hmong American boy in traditional clothing. Photographed by Vue Xiong, c.1992.","author":[{"name":"Mai Na M. Lee","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/mai-na-m-lee"}],"categoryTag":[],"date":"January 27, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Hmong and Hmong Americans in Minnesota","postbody":"The Hmong first arrived in Minnesota in late 1975, after the communist seizure of power in Indochina. They faced multiple barriers as refugees from a war-torn country, but with the help of ...","searchtext":"The Hmong first arrived in Minnesota in late 1975, after the communist seizure of power in Indochina. They faced multiple barriers as refugees from a war-torn country, but with the help of generous sponsors, have managed to thrive in the Twin Cities area, a region they now claim as home. Today, many Hmong promote the economic, social, and political diversity of the state. Origins The Hmong are a minority indigenous to China. Ten million of their co-ethnics, referred to as “Miao,” still live there in the twenty-first century. The Hmong were a non-literate people, but their funeral dirge, the Qhuab Ke (Teachings of the Way), and proverbs that they passed down orally, refer to an origin in the Yellow River region of northeastern China. Over the millennia, the expanding Chinese empire gradually pushed the Hmong south. The Hmong arrived in mainland Southeast Asia in large numbers during the mid-nineteenth century. At the same time, the French began colonizing Indochina (Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia). The Hmong of Vietnam and Laos resisted Western encroachment at first. Some, however, forged an alliance with the French that endured until the end of colonial rule in 1954. The Hmong played equally complex roles on different sides of the political divide during the First (1946-54) and Second (1946-73) Indochina Wars. In Laos, about one third of the population supported the Communists. The rest fell to the side of the pro-French, and, later, the pro-American Lao monarchy. As a direct result of their alliance with the Americans in what was known as the Secret War, these Hmong suffered Communist reprisals. Though some refugees sought sanctuary outside Southeast Asia, the majority ended up in the U.S. A Legacy Of War And Survival The Hmong who came to Minnesota have endured decades of war trauma since at least 1945. Several generations suffered confinement in Thai refugee camps. Dependent on American rice-drops during the Secret War and fed by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in the Thai camps, many Hmong grew up never knowing the life of subsistence farming in the mountains of Laos that their ancestors led. The psychological effects of sedentary confinement and war trauma remain unfathomable. They can perhaps be best captured by literary efforts, such as those written by Minnesota authors Kao Kalia Yang in The Latehomecomer and Mai Neng Moua and others in the literary anthology Bamboo Among the Oaks. A New Home In Minnesota Though the Hmong played a crucial role in the Secret War, they were deemed “too primitive” to be given asylum in the United States after their exile in May 1975. Other lowland Southeast Asians, such as the Vietnamese and Cambodians, were accepted for immediate resettlement. It took some maneuvering by individual Americans and Hmong, however, to get the Hmong into the U.S. At first, only General Vang Pao, his closest associates, and others employed directly by the U.S. government were allowed into the country. After some wrangling, U.S. policy makers amended the Indochina Migration and Refugee Assistance Act to include the Hmong. They allowed the general population to enter the country in 1976. So as not to burden only a few states, they dispersed Hmong families, like other refugee groups, across the land. Many of them, however, relocated to specific locales to reunite with their clan members. Within a few years, pockets of Hmong populations appeared in areas like the Twin Cities. Credit for the large Twin Cities Hmong population may be owed to the area’s progressive attitude, as well as its economic and educational opportunities. Minnesota has a long history of welcoming new immigrants. Moreover, the state has a reputation for excellent student achievement in national standardized tests. The Twin Cities in particular offer good job prospects and a high standard of living. Since the war in Laos was a “secret,” many Minnesotans who helped refugees resettle had never heard of the Hmong. Some thought they were sponsoring Vietnamese refugees. Even so, organizations like the Catholic Charities, Lutheran Social Services, Church World Services, and other groups and individuals generously provided the newcomers with basic necessities such as housing, furniture, household utensils, food, and clothing. Others volunteered as English tutors and transporters. Many of the educated Hmong elites with leadership experience and English-language skills were among the first to be welcomed by Minnesotans. These elites tried to solidify the social services targeted to refugees, attracting others to migrate to the region. The first Hmong family—Dang Her and his wife, Shoua Moua—arrived in Minnesota on November 5, 1975. Dang ranked among those with some education and English proficiency. He had worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) during wartime, qualifying him for asylum. An American co-worker and his congregation sponsored Dang’s family. When Dang’s and Shoua’s son, Bill Her, was born in February 1976, he became the first Hmong American child born in Minnesota. On July 16, 1976, a group of Twin Cities-area Hmong met to discuss their resettlement challenges and plan ways to build a diasporic community. Several months later, Dang Her, Leng Vang, Tou Fu Vang, Tony Vang, and Ya Yang created the state’s first non-profit Hmong organization, the Association of Hmong in Minnesota (AHM). The founders of AHM aimed to address social and economic issues. They also encouraged an understanding between the Hmong and the mainstream community. In 1980, AHM leaders joined forces with General Vang Pao. They re-chartered their organization as a Twin Cities branch of Lao Family Community, Inc., a private, non-profit agency that focused on English education and job training. Lao Family—then the area’s sole Hmong community organization— began hosting a Hmong New Year Festival and a Fourth of July soccer tournament. The events generated publicity and drew more Hmong to the region. In 2010, Minnesota supported the second-largest Hmong population in the U.S.: 66,181 individuals. It was the youngest of all Hmong groups in the U.S., with a median age of just 19.7 years old. The median age of the state was 37.3 years old. Of the state’s total Hmong population, 97 percent (64,422) resided in the Twin Cities area—the densest concentration anywhere in the nation. The remainder lived in suburbs and rural towns like Winona, Rochester, Tracy, Duluth, and Marshall. Literacy And Education Educational achievement remains a major challenge for first-generation Hmong Americans. Many have little parental guidance in American academic subjects. Hmong youth perform relatively poorly on standardized tests. They also drop out of secondary and post-secondary schools at disproportionately high rates. According to the national census, in 2010 14.5 percent of Hmong Americans held degrees at the college level or above, compared to 31.4 percent of non-Hispanic whites and 50.2 percent of non-Hispanic Asians aged twenty-five and older. Some scholars argue, however, that considering the low literacy rate of the Hmong who left Laos in 1975, Hmong Americans have made more progress in education than any other Indochinese group. Hmong women have made dramatic educational achievements. In 1990, only 19 percent of Hmong women in the U.S. had a high school diploma, compared to 44 percent of Hmong men. Only 3 percent of women had completed a bachelor’s degree, compared to 7 percent of men. Today, the number of women with bachelor’s degrees has surpassed that of men. Overall, 19.9 percent of women and 15.9 percent of men have a bachelor’s degree or above. The statistics of Hmong Minnesotans closely mirror the national trends. In 2010, 76.2 percent held a high school degree, 13.7 percent held a bachelor’s degree, and about 3 percent held graduate degrees. Despite this progress, Hmong community leaders have expressed concerns about Hmong educational attainment in Minnesota and elsewhere. At an August 2015 conference held at Hmong American Partnership (HAP), Bao Vang, the group’s executive director, stated that American-born Hmong children were falling behind other ethnic groups, with a 40 percent high-school dropout rate nationally. The trend has been similar in Minnesota. Such concerns may have stimulated the founding of over ten Hmong charter and magnet schools, as well as a Hmong language immersion school in the Twin Cities, since 2000. Economic Triumphs And Challenges Since 1975, the Hmong have made economic progress. Though of a few of the earliest refugees in the Twin Cities were elites who had some education, the vast majority were nonliterate, uneducated Hmong who spoke no English. In the early years, the elites provided vital support to the community by working as teachers, interpreters, and social service workers. By the 1980s, farming projects were developed in the Twin Cities and other areas with the aim of establishing Hmong self-sufficiency. These projects included the Hiawatha Valley Farm Cooperative (HVFC), run by Church World Services in the city of Homer, and the Minnesota Agricultural Enterprise for New Americans (MAENA), a program spearheaded by the University of Minnesota Agricultural Extension Services in collaboration with Lao Family Community. MAENA initiatives resulted in the creation of the Hmong Farming Cooperative in Oakdale, which was later relocated to Farmington where land was more available. Hmong participants in the co-ops were introduced to modern farming techniques, including the use of fertilizers and pesticides. Although the programs ended by 1985, Hmong farmers who completed the trainings went on to rent or buy their own land. Many became successful participants in the many farmers’ markets in St. Paul, Minneapolis, and suburban cities. Recently, younger and more educated Hmong Americans have begun to explore organic farming. In the 2010s, the Hmong community has ventured beyond the agricultural efforts of the 1980s. Before they could join the American middle class, first-generation Hmong refugees focused on accumulating basic necessities. Their frugal values built a foundation for eventual success in Hmong home ownership—over 50 percent in the Twin Cities—and in business investments. The success of entrepreneurs in the Twin Cities stimulated the formation of the Minnesota Hmong Chamber of Commerce in 1996. The Chamber’s 150-plus members own health clinics, law firms, restaurants, car dealerships, grocery stores, tax and consulting services, banks, elderly home care and real estate companies, hotel chains, bars and nightclubs, and other businesses. In 2004, Hmong entrepreneurs in the Frogtown neighborhood of St. Paul established the Hmongtown Marketplace, a two-building shopping complex with stalls staffed by individual proprietors. The atmosphere at Hmongtown is reminiscent of the open-air markets in Chiang Mai, Thailand, and Vientiane, Laos. In 2009, a group of nine businessmen and women opened a similar shopping complex on the eastside of St. Paul. Called Hmong Village, the single-building complex contained over twenty restaurants and 250 merchant stalls. Altogether, the Hmong businesses in the Twin Cities command annual revenues of more than one hundred million dollars. According to community leaders, the Hmong command an overall spending power in excess of one billion dollars. Hmong-owned newspapers such as the Hmong Times, Hmong Pages, Hmong Tribune, and Hmong Today, as well as several radio stations and a television program, also endorse the achievements of Hmong Minnesotans. Despite the success of some, poverty remains a serious issue for many. One quarter of the Hmong population in Minnesota lives below the poverty line. For this reason, organizations geared towards addressing economic and social issues remain prominent. St. Paul boasts over ten Hmong non-profit groups, including the Hmong American Partnership (HAP), the Hmong Cultural Center, and the Center for Hmong Arts and Talent (CHAT). CHAT is unique in its focus on developing literature and art in order to define a space for young Hmong Minnesotans. Major Political Strides Some scholars argue that strong Confucian values, inculcated by millennia of contact with the Han Chinese prior to their immigration to Southeast Asia, inspire the Hmong to value political involvement. According to the Foom Koom, the ritual blessings that are sung to surviving descendants during a funeral, the highest aspiration is for one’s children to obtain political posts—that is, to “become kings.” The Hmong also have a strong history of political participation in Laos. For these reasons, many have been active in politics in the Twin Cities region. Intriguingly for a patriarchal, patrilineal society, many of the Minnesota Hmong who first entered mainstream American politics were women. One reason for their early emergence as elected officials may be that, for decades following exile, many male leaders focused their political efforts on returning the Hmong to their homeland in Laos. While these elder leaders, who have deep ties to the Secret War, strategized for repatriation, women and younger men with education maneuvered for integration into the American mainstream. In 1992, Choua Lee became the first elected Hmong American official when she won a seat on the St. Paul School Board. Neal Thao, a man of the younger generation, replaced Choua in 1995 and served for seven years. He was followed by two more women: Kazoua Kong-Thao, elected in 2003, and Vallay Varro, elected in 2009. Minnesota State Senator Mee Moua, who earned an undergraduate degree from Brown University and graduate degrees from the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs and the University of Minnesota Law School, took Hmong politics to the next level. Moua’s landmark victory in District 67 of East St. Paul during a special election held in February 2002 gained her a place in American history as not only the first Hmong, but also the first Southeast Asian American to serve at the state level. She was reelected as the incumbent candidate that same November. Cy Thao was also elected into the Minnesota House of Representatives in 2002, representing District 65A. Both Mee and Cy left their positions in 2010 to pursue new careers. Three Hmong men stepped forward to campaign for Moua’s District 67 seat without success. In the subsequent election round in 2012, however, Foung Hawj ran again as the lone Hmong candidate and won.. Blong Yang was also elected as the first Hmong to serve in the Minneapolis City Council, representing Ward 5, and Dai Thao won his campaign in Ward 1 of St. Paul. Mee Moua’s and Cy Thao’s victories in 2002 captured the attention of local politicians who recognized the changing demographics of their constituents. Political figures like Congresswoman Betty McCollum, Governor Tim Pawlenty, Governor Mark Dayton, Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Ryback, and St. Paul Mayors Randy Kelley and Chris Coleman engaged the community by making public appearances at Hmong events. Both Kelley and Coleman chose Hmong individuals for their advisory boards. When the winning margin is miniscule, as it was during the gubernatorial contest between Mark Dayton and Tom Emmer in November 2009, the Hmong vote can be critical. Dayton, who triumphed in a recount by only a few hundred votes, had the endorsements of Dr. Yang Dao and General Vang Pao, figureheads who represented opposing Hmong political views. Politicians in Minnesota can no longer ignore the Hmong community’s electoral influence. A Secret-war Memorial In St. Paul Hmong political participation in Minnesota was also spurred by the Welfare Reform Act of 1996, which stipulated that only senior American citizens would be eligible for public financial assistance. For decades, many Hmong elders had delayed seeking citizenship because of the language barrier. They also dreamed of returning to Laos with General Vang Pao. The tenor of their thinking shifted dramatically in 1998, when the Welfare Reform Act’s policies went into effect. Many non-citizen Hmong elders were notified of their financial and food assistance cut-off dates. An elderly Hmong man in Wisconsin saw the reform as another American betrayal and protested by committing suicide when he received his benefits termination notice. Others on the East and West coasts followed suit by also committing suicide. Those in Minnesota were shaken by these events. Vang Pao and the Lao Veterans of America (LVA), based in St. Paul, worked with others around the country to address the wellbeing of Hmong in the U.S. Obtaining U.S. citizenship became their new focus. Before the welfare reforms, the LVA of Minnesota, with the support of Congressman Bruce Vento, had begun to rally for Congressional recognition of Hmong veterans of the Secret War. A small memorial plaque that honored Hmong veterans had been erected at Arlington National Cemetery in 1997. In 1998, the LVA and others pushed policy-makers to delay applying the welfare-reform policies to the Hmong. They worked with Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone to spearhead what became the Hmong Veterans’ Naturalization Act of 2000. The act waived the written English-language requirement of the citizenship exam for Hmong veterans of the Secret War, their spouses, and widows. Qualified individuals were allowed to take the exam orally in Hmong. The bill aimed to allow elders beyond retirement age to become citizens and qualify for public assistance. Its effects, however, were more pervasive. Non-profit organizations like the Lao Family Community and the Hmong Cultural Center began holding citizenship classes in the Hmong language for elders. The new citizens began exercising their voting rights, shifting the political landscape of Minnesota. Hmong and Lao veterans later gained further recognition in the state. After winning election in 2002, Cy Thao rallied for the state to allocate money for a Secret War memorial to be built on the state capitol grounds in St. Paul. State Senator Foung Hawj took over the project after his election in 2012. The groundbreaking ceremony for the memorial, attended by Governor Dayton and other politicians, took place in May 2015. The ceremony was scheduled to coincide with the fortieth anniversary of the mass Hmong exodus from Laos in May 1975.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/GT1.8 r67.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/hmong-and-hmong-americans-minnesota"},{"alt":"Color image of the James J. Hill House, 2013.","author":[{"name":"Eric Colleary","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/eric-colleary"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"January 20, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"James J. Hill House","postbody":"Sitting on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River and the city of St. Paul, the 36,500-square-foot, forty-two-room James J. Hill House stands as a monument to the man who built the Great ...","searchtext":"Sitting on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River and the city of St. Paul, the 36,500-square-foot, forty-two-room James J. Hill House stands as a monument to the man who built the Great Northern Railway. It remains one of the best examples of Richardsonian Romanesque mansions in the country. By the late 1870s, James Hill’s growing fortunes and family required a larger home that reflected his elevated status within the community. Hill, his wife, Mary, and their children had moved through several homes over the years, mostly in the Lowertown neighborhood of St. Paul. The Hills planned a house with the latest in modern conveniences where they could receive and entertain nationally known civic and religious leaders. In 1882, James Hill purchased two lots on the far eastern end of Summit Avenue and selected the architecture firm of Peabody, Stearns, and Furber of Boston and St. Louis to design the mansion. He settled on Richardsonian Romanesque as the style of architecture. Named for Henry Hobson Richardson, it was characterized by balanced asymmetry, imposing facades of rough-hewn stone, and rounded arches. The house could be seen from the front on Summit Avenue, and from the back along the river and from downtown St. Paul. Unlike most neighboring homes, the Hills’ house featured finished facades on both its front and back. Construction began in 1888. More than three hundred skilled craftsmen built the house over the next three years. General laborers earned as little as $1.75 a day. The master woodcarver made as much as $1.00 an hour. When the house was completed in 1891, it was equipped with the most advanced technologies of the day. Built during the transition between gas and electric lighting, the house was designed to include both. For security, windows and doors were wired to an annunciator system that would ring an alarm in the houseman’s room if they were opened unexpectedly. Buzzers under the dining room tables allowed Mary Hill to discreetly summon waitresses during a meal. Thirteen bathrooms featured state-of-the-art plumbing, with hot and cold running water. An elaborate ventilation system, which included twenty-two fireplaces, ensured that air moved freely throughout the house. The house’s total cost, including furnishings and other expenses, came to $931,275.01. The mansion at 240 Summit has a basement, three floors, and an attic. The ground level main entrance opens onto an impressive hall connecting all of the ground-floor rooms, including a music room, drawing room, library, dining room, a separate breakfast room, and a large art gallery with a built-in pipe organ designed by George Hutchings of Boston. The second floor was where James, Mary, and their daughters had their bedrooms. The sons’ bedrooms and a schoolroom were located on the third floor. Five bedrooms for up to ten female servants and two sewing rooms were also located on the third floor. A small theater and playroom were built in the attic for the Hill children and grandchildren. The basement level housed the servants’ dining room and sitting room, along with the kitchen, wine cellar, pantries, laundry room, boiler room, and bedrooms for the male staff, including the houseman and valet. The terraced lawn once featured a gardener’s house, power plant, four greenhouses, and a mushroom cave. Over the years, the mansion hosted a number of important events. A reception was held on September 5, 1895, for Monsignor Francesco Satolli, the first Apostolic delegate to the United States from the Vatican. When President William McKinley visited in 1899, Mary Hill remarked in her journal that the evening was pleasant and quiet. Four of the Hills|| daughters were married in the large drawing room. James Hill died at the house in 1916, and Mary Hill died five years later. In 1925, family members donated the house to the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis. The mansion was home to the Saint Paul Diocesan Teachers College from 1927 to 1951. It housed various educational programs run by the nearby College of St. Catherine and administrative offices for the Archdiocese. In 1978, the Archdiocese transferred the mansion to the Minnesota Historical Society, which preserved the building and developed educational activities. Since then, the house has been open to the general public for tours, interpretive programs, and special events.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/James J. Hill House 2013.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246089,"name":"Religion and Belief","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/james-j-hill-house"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of a Fourth of July festival at Co-opMesaba Park, 1937.","author":[{"name":"Jason Scorich","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/jason-scorich"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"January 13, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Mesaba Co-op Park","postbody":"Located near Hibbing, Mesaba Co-op Park is one of the few remaining continuously operated cooperative parks in the country. A gathering place of the Finnish cooperative movement, the park ...","searchtext":"Located near Hibbing, Mesaba Co-op Park is one of the few remaining continuously operated cooperative parks in the country. A gathering place of the Finnish cooperative movement, the park served the ethnic political radicals who energized the Iron Range labor movement and Minnesota’s Farmer-Labor Party. In late 1928, the Mesaba Range Co-operative Federation began securing land for a park to accommodate large Finnish gatherings. One hundred and sixty acres, including a fifty-two-acre lake not shown on lumber company maps, were purchased for $2000. Forty Finnish American organizations purchased membership shares. Volunteers cleared land for a road, grounds, and building sites. The period of the park’s founding was one of anti-Finnish sentiment. Signs across the Range read, “No Indians or Finns allowed.” The Finns’ prominent role in the 1907 and 1916 Mesaba Range strikes had led to blacklisting. The Finnish cooperative movement was, in part, a response to this discrimination. In June 1929, as work progressed, an article in the Finnish-language newspaper Työmies (The Workman) announced that local Finns would celebrate in Chisholm for the last time without a progressive venue of their own. The park opened on September 22, 1929. In the spring of 1930, construction began on a caretaker’s residence and a children’s school. The park’s centerpiece, a dance pavilion, was completed in June 1930. Early festivals featured plays, track and field events, swimming, and dances. In addition to sports, students at the North Star children’s camp were given an introduction to working-class thought. The park became a gathering place for members of the Farmer-Labor Party, the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), and the Communist Party of America. As a boy, Iron Ranger Gus Hall, a four-time Communist Party candidate for president, helped his father and others build the dance pavilion. Between eight and ten thousand people attended the park’s 1936 summer festival. They heard speeches from Elmer Benson and John T. Bernard, Farmer-Labor candidates for governor and congressman, respectively. A dance that summer, featuring accordionist Viola Turpeinen, packed over one thousand people onto the dance floor in alternating shifts. In 1938, the creation of the House Un-American Activities Committee initiated the era of communist “witch-hunts,” blacklisting, and guilt-by-association persecution. During this period of fear, intimidation, and surveillance, whipped into a near-frenzy by the committees of Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s, it was difficult to belong to the park. FBI agents stationed outside the park collected the license plate numbers of those who entered. The park was stigmatized as the “Commie Park” and the “Red Park.” This “red-baiting” atmosphere, combined with the increasing Americanization of Finnish children and post-World War II patriotism, led to a decline in membership that seriously threatened the park’s survival. Opening membership to individuals as well as groups in 1959 was a necessary response. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, young people spurred the park’s revival. Many had no Finnish heritage and came from the anti-war, environmentalist, and feminist movements. Younger members affiliated with the respected Työmies newspaper, like Weikko Jarvi and Timo and Belinda Poropudas, helped bridge the generational, cultural, and trust gaps between the aging Finns and the diverse newcomers. The original socialist and communist politics of Mesaba Co-op Park have largely faded, replaced by a general spirit of progressivism. Additional land was acquired, bringing the park’s total size to 240 acres. The main annual event remains the Juhannes, or Midsummer, festival. It features folk dancing, guest speakers, music, a Maypole, late-night bonfire, Finnish American mojakka stew, and an arts camp for children. The park also stands as a reminder of the many small Finn halls once dotting the Iron Range. As those halls closed, their contents, including lumber, chairs, a barrel stove, and stage drops and scenery, often found a new home at Mesaba Park.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/00002620-rf_0.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246055,"name":"Labor","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246054,"name":"Sports and Recreation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/mesaba-co-op-park"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Dr. Louis A. Fritsche, c.1920.","author":[{"name":"Paul Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/paul-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"January 11, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"New Ulm Military Draft Meeting, 1917","postbody":"The World War I draft rally held in New Ulm on July 25, 1917, was an exciting event; it featured a parade, music, a giant crowd, and compelling speakers. The speakers urged compliance with ...","searchtext":"The World War I draft rally held in New Ulm on July 25, 1917, was an exciting event; it featured a parade, music, a giant crowd, and compelling speakers. The speakers urged compliance with law, but challenged the justice of the war and the government’s authority to send draftees into combat overseas. In the end, people obeyed the draft law, while the state punished dissent. Three of the speakers lost their jobs; the fourth was charged with criminal sedition. New Ulm, the seat of Brown County, was founded in 1854 by German immigrants. In 1917, the area remained heavily German, and many residents maintained close ties with the old country. The United States’ entry into war with Germany, on April 6, 1917, troubled many in the area. The announcement in June of an imminent military draft raised the distressing prospect that young German American men from Brown County would be sent to fight against young German men in Europe. Dr. Louis Fritsche was New Ulm’s three-term mayor and its leading physician. City attorney Albert Pfaender belonged to one of New Ulm’s founding families. He had served three terms in the state legislature and fifteen years in the National Guard that included active duty in Mexico. Adolph Ackerman was professor and president of Martin Luther College in New Ulm. Albert Steinhauser, a lawyer and army veteran, published two weeklies, the New Ulm Review and the German-language New Ulm Post. All had opposed U.S. participation in the war, publicly and often. All had spoken at a well-attended anti-war rally in New Ulm on March 30; Fritsche and Steinhauser were in Washington, D.C., for an anti-war conference when war was declared. The war provoked intense anti-German feeling, reflected in Minnesota by passage of the Public Safety Commission statute on April 16. This law gave full executive and legislative power to an appointed board of seven—the Minnesota Commission of Public Safety (MCPS)—charged with protecting Minnesotans from treason and subversion. The MCPS put New Ulm under surveillance. The July 25 meeting began with a color guard, two orchestras, and a parade of two thousand young men to Turner Park downtown. It drew a crowd estimated at eight thousand in a town of six thousand. Pfaender and Fritsche spoke guardedly. They urged compliance with the draft law, but held out hope that soldiers from New Ulm might not have to fight in Europe. Pfaender advanced a constitutional argument that the federal government lacked the lawful power to send Minnesota militiamen overseas. Ackerman praised the patriotism of the citizens of New Ulm, but said that people did not want to fight for Wall Street, England, or France. Albert Steinhauser held nothing back. An army veteran, lawyer, newspaper publisher, and political radical, Steinhauser called the war a scheme of plutocrats for profit. A few weeks later, the MCPS charged Fritsche and Pfaender with “promoting and participating in seditious public meetings.” Governor J. A. A. Burnquist suspended them from office on August 21. The MCPS held hearings in New Ulm in September and October. Fritsche, Pfaender, Ackerman, and Steinhauser (among many others) testified. The proceedings made clear that the MCPS had, in effect, added to the oath of office of all Minnesota public officials a promise to support every war policy of the Wilson Administration. Pfaender and Fritsche had failed to do so. Both testified that they regretted the reaction to the July 25 meeting —it got wide attention and much condemnation—but neither backed down from what he had said. Steinhauser gave the most entertaining testimony; he called the Public Safety Commission a joke. On December 1, Governor Burnquist removed Fritsche and Pfaender from office permanently. Fritsche was found not guilty of disloyalty by the Brown-Redwood County Medical Society; Pfaender was expelled from the Brown County Bar Association. Under pressure, the trustees of Martin Luther College forced Ackerman to resign. Steinhauser had already been arrested on a federal charge of sedition. No draft refusal took place in Brown County. By 1920, calm had returned to New Ulm. Fritsche and Pfaender both returned to their old offices. After a period of intermittent employment, Ackerman became pastor of a church in Mankato, where he served for many years. Steinhauser was never prosecuted on the sedition charge.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/por 23305 p1.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246060,"name":"Crime and Punishment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/new-ulm-military-draft-meeting-1917"},{"alt":"Oil on canvas painting of Colonel Josiah Snelling, c.1818. Artist unknown.","author":[{"name":"Sarah Shirey","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/sarah-shirey"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"January 06, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186622056201,"name":"1754–1800 (Revolution and a New Nation)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056203,"name":"1792–1861 (Expansion and Reform)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Snelling, Josiah (1782–1828)","postbody":"Bravery at the Battle of Tippecanoe and during the War of 1812 distinguished the military career of Colonel Josiah Snelling, but he is best known for commanding Fort Snelling in the 1820s. ...","searchtext":"Bravery at the Battle of Tippecanoe and during the War of 1812 distinguished the military career of Colonel Josiah Snelling, but he is best known for commanding Fort Snelling in the 1820s. It was the first permanent U.S. government outpost in what would become the state of Minnesota. Josiah Snelling was born in Boston in 1782. His family ran a successful baking business, but he built his career by enlisting in the military and working his way up. He first enlisted in the Massachusetts militia as a sergeant in 1803, and then joined the Fourth Infantry Regiment as a first lieutenant in 1809. Snelling married Elizabeth Bell on August 29, 1804. She gave birth to William Joseph in December of the same year. Elizabeth died in 1810, at the age of twenty-two. Snelling continued to rise through the ranks. As a captain, he led a decisive charge that was vital to General William Henry Harrison’s victory at Tippecanoe in 1811. He distinguished himself again during the War of 1812, when he was brevetted major for bravery at the battle of Brownstown. Also during the war, Snelling, then thirty, married fifteen-year-old Abigail Hunt on August 13, 1812, in Detroit. The Snellings spent the years after the war stationed in Plattsburg, New York. There, Abigail gave birth to Henry Hunt on November 8, 1816. He was the second child of Josiah and Abigail; their first, Mary, had been born in 1813. They had three more children who survived past infancy: James, born in 1822; Marion, born in 1825; and Josiah, born in 1827. A lieutenant colonel by 1818, Josiah Snelling was promoted to full colonel of the Fifth Infantry Regiment on June 1, 1819. He was ordered to the confluence of the Mississippi and St. Peters (now Minnesota) Rivers to replace Lieutenant Colonel Henry Leavenworth and establish a headquarters for the Fifth Infantry. After a year at the confluence, Leavenworth’s men had established only temporary quarters. After his arrival in the fall of 1820, Snelling quickly broke ground on the first permanent barracks. With the help of engineer Lieutenant Robert McCabe, Snelling designed a diamond-shaped, limestone fort on the bluff above the rivers. This construction took five years for the enlisted men to complete. By 1821, the post was given the official name of Fort St. Anthony. General Winfield Scott made an inspection in 1824 and recommended that it be renamed for its commander. In 1825, the name Fort Snelling became official. Snelling’s command of the fort focused on survival. He could not always count on the long supply lines that supported it. His men spent most of their time farming and cutting timber, and Snelling was criticized by his subordinate officers for the lack of military drilling that took place. As commandant, Snelling also collaborated with Indian Agent Lawrence Taliaferro to represent the U.S. government in meetings with the Dakota and Ojibwe, largely to settle disputes that could disrupt trade. Snelling illegally utilized the labor of enslaved people in his household at the fort. He rented the labor of a man named William from Taliaferro, and purchased two women, Mary and Louisa, in 1827. The colonel was not immune to the tensions that often ran high between officers stationed at the post. Although the articles of war forbade dueling, Snelling made it known that he would accept personal challenges from his subordinates. When Lieutenant David Hunter, who had a history of conflict with William Joseph, challenged him, Snelling had Hunter arrested for conduct unbecoming of an officer. Later, Snelling accepted the quarrelsome Lieutenant Joseph Baxley’s challenge, but Snelling’s heavy drinking prevented them from ever exchanging shots. Snelling contracted chronic dysentery during the War of 1812, and by 1826, his health was failing. Both his illness and its treatment—typically opium and brandy—may have affected his judgment and command of his subordinates. Snelling and his family left Fort Snelling in October of 1827, when he was ordered to Jefferson Barracks to testify in Hunter’s court martial. He then went to Washington, D.C., to answer for undocumented expenditures made on the army’s behalf. Snelling faced a possible court martial for embezzlement and for accepting Baxley’s duel challenge. He died in Washington on August 20, 1828, before the accusations against him could be investigated.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/10247882.640x640.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/snelling-josiah-1782-1828"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Bishop Henry Whipple, c.1898.","author":[{"name":"Sharon Park","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/sharon-park"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"January 04, 2016","eraTag":[{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Whipple, Henry Benjamin (1822–1901)","postbody":"Henry Benjamin Whipple, the first Episcopal bishop of Minnesota, is known for his missionary work among the Dakota and Ojibwe and his efforts to reform the U.S. Indian administration ...","searchtext":"Henry Benjamin Whipple, the first Episcopal bishop of Minnesota, is known for his missionary work among the Dakota and Ojibwe and his efforts to reform the U.S. Indian administration system. After the U.S.–Dakota War of 1862, Whipple was one of the few white men to oppose the death sentences of 303 Dakota. Whipple was born in 1822 and educated in New York. After serving as rector and priest of Zion Church in Rome, New York, for eight years, he moved to Chicago in 1857 to help organize and become rector of the Church of the Holy Communion. His missionary work became well known among Midwestern businessmen, politicians, and churchmen, including Episcopalians in Minnesota. They elected Whipple as their bishop in 1859. Before moving with his family to Faribault in 1860, Whipple toured parishes and American Indian missions throughout Minneapolis, St. Paul, and St. Anthony in 1858. When Whipple visited the St. Columba Mission at Gull Lake, led by Ojibwe deacon John Johnson Enmegahbowh, the mission’s conditions of poverty alarmed him. Treaties forced the Dakota and Ojibwe to live on reservations. The influx of white traders, loggers, farmers, and entrepreneurs to the region limited their options for traditional hunting, gathering, and farming. After his visit to Dakota country, Whipple dedicated his missionary work to promoting Indian welfare. Whipple’s attitude toward Indians was paternalistic. He believed that whites needed to rescue Native people from poverty, alcoholism, and “spiritual wandering.” He also stressed that Indians needed to be “civilized” in the Euro-American ways of farming and education. He was also, however, more attentive than government agents to the concerns of the Dakota and Ojibwe. Whipple wrote to and visited Native members of his diocese. The Dakota and Ojibwe, he learned, had longstanding grievances after dealing with traders, agents, and missionaries for two decades. Through treaties with the U.S. signed between 1805 and 1858, the Dakota and Ojibwe had ceded most of their territory in Minnesota. In exchange, the U.S. government had promised annual payments of cash and goods, the construction of mills and schools, and agricultural training. However, government agents delayed or withheld the payments. Addressing his protests to the press, public officials, and Presidents Buchanan (in 1860) and Lincoln (in 1861), Whipple criticized the government for making fraudulent deals and failing to enforce the treaties. He also called for an overhaul of the U.S. Indian administration, denouncing it as “a stupendous piece of wickedness.” Whipple proposed specific reforms. He asked the U.S. government to treat the Dakota and Ojibwe as wards or citizens rather than as sovereign nations. He proposed that it provide supplies rather than cash payments and organize reservations by tribal band. He also recommended that agents prevent the sale of alcohol to Indians, encourage Indians to acquire land, and hire Christian teachers of farming and “the arts of civilization.” Whipple became a more vocal critic as tensions between the Dakota and white immigrant communities erupted in the U.S.–Dakota War in August 1862. In September, a military commission headed by General Henry H. Sibley brought 303 Dakota men to trial. Many white Minnesotans threatened to riot if all 303 were not hanged. In letters to Senator Henry M. Rice, President Lincoln, Henry Halleck, and various newspapers, Whipple argued that the government did not have the right to order a mass execution. He blamed the U.S. for prompting the conflict with years of treaty violations. He also protested the legal basis for the trials, the haste of the prosecution, and the lack of a competent defense. Yet in December 1862, Lincoln authorized the hanging of thirty-eight Dakota in Mankato. Whipple’s appeals during the U.S.–Dakota War trials earned him a national reputation as a spokesperson for Indian affairs. He served on a number of commissions, including the Sioux Commission (1876), the Northwest Indian Commission (1887), and the U.S. Board of Indian Commissioners (1895–1901). Late in his life, Whipple continued to expand the Protestant Episcopal Church in Minnesota. In the 1890s, he established a number of diocesan schools, including schools for Indian children. He remained in Faribault until his death, in 1901. He is the namesake of the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building (1 Federal Drive, Fort Snelling), built in 1965.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/10310593.640x640.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246059,"name":"Native Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246089,"name":"Religion and Belief","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/whipple-henry-benjamin-1822-1901"},{"alt":"Color image of a Red Bull Shoulder Patch.","author":[{"name":"Jack K. Johnson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/jack-k-johnson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"December 30, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Thirty-fourth “Red Bull” Infantry Division","postbody":"The Thirty-fourth “Red Bull” Infantry Division is a U.S. Army National Guard division based in Minnesota. It had more days in combat during World War II than any other American division. ...","searchtext":"The Thirty-fourth “Red Bull” Infantry Division is a U.S. Army National Guard division based in Minnesota. It had more days in combat during World War II than any other American division. Since September 11, 2001, “Red Bulls” have deployed where needed in the world, including Afghanistan and Iraq. In late summer 1917, not long after the United States entered World War I, the army combined existing National Guard units from Minnesota, Iowa, the Dakotas, and Nebraska to form the Thirty-fourth Infantry Division. The men trained for many months at Camp Cody, near Deming, New Mexico, while waiting anxiously to ship for France. In May, to their disappointment, they were named as a “depot” division. Companies, batteries, and regiments were broken up and the men sent overseas to fill openings in other units. The division was refilled with new draftees and finally departed for France, but by the time it arrived in October, it was too late to see action. The war ended on November 11, 1918. After World War I, the Thirty-fourth was reorganized with Guardsmen from Iowa, Minnesota, and South Dakota. By summer 1940, fighting again raged in Europe. As a precaution, Congress and President Roosevelt authorized a draft and mobilized the National Guard for a year of training. The Thirty-fourth was activated on February 10, 1941, and sent to Camp Claiborne, Louisiana. When the U.S. entered World War II that December, the Thirty-fourth became the first American division sent to Europe. The men trained in Northern Ireland. Combat began for the division on November 8, 1942, when elements landed successfully at Algiers, on the North African coast, as part of Operation TORCH. They encountered stiff German opposition as Allied forces thrust eastward into Tunisia toward Bizerte and Tunis, essential ports for the German army. Hill 609, a key German position, stood in the way. In late April 1943, the Thirty-fourth took Hill 609 in an intense, week-long battle. The enemy surrendered two weeks later, ending the North African campaign. Italy came next. After landing at Salerno in September 1943 as part of the Fifth Army, the division advanced slowly northward through mountainous terrain and terrible weather toward the Gustav Line, a formidable chain of German positions that spanned the Italian peninsula. The Allied advance stalled at Monte Cassino, which strategically anchored the Line. After months of bombardment and bitter fighting by the Thirty-fourth and other divisions, Cassino was finally taken. It opened a way to the Liri Valley beyond, but at high cost in casualties. Meanwhile, Allied commanders bypassed Gustav and established a beachhead at Anzio. The division landed there in March 1944. The breakout came in May, followed by a drive on Rome. After Rome, the division continued pushing northward through heavily entrenched German positions. By spring 1945, it faced a stubborn but wavering enemy in the plains of northern Italy’s Po Valley. German surrender in Italy came on May 2, 1945. By then, only a handful of its original soldiers were still with the division. Casualties, transfers, and rotations accounted for the rest. With |||Attack, Attack, Attack||| as its slogan, the “Red Bulls” completed 517 days of front-line combat in five major campaigns—more combat days than any other American division in the war—with some units at 611 days. In 1946, the Thirty-fourth was reconstituted with Guardsmen from Iowa and Nebraska, but it was disbanded as a division in the 1960s due to Guard reorganization and budget cuts. Its reputation as one of the toughest combat outfits in World War II was not forgotten, however. On February 10, 1991, the Minnesota-based Forty-seventh “Viking” Infantry Division was redesignated as the Thirty-fourth “Red Bull” Infantry Division. The Thirty-fourth’s proud legacy was thereby taken up by a new generation of soldiers. Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, National Guardsmen have been mobilized for federal active duty on a regular basis. Units of the Thirty-fourth have deployed to Bosnia, Kosovo, Egypt, Honduras, Afghanistan, Kuwait, and Iraq. In 2006–2007, its First Brigade Combat Team spent sixteen months in Iraq (twenty-two months overall) in one of the largest and longest single-unit deployments for the National Guard since the Korean War. Governors also call up units when needed for state missions requiring military-level support.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Red Bull patch.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/thirty-fourth-red-bull-infantry-division"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Meridel Le Sueur, c. 1940. ","author":[{"name":"Neala Schleuning","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/neala-schleuning"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"December 28, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Le Sueur, Meridel (1900–1996)","postbody":"For more than seventy years, the Minnesota-based writer and activist Meridel Le Sueur was a voice for oppressed peoples worldwide. Beginning in the 1920s, she championed the struggles of ...","searchtext":"For more than seventy years, the Minnesota-based writer and activist Meridel Le Sueur was a voice for oppressed peoples worldwide. Beginning in the 1920s, she championed the struggles of workers against the capitalist economy, the efforts of women to find their voices and their power, the rights of American Indians to their lands and their cultures, and environmentalist causes. Le Sueur was born in Murray, Iowa, in 1900, at the beginning of what she called “the most brutal century, the twentieth century.” Her family traveled across the Midwest into Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and, finally, Minnesota. She lived for several years in Fort Scott, Kansas, where her mother met the socialist Arthur Le Sueur, who later became Meridel’s stepfather. Le Sueur’s body of work—both large and diverse—brought a message of hope and resistance to her readers. She wrote hundreds of works in many styles: short stories, reporting (both interpretive and objective), histories, children’s books, novellas, novels, poetry, and personal journal writing. Her subject matter ranged from objective reporting of labor activism, women’s rights, immigration, and poverty to deeply personal reflections. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, Le Sueur was an advocate for the unemployed, marched with striking workers, and wrote articles for the Daily World, the national newspaper for the Communist Party. Over the decades, her short stories were published in the leading political and literary journals of the time, including the Kenyon Review and the New Republic. She also wrote for popular magazines: Parents, Mademoiselle, and Woman’s Home Companion. One of Le Sueur’s best-known and most inspirational stories from the 1930s is “I Was Marching!”—a statement about human solidarity and collective political action. It was inspired by the 1934 Teamster Truckers’ strike in Minneapolis, a bitter labor dispute that ended in victory for the union in spite of the deaths of two strikers. The story moved Le Sueur’s peers as well as those in younger generations to become political activists. Minnesota was a center of political activism during the Great Depression. Foreclosures of farms, strikes, drought in the Midwest, unemployment, and hunger—Le Sueur covered them all for the Daily Worker and other media and in her short stories and articles. The story “Women on the Breadlines” (1932) follows unemployed women during the Depression; “Milk Went Up Two Cents Today” (1940) explores the world of poor, pregnant women; and “Salvation Home” tells the story of young women committed to institutions and sterilized. In The Girl (1939), Le Sueur documented the lives of working-class people in St. Paul at the end of Prohibition. The novel centers around a young girl, who is never named, as she matures politically in the company of other women. Her immediate world is a bar, where she and her friend Clara wait tables. The girl is enamored with a young man, Butch, who gets caught up in the violence of the times. The novel takes readers into a world of women: a loving, nurturing community that supports the girl, who represents the “girl” in all of us. The McCarthy era (c.1945–1955) was a difficult time for Le Sueur. She was blacklisted along with many other artists and writers. She turned to writing children’s books like The Mound Builders as well as biographical studies of legendary American figures like Abe Lincoln, John Chapman (Johnny Appleseed), Nancy Hanks Lincoln, and Davy Crockett. Le Sueur’s commitment to the Midwest runs deep in her writings and philosophy. Various critics have called her the “voice of the prairie” and the “poet of the people.” Her regional focus arises from an understanding of the Midwest as more than a physical place. Le Sueur’s work celebrates a uniquely Midwestern mindset that values deep connections between people and recognizes their history on the land. It is the land itself, however, that forms the foundation of her passionate love for the region. Her work brings together the poetic imagery of American Indian philosophies, feminism, Midwestern culture, politics, and the earth. In the 1970s, Leftist and feminist activists found inspiration in Le Sueur’s works, many of which (including Ripenings and North Star Country) were re-published. She continued writing until her death in Hudson, Wisconsin, on November 14, 1996.","src":"https://www3.mnhs.org/hubfs/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Black%20and%20white%20photograph%20of%20Meridel%20Le%20Sueur%2c%20c.%201940.%20.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/le-sueur-meridel-1900-1996"},{"alt":"A man sits against a dark background, showing his head, arms, and upper body to the waist. His shoulders and torso show the remains of tar and feathers.","author":[{"name":"Ehsan Alam","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/ehsan-alam"}],"categoryTag":[],"date":"December 23, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"July 25, 1917","name":"Anti-German Nativism, 1917–1919","postbody":"When the United States entered World War I in 1917, Germans were the single largest ethnic group in Minnesota. Nativism during this period was a “patriotic” attitude that saw recent ...","searchtext":"When the United States entered World War I in 1917, Germans were the single largest ethnic group in Minnesota. Nativism during this period was a “patriotic” attitude that saw recent immigrants—particularly those of German descent— as potentially traitorous. Many felt that because German Americans shared their heritage with the Kaiser and the German Empire, they would side with the enemy power. That many German Americans advocated neutrality until the U.S. declared war was further proof of disloyalty to nativists. The most conspicuous nativist agency was the Minnesota Commission of Public Safety (MCPS). Created by the state legislature in April of 1917, the MCPS was a seven-person commission headed by Governor J. A. A. Burnquist. It was given near-dictatorial powers to support the war effort at home and root out disloyal elements. While much of the commission’s activity focused on attacking labor advocates and political dissenters in the Nonpartisan League and the Industrial Workers of the World, the MCPS kept a close watch on German Americans as well. There was, in fact, much cross-over between these two groups, since many German Americans were both socialists and pacifists. The MCPS took drastic action in dealing with a gathering in New Ulm on July 25, 1917. The meeting was organized by Brown County Auditor Louis Vogel, Mayor Dr. Louis Fritsche, and city attorney Albert Pfaender. Its agenda was to discuss the constitutionality of the draft. The MCPS and its agents already suspected Pfaender and Fritsche of sedition. A month later, Burnquist had them both deposed. Another victim of the July 25 rally was Adolph Ackermann, president of Dr. Martin Luther College. During the demonstration, he gave a speech questioning the government’s motive for entering the war. In response to his comments, the MCPS coerced the college to force Ackermann’s resignation. Nativism sometimes served personal and business interests. After Fritsche was removed from office, the MCPS pressured the State Medical Society and the Brown–Redwood County Society to revoke the ex-mayor’s medical certification. Two doctors on the review panel who voted against Fritsche ran practices in Springfield, a town in keen business competition with New Ulm. Fritsche was eventually exonerated. Another vested-interest case unfolded in Springfield, where mostly German American stakeholders proposed creating a new bank. The president of the existing State Bank of Springfield submitted the names of those stakeholders to the MCPS to investigate their loyalty. Some members of the Catholic Church also stood to benefit from anti-German policies. Archbishop John Ireland had long promoted the “Americanization” of the Church. During the war, this attitude gained ground. The archbishop urged that English should be the only language of church liturgy—a move that alienated German Catholics and their clergy, who conducted mass in German. This division allowed many Irish Catholics to assume leadership positions at the expense of their German counterparts. The German-language press was an obvious target. The MCPS kept a close eye on many of these publications. Albert Steinhauser, publisher of the New Ulm Post and the New Ulm Review, featured many German articles in his papers that criticized the war. Under pressure from the commission, he was arrested and expelled from the Minnesota State Editorial Association in 1918. Even more severe, federal authorities jailed Volkszeitung editor Frederick W. Bergmeier of St. Paul for the duration of the war. Perhaps the most hotly debated nativist issue was the use of German in the classroom. Many schools, both public and parochial, used German as the primary language of instruction. While Minnesota did not ban this practice outright, the MCPS did urge school boards to make English the exclusive educational language, with the exception of foreign language courses. The commission compiled a list of objectionable textbooks that could not be used for the teaching of German. Catholic parochial schools also faced strong pressure from religious leaders to abandon German. Both Archbishop Ireland and Stearns County Bishop Joseph Busch strongly pressed for the exclusive use of English in Catholic schools. Teachers also suffered as a result of nativist activity. In Wabasha County, public school teacher Irene Bremer resigned and lost her teaching certificate after making alleged pro-German comments. She was ordered by the MCPS and a superintendent to attend a normal school and prove her loyalty in order to teach again. German Minnesotans responded to nativism in different ways. While many spoke their minds and suffered, others kept quiet and out of sight. Some became vehement and vocal “patriots” or “100% Americans” in order to deflect suspicion. A few even spied on other Germans for the MCPS. The replacements for both Fritsche and Pfaender were themselves German Americans. Bishop Busch, the stalwart “Americanizer,” was of Austrian stock. On February 25, 1918, the MCPS began registering unnaturalized aliens (non-natives to the United States) at its St. Paul headquarters. On April 1, in the same city, a statue personifying the nation of Germany called “Germania” was removed from the Germania Life Insurance Building, soon renamed the Guardian Life Insurance Company of America. The MCPS and other officials both represented and sanctioned a general culture of fear and hostility against German Americans. Such antagonism manifested itself throughout society at large. Indeed, many of the investigations conducted by the commission were petitioned by private citizens. This created a climate of paranoia and violence. Fritsche and his family, after his disgrace, lived in fear of their well-being and lives; this was by no means unusual for victims of nativism. Nativist Minnesotans boycotted their German neighbors’ stores, vandalized their property, and called for them to resign from their jobs. A particularly gruesome case of violence occurred in Luverne. On August 19, 1918, John Meints, a German American farmer suspected of disloyalty, was kidnapped by a large group of men and driven to the South Dakota border. Whipped, tarred, and feathered, he was told that if he returned to Minnesota, he would be hanged. Meints later sued thirty-two men for false imprisonment for $100,000. Though the court sided with the defendants, a 1922 settlement awarded him six thousand dollars. When World War I ended, so did much of the MCPS’s justification. It was abolished by legislative act in 1919 and met for the last time in 1920. With the commission’s demise and the end of the war, anti-German nativism lost much of its momentum.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/MNopedia/MNopedia%202026/11-2325a.gif","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246060,"name":"Crime and Punishment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/anti-german-nativism-1917-1919"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of National Guardsmen patrolling Plymouth Avenue in North Minneapolis, July 1967.","author":[{"name":"Susan Marks","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/susan-marks"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"December 21, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Civil Unrest on Plymouth Avenue, Minneapolis, 1967","postbody":"On the night of July 19, 1967, racial tension in North Minneapolis erupted along Plymouth Avenue in a series of acts of arson, assaults, and vandalism. The violence, which lasted for three ...","searchtext":"On the night of July 19, 1967, racial tension in North Minneapolis erupted along Plymouth Avenue in a series of acts of arson, assaults, and vandalism. The violence, which lasted for three nights, is often linked with other race-related demonstrations in cities across the nation during 1967’s “long hot summer.” In the early twentieth century, North Minneapolis was known as a place where marginalized people came together. Restrictive housing covenants prevented both Jewish and African American citizens from buying homes elsewhere in Minneapolis, so the Northside became an area where residents from different backgrounds cooperated, built friendships, and even intermarried. After World War II, however, trust between the two groups began to erode. As overtly anti-Semitic practices declined, housing options and job opportunities opened up more readily for Jewish citizens than for African Americans, straining relationships between previously friendly neighbors. Civil rights leader W. Harry Davis described that unrest in his 2002 autobiography. North Minneapolis in the 1960s, he stated, was no longer the quiet, isolated small city of his youth. The anger over racial inequality that bubbled to the surface in places like Los Angeles and Detroit was also present in Minneapolis. Though some scholars refer to the events as riots, others argue that they were a series of criminal activities. Many, however, use terms like “uprising” and “rebellion” that suggest a strategic response to social injustice. The city had two major incidents of civil unrest on the Northside in the 1960s. The first, in 1966, involved looting and arson on Plymouth Avenue. Arthur Naftalin, the city’s first Jewish mayor, acknowledged the lack of opportunities for blacks in the neighborhood and promised change in response. By the summer of 1967, conditions had not improved, and black residents’ frustration was stronger than ever. Accounts vary as to how the 1967 incidents started. Some witnesses recall the mistreatment of a black woman by police at the Aquatennial parade as the inciting event. Shortly before 11:30 p.m. on July 19, a crowd of African American citizens moved north from the parade site towards Plymouth Avenue. There, they violently protested discrimination and mistreatment by police and Jewish business owners. Some people in the crowd vandalized, looted, and burned stores on Plymouth Avenue. There were sporadic incidents of arson, rock and bottle throwing, and assault. Someone threw Molotov cocktails at the home of a Jewish city-councilman—Minneapolis Fifth Ward Alderman Joe Greenstein. The city dispatched police forces with riot helmets and shotguns to control the crowds and minimize the damage. While trying to put out fires, some firefighters worked under a hail of rocks and bricks thrown by gathering crowds. By the time the violence and looting subsided early in the morning of July 20, approximately ten Plymouth Avenue stores had been vandalized. Silver’s Food Market and Knox Food Market—both Jewish-owned businesses—were completely destroyed by fires. Approximately ten people were treated at local hospitals, and thirteen African American citizens—including children—were arrested. Another round of violence ignited later that day. In response, Mayor Naftalin asked Governor Harold LeVander for Minnesota National Guard troops to occupy the area until tensions died down. Six hundred guardsmen were called in to work in round-the-clock shifts. For over a week, 150–250 National Guard troops were stationed on Plymouth Avenue. Additional Guardsmen were stationed in other areas in both North and South Minneapolis and in predominantly African American areas of St. Paul. The peacekeeping efforts of many Northside citizens during the demonstrations were acknowledged in some media coverage. On July 20 and 21, violence continued sporadically on and near Plymouth Avenue before tapering off. In total, there were eighteen fires, thirty-six arrests, three shootings, twenty-four injuries, and damages totaling 4.2 million. Of the arrests that were made, at least four were of white citizens. There were no fatalities. Throughout the three-day period, demonstrators had showed their frustration with discrimination against African Americans on the Northside. They had focused most of their anger on white authority symbols, including businesses and property. Local police received few reports of assaults on white citizens themselves. The media generally cited newcomers and a militant minority in North Minneapolis as the cause of the violence. Some local press addressed systemic causes—including alienation and racism– and called on community leaders and policymakers to prevent future violent incidents.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/E450 r13.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056216,"name":"African Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246060,"name":"Crime and Punishment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/civil-unrest-plymouth-avenue-minneapolis-1967"},{"alt":"Color image of a Dakota summer lodge, ca. 1846–1848. Watercolor painting by Seth Eastman.","author":[{"name":"Peter J. DeCarlo","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/peter-j-decarlo"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"December 16, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186625246048,"name":"1585–1763 (Colonization)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056201,"name":"1754–1800 (Revolution and a New Nation)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056203,"name":"1792–1861 (Expansion and Reform)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":203519472229,"name":"Pre-1585 (Before European Contact)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Inyan Ceyaka Otunwe","postbody":"Inyan Ceyaka Otunwe (Village at the Barrier of Stone), also called Little Rapids or simply Inyan Ceyaka, was a summer planting village of the Wahpeton Dakota. Located near present-day ...","searchtext":"Inyan Ceyaka Otunwe (Village at the Barrier of Stone), also called Little Rapids or simply Inyan Ceyaka, was a summer planting village of the Wahpeton Dakota. Located near present-day Jordan on the Minnesota River, the village was occupied by the Wahpeton during the early 1800s, and likely before. Burial mounds indicate that Paleo-Americans—possible ancestors of the Dakota—lived at the site as early as 100 CE. During the fur-trade era (roughly 1750–1840), the size and location of Dakota encampments like the one at Inyan Ceyaka varied according to a yearly cycle. In fall, large groups dispersed to harvest maple sugar and hunt deer. In winter, smaller family groups established camps in wooded areas. Men hunted and trapped fur-bearing animals, while women retrieved food stores they had cached during the summer. As a summer planting village, Inyan Ceyaka was occupied from late spring until early fall. It may also have been occupied in winter. The population of the village fluctuated, but Euro-American observers estimated that over three hundred Wahpeton lived there. Women planted, tended, and harvested corn at Inyan Ceyaka. Women and children gathered berries and roots. Men contributed to the food supply by hunting and fishing. Villagers also constructed bark containers, placed them underground, and used them to store excess corn. Wahpeton women built and maintained the structures of the village. Since the Dakota built their largest wooden lodges at summer planting villages, it is likely that such lodges existed at Inyan Ceyaka. Designed for summer living, they provided shade and were well ventilated. Near the lodge area was a community dump where the villagers discarded plant and animal remains, ash, and other trash. Documentary and archaeological research suggests that the village included a dance area—a smooth, dry semi-circle surrounded by a low earthen embankment. The Wahpeton would have kept the interior of the circle clear for dancers to perform while spectators stood outside the embankment. Mazamani (Walking Iron), a spokesman of the Wahpeton in the early nineteenth century, was a well-known leader of the Medicine Lodge. His leadership of the lodge, coupled with archaeological evidence, suggests that medicine dances were held at Inyan Ceyaka during the summer. The first known person of European decent to visit Inyan Ceyaka was Jean Baptiste Faribault, though he may have been preceded by trader Archibald John Campbell. Faribault worked for the Northwest Fur Company and began trading at the village in 1802. He married a mixed-race Dakota woman and acted as a cultural middleman. Some historians believe he spent several summers at Inyan Ceyaka. From Faribault’s arrival until 1851, the village hosted fur traders. The Wahpeton exchanged furs for trade goods like beads, blankets, awls, and knives. A fur trade post may have been constructed just north of the village. Whether a physical post existed or not, the fur trade had a dramatic affect on the Wahpeton economy. European trade goods became a part of everyday life, presenting alternatives to traditionally manufactured items. In the 1830s, the Wahpeton leaders Wanaksante (Rebounding Iron) and Kinyan (Red Eagle), along with Mazamani, met with Indian Agent Lawrence Taliaferro. They expressed interest in practicing more intensive agriculture at the summer village site and asked for seeds, plows, and the construction of a corn mill. In 1843, missionaries Mary and Stephen Riggs visited the village and expressed their intention to establish a mission there. The Wahpeton leaders rejected their offer, not wanting any missionaries in the vicinity. In 1851, Wahpeton leaders from Inyan Ceyaka attended the treaty negotiations at Traverse des Sioux. Mazamani’s son (Mazamani II) signed the treaty that ceded the land on which the village site was located. In the summer of 1853, the inhabitants of the village moved to a Dakota reservation on the Minnesota River. The U.S.–Dakota War of 1862 fragmented Dakota society, and Mazamani II was killed in the fighting. Many of the Wahpeton from Inyan Ceyaka were removed from the state or traveled west. In the 1880s, some Wahpeton originally from the village began returning to Minnesota. In 1999, the village site at Little Rapids was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In 2015, it was part of the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources Carver Rapids Management Unit.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/10267989.640x640.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246059,"name":"Native Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/inyan-ceyaka-otunwe"},{"alt":"Oil-on-canvas portrait of Harriet Bishop. Painted c.1880 by Andrew Falkenshield based on an engraving of Bishop made in 1860.","author":[{"name":"Mary Wingerd","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/mary-wingerd"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"December 14, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186622056203,"name":"1792–1861 (Expansion and Reform)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Bishop, Harriet E. (1817–1883)","postbody":"Harriet Bishop, best known as the founder of St. Paul’s first public and Sunday schools, was also a social reformer, land agent, and writer. In the 1840s, she led a vanguard of white, ...","searchtext":"Harriet Bishop, best known as the founder of St. Paul’s first public and Sunday schools, was also a social reformer, land agent, and writer. In the 1840s, she led a vanguard of white, middle-class, Protestant women who sought to bring “moral order” to the multi-cultural fur-trade society of pre-territorial Minnesota. Bishop was born in Panton, Vermont, in 1817. Deeply religious and schooled in moral righteousness, she exemplified nineteenth-century middle-class women’s values—what historians have deemed the “cult of true womanhood.” She believed that, as a woman, she had a calling to champion moral reform and Christian piety. Bishop spent ten years as a teacher in Essex County, New York. In 1847, unwed at age thirty, she found inspiration in a training course led by the reformer Catharine Beecher. The course was designed to recruit and prepare teachers to bring moral guidance to the new U.S. territories. Bishop was the first of this cohort to go west. In 1847, Thomas Williamson, a missionary to the Dakota, wrote to Beecher describing the roughshod village of St. Paul and its need for a teacher. Bishop immediately volunteered, though Williamson warned that the village had few creature comforts and was awash in alcohol. Bishop arrived in St. Paul in July 1847. She soon began teaching classes to seven students in a log cabin at present-day Kellogg Boulevard and St. Peter Street. On July 25, she established a Sunday school that served as the forerunner of the city’s Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian congregations. Williamson had specified that teaching in the region required an openness to cultural differences. Bishop, however, called the Dakota people who welcomed her “grotesque.” She dismissed her French-Canadian and mixed-blood Catholic neighbors as un-Christian. As for her students, they were for the most part “a dark forbidding group.” Though famed as St. Paul’s first teacher, Bishop lasted only a few years in her classrooms. In 1850, she founded a seminary and boarding school to teach and shelter new instructors. She made a greater impact as the first of a group of white, middle-class women who strove to transform the Northwest from the multicultural meeting ground of the fur-trade era into an equivalent of their Eastern home towns—with the same prejudices as well as refinements. As St. Paul grew in the 1850s, Bishop dedicated herself to social and religious reform. She became a founding member of the First Baptist Church and established a Sewing Society to pay off its mortgage. She helped organize groups to raise money for a new schoolhouse and to aid the needy. For cultural edification, she hosted the Philecclesian Literary Society in her home. Bishop was most passionate, however, in the battle against “demon rum,” which made her unpopular with many St. Paulites. Unfazed, she kept up her crusade, from 1849, when she helped found the Sons of Temperance Society until 1877, when she became the first paid organizer of the Minnesota Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. Despite her reformist zeal, Bishop was no radical. Like her mentor, Catharine Beecher, she opposed woman suffrage. In fact, evidence suggests that she hoped to make a conventional marriage. In 1850, her engagement to a young lawyer ended in separation—a public humiliation in the small community of St. Paul. To make her way as a single woman was no easy task, but in the boom years of the 1850s, Bishop found lucrative work as a land agent and Minnesota booster. In 1857, she published Floral Home, a somewhat exaggerated account of the territory’s beauty and potential. She married John McConkey, a widowed harness-maker with four children, in 1858. The relationship eventually soured, and Bishop accused McConkey of “habitual drunkenness.” The couple divorced in 1867. In spite of her personal disappointments, Bishop continued to pursue her literary interests. She found some success in publishing Dakota War Whoop, a sensational account of the U.S.–Dakota War of 1862. As the years passed, she cobbled together a difficult living as a writer and lecturer. She helped organize both the St. Paul Ladies Christian Union (1867) and the Home for the Friendless (1869). Near the end of her life, Bishop embraced the cause of woman suffrage. In 1881, she was involved in the founding of the Minnesota Woman Suffrage Association. She died in St. Paul, in 1883, at the age of sixty-six.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/10440442.640x640.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056210,"name":"Education","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/bishop-harriet-e-1817-1883"},{"alt":"Color image of St. Mark’s African Methodist Episcopal Church, Duluth, 2001.","author":[{"name":"Natalie Heneghan","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/natalie-heneghan"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"December 09, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"St. Mark’s AME Church, Duluth","postbody":"St. Mark’s African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church has played a central role in Duluth’s African American community for over 125 years. While other Black organizations have dissolved or ...","searchtext":"St. Mark’s African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church has played a central role in Duluth’s African American community for over 125 years. While other Black organizations have dissolved or moved to the Twin Cities, St. Mark’s has been a mainstay. Rev. Alphonse Reff, who served St. Mark’s from 1973 to 1984, noted in a 1975 interview that the church’s reach extends beyond its walls. From housing fraternal groups in the 1910s to supporting the fledgling local NAACP to hosting vigils in the 2010s, St. Mark’s has remained a welcoming community space. Duluth’s African American population at the turn of the twentieth century was small but active. Black people established fraternal orders, political clubs, and newspapers in the port city, mirroring larger establishments in the Twin Cities. Churches were fundamental to the growth and connectivity of the community. St. Mark’s AME Church was the first and only building in Duluth built by Black people, for Black people. Founded in 1890 by Rev. Richmond Taylor, the congregation first met at Fourth Street and Fourth Avenue West. Soon afterward, it moved to a newly constructed building at 530 North Fifth Avenue East. The structure’s basement level accommodated the congregation until 1913, when the main level was completed. The simple brick building sits in a mostly residential area. It features a two-story bell tower, Tudor Revival elements, and locally made stained glass windows. Like many churches at the time, St. Mark’s in the early twentieth century offered the community a central space for religious, social, and political conversation and networking. The local Masonic order frequently held meetings at the church, and membership there and in local Black organizations overlapped. At the time of St. Mark’s construction, most African American men in Duluth worked as janitors, waiters, porters, or dock or boat workers. A few independent barbershops and restaurants succeeded. Other employment came to Duluth via the U.S. Steel Corporation. St. Mark||s growth in its early years paralleled the growth of the African American population in Duluth, largely driven by job opportunities at U.S. Steel. In the early 1920s, the company recruited laborers—many from Southern states—to work at their plant in Morgan Park, a planned community near the edge of Duluth. Recruits found poor wages, unfamiliar weather, and discrimination upon arrival. Though their jobs were in Morgan Park, the company town, African American employees could not live there. It was a whites-only community. Most Black people settled in Gary, which was also a company town, or the East Hillside neighborhood, near St. Mark’s. After World War I, Duluth’s Black citizens faced stricter segregation and harsher discrimination. When the lynching of three traveling Black workers in Duluth captured national attention in 1920, St. Mark’s was proactive in response. Rev. William M. Majors of St. Mark’s assisted in efforts to indict the lynchers. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) provided legal and financial support for the proceedings. Before the lynching, African Americans in Duluth were not convinced a local NAACP chapter was necessary. After the incident, some outraged and fearful Black residents left Duluth altogether. Those who remained formed an NAACP chapter with sixty-nine members, and St. Mark’s provided gathering space for the new organization. NAACP founder W. E. B. Du Bois was the chapter’s first speaker. In March 1921, he came to St. Mark’s and spoke in favor of Minnesota’s pending anti-lynching law, which the state legislature passed the next month. Ethel Ray Nance, whose father helped establish the Duluth chapter and who became a civil rights leader in her own right, recalled in a 1974 interview that the church far exceeded its two-hundred-and-fifty-person capacity when Du Bois came. She estimated that 75 percent of the crowd was white. Duluth’s Black population grew to about nine hundred by 1970. In 2014, it remained just under two thousand, or 2 percent of the city’s total population. St. Mark’s continues to be central to the community and attuned to racial issues in the twenty-first century. St. Mark’s parishioners hosted a prayer vigil and bell-ringing for victims of the shooting at Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in June 2015.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/MNHSphoto.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056216,"name":"African Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246089,"name":"Religion and Belief","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/st-mark-s-ame-church-duluth"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Agnes Keenan, c.1945. From the Agnes Keenan Collection. St. Catherine University Archives, St. Paul.","author":[{"name":"Mary Jo Richardson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/mary-jo-richardson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"December 07, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Keenan, Agnes (1910–1979)","postbody":"Agnes Keenan’s name is among the most prominent in the history of St. Catherine’s College—the school that became St. Catherine University. Although she was born in Aberdeen, South Dakota, ...","searchtext":"Agnes Keenan’s name is among the most prominent in the history of St. Catherine’s College—the school that became St. Catherine University. Although she was born in Aberdeen, South Dakota, in 1910, Keenan spent most of her life in St. Paul working as a teacher and community leader. When Keenan was two years old, her family moved to the Twin Cities. At first, they settled in Minneapolis, but five years later they bought a home on Summit Avenue in St. Paul. Keenan, her younger sister, Anna, and her brother, Edward, spent their childhood there. Both Keenan and her sister attended Derham Hall High School, which was on the campus of the College of St. Catherine at the time, before enrolling in the college itself. Keenan graduated in 1931 with majors in English and Latin and a minor in history. Keenan worked as a teacher in local schools, including St. Paul’s Cleveland Junior High School, before attending Catholic University in Washington, D.C. After writing her thesis on Alice Meynell, the English poet and writer, she graduated with a master’s degree in English and philosophy in 1938. She then began her twenty-seven-year teaching career in English at the College of St. Catherine. Keenan’s students were especially attracted to her courses on the Catholic Literary Revival and Dante. She was a prolific writer of book reviews and articles as well as a lecturer in the Twin Cities community. In the 1940s, she cooperated with the St. Paul Public Schools to develop a “practice teaching” program for educators. A turning point in Keenan’s life arrived in 1953, when she joined an international Catholic congregation called the Daughters of the Heart of Mary. Formed during the French Revolution, the organization did not establish convents, use titles, or practice other customs that identified lay people as religious members. After joining the group, many members continued to practice their professions, lived at home, and cared for elderly parents. Keenan followed this example in St. Paul, where she continued to teach English at the College of St. Catherine, lived at home, and cared for her mother, who had a long-term cardiac condition. Keenan took vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience in the order, which Archbishop John Gregory Murray invited to St. Paul. In 1960, after her mother died, Keenan became a Superior for the Daughters of the Heart of Mary in the congregation’s St. Paul province. One of her first tasks in her new position was to find a place in St. Paul for holding retreats for women. Louis Hill, son of the railroad magnate James J. Hill, had donated his mansion at 260 Summit Avenue to the Catholic Church in his will. The house, Keenan realized, was an ideal location for retreats. Because of her friendship with members of the Hill family and others in the local community, Keenan was able to restore the mansion and transform it from an office building into the Maryhill Retreat House. In 1972, the College of St. Catherine awarded Keenan the Alexandrine Medal. The medal recognized her outstanding work in the community as well as her leadership roles in the Daughters of the Heart of Mary, which included assisting the director of the order in France and directing a mission in Ethiopia and a school in Addis Ababa. In 1979, at a meeting of the Daughters of the Heart of Mary in Paris, Keenan died of a heart attack. She was sixty-eight years old.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Image (316).jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056210,"name":"Education","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246089,"name":"Religion and Belief","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/keenan-agnes-1910-1979"},{"alt":"Color image of a Minnesota State Grange picnic held on the Sletton Farm in Aitkin on June 13, 2015.","author":[{"name":"Members of the Sunbeam Grange #2","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/members-sunbeam-grange-2"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"November 30, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"State Grange of Minnesota","postbody":"For almost 150 years, the State Grange of Minnesota as an organization has thrived, faded, and regrouped in its efforts to provide farmers and their families with a unified voice. As the ...","searchtext":"For almost 150 years, the State Grange of Minnesota as an organization has thrived, faded, and regrouped in its efforts to provide farmers and their families with a unified voice. As the number of people directly engaged in farming has declined, the State Grange has shifted its focus toward recruiting a new type of member—often younger—interested in safe, healthy, and sustainable food sources. Oliver Hudson Kelley and six associates founded the National Grange and Order of the Patrons of Husbandry in late 1867. As designed by Kelley, the purpose of each local Grange was to educate farmers and their families, enrich their social lives, and share information on the growing of crops. Granges also offered advice on marketing crops and livestock and setting up produce cooperatives. Together, they aimed to create a social fraternity that united farmers across the country. State Granges needed a minimum of fifteen local Granges to qualify for National Grange certification. Kelley personally undertook the responsibility of organizing what was to become the State Grange of Minnesota. Organizing conditions were favorable in 1869, when the prices paid to farmers failed to match the costs of production. Railroads kept the grain transport costs high. Grain elevators controlled the prices farmers received for grain. Kelley envisioned that the state and local Grange subordinates would fight against the railroads, elevators, and other exploiters of local farmers. By February 23, 1869, Kelley personally had organized enough subordinate Granges to certify the State Grange of Minnesota. It was the first State Grange established in the country. By the end of 1869, thirty-nine subordinate Granges were active. By 1874, 450 Granges had been established. Ignatius Donnelly, a long-time Populist and Grange member, called a meeting of all Grange members in 1873. They created the Anti-Monopoly Party, a political party that in partnership with the Democrats came close to capturing all state offices in 1874. The party’s creation caused a split between members who wanted the Grange to be a political force and others who felt it should remain non-partisan. This ideological split, in concert with bad financial decisions concerning Grange ownership of cooperative businesses, caused a steep drop in the number of subordinate Granges. In 1887, the State Grange requested that the Minnesota Legislature appropriate funds for a state school of agriculture. The project was promoted heavily by State Master William S. Chowen and associates James A. Bull and J. D. Scofield. The legislature established the School of Agriculture on the University of Minnesota’s St. Paul campus a year later. At first, the school served only male students. In 1897, after nine years of continuous pressure from the Grange, the program became co-educational. The National Grange was the first national organization to mandate leadership roles for women. It specified that at least four of its sixteen elected positions were to be held by women, with the remainder open to both men and women. In 1893, Sarah E. Baird, a member of Minnehaha Grange No. 398, was elected as the first female master of the State Grange, a position she held until 1912. The Grange rules and rituals also strongly encouraged participation by youth. By 1925, the State Grange no longer had enough local Granges to be recognized officially by the National Grange. In 1928, the National Grange authorized a reorganization effort, which by 1929 resulted in the State Grange being reinstated. Spurred on by public demand for inexpensive social outlets during the Great Depression, the number of individual subordinates grew to seventy-five between 1930 and 1950. Granges provided many social outlets by conducting youth summer camps, hosting Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners, preparing entries for County Fairs, and conducting community service projects. In 1934, the Minnesota State Granges sent a resolution to the National Grange to acquire Oliver Kelley’s homestead in Elk River. In 1935, the National Grange took possession of the property. During the next twenty-five years, a wide range of state and subordinate Grange activities took place on the site. In 1960, the 189-acre farm was donated to the Minnesota Historical Society. Throughout its history, the State Grange has been faithful to its priorities of education, community service, non-partisan problem solving, and grass-roots leadership. In the 1960s, the National Grange expanded its membership beyond famers to include any who share these core values. In 1972, the State Grange listed thirty-five subordinate Granges in its published centennial history. This decline followed massive changes that began in the 1960s and undercut the appeal of the Grange. The total number of farms decreased. On the farms that remained and grew in size, fewer people actively engaged in agriculture because of mechanization. The populations of rural towns and townships dwindled, while at the same time entertainment options for rural people expanded to include at-home television viewing. These trends continued throughout the second half of the twentieth century. When Kelley organized the first Granges in Minnesota in 1869, those not living on farms were in a distinct minority. By 2000, people residing on farms were about 3 percent of the state’s population. In 2003, due to budget cuts, the Minnesota State Historical Society decided to close the Oliver Kelley Farm and six additional historic sites owned by the Society. The State Grange was an early participant in a successful effort to stop the closures. In 2012, just when it appeared that the State Grange would fall under the minimum number of subordinates, several employees of the Oliver Kelley Farm organized a new subordinate Grange. Based in the historic Minnehaha Grange Hall in Edina, Oliver Hudson Kelley Grange #834 has demonstrated an appeal to urban people interested in a range of agriculture issues. These include organic food production, farmers markets, community gardens, seed harvesting and preservation, urban farming, and Master Gardener programs. In October 2014, the State Grange approved the Minnesota Growth Project, a focused effort to establish additional subordinate Granges. The project targets anyone with a genuine interest in healthy food and small-scale food production as well as a commitment to the values and mission of the Grange.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Grange Picnic.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246091,"name":"Agriculture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/state-grange-minnesota"},{"alt":"Photograph of Henry Longstreet Taylor, c.1917. Photograph by Golling Studio.","author":[{"name":"Mary Krugerud","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/mary-krugerud"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"November 25, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Taylor, Henry Longstreet (c.1858–1932)","postbody":"Henry Longstreet Taylor was a key figure in the development of tuberculosis treatment in Minnesota. The sanatoriums he helped establish in the early 1900s were an essential part of a ...","searchtext":"Henry Longstreet Taylor was a key figure in the development of tuberculosis treatment in Minnesota. The sanatoriums he helped establish in the early 1900s were an essential part of a statewide anti-tuberculosis campaign to control and study the disease. Taylor was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on August 14, 1857. He graduated from Haverford College in Pennsylvania and received his doctor of medicine degree from the College of Ohio in 1882. After graduation, he went to Europe to study with Robert Koch, who had identified the bacillus that caused tuberculosis. Four years later, Taylor returned to the United States intending to establish a medical practice in Ohio. Illness caused him to move to Asheville, North Carolina. He recovered and worked for four years at an Asheville sanatorium. Taylor came to Minnesota in 1893 because he knew that tuberculosis was a public health menace in the state. At that time, there was no cure for the disease. Some doctors believed that people who were sick with tuberculosis could get well if they were given enough rest, fresh air, and good food. Taylor wanted to provide places for tuberculous people to take the fresh-air cure. In 1899, he erected tents in a field near the Ramsey County Poor Farm so invalids could live outdoors during the summer. Because tuberculosis was contagious, neighbors of the Poor Farm did not want the tents near them. The next year, they plowed the fields and planted potatoes. Taylor abandoned that project and began to campaign for sanatorium construction for people with tuberculosis. Taylor delivered speeches and wrote articles to promote the sanatorium concept throughout Minnesota. In 1901, the state legislature created a three-member commission to study the need for a state-operated sanatorium. Taylor was appointed chair of the commission. Its members visited many sanatoriums in the United States. They also looked at potential locations in Minnesota. Their final report recommended that a state sanatorium be built by Leech Lake in Cass County near Walker. The legislature provided funding to purchase the land. There was not enough money to start construction. Taylor became impatient with the delay in sanatorium building. He worked with other doctors to establish places for people to heal. In 1902, he helped physicians at City and County Hospital in St. Paul create a separate tuberculosis ward. The next year, he was given the use of an entire floor at Luther Hospital for his patients. In 1905, he used private financial support to build his own sanatorium on Lake Pokegama near Pine City. The Minnesota State Sanatorium for Consumptives finally opened in December 1907. Taylor realized that the needs of many people could not be met by so few institutions. In 1910, he helped open Cuenca Sanatorium on Bass Lake (later renamed Lake Owasso). In 1915, he oversaw the opening of the Ramsey County’s Children’s Preventorium on the same site. As its medical director, he worked to improve the health of children who were at risk for developing tuberculosis. In 1912, Taylor was appointed to a legislative commission to develop a system for creating county sanatorium districts. By 1918, Minnesota had fourteen county sanatoriums. It offered tuberculosis treatment to more of its citizens than any other state. Taylor’s efforts at tuberculosis control and education were not limited to sanatoriums. In 1920, he endowed a Pokegama Scholarship for Research in Tuberculosis at the University of Minnesota. He also served on the boards of several local, state, and national tuberculosis associations, including the Minnesota Public Health Association and the National Tuberculosis Association. Taylor died on January 2, 1932, just weeks after helping with the Ramsey County Christmas Seal campaign. In 1906, 2,042 people had died from the disease statewide. In 1932, thanks in part to Taylor’s work, half as many citizens died of tuberculosis, even though there was still no cure.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/10226365.640x640.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246087,"name":"Health and Medicine","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/taylor-henry-longstreet-c1858-1932"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of an exterior view of Fort Snelling showing the Round Tower, 1863.","author":[{"name":"Matthew Cassady and Peter J. DeCarlo","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/matthew-cassady-and-peter-j-decarlo"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"November 23, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Fort Snelling in the Civil and US–Dakota Wars, 1861–1866","postbody":"During the Civil War era, Fort Snelling served as an induction and training center for nearly twenty-five thousand soldiers. Many of them fought in the Civil War. Around fourteen hundred of ...","searchtext":"During the Civil War era, Fort Snelling served as an induction and training center for nearly twenty-five thousand soldiers. Many of them fought in the Civil War. Around fourteen hundred of the troops raised at the fort served in the US–Dakota War of 1862. After that war, a concentration camp for Dakota non-combatants was established near the fort. Following the Civil War, the fort supported US military expeditions against Indigenous people and the garrisoning of western posts. When the Civil War began, Minnesota re-opened Fort Snelling as a training center for new recruits. The fort had several commandants throughout the period. The First Minnesota Volunteer Infantry Regiment was the first unit recruited at the fort in April of 1861. While at the post, recruits learned the basics of soldiering. They spent the majority of their time marching, drilling with their weapons, and standing guard duty. After the draft began in 1863, several wooden barracks were built outside the fort||s walls to accommodate the large number of new soldiers. At times, there were so many soldiers at the fort that some lived in tents. Once a military unit||s term of service ended, Fort Snelling served as its mustering-out point. In total, Minnesota recruited twenty-one military units during the Civil War, totaling about twenty-five thousand soldiers. When the US–Dakota War began in August of 1862, a number of US regiments were being recruited at Fort Snelling. Colonel Henry Sibley assembled four infantry companies at the fort to march against the Dakota. Later, eight more companies and some mounted militia organized at the fort and joined Sibley at St. Peter. When the US–Dakota War ended, about sixteen hundred Dakota and mixed-race non-combatants (mostly women, children, and the elderly) were removed to Fort Snelling. They were held in a concentration camp—a place where people are confined, often in poor conditions, without regard to legal norms of arrest—during the winter of 1862–1863 to await expulsion from the state. The camp was enclosed by a stockade and located on the river bottom below the fort in present-day Fort Snelling State Park. According to eye-witness accounts, Dakota prisoners suffered assaults and violence at the hands of soldiers and white civilians. Conditions in the camp were poor. The Dakota lacked sufficient food. Outbreaks of mumps, measles, and pneumonia killed many. It is estimated that between 130 and three hundred Dakota died in the camp. In April of 1863, a steamer carrying Dakota men who had been imprisoned at Mankato made a quick stop at Fort Snelling. US soldiers kept the Dakota men from reuniting with their families in the camp. The Dakota men were removed to a military prison in Davenport, Iowa, where the threat of mob violence was less. In May of 1863, the Dakota who had survived the winter in the concentration camp were removed to the Crow Creek Reservation. In addition, over two thousand Ho-Chunk (Winnebago) were briefly held at Fort Snelling before being removed from the state. After the US-Dakota War, the Dakota leaders Sakpedan (Little Six; |||Shakopee III|||), and Wakanozhanzhan (Medicine Bottle) were imprisoned at Fort Snelling. A military commission convicted them of murdering civilians and participating in the war. Both men were executed at Fort Snelling on November 11, 1865. From the summer of 1863 through 1866, troops mustered in and out of the Army at Fort Snelling. It also functioned as a supply base for operations against Dakota who had moved west. The army conducted three “punitive expeditions” into Dakota Territory that targeted Dakota who were deemed “hostile” by the US government. Soldiers recruited at Fort Snelling participated in all three expeditions. The first two expeditions resulted in battles and attacks on American Indian villages. The vast majority of Indigenous people involved in these conflicts were Lakota and had not participated in the US–Dakota War. The final punitive expedition in 1865 failed to engage any Dakota. Many of the teamsters who served on the 1863 expedition were recently freed African American men. Many of them enlisted in the United States Colored Troops. Until 1866, Minnesota troops garrisoned western posts. That year, Brackett’s Battalion of cavalry was the last Civil War-era unit to muster out of service at Fort Snelling.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/10379121.640x640.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/fort-snelling-civil-and-us-dakota-wars-1861-1866"},{"alt":"Colorized Washburn-Crosby Flour Mills advertisement for Gold Medal Flour, Threshing Scene, unknown location.","author":[{"name":"Linda A. Cameron","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/linda-cameron"}],"categoryTag":[],"date":"November 19, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Bonanza Farms, Red River Valley","postbody":"Bonanza farms—large, commercial farming enterprises that grew thousands of acres of wheat—flourished in northwestern Minnesota and the Dakotas from the 1870s to 1920. Geology, the Homestead ...","searchtext":"Bonanza farms—large, commercial farming enterprises that grew thousands of acres of wheat—flourished in northwestern Minnesota and the Dakotas from the 1870s to 1920. Geology, the Homestead Act of 1862, railroads, modern machinery, and revolutionary new flour-milling methods all contributed to the bonanza farm boom. The fertile Red River Valley was created twelve thousand years ago when retreating glaciers left behind deposits of silt. The resulting flat land, with its rich topsoil, was well suited to farming with horsepower and machinery. The Homestead Act of 1862 enabled farmers to obtain 160 acres of land in exchange for a filing fee and a residency of five years. They could also purchase the property at a price of $1.25 per acre following six months of residency. This opportunity prompted an influx of European Americans into Dakota Territory and the new state of Minnesota. Railroads had a significant impact on agricultural development in the Red River Valley. Trains provided transportation for the newcomers and carried equipment and supplies needed for farming. Railroad companies received large land grants to build their rail lines. One of the railroads, the Northern Pacific (NP), went into bankruptcy in 1873. The NP||s board of directors agreed to exchange the railroad||s worthless bonds for land at face value. This enabled investors to purchase large tracts of land for just fifteen cents per acre. Among the first to take advantage of the offer of land at discounted prices were General George W. Cass, president of the NP, and Benjamin Cheney, a member of the railroad||s board of directors. Cass and Cheney initially purchased 13,440 acres a few miles west of Fargo in 1874. Absentee owners, often from the eastern United States or the Twin Cities, hired managers to oversee bonanza farm operations. Cass and Cheney hired Minnesota farmer Oliver Dalrymple to manage their farm. Its success ignited a firestorm of land sales to large-scale investors. By the early 1880s, speculators viewed the land of the Red River Valley as a gold mine. Railway magnate James J. Hill also saw the advantage of owning land in the Red River Valley. Hill||s interest in farming grew out of his desire to maximize his St. Paul, Minneapolis and Manitoba (later Great Northern) Railroad||s profits. He reasoned that if the farmers along his rail lines were successful, his trains would have valuable freight to haul and would turn a tidy profit. In 1881, Hill began purchasing land in Kittson County that had been a part of the railroad||s original land grant at $2.75 per acre. His farm eventually totaled forty-five thousand acres (more than seventy square miles) and became the largest in Minnesota, although only about three thousand acres were under cultivation. To simplify management, in 1910 the farm was divided into two parts: the Humboldt and Northcote Divisions. Most scholars agree that a farm had to have a minimum of three thousand acres to qualify as a |||bonanza.||| While most such farms in Minnesota ranged from four thousand to ten thousand acres, others were immense. The Keystone Farm in Polk County took up 21,760 acres. The largest of all bonanza farms, the Cass-Cheney-Dalrymple farm in Dakota Territory, totaled seventy thousand acres. Milling technology stimulated the growth of bonanza farms in the Red River Valley. Hard red spring wheat was more nutritious than winter wheat and better suited to the northern climate because it required a shorter growing period. Spring wheat||s hard, brittle bran shell, however, made milling with the old-fashioned grindstone method more difficult. The millers in Minneapolis began to experiment with the |||new process||| of milling, using roller technology and middlings purifiers that could break down the hard shell and consistently produce large quantities of high-quality flour. Modern farm machinery also boosted large-scale agriculture. Improved harrows and seed drills saved farmers time and labor. These machines sowed seeds at a predetermined, uniform depth and covered them to keep them from blowing away. This increased the chances that every seed would grow. Fanning mills cleaned grain prior to shipment, and cleaned seed wheat to eliminate noxious weeds. Self-tying binders saved the labor of bundling the grain by hand, although it was still hand-shocked. Improved steam traction engines and larger threshing machines made it possible to thresh huge volumes of grain. Bonanza farms required fleets of equipment. In 1885, Hill||s Humboldt Farm employed 254 horses and mules; forty-five each seeders, harrows, and binders; one hundred plows; six threshers; ninety-five wagons; fourteen mowers; and other small machinery. Not surprisingly, implement manufacturers sprang up in Minnesota to meet the needs of these farmers. The Minneapolis Threshing Machine Company (1887–1929) and the Northwest Thresher Company of Stillwater (1866–1913) are just two examples of businesses that grew out of the agricultural boom of the Red River Valley. Typically, new acreage was broken in preparation for seeding each year, but not all of a bonanza farm||s acreage was cultivated at once. Farmers intent upon making a quick fortune at the expense of the land continued to grow only wheat on the same acreage year after year. This depleted the nutrients in the soil and decreased yields. Severe weather, early and late frosts, too little or too much moisture, and insect and weed infestations all contributed to small yields and poor-quality grain. Good harvests created a unique problem. Other countries, like Russia and Argentina, were also growing a substantial amount of wheat. The high volume of grain produced led to stiffer competition in the foreign market. This impacted the bonanza farm economy by driving down the price of wheat. Some bonanza farm owners, like James J. Hill, saw the benefits of diversified farming and soil conservation through crop rotation. Hill put both into practice on his Humboldt Farm as an example to other farmers. Wheat was still king in the Red River Valley in the 1880s, but farmers began to dedicate some acres to other crops, such as oats, barley, and hay. They added cattle, sheep, and pigs—animals valued for the natural fertilizer they produced and as sources of food for the large crews required to run the farms. By the end of the nineteenth century, most of the land in the Red River Valley was under cultivation. With fewer men needed in the spring to break the land, farm managers turned to migrant laborers. At times, finding enough men to work the land proved difficult. There was also some resistance on the part of local residents to the use of such labor; transient workers were perceived by some to be untrustworthy. In the early twentieth century, bonanza farms fell victim to a number of factors, including the spread of diversification and increasing labor problems. It became more profitable to divide the land into smaller farms, and rising land prices led many to sell off acreage for a quick profit. Taxation also played a part in the demise of these colossal farms; an increase in taxes could wipe out the small margin of profit realized per acre. By 1920, most large-scale farming operations in the Red River Valley had ceased.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Ferrell VI.397.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246091,"name":"Agriculture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/bonanza-farms-red-river-valley"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Lieutenant Josias King, 1862.","author":[{"name":"Brian Leehan","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/brian-leehan"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"November 18, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"King, Josias R. (1832–1916)","postbody":"With the fall of Fort Sumter in 1861, Minnesota became the first state to offer troops to fight the Confederacy. Josias Redgate King is credited with being the first man to volunteer for ...","searchtext":"With the fall of Fort Sumter in 1861, Minnesota became the first state to offer troops to fight the Confederacy. Josias Redgate King is credited with being the first man to volunteer for the Union in the Civil War. King was born into wealth and died in poverty nearly eighty-four years later. In between, he lived a vigorous life full of adventure and service to his country. King was born on February 21, 1832, in Washington, D.C. His father was a prominent lawyer with powerful government friends and clients. At fourteen, King went to Florida with a U.S. survey team, returning home in 1849. He entered Georgetown University, intending to go on to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and a military career. After hearing news of gold strikes in California, he convinced his father to fund his expedition to the gold fields. King supported himself prospecting but never found his “big strike.” He eventually joined a U.S. government survey party and helped hunt for the infamous California bandit “Joaquin” (likely Joaquin Murrieta). Back home at the end of 1856, King was as restless as ever. His father secured him a position with the Surveyor General of Minnesota Territory. Arriving in St. Paul on April 19, 1857, he joined the local militia unit, the Pioneer Guards, and became friends with fellow “PG” member James J. Hill. On Saturday, April 14, 1861, Fort Sumter fell to Confederate forces while Minnesota Governor Alexander Ramsey was in Washington. Ramsey was the first governor to offer troops to the U.S. government to suppress the rebellion. His telegraphed message back to Minnesota brought the Pioneer Guard to their St. Paul armory on the evening of Monday, April 15. King was the first to step forward and sign his name. Thereafter, King was hailed as the first man to volunteer for the Union cause. Though some later claimed that the distinction actually belonged to Aaron Greenwald, a volunteer who purportedly signed his name in Anoka that morning, extant documents do not support that contention. The state’s militia units, and new recruits, made up the First Minnesota Volunteer Infantry, which served its three-year enlistment in the Army of the Potomac. King served in all of the First’s engagements through July 1862, when he took on the rank of regimental adjutant. The regiment’s colonel, Alfred Sully, was promoted to brigadier general in September 1862 and later requested King as his aide-de-camp. In May 1863, Sully was posted to the Northwest to lead punitive campaigns against the Dakota after the U.S.–Dakota War of 1862. King served in Sully’s 1863 campaign into Dakota Territory and returned to the First Minnesota in mid-September 1863. The regiment suffered severe losses in July’s Battle of Gettysburg, and because of King’s proven leadership abilities, he was made First Lieutenant of Company A and a month later promoted to captain of Company G. He was mustered out with the rest of the regiment in early May 1864. On Sully’s recommendation, King was commissioned lieutenant colonel in the short-lived Second Regiment, U.S. Infantry Volunteers, serving in Kansas. He went on to serve in the Second U.S. Infantry—a regular federal unit—in Kentucky. Posted to Atlanta in 1868, King resigned his commission in 1870 because of his wife’s ill health. The couple returned to the cooler climate of St. Paul, where he worked as a surveyor and then for an insurance company. In 1885, King was appointed Inspector General of the Minnesota National Guard with the rank of brigadier general. He made significant reforms in the Guard and was thereafter referred to as the “Father of the Minnesota Guard.” Given his “first man to enlist” credentials, King was asked to pose for the face of the bronze soldier atop the Civil War monument in St. Paul’s Summit Park, which was dedicated on November 20, 1903. King worked into his eighties to supplement his small military pension. He received periodic financial help from his friends, including James J. Hill. A 1915 streetcar accident left King bedridden for nearly a year, and he died of a heart attack on February 10, 1916. His funeral was held in St. Paul’s Cathedral. Archbishop John Ireland delivered the eulogy and James J. Hill served as honorary pallbearer.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/por 10699 r2.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/king-josias-r-1832-1916"},{"alt":"","author":[{"name":"Andrea Reidell and Linda A. Cameron","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/andrea-reidell-and-linda-cameron"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"November 12, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186622056203,"name":"1792–1861 (Expansion and Reform)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Nelson, George (1786–1859)","postbody":"George Nelson spent nearly twenty years as a clerk in the fur trade, working for the XY, North West, and Hudson||s Bay Companies. He kept extensive journals that offer a valuable picture of ...","searchtext":"George Nelson spent nearly twenty years as a clerk in the fur trade, working for the XY, North West, and Hudson||s Bay Companies. He kept extensive journals that offer a valuable picture of life in the fur trade and the culture of the American Indians he met during his travels. George Nelson was born on June 4, 1786, in Quebec, Canada, and grew up in Sorel, Quebec. His father, William, was a schoolmaster originally from England. His mother, Jane Dies, relocated to Canada from New York during the American Revolution. Though both his parents were Loyalists, Nelson considered himself a British subject and remained loyal to the Crown throughout his life. Two of his younger brothers, Wolfred and Robert, were leaders in Canada||s Revolution of 1837, an attempt to create a republic independent from Great Britain. These political differences created a division in the Nelson family, and George remained estranged from his brothers for most of his life. Nelson received an excellent education from his father. He studied English, French, Greek, and Latin, as well as bookkeeping, mathematics, geography, and navigation. With such a broad education, he could have chosen from among several career options, but stories of voyageurs and the western wilderness lured him into the fur trade. In 1802, he signed a five-year contract with the XY Company as an apprentice clerk, earning fifteen British pounds sterling per year. Upon completion of his contract, he would receive shares in the company or one hundred pounds sterling. Due to the XY Company||s lack of experienced officers, Nelson was put in charge of a small fur trade outpost in Northwest Michigan Territory (later Wisconsin) at the age of sixteen. His lack of experience created conflicts with the men at his post, but his ability to read and write qualified him to perform the job. Between winter fur seasons, Nelson traveled to Grand Portage on the northeast shore of Lake Superior to wait out the summer months. In 1808, he married Mary Ann, a member of the Ojibwe Loon Clan from the north shore of Lake Superior. She was a cousin of the wife of Nelson||s superior officer. The Nelsons had eight children together. Later, in 1825, the couple was married in a Christian ceremony at Christ Church in Sorel. Nelson planned to retire from the fur trade in 1816 at the age of thirty, and he moved his family back to Sorel. Due to financial difficulties, however, he returned to the fur trade just two years later. Over the course of his career, he served three different companies, starting with the XY Company in 1802, staying with the North West Company from 1804 to 1816, and ending with the Hudson||s Bay Company, from which he finally retired in 1823. He spent almost twenty years in the fur trade. While many other apprentices eventually became |||wintering partners,||| gaining authority over whole districts in a fur trade company, Nelson never rose above the rank of clerk. One reason may have been a lack of connections. The fur traders were a tight-knit community, and knowing the right people was as important as knowledge of the business. The fact that two of the companies he worked for merged with a larger competitor may have limited his opportunities for advancement. Frustration with this lack of opportunity caused him to refer to his career as |||wretched.||| One of George Nelson||s duties as a clerk was to keep a daily journal. His record of transactions, as well as his personal reminiscences and observations, have given us a picture of fur trade life. His journals show respect for the people among whom he lived and worked. He is remembered for recording the legends of the Cree and Ojibwe people he encountered during his postings to Manitoba and Saskatchewan, Canada. After retiring from the fur trade in 1823, Nelson again returned to Sorel with his wife and children. Tragically, by 1831, Mary Ann and seven of the children had died. From 1825 until 1836, he made unsuccessful attempts to run lumber, potash, and farming businesses. He died in 1859, at age seventy three. He was survived by his unmarried daughter, Jane.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/sorel.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/nelson-george-1786-1859"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Fanny Fligelman Brin, c.1925. Photographed by Eugene G. Garrett.","author":[{"name":"Linda A. Cameron","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/linda-cameron"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"November 09, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Brin, Fanny Fligelman (1884–1961)","postbody":"Fanny Fligelman Brin devoted her life to the causes of world peace, democracy, social justice, and Jewish welfare. Her long career as a peace activist included involvement with the National ...","searchtext":"Fanny Fligelman Brin devoted her life to the causes of world peace, democracy, social justice, and Jewish welfare. Her long career as a peace activist included involvement with the National Council of Jewish Women, the Women||s International League for Peace and Freedom, and the National Committee on the Cause and Cure of War, among others. Fanny Xeriffa Fligelman was born in Berlad, Romania, on October 20, 1884, to John and Antonette (Friedman) Fligelman. The family soon immigrated to the United States and settled in Minneapolis. Fanny attended South High School and graduated with honors from the University of Minnesota. In 1913, she married glass merchant Arthur Brin, who shared her passion for justice and the world peace movement. Brin began her peace activism as Director of the Minneapolis Women||s Committee for World Disarmament in 1921. In 1923, she was appointed National Chairman of the Subcommittee on Peace and Arbitration for the National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW). She worked tirelessly to promote the Kellogg–Briand Pact and was a strong supporter of U.S. involvement in the League of Nations. The next year, she was elected President of the Minneapolis Section of the NCJW. She also served as State Chairman for Membership in the Minnesota Section of the Women||s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). It wasn||t long before Brin’s work caught the attention of Carrie Chapman Catt, founder of the National Committee on the Cause and Cure of War. Catt invited her to chair the Minnesota campaign in support of the Kellogg–Briand Pact. The campaign was a success. The pact was ratified by Congress on January 15, 1929. Brin was elected to her first term as national president of the NCJW in April of 1932. As president, she was the council’s official representative to Catt||s National Committee on the Cause and Cure of War. She was chosen by Eleanor Roosevelt the following year to serve on a national committee to study humanitarian needs during the Great Depression. In the early spring of 1933, just months after Adolf Hitler became Chancellor, the NCJW became concerned about the harsh treatment of Jews in Germany. The council stepped up its efforts to assist Jews overseas and immigrants fleeing the tensions in Europe. Brin collected clothing to benefit a family in Poland as well as immigrants arriving at Ellis Island. Both Fanny and Arthur Brin were actively involved in the German Jewish Children||s Aid program. Beginning in 1934, children were brought to America and placed with Jewish families. The goal was to provide them with a good education. The program benefited many more than the original quota of 250 children. The Brins took one boy into their own home and later helped to reunite him with his family. In March of 1935, Brin was reelected national president of the NCJW. When she stepped down after her second term in 1938, a luncheon was held in her honor with five hundred women in attendance. The Brins traveled to Europe in the summer of 1938 as part of a two-month tour led by peace activist Sherwood Eddy. The group met with peace leaders in several countries and attended the European Seminar Conference held at the Carnegie Foundation in Paris. Brin was inspired by the Dumbarton Oaks Conference, held in the fall of 1944 in Washington, DC. In response, she organized the “Dumbarton Oaks – Road to Lasting Peace” rally in Minneapolis in February of 1945, bringing together women from thirty-six local organizations. The highlight of Brin’s career as a peace activist came in 1945. She was chosen to represent the NCJW at the United Nations Charter Conference in San Francisco. She also served as an alternate for the Women’s Action Committee for Lasting Peace (formerly the National Committee on the Cause and Cure of War). At the conference, she witnessed delegates from fifty nations draw up the charter for the United Nations. Her final appointment occurred in 1950, when she became a member of the Committee on Education for the International Council of Jewish Women and briefly served on its Committee on World Affairs. After a long career in the trenches of the peace movement, Fanny Fligelman Brin passed away on September 4, 1961.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/por 18403 r1.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246089,"name":"Religion and Belief","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/brin-fanny-fligelman-1884-1961"},{"alt":"Color scan of a Wanted for Bank Robbery poster, 1930.","author":[{"name":"Sharon Park","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/sharon-park"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"November 04, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Gangster Era in St. Paul, 1900–1936","postbody":"St. Paul in the late 1920s and early 1930s was known as a “‘crooks’ haven”—a place for gangsters, bank robbers, and bootleggers from all over the Midwest to run their operations or to hide ...","searchtext":"St. Paul in the late 1920s and early 1930s was known as a “‘crooks’ haven”—a place for gangsters, bank robbers, and bootleggers from all over the Midwest to run their operations or to hide from the FBI. The concentration of local organized crime activity prompted reformers and crime reporters to call for a “cleanup” of the city in the mid-1930s. St. Paul earned its reputation as the “sanctuary for criminals” in the Midwest with the help of corrupt politicians and police chiefs who agreed to turn a blind eye to gangsters’ underground activities, which included smuggling, racketeering, and gambling. This collaboration began in 1900 with the Layover Agreement, an unofficial contract between criminals and Chief of Police John O’Connor. In exchange for tip-offs about FBI raids and protection during their “layover” in the city, the gangsters first agreed to check in with the St. Paul police when they were in town. Second, they gave a portion of their gains to the police department. Finally, they agreed to commit no crimes within the city limits, though Minneapolis was fair game. Police chiefs after O’Connor, such as Frank Sommer (1922–1923) and Thomas A. Brown (1930–1932), continued to use the “O’Connor System” in an effort to keep crime levels down in St. Paul and to profit from gangsters’ illegal operations. The prohibition of alcohol from 1919 until 1933 also encouraged the rise of St. Paul as a center for gangsters’ activities. The Volstead Act (or the National Prohibition Act), introduced by Minnesota Congressman Andrew Volstead in 1919 and made part of the U.S. Constitution as the Eighteenth Amendment, banned the manufacturing, sale, and transportation of alcoholic beverages. The closing of breweries and distilleries resulted in the rise of bootlegging (the smuggling and illegal sale of alcohol), and St. Paul became known as one of the “wettest” cities in the nation. The prohibition of liquor also led to an increase in organized crime, since mobs and gangs controlled bootlegging operations. Knowing that they were generally safe in St. Paul, notorious criminals—including bank robber John Dillinger and his girlfriend Evelyn Frechette; racketeer and mob leader Al “Scarface” Capone; and the outlawed duo Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker—stayed in the city at some point, though most of their crimes were committed in other Midwestern states. In 1932, however, more than 20 percent of the nation’s bank robberies took place in Minnesota. Gangsters frequented favorite spots throughout the city, such as the Green Lantern Saloon on Wabasha Street and Nina Clifford’s brothel on Washington Street. Some gang leaders used St. Paul as the headquarters of their operations. Leon Gleckman, known as the “Bootlegging Boss” and the “Al Capone of St. Paul,” established the base of his bootlegging business at the St. Paul Hotel. Alvin “Creepy” Karpis and the Barker family—the core members of the Barker‒Karpis gang—set up a home in West St. Paul. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover had his eye on the gang||s members after they robbed a store in Missouri and killed a sheriff on December 19, 1931. Hoover targeted Katherine “Ma” Barker, the mother of two of them, as the leader. FBI files suggest, however, that she was not heavily involved in her sons’ activities. Former gang members later claimed that she tagged along to give the impression of a mother traveling with her sons. Nevertheless, Hoover helped establish Ma Barker’s reputation among FBI agents and the American public as the gang’s mastermind. Although the Barker-Karpis gang selected St. Paul because it was calmer than other Midwestern cities, they did not stop their criminal activities. In 1932, the gang robbed the Northwestern National Bank and Trust Company in Minneapolis and later the prominent Third Northwestern National Bank. Although they had close calls with an FBI raid, the gang was able to flee in time to Wisconsin, thanks to tip-offs from a friend with contacts in the St. Paul police department. The gang suspected that Ma Barker’s boyfriend, Arthur Dunlop, had spilled details of their successful heists to their landlady’s son. When the police arrived at their hide-out spot in Webster, Wisconsin, they only found Dunlop’s dead body on the shores of a nearby lake. In 1933 and 1934, the gang returned to St. Paul to plan the kidnappings of wealthy St. Paul businessmen William Hamm Jr. (president of the Hamm Brewing Company) and Edward Bremer (president of the Commercial State Bank of St. Paul), in exchange for large ransoms. Both victims were released shortly after the gang received the ransoms. But the kidnappings showed signs of the O’Connor system breaking down, since these crimes had been committed inside the city of St. Paul. Federal and local efforts to track down the kidnappers intensified as the story grabbed national headlines, and the Karpis-Barker gang members began to doubt the reliability of their police connections. Similar FBI hunts for gangsters throughout the Midwestern states dragged on for more than a decade, while reformers such as St. Paul police chief Thomas Dahill and Mayor Mark H. Gehan called for a “war on hoodlums.” In March 1934, Dillinger had a shootout with the police and the FBI at his St. Paul residence, the Lincoln Court Apartments. Although he managed to escape to his doctor’s clinic in Minneapolis to hide and to receive treatment for his wounds, newspaper coverage of the shootout and Dillinger’s escape convinced citizens that the city needed to be “cleaned up.” This incident also made St. Paul a target of federal and state law enforcement agencies when Hoover sent in FBI agents to search the city for evidence of Dillinger. Dillinger and other “public enemies” fascinated the American public with their ability to survive shootouts and escape police raids. Some local Minnesota residents, however, such as the members of the St. Paul Women’s Club, acted to end the crime wave. They helped elect the reform-minded Mayor Gehan and alerted the FBI to sightings of gangsters. Other Midwestern residents made deals with the FBI, offering them information about gangsters’ whereabouts. This was how Dillinger was finally caught: with a tip-off from a woman who agreed to help capture him. When Dillinger emerged from the Biograph Theater in Chicago with two women (one of whom was the informant), FBI agents cornered him in an alley, shot him five times, and killed him. After Dillinger’s death, a number of other gangsters were killed by the police or brought to trial for their crimes. In January 1935, Ma Barker and her son Fred were killed during a shootout with the FBI in Florida. In June 1935, Doc Barker and four other gang members were brought to trial at the St. Paul federal court for the kidnapping of Edward Bremer. In May 1936, Hoover, who had been criticized by a senator for not making any arrests himself, claimed to have personally arrested Alvin Karpis. He brought Karpis to trial in St. Paul, where he was charged for his involvement in the Hamm and Bremer kidnappings. On August 3, 1936, Karpis pled guilty to all charges and received a life sentence in Alcatraz. The “gangster era,” with its sensationalized hunts for wanted criminals throughout the Midwest, was finally winding to a close.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/MNopedia/MNopedia%202026/Gangster_Era.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246079,"name":"Cities and Towns","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246060,"name":"Crime and Punishment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/gangster-era-st-paul-1900-1936"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Toni Stone meeting her idol, boxer Joe Louis, c.1949.","author":[{"name":"Wendy Jones","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/wendy-jones"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"November 02, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Stone, Marcenia Lyle (Toni), 1921–1996","postbody":"Marcenia Lyle (Toni |||Tomboy|||) Stone broke both gender and racial barriers by becoming the first female professional baseball player in the Negro Major League. During her career, she played ...","searchtext":"Marcenia Lyle (Toni |||Tomboy|||) Stone broke both gender and racial barriers by becoming the first female professional baseball player in the Negro Major League. During her career, she played with a variety of men||s teams before making history when she joined the Indianapolis Clowns, a Negro Major League Team. Toni Stone was born Marcenia Lyle Stone on July 17, 1921, in Bluefield, West Virginia. When she was ten years old, her family moved to St. Paul. Her parents, Boykin and Willa Maynard Stone, raised Marcenia in St. Paul’s Rondo neighborhood. Stone grew up playing baseball with the neighborhood boys, despite her parents|| objections, and earned the nickname |||Tomboy.||| Encouraged by her priest, she was the first girl to hold a spot on the St. Peter Claver Catholic Church boys|| baseball team in the Catholic boys|| league. Stone got her first real break when she joined the Twin City Colored Giants |||barnstorming||| team at age sixteen. She travelled around the Midwest and Canada with the team until she moved to California following the onset of World War II to be near her sister. She worked odd jobs and settled into the Fillmore neighborhood of San Francisco—sometimes called “the Harlem of the West.” While living there, Stone adopted a new professional name, |||Toni Stone.||| She met her future husband, Aurelious Pescia Alberga, at a nightclub, and the couple was married in 1950. At Alberga||s suggestion, Stone applied to play American Legion baseball. To get around the Legion||s age restriction, which required players to be no older than seventeen, she shaved ten years off her actual age and maintained the ruse throughout her career. She played a short stint with the San Francisco Sea Lions of the West Coast Negro League before joining the New Orleans Creoles, a Negro Minor League team, in 1949. Toni Stone made sports history in 1953 when she signed a seasonal contract with the Indianapolis Clowns in the Negro American League. She was hired to fill the second-base position vacated by Hank Aaron when he joined the Milwaukee Braves. As one of the first women to play in the Negro Major League, Stone endured substantial harassment from opponents, critics, and fellow teammates. With the rise of integrated baseball, Negro League baseball began to wane. Though Stone’s skills improved the team, its managers hired her as a strategy to sell tickets. When the team||s owner suggested that she wear a skirt, however, Stone refused. Serious about her sport, she insisted on wearing the official uniform. In an attempt to make the Indianapolis Clowns more marketable, publicists for the team fabricated a biography for Stone. They claimed that she had attended Macalester College when in fact she had never graduated from high school. They reported her seasonal salary at $12,000 when, by her own admission, she was paid about $400 per month. There is some evidence that the team||s management inflated her statistics to sustain the public||s interest. It is widely accepted, however, that she achieved a batting average of .364—the fourth highest in the league for 1953. Regardless of the hype, Stone proved herself to be a true athlete. She spent just one season with the Indianapolis Clowns. Her favorite memory with the team was getting a hit off legendary pitcher Satchel Paige during an exhibition game. The following season, Stone played with the Kansas City Monarchs. Feeling exploited, and dissatisfied with how little time she was allowed to spend on the field, she quit and returned to California. She continued to coach and play semi-professional ball well into her sixties. Stone||s contributions to baseball were largely forgotten until later in her life. She is remembered in the Negro Leagues Museum in Kansas City, Missouri. The city of St. Paul declared March 6, 1990, as “Toni Stone Day,||| and later named a neighborhood ball park |||Toni Stone Field.||| She was honored by the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1991 and was inducted into the Women’s Sports Hall of Fame in 1993. In 1997, the Great American History Theatre in St. Paul commemorated her story in a world premiere production, Tomboy Stone. Toni Stone died on November 2, 1996, in Alameda, California.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/GV3.11P p66.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056216,"name":"African Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246054,"name":"Sports and Recreation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/stone-marcenia-lyle-toni-1921-1996"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of the 1981 Hmong New Year, held in St. Paul’s Highland Junior-Senior High School. Photographed by Marlin Heise on December 19, 1981.","author":[{"name":"Kong Vang","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/kong-vang"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"October 28, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Hmong New Year, St. Paul","postbody":"The Hmong New Year in St. Paul is a unique annual event encapsulated into a weekend celebration held at the end of November. Since 1977, Hmong people have gathered in the city to meet, eat, ...","searchtext":"The Hmong New Year in St. Paul is a unique annual event encapsulated into a weekend celebration held at the end of November. Since 1977, Hmong people have gathered in the city to meet, eat, celebrate the harvest, and enjoy cultural performances. Though the event is rooted in the agricultural history of the Hmong people and their religious traditions, it has found a new expression in St. Paul—the home of one of the largest communities of Hmong outside Southeast Asia. When the first Hmong refugees arrived in Minnesota from Laos and Thailand in the mid-1970s, their desire to seek out other Hmong was strong. As they settled into new homes, they sought to preserve their culture and traditions, including the annual observance of the New Year. In Hmong villages in Laos, the multi-day harvest gathering centered around feasting, courtship, and seeking blessings from ancestors. In November 1977, a few Hmong refugees living in St. Paul came together to discuss how to celebrate the New Year together. They formed a group to collect money from different families to fund a New Year celebration. Although it was not a formal organization, it succeeded in raising the necessary funds. The group met again a year later and brought together twenty-five families. In 1979, the Hmong New Year was held at a Salvation Army. Many Hmong attended in hopes of meeting old and new faces. As the event’s popularity grew, finding a location large enough to contain it became a formidable task. In 1980, members of the nonprofit Lao Family Community of Minnesota began to help with planning and organization. Over six thousand Hmong attended the fourth Hmong New Year, held at St. Paul’s Civic Center (later rebuilt as the Excel Energy Center). The use of this new venue expanded what had been a private gathering into a public event, and one that Non-Hmong people could attend. Slowly, the celebration was growing into a spectacle, transformed by brightly colored decorations and music. Efforts to preserve Hmong culture—and to embrace it as a community—were major components of the 1981 New Year, held at Highland Junior-Senior High School in St. Paul. Eager to hold on to their culture, attendees wore traditional Hmong clothes. The event featured Hmong dancers, performers playing the qeej (a traditional Hmong wind instrument), food, and music. Those who didn’t perform were able to participate in the expression of culture through their outfits. When the St. Paul Civic Center hosted the celebration again, in 1986, it took on the preservation of culture as its focus. Hmong Minnesotans showcased dances, singing, and other traditional activities. Skits were included in the event’s program that showcased the warmth of Hmong folktales. In the early 2000s, Roy Wilkins Auditorium in St. Paul’s River Centre became the long-term home of the city’s Hmong New Year. Attendance continued to grow throughout the decade and in the early 2010s, peaking at about forty thousand in 2013. In the twenty-first century, the St. Paul Hmong New Year has completed its transformation from a small community gathering to a weekend-long social extravaganza. This has created a mixture of old and new, a blend of traditional and modern, and recognition of diversity. Though many Hmong still practice animist rituals and pray to ancestors during the event, others sing Christian songs and hold fundraisers for local churches. Pov pob, or “ball toss,” continues to be an essential part of every New Year. In this courtship ritual, a young man tosses a small cloth-sewn ball (pob) back and forth with a young woman. Many people participate in this traditional activity in hopes of finding a potential partner. Music remains another strong component of the celebration, and one that intertwines with other activities. Even when playing ball toss, young men and women often participate in traditional folk singing, or kwv txhiaj. Though there has been consistency, there have also been new revelations. In the 2010s, New Year celebrations feature Hmong break dancers, hip-hop artists, interracial and interethnic couples, singers, painters, and many styles of new and old Hmong clothing. They also provide a setting for the Miss Hmong Minnesota Pageant, in which young women compete for the state-wide title and crown.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/10437487.640x640.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246089,"name":"Religion and Belief","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/hmong-new-year-st-paul"},{"alt":"“Grace,” the Minnesota state photograph, taken by Eric Enstrom c.1920 and colorized by Enstrom’s daughter, Rhoda Nyberg.","author":[{"name":"Harris Cameron","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/harris-cameron"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"October 26, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"“Grace” (Minnesota state photograph)","postbody":"Around 1920, the photographer Eric Enstrom took a picture of a white-bearded visitor to his studio in Bovey. The resulting image, which Enstrom called “Grace,” gained international ...","searchtext":"Around 1920, the photographer Eric Enstrom took a picture of a white-bearded visitor to his studio in Bovey. The resulting image, which Enstrom called “Grace,” gained international recognition and was designated Minnesota’s official state photograph in 2002. Eric Enstrom was a Swedish American photographer who lived and worked in the mining town of Bovey. Around 1920 (some accounts date the event to 1918), an itinerant salesman named Charles Wilden visited his studio. Impressed by what he recognized as kindness in the man’s face, Enstrom asked Wilden to pose for a picture. He had Wilden clasp his hands and bow his head, as in prayer, while seated at a table with an arrangement of household objects, including a book, a loaf of bread, and a bowl of soup. He called the photograph “Grace.” Enstrom composed “Grace” to represent survival in the face of hardship. He later connected it to World War I and the heavy toll the trenches of Europe had taken on American lives, as well as the rationing faced by Minnesotans on the home front. In a 1961 interview, he explained his intention to capture an image that would inspire thankfulness in people who had endured privations during the war. By highlighting Wilden’s devout posture and humble surroundings, he aimed to evoke the spirit of religious faith, thankfulness, and humility he associated with many of the newly arrived European immigrants to Minnesota. As the 1920s progressed and tourists began to purchase “Grace” from Enstrom’s studio, the photograph became a well-known fixture in local churches, restaurants, and private homes. In 1926, Wilden signed over his rights in the image to Enstrom for five dollars and Enstrom registered a copyright. Enstrom and his daughter, the artist Rhoda Nyberg, painted over prints of the originally black-and-white image to give it the appearance of a colorful oil painting. Nyberg continued to paint versions of the image for the rest of her life, even painting a matching image depicting an elderly woman. During the 1950s, the Enstrom family sold the rights to “Grace” to Augsburg Publishing House in Minneapolis—a publisher associated with the American Lutheran Church. The photograph continued to grow in popularity in Minnesota and across the United States, and by 1961, Augsburg Publishing had sold twenty thousand prints. In 2002, Senator Bob Lessard of International Falls and Representative Loren Solberg of Bovey sponsored a bill in the state legislature that designated “Grace” the official state photograph. Governor Jesse Ventura signed it into law later that year. Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer hung a sepia print of the photograph on her office wall, as specified in the bill. In the 2010s, Augsburg Fortress (a new incarnation of Augsburg Publishing) continues to sell prints of “Grace.” Since 1995, the image has been in the public domain and can be found on many Web sites. The picture hangs in the cabin of the Northwestern, the Alaskan crab fishing boat featured in the Discovery Channel’s reality TV show “Deadliest Catch.” In 1993, a monument to “Grace” and its creator was erected near Bovey Village Hall.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Gracecolorized.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/grace-minnesota-state-photograph"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Nellie Stone Johnson, c.1935.","author":[{"name":"Tom Beer","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/tom-beer"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"October 21, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Johnson, Nellie Stone (1905–2002)","postbody":"Nellie Stone Johnson was an African American union and civil rights leader whose career spanned the class-conscious politics of the 1930s and the liberal reforms of the Minnesota DFL Party. ...","searchtext":"Nellie Stone Johnson was an African American union and civil rights leader whose career spanned the class-conscious politics of the 1930s and the liberal reforms of the Minnesota DFL Party. She believed unions and education were paths to economic security for African Americans, including women. Her self-reliant personality and pragmatic politics sustained her long and active life. Born in 1905 to Dakota County farmers who stressed religious and racial tolerance, Johnson absorbed lessons about organizing at a young age. Her father was a Nonpartisan League member who rallied Pine County farmers to join cooperatives and elect insurgent candidates to office. Milk and potato prices, Johnson learned, were set in far-off Minneapolis. The dairy and electric cooperatives her father promoted helped increase farm income. After moving to Minneapolis to finish high school, Johnson was hired as an elevator operator by the Minneapolis Athletic Club in 1924. There, and at the West Hotel, she experienced workplace discrimination and faced anti-union employers. She believed the worst discrimination was economic, but trusted that organizing and collective bargaining could improve a worker’s lot. Johnson met communists, radicals, and the itinerant socialist union organizer Swan Assarson in the 1920s while taking classes at the University of Minnesota. A radical himself who believed in a workers’ society, Assarson mentored Johnson in organizing hotel workers. Johnson’s father also encouraged her activism. Together, they delivered potatoes and rutabagas off his Pine County farm to worker kitchens during the 1934 Teamsters strike. Minneapolis hotels and restaurants were not organized when the National Labor Relations Act emboldened workers to take action in 1935. The New Deal law changed the landscape in workplaces by protecting organizing and collective bargaining activities. It also motivated Johnson and African American leaders Anthony Cassius and Albert Allen Jr. to talk to union members and educate their co-workers in the city’s downtown hotels. Cassius led the Curtis Hotel workforce into Local #614 of the Hotel and Restaurant Workers Union. His leadership sparked organizing at other hotel worksites. Allen championed efforts at the Athletic Club, where Johnson and white co-worker George Naumoff soon organized all the shifts. Local #665 of the Hotel Employees Union was quickly chartered at the Athletic Club as an integrated union. Johnson was one of the first women to sit on her local’s contract-negotiating committee. Gradually, things began to change in the hotel industry. Wage increases and uniform job classifications ended racial and gender pay inequities. At the Athletic Club, Johnson pushed to end in-house segregation of eating and locker room facilities. Johnson’s prominence in union circles widened. She was elected vice president of her local union in 1936 and sat on the important statewide hotel and restaurant workers’ council. She worked with progressive trade unionists at the Minneapolis Central Labor Union and urged hotel unions to affiliate with the Minnesota AFL. At times, she challenged more conservative AFL union officials to organize the unorganized. Minneapolis unions supported the Farmer-Labor Party in the 1930s and 1940s. Johnson became deeply involved in the Farmer-Labor Association, the party’s educational arm. At the same time, she was a member of the powerful union-based United Labor Committee, which endorsed candidates. In these roles, she discovered her talent for planning and executing political campaigns. Organized labor shared the goals of full employment, health insurance, and affordable housing with liberal politicians like Hubert Humphrey, whom Johnson met in about 1938. Humphrey was impressed with her labor and civil rights activism and sought her support when he ran for mayor of Minneapolis in 1943 and again in 1945. Throughout her career, Johnson remained pragmatic. When the Farmer-Labor Party’s influence waned in the 1940s, she helped create a merged Democratic and FL Party and swung her allegiance to what she believed would be a multi-racial, labor-oriented DFL. Johnson remained active in labor and DFL politics as the civil rights movement gained momentum in Minneapolis and across the United States. She helped forge the city’s first Fair Employment Commission, successfully ran for the Library Board, and spearheaded passage of the Minnesota’s Fair Employment and Fair Housing Laws (1955 and 1957). In 1972, she campaigned for Van White, the first African American elected to the City Council. Johnson died in Minneapolis, in 2002, at the age of ninety-six.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/public_domain_johnson.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056216,"name":"African Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246055,"name":"Labor","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/johnson-nellie-stone-1905-2002"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of John T. Bernard, c.1938.","author":[{"name":"Jason Scorich","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/jason-scorich"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"October 19, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Bernard, John Toussaint (1893–1983)","postbody":"Minnesota Congressman John T. Bernard fought throughout his life for working people against strong opposition. His outspoken and uncompromising views led him, on his second day in office, ...","searchtext":"Minnesota Congressman John T. Bernard fought throughout his life for working people against strong opposition. His outspoken and uncompromising views led him, on his second day in office, to cast the single “no” vote in Congress against the Spanish arms embargo. Bernard’s vote proved farsighted as the Spanish Civil War became, in many ways, a “dress rehearsal” for World War II. Born in Corsica on March 6, 1893, John Toussaint Bernard followed his parents to the United States and Eveleth, Minnesota, in 1907. In 1910, he found work at the Spruce Mine. In 1916, he enlisted in the army, served on the Mexican border, and was sent overseas during World War I. While in France working for naval intelligence, he met Josephine Dinois. The couple married in 1928. Back in Eveleth, Bernard was blacklisted from the mines because of earlier efforts to unionize fellow workers. Eventually finding work as an Eveleth fireman (1920–1936), the blacklisted Bernard was elected twice as president of the Governor Olson Local of the International Association of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers. Bernard also organized and served as chairman of the first Farmer-Labor Party club in Eveleth and served two terms as leader of the St. Louis County Farmer-Labor Association. In 1936, Morris Greenberg, an Eveleth attorney and Farmer-Labor organizer, approached Bernard about running for the Eighth District seat in the U.S. Congress. Bernard agreed after Governor Floyd B. Olson contributed $200 towards the filing fee and campaign. Bernard, along with gubernatorial candidate Elmer Benson, was swept into office on a wave of Farmer-Labor support. A test of Bernard’s integrity came on his second day in Congress. President Roosevelt had asked for a unanimous vote in both houses to deny military and financial support to either the democratically elected Republican government of Spain or to rebel general Francisco Franco. Bernard saw a Spanish arms embargo as pro-fascist because Hitler and Mussolini already backed Franco. Although many progressives agreed and thought the measure anti-democratic, they considered voting against an embargo “political suicide.” When the call for a unanimous vote came, on January 6, 1937, only Bernard objected. During the remainder of his term, Bernard supported the Spanish Loyalist cause. He also advocated for striking autoworkers, timber workers, and anti-lynching legislation. He alienated many in the American Federation of Labor (AFL) by organizing for its rival, the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). Bernard’s outspoken, left-wing stance, combined with political backlash against Roosevelt and the New Deal, led to defeat in his 1938 re-election bid. His opponent, and much of the AFL leadership, accused him of being a Communist. Because the Catholic Church backed Franco in Spain, Bernard was denounced in nearly every local Catholic pulpit. His support of civil rights and anti-lynching laws also angered northern Minnesota’s chapters of the Ku Klux Klan. Bernard ran again in 1940, but lost. Following his 1938 defeat, Bernard was blacklisted on a grand scale on the Iron Range. His vocal criticism of corporations and big banks and support of working people made it impossible for him to find work. His essentially popular-front political stance between the time of the Hitler–Stalin pact of 1939 and the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 also made enemies. Although fluent in French, Italian, and Spanish, Bernard was rejected for service in World War II, even after writing directly to Roosevelt. In 1952, Bernard was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). His affiliations with Loyalist Spain, the CIO, and many other groups were deemed Communist. Bernard defied the committee. He called a previous witness a “stool pigeon” and asserted his Fifth Amendment privilege on many questions. But he also insisted on his loyalty to America and his willingness to fight in its defense. A 1977 “Tribute to John T. Bernard” at Mesaba Co-op Park near Hibbing included many old Farmer Laborites, including Benson, veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, and Communist Party head Gus Hall. It was at this event, at age eighty-four, that Bernard accepted a membership card in the Communist Party of America. Bernard died in 1983 in Long Beach, California. He was ninety years old.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/P809_portrait_edited.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246055,"name":"Labor","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/bernard-john-toussaint-1893-1983"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of miners inside the Fayal mine in Eveleth, 1915. Photographed by William F. Roleff.","author":[{"name":"David LaVigne","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/david-lavigne"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"October 14, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Mesabi Iron Range Strike, 1916","postbody":"During the summer of 1916, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) coordinated a strike of iron ore miners on the Mesabi Iron Range. The strikers fought for higher wages, an eight-hour ...","searchtext":"During the summer of 1916, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) coordinated a strike of iron ore miners on the Mesabi Iron Range. The strikers fought for higher wages, an eight-hour workday, and workplace reform. Although the strike failed, it was one of the largest labor conflicts in Minnesota history. The Mesabi Range strike began on June 2, 1916. Joe Greeni, a Czech immigrant miner, protested the low wages and system of payment in the mines. He inspired workers at the St. James Mine in Aurora to walk off the job. Within a week, the walkout had spread region-wide and as many as eight thousand miners went on strike. Like Greeni, most of the striking miners were immigrants. The Mesabi miners organized under the banner of the Industrial Workers of the World. The IWW was an industrial union that advocated for the overthrow of capitalism and for workers’ control of the workplace. It had organized a variety of industries, ranging from textile factory workers to migrant farm laborers to timber workers. The IWW and the striking miners drew up a list of demands to present to the mining companies. These demands included an eight-hour day that counted time descending into and ascending from underground mines; daily wages of $3.50 for underground mining work in wet places, $3.00 for underground work in dry places, and $2.75 for surface work; pay day twice per month; and abolition of the contract labor system. The demand involving the contract labor system was the most important. Under the contract system, underground miners were paid for the amount of ore dug out rather than by a set daily wage. Workers assigned to easily mined ore consequently earned more. In order to receive desirable assignments, miners claimed that they had to buy alcohol, cigars, and other gifts for mining bosses or participate in bogus raffles administered for the bosses’ profit. The mining companies met the strikers’ demands with disdain and refused to negotiate. Company officials asserted that a skilled miner could earn more on the contract system than he could without it. The companies also contended that the IWW was misleading and nefarious and was taking advantage of the unsuspecting miners. To combat the strike, officials hired over a thousand armed guards to protect company property and to monitor the strikers’ actions. Tensions eventually erupted into violence. On June 22, a Croatian miner named John Alar was shot and killed during a skirmish with Oliver Iron Mining Company guards in Virginia. At Alar’s funeral procession, three thousand mourners walked behind a large red banner that read, “Murdered By Oliver Gunmen.” The response of law enforcement officials was to arrest two of the IWW organizers, Sam Scarlett and Carlo Tresca, on a charge of criminal libel. Violence broke out again on July 3 in Biwabik, when Deputy Sheriff James Myron and a Finnish soda pop distributor named Tomi Ladvalla were killed in another confrontation between strikers and company guards. Following this incident, county and state authorities clamped down on the strikers’ civil liberties. St. Louis County Sheriff John Meining arrested the most prominent IWW organizers on the charge of inciting murder. Minnesota Governor J. A. A. Burnquist outlawed pickets that had been used to intimidate strikebreakers. After the arrests of its chief organizers, the IWW struggled to sustain the strike. In response to the arrests and banning of pickets, its national publications described how mining company “thugs” violated the rights of free assembly and free speech and had denied those taken into custody a fair and speedy trial. It sent new organizers, including the famed Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, to fill the leadership void. It also opened a cooperative store to distribute food and goods to the striking miners. The arrests of the original organizers, however, severely curtailed the IWW’s power, and the strikers’ enthusiasm gradually declined. On September 17, the strike ended. Although a negotiated settlement was not achieved, most mining company officials soon implemented several pay raises, reformed the contract labor system, and changed to an eight-hour workday. In December, IWW and St. Louis County attorneys reached a deal that released the IWW organizers from jail.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/mesabi%20iron%20range.jpeg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246055,"name":"Labor","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/mesabi-iron-range-strike-1916"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of women reading in library, Rochester State Hospital, c.1930.","author":[{"name":"Sarah Shirey","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/sarah-shirey"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"October 12, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Rochester State Hospital","postbody":"Rochester State Hospital opened on January 1, 1879, as Minnesota’s second hospital for the insane. It served as part of Minnesota’s state hospital system until 1982, when changing trends in ...","searchtext":"Rochester State Hospital opened on January 1, 1879, as Minnesota’s second hospital for the insane. It served as part of Minnesota’s state hospital system until 1982, when changing trends in treatment for the mentally ill and lack of funding led to its closure. Rochester State Hospital began as the Minnesota Inebriate Asylum. In 1873, the state legislature passed a law that imposed a ten-dollar annual tax on liquor dealers to fund the building of an asylum for sufferers of alcoholism, then commonly called inebriates. The state purchased 160 acres of land in Rochester in 1876, and construction of the asylum began in 1877. Liquor dealers strongly opposed the tax and successfully lobbied against it, arguing that there was a more urgent need for another hospital for the insane. In 1878, the legislature repealed the tax and abolished the inebriate asylum. In its place, they established the second Minnesota Hospital for the Insane to ease overcrowding at St. Peter, then the state’s only institution for the mentally ill. A portion of the new hospital was dedicated to treating chronic inebriates. The hospital opened on January 1, 1879, with one hundred male patients transferred from St. Peter. It was built according to the Kirkbride plan, a design created by Dr. Thomas Kirkbride that set aside open stretches of land for farming, exercise, and occupational therapy. The original structure featured a central administration building with wings for patient wards stretching out behind it on either side. The first building was completed in 1880 but was expanded throughout the 1880s. In 1893, the institution changed its name to the Rochester State Hospital. Treatment of mental illness at the hospital before the 1920s mainly involved keeping patients occupied with work and recreation, and restraining violent patients. Many patients worked on the hospital’s five-hundred-acre farm. Though physical punishment was not prescribed as a treatment, the hospital came under scrutiny in 1889 when patient Taylor Combs died at the hands of two attendants. Following this scandal, Dr. A. F. Kilbourne replaced the hospital’s first superintendent, Dr. J. E. Bowers. Kilbourne, who served at Rochester until his death in 1935, was a firm believer in therapeutic occupation and amusement for patients as the most valuable forms of treatment. He tried to improve Rochester’s program so that it offered patients more light exposure and more interesting work. After his takeover in 1889, the hospital developed one of the first nurses’ training programs in the country. The first class graduated in 1892. Treatment methods evolved throughout the hospital’s history. In the late 1940s, insulin and electroshock treatments were common. In the 1950s, lobotomies were used on some patients, and drug use became more extensive. The hospital’s campus continued to change as well. After World War II, there was an influx of geriatric patients. With the old Kirkbride building unable to accommodate them, a major construction program began in 1948. By 1964, newer buildings served most of the patients and the Kirkbride structures were torn down. In 1965, the City of Rochester purchased 212 acres of the hospital’s farm land and turned it into Quarry Hill Park. By the 1960s, the hospital was known for its surgical unit. It served as a center for many other state institutions, and by 1971 was the only remaining surgical unit in the state hospital system. In the same year, it became the surgical center for the Department of Public Welfare. In the late 1970s, as the economy declined, the treatment of mental illness moved from state institutions to community-based facilities. In 1981, the Minnesota Legislature ordered Rochester to close as a cost-saving measure, triggering a state-wide controversy. Hospital staff and community members expressed concern that the closure would traumatize patients and damage the local economy. Unlike other state hospitals, which received patients through court orders, Rochester admitted a majority of its patients voluntarily. Patient advocates feared that closing the hospital would hurt those who sought help willingly. Despite these objections, the hospital closed in June 1982. The Federal Medical Center, a prison for inmates with medical problems, was built on the hospital’s grounds in 1984. The prison used some of the detached hospital buildings but demolished others to allow for new construction.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/HV1.452 p3.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246087,"name":"Health and Medicine","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/rochester-state-hospital"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Medtronic Founder Earl Bakken and Medtronic CEO Winston Wallin with an early pacemaker model, 1986. Photographed by Jeffrey Grosscup.","author":[{"name":"Andrew B. Stone","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/andrew-b-stone"},{"name":"Sarah Shirey","slug":"/mnopedia/search/index/author/sarah-shirey"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"October 07, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Medtronic","postbody":"The Medtronic medical device company was founded in 1949 by Earl Bakken and Palmer Hermundslie. From its beginnings in a converted garage, it has grown into a multi-billion-dollar ...","searchtext":"The Medtronic medical device company was founded in 1949 by Earl Bakken and Palmer Hermundslie. From its beginnings in a converted garage, it has grown into a multi-billion-dollar enterprise and one of Minnesota’s leading businesses. In the late 1940s, electrical engineer Earl Bakken saw an opportunity for starting a business that specialized in repairing medical equipment. He discussed this idea with his brother-in-law, Palmer Hermundslie, and in 1949 they founded Medtronic. Medtronic’s first office was a converted boxcar garage in Minneapolis. In their first month, Bakken and Hermundslie made eight dollars for repairing one centrifuge. To make more money, they took side jobs selling medical equipment for the Sanborn Company. They also started taking contracts to build custom-ordered devices for local physicians. In 1954, Bakken began to assist with equipment during surgeries performed at the University of Minnesota. There, he met open-heart surgery pioneer Dr. C. Walton Lillehei, who in 1957 asked Bakken to create a portable, battery-powered pacemaker. Bakken created a prototype by adapting a metronome circuit from Popular Electronics and altering its voltage to match the human heart’s. After this prototype was tested, Lillehei began using Medtronic pacemakers the next day. The devices became a key part of Medtronic’s business. After it introduced a line of new, implantable pacemakers, Medtronic saw its sales grow rapidly—from $180,000 in 1960 to $518,000 in 1962. The company moved into a fifteen-thousand-square-foot building and increased its staff to fifty-four people. It also expanded its product line by adding a new heart monitor and other devices. This rapid expansion, however, caused problems. New devices were expensive to research and manufacture. Bakken saw himself as an engineer, not a businessman. He was more interested in making useful devices than in profit. Sales had increased, but Medtronic still nearly went bankrupt. In response, Bakken shifted his attention to Medtronic’s business side. He reduced the product line, attempted to limit costs, and focused the company on pacemakers and other profitable products. The move was a success, and Medtronic grew throughout the late 1960s. By 1968, it brought in almost 10 million dollars in sales per year. The company’s pacemakers made up 65 percent of the worldwide market by 1970. Bakken’s approach up to this point had been to offer simple and reliable products. He believed doctors were wary of innovation and preferred medical devices they knew they could trust. This trust suffered a blow in 1975 when some of Medtronic’s Xytron-model pacemakers began to short out early. These pacemakers featured older mercury batteries rather than the latest lithium ones, which promised longer battery life. Although the several hundred Xytrons that failed did not cause any deaths, they seriously damaged Medtronic’s reputation. By 1980, Medtronic’s earnings were on the decline. The company needed to develop more innovative and diverse products to restore their reputation and compete with newer firms. They launched a line of programmable pacemakers but were no longer the technology leaders. When Winston Wallin took over as CEO in 1985, he doubled the company’s research spending to push innovation. As Medtronic entered the 1990s, acquisition became the key strategy for growth. By this time, it had acquired Johnson & Johnson’s cardiovascular division, as well as several European pacemaker producers. In 1998, Medtronic began the process of buying in succession five companies that manufactured leading medical products. In 1999, fifty years after Medtronic’s founding, the company was serving customers in more than 120 countries. It projected sales of $5 billion for the next year, coming from not only their heart-rhythm business but from the neuro-, vascular-, and cardiac-surgery markets as well. In the twenty-first century, Medtronic faced criticism from the animal rights group PETA for testing its medical devices on animals. After talks with PETA in 2005, 2008, and 2010, Medtronic agreed to improve the lives of its test animals and to avoid unnecessary testing when possible. Medtronic continued its aggressive acquisition plan in the 2010s. In January of 2015, it closed a $49.9 billion deal to acquire the Irish hospital supplier Covidien PLC. This merger renamed the company Medtronic PLC and moved its corporate headquarters to Ireland for tax purposes. Minnesota was no longer its official home, but Medtronic kept its operational headquarters in Minneapolis.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Collection I.437.31.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246087,"name":"Health and Medicine","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246052,"name":"Science and Technology","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/medtronic"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Minnesota State Fair-goers at KSTP television cameras of the telemobile, 1947.","author":[{"name":"Susan Marks","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/susan-marks"}],"categoryTag":[],"date":"October 05, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Television in Minnesota, 1928–1961","postbody":"Minnesota was a pioneer in the early years of broadcast television. From the 1920s through the 1960s, local stations achieved many national firsts and produced enduring TV legends. ...","searchtext":"Minnesota was a pioneer in the early years of broadcast television. From the 1920s through the 1960s, local stations achieved many national firsts and produced enduring TV legends. Broadcast television in Minnesota got its start in radio, beginning with St. Paul radio station KSTP. In August 1928, station owner and broadcasting pioneer Stanley E. Hubbard started transmitting in the new experimental medium of “radio picture broadcast”—a precursor to television. Four times a week, KSTP broadcast still photos. The technology was so new that only a handful of people had the receivers to view them. By the early 1930s, the novelty of television was attracting new enthusiasts. In 1933, Dr. George A. Young, an optometrist who owned and operated Minneapolis radio station WDGY, got a license to broadcast Minnesota’s first television station, W9XAT. The “X” in the call letters indicated “experimental.” W9XAT had five hundred watts of power and accompanied the audio broadcast on WDGY. The picture quality was poor, and the technology depended on a crude, mechanical scanning-disc broadcast system. It’s unknown how many early mechanical television viewers tuned in to watch the blurry, black-and-white imagery. Young gave up his television license in 1936, but his radio station flourished. In 1938, Hubbard bought the first television camera ever sold by the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), for $8,500. He also purchased RCA’s first available electronic television set. In August 1939, he arranged the first demonstration of electronic television in the state. It was a closed-circuit telecast of an American Legion parade that played to six television sets in the downtown Minneapolis Radisson Hotel. To promote television, KSTP continued to showcase closed-circuit programming. Most Minnesotans, however, could not afford a television set that cost around $600. During World War II, television broadcast was temporarily suspended when companies like RCA were recruited for the war effort. But new technologies developed during wartime enabled greater mass production of consumer products, like televisions sets, at lower prices. As television moved beyond the novelty realm and into permanence, there was a need for formal training in all aspects of television production. For many technicians, camera operators, lighting crews, on-air talent, makeup and wardrobe personnel, and news directors, the answer was Twin City Television Lab. The lab opened its doors in 1947 and gained national respect among broadcasters for improving television production. In March 1948, the National Broadcasting Center (NBC) announced its first-ever station affiliation contract, which was awarded to Minnesota’s KSTP-TV. The station’s transmitter, located on University Avenue at the border between Minneapolis and St. Paul, had a 571-foot tower and an effective radiated power of 24,700 watts. KSTP-TV on Channel 5 was the state’s first commercial station, signing on the air on April 27, 1948, from the Prom Ballroom in St. Paul. KSTP-TV was the first television station in the Northwest and the first to cover local news. KSTP-TV’s only competition arrived the following year with Minneapolis’s WTCN-TV (later KARE 11) on Channel 4. WTCN-TV went on the air on July 1, 1949. It offered a combination of live local programming and national television shows from the American Broadcast Corporation (ABC), Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), and DuMont networks. In 1948, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) put a freeze on all new television station applications. Broadcasting too many stations at once, it feared, would overtax the limited frequencies. When the ban was lifted in 1952, the FCC opened up numerous opportunities by reserving 162 channels on the newly assigned UHF band and eighty channels on the VHF band for nationwide non-commercial and educational television. The same year, Twin Cities WTCN-TV was sold to WCCO Radio, and Channel 4 became WCCO-TV. Following some reconfiguring in 1953, WTCN-TV and WMIN-TV broadcast jointly on Channel 11. The two stations shared the channel via a rotating broadcast schedule. Each one broadcast for two hours at a time and alternated between studios throughout the day. Two years later, WMIN-TV sold its share of Channel 11, and WTCN-TV took over the frequency full time. In January 1953, KSTP-TV became the first television station in Minnesota to increase its power to 100,000 watts, the highest wattage allowed by the FCC. The increase meant viewers as far away as Duluth and Brainerd would get better reception from this Twin Cities station. However, reception was still spotty. Viewers in greater Minnesota were left adjusting their antennas and longing for closer television towers. Shortly after the FCC ban was lifted, KROC-TV (later KTTC), sister station to KROC radio, launched on July 1953. The station’s original studios and transmitter were a few miles outside of Rochester. This tiny operation carried programming for all four commercial networks: ABC, CBS, NBC, and DuMont. KROC-TV eventually expanded its operation to serve downtown Rochester. In the same year, WFTV on Channel 38 signed on as Duluth’s first television station. WFTV was on the UHF ban at a time when most televisions sets only had VHF tuners. Viewers needed to purchase a converter box to watch WFTV’s shows—a mix of local news, sports and weather programs, and national programming from all four commercial networks. In 1954, two new Duluth stations on the VHF ban—KDAL-TV (later KDLH) of Channel 3 and WDSM-TV (later KBJR) of Channel 6—signed on. Since the two new stations were more powerful and easier to receive on the VHF ban, WFTV permanently signed off. Minnesota’s first non-commercial public television station started broadcasting in 1957 under the name Twin City Area Educational Television on Channel 2. Initially, the station was located in a World War II-era, wooden barracks-type building on the University of Minnesota’s St. Paul campus. The station broadcast educational shows. Eventually, it took on the call letters KTCA (later TPT) and became an affiliate of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). In 1958, a new station, KCMT (the last three call letters stood for Central Minnesota Television), signed on the air for the first time. It touted the tallest television tower in the state at 1,133 feet. KCMT was a joint venture by a group of Alexandria businessmen who wanted to bring television service to central Minnesota. It was a big operation run by a small staff who produced local news and community shows and broadcast national programming. KCMT gained a large viewing audience, especially for their talk show Welcome Inn. The golden era of television was drawing to an end in the early 1960s, but in Minnesota some of the state’s most iconic programs and on-air personalities were just hitting their stride. Legendary journalists Dave Moore, Chick McCuen, and Bill Carlson were the new faces of WCCO-TV’s news. The characters Casey Jones (played by Roger Awsumb) and Roundhouse Rodney (played by Lynn Dwyer) delighted child viewers. They appeared on various shows, including Lunch with Casey and Wake Up with Casey and Roundhouse. Longtime popular radio actor Clellan Card played the loveable Scandinavian Axel Torgeson on Axel and His Dog, a kids’ show that aired for twelve years. In 1961, under the leadership of Stanley S. Hubbard, son of Stanley E. Hubbard, KSTP-TV became the nation’s first all-color television station. New television stations, shows, and advances in technology continued to emerge throughout the state, confirming Minnesota’s reputation as a leader in broadcast television.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/FM6.55X p23.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246052,"name":"Science and Technology","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/television-minnesota-1928-1961"},{"alt":"Color image of an oil painting of Mother Benedicta Riepp, c.1980s. Painting by Sister Thomas Carey, O.S.B.","author":[{"name":"Sister Ephrem (Rita) Hollermann","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/sister-ephrem-rita-hollermann"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"September 30, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186622056203,"name":"1792–1861 (Expansion and Reform)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Riepp, Mother Benedicta (Sybilla) (1825–1862)","postbody":"Mother Benedicta (Sybilla) Riepp was the founder of the Roman Catholic Sisters of the Order of Saint Benedict in North America. During her time as Superior of the first foundation in St. ...","searchtext":"Mother Benedicta (Sybilla) Riepp was the founder of the Roman Catholic Sisters of the Order of Saint Benedict in North America. During her time as Superior of the first foundation in St. Marys, Pennsylvania, she sent a group of Sisters to St. Cloud, Minnesota, where they began a new convent. This group moved to St. Joseph in 1863. By 1946, Saint Benedict’s Monastery was the largest community of Benedictine Sisters in the world. Sybilla Riepp was born in Waal, Bavaria, on June 28, 1825. In 1844, she entered St. Walburg Convent in Eichstätt, Bavaria, and received the name Benedicta. She taught in the girls’ school of Eichstätt during the eight years she lived there. When a request came to send Sisters to teach the children of German immigrants in Pennsylvania, Benedicta volunteered. She and her companions arrived in St. Marys, Pennsylvania, in 1852. There they established the first convent of Benedictine Sisters in North America. The six years Mother Benedicta spent as Superior at Saint Joseph Monastery in St. Marys were filled with physical hardship and misunderstandings between herself and Abbot Boniface Wimmer, O.S.B., of St. Vincent Abbey in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. She resisted his interference in the internal matters of the women’s community. He, in turn, questioned her authority as the Superior of the convents she founded. Nevertheless, her leadership during those years resulted in the establishment of three new foundations in Erie, Pennsylvania (1856), Newark, New Jersey (1857), and St. Cloud, Minnesota (1857). In 1857, Mother Benedicta travelled to Europe. She hoped her superiors in Eichstätt and Rome would help her resolve the controversy surrounding the independence of the new convents in North America. She and her companion were not favorably received in Eichstätt. They were prevented from traveling to Rome to present her case before the Pope. Mother Benedicta returned to the United States in 1858, broken in spirit and failing in health. She was no longer welcome in the convents she had founded in the East. At the invitation of Mother Willibalda Scherbauer in St. Cloud, she moved to the Minnesota city in the spring of 1858. Four years later, she died of tuberculosis on March 15, 1862. In 1884, her remains were transferred from St. Cloud to the convent cemetery in St. Joseph. The only extant writings of Mother Benedicta are fourteen letters written between the years 1852 and 1861. These letters reveal her conviction that her Benedictine vocation was a privilege. Three federations of Benedictine women in North America, totaling about two thousand members in the early 2000s, remain the legacy of Mother Benedicta Riepp.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Mother Benedicta Riepp, OSB, Oil Painting.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246089,"name":"Religion and Belief","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/riepp-mother-benedicta-sybilla-1825-1862"},{"alt":"Color scan of a map of the downtown and university districts of Minneapolis, 1939.","author":[{"name":"Ellen Manovich","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/ellen-manovich"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"September 30, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"University District, Minneapolis","postbody":"For much of the twentieth century, a section of Southeast Minneapolis was called the University District. By the 1980s, parts of the same area were known as Marcy-Holmes and Dinkytown. The ...","searchtext":"For much of the twentieth century, a section of Southeast Minneapolis was called the University District. By the 1980s, parts of the same area were known as Marcy-Holmes and Dinkytown. The emergence and disappearance of the District as a place name occurred as the neighborhood’s relationships with the rest of the city and the nearby university changed. Before the University of Minnesota (U of M) was founded in 1851, the area that later became the University District was within the city of St. Anthony. When St. Anthony and Minneapolis merged in 1872, the same area came to be called the East Side, since it lay to the east across the Mississippi River from Minneapolis. After closing its original campus during the Civil War, the U of M reopened in 1867 at a site further downriver in the District. John Pillsbury, who spearheaded and supported the school, lived in the neighborhood at 1005 Fifth Street Southeast. Responding to university-related housing and business opportunities, early 1900s newspaper ads listed properties in the University District within Southeast Minneapolis. By the 1930s, a map produced for visiting geologists marked the District’s boundaries. It showed a zone that stretched to the Mississippi on the south, East Hennepin Avenue and the Great Northern train tracks to the west and north, and Oak Street to the east. As the U of M grew, its identity fused with the neighborhood’s. More and more students lived in the District, and the campus boundaries expanded. After the G.I. Bill was passed in 1946, U of M enrollment increased when returning soldiers signed up for college educations. Housing shortages created demand for more apartments and rooming houses. Traffic worsened as students commuted to campus by car from other parts of the city. These neighborhood issues and citywide changes like migration to the suburbs led to calls for the city to overhaul its zoning code. In 1948, property owners and long-term residents met to organize an improvement association. In 1950, they formed the University District Improvement Association (UDIA). Liaising with the city of Minneapolis, the U of M, and other planning groups, the UDIA advocated for an end to heavy traffic through the area. It also worked to preserve the area as a residential, as opposed to industrial, area. The UDIA asked the city of Minneapolis to nominate a site in the University District near Holmes Elementary School for urban renewal. Though the city eventually chose other areas for more intensive renewal, neighborhood leaders emphasized that funding a renewal program in the University District would benefit the city as a whole. Later, in the 1980s, the neighborhood did complete an urban renovation project near Central Avenue called the Holmes Renewal project. A number of related changes in the mid-twentieth century led to the dropping of the University District name. In the 1960s, the UDIA opposed the placement of Highway 35-W along Ninth Avenue Southeast. Throughout the planning and construction process, the neighborhood urged the city and state highway department to blunt its impact. They suggested placing a platform over the highway or tunneling it off to build a park. Authorities dismissed these requests due to cost and feasibility concerns. 35-W, completed as planned in 1971, bisected the neighborhood and splintered its unity. A second change involved neighborhood activists’ decision to market the District as a place for families, not just students. They also worked to preserve historic structures in the area in the face of threatened development, and to focus attention on riverfront redevelopment. In 1984, the UDIA changed its name to the Marcy-Holmes Neighborhood Association after two schools in the neighborhood. Though the area was no longer called the University District, it remained connected to its largest neighbor because it was home to students and staff affiliated with the U of M. By the early 2000s, the area became part of a new coalition called the University District Alliance, which included the neighborhoods of Marcy-Holmes, Southeast Como, Prospect Park, and Cedar-Riverside.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/G4144 .M52C5 1939 .G8 2F.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246079,"name":"Cities and Towns","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/university-district-minneapolis"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Colonel Hiram Berdan, c.1861.","author":[{"name":"Brian Leehan","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/brian-leehan"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"September 29, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Second Company of Minnesota Sharpshooters","postbody":"Minnesota raised two companies of sharpshooters during the Civil War. Both were in the elite Berdan’s Sharpshooters brigade. The Second Company of Minnesota Sharpshooters, however, served ...","searchtext":"Minnesota raised two companies of sharpshooters during the Civil War. Both were in the elite Berdan’s Sharpshooters brigade. The Second Company of Minnesota Sharpshooters, however, served out most of its three-year enlistment with the premier regiment of the state: the First Minnesota Volunteer Infantry Regiment. On June 13, 1861, Colonel Hiram Berdan of New York proposed forming a regiment of sharpshooters. The U.S. government quickly accepted Berdan’s suggestion, authorizing a second regiment as well. Recruited early, the First Company of Minnesota Sharpshooters went on to become Company A of the Second U.S. Sharpshooters Regiment. The Second Company of Minnesota Sharpshooters was recruited in St. Paul between November 23, 1861, and March 17, 1862. The company was sent east a month later to join the Army of the Potomac. The Second Company was assigned to the First U.S. Sharpshooters Regiment and given the designation of Company L. The company received its equipment and weapons when it was already in a combat zone: the Virginia Peninsula between the James and York Rivers. Its men were armed with the supremely accurate and reliable Sharps rifle. These fired cartridges loaded at the breech of the weapon, and had a much higher rate of fire than the muzzle-loading muskets used by most other troops. The company received its first drilling in company movements and skirmishing on May 12, and participated in the Battle of Hanover Courthouse two weeks later. On May 30, 1862, Captain William F. Russell received Order #153, which instructed him to detach Company L from the First Regiment U.S. Sharpshooters and attach it to the First Minnesota Volunteer Infantry. In the Battle of Fair Oaks/Seven Pines on May 31 and June 1, Company L missed going into action with the First Minnesota, as the regiment was already fighting. On June 1, the company was engaged in the battle, and finally connected with the First on June 2. From that point until the regiment mustered out of service, Company L fought with the First Minnesota. The hard marching and swampy, unsanitary conditions of Virginia’s Peninsula took a toll on the company. On June 10, 1862, Merrill Dwelle of Company L wrote to his sister from the Fair Oaks battlefield. He described the sickness that plagued the men, including its officers, and remarked that they had been unusually active for such a “green” company. They continued to be active, but didn’t stay green for long. They fought in most of the Seven Days Battles during the Peninsula Campaign, and went into action with about forty-two men on September 17, 1862, at the Battle of Antietam. In ten minutes, twenty of those men were wounded, one mortally. At Gettysburg, the company was detached from the First Minnesota and sent to support an artillery battery near Cemetery Hill. They fought in this position on July 2 and 3, 1863, sniping at Confederates across the fields and helping to turn back Pickett’s Charge. By the end of November 1863, the entire company had been assigned to provost guard (military police) duty at their division’s headquarters. In February 1864, the First Minnesota was sent back to the state to be mustered out of service in the spring. Not enough men were recruited, re-enlisted, or still had time on their original enlistments to keep the regiment in service. But there were enough to form the new First Battalion of Minnesota Volunteers, composed of Companies A and B. On May 3, 1864, General U.S. Grant’s Overland Campaign launched the Army of the Potomac into nearly forty-eight consecutive days of exhausting marches and savage combat, including the Battles of the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Cold Harbor. Portions, and often all, of Company L were repeatedly pulled from provost duty and put on the battle line. The campaign ended with a nearly year-long siege of the city of Petersburg, just south of Richmond, Virginia. On March 19, 1865, the Second Company of Minnesota Sharpshooters reached the end of its three-year enlistment. Eighteen men re-enlisted, and a handful still had time on their original enlistments. All were transferred to either Company A or to the newly formed Company C of the First Battalion of Minnesota Volunteers.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/MNopedia/MNopedia%202026/Second%20Company%20Minnesota%20Sharpshooters/10771574.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/second-company-minnesota-sharpshooters"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Harold Stassen signing a bill into law, 1941.","author":[{"name":"Steve Werle","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/steve-werle"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"September 21, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Stassen, Harold (1907–2001)","postbody":"During a lifetime devoted to public service, Harold Stassen left an indelible mark upon American politics. He first gained national prominence in the 1930s by revitalizing Minnesota’s ...","searchtext":"During a lifetime devoted to public service, Harold Stassen left an indelible mark upon American politics. He first gained national prominence in the 1930s by revitalizing Minnesota’s Republican Party and establishing a progressive, cooperative approach to state government. Although his achievements are often obscured by his seemingly relentless quest to become president, Stassen contributed greatly to the cause of international peace following World War II. Harold Edward Stassen was born in 1907 on his family’s truck farm in West St. Paul. His father, William, taught him the importance of civic engagement and the prominent role the Republican Party had played in Minnesota during the late nineteenth century. At the age of fifteen, Stassen graduated second in his class from St. Paul’s Humboldt High School. After another year of helping to run the family farm, he enrolled at the University of Minnesota, where he became active in campus politics. He joined the debating society and led the U of M rifle team to three consecutive national championships. He was also elected student-body president. Stassen’s exposure to history and international relations at the U of M helped form his lifelong interest in world peace. Stassen graduated from the University of Minnesota Law School in 1929. He opened a law office in South St. Paul with his classmate Elmer Ryan. That fall, he married his longtime sweetheart, Esther Glewwe. Stassen decided to run for Dakota County attorney in 1930, despite contracting tuberculosis. He won the election with the help of family and friends who campaigned while he convalesced at Pokegama Sanitarium. Once fully recovered, he prepared to assume his duties at the Dakota County Courthouse in Hastings. Stassen faced many challenges as Dakota County attorney during the Great Depression. He battled organized crime, tried to avert labor strikes, helped to prevent farm foreclosures, and successfully argued an important tax case before the U.S. Supreme Court. He observed state politics closely during the 1930s and feared the growing influence of the Farmer-Laborites. Led by three-time governor Floyd B. Olson, the Farmer-Labor Party had by 1934 completed its transition from a populist-oriented, third-party movement to the people’s choice in Minnesota. In 1935, Stassen helped establish the Young Republican League of Minnesota. A year later, he was elected its first chairman. He sought the Republican nomination for governor in 1938. Stassen’s brand of Republicanism was progressive and forward-thinking. It appealed to young and independent voters who were suspicious of the Farmer-Labor Party’s lock on state offices. Stassen carried the Republican primary easily and then won the 1938 gubernatorial election. He was only thirty-one years old. On January 2, 1939, Stassen became the youngest governor in Minnesota history. Promising to rid the state capitol of corruption and political patronage, Stassen pursued an ambitious set of legislative reforms addressing civil service, labor relations, public welfare, and government reorganization. He soon gained the attention of GOP leaders outside Minnesota. In 1940, he was chosen to deliver the keynote address at the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia. In 1942, Governor Stassen announced that he would resign the following spring to join the U.S. Naval Reserves. That November, he was reelected to a third term. In the summer of 1943, he joined Admiral William Halsey’s staff in the South Pacific. He served with distinction for the remainder of the war. He attended the San Francisco Conference in 1945 to help draft the United Nations Charter. Stassen also organized the evacuation of nearly twenty thousand Allied POWs held by the Japanese at the end of the war. Stassen began running for president in the 1940s and never really stopped. He sought the GOP’s nomination a record ten times between 1944 and 1992. His efforts to win state presidential primaries yielded several early victories and set a precedent for future candidates. Stassen served as president of the University of Pennsylvania from 1948 until 1953, when he joined President Eisenhower’s national security team. After leaving the Eisenhower Administration in 1958, Stassen practiced international law and ran unsuccessfully for many more offices in Pennsylvania and Minnesota. He died in 2001 and is buried alongside his wife at Acacia Cemetery in Mendota Heights.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/FM6.323 p79.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/stassen-harold-1907-2001"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Joseph Renshaw Brown, c.1863. Photograph by Hirsch Brothers.","author":[{"name":"Nancy and Robert Goodman","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/nancy-and-robert-goodman"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"September 16, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186622056203,"name":"1792–1861 (Expansion and Reform)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Brown, Joseph Renshaw (1805–1870)","postbody":"During his five decades in Minnesota, Joseph R. Brown was a significant figure in territorial and state politics. Although he never held high office, he exercised great influence on how the ...","searchtext":"During his five decades in Minnesota, Joseph R. Brown was a significant figure in territorial and state politics. Although he never held high office, he exercised great influence on how the region developed. His ability to produce legislative results earned him the nickname “Jo the Juggler.” Joseph Renshaw Brown was born on January 5, 1805, in York, Pennsylvania. At age fifteen, while a printer’s apprentice, he ran away to join the army. He was sent to Cantonment New Hope, a predecessor of Fort Snelling, on the edge of the American occupation of the continent. In 1828, aged twenty three, he was discharged from the army. For the next ten years he worked in the fur trade, often as far west as Lake Traverse. His three marriages (with two divorces) to mixed-race women produced invaluable ties to Dakota and Ojibwe communities. When the Dakota ceded their country east of the Mississippi River to the U.S., Brown was one of the first to stake a claim. In 1838, he moved his family and several business partners to Grey Cloud Island, then part of Wisconsin Territory, where he built a store and farm. He plunged into Wisconsin politics as if he had been practicing for years. His experiences as a lobbyist and legislator in Madison and as a county official, justice of the peace, and election fixer prepared him well for an influential role in Minnesota. When Wisconsin became a state in 1848, the territory west of the St. Croix River was left in a legal void. Brown organized and chaired the key Stillwater Convention, which sent Henry H. Sibley to Washington to persuade Congress to organize Minnesota Territory. During Minnesota’s territorial days, Brown became a celebrity. He moved to St. Paul and was secretary and bill writer in the first Minnesota Territorial Council. He was then elected to both the Council and House and edited the influential Minnesota Pioneer. In 1851, he was instrumental in making the treaties with the Dakota that opened up southern Minnesota Territory to white immigration. At Traverse des Sioux, Brown had Dakota leaders sign a controversial document that acknowledged their debts and authorized direct payments to the traders. Brown was a delegate to the 1857 constitutional convention and helped draft the Minnesota state constitution. As Sibley’s campaign manager, he worked to elect his old friend the state’s first governor. A life-long Democrat, he was rewarded for party service by being made Indian Agent to the Sioux (Dakota) in 1857. In this role, he engineered the 1858 treaty by which the Dakota ceded the northern part of their reservation. He also promoted a vigorous “civilization” program that pressured the Dakota to rely on farmed crops and livestock for food. After Minnesota achieved statehood in 1858, Brown slipped quietly out of politics and into speculation. He ran a transportation business that centered on his Minnesota River town site of Henderson. He operated a steamboat and stage line connecting Henderson with St. Paul and contracted to haul freight to Fort Ridgely and the Dakota agencies. In 1860, he brought to town a “steam wagon” to pull freight wagon trains over the prairies in place of oxen. In 1862, he pioneered another steam-wagon route from Nebraska to the Colorado goldfields. When the U.S.–Dakota War of 1862 began, Brown hurried to rescue his captive family. He joined Sibley, now the commander of an army against the combatant Dakota, as an aide. He commanded the scouting and burial detail that was attacked at Birch Coulee, and he was later superintendent of the Dakota prison at Mankato. Brown participated in the 1863 and 1864 punitive expeditions against the Dakota as major in charge of the scouts. He was appointed a commissioner to conduct peace overtures with the Sisseton and Wahpeton Dakota who had not been involved in the war. His objective during the postwar period was to gain official recognition of those Dakotas’ non-combatant status, and to restore their prewar benefits. Brown and Gabriel Renville worked together to bring about the Sisseton-Wahpeton Treaty of 1867. Afterward, Brown retired to a stock farm at Browns Valley and began work on another steam wagon venture. The third model was just being finished when he died in New York City in 1870 at age sixty-five.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/10343262.640x640.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/brown-joseph-renshaw-1805-1870"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of children attending a child||s birthday party c.1912.","author":[{"name":"Laura Weber","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/laura-weber"}],"categoryTag":[],"date":"September 14, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186622056203,"name":"1792–1861 (Expansion and Reform)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"From Exclusion to Integration: The Story of Jews in Minnesota","postbody":"Poverty, prejudice, and persecution sparked two waves of Jewish immigration to the United States in the nineteenth century. The first wave (1820–1880) consisted of about 250,000 Jews from ...","searchtext":"Poverty, prejudice, and persecution sparked two waves of Jewish immigration to the United States in the nineteenth century. The first wave (1820–1880) consisted of about 250,000 Jews from German-speaking regions of central Europe, fewer than one thousand of whom made their way to Minnesota. The second and largest wave (1882–1924) was made up of more than two million Yiddish-speaking Jews from Eastern Europe. About twenty thousand settled in Minnesota. Subsequent waves—refugees from Hitler’s Europe (1940s and 1950s) and Russian immigrants (1970s and 1980s)—built upon the earlier arrivals’ contributions to Minnesota’s businesses, politics, professions, arts, and culture. The first wave: German Jews St. Croix Valley fur trader Maurice Mordecai Samuel was among the first Jews to arrive in Minnesota in the late 1840s. Other German and Central European Jews who had earned their living as peddlers elsewhere in the United States soon followed, attracted by commercial opportunities in the growing Minnesota Territory. German Jewish peddlers-turned-merchants could be found in market towns throughout the state by the 1880s. In the 1850s, the German Jewish migrants who had accumulated capital started businesses and lived in St. Paul’s Lowertown district. Dry goods, liquor, and furs were among the commodities they sold. Two of their shops, Mannheimer Brothers and the Golden Rule, grew into large department stores. In 1856, eight St. Paul families founded the first Jewish organization in Minnesota, Mount Zion Temple. Jews began to settle in Minneapolis around 1865. The shops they founded along Washington Avenue supplied workers in the city’s thriving lumber industry with ready-made clothing and dry goods. As they had in St. Paul, Minneapolis Jews lived and worshipped near their places of business. The small Minneapolis Jewish community consisted of fewer than two hundred people by 1877. The Montefiore Burial Association—the first Jewish institution in Minneapolis— was founded in 1876 by German Jews. Two years later, the same group finally founded a synagogue, Shaarai Tov (later renamed Temple Israel). The second wave: refugees from Eastern Europe The earliest Eastern European immigrants in the Twin Cities initially settled in the same neighborhoods as their German coreligionists. They spoke a different language, Yiddish, and followed different religious and social practices. The Eastern European peddlers and small merchants set up their own synagogues: Sons of Jacob (1869) in St. Paul and Adath Jeshurun (1884) in Minneapolis. On July 14, 1882, two hundred impoverished Eastern European Jews arrived unexpectedly at the St. Paul train station. Their appearance marked the beginning of the second, and largest, wave of Jewish migration to Minnesota, consisting of émigrés from the Russian Empire, Austria-Hungary, and Romania. The established German Jewish community immediately came to the newcomers’ aid. There were only one thousand or so Jews living in the entire state in 1882, so caring for the refugees, who numbered six hundred by the year’s end, was a major task. There was an ambivalent quality to this aid. On one hand, the German Jews were motivated by genuine benevolence and long-standing religious tradition. A key example is Neighborhood House, a settlement house founded by the women of Mount Zion in 1897 on the West Side Flats, where many of the Russian Jewish immigrants first settled. On the other hand, the established German Jewish community feared that the foreign dress and customs of the Eastern Europeans would cause an antisemitic backlash that would transfer to them. As immigrants from Eastern Europe continued to arrive, they formed their own Jewish community, parallel to that of the established German Jews. As some emerged from economic dependency, they created their own social welfare groups, including the Jewish Home for the Aged (1907); Sholom Residence (1918); and the Jewish Sheltering Home for Children (1918). By the end of World War II, Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Duluth each maintained a community-wide social service agency and federated community-fundraising organization. Outside the Twin Cities Jews also settled outside the Twin Cities. The largest community was in Duluth, where the first permanent Jewish settlers arrived in 1869. Another decade passed before a significant number of Jews joined them. German and Central European Jews came first, followed a decade later by the Eastern Europeans. The small size of Duluth||s Jewish population helped prevent a community split. Duluth (and its sister community, Superior, Wisconsin) thrived as a commercial center after the Mesabi Iron Range opened in the 1890s. Jews originally from Lithuania founded Adas Israel Congregation in 1885. Hungarian and German Jews formed a Reform synagogue, Temple Emmanuel, in 1891. Duluth’s West End, between Twelfth and Twenty-fourth Avenues (later the Central Hillside neighborhood), became home to the Eastern European group. Jewish Duluthians were integrated into the economic and public life of the city. By the end of World War I, the Jewish population of Duluth was twenty-three hundred. It reached its height in the 1930s, with about thirty-five hundred people. During this era, Duluth supported four synagogues, two cemeteries, charitable organizations, a Talmud Torah, three social clubs, and four lodges. By 1940, Duluth’s Jewish population had declined to 2,633. In the 1890s, some Duluth–Superior Jews moved to the Iron Range to found retail and other businesses that served the booming region’s mining towns. Though small in numbers (1,112 at their peak in 1920), Iron Range Jews supported a vibrant Jewish community for decades. Synagogues were founded in Eveleth, Hibbing, Virginia, and Chisholm. Small Jewish communities arose at the turn of the twentieth century in several southern Minnesota towns, including Faribault, Mankato, Albert Lea, and Austin. In each, Jews gathered for religious purposes. Only in Rochester, where the founding of the Mayo Clinic in 1905 created a need for a local congregation that could serve Jewish patients, was a synagogue (B’nai Israel), established. The dispersion of Jews throughout the state reached a peak in the 1920s. Some four thousand were counted in 145 small towns outside of Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Duluth at the end of World War I. Twin Cities neighborhoods By 1910, St. Paul’s three major Jewish residential areas were home to between forty-five hundred and five thousand of Minnesota’s total Jewish population of thirteen thousand. The older, more prosperous, and largely German families lived in the downtown area; some had begun to move to the Summit Hill neighborhood. The Eastern Europeans lived in two areas of St. Paul. One enclave was east of the state capitol and the home of the Sons of Jacob synagogue, founded by Polish Jews. The other was the ten-block-square West Side Flats. By end of 1880s, the Flats had three small Orthodox synagogues; by 1900, there were three more. As their economic standing improved, the Eastern Europeans left the flood-prone Flats for the Selby–Dale neighborhood. From the remnants of the small Flats congregations arose Temple of Aaron (1911). The temple’s first home at Ashland Avenue and Grotto Street was two blocks from Mount Zion, which had left Lowertown in 1901 for a new home at Holly Avenue and Avon Street, just off Summit Avenue. Three Hebrew schools were founded in St. Paul between 1880 and 1920. Each had its own constituency and neighborhood. Not until 1956 did they merge to become the Talmud Torah of St. Paul. Early on, Neighborhood House and other settlement houses deemphasized their Jewish focus. The St. Paul Jewish community recognized the need for a Jewish community center as early as 1916. After years of fundraising, the Jewish Education Center, forerunner of the Jewish Community Center of St. Paul (JCC), opened in 1930 in the Summit Hill neighborhood. As Minneapolis boomed and overtook St. Paul in overall population, so did the Jewish population of Minneapolis. From a small group of five hundred individuals in 1880, the community grew tenfold to approximately five thousand by 1900. By 1915, the earliest settlers and their synagogues, Temple Israel and Adath Jeshurun, were moving west from their original downtown neighborhood toward Lyndale and Hennepin Avenues and the Chain of Lakes. Newer arrivals primarily from Romania concentrated in the Elliot Park area of South Minneapolis. The neighborhood contained a handful of synagogues and religious schools, the South Side Neighborhood House, and Jewish-owned stores. The South Side’s population remained stable until the 1940s. The largest and best-known Jewish neighborhood was Minneapolis’ North Side. Through World War II, North Minneapolis had the largest concentration of Jews in the Upper Midwest between Chicago and Denver. Eleven Orthodox synagogues, including Kenesseth Israel, Mikro Kodesh, Tifereth B’nai Jacob, Sharai Zedeck, and Gemelus Chesed, were founded there between 1884 and 1905. North Side children came together in one institution to learn their Jewish heritage. The Talmud Torah of Minneapolis evolved from Old World-style methods into a modern, coeducational school. Jewish institutions continued to spring up on the North Side, including the Emmanuel Cohen Center (forerunner of the Sabes Jewish Community Center, the Labor Lyceum, and Beth El Synagogue). By the 1920s, however, the immigrant-era neighborhood had become a slum. First-generation synagogues and the homes of 126 poor Jewish families were among the structures razed between 1936 and 1938 to create the New Deal-funded Sumner Field housing development. Community integration and the challenge of antisemitism Efforts by community leaders coupled with sociological forces began to break down the German–Eastern European divide within the Twin Cities Jewish communities by the time of World War I. Among the efforts was the Anglo-Jewish newspaper the Jewish Weekly (forerunner of the American Jewish World), founded in 1912 by Rabbi Samuel Deinard. The Zionist movement, which affirmed the need for a Jewish homeland in Palestine, was another mechanism for community integration. Initially, support for Zionism in the Jewish community was split along Orthodox-Reform lines. Deinard’s advocacy of Zionism in the pages of the American Jewish World and from the pulpit of his Reform congregation helped bridge the divide. By the end of World War I, virtually all Minnesota Jews supported Zionism and enthusiastically joined local and national Zionist organizations. The largest of these was the national women’s group Hadassah, which had chapters in Minneapolis, St. Paul, Duluth, and Chisholm. Generations of Minnesota youth attended the Zionist Herzl Camp, near Webster, Wisconsin, after its founding in 1946. Antisemitism, racism, and anti-Catholicism were on the rise throughout the United States in the 1920s. The advent of the Great Depression began a decade of intense discrimination in employment, housing, and public accommodations for Minnesota’s Jews. The situation was most acute in Minneapolis, where Jews were almost totally excluded from civic and social organizations. In St. Paul, circumstances for Jews were less dire. The roots of the contrast between the two cities can be found in their early histories. Jews arrived in St. Paul simultaneously with other settlers. From the outset, Jews were knit into the fabric of the city’s economic and civic life. In Minneapolis, Jews were among those groups who arrived after its major industries were established by self-sufficient New Englanders, who set the tone of exclusivity and discrimination that was perpetuated by other non-Jewish residents of Minneapolis. Antisemitism was used as a political weapon during the 1930s. Jews supported and advised governors Floyd B. Olson and Elmer A. Benson of the Farmer Labor Party. In the 1938 governor’s race, opponents conducted an organized antisemitic campaign to defeat Benson, the incumbent. The 1938 campaign prompted statewide anti-defamation groups to merge into the Anti-Defamation Council of Minnesota. (In 1959 the group was renamed the Jewish Community Relations Council.) Mount Sinai Hospital in Minneapolis, which opened in 1951, was a Jewish-sponsored, non-sectarian hospital founded as a direct result of Jewish doctors’ exclusion from the staffs of Twin Cities private hospitals. Journalist Carey McWilliams’s 1946 investigation of antisemitism in the Twin Cities coined a phrase that stuck to describe Minneapolis: “the capital of antisemitism in the United States.” The unfavorable publicity that followed pressured Minneapolis officials, goaded by newly elected mayor Hubert Humphrey, to enact antidiscrimination ordinances. State measures followed. Ordinances and laws, educational efforts, and Jewish community vigilance led to a decline in overt acts of public antisemitism. One measure of declining prejudice was Jewish success at the polls. Arthur Naftalin was elected as Minneapolis’ first Jewish mayor (1961–1969), and Lawrence Cohen was St. Paul’s first Jewish mayor (1972–1976). Private attitudes persisted, however, and individual Jews continued to experience more “discreet” expressions of antisemitism for decades. (Minnesota was not represented by a Jewish politician in the US Senate until Rudy Boschwitz||s first term, in 1978. Paul Wellstone and Al Franken followed him in 1991 and 2009, respectively.) Upward mobility and the move to suburbia Hard work, acculturation, and a focus on education as a means of uplift for the second generation led to a decline in blue-collar employment in the Jewish community in the postwar era. As late as 1947, almost half of Minneapolis Jews worked blue-collar jobs. By 1971, only 8.8 percent of Minneapolis Jews were classified as working class. Educational levels and median incomes were higher for Jews than their Hennepin County neighbors. Some of the post-war blue-collar workers were recently arrived displaced persons (DPs)—survivors of the Nazi Holocaust who began arriving in Minnesota in the late 1940s. By 1952, 269 families, consisting of about eight hundred individuals, had settled in Minneapolis, 168 families (365 people) in St. Paul, 28 families in Duluth, and a smaller number in other parts of the state. Many prospered. Like other middle class Americans, Jewish GIs and their new families aspired to move to the suburbs. The gradual lifting of restrictive housing covenants and socio-economic upward mobility meant the end, within two decades, of the self-contained, cohesive Jewish immigrant neighborhoods. For example, as late as 1949, 60 percent of Minneapolis’s roughly twenty-three thousand Jews lived on the North Side. Ten years later, the North Side was home to only 38 percent of Minneapolis Jewry, while 28 percent had moved to suburban St. Louis Park. The first congregation to make the move from Minneapolis to St. Louis Park was South Minneapolis’ B’nai Abraham, in 1956. In the early 1960s, others followed. Volatile summers of racial unrest on Plymouth Avenue in 1967 and 1968 spurred the remaining Jewish institutions in North Minneapolis to close or move. Two North Side synagogues joined with B’nai Abraham in 1972 to form a new congregation, B’nai Emet. In the postwar era, young St. Paul families moved from the Summit Hill neighborhood to the newly developed Highland Park neighborhood. As they did, the community’s center of gravity shifted. Temple of Aaron Synagogue, the St. Paul JCC, and Talmud Torah moved to Highland Park in the mid-1950s. When the time came for the venerable Mount Zion Temple to construct a new building after World War II, however, it did not choose to move to Highland Park. Instead, the congregation erected a new facility on Summit Avenue, just blocks from its old one, in 1954. In Duluth, upward mobility led to outmigration to larger cities and other states. Duluth Jews built a Jewish Education Center in 1951 at the corner of East Second Street and Sixteenth Avenue. The Center was the home to the Ida Cook Hebrew School and social activities. In 1970, Duluth’s Jewish population was 1,100—less than half of what it was thirty years earlier. In 1973, the city’s Jewish federation recommended that all of Duluth’s Jewish groups consolidate in the Center. Temple Israel, one of two synagogues remaining in Duluth, did so. The other, Adas Israel, stayed put. Immigration, identity, and continuity Jewish communal and fraternal organizations saw high rates of participation in the 1950s and 1960s. Synagogue membership was widespread. As late as 1971–1972, 88 percent of Jewish adults in Minneapolis identified themselves with one of three movements: Orthodox, Conservative, or Reform. A third wave of Jewish immigration to Minnesota began in 1971 and continued into the late 1980s. This group, from the Soviet Union, was permitted to emigrate after years of refusal. The breakup of the Soviet Union in 1989 brought more immigrants. By 2000, Jews from the Former Soviet Union (FSU) made up approximately 10 percent of Minnesota’s Jewish population. At the same time the Jewish community worked to integrate Russian Jews, it also struggled to retain the American-born. Population studies conducted in 1995 and 2004 showed declining levels of synagogue membership and increasing rates of intermarriage. In 1994, the Minneapolis Jewish Federation created the Commission on Jewish Identity and Continuity to ensure that the next generation of Jews would maintain a commitment to the Jewish community. Reform and Conservative synagogues strove to become more inclusive for women, intermarried couples, and, eventually, gays and lesbians. The path was not always smooth. The genesis of Shir Tikvah Congregation (1988) was a dispute at Mount Zion Temple over Associate Rabbi Stacy Offner, the first woman rabbi in Minnesota, when it became publicly known that she was gay. New non-Orthodox congregations founded in the 1980s and 1990s included Bet Shalom (Reform), Beth Jacob (Conservative), Or Emet (Humanistic), and Mayim Rabim (Reconstructionist). The era’s trend toward liberalism and secularization was countered by new energy in the small Orthodox community. Two new St. Louis Park congregations, Bais Yisroel and Darchei Noam (2000), provided alternatives to Kenesseth Israel (Minneapolis’ oldest Orthodox synagogue) and Adath Israel (St. Paul). About two hundred Minnesota families belonged to the Chabad-Lubavitcher Hasidic movement in the early 2000s. Hasidism is a branch of Orthodox Judaism whose spirituality is based in Jewish mysticism. In 2015, Chabad maintained six centers in the Twin Cities, Duluth, Rochester, and Fargo, North Dakota. The 2004 population study of Twin Cities Jews portrayed a relatively stable community of forty thousand. Almost half were locally born—well above the average for American cities. Significant levels of poverty coexisted with wealth, particularly among immigrants from the FSU. One finding—that 36 percent of Jews surveyed declined to identify with a movement and selected “just Jewish”—attracted much attention within the community. Twin Cities results for this answer ranked seventh highest among fifty comparison American Jewish communities. Twenty-first-century unaffiliated Jews, as well as those already firmly identified, have new options beyond the synagogue. Organizations such as Jewish Community Action, Rimon, and TCJewfolk.com empower Jews to maintain their identity through social action, arts and entertainment, adult education, and spirituality. At the same time, Minnesota Jews are firmly integrated into the economic, civic, and cultural life of the state.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/childs_birthday_party_virginia_MDL_0.png","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246089,"name":"Religion and Belief","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/exclusion-integration-story-jews-minnesota"},{"alt":"George. Morrison","author":[{"name":"Susan Marks","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/susan-marks"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"September 10, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Morrison, George (1919–2000)","postbody":"George Morrison, one of Minnesota’s most important artists, is best known for his landscape paintings and wood collages. He drew inspiration from nature, combining impressionism with ...","searchtext":"George Morrison, one of Minnesota’s most important artists, is best known for his landscape paintings and wood collages. He drew inspiration from nature, combining impressionism with expressionism, cubism, and surrealism to develop a uniquely textured style. He referred to himself as a formalist in his approach to art. Morrison’s artwork rarely includes overt references to his Ojibwe heritage. Therefore, he is not defined solely as an Native American artist. Resistant to being labeled, he described himself as a painter who happened to be Native. At the same time, Morrison’s prolific art often reflects a respectful connection to Ojibwe culture. Born in 1919 in Chippewa City, outside the Grand Portage Indian Reservation, Morrison was one of twelve children in a close-knit family. He spoke only Anishinaabemowin until he was about six years old, when he learned English in school. Along with his brother Bernard, Morrison was eventually sent to Hayward Indian Boarding School in Wisconsin. When he was ten, Morrison left Hayward and underwent surgery to treat tuberculosis of his left hip. To pass the time during his fourteen-month recovery in the hospital—including eight months with both legs in casts—Morrison took up reading, drawing, and carving. Throughout his early education, Morrison’s teachers recognized and nurtured his extraordinary talents. His work led to a tribal scholarship to study commercial art at the Minneapolis School of Art (later the Minneapolis College of Art and Design). During Morrison’s time at college, from 1938 to 1943, he discovered that fine art held a greater appeal for him. Soon, he started developing an artistic sensibility as a modernist painter. Upon graduating from the Minneapolis School of Art, Morrison received the prestigious Van Derlip Traveling Scholarship for the Art Students League (ASL) in New York, where he studied from 1943 to 1946. In New York, Morrison was regarded for his sophisticated tastes in art, literature, travel, culture, and jazz. He was fully immersed in the modern art community and his exhibits were well received by critics and artists alike. In 1952, Morrison received a Fulbright scholarship. He continued his studies in Paris and Antibes, France. Upon finishing the Fulbright, Morrison received a fellowship from the John Hay Whitney Foundation. This afforded him the opportunity to work in Duluth, close to his family. Morrison returned to New York in 1954 and became acquainted with influential American expressionists: Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollack, and Franz Kline. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Morrison lived in cities in the Midwest and on the East Coast, including New York, Providence, and the Cape Cod art community of Provincetown. In Provincetown, Morrison gathered driftwood along the beaches to use in the creation of horizontal mosaic reliefs, which became highly sought after by collectors and galleries. In 1960, he met his future wife, artist Hazel Belvo, at the Dayton Art Institute. Morrison and Belvo had one son together, Briand, and raised him with Belvo’s two other sons in artist communities. According to Belvo, the family was totally committed to art as a way of life. Morrison taught art at various colleges, including Cornell, Dayton Art Institute, Rhode Island School of Design, and Pennsylvania State University. In 1970, he took a position at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, where he taught Native American studies and art. In the mid-1970s, Morrison and his family built a home with an art studio on the Grand Portage Indian Reservation on Lake Superior, naming it Red Rock for the jasper in the nearby bluffs. This period marks a shift in Morrison’s art back to his Ojibwe roots and the nature surrounding him, as is seen in many of his horizon-line landscape paintings. After Morrison retired from teaching in 1983, he moved permanently to Red Rock. There, he continued to work prolifically throughout the 1980s and 1990s, despite numerous health problems. He and Belvo divorced in 1993 but remained close. By the early 1990s, Morrison was recognized as a founder of Native modernism. In 1999, he received a Master Artist Award from the Eiteljorg Museum Fellowship for Native American Fine Art. Morrison continued to work at Red Rock until his death in April 2000, at the age of eighty.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/George_Morrison_1998.png","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246059,"name":"Native Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/morrison-george-1919-2000"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of a group of people dismantling a still at Pillsbury and Charles Streets in St. Paul, c.1925.","author":[{"name":"Rae Katherine Eighmey","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/rae-katherine-eighmey"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"September 08, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"National Prohibition Act (Volstead Act)","postbody":"Writers of the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution took a little more than one hundred words to prohibit the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcoholic beverages. It fell to ...","searchtext":"Writers of the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution took a little more than one hundred words to prohibit the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcoholic beverages. It fell to Minnesota Congressman Andrew Volstead to write the regulations and rules for enforcement. The twelve-thousand-word Volstead Act remained in effect for thirteen years, from 1920 until Prohibition was repealed in December 1933. The Eighteenth Amendment required one year between ratification by the states and the beginning of enforcement. Congress needed that time to create the new law||s specific regulations. Minnesota Congressman Andrew Volstead, as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, was responsible for writing the National Prohibition Act, a law that became known as the Volstead Act. The stern-faced congressman from Granite Falls set out to moderate the strict philosophy of the amendment’s primary promoting group, the Anti-Saloon League. They and other unwavering prohibitionists had sought to prevent even one drop of alcohol from being sold. Volstead struck a balanced approach between the spirit of the law and practical realities. His legislation continued the existing prescription of alcohol for medicinal purposes. It also allowed the brewing and sale of “near beer” with an alcoholic content of no more than one half of one percent, and the home manufacture of alcoholic, but “non-intoxicating,” fruit juice and cider. Volstead said that he put in as much alcohol as the Congress would stand for. Prohibition as enforced by the Volstead Act transformed American streets, businesses, and social life. In Minnesota the streetscape had changed seven months earlier when the state legislature voted for full compliance with the War Prohibition Act that went into effect on July 1, 1919. In Little Falls, the town’s fourteen saloons closed overnight, with some of the dealers now selling soft drinks. In the Twin Cities, the Salvation Army turned some closed beer parlors into canteens for the entertainment of returned soldiers and sailors. Go-getter businessmen quickly recognized the business opportunities in non-alcoholic beverages, ice cream sundaes, and sodas. In Willmar, ground was broken for a new inn in April 1920 with the owners promising a first-class refreshment parlor. C. B. Nelson of Turtle Lake added a soda fountain and ice cream stand to his pool hall in May 1920. Popular treats described in soda fountain trade journals included the Prohibition Sour, the Flapper Frappe, and the Independence Day Sundae. To take advantage of increasing sales of soft drinks, companies including the Minneapolis-based Brazilla created new fruit and cola flavors. Minnesota breweries were significantly impacted. Many, such as the Kiewel Brewery in Little Falls, accommodated a variety of new enterprises while keeping their plants ready to convert back into active beer making should Prohibition be repealed. Kiewel used its former cold beer rooms to churn and keep ice cream. They also made legal, non-alcoholic malt beverages. Not everyone in the general public supported the Volstead Act’s restrictions. Minnesota newspapers reported on local raids and the arrests of traveling bootleggers. One raid at the Preiss brewery in St. Cloud resulted in five arrests for brewing beer of more than 2.5 percent alcohol. At the Remmler plant in Red Wing, beer as high as 3 percent alcohol was found. Those tempted to make or consume home-brewed moonshine were confronted with front-page stories about people who had died from drinking bad booze with the empty bottles by their side. Newspaper editorials in the Bemidji Daily Pioneer urged their readers to follow the Volstead Act laws. People who bought illegal alcoholic beverages or went to speakeasies, they warned, were as guilty as the bootleggers or moonshiners in promoting a destructive atmosphere of lawlessness. Volstead’s mail reflected both approval and disapproval of the law that took his name. Letters praising the effects of saloon-free streets were counterbalanced by those that accused the congressman of taking bribes and overreaching. He received death threats. Volstead was narrowly reelected in the first election after Prohibition went into effect. He lost his bid for an eleventh term two years later in November 1922. The Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act were overturned when the states ratified the Twenty-First Amendment to the Constitution, which made alcoholic beverage policy a matter for each state.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/HV8.16 r3.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246079,"name":"Cities and Towns","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/national-prohibition-act-volstead-act"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Mary Mehegan Hill, c.1910.","author":[{"name":"Eileen R. McCormack","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/eileen-r-mccormack"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"September 02, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Hill, Mary Theresa Mehegan (1846–1921)","postbody":"Mary Theresa Mehegan Hill, wife of railroad builder James J. Hill, lived in St. Paul from her arrival as a young child in 1850 until her death in 1921. She witnessed the city’s evolution ...","searchtext":"Mary Theresa Mehegan Hill, wife of railroad builder James J. Hill, lived in St. Paul from her arrival as a young child in 1850 until her death in 1921. She witnessed the city’s evolution from a small settlement on the Mississippi River to an important center of commerce. Mary Mehegan was born on the Lower East Side of New York City on July 1, 1846. Her parents, Timothy and Mary McGowan Mehegan, were both emigrants from Ireland. Shortly after Mary’s birth, the family moved to Chicago. The Mehegans lived there for three years before moving further west. Timothy heard accounts of the new Mississippi River settlements in Minnesota Territory and purchased land in St. Anthony. Shortly after the ice was off the river, the family traveled to St. Paul, where they landed on May 21, 1850. Timothy went on to St. Anthony to inspect his purchase. When he discovered the land was poor, he returned to St. Paul and decided to make his home there. When the Mehegans arrived, St. Paul had just over one thousand inhabitants. Minnesota was eight years away from statehood and the town was already growing rapidly. In 1850 it had all the necessary merchants, land agents and builders, physicians, bankers, and lawyers. It also boasted a historical society, a daily newspaper, and a public school. The family moved into a new house at Minnesota and Bench Streets, on the cliffs over the Mississippi River. They were close to the Catholic chapel and a small but energetic Irish community. Mary was one of the first pupils enrolled in St. Joseph’s Academy, founded by the Sisters of St. Joseph in 1851. Timothy Mehegan, never financially successful, died suddenly in 1854, leaving his family in desperate circumstances. Mary’s deep Catholic faith and the priests and nuns she was close to helped her during the difficult years that followed. While still in her teens, Mary worked as a waitress at the Merchant’s Hotel near the levee on Jackson Street. In 1863, she met James Hill, who worked in a steamship forwarding warehouse on the lower levee. The two fell in love, and after their engagement, James provided the funds to enable Mary to attend St. Mary’s Institute in Milwaukee. After three years at the school, operated by the Sisters of Notre Dame, Mary returned to St. Paul. She and James were married on August 19, 1867, and moved to their first home in Lowertown. James and Mary had ten children; Mamie, James, Louis, Clara, Katie, Charlotte, Ruth, Rachel, Gertrude, and Walter were born between 1868 and 1885. Katie died in infancy in 1876. Mary was involved in the services and activities of her parish church, St. Mary’s. She nurtured her children and her Catholic faith and enjoyed her Lowertown neighbors and friends. She also performed the duties expected of a woman of her increasing social status: making social calls and entertaining. Those duties grew after the family moved to their mansion on Summit Avenue in 1891. Mary’s patriotism was strong and something she took great pride in. She was also proud of St. Paul. Every year of her married life, on May 21, Mary had a new front door mat put down to commemorate her 1850 arrival. She often mentioned in her diaries how important that anniversary was to her. When World War I loomed, Mary invested in Liberty Bonds, donated to the Red Cross and Belgian Relief, and sewed and knitted clothing for America’s soldiers and sailors. After James Hill’s death in 1916, she worked to ensure the James J. Hill Reference Library was completed and endowed. In the last years of her life she generously donated to Catholic educational institutions and charitable groups in the city she loved. Mary Hill died on November 22, 1921, in St. Paul. She had lived there for seventy-one years—almost her entire life. Her funeral was held at the Cathedral of St. Paul and she was laid to rest at the Hill family farm in North Oaks.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/lhf00175.640x640.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/hill-mary-theresa-mehegan-1846-1921"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of sideshows at the Minnesota State Fair, 1917.","author":[{"name":"Kathryn R. Goetz","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/kathryn-r-goetz"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"August 31, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Minnesota State Fair, 1917","postbody":"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 ...","searchtext":"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. Organizers reframed the event as a “Food Training Camp” that showed Minnesotans how to produce and conserve resources vital to the Allied war effort. After the United States declared war on Germany on April 6, 1917, some believed that the fair should be cancelled. Gasoline was rationed. Many believed that the railroads, needed to transport people and livestock to the fair, should be used by the military instead. Due to newly imposed food restrictions on sugar, wheat, and meat, many popular cooking and baking contests could not go on as usual. In spite of these concerns, fair organizers argued that it was vital that the fair be held as planned. Agricultural Society publicist Ray Speer proposed the idea of the fair as a “food training camp.” It was more important than ever, he argued, to introduce Minnesotans to new agricultural products, livestock, and farm machinery. The beginning of the war in 1914 had caused major disruptions in the European food supply. When the United States joined the Allies, producing enough surplus food to feed American soldiers as well as Europeans became a priority. The state fair, Speer claimed, would help Minnesota farms produce more. It would also teach all Minnesotans new food conservation and preservation techniques. The Agricultural Society’s view prevailed, and organizers went to work planning the event. Promoters were careful to emphasize that every Minnesotan had a role to play in the war effort as well as at the fair. Cartoon advertisements, printed in newspapers across the state, emphasized how every aspect of the fair could be linked to Minnesota’s support of the war. The fair was held between September 3 and September 8 at the State Fairgrounds in St. Paul (later Falcon Heights). It showcased a multitude of new plants, animals, and methods of farming. Agricultural scientists displayed new varieties of corn, wheat, and other crops that could result in larger harvests per acre. Farmers were encouraged to raise livestock that yielded more meat. Developing stronger breeds was of special concern during the fair, since much of Europe’s livestock had been destroyed in the war and would need to be replaced when it was over. Farm machinery played a more important role than it had at past fairs. Though agricultural machines had been exhibited since the 1860 fair, the 1917 fair featured the latest and most efficient models. Though there were 175,000 farms in Minnesota alone, there were fewer than sixteen thousand tractors in the entire country. With increased demand for food and with the Army taking both men and horses from Minnesota farms, there was more incentive than before to create a modern, mechanical farm. While agricultural production was central to the 1917 fair, organizers made it clear that all Minnesotans were needed to participate in the war effort. Classes in gardening, canning, and preservation offered Fair attendees ways to help raise the state’s food production. Children were encouraged to form clubs to raise everything from potatoes to chickens. Cooking demonstrations helped home cooks cope with the schedule of increasingly wheatless and meatless meals. The fair also highlighted new fashions and sewing techniques that wasted less fabric. Organizers replaced fancy sewing contests with more utilitarian ones. The Red Cross, YMCA, and YWCA held outreach activities at the Fair, all emphasizing how men women and children could support the troops. Booths collected money for Liberty Loans and stalls displayed handicraft projects by disabled veterans. Much of the entertainment at the 1917 fair was influenced by the war as well. Army officers staffed recruiting booths and presented displays of horsemanship. Sporting contests highlighted the athletic ability essential to the men who might enlist. A nightly show at the Grandstand featured a cast of three hundred reenacting major battles of the Western Front complete with a massive fireworks display. Despite early concerns that it should not be held at all, the 1917 fair broke all attendance records to that date. It drew 116,000 people on Labor Day alone and a total of 382,405 across its seven-day run.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/10392607.640x640.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246091,"name":"Agriculture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/minnesota-state-fair-1917"},{"alt":"Slovene_Wedding_Picture","author":[{"name":"David LaVigne","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/david-lavigne"}],"categoryTag":[],"date":"August 26, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Immigration to the Iron Range, 1880–1930","postbody":"During the early twentieth century, the population of the Iron Range was among the most ethnically diverse in Minnesota. Tens of thousands of immigrants arrived from Finland, ...","searchtext":"During the early twentieth century, the population of the Iron Range was among the most ethnically diverse in Minnesota. Tens of thousands of immigrants arrived from Finland, Austria-Hungary, Italy, Sweden, Norway, Canada, England, and over thirty other places of origin. These immigrants mined the ore that made the Iron Range famous and built its communities. Minnesota has three iron mining ranges, which are collectively known as the Iron Range. The Vermilion is the northernmost, and it began shipping ore in 1884. The Mesabi Range is the largest, and it started ore shipments in 1892. The Cuyuna Range first shipped ore in 1911 and is the southernmost range. With the onset of mining operations, the population of the three ranges expanded rapidly. In 1885, there were fewer than five thousand people living on the Iron Range. By 1920, the population exceeded a hundred thousand. This growth was spurred by the need for labor in the mines and corresponded with a massive wave of immigration from southern and eastern Europe. Immigrants eventually constituted more than half of the Iron Range population. In the mines, they formed 85 percent of the workforce. Forty-three different nationality groups populated the Iron Range. The earliest immigrants were Finnish, Swedish, Slovenian, Canadian, Norwegian, Cornish, and German. After 1900, the origins of the population expanded, with Italian, Croatian, Polish, Montenegrin, Serbian, Bulgarian, Romanian, Slovak, Hungarian, and Greek immigrants filling mining jobs. A sizeable Jewish population started main street businesses. Chinese immigrant men ran restaurants and laundries. When the population began to stabilize after 1910, Finns made up the single largest immigrant nationality. They constituted a quarter of all foreign-born persons. Slovenes and Croats—referred to collectively as “Austrians”—were the next largest group at over 20 percent of the immigrant sector. Italians and Swedes each made up close to 10 percent of the foreign-born population. For immigrants, life on the Iron Range was not easy. Mine laborers worked long hours and received low wages. Underground mines operated on a contract labor system—an arrangement in which miners received payment based on the amount of ore produced—which led to bribery. Miners paid to get assignments in the most accessible and therefore most profitable ore. Mining work was also dangerous. Hundreds of deaths occurred due to accidents, with the deadliest being the Milford Mine disaster in 1924. Beyond the industrial workplace, immigrants faced other challenges. The cost of living was high. To maximize savings, immigrants lived in substandard housing conditions. In a practice known as the “hot bed system,” day- and night-shift workers alternated sleeping in the same beds. Unmarried immigrant women labored long, hard days as domestic servants. Married women rarely worked outside the home, but they supplemented family incomes by keeping boarders or lodgers. In addition to material hardships, immigrants confronted social prejudices. Native-born Americans occupied the best-paying jobs at the mines. They viewed immigrants from northern European countries as “desirable” workers. For example, many Cornish immigrants entered supervisory roles. Southern and eastern European immigrants, however, occupied lower positions in the workforce hierarchy. Mining company officials described these immigrants as “black races” who were physically and intellectually inferior. Community leaders likewise looked down on southern and eastern European immigrants. They objected to immigrants’ congested living situations, imbalanced sex ratios, perceived immorality, and association with political radicalism. The fact that many immigrants were Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, or Jewish caused further anxiety. Local chapters of the Ku Klux Klan developed during the 1920s in opposition to Catholic and Jewish immigrants. Despite these challenges, immigrants adapted to the new circumstances. One key adaptation strategy was the formation of ethnic institutions. Saloons and socialist worker halls offered refuge from the hardships of mining. Fraternal and mutual benefit societies guaranteed financial support when accidents or deaths occurred. Churches and synagogues provided a spiritual home. Immigrants also constructed boarding houses, temperance societies, shops, consumer cooperatives, and newspapers. Another adaptation strategy was the retention of connections with the homeland. Many immigrants came to the Iron Range only temporarily. Their aim was to save money and return to their countries of origin. During the early years of mining development, when most immigrants were men, this was especially common. But immigrants maintained homeland connections even when they moved permanently. They sent home money and exchanged letters with friends and family in the old country. Ethnic institutions and homeland connections divided the immigrant population on the Iron Range. Each immigrant group had its own community life, and tensions existed between groups. In larger cities, for example, there were usually separate Catholic churches for the Irish, Slovenian and Croatian, and Italian populations. Immigrants continued to speak their native tongues. They resided in ethnic clusters. They married partners of the same nationality. Over time, though, ethnic distinctions diminished. Shared experiences created a new, interethnic identity. One such experience—and a third strategy for adapting to life on the Iron Range—was workplace organization. The first large-scale strike occurred in 1907, when the Western Federation of Miners organized an ill-fated walk-out on the Mesabi. In 1916, the Industrial Workers of the World led the most important labor conflict in Iron Range history, but it failed as well. Americanization efforts were more successful in breaking down ethnic distinctions. Following the 1916 strike, mining company officials sought to prevent further labor unrest by investing in corporate welfare programs. They supported community beautification projects, model villages, gardening contests, visiting nurses, picnics, and Christmas parties. The construction of modern parks and recreational facilities led to Iron Range communities fielding excellent athletic teams. Public schools and libraries were especially important to Americanization efforts. Adults attended night schools to learn English and prepare for citizenship examinations. In an effort to target women, instruction even extended into immigrant neighborhoods. However, the greatest attention went to the children of immigrants. Iron Range school buildings were palaces of learning. When Hibbing built a $4 million high school in 1923, it was among the most impressive in the nation. The era of mass immigration to the Iron Range ended at the close of the 1920s. In 1924, the U.S. Congress passed legislation that limited immigration from southern and eastern Europe. At the same time, iron mining operations became increasingly mechanized, reducing the size of the labor force. As second and later generations gradually outnumbered their immigrant forbearers, the Iron Range shifted from an “immigrant” population to an “ethnic” one.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/MNopedia/MNopedia%202026/Slovene_Wedding_Picture.jfif","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246055,"name":"Labor","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/immigration-iron-range-1880-1930"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Carol and Cotton Thompson on their wedding day, March 27, 1948.","author":[{"name":"William Swanson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/william-swanson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"August 24, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Murder of Carol Thompson","postbody":"The March 1963 murder of St. Paul wife and mother Carol Thompson shocked the Twin Cities as few local crimes have. Despite community fears of a homicidal maniac, investigators soon focused ...","searchtext":"The March 1963 murder of St. Paul wife and mother Carol Thompson shocked the Twin Cities as few local crimes have. Despite community fears of a homicidal maniac, investigators soon focused on T. Eugene |||Cotton||| Thompson, the victim’s husband, as their prime suspect. Three and a half months after the murder, Thompson was arrested and charged in connection with his wife’s death. In December 1963 he was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. Carol Swoboda Thompson was the only child of a respected local business owner, the wife of an up-and-coming attorney, and the mother of four children, ages six to thirteen. At about eight thirty on the morning of March 6, 1963, she was surprised by an intruder in her home in the comfortable Highland Park neighborhood of St. Paul. After a furious struggle with her assailant, who beat and stabbed her multiple times, Thompson fled to a neighbor’s house. Three hours later, she succumbed to her massive injuries at Ancker Hospital. Twin Citians were stunned by the front-page headlines that evening and the next morning, and shaken by rumors of a killer at large in the community. Such attacks were unusual enough in St. Paul in 1963, but they were virtually unheard of in orderly, affluent neighborhoods such as the Thompsons’. Thirty-four-year-old Carol Thompson, in many ways a paradigm of upper-middle-class domesticity, was a highly improbable victim. Driven by intense public pressure, St. Paul police mounted an exhaustive investigation. But detectives soon focused their attention on T. Eugene Thompson, the victim’s thirty-five-year-old husband, after receiving reports of his purchase of more than $1 million in life insurance on his wife and a history of womanizing. Thompson vehemently denied involvement in the crime. Then, in late April, a motley group of small-time hoodlums began telling their secrets. One of them, a Korean War combat veteran named Dick W. C. Anderson, eventually confessed to the murder. He fingered one Norman Mastrian, a former Twin Cities prizefighter and underworld figure, as the “middleman” who hired him. The victim’s husband, he alleged, was the slaying’s mastermind. T. Eugene Thompson was arrested on June 21 and indicted on a charge of first-degree murder. Thompson’s six-week trial began in late October and drew intense media attention. Argued by Ramsey County Attorney William Randall, the state’s case was based on a chain of evidence that included $1.1 million in life insurance on Carol Thompson and the presence of “another woman” whom Thompson was allegedly determined to marry. Randall also counted on the dramatic, detailed testimony of the actual killer, Dick Anderson. The defense, led by respected criminal attorney Hyam Segell, insisted that Thompson was a loving and dutiful husband unjustly accused by untruthful witnesses and besmirched by misleading evidence. Presumably against the advice of his counsel, Thompson himself took the stand. By most accounts, he did more harm than good to his cause. After twelve hours of deliberation, the jury decided that Thompson was guilty as charged, and he was sentenced to life in prison. The verdict made headlines around the world. Afterward, the Thompsons’ son and three daughters were cared for by their maternal grandparents, Otto and Antonia Swoboda, and a series of housekeepers. The children continued to attend school in Highland Park and eventually went off to college, embarked on careers, and started families of their own. They were often recognized as the offspring of, arguably, the most infamous murderer and murder victim in Minnesota history. The oldest child, Jeffrey, became a lawyer and later served as Rice County Attorney in Faribault. There, he prosecuted several first-degree murder cases and occasionally cited points of law that derived from his father’s trial and appeals. In 1999, Governor Arne Carlson appointed the younger Thompson a district court judge in Winona. Paroled in 1983, T. Eugene Thompson resettled in the Twin Cities and remarried. A convicted felon, he was prohibited from practicing law and remained on parole until he died, on August 7, 2015, his eighty-eighth birthday.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Dial M_102.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246060,"name":"Crime and Punishment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/murder-carol-thompson"},{"alt":"Black and white postcard showing the Great Northern Railway Depot and a grain elevator behind the depot in Clontarf, c.1880s.","author":[{"name":"Eileen R. McCormack","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/eileen-r-mccormack"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"August 19, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Founding of Clontarf","postbody":"Clontarf, a railroad town in Swift County, was established by Bishop John Ireland of St. Paul in 1877 as a Catholic colony on the prairie. Early arrivals named Clontarf for the site of the ...","searchtext":"Clontarf, a railroad town in Swift County, was established by Bishop John Ireland of St. Paul in 1877 as a Catholic colony on the prairie. Early arrivals named Clontarf for the site of the eleventh-century victory of the Irish king Brian Boru over Viking invaders. The St. Paul and Pacific Railroad extended its track west from St. Paul to the Dakota Territory border at Breckinridge in 1871. About 140 miles west from St. Paul, a siding and a section house called Randall Station were built near present-day Clontarf. The sandy soil surrounding Randall Station was not attractive to farmers, leaving much of the land unsold and uncultivated. Railroads needed farms and communities along their tracks to make the lines sustainable. In January 1876, Bishop Ireland announced the creation of the Catholic Colonization Bureau. The Bureau would act as agent for the St. Paul and Pacific Railroad to sell the 117,000 acres of unsold railroad land grants in Swift County. Much of the available railroad land was sold within two years. In 1878, James J. Hill and partners acquired the bankrupt St. Paul and Pacific Railroad, renamed it the St. Paul, Minneapolis and Manitoba, and began to extend the line to Puget Sound. In Clontarf, families arrived on Hill’s trains nearly every day to begin their new lives. On the East Coast, Irish immigrant families, working in mines, mills, stone quarries, and factories, heard Bishop Ireland’s promise of affordable land, a Catholic church with a resident priest, and a community of Irish Americans. There, they hoped, they would be free from the immigrant bias that existed in their towns and cities. They came from Concord, New Hampshire; Salem, Massachusetts; and Southington, Connecticut. Irish families from Wisconsin, Minnesota, and other states joined them in the farmlands surrounding Clontarf. The Catholic Church was fundamental to the Clontarf colony. Father Anatole Oster was assigned as the first priest in 1878 and he named the parish St. Malachy for an Irish saint. Father Oster was a native of France, which pleased the French-Canadian members of the parish who had farms north of Clontarf. In accordance with Ireland’s vision, Father Oster attended to both the spiritual and practical needs of the Clontarf residents. He played a hands-on role, helping the farmers plant their crops and build their homes on the prairie. Very quickly, Clontarf grew into a vibrant village. Adding to the lumberyard and general store that opened in 1876, several businesses sprung up in response to the influx of Irish immigrants. A second general store, a sewing machine shop, a yard goods store, a carpentry shop, and a blacksmith were soon joined by other businesses and professional services. In 1878, Clontarf Public School District #25 was organized, a grain elevator opened, and construction of St. Malachy Church and rectory was completed. The colony grew so dramatically that Clontarf Township split, forming Tara Township to the west of town. The colonists adapted to the conditions of life on the prairie. Grasshopper invasions, grass fires, and failed crops presented frequent challenges. Farmers learned that the area’s lighter soil lent itself to the cultivation of hay and grasses, which could be used as feed for their livestock. These crops could also be sold. Feed and bedding for animals in a “horse-powered” society was always in demand. Railroad transportation made commercial hay production possible; Clontarf hay was used by the Chicago Fire Department. Bluegrass seeds were shipped to Kentucky, the home of Kentucky bluegrass. Clontarf earned the name “Hay Capital of the World.” In the early 1910s, for many farmers in Tara and Clontarf townships, hay was their cash crop. By this time, Bishop Ireland’s goal for Clontarf was satisfied; he had brought Irish from eastern cities to rural Minnesota. Many thrived, gaining spiritual, economic, and personal freedoms. For some, Clontarf was a destination—a place to stay for many generations. For others, it was only a stage in the migratory process of the Irish across America. They moved on, along the railway lines, as the northwestern United States developed agricultural, mining, and industrial communities.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Clontarf-depot.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246079,"name":"Cities and Towns","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/founding-clontarf"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of a family civil defense drill, 1953.","author":[{"name":"Dave Kenney","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/dave-kenney"}],"categoryTag":[],"date":"August 17, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Civil Defense in Minnesota, 1950–1974","postbody":"During the extended Cold War standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union, many Minnesotans prepared for the terrifying possibility of nuclear war by participating in a variety ...","searchtext":"During the extended Cold War standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union, many Minnesotans prepared for the terrifying possibility of nuclear war by participating in a variety of civil defense efforts. The civil defense strategies employed in Minnesota changed significantly as the perceived military threat evolved. In the years immediately following World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union emerged as the two most powerful nations in the world—and as geopolitical rivals. The Soviets’ blockade of Berlin in 1948 and their successful test of an atomic bomb in 1949 confirmed that a global superpower competition was at hand. The outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 and subsequent suspicions of covert Soviet involvement in the conflict only deepened the U.S.–U.S.S.R. rivalry. As tensions between the two countries increased, the threat of atomic warfare loomed larger. In December 1950, a new federal agency, the Federal Civil Defense Administration, began working with state governments to implement programs designed to help citizens survive a nuclear attack. A few months later, Minnesota established the Civil Defense Department to coordinate all civil defense efforts in the state. “Duck and Cover” Period During the first few years of Minnesota’s civil defense mobilization, state and local officials repeatedly assured the public that nuclear war was survivable. “With a dependable warning system and properly constructed shelters you are likely to survive an atom bomb blast,” the Minneapolis Star reported. School children were taught to “duck and cover” in the event of an atomic bomb flash. Homeowners were urged to prepare refuge rooms equipped with canned food, flashlights, and other emergency supplies. Civil defense officials believed that preparation was one of two primary keys to survival. The other key was time. U.S. military planners assumed that if the Soviets attacked, they would use long-range bombers armed with atomic weapons. Radar could detect incoming enemy aircraft in some cases, but not all. Additional safeguards were needed. In 1950, the U.S. Air Force reactivated the Ground Observer Corps (GOC), a World War II-era network of civilian volunteer plane spotters. GOC volunteers staffed observation posts and tracking offices known as “filter centers.” They constituted an extra early warning system that supposedly would give civilians the time they needed to seek shelter. Minnesota boasted the largest GOC network in the United States. In 1954, near the program’s zenith, more than fourteen thousand volunteers staffed 460 active observation posts throughout the state. Those numbers were much smaller than what the Air Force deemed necessary, but they still represented an impressive commitment when compared to volunteer statistics in other states. Minnesota ground observers regularly reported plane sightings to the regional filter center in Minneapolis, but never spotted an enemy aircraft. Evacuation Period In 1952, the United States successfully tested the world’s first hydrogen bomb. It was estimated to be one thousand times more powerful than the atomic weapons previously developed by the United States and the U.S.S.R. The following year, the Soviets successfully tested their own H-bomb. The Cold War entered a new, more frightening phase. Civil defense officials in the United States stopped assuring Americans that they could survive a direct nuclear blast. Instead, they made plans to evacuate cities in the event of a Soviet attack. The centerpiece of the new evacuation strategy was a nationwide series of practice drills called “Operation Alert.” Each year, beginning in 1954, cities throughout the country tested their civil defense readiness during a hypothetical nuclear attack. State and local civil defense officials were told to assume that citizens living in targeted cities would survive only if they evacuated to outlying areas. In Minnesota, the annual Operation Alert drills mostly served to remind Twin Cities residents that getting out of town was the only way to survive an H-bomb blast. Newspapers published maps showing how an H-bomb explosion over a particular landmark (the Lake Street Bridge, for example) would devastate both Minneapolis and St. Paul. Estimates from the first Operation Alert exercise showed that an H-bomb attack on the Twin Cities would kill more than sixty-seven thousand people in Minneapolis alone—even with a successful evacuation of downtown. The city’s civil defense director admitted the number would be much higher if the evacuation failed to go as planned. Fallout Shelter Period Federal, state, and local civil defense officials had always assumed that the public would have time to seek shelter or evacuate if radar and ground observers detected Soviet bombers on the way to U.S. targets. By the late 1950s, that assumption no longer made sense. In 1957, the Soviets conducted the world’s first successful test of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). That same year, they used a similar rocket to launch the satellite Sputnik I into earth orbit. The U.S.S.R. now possessed the technology to deliver a nuclear warhead to the United States in a matter of minutes. Civil defense planners no longer had time on their side. Strategies shifted again. The Ground Observer Corps was deactivated in 1959. The last Operation Alert exercises were held in 1961. Plans for city evacuations were abandoned. In their place, civil defense officials began focusing on fallout shelters, where the survivors of a nuclear attack could theoretically protect themselves from radioactivity. The new strategy resulted in networks of public shelters marked by distinctive black-and-yellow civil defense signs. It also encouraged the building of smaller fallout shelters in private homes. By 1966, Minnesota had nearly twenty-five hundred public fallout shelters stocked with food, water, medical supplies, and radiation detection equipment. Civil defense officials estimated that those shelters could accommodate more than 1.3 million people. The shelters were located in both public and private buildings. One civil defense official joked that Minneapolis’s best shelter was in the sub-basement of the Radisson Hotel, which was conveniently located next to the storage room of the Haskell’s liquor store. Another sixty thousand Minnesotans had access to home fallout shelters. Phase Out Minnesotans’ interest in civil defense spiked during high-stakes Cold War confrontations like the 1961 Berlin crisis and the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. It quickly diminished, however, once the perceived threat receded. Civil defense officials often lamented that public apathy was the biggest challenge they faced. As the years went on, new challenges arose from critics who argued civil defense was a “grand illusion” meant to lull people into the false belief that they could win and survive a nuclear war. In the mid 1960s, the state Civil Defense Department started shifting its focus from nuclear war to natural disasters. In 1969, it became a division of the Minnesota Department of Public Safety. A few years later, it was renamed the Emergency Services Division. The state’s Cold War-era civil defense program unofficially ended during the 1970s, when many of the old public fallout shelters of the 1960s were emptied of their emergency supplies. By that time, the high-protein wheat crackers stocked in most shelters had gone stale or rancid. They were sold for cattle and hog feed.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/E450 p16.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/civil-defense-minnesota-1950-1974"},{"alt":"Color image of a World War I-era Red Cross poster, c.1917.","author":[{"name":"Kathryn R. Goetz","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/kathryn-r-goetz"}],"categoryTag":[],"date":"August 12, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Women on the World War I Home Front","postbody":"After the United States entered World War I in 1917, Minnesota women, like Americans across the nation, were called to contribute to the war effort. Though some went to Europe and served as ...","searchtext":"After the United States entered World War I in 1917, Minnesota women, like Americans across the nation, were called to contribute to the war effort. Though some went to Europe and served as nurses, drivers, and aid workers on the battlefields, many more participated on the home front. They took on new jobs, conserved vital resources, and joined volunteer organizations. At the same time, they struggled to come to terms with conflicting ideals of patriotism, loyalty, and what it meant to be an American. Participation on the home front took many forms. Some women worked in offices and factories to replace men who had enlisted. Schools and colleges across Minnesota offered them a variety of vocational programs, including training courses in nursing and clerical jobs. While Minnesota women did not enter factory work at the same rate as women in other parts of the country, they did more agricultural labor. In the summers of 1917 and 1918, women did paid and volunteer work in farm fields statewide. A 1919 vocational study in Minneapolis showed that during the war, over half of the women in the city’s workforce were paid less than the men that they had replaced. During the war, women also were called on to join the “Army of American Housewives.” They were urged to conserve in nearly every area of household life. Women were encouraged to avoid using delivery services for their shopping to free workers for war service. To avoid inefficiency, fashion magazines and pattern companies advised women to choose patterns that made the best use of fabric and to do without new clothes whenever they could. Women, as well as men, were asked to buy Liberty bonds and donate to the Red Cross. Minnesotans were bombarded with reminders to make do with less, especially when it came to food. During World War I, food and patriotism were closely linked. Historians argue that, aside from the draft, food conservation had the most significant impact on life on the Minnesota home front. Minnesotans produced as much of their own food as possible and consumed less meat and wheat so that it could be shipped to Europe. The 1917 Minnesota State Fair hosted canning and baking competitions for women and girls. By 1918, a conservation schedule of meatless, wheatless, and porkless meals dictated what was served on tables statewide. Since household cooking and shopping were largely the work of women, their participation was especially vital. The University of Minnesota Extension Service offered women courses in growing vegetable gardens, nutrition, and canning and preserving food. Since the beginning of the war in 1914, Minnesota women had been active in organizations that fed, housed, and clothed war widows and orphans in Europe. Once the United States entered the war, voluntary organizations became more active. Women joined, led, and donated their time and money to groups that provided soldiers with food, shelter, and supplies. They joined YWCA sewing and knitting circles to craft items for soldiers and civilians. They rolled bandages and collected funds for the Red Cross. Along with these larger organizations, women in book groups, college clubs, PTAs, and church groups committed to knitting, sewing, nursing, and fundraising. Girls were encouraged to enlist as “Victory Girls” by pledging money saved from allowances and babysitting jobs. Prominent women like University of Minnesota professor Maria Sanford traveled the state giving lectures to raise awareness of war-related activities. While many relief efforts claimed to represent all Minnesota women, in reality the situation was more complicated. Although many girls and women participated in, and in many cases led, the state’s war relief organizations, participation was not always equal. Upper-class women held nearly all of the leadership positions. Urban women were more likely to contribute their support than women who lived in rural areas. The work of the Woman’s Committee of the Minnesota Commission of Public Safety (MCPS) highlights these divides. The MCPS was created by an act of the Minnesota Legislature in 1917 to protect the public and mobilize the state’s resources for war. Shortly after its formation, the MCPS established a Woman’s Committee headed by Alice Ames Winter. Winter was also named the head of the Minnesota Woman’s Committee within the Council of National Defense. By holding these two prominent leadership roles at the same time, Winter was able to set her own agenda apart from the MCPS. During 1917, Winter’s organization built a network of women in every county in Minnesota. These county committees led food conservation efforts and Liberty Loan and Red Cross donation drives. They worked to match women with volunteer and vocational training so that they could fill vacant jobs. Winter stressed the importance of the protection of women and children, especially infants, on the home front. One of the committee’s most central programs was also its most controversial. Winter, along with many other wartime leaders, believed that Americanization was essential to winning the war. They targeted Minnesota’s immigrant communities, including German Americans, Austrian Americans, and Finnish Americans. Stressing that it was a matter of patriotism, the Woman’s Committee and other groups pressured the immigrants to adopt English and abandon their ethnic identities. In turn, many immigrants resisted—particularly those in small towns and rural areas, where the war was unpopular. Though it appeared to unite them in a common cause, the war divided Minnesotans along social, regional, and ethnic lines. Many groups used scare tactics to try to eliminate perceived disloyalty. Pamphlets and newspaper columns described the “woman slacker” who was a drag on the war effort. These slackers, they claimed, wasted wheat, neglected war work, and criticized the government. Newspapers printed the names of those who didn’t contribute to the Red Cross or Liberty Loan. Members of the American Protective League, led by Charles G. Davis of Minneapolis, made similar accusations against Minnesota women who were suspected of wasting sugar and wheat or neglecting to buy Liberty bonds. When the war ended in 1918, few of its changes remained permanent for Minnesota women. Most of those who had been hired to replace enlisted men were laid off when the soldiers returned home. Winter and the Woman’s Committee of the MCPS did not retain the power that they had held. However, one notable change for Minnesota women occurred soon after the armistice. Ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920 granted them, and women across the nation, the right to vote.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/E435.13 a7.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246079,"name":"Cities and Towns","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/women-world-war-i-home-front"},{"alt":"Cover of a brochure published by Swift & Company, a national meatpacker and margarine producer with operations in St. Paul. From the Davis, Kellogg & Severance Law Firm Records, 1878-1941, Minnesota Historical Society.","author":[{"name":"Dave Kenney","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/dave-kenney"}],"categoryTag":[],"date":"August 10, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Minnesota’s Margarine Battles, 1885–1975","postbody":"During the late 1800s, dairy farmers in Minnesota and other states faced what they considered a serious and immediate threat to their livelihoods: the growing popularity of a butter ...","searchtext":"During the late 1800s, dairy farmers in Minnesota and other states faced what they considered a serious and immediate threat to their livelihoods: the growing popularity of a butter substitute called oleomargarine. For nearly a century, the dairy industry and its legislative allies waged a series of campaigns to prohibit or limit the manufacture and sale of margarine. No state retained its anti-margarine laws longer than Minnesota. Margarine’s origins dated back to 1867, when a French chemist named Hippolyte Mège-Mouriès—seeking a prize offered by Emperor Napoleon III—developed a process for turning beef tallow and milk into a spread that tasted like butter. Mège-Mouriès called his product oleomargarine. (It later became widely known simply as oleo and margarine.) In 1873, Mège-Mouriès’s oleomargarine manufacturing process received a U.S. patent. American oleo manufacturing began in earnest a few years later. Margarine’s arrival in the United States coincided with the country’s shift from an agricultural to an industrial economy. Many farmers worried that products made in laboratories and factories would replace traditional agricultural goods. Oleomargarine, with its similarities to butter, seemed like a particularly ominous threat. Dairy organizations throughout the country began lobbying Congress and state legislatures to pass protective anti-margarine laws. In 1885, Minnesota became one of the first states in the nation to prohibit the production and sale of oleo. Two years later, Governor Lucius Hubbard announced that sales of “oleomargarine and its kindred abominations” had virtually stopped in Minnesota. But a new federal law, enacted in 1886, recognized margarine as a legal product subject to taxes and regulation. Minnesota’s anti-oleo law was no longer valid. The battle over margarine entered a new, back-and-forth phase focusing on regulation and taxation. In 1891, dairy organizations in the state helped convince the legislature to pass what was known as a “pink law.” Under the new law, oleo could now be legally manufactured and sold in Minnesota, but it had to be colored pink. Since few consumers relished the idea of slathering a pink, butter-like spread on their toast, the pink law effectively halted all sales of oleo in the state in the 1890s. But in 1898, the U.S. Supreme Court declared pink laws unconstitutional. Oleo was now legal in Minnesota. The skirmishes over how available it would be to consumers, however, were far from over. The margarine debate in Minnesota and across the country began focusing on the distinctions between colored and uncolored oleo. Dairy producers argued that margarine in its natural state was an unappealing white, and that margarine producers should be prevented from artificially coloring their product a butter-like yellow. According to this view, yellow margarine was a fraud meant to trick consumers into thinking they were buying and eating butter. Makers of oleo countered that the manufacturing process often produced a yellow-tinted product. Strict labeling laws, they argued, made deception impossible. Dairy producers scored a major victory in 1902, when the federal government enacted a new law imposing much higher taxes on yellow margarine than on white margarine. Three years later, Minnesota further strengthened the dairy industry’s position in the state by enacting one of the toughest anti-oleo laws in the nation: a prohibition on the manufacture and sale of any margarine “made or colored to imitate yellow butter.” Consumer demand for oleo continued to grow, despite the many restrictions on its production and distribution. As a result, increasing numbers of Minnesotans began running afoul of the state’s anti-margarine laws. In 1908, the Hammond Packing Company of Minneapolis was found guilty of manufacturing illegal yellow oleo. The Minnesota Supreme Court later overturned its conviction. A few years later, a grocer named Ole Hanson was charged with illegally selling yellow margarine at his store in Mankato. He was acquitted when the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that the state’s ban on yellow oleo was unconstitutional. Repeated court setbacks failed to dissuade Minnesota’s anti-margarine crusaders. State legislators continued to tinker with the law in hopes of crafting restrictions that would stand up to judicial scrutiny. In 1913, they approved a revision that stated all oleo manufactured and sold in the state must be “fifty-five percent of white according to the methods and measurements used by the Bureau of Standards.” The fifty-five percent standard was, for all practical purposes, a creative way to re-impose the ban on yellow margarine without directly defying the state’s supreme court. The revised anti-margarine law remained on the books largely unchanged for the next several decades. Undeterred, oleo producers continued to look for ways to move their product legally to market and increase consumer demand. During the 1910s, they started packaging white margarine with packets of artificial food coloring so that consumers could knead it in by hand. They also began experimenting with new ingredients to improve taste. Oleo mixed with a small percentage of dairy butter—often called “butterine”—became increasingly common and popular. And price, as always, worked in margarine’s favor. In 1916, the price of a pound of high-grade oleo averaged twenty-six cents in Minneapolis and St. Paul. The average price of a pound of high-grade butter was forty cents. Minnesotans responded by buying 1.5 million pounds of margarine a year. Anti-margarine forces continued to hold sway in Minnesota for several decades after the battles of the late 1800s and early 1900s finally cooled down. Arguments that restrictions on oleo hurt budget-conscious Minnesotans failed to make much difference. If anything, the restrictions only grew tighter. In 1933, the state imposed a new ten-cent tax on white oleo, while maintaining the effective ban on yellow margarine. In 1945, it extended that tax to newer types of oleo made with vegetable oils. In 1950, the federal government repealed its long-standing tax on margarine. With much of the margarine sold in the United States now being made with vegetable oil produced by American farmers, agriculture’s united front against oleo began to crumble. States started reassessing their anti-margarine laws. One by one, the state laws disappeared. Most states were quicker to drop their bans on yellow margarine than they were to give up the revenue produced by margarine taxes. Minnesota, however, took its time. It wasn’t until 1963 that the state legislature finally voted to legalize yellow margarine. And even then, the opponents of oleo did not concede gracefully. A few weeks before the final vote on legalization, state inspectors engaged in a final crackdown on illicit margarine. Among the unlucky scofflaws was the owner of a Scandinavian restaurant in Minneapolis who was caught serving lutefisk with an illegal mixture of melted yellow oleo and butter. Minnesota continued to tax oleo for another twelve years. By that time, it and North Dakota were the only states doing so. The oleo taxes in both states expired on the same day—July 1, 1975.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Jersey Butterine.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246091,"name":"Agriculture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/minnesota-s-margarine-battles-1885-1975"},{"alt":"","author":[{"name":"Joan Mathison","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/joan-mathison"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"August 05, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Kilmarnock Books","postbody":"The Kilmarnock Bookstore in downtown St. Paul brought writers and artists together at the dawn of the Jazz Age and helped inspire some of the best work of their careers. Nearly a hundred ...","searchtext":"The Kilmarnock Bookstore in downtown St. Paul brought writers and artists together at the dawn of the Jazz Age and helped inspire some of the best work of their careers. Nearly a hundred years later, the Twin Cities are considered among the most literary cities in the United States. The bookstore, officially called Kilmarnock Books, opened in 1921 in upstairs rooms of the Guardian Life Building at 84 East Fourth Street. Its young owner was Cornelius Van Ness, a Harvard graduate who wanted to create a place where people could gather to talk about and buy books. Owning a bookstore also gave him a reason to travel to Europe and buy rare books, including bootlegged copies of Ulysses, banned in the United States. Van Ness arranged for Thomas Boyd, the young literary editor for the St. Paul Daily News, to manage the store. Through his work at the newspaper, Boyd had developed relationships with important writers, including F. Scott Fitzgerald, Carl Sandburg, Willa Cather, and Sinclair Lewis. The store was named after Boyd’s ancestor, the Scottish Earl of Kilmarnock. Its sign read: |||Kilmarnock Books, Magazines, foreign and domestic. The best in fiction, biography, essays, plays, poetry and stationery.||| It was the Jazz Age, a time of great change and creativity, and the Kilmarnock’s regulars—particularly Fitzgerald—captured its avant garde spirit. Fitzgerald and his wife, Zelda, had moved close to his home town of St. Paul soon after the store’s opening. Fitzgerald frequently visited the Kilmarnock after working in his secret writing room up the street. He passed through the sales room, where books were arranged by color—not author, title, or subject—to the back room. There, he joined other writers around the fireplace, drinking tea, smoking cigars, and discussing books. Soon he began writing a short-story series that explored ideas he would develop more fully in The Great Gatsby. The key people of the Kilmarnock met through the Nimbus Club, a remarkable community of St. Paul writers, artists, and patrons. On Tuesday evenings, they drank homemade red wine with spaghetti at their favorite Italian restaurant, listened to jazz, and discussed new ideas, often late into the night. At the center of the Nimbus Club was the charming and wealthy Charles Macomb Flandrau, the son of poets, a world traveler, and the author of travel essays. It was said of Flandrau that he had the same raw talent as Fitzgerald, but lacked the drive to succeed financially that pushed the novelist to greatness with The Great Gatsby. Flandrau recognized talent and nurtured the younger writers within the Nimbus Club’s circle. Fitzgerald also liked to discover new talent for his publisher and encouraged Boyd to write a novel about his wartime experiences. Sinclair Lewis and Fitzgerald’s editor, Maxwell Perkins, offered their support as well. So it was that in the back room at the Kilmarnock Bookstore, Thomas Boyd wrote his first novel in just six weeks. After it was rejected by two publishing houses, Fitzgerald persuaded Scribner’s to reconsider, and Through the Wheat was finally published to critical acclaim. The Fitzgeralds moved to Great Neck, New York, in the fall of 1922, where Scott began to work on The Great Gatsby. Boyd’s breakthrough coincided with hard times for the Kilmarnock. In 1923, the struggling bookstore moved a block west to a street-level location with display windows to lure customers inside. The building was likely the original Minnesota Club. Enjoying his new fame, in the fall Boyd impulsively dropped everything at the bookstore and left on an extended trip to France. When he returned home six months later, there had been a fire and Van Ness had found a new manager. By 1926, the bookstore had been sold. The Kilmarnock was gone. Boyd and his wife, Peggy, left St. Paul for Ohio in February 1925. Boyd continued writing but would never again know great success. Fitzgerald spent the rest of his career in New York, Paris, and Hollywood. Flandrau also continued to travel, searching for inspiration to write again. The local literary zeitgeist moved to the University of Minnesota, where Robert Penn Warren, Sinclair Lewis, and Saul Bellow joined Professor Joseph Warren Beach’s English Department to challenge and inspire another generation of writers.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Kilmarnock books.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/kilmarnock-books"},{"alt":"Paul Wellstone’s official U.S. Senate portrait, taken c.1996.","author":[{"name":"Paul Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/paul-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"August 03, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Wellstone, Paul (1944–2002)","postbody":"Paul Wellstone once described himself by saying, “I’m short, I’m Jewish, and I’m a liberal.” He was also a Southerner, a college professor, and a rural community organizer who became a ...","searchtext":"Paul Wellstone once described himself by saying, “I’m short, I’m Jewish, and I’m a liberal.” He was also a Southerner, a college professor, and a rural community organizer who became a two-term U.S. senator from Minnesota. He inspired a passionate following, in Minnesota and among liberals nationwide. Wellstone died in a plane crash while running for a third term. Among successful Minnesota politicians there have been orators (Hubert Humphrey and Floyd Olson); Easterners (Norm Coleman, Rudy Boschwitz, and George Latimer); professorial types (Eugene McCarthy and Don Fraser); and Jews (Coleman and Boschwitz). Only Wellstone was all of these and one unique thing more; before coming to Minnesota he had always lived in the South. Wellstone was born on July 21, 1944, in Washington, D.C. His Ukrainian immigrant father, Leo (original surname Wexelstein), worked as a writer for the government. His Ukrainian American mother, Minnie, was a school cafeteria worker. Young Wellstone’s family life was not easy—his father distant, his only brother schizophrenic. In high school in Virginia, he starred in wrestling and cross country. At the University of North Carolina in the early 1960s, he wrestled, studied political science, practiced civil rights organizing, and married Sheila Ison of Kentucky. When UNC denied him admission to a Ph.D. program in political science, he protested and demanded reconsideration. The university gave in. In 1969, Wellstone was hired to teach political science at Carleton College in Northfield. There, he dressed like a student, refused to publish in academic journals, and enlisted students in his avocation: organizing Rice County’s poor people to assert their rights and Southern Minnesota farmers to resist installation of power lines across their land. After three years, Carleton’s political science department told Wellstone to look for work elsewhere. Wellstone protested again, and so did students. Instead of being fired, he was granted tenure a year early. In 1982, Wellstone made a surprise, and successful, bid for the Democratic Farmer-Labor Party (DFL) nomination for state auditor—a job for which he had few qualifications. He lost decisively to Republican Arne Carlson. Eight years later he won the DFL nomination to challenge Republican U.S. Senator Rudy Boschwitz. Boschwitz had been elected to the Senate twice, both times crushing his DFL opponent. Wellstone started far behind in the polls and in money, but he ran a clever, underdog campaign featuring funny ads and a beat-up green bus. His win made national news. In his career as a community organizer Wellstone had used Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, which advocated the tactical creation of conflict. This translated badly to the Senate, where in his first days he offended many by violating traditions and decorum. He quickly reformed and became well liked. Wellstone concentrated on constituent services and issues such as mental health and veterans’ needs. He voted against the use of force in Kuwait in 1991. As his 1996 reelection campaign approached, Wellstone made two risky votes, one against President Clinton’s popular welfare reform plan and the other for the Defense of Marriage Act. The second upset his liberal supporters. Nevertheless, he easily defeated Rudy Boschwitz in a rematch. In his second term Wellstone voted against the Iraq War resolution, made a well-publicized “poverty tour” of the country, and started a campaign for president in 2000. He withdrew for health reasons: chronic back pain and mild multiple sclerosis. As a senator Wellstone was a reliable liberal voter. Both the Americans for Democratic Action and League of Conservation Voters gave him exemplary marks. In his twelve years in office he sponsored a modest total of 185 bills and resolutions, few of which passed. His successes lay in lobbying reforms: limitations on international sex trafficking (with Republican Sam Brownback); the Workforce Investment Act (with Republican Mike DeWine); and the Mental Health Parity Act (with Republican Pete Domenici). Soon after his first election, Wellstone announced that he would serve only two terms. He changed his mind and ran for a third term in 2002 against former St. Paul mayor Norm Coleman. He appeared to be trailing when he cast his controversial vote against the invasion of Iraq on October 11. The vote gave him a lift. Polls showed him ahead when Wellstone, his wife, Sheila, his daughter, Marcia, and four others were killed in a plane crash near Eveleth on October 25.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/wellstone.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/wellstone-paul-1944-2002"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Anti-pornography activists at Chicago Avenue and Lake Street, c.1980.","author":[{"name":"Kirsten Delegard","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/kirsten-delegard"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 29, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Minneapolis Anti-pornography Ordinance","postbody":"In 1977, residents of South Minneapolis mobilized to fight the expansion of adult entertainment businesses along Lake Street. In 1983, after years of unsuccessful protest, these activists ...","searchtext":"In 1977, residents of South Minneapolis mobilized to fight the expansion of adult entertainment businesses along Lake Street. In 1983, after years of unsuccessful protest, these activists sought help from nationally known feminist theorists Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin. MacKinnon and Dworkin wrote a controversial amendment to the city||s expansive civil rights ordinance that defined pornography as a violation of women||s civil rights. In the late 1960s, a pair of Minneapolis entrepreneurs named Ferris and Edward Alexander sensed opportunity. In 1969, the brothers bought the Rialto Theater on Lake Street. Once a destination for family moviegoers, the theater began screening movies like Deep Throat. Soon a bookstore opened next to the theater. An adult entertainment district began to take shape on Lake Street. The Alexanders enjoyed a virtual monopoly on the distribution of pornography in Minnesota. They owned a string of businesses across the state. But these Lake Street storefronts would serve as the core of what one newspaper called their |||empire of smut.||| The cluster of pornographic bookstores and theaters attracted men from all over the Twin Cities. There, they watched movies, read magazines, and sought sexual encounters with both prostitutes (men as well as women) and other patrons. Residents of the Powderhorn and Central areas were dismayed by the way these businesses altered the climate of their neighborhoods. They objected most to customers harassing women on the surrounding streets. In 1977, residents mobilized in protest and organized a picket line. City officials responded with a zoning ordinance that outlawed the operation of adult bookstores and theaters within five hundred feet of churches, schools, or residential areas. The injunction would have forced the Alexander brothers to close most of their businesses. The brothers sued the city and won. In the wake of this ruling, activists regrouped in 1979. Instead of picketing, women volunteers organized themselves into action groups they wryly called |||afternoon bridge clubs||| and |||sewing circles.||| They spent several hours each week |||browsing||| bookstores. Like temperance activists in the nineteenth century, they saw how the mere presence of women disrupted an all-male environment. They were courteously confrontational. They greeted people at the door and stood |||behind customers, watching customers watch the quarter movies.||| Police and city officials sympathized with the protesters. But instead of fighting street harassment, police focused on the men inside the bookstores who sought sexual encounters with other men. Between 1979 and 1985, they arrested over thirty-five hundred men for |||indecent conduct.||| By 1983, the Lake Street pornography district was still flourishing. Frustrated activists decided to seek help from Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon, two nationally-known feminist theorists who argued that pornography scripted women||s oppression. The women were living in Minneapolis for a time while they taught a class at the University of Minnesota law school. Dworkin and MacKinnon brought new life to the anti-pornography campaign when they called for what opponents saw as a de facto ban. They appeared before the city zoning committee in October 1983. Pornography, they argued, was a crime against women. The city council hired them to amend the Minneapolis civil rights ordinance to define pornography as “the sexually explicit subordination of women, graphically depicted” and |||a form of discrimination on the basis of sex.||| The amendment allowed those who had been harmed by pornography to sue its producers and purveyors. For the next two months, debate over the measure consumed the city. On December 30, 1983, the city council approved the ordinance in a seven-to-six vote. Six days later, it was vetoed by Mayor Donald Fraser, who argued it would never hold up to judicial review. Dworkin and MacKinnon used the publicity generated by the measure to launch a national campaign. Cities all over the country considered adopting the ordinance they wrote in Minneapolis. After the mayor||s veto, debate over pornography continued to rage in the city. In January 1984, Fraser created the Task Force on Pornography to find consensus on the issue. After a series of meetings, the body proposed a new version of the ordinance, drawing fire from Dworkin and MacKinnon. The pair countered with another measure which offered a narrowed definition of pornography and a less ambitious |||trafficking||| provision. In July, the city council approved the new ordinance. The mayor immediately vetoed it. In 1986, the U. S. Supreme Court affirmed a lower-court decision that declared such measures to be unconstitutional.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Jan 29 1981 SPDPP box 471.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246060,"name":"Crime and Punishment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/minneapolis-anti-pornography-ordinance"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Virginia Piper in Jay Cooke State Park after her rescue by the FBI. Photographed by the FBI on July 29, 1972. Used with the permission of Harry Piper III.","author":[{"name":"William Swanson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/william-swanson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 27, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Kidnapping of Virginia Piper","postbody":"On July 27, 1972, two armed, masked men walked into the Orono home of Virginia Lewis Piper and walked out with the forty-nine-year-old woman handcuffed and blindfolded. The next day, her ...","searchtext":"On July 27, 1972, two armed, masked men walked into the Orono home of Virginia Lewis Piper and walked out with the forty-nine-year-old woman handcuffed and blindfolded. The next day, her husband, Harry C. Piper Jr., a prominent Twin Cities investment banker, personally delivered a $1 million ransom to the unidentified kidnappers. Four decades later, no one has served a day of prison time for the crime. Except for about four thousand dollars in scattered twenty-dollar bills, the Pipers’ million-dollar ransom has not been recovered. The Piper kidnapping drew media attention from coast to coast, not only because of the amount of money involved, but because of the status of the well-to-do victims. Harry Piper Jr., known by his childhood nickname, Bobby, was a pillar of the Twin Cities business community and a respected figure on Wall Street. Virginia Piper, whom everyone called Ginny, was active in social, philanthropic, and civic affairs. The parents of three grown sons, the Pipers lived in unpretentious comfort near Lake Minnetonka. The intruders probably intended to abduct Bobby Piper, whom they mistakenly believed had come home early that Thursday afternoon. Instead, they handcuffed Ginny, forced her into the back seat of their car, and, with her eyes covered, drove away. Before departing, the kidnappers left a detailed, typed ransom note addressed to “Family.” It demanded $1 million in unmarked twenty-dollar bills, to be delivered according to precise and non-negotiable instructions the next evening. The FBI immediately took charge of the case. Despite the Bureau’s objections, Bobby Piper, alone and without law-enforcement surveillance, delivered a duffel bag stuffed with fifty thousand twenties on Friday night. Carefully following the kidnappers’ instructions, Bobby drove with the money on a circuitous route into Minneapolis. There, a note directed him to a dark parking lot behind a seedy bar in the shadow of downtown. While inside the bar, trying to make a phone call per the kidnappers’ orders, the ransom was almost certainly removed from the car he had left in the lot and spirited away. Bobby returned to his home after midnight not knowing who had made off with the money or, more crucially, the whereabouts and fate of his wife. The next day––it was now Saturday morning––an unidentified male called a local clergyman and told him where Ginny Piper could be found. Three hours later, following the caller’s directions, the FBI recovered her from a heavily wooded area in Jay Cooke State Park south of Duluth. She was wet from the rain, hungry, exhausted, and traumatized––but physically unharmed. She was immediately flown back to the Twin Cities, where she was reunited with ecstatic family members and friends. The FBI then began what would turn out to be one of the most extensive manhunts in its history. It involved hundreds of agents around the country, who took a close look at more than a thousand persons of interest and spent tens of millions of dollars in the process. But it wasn’t until sixteen days before the expiration of the federal five-year statute of limitations for kidnapping that two middle-aged Twin Cities men––minor career criminals named Kenneth Callahan and Donald Larson––were arrested and charged with the crime. In the fall of 1977, Callahan and Larson were tried in a federal courtroom in St. Paul. They were prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Thorwald Anderson and defended by high-profile Twin Cities lawyers Ronald Meshbesher and Bruce Hartigan. After nearly a month of testimony and four days of deliberation, a jury found the two men guilty. That verdict, however, was overturned on appeal. In a second trial two years after the first, the defendants were found not guilty. The FBI insisted that the second jury was mistaken and claimed that Callahan and Larson had indeed kidnapped Virginia Piper. Though most of the ransom money had not been found, the Bureau declared the case closed. In fact, serious doubts remained. Many persons familiar with the case believe the job was too sophisticated for the likes of Callahan and Larson. They maintain that at least three persons were involved, and that, despite several amateurish mistakes, the perpetrators pulled off what’s been called “the nation’s most successful kidnapping.”","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/6xGUd.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246060,"name":"Crime and Punishment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/kidnapping-virginia-piper"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Donaldson’s Glass Block, c.1920. Photograph by Charles P. Gibson.","author":[{"name":"Gretchen Luhmann","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/gretchen-luhmann"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 22, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"1884","name":"Donaldson’s","postbody":"Donaldson’s, also known as William Donaldson and Company and L. S. Donaldson’s, was a Minneapolis department store located on Nicollet Avenue and Sixth Street. Started by two immigrant ...","searchtext":"Donaldson’s, also known as William Donaldson and Company and L. S. Donaldson’s, was a Minneapolis department store located on Nicollet Avenue and Sixth Street. Started by two immigrant brothers, the company grew to be one of the major retail chains in the Twin Cities, rivaling Dayton’s for much of the twentieth century. Originally born in Scotland, the brothers William and Lawrence S. Donaldson worked as salesmen across the United States before moving to Minneapolis. William arrived around 1881 and worked for the firm Auerbach, Finch, Van Slyke and Company. In 1882, he opened his own store at 309 Nicollet Avenue with a small stock of men’s and women’s clothes, and by the next year, Lawrence had joined him. In 1883, when he could no longer renew his store’s lease, William Donaldson bought a space at Nicollet Avenue and Sixth Street in the Glass Block—a building known for its large number of plate-glass windows. Together, William and Lawrence purchased the Colton Company firm, which owned the Glass Block, and started their own business. From the start, the Donaldsons’ store fared well, despite its location on what were then the outskirts of downtown. By the end of their first year in business, they had outgrown their space. In April 1884, they tore down the original Glass Block and replaced it with a larger version. The new building afforded the people of Minneapolis with a cosmopolitan landmark and became a local attraction. When William Donaldson died in 1899, Lawrence took over as sole owner and president of the company. In 1907, the name of the company was formally changed from William Donaldson and Company to L. S. Donaldson’s. After the name change, the store continued to thrive. In 1912, Lawrence Donaldson bought out Gimbel-Zimmer, another Nicollet Avenue retailer. The entire city block was now in his possession. Like other early twentieth-century department stores, Donaldson’s was not merely a shop that sold household goods and quality clothing. Rather, it was a public center that hosted civic and cultural affairs. It provided a venue for fashion shows, art collections, special exhibits, Christmas programs, and lectures. When Lawrence Donaldson died in 1924, customers began to refer to the store simply as Donaldson’s. In 1929, it was acquired by a holding company called Hahn Department Stores (later Allied Stores). Hahn allowed Donaldson’s to keep its name and staff, including managers. By the mid-twentieth century, the Twin Cities retail landscape was poised for change. A survey commissioned by Donald Dayton showed that Minnesota’s winter weather limited stores’ ability to do business all year round. To address this problem, the Dayton Company hired Victor Gruen to design Southdale Center—the world’s first indoor shopping mall—in 1952. The center opened in 1956, with competitors Dayton’s and Donaldson’s as its anchor tenants. In 1961, Donaldson’s acquired the Golden Rule of St. Paul and reopened the store as Donaldson’s Golden Rule. Three more openings extended the company’s reach to malls in Brookdale (1962), Rosedale (1969), and Ridgedale (1974). In 1980, Donaldson’s St. Paul outlet moved across the street from the site of the old Golden Rule. The new store launched with an impressive and much-anticipated grand opening that included legendary baseball player Mickey Mantle signing autographs. When a section of the City Center shopping complex was completed in downtown Minneapolis in 1982, the original Donaldson’s relocated there from the Glass Block. A few months later, on Thanksgiving Day, the much-beloved Glass Block burned down due to arson. By 1987, Donaldson’s totaled twelve stores across Minnesota and Iowa and was greatly loved by consumers. The store, however, could no longer compete against Dayton’s. Chicago merchandiser Carson Pirie Scott bought the company and changed its name to Carson’s. Without the local name recognition of Donaldson’s, Carson’s stores in Minnesota failed to prosper.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/MH5.9 MP3.1D p24.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/donaldson-s"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Frederick McKinley Jones standing next to a truck outfitted with a mobile refrigeration unit, c.1950.","author":[{"name":"Ross Boehme","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/ross-boehme"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 20, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Thermo King Model C","postbody":"In 1939, Frederick McKinley Jones patented the world’s first successful refrigerated transportation system. At the time, he was working for the Minneapolis-based company U.S. Thermo ...","searchtext":"In 1939, Frederick McKinley Jones patented the world’s first successful refrigerated transportation system. At the time, he was working for the Minneapolis-based company U.S. Thermo Control. Two years later, he released an improved version, the Model C, which revolutionized the agriculture and military industries. Frederick McKinley Jones patented more than sixty inventions over his sixty-seven-year lifetime, making him one of the most prolific African American inventors ever. The Thermo King Model C stands as his most prominent achievement. While living in Hallock in the 1920s, Jones built a transmitter for the town’s radio station. Joe Numero, an entrepreneur from Minneapolis, noticed the station’s excellent quality and offered Jones a job at his sound system company. Jones accepted and moved to the Twin Cities in the early 1930s. Though the company thrived thanks to Jones’s engineering prowess, Numero sold it to RCA so that he could start a joint venture with the young inventor. In 1938, Numero founded a new venture: the U.S. Thermo Control Company. Jones served as vice president of engineering. One year later, Jones filed for Thermo Control’s first patent: the Model A, the world’s first successful system for refrigerated transportation. Until the 1940s, transported goods were cooled by salt and ice. This created temperature inconsistencies and required manual labor. Model As were designed to be mounted onto the undersides of semi-trucks and to pass refrigerant tubing to their trailers. In the words of Jones’s patent, these tubes “condition[ed] the air” within the compartment by “tempering, humidifying and circulating.” The Model A worked, but it was heavy and bulky. The Model B, though more compact, was not ready for intensive use. In late 1941, Jones unveiled the Model C. Jones’ Model C was the first cooling unit mounted on the front side of a vehicle. Units fixed in this location collected less dirt than under-mounted versions. More important, the Model C’s unitary, metal body gave it the rigidity to withstand long trips and the lightness—seven hundred pounds—to save precious engine power. Running the unit were a Briggs and Stratton single cylinder engine, a Lynch Model Par S-2150 reciprocating compressor, and a six-volt starter. The Model C was such a revolutionary invention that Thermo Control renamed itself “Thermo King” in 1941. During World War II, Thermo King made Model Cs exclusively for the U.S. military. The military applied the invention to boats, planes, and trucks in order to transport temperature-sensitive drugs and blood plasma to soldiers in need. The Model C became commercially available after World War II and immediately made an impact on the agricultural industry. Seasonal crops could be shipped across the world. Nations could trade perishable goods. Jones’ invention laid the groundwork for the modern supermarket. The Model C was retired from service in the mid-1960s. By then, it had made an indelible mark on international trade. L.B. Hartz Wholesale of Minnesota purchased the original Model C and donated it to the Thermo King dealership in St. Paul. Soon afterwards, the model was put on display at Thermo King’s headquarters in Minneapolis. As of 2015, more than three quarters of the food transported in the United States ships with a refrigeration unit. The Model C has also allowed for the shipment of a variety of goods, including photographic film chemicals, flowers, and paintings.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/por 21534 p1.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056216,"name":"African Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246052,"name":"Science and Technology","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/thermo-king-model-c"},{"alt":"Color image of the he 1980 United States Olympic Hockey Team, 1980.","author":[{"name":"Kevin Hogg","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/kevin-hogg"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 15, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Miracle on Ice","postbody":"The Miracle on Ice is the name given to the American men’s ice hockey victory over the heavily favored Soviet Union at the 1980 Winter Olympics. The team drew heavily on Minnesotan talent, ...","searchtext":"The Miracle on Ice is the name given to the American men’s ice hockey victory over the heavily favored Soviet Union at the 1980 Winter Olympics. The team drew heavily on Minnesotan talent, including twelve players and coach Herb Brooks. Coming amid American setbacks in the Cold War, their unlikely win inspired and united the country. St. Paul native Herb Brooks was head hockey coach for the University of Minnesota from 1972 to 1979. After being picked to lead the U.S. to the 1980 Olympics in Lake Placid, New York, he selected much of his team from Minnesota, a state known for its hockey programs. Nine members had played for Brooks’s Golden Gophers, who had won three national titles in six years. Brooks used a European-style game of speed and passing. He emphasized teamwork, effort, and character in his players. To unite players from rival schools, he made himself a focal point for their frustrations by pushing their limits and criticizing them often. The team had forty-two wins, sixteen losses, and two ties against college, National Hockey League (NHL), and European teams in exhibition play. Just months into the Iranian Hostage Crisis and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, America’s confidence and international reputation were suffering. The United States, ranked seventh in hockey, was not considered a medal contender. They tied their first game against Sweden with a goal from Grand Rapids native Bill Baker with twenty-seven seconds remaining. A win over second-seeded Czechoslovakia and victories against Norway, Romania, and West Germany propelled the team to the medal round. The United States needed wins against both the Soviet Union and Finland to guarantee a gold medal. The Soviet Union was widely expected to win their fifth-straight hockey gold medal. The young Americans were considered no match for the experienced Soviets. The Soviet team had proven their skill with a victory over the 1979 NHL All Stars and a 10-3 win over the Americans prior to the Olympics. In the February 22 game, the Soviet Union scored first, with Vladimir Krutov deflecting a long shot to take the lead. Eveleth native Mark Pavelich then stole the puck and passed to Babbitt’s Buzz Schneider, who scored the tying goal. Sergei Makarov quickly responded with another Soviet goal. Five seconds before the first period buzzer, Warroad’s Dave Christian took a long shot, and Minnesota-born Mark Johnson scored on the rebound from to tie the game. The Soviets pulled Vladislav Tretiak, considered by many to be the best goalie in the world. This encouraged the Americans, but Aleksandr Maltsev quickly took the lead back for the Soviets. The Soviets outplayed the American team, who stayed a goal behind until almost halfway through the third period. Johnson scored to tie the game, and team captain Mike Eruzione quickly scored to give the Americans the lead. Pavelich and fellow Minnesotan John Harrington assisted on the final goal. The Americans then fought off the Soviet team to hold on to their lead. As the final seconds ticked down, broadcaster Al Michaels gave the famous call: “Do you believe in miracles? Yes!” Although the United States had defeated the top team in the world, they still needed a victory over Finland to guarantee the gold medal. Their chance came on February 24. Down 2-1 in the final period, Duluth’s Phil Verchota tied the game. St. Paul native Rob McClanahan scored the eventual game winner. After the games, the American hockey team visited President Jimmy Carter in Washington, DC, and was greeted by cheering fans, with a renewed sense of national pride, lining the streets. The Miracle on Ice is seen as a turning point for American hockey. The game was named the greatest sports moment of the twentieth century by Sports Illustrated. It inspired many Americans to pursue hockey careers. NHL teams began to view American prospects more seriously. The game has been commemorated in several movies, including Disney’s 2004 film Miracle. The American team reunited to light the Olympic cauldron at the 2002 Salt Lake City Games, where Brooks coached the American team to a silver medal. The 1980 arena has since been renamed the Herb Brooks Arena. Brooks was inducted to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2006.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/GV3.73 p33.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246054,"name":"Sports and Recreation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/miracle-ice"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of young bakers participating in a bread-making demonstration at the 1918 Minnesota State Fair.","author":[{"name":"Rae Katherine Eighmey","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/rae-katherine-eighmey"}],"categoryTag":[],"date":"July 13, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"University of Minnesota Agricultural Extension Service, 1917–1919","postbody":"The University of Minnesota Agricultural Extension Service was the first state agency to respond to the urgent food conservation needs of World War I. Extension director Archie Dell (A. D.) ...","searchtext":"The University of Minnesota Agricultural Extension Service was the first state agency to respond to the urgent food conservation needs of World War I. Extension director Archie Dell (A. D.) Wilson and other staff worked throughout the war to provide guidance, information, persuasion, and recipes to farmers and homemakers across Minnesota. Their efforts helped preserve the food that would win the “war to end all wars.” The United States entered World War I on April 6, 1917. Less than a week later, University of Minnesota Extension Service director A. D. Wilson announced steps farmers could take to produce more wheat and other grains. Most of Minnesota’s farmers had not yet planted for the 1917 harvest. As a result, they were able to shift their crops to those best suited to war needs. Before the end of April, Minnesota Governor J. A. A. Burnquist named Wilson to head the state’s Committee on Food Production and Conservation, also called the Food Committee. Technically, this group was a division of the statewide Minnesota Commission of Public Safety (MCPS), which oversaw all wartime activities. In practice, however, Wilson independently took the lead on agricultural issues, including home food conservation. Later, he became the federal food coordinator for the state. The Extension Service was essential to the war effort. Persuasion and information went hand-in-hand in this voluntary program, which both taught Minnesotans that “food could win the war” and gave them the skills to do it. Wilson and Extension staff showed citizens how to limit consumption, change cooking and eating practices, and eliminate waste to meet this challenge. Wilson, following the lead of U.S. Food Administration head Herbert Hoover, framed his appeals as calls for voluntary cooperation. Working to enlist the help of every Minnesotan, Wilson encouraged those who had an abundance of food to practice self control and share. Increasing the food supply was a pressing goal. Food production in the farms of America’s European Allies had slowed significantly since the war began in August 1914. Now American farming and food distribution needs would change, too. Citizens were called upon to share nutrient-dense foods that shipped well—wheat, meat, sugar, and fats—with the nation’s hungry Allies. Additionally, over the next eighteen months, the United States drafted an estimated 2.7 million men into military service. Among them were more than seventy-nine thousand Minnesotans. This shift of population from cities and farms to army camps required a shift of foods from the nation’s kitchens to the army camps as well. In the first days of U.S. involvement, University of Minnesota home economists Mildred Weigley, Joan Muir Dorsey, and Mable McDowell began developing bread recipes that used alternative flours and grains to stretch the wheat supply. After six weeks’ work, the Extension Service published recipes that taught homemakers from Duluth to Worthington how to use unfamiliar products such as rice and barley flour. These tips became the basis for wheat conservation guides distributed across the nation by the U.S. Food Administration. Minnesota home economists also devised recipes for the best ways to substitute nuts, vegetables, and cottage cheese for meat. In these days before television and radio, Extension news services used diverse tactics to persuade and inform Minnesotans. They distributed recipes and crop- and garden-growing advice through news releases to newspapers across the state. They hired agents to work in the counties, offering guidance for novice gardeners. Extension home economists demonstrated conservation recipes and the newest and best ways to preserve garden surpluses by canning or drying them. Teenaged members of the Boys and Girls Club, an Extension-supported precursor to the 4-H, showed how to bake wheat-saving Liberty Bread at the 1917 and 1918 Minnesota State Fairs. In October 1917, the need to conserve food resources became more urgent. Hoover called for meatless and wheatless meals. By February 1918, families across the nation were asked to make major changes. Of the twenty-one meals served each week, only three were completely unrestricted. The remaining eighteen were wheatless, meatless, or both. All Minnesotans were urged to join in the effort. In November and December 1917, Wilson made weekly trips up to the freezing North Woods lumber camps. There, he promoted food conservation with lumberjacks and their cooks. Camp cooks traveled to take special conservation cooking classes on the University of Minnesota campus. As a result of Wilson’s persuasion and on-campus training, the camps observed meatless days. Wheat flour usage dropped from twenty-six pounds per man per month to fourteen and a half pounds. In the summer of 1918, lumberjacks, like many other Minnesotans, began growing their own vegetables. They, too, replaced meat and wheat dishes with abundant garden goods on their dinner plates. During the eighteen months when the United States was at war with Germany (from April 6, 1917, to November 11, 1918), the U.S. Food Administration adjusted food conservation goals. The revisions reflected changes in the needs of our troops and allies and the foods that were in shortage or abundance. The situation was remarkably fluid. For example, through the early days of the war, potatoes were in short supply. It was “unpatriotic” to eat bacon. By spring 1918, however, when supplies had increased, cooks welcomed bacon and potatoes to their tables as food conservation heroes. The Extension sponsored pig-growing clubs for youth living on farms. During the 1917 growing season, Wilson and other Extension experts advised novice potato growers on how to raise healthy crops. The division acted as a clearinghouse for data about what was planted and how well the crops were doing. As harvest time neared, they suggested the best way to bring them to market. By the fall of 1918, the Extension was sharing recipes across the state to assure that every spud “could be a soldier.” Potatoes stood in for wheat and meat, appearing at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and even in desserts. Wilson praised the people of Minnesota for their efforts. Their work, he said, “put the war food efforts over the top.” During 1918, Minnesotans diverted thirty-six million pounds of sugar. Hotels and restaurants saved more than five million pounds of meat. As to the increase of war-vital crops, Wilson reported that Minnesota farms produced more food in 1918 than in any other year in the state’s history.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/FM6.55D p59.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246091,"name":"Agriculture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/university-minnesota-agricultural-extension-service-1917-1919"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of James J. Hill, 1902. Photograph by Pach Brothers.","author":[{"name":"Paul Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/paul-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 08, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Hill, James J. (1838–1916)","postbody":"James J. Hill fit the nickname “empire builder.” He assembled a rail network—the Great Northern (1878), the Northern Pacific (1896), and the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy (1901)—that ...","searchtext":"James J. Hill fit the nickname “empire builder.” He assembled a rail network—the Great Northern (1878), the Northern Pacific (1896), and the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy (1901)—that stretched from Duluth to Seattle across the north, and from Chicago south to St. Louis and then west to Denver. He was one of the most successful railroad magnates of his time. Hill arrived in St. Paul in 1856, from a farm near Rockwood, Ontario. He got work as a clerk on the waterfront with the firm of Brunson, Lewis, and White, agents for the Dubuque Packet Company (a steamboat line). From there, Hill observed both the increasing demand for shipped goods and how laborious and expensive steamboat traffic was. He concluded that in better transportation lay the path to wealth. Soon after railroads came to St. Paul, in 1866, the newly formed James J. Hill Company built a warehouse between the tracks and the steamboat landing to make moving goods between boat and train cheaper and more secure. Hill prospered. In 1867, he saw that coal had advantages over wood as a fuel—more concentrated carbon and an apparently inexhaustible supply. By 1875, his Hill, Griggs and Company dominated the Twin Cities coal market. Buying coal in high volume, he got discounts from sellers and shippers and undercut his competitors in price. He made a second fortune. Intrigued by the rising flow of immigrants into the Red River valley, in winter 1870 Hill made an adventure-filled visit. He traveled by dogsled, waded the icy Red, set a guide’s dislocated shoulder with a stick and a rope, and returned convinced of the area’s bright future. In 1871, he went into the steamboat business, hauling goods and immigrants north toward Winnipeg and bringing back the bountiful wheat of Dakota Territory. His net worth rose to $150,000. In the early 1870s, the St. Paul and Pacific Railroad ran a line toward the Red River but fell into receivership. In 1878, with partners Norman Kittson, Donald Smith, and George Stephen, Hill bought the company for roughly $5 million. He valued its assets at more than $19 million. Hill and four associates renamed the railway the St. Paul, Minneapolis and Manitoba to reflect its focus: hauling people and goods up the Red River valley toward Manitoba, and wheat back to St. Paul and beyond. Hill built an efficient road and lowered shipping costs; the abundant profits were reinvested in improvements and expansion. Never satisfied, Hill now looked west to the mines of Montana and beyond. In 1887, “the Manitoba” began building cross-country. Renamed the Great Northern, it reached the Pacific in January 1893. The 1893–1896 Depression stressed railroads and forced Hill’s competitor, the Northern Pacific, into receivership. The well-run Great Northern made steady profits, partly by cutting wages. Eugene Debs’s American Railway Union struck the Great Northern in summer 1894, and Hill consented to an arbitration that restored the cuts. In April 1896, through an arrangement with New York financier J.P. Morgan, Hill acquired control of the Northern Pacific. In 1902, Hill bought the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy, a profitable railway based in Chicago that ranged south to St. Louis and Kansas City, then west to Denver. He fought off a furious effort by Edward Harriman to crack Hill’s empire by buying control of the Northern Pacific out from under him. Hill then helped create Northern Securities as a secure holding company for the stock of several railroads, including the Northern Pacific and Great Northern. The U.S. government challenged this under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. In 1904, the Supreme Court ordered Northern Securities dissolved; Hill thereafter ran his railways separately. Away from his office, Hill and his wife Mary raised a large family, first in Lowertown and then on Summit Avenue. Three sons and six daughters survived to adulthood. Hill gave often to charity—usually in small amounts to individuals, sometimes on a bigger scale. He built the St. Paul Seminary and helped endow the downtown St. Paul Public Library. He owned the St. Paul Globe newspaper from 1896 to 1905 and the First National Bank of St. Paul from 1912 until his death. Hill resigned as president of the Great Northern in 1907 but stayed on as chairman of the board until 1912. He died on May 29, 1916, after a short illness, at age seventy-seven.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/10282076.640x640.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246053,"name":"Transportation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/hill-james-j-1838-1916"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of African American barber Prince Honeycutt in his Fergus Falls shop, c.1900.","author":[{"name":"Tom Beer","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/tom-beer"}],"categoryTag":[],"date":"July 06, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Journeymen Barbers in Minnesota","postbody":"Journeymen barbers were skilled craftsmen whose labor organizations helped shape the barbers’ trade in Minnesota. Politically active from their first arrival, they allied themselves with ...","searchtext":"Journeymen barbers were skilled craftsmen whose labor organizations helped shape the barbers’ trade in Minnesota. Politically active from their first arrival, they allied themselves with third-party movements after World War I. Shopping mall barbershops, consumer choices, and lost union membership led to organizational decline in the 1970s. In St. Anthony and St. Paul before the Civil War, black barbers Ralph Grey and William Taylor helped refugees escape slavery. As villages grew into towns and cities, the barbers’ trade remained open to black men. By 1875, black barbers resided in Fergus Falls, Maple Plain, New Ulm, Stillwater, and Winona. In Minneapolis (St. Anthony renamed) and St. Paul, “first-class” barbershops employed journeymen black barbers in white uniforms. One claimed to be the leading colored barbershop in Minneapolis. The first-class shops imitated those in the South that catered to white elites. Twin Cities versions avoided the color line by serving both black and white customers. First-class shops symbolized economic progress for their black owners. White journeymen barbers were in oversupply and earned low wages. Immigrant German barbers formed independent craft unions in the Twin Cities by 1883 and agitated to reduce hours of work. The American Federation of Labor (AFL) invited craft workers to form separate national unions in 1886. The Journeymen Barbers International Union of America (JBIUA) joined the AFL and began organizing in Minnesota in 1890. The JBIUA used trade union tactics to organize non-union barbershops. It highlighted hours of work, pricing, and working conditions in negotiations. Boycotts, shop cards, and “do not patronize” campaigns were common. Legislation eventually required licensing, sanitation, and apprentice training. The JBIUA eyed first-class shops for the wages they could offer and pledged to improve working conditions for all journeymen. Journeymen worked fifteen-hour days and seven-day weeks. They supported the closing of shops on Sundays. Local ordinances, however, proved ineffective, since owners like Napoleon Laburie of Minneapolis could pay small fines and remain open. The union also discouraged journeymen from Sunday work, as six black Merchants Hotel barbers learned when they were arrested in St. Paul. A campaign for a statewide law added teeth to union enforcement by 1894. With journeymen’s support, the Minnesota Legislature passed a Sunday closing law in 1894. The state Supreme Court noted that journeymen worked more and later hours than most tradesmen. The 1900 U.S. Supreme Court affirmed normal Sunday work was off limits and gave journeymen a day of rest. Thomas Henry Lyles, a black barber from Maryland, had led the push for Sunday closing in St. Paul. In 1890 he lobbied the JBIUA local to grant blacks full membership. Lyles and the union probably encouraged Republican Governor Samuel Van Sant to appoint black barber Samuel Hedge as the barber of the state capitol. The St. Paul local became integrated. In 1897, the JBIUA helped pass Minnesota’s barber licensing law—the nation’s first. It required barbers to obtain licenses and closed unsanitary shops. A three-member board, including one union member, administered the law. Union shops advertised hygiene, linking it to the union shop. Although the law was criticized, the courts said it benefited public health and welfare. By 1902, over twenty-five hundred Minnesota barbers were licensed. Eight percent of them were black. Of the twenty percent who were of German heritage, many were barber and union officials. M. P. Miller, active in efforts to pass the state licensing law, became Secretary of the State Board of Barber Examiners. J. C. Meyers was national president of the JBIUA and Secretary-Treasurer of the St. Paul Trades and Labor Council. Swedish immigrant barber Charlie Kleist was a more typical small-town barber. He welcomed shorter hours, running hot water, and women customers in his Cokato barbershop. In Springfield, on the southwest prairie, Ike Black worked in his brother’s shop by age thirteen. Later, he owned one of the six barbershops in the small farming town. Journeymen in Minneapolis who worked in downtown high-price shops were members of an independent Barbers Protective Association. When the Minneapolis journeymen’s union and the Association pressed separate wage demands on employers, the independent barbers debated joining with the union in order to strengthen their position. Despite a Sunday closing law, journeymen continued to struggle with employers. In 1908, East Grand Forks barbers struck their shops. The battle between labor and capital intensified. It spilled across the state line into North Dakota, where organized business groups demanded no preference be given to union barbers. Journeymen and boss barbers in Grand Forks nevertheless supported the Minnesota strikers. By 1910, journeymen unions dotted the state. They formed in Brainerd, East Grand Forks, Faribault, New Ulm, Red Wing, Rochester, and Winona. Locals affiliated with central bodies and the Minnesota AFL. A state JBIUA council coordinated barbers’ legislative affairs. Journeymen in Twin Cities hotels and first-class shops lived modest, if not middle-class, lives on union wages. St. Paul union journeymen earned fifteen dollars a week plus fifty percent of their revenue. With regulation came higher costs. Shops without access to capital moved from center-city locations to adjacent neighborhoods. Downtown black shops like Peoples’ Barbershop moved to Rondo or the North Loop in St. Paul. In Minneapolis, black shops moved to Franklin Avenue and North Minneapolis. Over time, licensing drove some barbers out of business. In 1913, Booker T. Washington challenged the JBIUA to open its doors to black journeymen barbers. He proposed that black proprietors and the white union work together to end prejudice. Urban population growth allowed black businesses to serve black customers in segregated Twin Cities neighborhoods. Some young blacks’ distaste for the barbers’ trade, however, impeded black and white cooperation. In January 1920, Minneapolis union barbers struck eight downtown owners who adopted open-shop policies and voided union contracts. The Duluth JBIU local joined the Farmer-Labor Association. Trade unions supported Farmer-Labor Party (FLP) candidates in city, county, and state races. Minneapolis journeymen barbers had challenged downtown shops to raise wages when prices were raised. Union grievances grew when employers cut wages and discharged journeymen. The Minneapolis Citizens Alliance pushed downtown shops to void the union contract. A 1920 strike by journeymen won wide support from city trade unions, but the Citizens Alliance campaign to block union members from jobs continued into the 1930s. During the worst of the Great Depression, JBIUA members gave haircuts to orphans and the elderly. They asked customers to avoid fake union shops. One thousand barbers and their friends enjoyed carnival attractions, dancing, food, and baseball at the June 1936 local union picnic at Wildwood Park. The FLP was swept from office in the 1938 general elections. Republican Governor Harold Stassen purged JBIUA leaders Nick Delmont and Mike Coleman from the Barbers’ Board. CIO unions organized twenty Twin Cities barbershops. When the JBIUA charged CIO collusion with owners, the CIO counter-charged that the JBIU had abandoned black barbers. The JBIUA tried to hold onto one-man shops. After World War II, a generation of barbers who had guided the JBIUA retired as GIs came home to claim jobs. The JBIUA continued to challenge non-union shops. The AFL and CIO merged; labor union membership peaked. Suburban growth and changing consumer preferences created new markets for corporate barbers and beauty shops that out-competed traditional barbershops. In 1972, the two locals in the Twin Cities merged. The JBIUA pledged to organize suburban mall barbers. Two hundred union barbers attended the 1972 state AFL-CIO convention to learn new styling techniques. Twin City JBIUA membership dropped to 130 barbers by 1977. After a run of ninety years, the Minnesota JBIUA ceded jurisdiction to the United Food and Commercial Workers in 1980. Only two union barbershops still operated in 2013.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/6844PrinceHpneycutt.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246055,"name":"Labor","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/journeymen-barbers-minnesota"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of National Guard troops keeping a crowd back during a raid on strike headquarters in Minneapolis, 1934.","author":[{"name":"Ehsan Alam","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/ehsan-alam"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 02, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Minneapolis Teamsters’ Strike, 1934","postbody":"“No trucks shall be moved! By nobody!” was the rallying cry of Minneapolis Teamsters Local 574 as they struck in the summer of 1934. Their demands were clear: a fair wage, union ...","searchtext":"“No trucks shall be moved! By nobody!” was the rallying cry of Minneapolis Teamsters Local 574 as they struck in the summer of 1934. Their demands were clear: a fair wage, union recognition, and the trucking firms’ recognition of inside workers as part of the union. Despite the violent reaction of the authorities, the 574 won on all these points. In the early 1930s, an employer advocacy group called the Citizens Alliance (CA) ensured that Minneapolis remained a non-union town. President Roosevelt’s New Deal program gave workers the right to collectively bargain, and Farmer–Labor Party governor Floyd Olson sympathized with unions. Olson’s support, however, proved tepid at best, and the bosses felt the New Deal did not mandate unions. Additionally, large labor groups were more interested in maintaining the status quo than in improving working conditions. Instead, Local 574 conducted a grass-roots campaign that won the hearts of the rank and file. The organizers were workers themselves, and relied on strong personal connections to develop their plans. Many of those leaders—V. R. Dunne and Carl Skoglund in particular—also belonged to the Trotskyist Communist League, which taught them how to strategize a radical strike. Smart planning, strong leadership, and member loyalty would carry the day. In February, Local 574 organized and won a coal truckers’ strike for union recognition and better working conditions. Though the gains were minor, the real boost came from the confidence it built among workers. Over the next few months the 574’s ranks swelled with members joining up from all sectors of the trucking industry. An industry-wide union that included truckers, helpers, and inside workers like packers was unprecedented and entailed a great amount of power. They mobilized for an inevitable strike, creating a radicalized workers’ organizing committee. A strike headquarters was rented and furnished with a commissary, a garage, and medical staff. The 574 also created a women’s auxiliary that included members’ wives and boosted morale. On April 30, workers demanded a closed shop, union recognition, shorter hours, and standard pay. The 574 presented these demands to the trucking firms, which refused to negotiate with or recognize the union. The workers thus voted to strike on May 16. Right away there were violent skirmishes between strikers and the “special deputies” who had been organized by police chief Michael Johannes and the CA. These clashes proved inconclusive until the “Battle of Deputies’ Run” on May 22, during which the workers beat and dispersed the strikebreakers, killing two. Under pressure from the governor, the two sides agreed to a deal on May 25: all workers would be reinstated and the 574 would represent truckers and helpers. Yet the definition of “insider workers” was left open. By June things were unraveling. The CA leaned on employers to discriminate against union members. The bosses refused to discuss wages or the inside-worker issue with the union. Workers voted to strike starting July 16. Johannes in turn issued shotguns to the strikebreaking forces and encouraged their use. On July 20, “Bloody Friday,” police opened fire on unarmed strikers attempting to stop a delivery. Sixty-seven people were wounded—most of them shot in the back. Two were killed, including one man whose funeral became a mass demonstration; an estimated forty thousand marched. On July 25, mediators Francis J. Haas and E.H. Dunnigan issued a proposal that listed minimum wage rates and clearly defined insider workers; it also reaffirmed union recognition. Local 574 accepted the deal but the firms—many of them now represented by the Employers’ Adivsory Committee or EAC—rejected it. Olson declared martial law, banning picketing and issuing permits only to trucks delivering essentials. The National Guard raided CA and strike headquarters and arrested union leaders. The permit system quickly relaxed. Firms began to deliver wares, causing 574 president Bill Brown to claim that the governor was “the best strikebreaking force our union has ever gone up against.” On August 5, Olson allowed only those firms that signed the Haas-Dunnigan proposal to get trucking permits. Under pressure, the EAC finally voted to accept it. The strike ended on August 22, 1934. The Citizens’ Alliance’s iron grip had been broken. Minneapolis’s notoriety as a “scab” town was replaced by a reputation for union support.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/HG3.18T p71.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246055,"name":"Labor","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/minneapolis-teamsters-strike-1934"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Motor Corps vehicles at Camp Lakeview, Lake City, Minnesota, September, 1918.","author":[{"name":"Peter J. DeCarlo","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/peter-j-decarlo"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"June 30, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Minnesota Motor Corps","postbody":"The Minnesota Motor Corps was the first militarized organization of its kind in the United States. Made up of volunteers and their vehicles, the corps existed for the duration of World War ...","searchtext":"The Minnesota Motor Corps was the first militarized organization of its kind in the United States. Made up of volunteers and their vehicles, the corps existed for the duration of World War I. It provided disaster relief, transported troops, and aided police. The Motor Corps’ services proved crucial, but many viewed it as a state-sponsored police force that infringed on the rights of citizens. In 1917, the Minnesota Motor Reserve was formed under the sponsorship of the Minnesota Commission of Public Safety (MCPS). It was founded by Roy B. Simning, secretary of the Minneapolis Automobile Trade Association. The Motor Reserve was meant to secure cars in each county under the direction of sheriffs and to provide transportation for state troops and posses. Though it had some success in Minneapolis, the reserve eventually became stagnant. Winfield Stephens, of Pence Automobile in Minneapolis, proposed reorganizing and militarizing the organization. Adjutant General Rhinow and Governor J. A. A. Burnquist approved. The Motor Corps was authorized in May of 1918 under the authority of the adjutant general; Stephens became its commander. The corps was not recognized by any government act. Even so, control shifted from local sheriffs to the state military. Rhinow considered the Motor Corps part of the Minnesota Home Guard. Though the two organizations often blended, the Home Guard was created by law while the Motor Corps was not. The Motor Corps was organized into a brigade of ten battalions, numbering 2,583 officers and men from around the state. The corps’ headquarters was at Colonel Stephens’ car dealership in Minneapolis. The motor battalions were supplemented by three additional units. A Medical Corps was commanded by Major Thomas Warham and an Aero Division was commanded by Captain John P. Ernster. The Red Cross formed an official auxiliary of the Motor Corps. Volunteers equipped themselves and their vehicles at their own expense, and an enlistee promised to furnish a five-passenger motor car for transporting state troops. Most members were businessmen and professionals. The Motor Corps did not recruit people of color or women. Units of the Motor Corps drilled in fields and met in local halls, car dealerships, and armories. The largest gathering was an encampment held at Camp Lakeview outside Lake City in September of 1918. Nearly one thousand men with six hundred vehicles attended. Adjutant General Rhinow inspected the troops. An ambulance corps of the Minnesota National Guard attended. Drill at the encampment was done in infantry and motor formations, and men were specifically trained to quell riots and break strikes. The Motor Corps proved its value during two natural disasters that occurred in 1918. On August 21, a tornado passed through the town of Tyler. Units of the Motor Corps from the Twin Cities transported troops and medical supplies to the town over treacherous roads the day after. The most important duty the Motor Corps performed was aiding citizens after the fires of October 1918. Units of the Motor Corps from the Twin Cities, Duluth, the Iron Range, and other communities drove to the burned-over district. Without food or rest they were sent into the charred areas to care for the injured and recover the dead. The Motor Corps provided the only transportation in the disaster zone and was pivotal in transporting victims, state troops, and supplies. The Motor Corps participated in slacker raids, tracking down criminals and closing saloons. It was also used to break strikes and subdue political agitation. These actions made many perceive it as a tool of the state and an enemy of the Nonpartisan League, organized labor, and political freedom. The Motor Corps became a model for other states and Burnquist hoped it would become a federal organization. When World War I ended, a bill to make the Motor Corps a permanent part of the state military was introduced in the Minnesota legislature. Burnquist, the MCPS, and Rhinow had the bill introduced by their followers. They felt the Motor Corps was needed to combat “red socialism” and disturbances. The bill was controversial and faced opposition from organized labor, political activists, and the National Guard. The bill passed the House but was defeated in the Senate. With the war over, and no legal basis for its existence, the Motor Corps disbanded.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Collection II 4 IMAGE 009.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246053,"name":"Transportation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/minnesota-motor-corps"},{"alt":"Color image of the Minnesota Machinery Museum, Hanley Falls. Date unknown.","author":[{"name":"Natalie Heneghan","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/natalie-heneghan"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"June 17, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Minnesota Machinery Museum","postbody":"When Hanley Falls School closed in the late 1970s, a few local residents saw an opportunity. Committed to sharing the history of their community, they transformed the white, two-story ...","searchtext":"When Hanley Falls School closed in the late 1970s, a few local residents saw an opportunity. Committed to sharing the history of their community, they transformed the white, two-story building on the town square into the Minnesota Machinery Museum. Since 1980, the museum has collected vintage farm equipment and created exhibits celebrating the history and agricultural tradition of Yellow Medicine County. In the summer of 1976, Hanley Falls residents Lowell Gustafson and Galen Redetzke had an idea. To celebrate the town’s history, they planned to show old-fashioned, steam-powered farm equipment in action during the U.S. Bicentennial celebration. Their threshing spectacle was a hit. Locals and visitors began gathering in Hanley Falls every summer for the event, later called the Good Old Days Threshing Show. While the show was still in its early years, Gustafson, Redetzke, and others decided to turn the nearly obsolete Hanley Falls School into a museum for farm machinery. By 1978, neighboring Granite Falls had absorbed all of Hanley Falls’ students. Hanley Falls no longer needed its New Deal-era school. Locals thought it would be perfect for displaying antique farm implements year-round—not just during the Threshing Show. The Works Progress Administration (WPA) built Hanley Falls School between June 1938 and November 1939. The WPA employed 108 men, including some locals, and paid workers between sixty-five and seventy-five cents per hour. A fire—supposedly started by a stove used to keep concrete from freezing in the winter—briefly delayed work. The new school could fit 160 elementary school students and one hundred high school students. After years of rising costs and a shrinking student body, the district began to dissolve. Hanley Falls’ last senior class graduated in 1968. By 1978, only fifth- and sixth-grade classes still used the building. But the school was not empty for long. That November, the local farm machinery enthusiasts paved the way for Yellow Medicine County to buy the building for one dollar. With grants from the Minnesota Historical Society and the county, a Museum Board formed. The Yellow Medicine County Agricultural and Transportation Museum opened less than two years later. It featured a traveling Smithsonian exhibit, “The Tall Grass Prairie.” Dedication ceremonies were held in early August of 1980 during the annual Threshing Show. Lowell Gustafson proclaimed the crowd that weekend to be the biggest Hanley Falls had ever seen. Conrad and Alice Velde of Granite Falls donated the museum’s first artifact: a high-wheeled wooden farm wagon. The collection grew, and in 1982, a steel building opened to house larger machinery. A few years later, the Oliver H. Kelley Farm donated a replica of the first McCormick reaper. In 1994, the museum changed its name to the Minnesota Machinery Museum. In the 2010s, the Minnesota Machinery Museum manages a collection spread among five buildings on a six-acre lot. Visitors can see plows dating back to 1877. The oldest tractor in the collection is from 1912. One of the horse-drawn scrapers that WPA workers used on the school building sits in the old gymnasium. Collections also include old farm toys, blacksmithing tools, horse equipment, interviews with local residents, and art similar to what might have hung in turn-of-the-twentieth-century farmhouses. Rooms in the school building feature different themes: 4-H, Future Farmers of America, railroads, local history, and the school itself. Trophies, sweaters, pennants, and yearbooks from the old Hanley Falls School are on display. The building still hosts high school reunions for Hanley Falls alumni. Above the main entrance, a bas-relief sculpture by an anonymous WPA artist depicts an American Indian and a fur trader shaking hands. It was moved from St. Paul to Hanley Falls for the new school building in 1939. Artist Mark Lamin painted the mural, which was originally white, in 1983. The museum has housed other Smithsonian exhibits, including “Barn Again!” in 2005 to celebrate its twenty-fifth anniversary and “The Way We Worked” in 2012. The Good Old Days Threshing Show, held on the museum’s grounds every August, is still its key event. In good weather, the show draws as many as three thousand people—ten times the population of Hanley Falls.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/machinery_museum_web_site_photo.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246091,"name":"Agriculture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056210,"name":"Education","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/minnesota-machinery-museum"},{"alt":"Color poster produced for the National War Garden Commission. Designed by illustrator James Montgomery Flagg, c.1918.","author":[{"name":"Rae Katherine Eighmey","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/rae-katherine-eighmey"}],"categoryTag":[],"date":"June 15, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Liberty Gardens, 1917–1919","postbody":"On April 12, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson called upon Americans on the home front to help fight what would become known as World War I. In response, many Minnesotans turned to backyard ...","searchtext":"On April 12, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson called upon Americans on the home front to help fight what would become known as World War I. In response, many Minnesotans turned to backyard gardening to increase their food supply. Homegrown vegetables filled pantries and stomachs and allowed “citizen soldiers” to conserve wheat, meat, sugar, and fats that were essential for U.S. troops and their European allies. On May 1, 1917, nearly a month after the U.S. Congress declared war against Germany, patriotic parades filled the streets of large and small communities across Minnesota. During this “Wake Up America” event, marchers portrayed patriotic characters like Uncle Sam. They showed off Red Cross committees and suggested ways to get involved in the war effort. In Crookston, Northwest School of Agriculture students marched with garden tools in hand to show their desire and willingness to feed the Allied armies. Liberty gardens, as homegrown plots became known in 1918, were a crucial part of food conservation efforts, since vegetables could take the place of meat- and wheat-based dishes. The group that coordinated the state’s war efforts, the Minnesota Commission of Public Safety (MCPS), wrote in their newsletter that flying a flag at the front of the house would mean little for the war effort unless there was a garden in the back yard. Communities around the state found garden land for those who didn’t have a yard. The Iron Range city of Eveleth’s Commercial Club helped organize the use of state land. It created four acres of garden plots at St. Mary’s Lake and hired a watchman. In the southwestern town of Pipestone, the Current Events Club organized local gardening efforts by acting as a clearinghouse. Its members matched people with arable land with those who wanted to raise vegetables. Minnesota businesses helped as well. Housing developers around the state turned empty lots into garden space. The Soo Line Railroad permitted gardening on fifty thousand acres of its land. Other lines promoted the use of rights of way for crops. Gardeners along the Northern Pacific right of way produced enough food to fill two hundred rail cars. Finding a garden space was just the beginning. Over time, many Minnesotans who had never grown a single vegetable caught the patriotic gardening fever. They needed encouragement and information, and help was all around. The Minneapolis Garden Club, with a membership of more than eighteen hundred gardeners, supported a demonstration agent. It also distributed literature from the federal gardening commission and provided free seeds and berry bushes. Around the state, youngsters cultivated garden plots in schoolyards during the summer under the watchful eyes of teacher-coordinators. Students filled out garden cards that tallied the hours they spent tending their crops and described how their gardens progressed. Adult novice gardeners also found the support they needed to plan, sow, and grow their plots. In these days before radio and television, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the National War Garden Commission, the University of Minnesota Extension Service, seed dealers, local garden clubs, librarians, and merchants all provided information. They published booklets, issued bulletins, and created displays in libraries and store windows using posters designed by the nation’s leading illustrators. These displays illustrated the importance of gardening, offered patriotic views of homegrown harvests, and praised the value of home-canned produce. The gardening boom kindled public interest in pest control. Minnesota state entomologist A.G. Ruggles invited gardeners to send live insects to his office for identification. They packed the specimens in sealed wooden boxes and shipped them through the mail. Ruggles responded with advice that, as a reporter for the Minneapolis Journal wrote, “seal[ed] the doom of millions of pests.” University of Minnesota professors wrote bulletins cheerfully extolling the health value of vegetables in the diet. They recommended sixteen foods that could be grown for everyday use and then canned, dried, or preserved as pickles or jams. They suggested putting up a two-year supply of food. Among the ideal crops were beans, beets, cabbage, carrots, cucumbers, pumpkins, parsnips, squash, spinach, tomatoes, and potatoes. Potatoes played a key role in menus as a substitute for both meat and wheat. When the United States entered the war in April 1917, potatoes were in short supply; many new gardeners saw them as a good place to start. The editor of the Mankato Ledger newspaper reported his dismay when his scarce and valuable seed potatoes were stolen before he could plant them. Other growers were more successful. By fall 1917, bushels of potatoes were ready to take the place of bread and meat during the most restrictive days of voluntary food conservation. This period began in February 1918, when nineteen of the twenty-one weekly meals were meatless, wheatless, or both. During the spring of 1918, gardeners in St. Cloud predicted they had planted enough potatoes to fulfill the needs of the entire city by autumn. Once the vegetables were grown, preserving them was an important part of the food conservation goal. One popular innovation was the cold-pack method, which took less time than the traditional technique. Homemakers could even use multi-gallon metal wash boilers to process many jars at one time. Cold packing was considered so simple it was said that even a child could do it. At the Minnesota State Fair, members of the Boys and Girls Club, a precursor to the 4-H, competed with live demonstrations of the method. The 1917 winner was Elsie McNail of Sleepy Eye. She won for the speed, skill, and cleanliness of her work and the flavor, texture, and appearance of her jarred produce. Minnesota’s accomplishments led the nation. The secretary of the Minneapolis Garden Club noted that the city’s residents grew ten thousand war gardens—almost 30 percent more than the next most productive city surveyed. By July 1918, those gardens (twenty-one hundred acres in total) had produced nearly half a million dollars of garden goods, or an average of $238 per acre. This was no small sum. At the time, ten pounds of barley flour cost sixty-five cents. Homemakers could buy seven pounds of coffee for a dollar; a new Ford motor touring car was $360. National statistics reveal the broad impact of home gardening on the war effort. The produce from more than eight million new gardens across the country provided the nutritional equivalent of meat for a million soldiers for 302 days and bread for 248 days, or an entire ration for 142 days. Data describing home food production after the war ended in 1919 are scarce. Anecdotal information suggests that the passion for gardening did not continue into the 1920s. However, the privations of the Great Depression prompted some households to grow their own food in the 1930s. During World War II, nearly a generation after the first modern wartime gardening efforts, liberty gardens reappeared as victory gardens and became much-promoted home-front resources.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/E435.19 b11.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246091,"name":"Agriculture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/liberty-gardens-1917-1919"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Waconia Patriot editor and publisher Charles Reil in his office, 1917.","author":[{"name":"Lindsay Marshall","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/lindsay-marshall"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"June 10, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Waconia Patriot","postbody":"The Waconia Patriot has provided local news to the residents of Carver County since 1897. In the twenty-first century, the paper is owned by ECM Publishers, Inc. In the early 1890s, the ...","searchtext":"The Waconia Patriot has provided local news to the residents of Carver County since 1897. In the twenty-first century, the paper is owned by ECM Publishers, Inc. In the early 1890s, the citizens of Waconia relied on the Carver County News for reporting on their city. Managed by English immigrant J. H. Glass, the weekly publication also covered news from across the county. When Glass moved the Carver County News to Watertown in August 1897, Waconia was briefly left without a paper of its own. Publisher J. Martin stepped forward to fill the gap, printing the first issue of the Waconia Patriot in September. The Patriot’s original office was at 124 West Main Street. James D. Burns served as editor and publisher after Martin and was succeeded by Peter Eltis by 1898. Over the next decade, the paper’s management and editorial staff changed often. In 1906, Charles A. Reil became editor and publisher. His management helped triple the paper’s subscriber base by 1909. In 1910, Montgomery Ward and Company offered to buy a large block of advertising space in the Patriot and asked Reil to name his price. Reil chose to decline the offer in order to preserve the paper’s hometown feel. His decision allowed local businesses to continue to benefit from advertising in the Patriot. Reil took deliberate steps to modernize the paper’s printing process. In 1912, he brought in machines to boost efficiency, including a press, a paper cutter, a perforator, and a stapling machine. A linotype machine was added in 1914. In 1915, office space became an issue. The basement was excavated to create an area for housing the machines. In 1919, two brothers, Anthony and William Wessale, bought the Patriot from Reil, who was their cousin. The paper remained in their family for nearly half a century. The brothers are credited with popularizing the phrase, “Waconia, paradise of the Northwest,” which appeared on the paper’s masthead. Many local businesses used the slogan in their advertising to attract customers to the city. In 1924, a third Wessale brother, Art, joined the team. His job duties focused on printing and production. World War II brought lasting changes to the Carver County newspaper business. When Charles Mayer, editor of the Young America Eagle, joined the Army Air Corps in 1943, the Patriot took over part of the neighboring paper’s subscription list. The merger boosted the Patriot’s circulation to nearly twenty-four thousand—the highest in Carver County. The paper hired a Young America representative and added a section covering news from the village. In 1970, Anthony Wessale retired and sold half of the Patriot’s rights to Art. In 1974, Elmer Miller, an employee since 1929, became co-publisher and editor. When Art Wessale retired in the same year, the paper’s ties with the Wessale family were severed. Elmer Miller retired in 1982, at which point James Berreth took over as proprietor. In 1993, the Waconia Patriot moved into a larger space about a block south of Elm Street. This office became the location for the layout not only of the Patriot but also the Carver County News, Mount Laker, Gold Miner, Norwood-Young America Times, and the Long Lake Pioneer. The papers were printed at Crow River Press in Hutchinson.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/av-81-6633  ca reil.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246079,"name":"Cities and Towns","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/waconia-patriot"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of people and ruins after the fire, 1918.","author":[{"name":"Paul Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/paul-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"June 08, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Cloquet, Duluth, and Moose Lake Fires, 1918","postbody":"The worst natural disaster in Minnesota history—over 450 dead, fifteen hundred square miles consumed, towns and villages burned flat—unfolded at a frightening pace, lasting less than ...","searchtext":"The worst natural disaster in Minnesota history—over 450 dead, fifteen hundred square miles consumed, towns and villages burned flat—unfolded at a frightening pace, lasting less than fifteen hours from beginning to end. The fire began around midday on Saturday, October 12, 1918. By 3:00 a.m. on Sunday, all was over but the smoldering, the suffering, and the recovery. What is often called simply the Cloquet Fire was really a host of fires, fifty or more, that combined in a single event. It had two major theaters, one called the Cloquet–Duluth Fire and the other the Moose Lake Fire. Conditions for both had been building for months. Lumbering, the region’s main industry, created giant depots of cut, dry lumber and left the countryside littered with wood waste. Farmers routinely burned fields and brush. Locomotives, contrary to law, spewed sparks and embers. The summer and fall of 1918 had been extremely dry. The Cloquet–Duluth Fire began before noon on October 10 when a Great Northern locomotive set a small fire at Milepost 62 northwest of Cloquet. It smoldered for two days, then came alive when a cold front brought stiff winds and a steep drop in humidity. At about 1:30 p.m. this fire began to move and join with others. It moved on two axes: east toward Duluth and southeast toward Cloquet. Around 2:00 p.m. the Cloquet-bound fire destroyed the village of Brookston. Moving slowly at first, it reached the Fond du Lac Ojibwe reservation around 7:15 and the city of Cloquet around 8:00. Winds had by then risen to sixty miles per hour. Later, survivors described phenomena of terror: walls of flame hundreds of feet tall, houses exploding from heat, bolts of flaming wood propelled through the air, the sun turned red, and a roar louder than thunder. The people of Cloquet got just enough warning. Factory whistles blew, the fire department sent runners, telephone operators called every number, and the mayor organized four evacuation trains. The city, full of frame houses and tons of dry lumber at three sawmills, burned almost flat. But only five people died there; over seven thousand got out by train. The Duluth-bound fire crept east from Milepost 62, joined with another fire around 2:00 p.m., and then began to dash. Winds rose to hurricane force, pushing forward the fire’s front, ten miles wide, at up to twenty miles per hour. The world’s fastest sprinter, given a one-hundred-yard head start, would have been in flames within thirty seconds. For people caught in the inferno’s path, survival often depended on luck. The fire reached the northeastern corner of Duluth around 7:00 p.m. It burned a country club and train depot but never descended into the main part of the city. Winds began to fall around 9:00 p.m. By 3:00 a.m. the fire had reached its limit at Lake Superior; around eight hundred square miles had been charred. The Moose Lake fire—at least five fires combined—had begun October 4 along railroad tracks near Tamarack in Aitkin County, then lain low until the winds and humidity drop of October 12 whipped it into motion at about 1:00 p.m. that day. It drove southeast toward the towns of Kettle River and Moose Lake, combining with other fires along the way. Twenty-five people in the village of Automba were killed when the flames raced through, destroying it completely. The fire reached Kettle River around 6:45. Seventy-five to one hundred people, some of them fleeing by car, were killed by fire and an accident at a sharp highway turn south of town called Dead Man’s Curve. People could not outrun the racing flames. They saved themselves in streams, ditches, and open fields, or died, many in root cellars by suffocation. As the blaze neared Moose Lake around 7:30, relief trains rescued a few hundred. Most who survived, however, did so by taking refuge in Moose Head Lake. Some simply drove their cars in and waited. By 10:00 p.m. the fire had passed. The Moose Lake Fire consumed over four hundred square miles and caused more than half of that day’s deaths. Other fires added to the destruction and tally of victims. A statewide relief effort, assisted in part by the Minnesota Home Guard, began October 13. Rebuilding followed soon thereafter.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/SC4.2F r86.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/cloquet-duluth-and-moose-lake-fires-1918"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of John Frank Wheaton, c.1899.","author":[{"name":"Linda A. Cameron","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/linda-cameron"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"June 03, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Wheaton, John Francis (1866–1922)","postbody":"John Francis (J. Frank) Wheaton, a Twin Cities lawyer and orator, became the first African American elected to serve in the Minnesota legislature in 1898. A target of racial prejudice ...","searchtext":"John Francis (J. Frank) Wheaton, a Twin Cities lawyer and orator, became the first African American elected to serve in the Minnesota legislature in 1898. A target of racial prejudice throughout his life, Wheaton believed in the political process as a means to improve the state’s civil rights laws. Wheaton was born on May 8, 1866, in Hagerstown, Maryland, to Jacob Francis and Emily Green Wheaton. He valued education and worked hard to attain it. At Storer College in Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, he earned a teaching degree and taught school while studying law. Later, he took a summer business course at Dixon Business College in Illinois. In 1892, he obtained a law degree from Howard University Law School in Washington, DC. After months of struggle against discriminatory practices, Wheaton was admitted to the Maryland Bar and permitted to practice law. Wheaton’s strong interest in politics was perhaps inspired by his father, who claimed to be the first African American to cast a vote in Maryland after blacks achieved suffrage in 1879. Young Wheaton was named a delegate to the Maryland Republican State Convention three times, in 1887, 1889, and 1891. He campaigned for presidential candidate Benjamin Harrison in 1888, giving speeches at local meetings. That year, at age twenty-two, he was chosen as an alternate delegate to the Republican National Convention in Chicago. Wheaton moved to Minnesota in 1893. He put himself through the University of Minnesota’s law school by working as a hotel waiter and railroad porter. In 1894, he received his degree. He was the first African American to graduate from the law school and only the fourth to earn a degree from the University. Wheaton’s political career quickly advanced in Minnesota. He began work in the law office of Judge William A. Kerr in 1894. The judge helped the young lawyer obtain a position in 1895 as assistant file clerk for the Minnesota House of Representatives. There, Wheaton earned a salary of five dollars per day. Judge Kerr would later appoint him as second deputy clerk for the Minneapolis municipal court in 1897. Despite his good education and respected standing in the community, Wheaton continued to encounter prejudice based on his race. In 1895, he went to lunch at the Creamery restaurant in Minneapolis with fellow attorney D.M. Scribner and State Representative George F. Wright. After Wheaton was refused service, all three men left the restaurant in protest. Wheaton filed suit against the owner for discrimination. In 1897, Wheaton once again came face-to-face with racial prejudice. While eating at St. Paul||s Metropolitan Hotel with a friend, he was accused of stealing the wallet of a prominent white man. The accuser dropped the charges and they were not searched. Outraged, Wheaton filed suit against the man for twenty thousand dollars in damages from false arrest and imprisonment. No record has been found of the results of either lawsuit. These events may have inspired Wheaton’s decision to run for public office in 1898. He ran on the Republican ticket to represent the Kenwood district of Minneapolis. The district had an estimated nine thousand eligible voters, fewer than fifty of whom were black. Some voters in the district expressed prejudicial concerns about a black candidate, but Wheaton won the election. He became the first African American to serve in the Minnesota legislature. Representative Wheaton introduced fifteen bills during his one term in office (1899). Chief among them was an amendment to an 1885 civil rights bill that prevented businesses from refusing service to anyone on the basis of race or color. Wheaton proposed an addition that made the list of pertinent businesses exhaustive. The bill passed both the House and Senate and was signed into law by Governor John Lind on March 6, 1899. Wheaton did not run for reelection in 1900. Instead, he went to Chicago to help establish the United Brotherhood, an insurance company open to people of all races. He returned to Minnesota briefly before moving to New York City in 1902. There, he continued his career in law and public service. In 1922, police called for Wheaton to pay a high-priced bail bond after one of his clients—an alleged murderer—escaped town. Bankrupt, he committed suicide at his home on January 15.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/10366135.640x640.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056216,"name":"African Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/wheaton-john-francis-1866-1922"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of flood at Chaska, 1965.","author":[{"name":"Lindsay Marshall","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/lindsay-marshall"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"June 01, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Flooding in Carver County, 1965","postbody":"In April 1965, the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers crested at record levels, flooding cities and towns across the Upper Midwest. The disaster was especially evident in Chaska and Carver, ...","searchtext":"In April 1965, the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers crested at record levels, flooding cities and towns across the Upper Midwest. The disaster was especially evident in Chaska and Carver, where the Minnesota River reached its highest-recorded local level on April 12. While much of the two communities was severely damaged, residents pulled together to save the new Carver County courthouse. Prior to the flood of 1965, the Minnesota River’s highest level at Chaska was 29.1 feet, recorded in 1952. In 1953, a dike was constructed that measured a foot and a half above the 1952 flood level. As snow melted and the river began to rise in the spring of 1965, it was soon evident that the river would exceed the dike. At various points along the Minnesota River, as well as other bodies of water, designated residents measured the water level with river gauges and reported their findings to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Emil Teske was a river gauge operator in Carver County during the 1965 flood. He reported that the river level was 7.40 feet on April 5. Two days later, the river had risen nearly ten feet. The community was warned that the water would exceed flood levels by the following week. Emergency trucks hauled fill to add to the height of the dike. As the river continued to rise, residents of Chaska and Carver were encouraged to evacuate. On April 12, at 8:00 pm, the Minnesota River crested at 34.25 feet. The water stayed at this height through the next day. A total of fifty-seven homes and twenty businesses in Carver were heavily damaged. Two hundred and forty-two homes and fourteen commercial buildings in Chaska were damaged. Many residents were reluctant to evacuate, not knowing that the flood waters would reach above the second floors of many homes. Residents made a special effort to protect the new Carver County courthouse. Hundreds of people filled sandbags and used them to create a wall surrounding the building. The hard work of the volunteers paid off, and the courthouse was saved. Carver and thirty-eight other Minnesota counties were declared disaster areas in the days following the flood. The American Red Cross provided assistance to the families and businesses affected. The flood also created an estimated $400,000 (in 1965 cost estimates) in damages to local highways. Dynamite was used to break up large chunks of ice that traveled quickly down the river and struck the pillars of the highway bridge. The water also damaged guard rail posts and the road surface, causing parts of it to be carried away. Less than a month after the flood, Carver County was hit by a series of tornados. County-wide building and property losses amounted to nearly four million dollars.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/AV813236.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/flooding-carver-county-1965"},{"alt":"Colorized postcard image of downtown store at 700 Nicollet Ave., 1912.","author":[{"name":"Paul Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/paul-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"May 27, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"March 1954","name":"Dayton’s","postbody":"Dayton’s began as a single store at Seventh Street and Nicollet Avenue in Minneapolis in 1902. When the last Dayton family member retired from leadership in 1983, the company had stores ...","searchtext":"Dayton’s began as a single store at Seventh Street and Nicollet Avenue in Minneapolis in 1902. When the last Dayton family member retired from leadership in 1983, the company had stores nationwide and profits of over $240 million. It became Target Corporation in 2000. One of America’s great retail empires was built on a foundation of Minnesota farmland. In 1881 twenty-six-year-old George Dayton came to Worthington from upstate New York to tend some troubled real estate investments. Soon he owned the local bank, a real estate investment company, many acres of farmland, and a fortune. Searching for a place to invest that fortune, Dayton chose Minneapolis. Specifically, he settled on Nicollet Avenue real estate. He put up an office building at Sixth and Nicollet in 1892 and a still-bigger building at Seventh and Nicollet in 1902. His major tenant there was a department store called Goodfellow’s, which he soon bought. The store took the Dayton name in 1903 and kept it until 2001. Dayton aimed to forge a bond between his store and the people of Minneapolis. He worked on three fronts: merchandising, entertainment, and civic affairs. In merchandising Dayton’s offered a vast array, from tools to high fashion. It also maintained a generous return policy. Events like flower exhibits, Christmas extravaganzas, and fashion shows brought entertainment. Dayton’s and the family supported the arts and charity, first through the Dayton Foundation (1918) and then through its 5-percent giving policy (1946). Sales grew every year, from $600,000 in 1902 to $60 million in 1950. The downtown building(s) expanded eight times. By 1946 the original six-story corner installation had grown to three-quarters of the entire block and twelve floors. Leadership stayed in the Dayton family. The eldest son, Draper, became store manager in 1906. A second son, Nelson, joined in 1911. When Draper Dayton died suddenly in 1923 at age forty-three, Nelson took over as store manager. He held that position until 1947. George Dayton died in 1938, at which point Nelson became president of the company. When Nelson Dayton died in 1950, his five sons took over. The next generation faced new challenges. Dayton’s had grown steadily over fifty years, but always in the same downtown location. By now population growth was shifting to the suburbs; the Dayton brothers decided to go there, too. In 1956 they opened the nation’s first indoor shopping mall, Southdale, in Edina. Dayton’s and its longtime rival Donaldson’s were the anchor tenants. Brookdale (1966), Rosedale (1969), and Ridgedale (1974) followed. In 1954 Dayton’s opened a store in Rochester and bought one in Sioux Falls. It moved into downtown St. Paul in 1959. It broke out of the Midwest in 1968, buying regional chains in Portland and Phoenix. In 1966 it launched B. Dalton, a bookselling line that grew to include 798 outlets at its peak (it was sold in 1986). In 1969 Dayton’s merged with the J.L. Hudson Company of Michigan and became Dayton Hudson Corporation. Dayton Hudson bought the Brown stores of Oklahoma in 1971 and finally Mervyn’s of California in 1978. By 1979 Dayton Hudson had stores in forty-one states. The company’s profit in 1983 amounted to $243 million. Through all these changes Dayton’s retained a loyal customer base. Twin Cities residents in particular personally identified with the store. But the Dayton’s name would not last much longer. The last Dayton brothers retired from the company in 1983. In 1990 Dayton Hudson bought the Chicago-based Marshall Field’s stores. In 2001 all the Dayton Hudson stores became Marshall Field’s, including the flagship: the former Goodfellow’s at Seventh and Nicollet in downtown Minneapolis. Dayton’s had started in a different direction in 1962 with its first Target store in Roseville, followed quickly by stores in St. Louis Park, Crystal, and Duluth. By 1979 Target had eighty stores and sales of over $1 billion. By 2000 Target Division profits surpassed earnings from all other stores combined. Dayton Hudson changed its name to Target Corporation. In 2004 Target sold all of its Mervyn’s and Marshall Field’s stores. By 2015, what began as a single department store in 1902 had become a national discount empire with nearly 1800 stores.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/MH5.9 MP3.1D r30.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/dayton-s"},{"alt":"Oil on canvas painting by David Geister, 2006.","author":[{"name":"Matthew Cassady","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/matthew-cassady"},{"name":"Peter J. DeCarlo","slug":"/mnopedia/search/index/author/peter-j-decarlo"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"May 20, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186622056203,"name":"1792–1861 (Expansion and Reform)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Fort Snelling in the Expansionist Era, 1819–1858","postbody":"The U.S. Army built Fort Snelling between 1820 and 1825 to protect American interests in the fur trade. It tasked the fort’s troops with deterring advances by the British in Canada, ...","searchtext":"The U.S. Army built Fort Snelling between 1820 and 1825 to protect American interests in the fur trade. It tasked the fort’s troops with deterring advances by the British in Canada, enforcing boundaries between the region’s Native American nations, and preventing Euro-American immigrants from intruding on Native American land. In these early years and until its temporary closure in 1858, Fort Snelling was a place where diverse people interacted and shaped the future state of Minnesota. The junction of the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers, called Bdote by the Dakota, has been a sacred gathering place for centuries. Some oral traditions refer to it as the origin place of the first Dakota people. In 1805 the U.S. Army ordered Lieutenant Zebulon Pike to find the source of the Mississippi River and select sites for military posts in the Northwest Territory. When he arrived at Bdote, Pike made an unauthorized agreement with two Dakota leaders to acquire land for a U.S. fort. He promised that the government would construct a trading post in the area. The trading post was never built, and Pike’s land cession deal was not binding. In 1819, however, soldiers of the Fifth U.S. Infantry Regiment arrived at the river junction. Construction of the fort began the following year when Colonel Josiah Snelling took command. Initially called Fort St. Anthony, the fort was completed in 1825 and named in honor of its leader. Buildings were constructed by the river landing and stables nearby. The fort had the first European-American school and hospital in what would become Minnesota. Its troops enjoyed a high standard of health relative to other posts. In its first forty years, the fort’s garrison fluctuated between eighty and three hundred men. Until 1848, it quartered elements of the Fifth and First U.S. Infantry Regiments. Afterward, various infantry, cavalry, and artillery units occupied the post. Its commanders, including the illustrator Seth Eastman, were officers of varying rank. Soldiers spent their time building new structures, maintaining old ones, and simply surviving at a post hundreds of miles from its nearest supply base. They tended four hundred acres of gardens, hauled supplies, cut firewood, milled flour at St. Anthony Falls, and stood on guard duty. Officers and some enlisted men had families at the fort. Women worked as laundresses, domestic servants, and hospital matrons. The St. Peters Indian Agency, built on the Fort Snelling military reservation in 1820, was a key site for diplomacy between the U.S. government and Native American nations. The Indian Agent acted on behalf of the U.S. government. Dakota and Ojibwe people often met with the Agent and the fort commandant for political reasons, including the signing of the Treaty of St. Peters in 1837. The American Fur Company post across the river at Mendota drew Dakota and Ojibwe to the area for trade. Though it was illegal, slavery existed at Fort Snelling. Between fifteen and thirty enslaved people lived there at any one time throughout the 1820s and 1830s. They likely cooked, cleaned, and did laundry and other chores. Their owners were army officers, government officials, and fur traders. Lawrence Taliaferro, the St. Peters Indian Agent between 1820 and 1839, relied heavily on the labor of enslaved people. One of them, a woman named Harriet Robinson, married Dred Scott in the mid-1830s. The Scotts’ residence at Fort Snelling formed part of the basis of their suit for freedom in the 1857 U.S. Supreme Court case Scott v. Sandford. There was little armed conflict at the fort during the expansionist era. The site never came under attack, and U.S. soldiers never engaged Native Americans in open combat. There are, however, some records of soldiers committing acts of violence against Native Americans. Fort Snelling remained in service for nearly forty years. By 1858, when Minnesota became the thirty-second state, the U.S. government had established forts further west, and Fort Snelling was no longer considered necessary. The post closed later that year. The government sold the fort and its military reservation to Franklin Steele, a local businessman and the fort||s sutler. Steele intended to sell off lots of land for a city named |||Fort Snelling.||| Though his sheep often grazed on the fort’s parade ground, Steele never built the city.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/FortSnelling_Geister.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246059,"name":"Native Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/fort-snelling-expansionist-era-1819-1858"},{"alt":"Colorized tinted photographic postcard showing Lewis Street in Watertown, c.1909.","author":[{"name":"Lindsay Marshall","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/lindsay-marshall"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"May 18, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Watertown Bell Foundry","postbody":"For thirty years, William Bleedorn was one of only a few cow bell manufacturers in the United States. Between 1863 and 1885, his foundry in Carver County produced thousands of bells that ...","searchtext":"For thirty years, William Bleedorn was one of only a few cow bell manufacturers in the United States. Between 1863 and 1885, his foundry in Carver County produced thousands of bells that were used by farmers across the country. Bleedorn was born in Prussia in 1835. In 1853, he arrived in the United States and settled in Wisconsin, where he lived for ten years. He married Minnie Schroeder in 1857. The couple would go on to have seven children. In 1863, Bleedorn registered for the draft. At the time, he was living in Watertown—then a small hamlet near the northern border of Carver County. Bleedorn did not begin his military service until 1865, when he served a total of four months and ten days with Company D of the First Battalion, Minnesota Infantry. Bleedorn opened the Watertown Bell Foundry in 1864 in downtown Watertown. The community grew rapidly during the 1870s and was incorporated as a village in 1877. Bleedorn found a unique and in-demand trade: manufacturing cow bells. He established a production process in which he cut out and shaped each of his bells individually from sheet metal he had shipped to himself. Each of Bleedorn’s bells was made to produce a slightly different sound. Farmers who did not fence in their fields could locate their free-roaming cattle quickly by listening for the unique tones of their bells. When Bleedorn began his foundry, it was one of only three in the country. He was the only cow bell manufacturer in Minnesota. During the mid-1870s, a planned railroad that would have served Watertown was rerouted. This was a major disappointment for the city, which missed out on the business opportunities that would have been made possible by rail service. Despite this setback, the Watertown Bell Foundry continued to succeed. By 1882, the foundry was reported to have been producing between three thousand and five thousand bells each year. The foundry closed in 1885. Bleedorn continued to live in Carver County until his death in 1913.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/MC2.9 WT r3.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/watertown-bell-foundry"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of translators at the Military Intelligence Service Language School at Fort Snelling, 1945.","author":[{"name":"Peter J. DeCarlo","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/peter-j-decarlo"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"May 13, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Military Intelligence Service Language School (MISLS)","postbody":"In 1942, the Military Intelligence Service Language School (MISLS) was established in Minnesota. The school trained soldiers as Japanese linguists to support the US military in World War ...","searchtext":"In 1942, the Military Intelligence Service Language School (MISLS) was established in Minnesota. The school trained soldiers as Japanese linguists to support the US military in World War II. A unique institution, it became point of pride for Japanese Americans who faced discrimination before and in wartime and had a strong impact on the war||s outcome. As war with Japan became a possibility in the early 1940s, some military officers realized that there would be a need for Japanese linguists. As a result, the Fourth Army Intelligence School was established in San Francisco in 1941. The school primarily recruited second-generation Japanese Americans, called Nisei. Among the Nisei were a group called Kibei—Japanese Americans who had received education in Japan. A few of the students were white. Students were taught reading and writing, interrogation, translation, document analysis, geography, and map reading. There were lessons on the structure of the Japanese military as well as Japanese politics and society. The language school was controversial since many felt the Nisei could not be trusted. Nisei soldiers attending the school faced discrimination. In February 1942, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, leading to the forced removal of Japanese Americans from their homes to concentration camps inside the United States. The order prompted the school to move as well. Several states rejected the school’s request to relocate within their borders. Governor Harold Stassen of Minnesota agreed to take in the language school. Minnesota had adequate facilities, and most of its residents were accepting of Japanese Americans. In June, the school moved to Camp Savage in Scott County. It was placed under the direct control of the War Department and renamed the MISLS. After the move to Camp Savage, many of the school’s students came from American concentration camps. The curriculum emphasized versatility but focused on military aspects of the Japanese language. Each class at Camp Savage was bigger than the previous one. The last class had 1100 students taught by 100 instructors. As Camp Savage expanded, the school population outgrew the post and moved to Fort Snelling in August 1944. The MISLS headquarters were located in building 57, and students enjoyed improved facilities. After Germany’s defeat, activity at the school increased. Students graduated more rapidly. Japanese radio messages and communiqués were intercepted and translated directly. After Japan surrendered, the MISLS grew. More linguists were needed for the occupation of Japan. In early 1946 the school was at its largest, with three thousand students. A Women’s Army Corps detachment was added to the school. Korean and Chinese language sections were created. At the time, some five thousand MISLS graduates were overseas. In June 1946, the last class graduated at Fort Snelling. Shortly afterward, the school moved back to California. During the MISLS’s time in Minnesota, the Japanese American population in the state grew to approximately five thousand. The Nisei who attended the school faced unique personal challenges when deciding to join the military. Many parents of Nisei felt uncomfortable with their children’s participation in the war. After being discriminated against by the federal government, some Japanese Americans found the idea of military service problematic. The US intelligence service feared that after Executive Order 9066, recruits would be hard to find. However, Nisei volunteered in the hundreds, and those who enlisted did so to prove their loyalty to the United States. The school graduated over six thousand linguists, roughly 85 percent of whom were Nisei. Graduates had a wide range of experiences. Early students became instructors at the MISLS. Most graduates were deployed to the Pacific or China-Burma-India theaters. There, they communicated with Japanese soldiers, gathered and translated documents, and engaged in combat. Nisei served on the staff of US generals and worked as translators during high-level negotiations. The linguists served in every branch of the military and supported more than 130 wartime organizations. During the war, graduates of the MISLS worked in secrecy due to the importance of their mission. It was not until the 1970s, when World War II military intelligence documents were declassified, that their story became public. The intelligence the MISLS graduates provided had been extremely useful. The Nisei linguists were credited with shortening the war in the East by two years, saving nearly a million lives and billions of dollars.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/E448.24 p3.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/military-intelligence-service-language-school-misls"},{"alt":"Colorized postcard of the Duluth Armory, c.1920.","author":[{"name":"Natalie Heneghan","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/natalie-heneghan"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"May 11, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"1941","name":"Duluth Armory","postbody":"The Duluth Armory has served as both a military training facility and an entertainment venue since its construction in 1915. Notable for its neoclassical design, the armory was central to ...","searchtext":"The Duluth Armory has served as both a military training facility and an entertainment venue since its construction in 1915. Notable for its neoclassical design, the armory was central to the work of the National Guard and Home Guard. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2011. At the turn of the twentieth century, Duluth was a growing Midwestern hub. Its population was rising, its economy was booming, and military activity was becoming more important. In 1899, Minnesota established a naval reserve. Soon, Duluth’s new naval militia and its National Guard companies no longer fit in the city’s 1896 armory. By 1913, the city had decided to replace it. The new Duluth Armory officially opened in November 1915. Local architects Clyde W. Kelly and Owen J. Williams’ design broke with the tradition of earlier armory styles in Minnesota. Instead of using the castle-like features seen in the St. Peter Armory, for example, the architects opted for Beaux-Arts classicism. The sleek and simple style was a prime example of the new era of armory design. The building, with over 107,000 interior square feet, was the biggest armory in the state. It had living quarters for Guardsmen, offices, training facilities, and public event space. Duluth’s National Guardsmen went overseas when the U.S. entered World War I in 1917. To protect citizens and resources at home, Minnesota created the Home Guard. Home Guard units, including those based in the armory, were called to action twice during the course of the war. They organized relief efforts when a tornado hit the city of Tyler and after a wildfire tore through the northeastern part of the state. Despite the economic slump of the Great Depression, the 1930s and early 1940s saw some of the armory’s biggest changes. The building received a $95,896 addition through the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Plans provided for a stage, classrooms, and kitchen. Local laborers finished the project in 1941. As the country’s furthest inland port, Duluth prepared the armory for possible attack during World War II with blackout screens and lightproof paint. A Minnesota State Guard formed to carry out civil defense. Its men, named the “Monday Night Soldiers,” met at the armory once a week for training. While military activity was the initial concern of the Duluth Armory, the building has hosted social and cultural events since it opened. Its early years saw an automobile show, charity events, and regular expos and conventions. Famous public figures and performers drew crowds to the armory. President Harry Truman, Senator Hubert Humphrey, and former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt gave speeches. John Philip Sousa’s marching band performed in January 1920, and the New York Philharmonic came in 1921. The Duluth Civic Symphony Orchestra, started in 1925, held its annual concert series at the armory. By the middle of the century, big-name acts were common. Johnny Cash, Liberace, Louis Armstrong, Sonny and Cher, Diana Ross and the Supremes, and the Beach Boys all entertained Duluth from the armory’s stage. In January 1959, Buddy Holly performed at the armory as part of the Winter Dance Party tour. He was killed in a plane crash only a few days later. One member of the young crowd that night was a teenage Bob Dylan. Dylan recalled the show when he accepted the 1998 Album of the Year Grammy Award for Time Out of Mind. Standing in the armory audience and catching Holly’s eye, he said, was an experience that stayed with him. The prosperity of the post-war years prompted many states to tear down their out-of-date armories and build modern facilities. In 1963, Duluth built a new center for its eight-hundred-man Army Reserve. Three years later, it built the Duluth Arena-Auditorium. The two new buildings made the armory less sought-after for military and entertainment purposes. By the late 1970s, it had become a storage facility for maintenance vehicles. After years of vacancy and little upkeep, demolition was planned for the armory in 2001. The threat spurred both local and statewide preservationists into action. The Armory Arts and Music Center, a non-profit committed to continuing the legacy of the armory as a hub of entertainment and civic life, bought the building in 2004.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/MS2.9 DU8 r17.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246079,"name":"Cities and Towns","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/duluth-armory"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of an exterior view of the American Crystal Sugar factory in Chaska. Date and photographer unknown.","author":[{"name":"Lindsay Marshall","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/lindsay-marshall"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"May 06, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"1905","name":"American Crystal Sugar factory, Chaska","postbody":"The city of Chaska is home to a factory that has survived decades of change in the Minnesota sugar industry. Since 1934 it has been part of the American Crystal Sugar Company, one of the ...","searchtext":"The city of Chaska is home to a factory that has survived decades of change in the Minnesota sugar industry. Since 1934 it has been part of the American Crystal Sugar Company, one of the leading sugar producers in the United States. In 1898, Minnesota’s first sugar-beet factory opened in St. Louis Park. In 1905, that factory burned to the ground. This loss, however, benefited Chaska. In September of that year it was announced that Chaska had been chosen as the location of the new Carver County Sugar Company. Newspapers reported that if the company invested $750,000 in its sugar-beet factory, over half of that amount would be paid out to farmers for harvesting beets. The employee payroll, they estimated, would be over $25,000. Construction on the factory and the railroad tracks associated with it began in November of 1905. The factory opened on October 18, 1906. The main building, made out of Chaska brick, was four stories tall. The adjacent warehouse was three stories. There were also smokestacks, a boiler house, and beet sheds capable of holding fifteen thousand tons of beets. All buildings were of brick construction, steel framed, and fireproof. The factory employed 150 workers who worked twelve-hour shifts. After the beets were processed, the pulp was sold as feed for livestock. In 1911, the company’s name was changed to the Minnesota Sugar Company. In 1912, a local firm was contracted to harvest three thousand acres of sugar beets, bringing the total area harvested to eight thousand acres. A boarding house for seasonal workers was also built. The house included eight separate apartments with Pullman sleepers, a large dining area, a washroom, and a lounge area. In the spring of 1913, the University of Minnesota General Agricultural College began working on experiments at the factory. Their goal was to find the best climate, the most fertile soil, and the most adaptable sugar beet varieties. By 1915, the factory employed 250 men. It produced over 125,000 bags of crystallized sugar that year as well as sixty thousand pounds of dry beet pulp and two thousand tons of molasses. Lime for fertilizing was also produced. Despite the short processing season in 1915 (only eighty-five days compared to the typical 120), the factory paid out over $60,000 in labor and field help. In 1924, a company called American Beet bought the Minnesota Sugar Company and its plants, including the Chaska factory. During the Depression, however, American Beet’s fortunes changed. In 1931, the average price of sugar dropped from seven cents per pound to one half-cent per pound. The Sugar Act of 1934 was enacted in response to these problems. It imposed protective tariffs and quotas. Sugar began being rationed during World War II. Additionally, employees began unionizing. Despite the troubles, the Chaska factory continued to run. American Beet became the American Crystal Sugar Company in 1934. In 1939, more railroad tracks were laid and updated equipment was added. That same year, a large neon sign was installed advertising the company’s new name. A shortage of labor arose during the 1940s. In earlier years, the company had employed local youth, German families from the Twin Cities, and Mexican migrants as laborers. By the 1940s, most of its field workers were Mexican migrants. In 1941, many of these workers protested the country’s sugar policy—an effort to increase sugar cane imports from Cuba while reducing domestic sugar beet acreage. In 1944, disaster struck the warehouse. When approximately 1,500 one-hundred-pound bags of sugar were stacked against a thirteen-inch wall, the weight and pressure proved too much. The wall collapsed, destroying the sugar. In 1957, American Crystal sold seventeen acres of land to the M. A. Gedney Company. On Easter Sunday of 1958, sleet and wind knocked down a power line during a storm, causing the motors in the warehouse fans to overheat and burn. The fireproof construction of the building helped contain the fire to a 60-by-225-foot area. The next year, the factory suffered another fire when two pulp stacks went up in flames. In 1971, the Chaska factory ceased production. The main reason was a failure to meet pollution control standards. In February of 1974, the smokestacks were torn down, beginning the dismantling of the factory. In the 2010s, American Crystal uses the site as a storage and distribution center.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/warehouse.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/american-crystal-sugar-factory-chaska"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Melvin Maas, 1931.","author":[{"name":"Paul Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/paul-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"May 04, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Maas, Melvin (1898–1964)","postbody":"Though he lived in a Democratic city and a Democratic political era—the Great Depression and World War II—the conservative Republican Melvin Maas represented St. Paul in Congress from 1927 ...","searchtext":"Though he lived in a Democratic city and a Democratic political era—the Great Depression and World War II—the conservative Republican Melvin Maas represented St. Paul in Congress from 1927 to 1945, with one short interruption. He also received two World War II combat decorations, was awarded a Carnegie Hero Fund medal, and served the public for two decades after leaving politics. When the U.S. entered World War I, nineteen-year-old Duluth native Melvin J. Maas joined the Marines, learned to fly, and flew reconnaissance missions over the Atlantic. In St. Paul after the war he joined one of his brothers in the insurance and bonding business. Maas first ran for Congress in 1926 on an anti-Prohibition platform. In the Republican primary that year he defeated incumbent Oscar Keller, then won the general election easily. When he entered Congress in March 1927 he became its youngest member at age twenty-eight. Maas won re-election in the Herbert Hoover Republican landslide of 1928. Then, however, the world changed. The stock market crash of 1929 and the Depression that followed threw scores of Republicans out of Congress and nearly crushed the party. While Maas prospered in the 1930 election, winning with his biggest majority ever (66% of the vote), harder times awaited him. Maas lost his seat in 1932. Minnesota’s failure to redistrict after the 1930 census led to a statewide, at-large primary. Only nine candidates could go on to the general election; Maas did not make the cut. One of his final acts in that Congressional session was to talk an unbalanced young man in the House gallery into dropping—into Maas’s waiting hands—the loaded pistol he had been waving. For this, Maas received a Carnegie Hero Fund Commission award and medal. By 1934, when Maas presented himself as a candidate for Congress once again, Congressional Republicans had been reduced to just over one hundred, and St. Paul loved the arch-Democrat Franklin Roosevelt. Maas still won, though not by much. He received only 36% of the vote, but his two main opponents split the vote against him. In 1936 Roosevelt won every ward in St. Paul, and handily. Maas won just three wards of twelve but was sent back to Congress by a margin of 360 votes—thanks once again to the divided Farmer-Labor and Democratic opposition. In Congress Maas had always focused on military issues, advocating especially for a bigger Navy. The threat and later the onset of World War II vindicated his position and may have helped him at home. He won easily in 1938, 1940, and 1942. In Congress and out, Maas kept his Marine officer commission and his pilot’s license. He flew all over the country. After war with Japan began, he flew in the South Pacific. He volunteered for combat in the summer of 1942 and won a Silver Star for action over New Guinea. This did not help him in politics. He lost in 1944 when the Democrats and Farmer-Laborites united behind a single candidate, Frank Starkey. Though only forty-six at the time, Maas never ran for office again. He returned to active Marine duty in 1945 as an airbase commander on Okinawa. While there, he suffered shrapnel wounds to the face and won another combat medal, the Legion of Merit. After the war, having been promoted to general, Maas stayed on active military duty. In 1949 President Truman appointed him to the President’s Committee on the Employment of the Handicapped. The appointment proved prophetic. Over the course of a few weeks in August 1951 Maas lost his eyesight—a delayed response to his injuries on Okinawa. In 1954 President Eisenhower appointed Maas chairman of the Committee on Employment of the Handicapped. For his energetic work there he won many certificates and commendations, including the Migel Medal, the highest award of the American Foundation for the Blind, presented to him by Helen Keller. In 1955 he was elected national commander of the Disabled American Veterans. Maas died in April 1964 of heart disease and diabetes.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/por 19560 r2.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/maas-melvin-1898-1964"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of the steamer Sea Wing, c.1889.","author":[{"name":"Frederick L. Johnson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/frederick-l-johnson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"April 30, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Sea Wing Disaster, 1890","postbody":"The July 13, 1890, capsizing of the steamer Sea Wing on Lake Pepin and the deaths of ninety-eight of its passengers horrified Minnesota and the nation. The accident ranks among the most ...","searchtext":"The July 13, 1890, capsizing of the steamer Sea Wing on Lake Pepin and the deaths of ninety-eight of its passengers horrified Minnesota and the nation. The accident ranks among the most deadly on America’s inland waterways. Captain David Niles Wethern typically used his 135-foot steamboat Sea Wing to tow log rafts to lumber mills along the Mississippi River. He made extra money operating his vessel as a no-frills excursion craft. In July 1890 the captain announced he would take the Sea Wing on a day-long voyage and visit Lake City, located on Lake Pepin about sixty miles southeast of St. Paul. Captain Wethern based his steamboat in Diamond Bluff on the Wisconsin side of the Mississippi. He counted upon great interest in his excursion among townspeople of Red Wing, the largest city along his proposed route. Eager Red Wing residents greeted the riverboat as it approached the levee at 9:30 a.m. on July 13. More than 150 excited customers surged onto the Sea Wing and an attached barge. Excursionists found Lake Citians prepared for their visit with popcorn, ice cream, and lemonade stands at the ready. Planned activities ran smoothly until a late-afternoon rain squall scattered the crowd, disrupting the schedule. Shortly after 7:00 p.m. Captain Wethern blew the ship’s whistle to recall his passengers. A chaotic scene greeted the excursionists at Lake City’s Washington Street landing. Threatening clouds had gathered even before boarding began. Some bystanders cautioned passengers to stay on shore. A number of ticket holders had yet to appear, while some new customers bought tickets and got on. At eight o’clock Sea Wing and its barge, now with 215 on board, left port. It sailed onto Lake Pepin, a 21-mile-long widening of the Mississippi. Captain Wethern did not know that a few hours earlier a storm front moving into the region had produced a tornado on the outskirts of St. Paul that killed six people. Half an hour out of Lake City Wethern observed a powerful gale coming off the Minnesota shore. He turned the riverboat to meet the storm. Many of those on board, including most of the fifty-seven female excursionists, crowded into the ship’s cabin. Sea Wing rode up on a massive wave to about a forty-five-degree angle before a blast of heavy winds capsized the steamer. Lightning illuminated the scene. Those tossed into the roiling waters struggled to survive by clinging to wreckage or swimming for shore. About twenty-five survivors, including Captain Wethern, took refuge on the overturned steamboat’s flat bottom. Unfortunates trapped in the cabin quickly drowned. The wreckage, along with the barge and its passengers, drifted downriver. The overturned steamboat’s pilothouse touched bottom at Central Point near Lake City and rolled onto its port side. Survivors on the craft’s slippery hull were pitched into the water. A number of passengers on the barge jumped off as their vessel reached Central Point’s shallow waters. They ran to Lake City to alert the populace. National Guardsmen and Lake City volunteers began removing bodies from the Sea Wing’s main cabin around midnight. They carried the dead to shore, later moving them to another steamer, Ethel Howard, for shipment to Red Wing. At 6:10 Monday morning, that boat arrived at the city levee. It carried fifty-two lifeless forms. Guardsmen continued to labor around Central Point throughout the morning recovering more of the drowned. They had found about ten by noon. Officials reported that some forty passengers were missing. Retrieval efforts continued at Central Point until Thursday, when the last body was discovered. The death toll was ninety-eight. The catastrophe nearly overwhelmed the city of Red Wing, home to sixty-seven victims, with another eight from nearby townships. The death toll among females proved grim; fifty of the fifty-seven died. Demands for an investigation into the Sea Wing disaster arose, prompting a response from government officials. Formal hearings began in St. Paul on July 20 and concluded a week later. A final report noted that Sea Wing had been overloaded and did not have a properly licensed pilot and crew. The inspectors labeled Captain Wethern’s actions unskillful. Federal officials did not bring Captain Wethern to trial for reasons that went unreported. He faced severe condemnation in the days following the accident but also received some sympathy. His wife and one of his sons had died in the accident.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/MNopedia/MNopedia%202026/Assorted%20rescans/HE5.11S%20r12_sea_wing_disaster.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246067,"name":"Environment","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246053,"name":"Transportation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/sea-wing-disaster-1890"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of a staff member administering a vocational test at the Jewish Vocational Society of St. Paul, undated.","author":[{"name":"Laura Weber","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/laura-weber"}],"categoryTag":[],"date":"April 27, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Jewish Social Welfare Groups, 1871–2012","postbody":"Nineteenth-century Jewish immigrants brought to Minnesota long-standing religious traditions of aiding the poor and needy. Beginning in the 1870s, German-Jewish immigrants, followed by Jews ...","searchtext":"Nineteenth-century Jewish immigrants brought to Minnesota long-standing religious traditions of aiding the poor and needy. Beginning in the 1870s, German-Jewish immigrants, followed by Jews from Eastern Europe, founded an array of charitable and philanthropic groups. Women were the prime movers, though men held directors’ roles. When local governments began providing relief payments in the 1930s, the Jewish aid groups focused on social services. By the end of World War II, Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Duluth each maintained a community-wide social service agency and community federation. This model persisted into the twenty-first century. The first Jewish charity group in Minnesota was the Hebrew Ladies Benevolent Society (HLBS). Women members of the predominantly German-Jewish Mount Zion Temple founded it in 1871. Shaarei Tov (later, Temple Israel) in Minneapolis and Temple Emanuel in Duluth founded their own women’s benevolent societies in the early twentieth century. Like Mount Zion, both were Reform temples. Eastern European Jews began to arrive in Minnesota in large numbers in the 1880s. Most were poor. Benevolent society staff inspected aid recipients’ homes. They determined if recipients were truly needy and thus “worthy” of charity. Charity workers also wanted to prevent the newcomers from becoming a burden on the established Jewish community. Many members of temple-based charities also joined Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Duluth chapters of the National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW), founded in Chicago in 1893. The HLBS and St. Paul NCJW founded Neighborhood House on the West Side river flats in 1897. In the 1920s, Minneapolis NCJW founded South Side Neighborhood house. Eastern European Orthodox Jews soon set up their own self-help groups. Two of the earliest were Sisters of Peace Benevolent Society (1882) and Charity Loan Society (1890). Together, they founded the Jewish Home for the Aged in 1907. Another group, the Daughters of Abraham (1918), established Sholom Residence. The two homes for the elderly merged in 1971. Benefit and loan societies were another immigrant self-help strategy. Benefit societies collected small monthly payments from members to pay for insurance policies and burial plots. The most prominent was B’rith Abraham (Covenant of Abraham). At its peak around 1917, the group had chapters in Minneapolis, St. Paul, Duluth, and the Iron Range. Total membership numbered about two thousand. Gemelus Chesed (later Sharei Chesed synagogue) was a loan society that held religious services. The socialist Workmen’s Circle included the services of a loan society among its member benefits. Other groups, such as the Jewish Loan Society in Minneapolis, were independent. In St. Paul, the Women’s Free Loan Society (1915) lent immigrant women money to furnish their homes or start a business. Jewish immigrants continued to arrive in Minnesota into the early twentieth century. As they did, the Jewish community founded more social service groups. Examples included the Jewish Sheltering Home for Children in Minneapolis, homes for transients in the Twin Cities, and employment agencies. Free- or low-cost pharmacies and medical clinics sprang up. A committee appointed by the B’nai Brith looked at the idea of uniting fundraising efforts for the many Jewish charities. The result was Associated Jewish Charities, founded in 1910. It collected and then distributed funds to United Hebrew Charities, Jewish Loan Society, and other groups. In 1918, Associated Jewish Charities became a charter member of the Community Chest, forerunner of the United Way. The charity then gave up fundraising in support of local groups. It concentrated instead on providing social services and raising money for national and international Jewish groups. It changed its name to Jewish Family Welfare Association (JFWA) to reflect its new mission. At the end of World War II, JFWA took the name Jewish Family and Children’s Service—still its name in 2014. Similar streamlining occurred in St. Paul and Duluth. Associated Jewish Charities of Duluth, a union of charitable societies, formed in 1921. It was renamed the Northland Jewish Fund in 1998 to reflect its geographic reach and the fact it did not provide social services. It survived until 2001. In St. Paul, four women’s charity groups incorporated in 1910 to form Associated Jewish Charities of St. Paul. The forerunner of the Jewish Family Service of St. Paul, it continues to operate in the twenty-first century. The Minneapolis Federation for Jewish Service was founded in 1930 at the advent of the Great Depression. Its two-fold mission was to fundraise and promote Jewish community unity by integrating the work of local Jewish agencies. The agencies represented disparate communities based on neighborhood, place of origin, mode of worship, and class. Initially, Federation funds supported hospitals, orphan homes, and religious schools in Europe and Palestine. The Talmud Torah was the only local beneficiary. Other local Jewish social service groups were still funded by the Community Chest. Even as umbrella organizations formed, single-mission Jewish relief groups continued to multiply. By 1936, some ninety-four separate groups existed in Minneapolis alone. St. Paul and Duluth were not far behind. The Depression made it more difficult to raise money. Still, the Minneapolis Jewish community was reluctant to turn its relief role over to the new public relief agencies. Public relief payments were lower than what the JFWA had tried to pay in the past. JFWA refocused its efforts on the pressing issue of helping people find work. The effects of anti-Semitism and the Depression led to the expansion of the Jewish Free Employment Bureau, renamed the Jewish Employment Service in 1936. In the late 1930s, the Federation responded to the problem of anti-Semitism by creating the Minnesota Jewish Council, today the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas. St. Paul’s first united fundraising appeal on behalf of causes not supported by the Community Chest was held in 1935. In 1943, fundraising and community planning functions came together under the United Jewish Fund and Council of St. Paul. Social planning also became a major focus of the Minneapolis Federation after World War II. To aid the effort, the Minneapolis Federation took the first of its periodic censuses of the local Jewish population in 1937. At the end of World War II, St. Paul founded the Jewish Vocational Service. It joined the other Twin Cities social welfare organizations to help returning veterans and young people plan careers. Resettling displaced persons from Nazi Europe soon took center stage. For the next ten years, a large proportion of Jewish social welfare efforts were devoted to refugee resettlement. In the 1970s, another wave of Jewish settlers arrived in the Twin Cities. This group, from the Soviet Union, was permitted to emigrate after years of refusal. Resettlement programs were again developed. These efforts continued into the 1980s and 1990s, when the breakup of the Soviet Union brought more immigrants. Jewish Family and Children’s Service, located since its inception in downtown Minneapolis, opened its first suburban branch in 1979. When it celebrated its centennial in 2009, it was located in Minnetonka. Jewish Family Service of St. Paul, located in the Highland Park neighborhood, celebrated its centennial in 2010. Both family services serve all in need. In the post-World War II era, the Minneapolis Federation has become the dominant Jewish agency in Minnesota because of community size and amount of money raised. It participates in planning for Jewish agencies of all kinds, including those funded by the Jewish community, the United Way, and federal grants. St. Paul||s United Jewish Fund and Council plays a similar role. It changed its name to the Jewish Federation of Greater St. Paul in 2012.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Jewish Vocational Services.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246089,"name":"Religion and Belief","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/jewish-social-welfare-groups-1871-2012"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of the founders of New Ulm, ca. 1854.","author":[{"name":"William Millikan","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/william-millikan"}],"categoryTag":[],"date":"April 22, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186622056203,"name":"1792–1861 (Expansion and Reform)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Military Land Warrants in Minnesota, 1854–1863","postbody":"State militia soldiers fought many wars against Britain, Mexico, and American Indian nations to take land for the United States. The federal government rewarded them with military land ...","searchtext":"State militia soldiers fought many wars against Britain, Mexico, and American Indian nations to take land for the United States. The federal government rewarded them with military land warrants—certificates that could be redeemed for up to 160 acres of U.S. public land. The warrants were quickly sold and then traded on Wall Street to land agents in the country’s western territories. The agents made huge profits from selling and loaning them to struggling farmers. In Minnesota, German immigrants used land warrants to buy Dakota land, start farms, and found the town of New Ulm. In 1854, a group of German immigrants joined the Chicago Land Association. They decided to seek out rich farm land in Minnesota Territory beyond the reach of speculators. There, they hoped to start a communal farming colony away from the ills of modern urban life. Ceded to the United States by the Dakota in 1851, southern Minnesota Territory was open to squatters under the preemption laws of 1841 and 1854. On October 8, the immigrants reached their destination: the Sisseton Dakota village of Maya Kicaksa (also known as Sleepy Eye’s village) at the mouth of the Cottonwood River. Unfortunately for the colonists, a U.S. government surveyor was already in the area preparing Brown County for public sale. Underfunded and poorly supplied, the German colonists struggled northwest toward the protection of Fort Ridgely to spend their first winter in a wooded area on Dakota land. They barely survived in frigid conditions, living off corn meal and scraps from the fort and handouts from a local trader. In spring 1855, they returned to and occupied Maya Kicaksa under the wary eyes of their Dakota neighbors. By that time, the U.S. Land Office in Winona had opened for business. Speculators and bankers in the town had begun to sell and loan military land warrants at steep interest rates. Financing their preemption claims would become a serious problem for the Germany colony. When a surveyor from Chicago began laying out the town of New Ulm on the site of Maya Kicaksa, the furious Dakota pulled up the survey stakes. Soldiers from Fort Ridgely arrived to protect the colony from Dakota resistance. With the first wheat crop still three years off and scarce barrels of flour selling for twenty dollars, the small community rapidly depleted its resources. By the fall of 1855, the colonists knew they would have to pay for their claims within a year. Temporary help, however, was on the way. On March 3, Congress had passed the Bounty Land Act of 1855. The act granted thirty-four million acres of Indian land to veterans who had fought in the War of 1812 and other wars. Almost all of the aged veterans and their widows lived in Eastern states and had no use for land west of the Mississippi River. Only one warrant in five hundred was located on new land by a soldier or his heirs. Instead, most warrants were sold to agents of large Wall Street banks and brokerage houses. Land warrant prices were listed on Wall Street exchanges. The warrants were then sold to local land agents across the country. Over six million acres of Indian land in Minnesota Territory were eventually located by the use of military land warrants. Two-thirds of these were located on Dakota lands before the . The military land warrant rapidly became the primary financial instrument for alienating the Dakota from their homeland. In the land office towns of Winona and Chatfield, local land agents and bankers bought hundreds of land warrants from Wall Street brokers. In southern Minnesota Territory, land warrants streamed in from the Illinois militia veterans of the Black Hawk War against the Sac and Fox Indians; from New Mexico volunteers who had fought the Apache and Navajo; and from Utah volunteers who had repressed the Ute. Land warrants were often loaned to struggling farmers at 40 percent to 50 percent interest. This rate came on top of a 40 percent increase on the price of the warrant. Local bankers doubled their money in a year while farmers assumed large debts. With improved farm land as a valuable security for the loans, eastern capitalists hurried to invest. Land office towns became business centers for a growing financial industry. In early June of 1856, the president and treasurer of the Chicago Land Association made a desperate trip to the Winona Land Office. They lacked the funds to patent all their preemptions but hoped to save the core of their colony. Traverse des Sioux lawyer Charles Flandreau negotiated with Winona land agents for the purchase of fourteen land warrants. William Thiele, for example, paid for the southwest quarter of section 29 of New Ulm Township with fifty dollars cash and the 120-acre military land warrant awarded to a Seminole War veteran. With the extra purchasing power they also secured the saw-mill quarter section of Milford Township. The fate of the rest of the colony remained precarious until it was bought out by a larger, better-funded group from Cincinnati. In July, the newly merged German Land Association of Minnesota returned to Winona with enough cash to buy eight more land warrants and secure the rest of the New Ulm town site. Under U.S. law, forty-eight hundred acres of Maya Kicaksa were now the official property of the German colony. The future of New Ulm, however, depended on the success of the surrounding farms. Without the financial backing of the Land Association, individual farmers faced huge obstacles. Most of them did not have the $1,000 required to purchase land and livestock, build a house, and develop a farm. Borrowing a military land warrant to pay off their preemptions became a grim necessity. Close to 90 percent of early Brown County farmers were forced by their limited resources to buy their patents with land warrants. By 1860, they had only improved five thousand acres and produced a small first wheat crop of slightly more than six thousand bushels. With the average local farm producing livestock and crops worth less than $140, there was little chance of paying off debts that ranged from $100 to $500. By the start of the Civil War, half of the area’s farmers had sold out or had their farms foreclosed. While military land warrants had helped the relatively well-financed colonists of New Ulm, they had been a disaster for many of the farmers on which the colony depended. On August 18, 1862, Dakota warriors seeking retribution for the loss of their homeland attacked towns and farms across the Minnesota River Valley. The attacks marked the start of the U.S.–Dakota War of 1862. Brown County farmers fled their land and sought safety in New Ulm. The next day the German colony itself was attacked. The surviving farmers and townspeople evacuated on August 25. Within a month the Dakota were defeated and driven out of the region. After the war, most local farmers returned to their land. By 1870, wheat production in the area exceeded two hundred thousand bushels a year. When the use of military land warrants declined after the passage of the Homestead Act, southern Minnesota banks invested their land warrant profits in flour mills, railroads, and grain warehouses. The European occupation of Maya Kicaksa had exiled its former residents, impoverished thousands of immigrants, and created the capital to develop the business infrastructure of Minnesota.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/10320438.640x640.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246059,"name":"Native Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/military-land-warrants-minnesota-1854-1863"},{"alt":"Color portraits of Betty Crocker, 1936–1981.","author":[{"name":"Kathryn R. Goetz","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/kathryn-r-goetz"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"April 20, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Betty Crocker","postbody":"For many Americans, the name Betty Crocker evokes an image of domestic perfection. From the often-reissued Betty Crocker Picture Cookbook to the iconic red spoon logo that bears her ...","searchtext":"For many Americans, the name Betty Crocker evokes an image of domestic perfection. From the often-reissued Betty Crocker Picture Cookbook to the iconic red spoon logo that bears her signature, Betty Crocker is one of the most recognized names in cooking. It comes as a surprise to some that “America’s First Lady of Food” is, in fact, fictional. Betty Crocker got her start not in the kitchen but in the advertising department of the Washburn-Crosby Company of Minneapolis. After an October 1921 contest in the Saturday Evening Post, Washburn-Crosby received many household questions along with contest entries. Samuel Gale, head of advertising, wanted to answer the questions but felt that the advice should come from a woman. Gale solved his problem by inventing Betty Crocker. Her last name was chosen to honor former company director William G. Crocker. “Betty” was chosen because it sounded cheerful and friendly. The advertising staff began to answer consumer questions using Betty Crocker’s name and persona. The answers, provided by the all-female home service department, promoted a new kind of cooking. Betty’s answers encouraged standard pan sizes, measurements, and cooking temperatures. She gave advice about how to use new electrical appliances. And she offered homemakers nationwide the chance to receive personal advice from a kindly figure who signed each letter, “Cordially Yours, Betty Crocker.” In 1924, the Washburn-Crosby Company bought a faltering radio station and renamed it WCCO. On October 2, the first Betty Crocker Home Service Program premiered on the station. Betty, voiced by Washburn-Crosby home economist Blanche Ingersoll, promoted good cooking as the secret to a happy home. By the following year, The Betty Crocker Cooking School of the Air was offering listeners a chance to cook along with Betty. In twenty-seven years on the air, over one million people completed the program. By the end of 1925, the two radio programs were on the air in twelve regional markets. While different women voiced Betty in each city, they read scripts in the main Betty Crocker office in Minneapolis. While Blanche Ingersoll provided Betty’s voice in the Twin Cities, it was another home economist, Marjorie Child Husted, who drove her persona. Husted had joined the Washburn-Crosby Company sales team in 1923. She led a team of home economists to create and triple-test recipes to meet the Betty Crocker standard. She also wrote the scripts for Betty Crocker’s radio broadcasts. Husted carefully shaped the public face of Betty Crocker. She arranged for “Betty” to interview Hollywood stars about cooking, their favorite recipes, and their home lives. In the 1930s and 1940s, the Betty Crocker brand responded to the shifting needs of American homemakers. During the Great Depression, she offered tips for household thrift as Husted and her staff worked to create low-cost recipes that would stretch food budgets. During World War II, she advertised recipes for rationing and encouraged patriotic work on the home front. In 1945, Fortune magazine declared Betty Crocker the second most popular woman in America. Also during the war, Husted worried that women were not being honored for their work in the home. She developed the Betty Crocker American Home Legion in 1944 to recognize women for their contributions. Husted championed the rights of women in the workplace, criticizing General Mills and other companies for discriminating against their female employees. The 1950s brought changes for Betty Crocker. The step-by-step instructions of the Betty Crocker Picture Cookbook (1950) helped make it a best seller. In 1954, General Mills introduced Betty Crocker’s red spoon logo that gave cookbooks, cake mixes, and other items the Betty seal of approval. In 1958, the Betty Crocker Test Kitchens moved from Minneapolis to General Mills’ headquarters in Golden Valley. Tour guides often found themselves consoling guests who had been shocked to find that their cooking heroine wasn||t real. Betty Crocker’s popularity waned in the later decades of the twentieth century. However, cookbooks, recipes, and products bearing her logo, signature, and portrait continued to be produced. In 1996, a new Betty Crocker portrait was made by blending the faces of seventy-five contest winners with the previous portrait to create a Betty for the next century.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/HF1.6 r41.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/betty-crocker"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of students at Gustavus Adolphus College c.1972.","author":[{"name":"Sherick Francois","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/sherick-francois"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"April 14, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"1970","name":"African American Students at Gustavus Adolphus College, 1963–1982","postbody":"Founded by Swedish Americans in St. Peter in 1862, Gustavus Adolphus College attracted a mostly white student body for much of its history. In the 1960s, the college took steps to diversify ...","searchtext":"Founded by Swedish Americans in St. Peter in 1862, Gustavus Adolphus College attracted a mostly white student body for much of its history. In the 1960s, the college took steps to diversify its campus by recruiting and retaining African American students from the South. This effort made Gustavus unique among Midwestern liberal arts colleges. Prior to 1965, most students at U.S. colleges and universities were middle- and upper-class whites. Throughout the country, laws, attitudes, and tuition costs kept most African Americans and other minorities from pursuing college degrees. Major changes in the enrollment process emerged against the background of the nation-wide civil rights movement. Though earlier attempts had been made to diversify the Gustavus campus, real reform did not occur until the 1960s. College president Edgar Carlson thought that the school should seek out students from underrepresented groups because of its affiliation with the Lutheran Church. As a result he began talking to the college’s Board of Trustees about raising funds to do so. With the board’s support and donations from the Lutheran Church in America (LCA), Carlson raised enough money to sponsor a black student recruitment program. The program began in the summer of 1963. Carlson gathered administrators Howard Holcomb, Owen Sammelson, Bruce Gray, and Paul Tillquist to discuss the college’s lack of racial diversity. After the meeting, Carlson sent Gray and Sammelson to Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. The two achieved little success that year, bringing in only seven African American students. In a 1972 Gustavian Weekly article, Gray recalled that the Gustavus initiative was among the first attempts by a Midwestern school to send staff on recruitment missions in the South. He noted that only Columbia, Harvard, and Yale were also recruiting from the South at that time. Prior to 1965, the only non-whites to graduate from Gustavus were international students. Thus, the three African-Americans who graduated in 1965 were among the college’s first non-white American graduates. As the school continued its recruitment efforts, black students established a Black Student Organization (BSO) to help new students feel at home while away from home. The BSO formed in 1967. It was not a club, or a social group or like a fraternity or sorority. Instead, the BSO aimed to serve the needs of black students and to improve their on-campus experience. In 1968, Gustavus introduced a program called DEMOS (Deferred Matriculation of Students) to serve disadvantaged youth in Minnesota. DEMOS was designed for students who displayed promise but failed to meet academic requirements. Although some students succeeded in the DEMOS program, including future Gustavus English professor Philip Bryant, most did not. A lack of positive results, together with concerns from white students and their parents about money being spent on the program, led to its demise in 1970. Despite the end of the DEMOS program, campus diversity continued to increase. African American attendance reached its peak of seventy-nine students during the 1970–1971 school year. There were thirteen African American graduates in 1971. The BSO remained active, bringing poet Don L. Lee to speak on campus in 1969. The success of Lee’s visit led the BSO to start an African-American Culture Series (AACS) in 1970. The series lasted until 1972. Prominent African American figures were brought to campus. They included civil rights worker Fannie Lou Hamer, former San Francisco 49ers player Bernie Casey, poet Gwendolyn Brooks, novelist/poet Imanu Amari Baraka, and Emory Douglas, a prominent Black Panther activist. In spite of programs like the AACS, African American enrollment declined between 1971 and 1977. It fell further between 1977 and 1982. Gustavian Weekly writer Gary Binon observed that the growth of opportunities for black students nationwide and a lack of recruiting funds available to the college contributed to the decline. In the early twenty-first century, diversity is again a priority at Gustavus. Thirteen percent of the Gustavus student body is non-white. The Diversity Center, established in 1999, hosts programs that aim to make the college an accepting place. These include an Asian Culture Club (ACC); a Diversity Committee; an International Cultures Club; and a Pan-African Student Organization (PASO).","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/gus-1972-12-08-0-007.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056216,"name":"African Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056210,"name":"Education","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/african-american-students-gustavus-adolphus-college-1963-1982"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Clarence Johnston, ca. 1919.","author":[{"name":"Paul Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/paul-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"April 08, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Johnston, Clarence H. (1859–1936)","postbody":"The prolific architect Clarence H. Johnston left a built legacy unmatched in Minnesota. He designed scores of mansions and stately houses, mostly in St. Paul, as well as dozens of academic ...","searchtext":"The prolific architect Clarence H. Johnston left a built legacy unmatched in Minnesota. He designed scores of mansions and stately houses, mostly in St. Paul, as well as dozens of academic buildings, churches, schools, sports palaces, prisons, hospitals, and asylums. Though he died in 1936, Johnston remains the most abundantly and persistently present of all Minnesota architects. He is best known for his houses, but his career had another dimension. In his long tenure as state architect and in commissions for institutional clients, he designed for multitudes. Johnston’s works have touched the full spectrum of Minnesotans and continue to do so in the twenty-first century. Johnston was born in Elysian, Waseca County, in 1859. His parents, Alexander and Louise Buckhout Johnston, were originally from New York state. At age fifteen Johnston went to work for St. Paul architect Abraham Radcliffe. He studied architecture at MIT—the only formal training he ever received—but left after one term due to a lack of money. He then worked briefly for architects in St. Paul and New York, where he lived with Cass Gilbert. In 1882 he settled into his own practice in St. Paul. Even at the start of his career Johnston knew how to think big. His first commission, at age twenty-four, was for future governor William Merriam’s mansion overlooking downtown St. Paul. He designed Glensheen—thirty-nine rooms and fifteen baths on seven acres overlooking Lake Superior. The house, finished in 1908, became one of Duluth’s main tourist attractions. Stonebridge (built in 1914, razed in 1953) stood near the Mississippi a mile south of the foot of Summit Avenue in St. Paul. Smaller than Glensheen, with nineteen rooms, it had classical touches— six enormous columns at the main entrance—and conspicuous modernities, such as a heated garage with maintenance pits. The landscaped, forty-acre campus made it the biggest estate in St. Paul. None of Johnston’s other houses approached these in scope. But he designed many, mostly in St. Paul’s wealthy neighborhoods and along Summit Avenue. There was no such thing, however, as a Clarence Johnston style; he composed in great variety. From 1901 to 1931 Johnston served as Minnesota State Architect while continuing his private practice. In this role Johnston designed public buildings for many people: employees, residents, guests, and managers—rather than private homes intended to please single clients. Johnston’s institutional creations supported diverse arenas of public life, including sports (the St. Paul Curling Club, 1913); health care (the Ah-Gwah-Ching Center, 1907); politics (the State Office Building, 1932); and farming (the State Fair Cattle Pavilion, 1920). The Crispus Attucks Home (1883) is a Johnston design, as is the Salvation Army Home for Girls (1913) and the Jewish Home for the Aged (1920), later known as Sholom Home. Johnston’s other works include the 1905 incarnation of Stillwater State Prison; two state reformatories; twenty-two churches; six public schools; and more than twenty buildings for the University of Minnesota, among them Williams Arena, Walter Library, and Northrop Auditorium. Even this list falls short of portraying the whole. Paul Clifford Larson, Johnston’s biographer, believed his own fourteen-page catalog of Johnston’s works to be incomplete. Johnston slowed down in the early 1930s and died in 1936. His son, Clarence Johnston, Jr., also had a notable career as an architect.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/por 15008 Lee 1.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/johnston-clarence-h-1859-1936"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Clement Beaulieu, c.1890.","author":[{"name":"Andrew B. Stone","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/andrew-b-stone"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"April 06, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186622056203,"name":"1792–1861 (Expansion and Reform)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Treaty of Washington, 1855","postbody":"The Treaty of Washington (1855) is a milestone in the history of Ojibwe people in Minnesota. The agreement ceded a large portion of Ojibwe land to the U.S. government and created the Leech ...","searchtext":"The Treaty of Washington (1855) is a milestone in the history of Ojibwe people in Minnesota. The agreement ceded a large portion of Ojibwe land to the U.S. government and created the Leech Lake and Mille Lacs reservations. The U.S. government acquired most Ojibwe land in eastern Minnesota in the Treaties of St. Peters (1837) and La Pointe (1854). In early 1855, it began planning a new treaty to buy most of the remaining Ojibwe land in the territory’s north-central woods. Traders like Henry Rice supported a new treaty because it would help pay off the debts they claimed the Ojibwe owed. Rice had invested in the lumber industry and stood to profit from logging on Ojibwe land. He claimed, however, that the treaty would mostly benefit the Ojibwe. According to Rice, they were “starving” as hunters and gatherers and needed government aid to become farmers. Thousands of Ojibwe, from different bands and with different interests, had attended the 1854 negotiations at La Pointe, making it difficult for U.S. representatives to get what they wanted. Commissioner of Indian Affairs George Manypenny did not want to repeat this situation in 1855. He instructed agent David Herriman to invite only a handful of Ojibwe leaders to Washington, DC, including Bagone-giizhig (Hole-in-the-Day the Younger) and Eshkibagikoonzh (Flat Mouth). They were not told the purpose of the visit—only that the government wished to discuss their lands in Minnesota. The Mille Lacs band were upset about not being invited to the negotiations and sent their own delegation. Though it is unclear if they arrived in time, the terms of the final treaty applied to them. Negotiations took place during three meetings held February 17–20. The U.S. government named Bagone-giizhig and Eshkibagikoonzh “head chiefs” and negotiators for the Ojibwe as a whole. Despite this, the delegations met separately and defended unique interests. Manypenny argued that when the Ojibwe became farmers, they would have more land than they needed—land that the government wanted to buy. Bagone-giizhig and Eshkibagikoonzh replied that the Ojibwe would need support to transition to a farming economy and tried to negotiate a higher price. They finally agreed that the Mississippi bands (including the Mille Lacs Ojibwe) would be paid $20,000 for twenty years. They would also receive $50,000 to pay debts and $10,000 in goods. The Pillager and Lake Winnibigoshish bands agreed to similar terms. Both parties assumed that the Ojibwe would continue to hunt and fish in the ceded territory. Although the Mille Lacs band already lived on land ceded in 1837, they wanted their own permanent reservation, like those set aside in the 1854 Treaty of La Pointe. The 1855 treaty created this reservation on the southern side of Lake Mille Lacs. It set aside a second reservation at Leech Lake for the Pillager band. To the Ojibwe negotiators, the treaty may have seemed the best of a limited number of options. Treaty payments had become crucial for the Ojibwe economy. Reservations reduced Ojibwe land but came with a promise that the people would not have to abandon their homes. Some Ojibwe leaders saw the reservation system as a way to protect a small part of their land from whiskey sellers, immigrants, and lumber companies. Not all Ojibwe were happy with the treaty, which had been signed far away by a handful of leaders. Because it promised payments and land to these few, some Ojibwe felt the leaders had put personal gain ahead of their people. A group of Pillager warriors became so angry with Eshkibagikoonzh that they killed the horse he had ridden to the negotiations. The 1855 treaty marked a turning point for the Ojibwe in Minnesota. Afterwards, having lost the majority of their land, they lived mostly on reservations. They relied more than ever on treaty payments that were often late or even stolen by Indian agents. More land was opened to logging, making it harder to survive by hunting and fishing alone. The treaty divided reservations into individual plots that were supposed to become family farms. Many Ojibwe, however, were forced to sell their land to survive, or lost it to dishonest traders and officials. The Leech Lake and Mille Lacs bands faced an ongoing struggle to hold onto their lands that continued into the twentieth century.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/MNopedia/MNopedia%202026/Assorted%20rescans/clement_beaulieu_resized.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246059,"name":"Native Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/treaty-washington-1855"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Julia Ann Sears, c.1872.","author":[{"name":"Harris Cameron","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/harris-cameron"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"April 01, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Mankato State Normal School controversy, 1873","postbody":"In August 1872, Julia Sears (1839–1929) was hired to head the Mankato State Normal School. Upon taking the job, she became the first woman to hold such a position of power in a ...","searchtext":"In August 1872, Julia Sears (1839–1929) was hired to head the Mankato State Normal School. Upon taking the job, she became the first woman to hold such a position of power in a coeducational institution of higher learning in the United States. Her leadership challenged traditional gender roles at teachers’ colleges but led to controversy when the local school board replaced her with a man. During the late nineteenth century Minnesota was quick to join the teachers’ college movement west of the Mississippi. By 1869 there were three teachers’ colleges (also called normal schools) in the state, all designed to train new instructors. Many women enrolled in these schools. They were eager to obtain careers in teaching—a profession increasingly considered to be appropriate for their gender. Julia Sears was born in Massachusetts in 1839. She became a committed educator, studying and teaching at normal schools in New England. In 1871, the thirty-two-year-old Sears was hired to teach at the new Mankato State Normal School. There she joined many other women, both students and faculty. In 1872, the Normal School Board hired Sears to replace its first “principal,” or president, putting her in a position no other woman in the country had attained. However, her annual salary was set at a thousand dollars less than her male predecessor’s. Sears operated the school with all the experience her years of teaching had given her. Under her care, the school was “running smoothly and making excellent advancement.” A local newspaper wrote, “We must score one for woman.” Sears ended her first term as principal with a graduation speech aimed directly at her female pupils. She pointed out the privileges that they could enjoy as professional women, stating, “Colleges open wide their doors and any place you are fitted to fill is no longer denied to you.” The school board, however, became uncomfortable with a woman serving as principal and “there were some feelings in the Board that the position should be held by a man.” At the beginning of the 1873 school year the board acted independently and elected a man, David Clarke John, to replace Sears. Sears returned to her original role as assistant. John was hired at the standard male salary in spite of his lack of experience in teaching. Upset, Sears wrote to board president George Gage, “I do not think I have been justly treated at Mankato State Normal School when I was assured again and again by officials and non-officials of my success last year.” When Sears went home to Massachusetts after her demotion, the board assumed that she would not return to claim her assistant position. They offered it to another man who lacked a teaching background, C.W.G. Hyde. In spite of her misgivings, however, Sears decided to accept the job after all. Both candidates arrived at Mankato in the autumn to claim the position but the board chose Hyde, despite his inexperience. The community expressed disgust with the decision. A local editor called for Sears’ return, complaining, “The Board (which is composed entirely of men) in their masculine wisdom determined that it was for the interest of the school that a man should have the position.” Sixty prominent Mankato residents signed a petition asking the board to retain “Miss Sears” as assistant principal. The students favored Sears overwhelmingly. In what became known as the “Sears Rebellion,” they walked out of classes in protest of her removal. Forty-one students (twenty-six women and fifteen men) refused to attend school until the board addressed their grievances. The matter was soon an object for debate in papers as far away as Minneapolis, and was seen to reflect poorly on the state as a whole. In the end, after allowing the students three-day notices, John expelled thirty-one of them. Journalists widely attacked the “rebellion”—even those who had written in favor of Sears before. Sears left the state and never returned or spoke of her time in Minnesota. She spent the rest of her life as a mathematics professor at a college in Nashville, Tennessee, where she was active in the woman suffrage movement.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/JuliaSears_edited.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056210,"name":"Education","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/mankato-state-normal-school-controversy-1873"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of the West Side Flats and Wabasha Bridge, 1904.","author":[{"name":"Paul Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/paul-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"March 30, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"West Side Flats, St. Paul","postbody":"From the 1850s to the 1960s, St. Paul’s West Side Flats was a poor, immigrant neighborhood—frequently flooded but home to a diverse group of Irish, Jewish, and Mexican workers and their ...","searchtext":"From the 1850s to the 1960s, St. Paul’s West Side Flats was a poor, immigrant neighborhood—frequently flooded but home to a diverse group of Irish, Jewish, and Mexican workers and their families. In the early 1960s all residents were moved out to make way for an industrial park. A twenty-first century visitor to St. Paul’s Riverview Industrial Park would be surprised to learn that this area was once a residential enclave. This was the West Side Flats, and for about a hundred years, from the 1850s to the 1960s, life bloomed there. A unique neighborhood in Minnesota and the wider U.S., the Flats were dense, low-income, polyglot, striving, unpaved, and unpainted. The Flats occupy the lowlands immediately south of downtown St. Paul and across the river. Where the land rises, or turns into a bluff, the Flats end and the rest of the West Side extends up and south to Annapolis Street, the border with West St. Paul. The Lafayette and High Bridges mark the east and west extensions. The first non-Native residents of the Flats were French Canadians and Yankees. Then came Germans, more speakers of French, and refugees from multiple potato famines in Ireland, some of whom came to the Flats rather than to Connemara Patch across the river. The first bridge connecting the Flats with downtown St. Paul was completed in 1859. St. Paul annexed the West Side (then part of Dakota County) in 1874 and built a new bridge to replace the first where the Wabasha Bridge crosses today. The Robert Street and railroad bridges went up in 1886. From then on, the West Side was fully connected to the rest of the city. Events in Russia affected the Flats as profoundly as the bridges. Just as famines in Ireland had done, pogroms and anti-Jewish laws in Russia set off mass emigration to the United States in the 1880s. The first Russian Jews reached St. Paul in winter 1882. About twenty of them made their way to the Flats later that year, and over the next few decades, hundreds more followed. By 1915 over 70 percent of the Flats’ residents were Jewish. The Flats can be thought of as a village within the city. Made distinct by geography (river to the north, bluffs to the south) and language (Irish, Russian, Polish, Yiddish, Lithuanian), the Flats developed an internal economy based partly on family entrepreneurship. From a population that probably never exceeded two thousand, scores of businesses arose: junk dealers, egg candlers, tailors, cobblers, and butchers. A 1910 count found over a hundred such enterprises on the Flats. Other men worked as laborers, and the West Side usually offered plenty of work. On the Flats themselves were American Hoist and Derrick, Minnesota Macaroni, Gedney Pickles, and the Waterous Company, maker of firefighting equipment. A little south, against the bluffs, stood Yoerg Brewery, Twin City Brick, and Villaume Box and Lumber. Farther south still were the South St. Paul stockyards. Almost all the housing in the Flats was modest at best. There was no point in building a nice house; the Mississippi flooded nearly every spring, and on the lowland there was no escape. As early as 1917 a St. Paul housing survey found that almost half the houses in the Flats had no sewer connection. A third had no bathing facilities. The one public school, Lafayette Elementary, was poorly built and overcrowded. The city dump was nearby, and there were no parks—just one playground. In all, it was “the worst kind of slum.” People lived there anyway. They built lives, livelihoods, and institutions. Irish Catholics worshipped at St. Michael||s Church, which was built in 1866 and moved to a new location within the neighborhood in 1882. Two synagogues opened in 1889, and more followed, as did a cheder (a Jewish religious school). Neighborhood House, founded in 1900, was at first a Jewish settlement house but later opened to all. In the twentieth century non-Jews arrived in appreciable numbers, especially Christian Syrians and Mexican Americans. Their church, Our Lady of Guadalupe, opened in the heart of the Flats in 1931. By then, Jews made up only about a third of the population of the Flats. The Depression ensured that housing on the Flats, most of it built in the nineteenth century, would get worse. A devastating 1952 flood proved that frame houses built on a floodplain were vulnerable. In 1956 the city’s Port Authority announced the creation of Riverview Industrial Park—a project that needed every acre of the Flats. The city began buying houses in 1961 and tearing them down in 1962. By the end of 1963 the last residents of the Flats had left.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/MNopedia/MNopedia%202025/West%20Side%20Flats/10409392.640x640.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246079,"name":"Cities and Towns","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/west-side-flats-st-paul"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of campers cooking outdoors at Dick Butwin Day Camp, 1967.","author":[{"name":"Laura Weber","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/laura-weber"}],"categoryTag":[],"date":"March 25, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Jewish Youth Camping in Minnesota","postbody":"Organized youth camping became popular in the late nineteenth century against the backdrop of the Progressive Era. In Minnesota and across the United States, reformers believed that ...","searchtext":"Organized youth camping became popular in the late nineteenth century against the backdrop of the Progressive Era. In Minnesota and across the United States, reformers believed that offering fresh-air vacations to poor children living in crowded cities would contribute to public health. Another motive was Americanizing the children of immigrants. The earliest Jewish camps pursued the same goals, with one addition: teaching the Jewish faith. The Jewish Working Girls Vacation Society in New York founded the first Jewish camp in the United States in 1893. Minnesota was the home of the first kosher camp in the Northwest, the Lake Rest Vacation Home. It was established in 1911 at White Bear Lake for the “benefit of overtired mothers and their children.” The camp was soon renamed Sophie Wirth Camp. Wirth was the leader of the camp’s founding organizations, the Jewish Relief Society (an auxiliary of Mount Zion Temple) and the St. Paul chapter of the National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW). Sophie Wirth Camp’s capacity in 1926 was ninety campers. The staff numbered twenty-five. Providing good nutrition to the campers, many of whom were underweight, was crucial. Two-week sessions for older children alternated with sessions for mothers with small children. One former camper recalled, “The staff and Council of Jewish Women were all for education, developing good health habits, even for Americanization, but the kids were there to have fun.” Neighborhood House, a settlement house on St. Paul’s West Side flats (also founded by Mount Zion women), sponsored Camp Kiwanis at Marine on St. Croix, another “fresh air” camp. Both Jewish and non-Jewish “underprivileged” children attended Kiwanis. By the 1920s, children of the immigrant generation were drifting away from their parents’ Old World religious observance. Zionism became a mass movement among American Jews. Racial tensions, fear of immigrants, and anti-Semitism increased across the U.S. A new Jewish camping philosophy arose in response. The camping experience was redesigned to reinforce children’s religious and cultural identities so they would stay connected to Jewish communal life. Typical summer camp recreation activities were added to make Jewish children feel part of mainstream American life. Hundreds of Jewish camps sprung up in the U.S. between the 1920s and 1950s, an era called the “heyday” of Jewish camping. A few were located in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Some camps had a religious focus, while others had Zionist, Hebrew, or socialist missions. All included American-style camping and outdoor activities. Minneapolis’s Council Camp, later known as Camp Tikvah, illustrates the evolution of Jewish camping philosophy. In 1930, Sam Finklestein, youth director at South Side Neighborhood House in Minneapolis, secured a “mosquito and weed-infested” campsite near Tonka Bay. He aimed to provide an outdoor experience that would physically and emotionally benefit children of the settlement house, which was sponsored by the Minneapolis chapter of the NCJW. In 1937 Finklestein learned of an opportunity to lease a better campsite in Hinckley for one dollar a year. It was one of a series of campsites built nationwide by the New Deal. The Jewish camping program got permission to use the Hinckley site on the condition that one-third of campers be “low-income.” The camp was nonsectarian but based on Jewish principles. For instance, Friday night Shabbat services were held weekly. The federal government withdrew the camp’s lease in 1947. By then, Council Camp had become a fixture of the Jewish community. A group led by Finklestein looked for a permanent location. They found a former resort located on three hundred acres near Aitken. The Minneapolis Jewish Federation created the Jewish Camping Association and purchased the site. The camp was renamed Camp Tikvah (Hope). The Emanuel Cohen Center (soon to become the Jewish Community Center of Minneapolis) took over operations in the late 1950s. Camp Tikvah closed in 1983. More overnight camps for the Jewish youth of Minnesota and the Upper Midwest arose in the 1940s and 1950s. First came Herzl Camp, in 1946. The independent Zionist camp was founded by a group of fifteen to twenty Jews from the Twin Cities led by Harry Rosenthal. Herzl Camp initially used the old Sophie Wirth Camp in White Bear Lake, which had closed in 1943. In its first year, Herzl Camp used a merit-based application process to select sixty campers. Criteria included personality, Jewish background, leadership potential, and interests. The process was similar to that used by East Coast camps, including one Rosenthal’s daughter had attended. The process was soon abandoned. About one thousand campers attended Herzl Camp in its first four years. When the White Bear Lake camp property was sold to developers, Herzl Camp purchased sixty acres on Devil’s Lake in Webster, Wisconsin, in 1947. A 1948 article in the American Jewish World praised the camp’s impact on children from “scores of small Jewish communities of the Northwest” where they were “bereft of almost all inspiring Jewish influences.” By 2012, Herzl claimed some 30,000 alumni, many second- and third-generation, from all over the U.S. During most years in the 2010s, virtually all the counselors are camp alumni. The St. Paul Jewish Community Center created an overnight camp in 1957. Previous efforts at day camping at Como Park and Lake Phalen proved “unsatisfying.” An earlier attempt to make arrangements with Council Camp did not succeed. For three or four years in the early 1950s, the St. Paul Jewish Community Center (JCC) used a New Deal-built camp near New Ulm for overnight camping. In 1957, Rose Butwin, the widow of local clothing manufacturer Jack Butwin, donated funds to the St. Paul JCC to purchase land on Lake O’Brien in Eagan. Camp Butwin, for children in grades K-9, was dedicated in June 1958. By 2013, it had expanded to encompass eighty-eight acres and added a retreat center with kosher facilities. Camps sponsored by Jewish community centers and the Conservative and Reform denominations developed after World War II. These camps added a new goal: cultivating leaders for Jewish organizations. The first of the denomination-sponsored camps were established in Wisconsin. This made them accessible to Minnesota youth. The Conservative movement’s Camp Ramah was founded in 1947 in Conover, near the border with Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Olin-Sang-Ruby Union Institute (OSRUI) camp in Oconomowoc was the Reform movement’s first summer camp, founded in 1952. The popularity of Herzl Camp, Camp Ramah, and OSRUI undoubtedly contributed to Camp Tikvah’s closing in 1983. The Aitken property was sold to a developer. Meanwhile, local synagogues provided day camps for younger children. The best known is Camp TEKO, sponsored by Temple Israel in Minneapolis. Located west of the city at Long Lake, Camp TEKO dates to about 1970. It also offers overnight camping for children in grades three to six. In the 2010s, about seventy thousand children nationwide attend Jewish overnight camp each year. Studies consistently show the positive, long-term impact of the Jewish camping experience on Jewish identity and affiliation. Those who have attended Jewish camps are more likely to donate to a Jewish charity, feel attached to Israel, and report that being Jewish is important to them than those who have not attended camp. The 2014 edition of the American Jewish World’s annual community guide listed eighteen Jewish camps in Minnesota and Wisconsin. They included overnight programs as well as day camps sponsored by synagogues and religious schools—some Orthodox and Hasidic.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Dick Butwin Day Camp, 1967.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246089,"name":"Religion and Belief","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/jewish-youth-camping-minnesota"},{"alt":"Color image of participants in the Operation Free Flu Shot program gather for a group photograph at the Hmong New Year celebration in St. Paul’s RiverCentre on November 24, 2012.","author":[{"name":"Elisabeth Thao","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/elisabeth-thao"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"March 23, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Hmong Health Care Professionals Coalition","postbody":"The Hmong Health Care Professionals Coalition (HHCPC) is a partnership of Hmong public health experts based in St. Paul. Since its founding in 1995, the HHCPC has grown to become a central ...","searchtext":"The Hmong Health Care Professionals Coalition (HHCPC) is a partnership of Hmong public health experts based in St. Paul. Since its founding in 1995, the HHCPC has grown to become a central health resource for Minnesota’s Hmong community. Its members and volunteers conduct research, educate patients, develop best practices, and provide leadership to other health groups. The HHCPC was founded in 1995 by Mao Heu Thao, Health Coordinator for the St. Paul–Ramsey County Department of Public Health. Having worked with the Hmong community, Thao knew that the language barrier and a lack of education about Western practices limited many Hmong families’ access to health care. Her vision for HHCPC was to provide networking and support opportunities and to build trust between Hmong patients and their doctors. Soon after its founding, the HHCPC held its first annual Hmong Health Fair during Lao Family Community of Minnesota’s Hmong Freedom Celebration at Como Park. Later fairs focused on specific issues to meet the evolving needs of attendees. The event’s staff are equipped to screen over four hundred Hmong individuals for diabetes, hypertension, and dental caries in a single day. Also in 1995, HHCPC launched its first health survey at the Hmong New Year celebration in St. Paul. The survey gauged how much the Hmong community understood, and was comfortable with using, Western health care systems. After reviewing the survey’s results, HHCPC launched The Hmong Health Talk Show with Kev Koom Siab TV (KKS). The program, produced in the Hmong language, aired on KTCA Channel 17. In 1996, the HHCPC conducted a second component of the survey during the Hmong New Year. It assessed the impact of The Hmong Health Talk Show and asked whether viewers had shared what they learned with their families. A 1998 survey showed that the show was truly effective, reaching and impacting 95 percent of surveyed Hmong Minnesotans. Due to limited funding, KKS ended in 2004. Since 2001, HHCPC has supported Hmong Education and Resources Today (HE&RT). The nonprofit clearinghouse connects Hmong families with public and private health care services. Working with groups like HE&RT, HHCPC continued to close the gap between Western health care providers and Hmong patients. In 2005, the coalition organized the “Strengthening Hmong Health in the Twenty-First Century” conference at the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH). The event targeted health care professionals who work with the Hmong community. In 2008, the coalition took part in the Sixth National Conference on Quality Health Care for Culturally Diverse Populations. A second conference at the MDH, “Understanding Contemporary Hmong Culture, Traditions and Spirituality for Better Health,” followed in 2010. Like the first, its goal was to educate health and human services workers who serve the Hmong in Minnesota. Since 2008, HHCPC has been active in multiple media outlets. Health-related shows advocating healthy living reach listeners through KFAI and KFXN (Hmong Radio AM 690). In 2011, HHCPC launched Operation Free Flu Shot. The program— a partnership between the Minnesota Immunization Networking Initiative, the Open Cities Health Center, St. Paul–Ramsey Public Health, and UCare Minnesota—offers free flu shots in high-traffic areas. HHCPC held the second Operation Free Flu Shot in 2012. It served patients at seven different sites: four metro-area churches, the Hmong New Year celebration, the Hmong Resource Fair, and the Hmong International Marketplace. In total, HHCPC vaccinated 902 people between three and one hundred years old. In 2014, HHCPC hosted its third conference, “Koj Puas Nyob Zoo / The State of Mental Health in the Hmong Community,” at St. Paul’s Wilder Foundation. In 2015, HHCPC members and volunteers are leaders and experts in the public health field. They include doctors, nurses, consultants, educators, social workers, and interpreters. Their contributions have made the coalition a leader among health groups and a resource for Hmong and non-Hmong communities alike.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/HHCPC 1.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246087,"name":"Health and Medicine","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/hmong-health-care-professionals-coalition"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Alice Gustava Smith (Sister Maris Stella) at Our Lady of Victory Chapel on the campus of the College of St. Catherine, c.1970.","author":[{"name":"Mary Jo Richardson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/mary-jo-richardson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"March 16, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Smith, Alice Gustava (Sister Maris Stella) (1899–1987)","postbody":"Alice Gustava Smith, better known by her students and readers as Sister Maris Stella, taught English at the College of St. Catherine (now St. Catherine University) in St. Paul for nearly ...","searchtext":"Alice Gustava Smith, better known by her students and readers as Sister Maris Stella, taught English at the College of St. Catherine (now St. Catherine University) in St. Paul for nearly fifty years. During that time she also published books of verse that built her reputation as a skilled and spiritual poet. Smith was born in Alton, Iowa, in 1899. During her junior year in high school she moved to St. Paul to attend Derham Hall High School. At that time, Derham Hall was located on the campus of the College of St. Catherine. Smith graduated from Derham Hall in 1918. Two years later she entered the novitiate of the Sisters of St. Joseph and took the name Sister Maris Stella. In 1924 she received her undergraduate degree from the College of St. Catherine with majors in English and music. Shortly after receiving her degree, she became a faculty member of the college. Sister Maris Stella’s career took off when she sailed to England and earned her master’s degree in English at the University of Oxford. Soon after returning from Europe she became a star in the English Department at St. Catherine’s. She loved teaching and became a popular creative writing teacher as well as a poet-in-residence. In 1939, Sister Maris Stella published her first volume of poetry, Here Only a Dove. During the 1940s she continued to write poetry for magazines. The English poet and novelist Alfred Noyes included a dozen of her poems in The Golden Book of Catholic Poetry, an anthology he edited in 1946. By the end of the decade, Sister Maris Stella had published her second volume of poetry, Frost for St. Bridget. A nature lover, she linked the Irish St. Bridget with the frost in bleak trees, where, as she wrote in one poem, “Under the moon the orchards bloomed with hoarfrost, the white hills lay pale.” During this poetically creative period, Sister Maris Stella continued to teach English at the College of St. Catherine. For almost twenty years she also served as chairperson of the school’s English Department. She enjoyed teaching literature, the history of the language, and, especially, creative writing. With such a busy schedule, she found less and less time to write her own poetry. Then, in the early 1950s, the poet, novelist, and memoirist May Sarton visited the college as a Phi Beta Kappa lecturer. After Sarton returned home, she started a fellowship program for writers like Sister Maris Stella who had little time to travel and write. Sarton believed that writers often suffered from “divine discontent” when they lacked time for creative work. Sister Maris Stella was surprised and pleased to receive a grant that allowed her to participate in Sarton’s program during the 1958–1959 academic year. She traveled to the Southwest, where she wrote poetry in a desert landscape markedly different from Minnesota’s. Several of these new poems were later published by North Central Publishing Company in a special Christmas edition. Another highlight in Sister Maris Stella’s career was a collaboration with Paul Fetler, a music professor and composer from the University of Minnesota. Fetler wrote a cantata inspired by her poem “The Veil and the Rock.” The first performance of the cantata was held at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. After serving in the English Department at St. Catherine’s for close to fifty years, Sister Maris Stella retired from active teaching in May 1971. By then, she had returned to using her birth name, Alice Gustava Smith. It was under this name that St. Catherine’s Alumnae Association published her Collected Poems in 1982. The book included several new poems as well as poetry selected from earlier volumes. Sister Alice died in 1987. Although she suffered from ill health toward the end of her life, she is remembered for her acceptance of aging and her spiritual outlook on life. Her colleagues often quoted her poem “Joseph of Dreams,” which includes the line, “in that last hour be a great light.” They agreed she herself was a great light for others, especially young women writers, for whom she was a strong guide.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Sister-Alice-Smith-at-Our-Lady-of-Victory-Chapel-St-Cates.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056210,"name":"Education","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246089,"name":"Religion and Belief","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/smith-alice-gustava-sister-maris-stella-1899-1987"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of residents of the Jewish Sheltering Home for Children in Minneapolis, c.1925.","author":[{"name":"Laura Weber","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/laura-weber"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"March 09, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Jewish Sheltering Home for Children, Minneapolis","postbody":"Orthodox Jews concerned about Jewish children who were cared for in non-Jewish foster homes founded the Jewish Sheltering Home for Children in North Minneapolis in 1918. The founders felt ...","searchtext":"Orthodox Jews concerned about Jewish children who were cared for in non-Jewish foster homes founded the Jewish Sheltering Home for Children in North Minneapolis in 1918. The founders felt that such children would become estranged from their religion and culture. The home they organized functioned as a Jewish institution through the early 1960s. Rabbi and Mrs. Louis Seltzer of Sharei Zedeck Synagogue led the group that incorporated the home in November 1918. They purchased a twenty-bedroom, five-bathroom Victorian house at 1704 Tenth Avenue North. (Tenth Avenue was soon renamed Oak Park Avenue.) The house stood on a five-lot corner parcel. In January 1919, eighteen Jewish children were gathered from foster homes and moved into the house. Families in crisis could place their children in the home for periods ranging from a few weeks to a few years. Adoptions were arranged for those whose parents had died in the influenza epidemic of 1918. A report from the 1920s classified the children as motherless; fatherless; with parents who were sick or in institutions such as the Glen Lake tuberculosis sanitarium; or with working mothers who were unable to care for them. In August 1921, forty-two children lived in the home—the legal limit. The need for a new facility was clear. The Sheltering Home Women’s Auxiliary led a fundraising campaign that culminated in the dedication of a new building in 1934. The three-story, red brick building was designed by the architectural firm Liebenberg and Kaplan. It was located across the street from the site where the Emanuel Cohen Center (also designed by Liebenberg and Kaplan) was built six years later in a similar Georgian style. Various Jewish women’s organizations, synagogues, and fraternal groups aided the Sheltering Home’s board of directors. They provided for the religious, academic, personal, and social needs of the children. After 1930, the Jewish Federation provided financial support. The Sheltering Home housed twenty-four children from seven families in 1936. Two years later, the number of children was down to ten, ages four to fourteen years, also from seven families. Most of the thirteen children who were discharged from late 1937 to early 1938 went home to their parents. For this reason, a 1938 survey of social and health work in Minneapolis recommended that the home should close and place children in need with relatives or in boarding houses. This did not happen for over twenty years. The Sheltering Home changed its name to Oak Park Home in 1940. A brochure from that year stated, “Our style Home [sic] offers the best possible facilities for a positive group family life without sacrificing the individuality of the child.” It stressed that children were given an Orthodox Jewish upbringing. Older children participated in activities at the Emmanuel Cohen Center across the street. People who stayed at the Sheltering Home as children later recalled being cared for in a stable atmosphere. They stayed connected to their families and the larger Jewish community. Oak Park Home staff urged former residents to continue to think of the home as a place they could visit and come to for guidance if needed. The Sheltering Home assisted refugee children waiting to be adopted after World War II. In the 1950s, however, trends in social welfare evolved. Social service agencies again preferred foster home care to institutional group settings. In 1964, the Oak Park Home ceased operations as a sheltering home for Jewish children. For a brief time it housed a Jewish-sponsored treatment center for “emotionally disturbed children.” In 1997, the building on Oak Park Avenue became the home of another organization that served youth in need of shelter: Avenues for Homeless Youth. According to a 2009–2010 annual report, the Minneapolis Jewish Federation and Adath Jeshurun Congregation were among its financial supporters. As of 2015, Avenues for Homeless Youth was located in the same building.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/pf071207.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246089,"name":"Religion and Belief","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/jewish-sheltering-home-children-minneapolis"},{"alt":"Color image of Minnesota state senator Mee Moua speaks at a rally on October 30, 2008, in support of Barack Obama, Al Franken, and other Democratic candidates.","author":[{"name":"Tiffany Vang","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/tiffany-vang"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"March 05, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"January 2002","name":"Election of Mee Moua to the Minnesota Senate, 2002","postbody":"In a special state senate election held in January of 2002, Mee Moua became the first Asian woman chosen to serve in the Minnesota Legislature and the first Hmong American elected to any ...","searchtext":"In a special state senate election held in January of 2002, Mee Moua became the first Asian woman chosen to serve in the Minnesota Legislature and the first Hmong American elected to any state legislature. Her win in St. Paul’s District 67 made national news and had lasting political and cultural impacts on the Hmong community. Randy Kelly’s successful run for St. Paul mayor in November 2001 left a Senate seat open in District 67. The ethnically diverse East Side district had a history of supporting the Democratic–Farmer–Labor party (DFL). A DFL convention was scheduled for January 15, 2002, and a special election for January 29, 2002. The five DFL candidates vying for the seat had less than two months to organize their campaigns. Tim Mahoney, a state representative and party favorite, was endorsed by Kelly. Most analysts predicted that he would win the primary. Moua, a St. Paul lawyer, announced her intention to run in late November. With about a month remaining before the primary, Moua needed to mount an aggressive and expansive campaign that would garner her support as a first-time candidate. Moua stood out from the field because of her refugee background. Born in Laos in 1969, she moved to the U.S. with her family in 1978 after the Vietnam War. She grew up in Wisconsin, where she experienced poverty and discrimination living in a mostly white neighborhood. While attending Brown University, Moua became a passionate activist on campus, which led her to pursue a political career. She earned a master’s degree in public policy at the University of Texas in 1995 and a law degree from the University of Minnesota in 1997. Prior to her run for Senate, Moua worked as an attorney and a community organizer in St. Paul. Moua’s 2002 campaign platform focused on education, housing, the economy, and public safety. With her background and experience, she wanted to reach out to the most marginalized people in her precinct. Disadvantaged groups, she reasoned, were often the most distant from politics. First-time and nontraditional voters, most of whom were low-income and recent immigrants, became the targets of her outreach. Even as a novice candidate, Moua knew firsthand how to run an effective campaign. In 1995 she had helped run her uncle Neal Thao’s successful bid for St. Paul School Board. As her 2002 race progressed, mentors like Senator Paul Wellstone offered key advice. At first, Hmong clan leaders hesitated to endorse Moua. Many were new to U.S. politics and unsure of her prospects. Eventually, however, they came together to support her. Moua also received strong backing from Progressive Minnesota. The political group focused on community organizing, citizen education, student advocacy, and feminist issues. With just weeks left before the DFL convention, young Hmong professionals contributed by serving as volunteers and campaign staff. They used their connections to build a strong voter base and reach out to residents in East Side St. Paul. By connecting with Hmong real estate agents, Moua’s staff was able to get valuable information on Hmong home ownership in District 67. In just two months, Moua’s 250 volunteers visited every one of the twenty-seven thousand households in the district three times. Through canvassing, they were able to register over five hundred first-time voters. At least three hundred of them were Hmong. On January 15, the day of the primary, Moua’s volunteers and staff provided Hmong translators. They also offered transportation to and from polling places. Although no candidate received the DFL’s endorsement, Moua obtained 1,751 votes (44.01%)—170 more than Mahoney. On January 29, the day of the special general election, Moua was elected by a margin of more than one thousand votes. She received a total of 3,055 (51.19%). Her Republican opponent, Greg Copeland, received 1,738. Independence Party candidate Jack Tomczak won 1,055. Moua’s victory broke barriers for Hmong women living within a patriarchal culture. It also signaled a change in mentality about their political participation. By winning the Senate seat, Moua increased the visibility of Hmong women and of Hmong people throughout Minnesota.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Mee_Moua_Oct_30_2008.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/election-mee-moua-minnesota-senate-2002"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of the exterior of the Minneapolis Talmud Torah at 1616 Queen Avenue North in Minneapolis, 1951. Photograph by the Minneapolis Star Journal Tribune.","author":[{"name":"Laura Weber","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/laura-weber"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"March 02, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Talmud Torah, Minneapolis","postbody":"For the first half of the twentieth century, the Talmud Torah of Minneapolis had two functions. First, it was a religious school for Jewish youth. Second, it was a community hub. When ...","searchtext":"For the first half of the twentieth century, the Talmud Torah of Minneapolis had two functions. First, it was a religious school for Jewish youth. Second, it was a community hub. When Minneapolis Jews moved to the suburbs after World War II, the Talmud Torah returned to its original educational purpose. The Minneapolis Talmud Torah evolved from the Hebrew Free School, founded in 1894 with twelve students. It first met in a vacant butcher shop at 613 Fifth Street North. A few years later, the school moved into the vestry rooms at Kenesseth Israel synagogue. The Free School was a cheder, an Old-World-style school for boys. In 1911, it moved to its own building at 808 Basset Place. George Gordon, a twenty-year-old immigrant teacher who later became a physician, instigated the move. He could see that the chaotic cheder system, with its ungraded classes and untrained teachers, was not meeting the needs of American Jewish youth. With community support, Gordon transformed the school. He created a modern, coeducational curriculum using trained teachers. Yiddish was abandoned as the teaching language in favor of Hebrew. Students learned about Jewish heritage and customs as well as religious foundations. The school was renamed Talmud Torah of Minneapolis in 1913, and a fund drive for a new building began the following year. The new site on the corner of Eighth Street and Fremont Avenue North was dedicated in 1915. In 1920, the Talmud Torah of Minneapolis took over the South Side Talmud Torah. The Fremont Avenue Talmud Torah was located between the older Sumner Field neighborhood and the newer (and more prosperous) Homewood neighborhood. Like the public schools in the area, the Talmud Torah served as a meeting ground for children from all strata of the North Side||s Jewish community. Besides classrooms and a library, the building eventually included a swimming pool, an auditorium, and meeting rooms. Two important Jewish institutions grew out of the Talmud Torah in the 1920s. The first was the Emmanuel Cohen Center, successor to the Talmud Torah Social Service department. The second was Beth El Synagogue, an outgrowth of the Talmud Torah’s Young People’s Congregation. Children’s services continued to be held at Talmud Torah even after the founding of Beth El in 1921. Talmud Torah enrollment averaged between seven and eight hundred in the 1930s. By this time there was a small Orthodox alternative to the Talmud Torah located on Twelfth Street and Logan Avenue North. In the 1940s, this school evolved into the Torah Academy, an Orthodox parochial school. It was still in existence as of 2015. In 1948, 60 percent of Minneapolis’s roughly twenty-three thousand Jews lived on the North Side. The percentage soon began to decline. Still, in 1951, the Talmud Torah built a new building in the Homewood neighborhood to replace the Fremont Avenue branch. It was named in memory of George Gordon, who had died in 1949. Gordon had given up his medical practice to serve full time as Talmud Torah director from 1928 until 1939. The South Side branch continued its operations in Adath Jeshurun Congregation’s education wing. In 1959, only 38 percent of the Minneapolis Jewish population remained on the North Side. About 28 percent lived in South Minneapolis with an equal number in St. Louis Park. That year, the Talmud Torah opened a St. Louis Park branch at 8200 West Thirty-Third Street. A fleet of buses was purchased in 1961 to transport children of the dispersed community among the three branches. In 1967, the Talmud Torah sold 1616 Queen to the Minneapolis School Board. The building retained the name of George J. Gordon, who had also been a champion of public school education. In 1969, the Talmud Torah combined all its operations at the St. Louis Park location. By 1971, only 2 percent (424 persons) of Minneapolis’s 21,600 Jews lived in North Minneapolis. Talmud Torah enrollment during the baby boom era peaked at 1,200. Between 1993 and 1995, 831 students were enrolled. Coming full circle, in 2003 the school moved into a new addition of the Sabes Jewish Community Center, which had originated as a department of the Talmud Torah. In 2014, most of its students come from families affiliated the three Minneapolis-area Conservative synagogues, Adath Jeshurun, Beth El, and Sharei Chesed.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/MH5.9 MP5.2 p128.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246089,"name":"Religion and Belief","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/talmud-torah-minneapolis"},{"alt":"Sketch of Pierre-Esprit Radisson, undated.","author":[{"name":"Thomas K. Backerud","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/thomas-k-backerud"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"February 23, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186625246048,"name":"1585–1763 (Colonization)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Radisson, Pierre Esprit (1636/1640–1710)","postbody":"Pierre Esprit Radisson’s 1659 expedition to Lake Superior and beyond opened a door to the North American fur trade. Through it, he earned a reputation as a courageous explorer and a cunning ...","searchtext":"Pierre Esprit Radisson’s 1659 expedition to Lake Superior and beyond opened a door to the North American fur trade. Through it, he earned a reputation as a courageous explorer and a cunning merchant. In the 2010s he is remembered as one of the first Europeans to travel to what became the state of Minnesota. Radisson was likely born in Avignon, France, between 1636 and 1640. Little is known about his early life. He arrived in New France, Canada, as a young man, around 1651. Shortly after his arrival in New France, Radisson was captured and adopted by a group of Mohawk Indians. He gained a familiarity with Iroquois language and culture that served him well on his later voyages. He escaped the Mohawk in 1653 and traveled to Fort Orange in what is now Albany, New York. After a short voyage to Europe, Radisson returned to Trois-Rivières, New France, in 1654. While there he first met his brother-in-law, Medard Chouart, Sieur Des Groseilliers. Des Groseilliers explored the Great Lakes region from 1654 to 1656. He returned with many furs and the promise of future riches. In August 1659, Radisson departed Trois-Rivières with Des Groseilliers. The duo set out for Lake Superior with thirty Frenchmen and a large company of Huron and Ottawa Indians. They took the Ottawa River to Lake Huron and were attacked by Iroquois along the way. Many of their French counterparts returned to New France out of fear. Radisson and Des Groseilliers continued to Chequamegon Bay in present-day Wisconsin, where they spent the winter. In spring 1660, Radisson and his party explored Lake Superior and parts of what are now Wisconsin and Minnesota. He attended a Feast of the Dead at or near the present-day Lac Courte Oreilles Reservation that brought together Huron, Ottawa, and other Native people, including Ojibwe and Dakota. After the feast, Radisson spent six weeks with the Dakota at a site to the southwest—probably near Lake Mille Lacs. He recorded his interactions in a journal, creating one of the first written accounts of Dakota customs. His notes describe a weeping ritual and the ceremonial use of pipes made out of sacred red pipestone, or calumet. Radisson tried to improve relations between the Dakota and the Cree. Stability in the region was essential for future commerce. Throughout the expedition, he learned about local geography from the Native people he met and became intrigued by the potential of the Hudson Bay region for fur trading. Radisson and Des Groseilliers returned to New France in 1660. They expected a grand welcome when they arrived in Montreal. Instead, they were arrested for unlicensed trading. The Company of New France seized most of their furs. A subsequent appeal in France was denied. The disgruntled traders traveled to England in 1666 to attract investors for a Hudson Bay expedition. Prince Rupert of the Rhine financed an expedition in 1668 and provided them with two ships. Radisson’s ship, the Eaglet, was forced back to England by a storm. Des Groseilliers made the voyage to Hudson Bay and established Fort Charles on the Rupert River. He returned to England with a wealth of furs. The Hudson’s Bay Company was chartered in 1670 by England’s King Charles II. The company employed Radisson and Des Groseilliers as guides to the Hudson Bay region until 1675. Des Groseilliers returned to New France in 1676. In 1681 Radisson joined Charles Aubert de La Chesnaye on an expedition to take control of Port Nelson in the Hudson Bay region. They captured the area for France in 1682 and seized its English occupants. Radisson befriended the English on the Nelson River and gave them provisions. Radisson returned to England rather than to New France. He ended his association with Des Groseilliers in 1684. Des Groseilliers refused to violate his French allegiance and returned to Trois-Rivières in 1698. Radisson went back to work for the Hudson’s Bay Company as superintendent of trade at Port Nelson. The company also employed his nephew Jean Baptiste Groseilliers. Radisson was released from the service of the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1687. He later took the company to English court for withheld wages and won his suit. He spent the rest of his life in London and died in 1710 at the age of seventy-four.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Pierre-Esprit_Radisson.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056200,"name":"Business and Industry","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/radisson-pierre-esprit-16361640-1710"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Clarence Wigington, c.1940s.","author":[{"name":"Paul Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/paul-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"February 17, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Wigington, Clarence (1883–1967)","postbody":"Clarence Wigington, the nation’s first African American municipal architect, served as lead architect in over ninety St. Paul city projects. His legacy in brick and stone has lasted well ...","searchtext":"Clarence Wigington, the nation’s first African American municipal architect, served as lead architect in over ninety St. Paul city projects. His legacy in brick and stone has lasted well into the twenty-first century. He designed both the enduring (schools, fire stations, park buildings) and the ephemeral (five Winter Carnival ice palaces). There are at most four architects whose names are associated with St. Paul and widely remembered: Cass Gilbert for the Minnesota State Capitol; Emmanuel Masqueray for the St. Paul Cathedral; Clarence Johnston Sr. for many Summit Avenue and Cathedral Hill mansions; and Clarence W. Wigington. Though Wigington is the least accomplished of the four, he has three buildings on the National Register of Historic Places. He is also the only architect to have a St. Paul building named after him. Born in Lawrence, Kansas, in 1883, Clarence “Cap” Wigington grew up in Omaha. As a teenager he won three first-place certificates in drawing at the Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition of 1899—Omaha’s World’s Fair. This may have attracted the attention of Thomas R. Kimball, a distinguished Omaha architect and chief architect of the Exposition. When Wigington graduated from high school in 1902, Kimball hired him. Wigington spent six years with Kimball as a draftsman, then began a long stretch of searching for his own professional identity. He designed a simple residence in Omaha—his first commission—and a potato chip factory in Sheridan, Wyoming. He moved to Sheridan and managed the factory until it failed. Back in Omaha in 1912–1914 and working on his own, he designed houses, apartments, academic buildings, and the Zion Baptist Church. In 1914 he moved to St. Paul. Wigington’s lack of formal training—he never got a degree or certification in architecture— probably held him back, but he did have skills. In 1915, at the urging of his wife, Viola, he took a qualifying exam as a senior draftsman in the then-new office of St. Paul City Architect. He received the highest score in his cohort of eight. He then began a city career that spanned, with occasional breaks, thirty-four years. Upon taking the position of “senior architectural draftsman” in November 1915, Wigington became the first African American municipal architect in the nation. The work did not offer much opportunity for imagination or creativity. City government was tight-fisted in the teens and twenties, and then came the Depression. Wigington had to take the assignments he was given. Schools, fire stations, and park buildings marked the top of the line. He also did park benches, toboggan slides, and water fountains. He took two breaks from the city, in 1916 and 1922, to go out on his own, but neither lasted long. Wigington emerged as a leader of St. Paul’s African American community during World War I. In 1917 he successfully petitioned Governor J.A.A. Burnquist to form a “colored” battalion of the Minnesota Home Guard. His appointment as a captain earned him the nickname “Cap”. The same Depression that suppressed local government spending encouraged federal spending that funded the best work of Wigington’s career. The Wigington designs most enjoyed by St. Paulites in the early twenty-first century were all WPA (Works Progress Administration) projects. They include the Hamline and Minnehaha playground buildings, Harriet Island Pavilion (since renamed the Clarence W. Wigington Pavilion), and the Highland Park Water Tower. Both pavilions were added to the National Register of Historic Places. The third of Wigington’s National Register buildings is the Holman Field administration building. They have in common a restrained moderne style and sandy-colored Kasota limestone. Wigington’s enduring creations conceal his imaginative side. He let that part of himself show much more in his ephemeral works: the St. Paul Winter Carnival ice palaces of the late 1930s and 1940s. Ice palaces had been essential features of the early, exuberant Winter Carnivals but had gone out of fashion during the 1920s and 1930s. The WPA brought them back starting in 1937. Wigington’s career wound down after World War II. He retired from the city in 1949 but kept a private practice going in St. Paul and Los Angeles, where he lived, with his wife Viola, from 1949 to 1958. They returned to St. Paul in 1958, then moved in 1963 to be with their daughter Muriel. Clarence Wigington died on July 7, 1967.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/por 30845 r2.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056216,"name":"African Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/wigington-clarence-1883-1967"},{"alt":"Color image of Hmong youth participate in Art Saves Us: Beyond the Noise, collaboratively creating original music in the Center for Hmong Arts & Culture’s (CHAT’s) St. Paul studio, May, 2013.","author":[{"name":"Fres Thao","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/fres-thao"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"February 13, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Center for Hmong Arts & Talent (CHAT)","postbody":"The Center for Hmong Arts & Talent (CHAT) is an arts advocacy group based in St. Paul’s Frogtown neighborhood. Since its inception in 1998, CHAT has transformed into a social justice ...","searchtext":"The Center for Hmong Arts & Talent (CHAT) is an arts advocacy group based in St. Paul’s Frogtown neighborhood. Since its inception in 1998, CHAT has transformed into a social justice arts organization that engages with local and national Hmong communities. In addition to providing diverse arts-based programs, CHAT uses innovative strategies to address social issues affecting Hmong Americans. In the late 1980s, playwright Jaime Meyer worked with Hmong youth to produce “Hmong Tapestry: Voices from the Cloth”. In 1990, Meyer and director Nkauj’lis Lyfoung formed Pom Siab Hmoob Theatre (PSHT). It was the first Hmong theater company in the world. Between 1990 and 1997, PSHT wrote and produced eight successful plays in St. Paul. Of these, five were community-based and three were professionally staged. In 1998, PSHT members decided to expand the group’s focus beyond theater arts in order to serve more Hmong artists. They changed its name to the Center for Hmong Arts & Talent (CHAT). Their new work crossed multiple art genres, making CHAT the first and only multidisciplinary Hmong arts organization in the U.S. The CHAT acronym was inspired by the popularity of the internet chat rooms of the late 1990s. In the early 2000s, CHAT debuted and refined several of its central initiatives. In the summer of 2001, it organized the first-ever Hmong Arts & Music Festival at St. Paul’s Western Sculpture Park. In the fall, CHAT’s youth program extended its reach by taking arts instruction into St. Paul’s federal housing projects. The program was called Art Saves Us—in part because several core CHAT artists were raised in the projects, and art literally saved their lives. In 2002, CHAT’s Voice Your Mind open mic event, eventually rebranded Innovative Community Elevation (ICE) Open Mic, was created. The program took place at venues such as Hmong ABC, Jasmine Teashop, and Metro State University. It aimed to provide a supportive environment for artistic development and live performance. CHAT’s involvement in technology and multimedia led to production efforts in music and film. It produced multiple videos and music compilations in the mid-2000s, including Hmongtopia: All About ABC’s (2006) and The H Project (2005), a recording that raised awareness of the Hmong genocide in Laos. In 2006, as a result of Hmong artists’ increasing interest in the fashion industry, CHAT created the Fresh Traditions Fashion Show and program. This one-of-a-kind fashion event offered its all-Hmong roster of designers complete creative control. It also, however, presented them with a challenge: creating an outfit that incorporated fabrics and colors used in traditional Hmong clothing. Other CHAT programs and events launched during this period included CHAT Radio, which aired on KFAI between 2006 and 2010. The show provided information on the latest community arts news and showcased Hmong artists. Dawning Dab Neeg Theatre (DDNT) was a theatre program that ran from 2007 until 2009. In 2007 alone, DDNT produced the collectively created Hmong-land; staged May Lee Yang’s Sia(b); and toured Stir-Fried Pop Culture to schools and colleges. In the fall of 2008 an influx of youth using the CHAT space as a creative hub prompted the creation of a new youth initiative. The Youth Leadership Group (YLG) targeted ages 15–19. The intense, year-long program used art as a vehicle to foster leadership skills and heighten students’ expectations for success after high school. Youth met weekly to discuss critical issues affecting the Hmong community, plan arts campaigns, and present them to the public. In 2014, the Hmong Arts & Music Festival began taking place during the July 4 weekend within Lao Family Community of Minnesota’s Hmong Freedom Celebration and Sports Festival. In that year, the event drew over fifteen thousand attendees. In 2015, many of CHAT’s programs continue to enrich the St. Paul arts scene, as well as the Hmong and immigrant/refugee communities. The Youth Leadership Group has produced five original theater pieces since its creation. As of 2015, it organizes CHAT’s quarterly Friday Night Lights open mic. Art Saves Us continues to provide free transportation and arts instruction to nearly two hundred youth annually. And Fresh Traditions is still the only U.S. fashion show to feature Hmong designers exclusively.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Art Saves Us.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056208,"name":"Arts","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/center-hmong-arts-talent-chat"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of attendees of the Semi-Annual Conference of the Northwestern District Organization Committee of the Workmen||s Circle, held in St. Paul on September 1, 1918.","author":[{"name":"Laura Weber","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/laura-weber"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"February 09, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Labor Lyceum and Workmen’s Circle","postbody":"A small, committed group of Jewish immigrants raised the funds needed to build the Labor Lyceum at 1426 Sixth Avenue North in Minneapolis in 1915. The two-story brick and stucco building ...","searchtext":"A small, committed group of Jewish immigrants raised the funds needed to build the Labor Lyceum at 1426 Sixth Avenue North in Minneapolis in 1915. The two-story brick and stucco building was a hub for radical Jewish cultural, political, and social activities for the next thirty-five years. The first Eastern European Jewish immigrants to Minnesota were working-class wage earners. In 1912, more than half were factory workers. Most followed traditional religious ways, but a minority were secular and radical. These Jews felt socialism was the means to create a just and equal society. They also wished to maintain a vibrant Jewish cultural life. Speaking Yiddish was a central part of their identity. Years later, one Jewish man recalled his experience arriving in Minneapolis as an immigrant in 1906. He found hundreds of other young men and women like himself, secular Yiddish speakers, “imbued with the spirit of socialism.” They put on Yiddish plays at the Finnish Hall on Glenwood Avenue and started a Yiddish library in 1907. The library was in Kistler’s Hall at Sixth Street and Lyndale Avenue North in the heart of the North Side neighborhood. Local branches of a national group, the Workmen’s Circle (also known by its Yiddish name, Arbeiter Ring), became a primary focus of such socialist activity. The group was founded in 1900 in New York. It was (and remains, in 2015) dedicated to Yiddish culture, trade unionism, and mutual aid. Chapters of the Workmen’s Circle formed in Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Duluth in 1910 and 1911. When the Workmen’s Circle raised the $35,000 needed to build the Labor Lyceum from allies around the state, it was at the height of its influence. The building had facilities to hold mass meetings and social events. Many groups rented space in the building. The rents provided a major source of the Workmen’s Circle budget. From 1915 to 1920, the Labor Lyceum maintained a Yiddish school for children. Sixty children were enrolled at its peak. A second attempt to establish a Yiddish school in 1936 began with forty-five children. Enrollment dropped by half within a few years. Most North Side immigrants and their children wanted to speak English, not Yiddish, in their daily lives. A 1936 Jewish communal survey reported that membership of all organizations that used the Labor Lyceum as their headquarters was close to 1,200. The three Workmen’s Circle branches had about 150 total members. The Jewish population of Minneapolis at the time numbered between sixteen thousand and twenty thousand. Power struggles in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s split the Workmen’s Circle into two camps. The socialists believed in change through established institutions. Others believed in the Soviet brand of communism under Joseph Stalin. Long-standing friendships were tested. Shouting matches and character attacks broke out in the halls of the Labor Lyceum. The arguments led to a 1937 split in the Duluth Workmen’s Circle chapter; the two branches reunited in 1960. In 1938, the Labor Lyceum building was among those moved when Sixth Avenue North was expanded to create Floyd B. Olson Memorial Highway. The building’s new address was 1800 Olson Highway, about four blocks west of its original location. The Labor Lyceum celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary in 1940. Membership in the three Workmen’s Circle chapters totaled 129. The Ladies’ Auxiliary had about thirty-five members. National membership was about seventy-five thousand. Minneapolis mayor Hubert Humphrey was the keynote speaker for the Lyceum’s thirtieth anniversary celebration in 1945. In 1953, the Workmen’s Circle moved to a new, smaller building at 2418 Plymouth Avenue. In 1966, the “Workmen’s Circle Center Hall” moved a few doors down the street to 2428 Plymouth. It remained there for three years. After that, it disappeared from the city directory. In industrial Duluth, Workmen’s Circle membership reached a peak of about three hundred in the 1930s. In 1961, the group celebrated its fiftieth anniversary. The Northern District of the national Workmen’s Circle held its annual conference in Duluth that year in their honor. The Duluth chapter had sixteen members in 1985. Several factors led to the demise of the Workmen’s Circle in Minnesota. These included the end of unrestricted immigration to the U.S. in 1924, the decline of the Jewish garment industry in Minneapolis, and the movement of the Jewish community into the middle class after World War II.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/workmens_circle_conference_1918.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056210,"name":"Education","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056211,"name":"Immigration","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246055,"name":"Labor","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246089,"name":"Religion and Belief","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/labor-lyceum-and-workmen-s-circle"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of embers of Company A, Sixteenth Battalion of the Minnesota Home Guard, c.1918.","author":[{"name":"Peter J. DeCarlo","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/peter-j-decarlo"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"February 02, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Sixteenth Battalion, Minnesota Home Guard","postbody":"During World War I, African American Minnesotans wanted to serve their state and their nation. Historically, however, the U.S. military had been racist in its recruiting. It allowed African ...","searchtext":"During World War I, African American Minnesotans wanted to serve their state and their nation. Historically, however, the U.S. military had been racist in its recruiting. It allowed African Americans to serve only in segregated units. Facing this institutional racism, the African American community of Minnesota asked Governor J.A.A. Burnquist to form an all-African American battalion of the Minnesota Home Guard. The Sixteenth Battalion became the first Minnesota-recruited African American military unit in state history. When the Minnesota National Guard was federalized in the spring of 1917, the state was left without any military organization. To defend the home front the Minnesota Commission of Public Safety created the Minnesota Home Guard. The Home Guard existed for the duration of World War I. Units performed civilian and military duties. Minnesota’s Home Guard units followed the racist recruiting policies of the U.S. military. Still, African American men saw the Home Guard as an opportunity. A leader in the community named Clarence Wigington petitioned Governor Burnquist to form an all-African American battalion of the Home Guard. In the racist climate that prevailed, a “separate but equal” unit was the most feasible option. On April 20, 1918, nearly a year after the creation of the Home Guard, the all-African American Sixteenth Battalion was ordered to form. Before this order was received, companies A and B formed in St. Paul. Led by Wigington, African American men met at the old state capitol building. Wigington gave an address; afterward, the men were sworn in. Wigington became captain of Company A. Orrington C. Hall led Company B. On April 26, 1918, companies C and D formed in Minneapolis and were sworn in at city hall. Gale C. Hilyer led Company C and Charles Sumner Smith captained Company D. A medical corps headed by Dr. Valdo Turner formed. About five hundred men enlisted in the battalion overall, with Major Jose H. Sherwood in command. The Sixteenth also had a band and drum corps. The band was led by Professor William H. Howard and the drum corps by Charles Miller. The officers of the Sixteenth were all men of color. Due to the poor treatment they received when trying to enlist, the men of the battalion demanded that their officers be of their own race. The Adjutant General’s office agreed. As the companies formed some whites criticized the state government for allowing African Americans to become officers. After its formation the battalion became active. Spanish American War veterans and ex-regulars ensured the battalion was well drilled. Each company began a schedule of drilling every week. On Memorial Day in 1918 it marched in parades alongside all white Home Guard units in both Minneapolis and St. Paul. The men did not have uniforms at the time but wore white gloves. According to newspaper accounts, the battalion received special applause from the crowd. The African American community of the Twin Cities embraced the battalion. There were patriotic rallies and parades and the battalion band became popular. It played at community events, dances, and battalion drills. The Sixteenth escorted African American draftees to the train station. The battalion also provided a line of communication between the state government and the African American community. During the summer of 1918 the battalion experienced infighting. Some men felt they should be in charge because they had military experience, which most of the officers lacked. Many expressed a desire to leave the unit. Discipline was not maintained. Attendance suffered, but the battalion continued to host events. When World War I ended, Home Guard units began to muster out. The Sixteenth continued to operate. Its band played concerts as late as February 1919. Determined to continue serving, leaders of the battalion pushed for the unit to be inducted into the Minnesota National Guard. On April 25, 1919, the Minnesota Legislature approved the formation of a separate battalion in addition to units of the Minnesota National Guard. This new unit was composed of the Sixteenth Battalion and was officially designated the First Infantry Battalion of the Minnesota Militia. Some African American veterans returning from overseas joined the new unit. The African American men of this unit were not officially part of the Minnesota National Guard. Like the Sixteenth, it was a segregated unit.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/CapCloseUp.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056216,"name":"African Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/sixteenth-battalion-minnesota-home-guard"},{"alt":"Color image of the of St. Paul Cathedral from John Ireland Blvd. Photograph by Wikimedia Commons user McGhiever, 2012.","author":[{"name":"Paul Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/paul-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"January 26, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Cathedral of St. Paul","postbody":"There have been four Roman Catholic cathedrals in St. Paul. The first three were built between 1841 and 1858. The fourth, and the most architecturally distinctive, opened in 1915. Since ...","searchtext":"There have been four Roman Catholic cathedrals in St. Paul. The first three were built between 1841 and 1858. The fourth, and the most architecturally distinctive, opened in 1915. Since then, no building in the Twin Cities has approached it in ambition or magnificence. The massive granite cathedral at the foot of Summit and Selby Avenues is the fourth in the history of the archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis. The first was Father Lucien Galtier’s log-cabin Chapel of St. Paul, elevated to the status of cathedral with the 1851 arrival of Bishop Joseph Cretin. A three-floor brick building succeeded it later in 1851; a bigger one in stone followed in 1856. Both stood in downtown St. Paul. Between 1850 and 1900 St. Paul grew from a village to a city of over 160,000. Many of the new citizens were Roman Catholics, mostly of German and Irish origin. In 1904 Archbishop John Ireland (1838–1918), a potato-famine Irish immigrant and a protégé of Joseph Cretin’s, decided to build yet another cathedral. Ireland hired French architect Emmanuel Masqueray (1861–1917). Together they conceived a building with a grandeur rivaled only by Cass Gilbert’s state capitol, completed in 1905. The commanding site they chose sits on the edge of a bluff then called St. Anthony Hill. In a biblical context, it can be seen as permitting the House of God to look down, literally and symbolically, on moneychangers (as represented by downtown St. Paul) and Caesar (as represented by the state capitol). Construction began in 1906. The building opened, undecorated inside, in 1915. Masqueray died in 1917, Ireland a year later. The Boston firm of Maginnis and Walsh was hired in 1923 to complete the interior, a project that went on until 1940. The exterior is Rockville (Minnesota) granite topped by a copper dome 306 feet from the ground at its apex. Above the main, east-facing entry, a relief sculpture of Christ sending his apostles out to preach to the world reaches to the peak. It is flanked by statues of St. Peter and St. Paul designed by Leon Hermant of Chicago and carved by John Garratti of St. Paul. Its overall appearance is severe; the granite is gray, the dome’s copper oxidized to a cocoa brown. The interior, by contrast, abounds in color—marble, metalwork, stained glass, and painting. There are at least twenty-five varieties of marble on display from nine countries. Their colors range from radiant red (Rojo Alicante from Spain in the Sacred Heart Chapel) to deep green (Tinos from Greece in the vestibules) to a black flecked with gold (Portora from Italy in the baldachin columns.) The bronze screen behind the altar is worked in figures and patterns. All of the eleven chapels feature stained glass windows. Three enormous rose windows brighten the sanctuary; one of them portrays North American martyrs and North Woods wildlife. The rose windows are by Charles Connick, the grilles by Albert Atkins, and the altar and baldachin (altar cover) by Whitney Warren. An unusual feature of the cathedral is the Shrine of Nations: six chapels arrayed in a semicircle behind the altar, installed 1926–1928. These commemorate ethnic groups that contributed labor and money to the Cathedral project: Irish, French Canadian, Italian, German, and Slavic. A sixth, of St. Therese, represents other ethnic groups in general. Each contains a central statue of a patron saint, two flanking stained glass windows, and, in the floor, a circular slab of marble from the country. There are two large frescos by Mark Balma. One shows Bishop Cretin arriving by canoe in 1851, with the Chapel of St. Paul in the background. The other portrays Archbishop Ireland about to enter the cathedral for its first mass in spring of 1915. At each of the four corners of the main seating area stands a bigger-than-life statue of one of the four evangelists. The interior space is vast beneath the high dome. The main dome and the high ceiling over the altar are both highly decorated, adding to the variety of color and setting off the soft glow of the Mankato travertine walls and columns. A major renovation took place between 2001 and 2003. Workers repaired the exterior and completely re-sheathed the copper dome.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/640px-St_Paul_Cathedral_2012.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246089,"name":"Religion and Belief","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/cathedral-st-paul"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of the Minnesota Home Guard on parade in St. Paul, 1917.","author":[{"name":"Peter J. DeCarlo","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/peter-j-decarlo"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"January 20, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Minnesota Home Guard","postbody":"When the Minnesota National Guard was federalized in the spring of 1917, the state was left without any military organization. To defend the state’s resources, the Minnesota Commission of ...","searchtext":"When the Minnesota National Guard was federalized in the spring of 1917, the state was left without any military organization. To defend the state’s resources, the Minnesota Commission of Public Safety (MCPS) created the Minnesota Home Guard. The Home Guard existed for the duration of World War I, and units performed both civilian and military duties. The MCPS created the Home Guard on April 28, 1917, to ensure public safety and protect citizens’ lives and property. Unofficially, the Home Guard was created to enforce the MCPS’s orders, many of which infringed on the rights of citizens. Home Guard volunteers served for the duration of World War I. They were not paid unless they committed to extended active duty. Only men over the age of twenty-six were recruited. The Home Guard operated under the command of Minnesota Adjutant General Walter F. Rhinow and under the ultimate authority of Governor J.A.A. Burnquist. Guard volunteers were armed with some weapons from the federal government, but most procured arms from military academies in the state and their home communities. Uniforms were provided by Adjutant General Rhinow or were manufactured and paid for through fundraising. Officers purchased their own uniforms. These uniforms followed the U.S. regulation pattern. Eventually, twenty-three battalions exceeding seven thousand men were recruited. After petitioning the governor, African Americans formed the Sixteenth Battalion—the only battalion that allowed men of color to enlist. In 1918 the Home Guard was augmented by a Motor Corps. Though organized in a military fashion, the Motor Corps was not recognized by any government act. Members volunteered themselves and their vehicles to the state. They performed duties alongside the Home Guard and many considered them to be part of it. The Motor Corps numbered over 2,500 men in ten battalions. The Home Guard performed a number of basic duties during its existence. Units marched in parades and participated in patriotic gatherings. They provided honor guards at funerals, sold liberty bonds, and supported the Red Cross. Members of the Home Guard harvested crops and escorted enlisted men to train stations when they left to serve. A number of units conducted “slacker raids” in which they tracked down men who were not abiding by the laws of the draft. The largest of these took place in St. Paul, where over five hundred men were arrested. The Home Guard played an important role in disaster relief in 1918. On July 1, 1918, a tornado swept through the town of Tyler. General Rhinow commanded the relief effort, which was carried out by members of the Home Guard and National Guard. On October 12, 1918, a devastating fire destroyed thirty-eight communities in northeastern Minnesota. Units of the Home Guard from Duluth and the Iron Range fought the fire. Afterward they provided first aid and security and buried the dead. The MCPS employed the Home Guard as a de facto police force to quell labor disputes. Most famously, the Home Guard was used to break a strike of Twin City Rapid Transit workers in the winter of 1917. After dispersing a crowd of thousands, the Home Guard closed off six square blocks of downtown St. Paul. Most pro-labor advocates saw the Home Guard as a tool of business interests and the private army of a dictatorial governor. Use of the Home Guard helped lead to the unification of the Nonpartisan League and labor interests. In addition, with temperance movements on the rise, the Home Guard was used to force the closure of saloons in Blooming Prairie. At times, the Home Guard helped bring stability to Minnesota during the World War I years. However, it was also a wedge that further divided opinion on issues like sedition and free speech, labor and business, loyalty and disloyalty, and race. Many people felt it was necessary; others thought it infringed on the rights of citizens. When the armistice with Germany was signed, Home Guard units began to muster out on their own accord. Some units were incorporated into the Minnesota National Guard when it was reorganized after the war. In December of 1920, the MCPS was officially dissolved and all of its orders, including the Home Guard, were voided.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/E435.12 r66.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246076,"name":"War and Conflict","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/minnesota-home-guard"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of students at the St. Paul Talmud Torah, 1930.","author":[{"name":"Laura Weber","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/laura-weber"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"January 12, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Talmud Torah, St. Paul","postbody":"Three Hebrew schools were founded in St. Paul between 1880 and 1920—the era of peak Jewish immigration to the city. Each had its own constituency and neighborhood. After much negotiation, ...","searchtext":"Three Hebrew schools were founded in St. Paul between 1880 and 1920—the era of peak Jewish immigration to the city. Each had its own constituency and neighborhood. After much negotiation, they joined forces in 1956 and took the name Talmud Torah of St. Paul. A Talmud Torah is a community-wide, supplemental religious school. Students begin their education at about age eight and continue through bar mitzvah age (thirteen). Some continue through high school. Students study Jewish heritage, customs, the Hebrew language, and religious foundations. St. Paul’s first Hebrew school was Capitol City Hebrew Free School. It was founded as the Sons of Jacob Hebrew School in 1881 and renamed in 1911. In 1912, Capitol City moved to a building at 137 West College Avenue. Capitol City students came from the Lowertown, West Seventh Street, and Rondo Street neighborhoods. About 125 boys and girls enrolled. The school conducted classes in English. The second school was Saint Paul Hebrew Institute, founded in 1911. It was located on the West Side Flats, home to many Jewish immigrants from Russia. It was a cheder, an Old World-style Orthodox school for boys only. Cheders had ungraded classrooms and, often, untrained teachers. St. Paul Hebrew Institute shared space with the Sheltering Home for Transients in a new building constructed at Fenton and Kentucky Streets. Yiddish was the language of instruction. The third St. Paul Hebrew school was founded in 1916 by Temple of Aaron, a new Conservative synagogue located in the Summit Hill district. Like the Minneapolis Talmud Torah, the Temple of Aaron school stressed use of the Hebrew language. In 1926, it became independent of the synagogue. Enrollment reached about 250 students. In 1930, the former Temple of Aaron school moved into the newly built Jewish Education Center (JEC) building at Grotto Street and Holly Avenue, directly behind the synagogue building. The school took the name Center Hebrew School. The JEC also housed recreational and social programming that was the forerunner of the St. Paul Jewish Community Center. The financial pressures of the Great Depression led Capitol City and Center Hebrew schools to consider merging as early as 1933, though this did not occur until 1944. An outside study conducted in 1935 recommended that the St. Paul Jewish community coordinate its Hebrew education through a local council. This included the school run by Mount Zion Temple, a Reform congregation. Finally, in 1948, an umbrella organization formed called the Bureau of Jewish Education. It was hoped that all the Jewish schools in St. Paul, including those attached to synagogues, would affiliate. However, only the now-merged Center-Capitol Hebrew School and the Kaplan Hebrew Seminary (founded in 1944) were part of the Bureau. The St. Paul Hebrew Institute joined in 1949 but left in 1954. By 1951, the member schools of the Bureau of Jewish Education were informally called “the Talmud Torah.” Enrollment stood at 186 students. Within two years, enrollment rose to five hundred as post-war baby boomers became school-aged. Facilities at the JEC and its Highland House satellite on Juno and Cretin Avenues were strained. A community conference on Jewish education in St. Paul was held in 1954. Two years later, philanthropist George Kaplan, funder of the Kaplan Hebrew Seminary and the Sholom Residence, underwrote construction costs for a unified, now officially named Talmud Torah of St. Paul. A school building was built adjacent to Temple of Aaron’s new synagogue on the western edge of Highland Park at 616 South Mississippi River Boulevard. The Jewish Education Bureau never successfully oversaw all St. Paul Jewish schools; it dissolved in the mid-1960s. In 1970, Talmud Torah of St. Paul restructured its program from five days of instruction after school and on Sunday to two days a week. The change was made due to time constraints and the competing interests of contemporary American children. The 1970s brought efforts to professionalize the staff. Two short-lived suburban branches were added. In 1982, a day (Jewish parochial) school for pre-kindergarten through fifth grade was added. The day school, afternoon school (grades two through twelve), and preschool moved into a refurbished public school building at 768 Hamline Avenue South, where it remained as of 2014. The Talmud Torah of St. Paul is not affiliated with any one Jewish movement or congregation.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/st._paul_talmud_torah_students_1930_0.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056210,"name":"Education","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246089,"name":"Religion and Belief","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/talmud-torah-st-paul"},{"alt":"Color image of Schott Barn with its roof intact, c.1985.","author":[{"name":"Nancy Voth","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/nancy-voth"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"January 05, 2015","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Frank Schott Barn, Stevens County","postbody":"The stone barn built by German immigrant Frank Schott in 1923 is a prime example of innovative Midwestern architecture. The barn, located just southwest of Chokio, stands out above the ...","searchtext":"The stone barn built by German immigrant Frank Schott in 1923 is a prime example of innovative Midwestern architecture. The barn, located just southwest of Chokio, stands out above the fields near the Stevens and Big Stone County lines. Many feel it serves as a reminder of the determination and skills of the immigrants who did their own building throughout the Midwest. Though the barn’s wooden roof collapsed in 1993, its stone walls remain standing in the early twenty-first century. Frank Schott was born in 1880 in Lestkov, Bohemia (the Czech Republic since 1993). Through training from his father and a German university education in architecture and engineering, Schott developed unique skills as a builder, cement contractor, and carpenter. Conscripted into the German army in 1900, he was not made for military life. In 1907, rather than return to service after leave, he obtained a fake passport and immigrated to the United States. Schott met his future wife, Sophie Barth, at her father’s restaurant in Black River Falls, Wisconsin. The couple married and moved to Minnesota, where they raised seven children near Chokio. Schott also learned how to farm. As he became familiar with the area, Schott identified plots of land with soil characteristics that would produce quality cement. He was said to know when cement slurry was ready by taste, and would adjust its lime content until the balance was just right. His cement work was famous for lasting a lifetime without cracking. After the family’s wooden barn was destroyed in a storm, Schott set out to build lasting replacement structures. These would not only support his family by sheltering their animals and crops, but also allow him to express his creativity and sense of pride. The property consisted of the original house, the chicken house, and then the barn. The chicken house, named “Castleswanhill,” was the first structure to be completed. Rocks used in the construction of both the barn and the chicken house came from the Schotts’ fields, neighbors’ fields, and rock piles. One particularly big boulder required four horses and the family’s tractor to pull it to the construction site. Schott, who could tell a rock’s weak spots by looking at it, used a stone hammer to break down the largest boulders. Special sand used for the barn was hauled from Lake Hattie, about nine miles from the farm. Construction on the barn’s foundation began in 1923. Rocks and cement were applied eighteen inches thick to an inner frame to form the outside walls. As the walls grew taller, horses and a tractor pulled rocks by means of a block and tackle onto a platform. From there they were moved into place with a crowbar. The second floor of the barn is held in place by iron I-beams that run the length and width of the floor. Other iron beams hold the cement in place. The center of the loft floor is as thick as eight inches, tapering off to six inches on the outside walls. The feedway, floor, gutter, and water troughs are made of cement. Enclosed cement steps curve upstairs to the milking area. Elegant towers located on the barn’s four corners and in the center of the front and back ends testify to Schott’s creative talent. Both aesthetic and functional in nature, they allow cool air to pass into and out of the barn year round. They were built by pouring cement around wooden forms. The barn took almost twenty years to build due to Schott’s busy work schedule. Once the slow process of laying the foundation was completed, however, the first floor of the barn was finished within months. The Schotts were then able to house the family’s cattle and horses. The Schott family discontinued their use of the barn in 1970s. Without livestock inside to maintain a steady humidity and temperature, expansions and contractions in the wood caused the structure to weaken, and its roof collapsed in 1993. In 2014, only the barn’s walls and the pump house remain standing. While the barn may no longer be hospitable for livestock, the structure still serves a purpose. It has been adopted by barn swallows that use it as a shelter for raising their young.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Schott_Barn_with_roof_resized.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246091,"name":"Agriculture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/frank-schott-barn-stevens-county"},{"alt":"Color image of the exterior of St. Mary’s Orthodox Cathedral in Minneapolis. Photographed by Paul Nelson on June 10, 2014.","author":[{"name":"Paul Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/paul-nelson"},{"name":"Andrew Morbey","slug":"/mnopedia/search/index/author/andrew-morbey"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"December 29, 2014","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"St. Mary’s Orthodox Cathedral, Minneapolis","postbody":"St. Mary’s Orthodox Cathedral, completed in 1906, was the home church of Rusyn immigrants to Minneapolis in the late nineteenth century. As these immigrants continued to arrive from the ...","searchtext":"St. Mary’s Orthodox Cathedral, completed in 1906, was the home church of Rusyn immigrants to Minneapolis in the late nineteenth century. As these immigrants continued to arrive from the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the 1900s, St. Mary’s became the Mother Church of Eastern Orthodoxy in the Twin Cities region. In 1877 Northeast Minneapolis began to attract immigrants from a small Central European ethnic group. A Slavic people, they were called, variously, Rusyns, Ruthenians, Carpatho-Rusyns, and Carpatho-Ruthenians, since many lived in the region below the Carpathian Mountains (now eastern Slovakia). In the late nineteenth century they were subjects of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. For hundreds of years Rusyns had belonged to the Eastern Rite Catholic tradition, a subset of the larger Roman Catholic world. Their roots, however, were in the Byzantine and Russian Orthodox Church. In Minneapolis, although they were encouraged to assimilate with Latin Rite Roman Catholics, Rusyns created a community that reflected their own unique religious and cultural history. Visiting Eastern Rite clergy from the eastern United States helped advance this dream. By 1887, their numbers had grown, and a group was organized to form and build a church. St Mary’s Greek Catholic Church, a small wood-frame building, opened in 1888 at the corner of 5th Street NE and 17th Avenue NE in Minneapolis. The following year, in response to the petition of parishioners, the Eastern Rite Catholic Bishop of Presov in eastern Slovakia sent a learned, widowed priest named Alexis Toth to be their pastor. His first service was held on Thanksgiving Day. A few weeks later, on December 19, Toth went to St Paul to present his credentials to John Ireland, the local Roman Catholic archbishop. The meeting did not go well. Upon learning that Toth had been married, as Eastern Rite clergy most often are, Ireland rejected his credentials and refused to allow him to serve as a priest. Ireland forbade use of the Eastern Rite liturgy and directed the Rusyn immigrants to worship at the local Polish parish of the Latin Church. This they did not do. Toth continued to serve as a priest, and he soon made contact with the Higher Church Administration of the Russian Orthodox Church in North America. Two trips to the Orthodox cathedral in San Francisco led to the informal (1891) and then the formal (1892) reception of Fr. Alexis and the parish community into the Orthodox Church as part of the Russian Orthodox Diocese of the Aleutians and North America. This reception was an important positive moment in the life of the community in Minneapolis, and in the return of Eastern Rite Catholics to Orthodoxy throughout the United States and in Eastern Europe. When the congregation’s first dedicated building burned down in 1904, the congregation took action. With the assistance of the Russian Holy Synod, it hired Minneapolis architect Victor Cordella to adapt and build a “stone” (that is, brick) replacement modeled on the old cathedral of the Elevation of the Holy Cross in Omsk, Siberia. Alterations to the blueprint were made in light of the size of the lot, which was too narrow. Among these were the addition of stained glass windows—an innovation in Orthodox church architecture—as an integral part of the articulation of sacred space. When the cathedral opened in 1906, its congregation had nearly nine hundred members. Still, the building’s $40,000 cost drained the church’s resources. Despite an annual subsidy of $1100 from the Russian government and a $1029 gift from Tsar Nicholas II, the cathedral opened without furnishings, decoration, or central heating. Those arrived as money permitted; pews were installed in 1934. Despite an annual subsidy from the Holy Synod and personal financial support and gifts from the Imperial family, the parish struggled. Yet it endured. The decorations added over the years include a white icon screen at the front of the sanctuary, a large chandelier, a painted dome, and stained glass. There are also icon-style paintings—some life size—of Jesus, Mary, and Orthodox saints. Renovations in 1982 and in the years following 2005 both maintained and expanded traditional iconographic programs in the church.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/st-marys-exterior_edited.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246089,"name":"Religion and Belief","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/st-mary-s-orthodox-cathedral-minneapolis"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Mount Sinai Hospital, c.1950","author":[{"name":"Laura Weber","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/laura-weber"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"December 22, 2014","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Mount Sinai Hospital and Foundation, Minneapolis","postbody":"Mount Sinai Hospital in Minneapolis was among the first private hospitals in the Twin Cities to admit minority doctors on its medical staff. The Jewish community opened it in 1951; by the ...","searchtext":"Mount Sinai Hospital in Minneapolis was among the first private hospitals in the Twin Cities to admit minority doctors on its medical staff. The Jewish community opened it in 1951; by the time it closed in 1991, local hospitals were open to doctors of all races and religions. Public anti-Semitism in the U.S. had risen markedly by the 1930s. The Minnesota Jewish Council, founded in 1939, fought incidents of local discrimination and tried to improve conditions. Employment discrimination was a major problem, and Jewish doctors were not immune. By the end of World War II, it was obvious that Jewish doctors, both locally and nationally, were excluded from medical school faculties and private hospital staffs. In 1944 a survey led by Minneapolis doctor Moses Barron reached the same conclusion. A 1947 study conducted by Minneapolis mayor Hubert Humphrey documented prejudice by local hospitals and nursing homes against Jews and blacks. Barron and other community leaders formed a committee to found a Jewish-sponsored, nonsectarian hospital. At the time, there was a shortage of hospital beds in the area. A new facility, they realized, could serve multiple needs. It could aid the entire community, including minority patients, offer Jewish doctors a place to receive them, and it provide a site for research and teaching. Some voiced concerns that the local Jewish community lacked the capacity to raise enough money. That did not stop philanthropist Jay Phillips. He kicked off the drive to raise the first $1.5 million for the “Jewish Hospital Association” in November 1945. In 1946 a hospital site was selected. It was in South Minneapolis on Chicago Avenue, between East 22nd Street and 24th Street. Liebenberg and Kaplan were chosen as architects. The firm had already designed a number of other buildings for local Jewish institutions. Plans called for a seven-story, 192-bed facility. It would include an emergency ward, two research labs, and air-conditioned operating rooms and maternity rooms. The hospital was named Mount Sinai Hospital in 1949. An auxiliary group formed the next year. During this period, eminent University of Minnesota surgeon Owen Wangensteen admitted Jewish students to the surgery program without bias. He also helped Jewish graduates struggling to find residencies. He worked to locate the new hospital near the university, but this did not occur. Mount Sinai Hospital opened on February 19, 1951. Minnesota Governor Luther Youngdahl, Dr. Charles Mayo, and Dr. Wangensteen spoke at the grand opening. Their presence showed that the post-war climate was improving for Jews and other minorities. Mount Sinai Hospital faced some early challenges. The AMA approved Mount Sinai for intern and resident training in anesthesiology and surgery. Soon, however, there were too many hospital beds in the area. There were not enough paying patients to meet costs. For this and other reasons, the AMA withdrew the surgery program’s certification. Operations eventually stabilized and the AMA restored credentials. From the start, the Mount Sinai Hospital Auxiliary played a crucial role. Members, primarily women, staffed the gift shop and waited on customers at the coffee shop. Major annual fundraisers such as the charity ball and used book sale held at Southdale Mall helped pay the expenses of indigent patients. Auxiliary membership reached 2,200 by 1987. The 1980s were a period of growth. In 1982 a four-story medical office and parking ramp were added. In 1983 Mount Sinai reached a management agreement with Hospital Corporation of America. The group was then the largest U.S. company of its kind. In the late 1980s, the hospital added equipment. It renovated one floor into deluxe patient rooms and suites. A new building was added to the campus for the Phillips Eye Institute. Market forces soon caused Mount Sinai Hospital to merge with Metropolitan Medical Center (formerly General Hospital). It was briefly called Metropolitan-Mount Sinai before dissolving in 1991. As of 2014, the Phillips Eye Institute continued to operate on its original site. Though Mount Sinai closed, the Auxiliary wanted to carry on its legacy. The Auxiliary became the Mount Sinai Community Foundation. It gives grants to five to eight health care organizations a year. As of 2013, it had given away $638,000.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Mount_Sinai_Hospital_Minneapolis_Minnesota.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246087,"name":"Health and Medicine","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246089,"name":"Religion and Belief","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/mount-sinai-hospital-and-foundation-minneapolis"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of Neighborhood House, St. Paul, 1924.","author":[{"name":"Laura Weber","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/laura-weber"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"December 15, 2014","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Jewish Roots of Neighborhood House, St. Paul","postbody":"Women members of Mount Zion Temple in St. Paul founded Neighborhood House in 1897 to assist poor Russian Jewish immigrants. For its first sixty-five years, the settlement house operated in ...","searchtext":"Women members of Mount Zion Temple in St. Paul founded Neighborhood House in 1897 to assist poor Russian Jewish immigrants. For its first sixty-five years, the settlement house operated in the West Side Flats—the neighborhood near the Mississippi River across from downtown where the immigrants first settled. French, Irish, and German immigrants settled on the Flats starting in the 1850s. By the 1890s they had been replaced by immigrant Jews fleeing persecution in Eastern Europe. The St. Paul chapter of the National Council of Jewish Women and Mount Zion’s Hebrew Ladies Benevolent Society organized sewing classes in rented rooms on Fairfield Avenue to assist the Jewish immigrants. Led by Sophie Wirth, the classes grew into an industrial school. Girls and boys learned home and industrial arts. They took English language and American citizenship classes. In 1897 the industrial school grew into Neighborhood House, a full-service settlement house located at 153 Robertson Street. Still led by Wirth, and supervised by Mount Zion’s rabbis, Neighborhood House added recreational activities, dental and baby clinics, and programs for adults. People of all religions and ethnic groups flocked to Neighborhood House. In 1903 it reorganized, evolving from a purely Jewish social effort into a non-sectarian one. In 1921 the population of the Flats was two and a half times greater than it had been in 1915. This led to crowding and housing shortages. Under Constance Currie, who became head resident in 1918, Neighborhood House added playgrounds and camping activities. Most notable was the Sophie Wirth Day Camp in White Bear Lake. The Northern Pacific Railway provided free transportation to the camp for five years after its founding in 1919. The service gave hundreds of mothers and children a rare day of leisure. Preventing juvenile delinquency was a key part of Neighborhood House’s mission. This was also the case with another St. Paul settlement house that served the Jewish community, the Lowertown Community Center (later renamed Central Community House), which opened in 1921. Neighborhood House was the model for a similar house on Minneapolis’s South Side that opened in 1923. The Jewish Community Centers in St. Paul and Minneapolis are descendants of these and other settlement houses in the Twin Cities. In the early 1920s Neighborhood House undertook a major fundraising drive so it could expand. In 1923 a new building at 229 East Indiana opened. It was designed by the local architectural firm Toltz, King and Day. A gymnasium addition came in 1928. During the Depression, Neighborhood House kept its gym and showers open sixteen hours a day to “help with morale and spirit” of the unemployed. Two generations of Jewish children and adults both affirmed their Jewish culture and assimilated into American society at Neighborhood House. Mount Zion Temple members continued to support Neighborhood House through donations and as volunteers. Mount Zion’s rabbis served on the Neighborhood House board at late as the 1960s, though Jews had left the Flats by the 1940s. Many moved to the Summit Hill neighborhood in St. Paul and, later, to Highland Park. The synagogues and Hebrew Schools moved with them. By World War II, an estimated twenty-three nationality groups lived on the Flats. Neighborhood House’s clientele, however, was mostly Mexican and Mexican-American. The settlement house branched out to provide its services to additional sites in St. Paul. For three years in the early 1950s, major floods hit the Flats. Neighborhood House was a focal point of rescue and recovery efforts. The St. Paul Port Authority made plans to bulldoze the Flats and create an industrial park protected by a dike system. Neighborhood House continued to provide its usual services to residents, who now added anxiety about the house’s future to their concerns. Long-time head resident Constance Currie died in 1957—another loss. In 1963 Neighborhood House’s buildings on the Flats were sold to the Port Authority of St. Paul and razed. Remaining Flats children were bused to Neighborhood House’s locations in other St. Paul neighborhoods. An era in the organization’s history had ended. In 2014 Neighborhood House continues to serve immigrants, refugees, and low-income people. Its modern headquarters in the Wellstone Center are near its original home on St. Paul’s West Side.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/MR2.9 SP5.3 p160.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246089,"name":"Religion and Belief","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/jewish-roots-neighborhood-house-st-paul"},{"alt":"Color image of the Fournier House, 2008.","author":[{"name":"Peter J. DeCarlo","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/peter-j-decarlo"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"December 08, 2014","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Fournier House, Minneapolis","postbody":"The Fournier House was designed by architect Lawrence A. Fournier and built in 1910. The house blends early Prairie School-style elements with a more dominant Arts and Crafts style. It is ...","searchtext":"The Fournier House was designed by architect Lawrence A. Fournier and built in 1910. The house blends early Prairie School-style elements with a more dominant Arts and Crafts style. It is also one of the first homes built in North Minneapolis. In 1908 Lawrence Fournier and his wife Mary purchased a lot in what is now the Cleveland neighborhood in North Minneapolis. The Fourniers|| selection of a North Minneapolis lot reveals the increasing appeal of this area of the city to new residents. Minneapolis real estate developers had begun to promote the area||s bucolic setting and its easy access to new street car lines. As the automobile became more popular and dependable after World War I, development increased at an even more rapid rate. The Cleveland neighborhood was unusually slow to develop, however, and the Fournier House was set in a rural atmosphere until a post-World War II building boom filled in many of the neighborhood||s remaining lots. Fournier was an architect at the famous firm of Purcell and Elmslie. It became the second-most-commissioned firm of the Prairie School, after Frank Lloyd Wright. However, Fournier’s work on the home two years prior to joining the firm shows the influence he had on Purcell and Elmslie. Steeped in knowledge of architectural styles, Fournier created a unique concept for the home. Mary Fournier was an artist and also influenced its design. The house the couple built exemplified the common ground between the Craftsman and Prairie Schools. For most of the exterior detailing, Fournier selected the Craftsman style, with its broad, sloping roof pierced by shed dormers. He also created wide, unenclosed eaves, exposed roof rafter tails, and exposed roof beams supported by knee braces. With a Craftsman sense of economy, he eliminated the vestibule. Instead, a sheltered partial-width front porch was built. Fournier used the Craftsman device of an elevated dining room window grouping with space under the windows for closets. Prairie School traits appear within the Craftsman context, creating a mingling of the two styles. For example, a formal Prairie pedestal urn is given an informal Craftsman covering of rustic field stones. A Prairie-style band rides the perimeter of the foundation but fails to create much of a horizontal accent on a compact bungalow form. A more successful stylistic blend is found in a Craftsman window box given a Prairie flair as it wraps around a comer-set casement window group. In his choice of materials, Fournier demonstrated concern for a smooth transition between the house and its setting. This concern for landscape was shared by both Prairie and Craftsman designers. The strong field stone foundation and rough cast stucco are more in keeping with the Craftsman School. However, Fournier included sidewalks of smooth, rose-colored concrete—a trait of the Prairie School. While at Purcell and Elmslie, Fournier served as the firm||s expert in the latest domestic engineering gadgetry of the period. He used this knowledge in his own home, designing a central vacuuming unit, laundry chute, galley kitchen, and rain water filtration system. The number of Prairie details in the Fournier house reflects the growing prominence of the Prairie School in 1910. Many of the Prairie elements Fournier experimented with in designing his own home appear with increasing frequency in the subsequent work of Purcell and Elmslie. Lawrence and Mary Fournier lived in the house until 1917, when Lawrence was transferred to Purcell and Elmslie||s Chicago office. From 1917 to 1961 the house remained within a single family. Since 1961, there have been several owners. In 1995 the Fournier House was added to the National Register of Historic Places for its expression of high-style house architecture.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Fournier House Wikimedia.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/fournier-house-minneapolis"},{"alt":"Color image of Kirby Puckett during the 1991 World Series.","author":[{"name":"Kevin Hogg","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/kevin-hogg"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"December 01, 2014","eraTag":[{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Puckett, Kirby (1960–2006)","postbody":"Kirby Puckett played twelve seasons as a center fielder for the Minnesota Twins. Known for both his playing skills and his spirit, “Puck” played a major role in rejuvenating the team and ...","searchtext":"Kirby Puckett played twelve seasons as a center fielder for the Minnesota Twins. Known for both his playing skills and his spirit, “Puck” played a major role in rejuvenating the team and leading them to World Series victories in 1987 and 1991. Although his career was cut short by eye problems, he was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2001. Kirby Puckett was born Anthony Kirby Puckett on March 14, 1960, to William and Catherine Puckett in Chicago, Illinois. One of nine children, he played baseball for Calumet High School, Bradley University in Peoria, and Triton Junior College in Chicago. In the January 1982 entry draft, the Minnesota Twins selected Puckett third overall. He bought a house in Brooklyn Park and later moved to Edina. On May 8, 1984, Puckett recorded four hits in his first game, finishing the season with 165 hits in 128 games and helping the team finish second in the American League West. He increased his total to 199 the following season. He was known for his speed, and also for robbing opponents of home runs with his leaping catches. His defensive statistics were among the best in baseball. In the 1986 season, he recorded thirty-one home runs and 223 hits and was elected to his first All-Star team. Puckett led the American League in hits in 1987, with 207, and helped the Twins win the American League Championship Series (ALCS). Puckett then batted .357 with ten hits to help the Twins win the World Series championship. The success of Puckett and the Twins energized fans and helped raise ticket sales from 860,000 in 1983 to three million in 1988. That year, he had career highs in runs batted in (121), batting average (.356), and hits (234). Despite Puckett’s performance, the Twins dropped to second place. They fell to fifth in 1989, although Puckett led the American League in hits and batting average. The Twins recognized Puckett’s importance by offering him a contract that, at the time, was the largest in baseball history. Puckett’s numbers dropped the following year, and the Twins finished the season in last place. His offensive performance improved in 1991, when his spirit and leadership helped propel the team to a first-place finish. They won the ALCS again and advanced to the World Series against the Atlanta Braves. Down three games to two, Puckett famously told his teammates to jump on his back and promised to carry them to victory. That night, he recorded four hits, including the game-winning home run. The Twins won the series, marking the first time a team won the World Series after finishing last the previous year. In 1992, Puckett led the league in hits and finished second in Most Valuable Player voting. His performance remained strong in the following seasons and he led the American League in runs batted in (RBIs) during the 1994 season. In September 1995 a wild pitch broke his jaw, ending his season. During spring training in 1996, he woke up one morning unable to see from his right eye. He underwent multiple surgeries, but doctors were unable to restore his vision. Puckett announced his retirement on July 12, 1996. He left baseball with a career .318 batting average, 2,304 hits, and 1,085 RBIs. Puckett was named to ten All-Star teams and received six Silver Slugger Awards for his offensive skills as well as six Gold Gloves for his defense. Despite his shortened career, he remains among the all-time Twins leaders in many offensive categories. Puckett’s jersey number, thirty-four, was retired in 1997. He remained with the team as executive vice president. He also continued the charity work that won him Major League Baseball’s Branch Rickey and Roberto Clemente Awards. Puckett worked with Partnership for a Drug Free America, the Children’s Heart Fund, the Glaucoma Foundation, and other organizations. In 2001, he was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Puckett suffered a stroke on March 5, 2006, and died the following day. He was forty-five years old.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Kirby_Puckett 1991 World Series.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056216,"name":"African Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246054,"name":"Sports and Recreation","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/puckett-kirby-1960-2006"},{"alt":"Color image of Oakland Cemetery, St. Paul","author":[{"name":"Paul Nelson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/paul-nelson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246074,"name":"Place","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"November 24, 2014","eraTag":[{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"1873","name":"Oakland Cemetery, St. Paul","postbody":"Founded in 1853, Oakland is Minnesota’s oldest public cemetery and a gathering place, in death, of people from the full range of St. Paul history, from the city||s founders to recent ...","searchtext":"Founded in 1853, Oakland is Minnesota’s oldest public cemetery and a gathering place, in death, of people from the full range of St. Paul history, from the city||s founders to recent immigrants. It is also a place of beauty. In 1850, when St. Paul was a muddy frontier hamlet, newspaper editor James Goodhue urged the creation of a public burial ground. Eventually, he reasoned, even the longest-lived local citizens would need an appropriate resting place. The town at the time had a few church bone yards but no place for the differently churched, the unchurched, paupers, and visitors to be buried. Spurred by such admonitions and civic pride, some of Minnesota’s early worthies—among them Alexander Ramsey—founded the Oakland Cemetery Association in 1853. They then bought “forty acres of rolling oak grove two miles from the river landing.” Over time, that grove came to be surrounded by city. In the twenty-first century it lies bounded by Magnolia Avenue on the north, Sycamore Street on the south, Sylvan Street on the west, and Jackson Street on the east, in the North End neighborhood. Later purchases expanded it to one hundred acres. The first burial plots sold for fifteen cents a square foot or $3.15 for the standard seven-by-three unit. The city and county bought a tract each to accommodate the graves of the destitute. The first burials took place in 1853. War tends to fill cemeteries, and Oakland has been no exception. Andrew Myrick, the Indian trader sometimes blamed for setting off the U.S.–Dakota War of 1862, was buried there, as were many Civil War casualties. One small portion of Oakland has come to be known as “Soldiers’ Rest” for its rows of military headstones. Some 1500 to 2000 veterans are believed to lie in the cemetery, including Civil War Medal of Honor winner Marshall Sherman. Many of St. Paul’s founders and early magnates have their final resting place in Oakland. They include governors Sibley and Ramsey; pioneer settler Augustus Larpenteur; teacher Harriet Bishop; philanthropist Amherst Wilder; and the merchant families of William Schurmeier, Charles Foote, and William Lindeke. Some of these chose plots on high ground near Oakland’s northwest corner. They now share this space with hundreds of Hmong immigrants. Apart from a Romanian section along Jackson Street and Russian and Chinese zones along the north border there are no ethnic divisions in Oakland. The headstone of Thomas Lyles, a prominent African American businessman of the nineteenth century, has for its nearest neighbors stones marked Roth, Stein, and Blomberg. German surnames are prominent throughout the cemetery. In 1873 the cemetery association hired the landscape architect Horace Cleveland to design the grounds. Cleveland, then based in Chicago, is considered one of the great American landscape architects of the nineteenth century. His influence on the Twin Cities has been enduring. In addition to Oakland he designed St. Paul’s St. Anthony Park neighborhood, the University of Minnesota’s main campus, several parks in the Minneapolis system, and its “grand rounds” network of parks, paths, and drives. (He is buried in Lakewood Cemetery, Minneapolis, which he did not design.) At Oakland one can see his handiwork with few later alterations. Oakland partakes of the “garden” school of cemetery design, which treats the grounds like a formal park. Curving roads take advantage of the rolling, wooded, natural terrain. Like many old cemeteries of this tradition, Oakland offers the visitor a history of memorial marker styles. They range from the now-eroded sandstone of the early, humble burials to the marble and gray granite mausoleums of the wealthy (including 3M founder Archibald Bush) to the portrait-bearing black granite favored by many Hmong families. Its most famous monument is the tribute to fallen firefighters that stands at the southeast point of Soldiers’ Rest. In the twenty-first century, Oakland remains what it has been since 1853: a public, non-sectarian, nonprofit cemetery open to all.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/View WP_20140425_011.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246079,"name":"Cities and Towns","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/oakland-cemetery-st-paul"},{"alt":"Color image of B’nai Israel Synagogue and Dan Abraham Cultural Center, c.2013.","author":[{"name":"Laura Weber","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/laura-weber"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"November 18, 2014","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"B’nai Israel Synagogue, Rochester","postbody":"Small Jewish communities arose at the turn of the twentieth century in several southern Minnesota market towns. In each, Jews gathered for religious purposes. But it was only in Rochester ...","searchtext":"Small Jewish communities arose at the turn of the twentieth century in several southern Minnesota market towns. In each, Jews gathered for religious purposes. But it was only in Rochester that a formal synagogue, B’nai Israel, was established. The founding of Mayo Clinic in 1905 created a need for a local congregation that could serve Jewish patients. After almost a century of holding worship services in former residences, B’nai Israel built its first synagogue building in 2008. The first Jews to settle permanently in Rochester arrived in about 1900. Most of them were junk dealers, peddlers, and merchants. Fourteen men founded the Hebrew Congregation of Rochester, Minnesota, in 1910. The congregation incorporated in 1917 as B’nai (Sons of) Israel Synagogue. It had twenty-five member families. Jews were among those who came to Rochester from all over the country seeking treatment at Mayo Clinic after its founding in 1905. B’nai Israel members accepted responsibility for them by comforting family members, providing kosher meals, and offering Yiddish translation services. In 1918, B’nai Israel bought a two-story house on the corner of Fifth Street and First Avenue Northeast. Worship services were held downstairs. The rabbi and his family lived upstairs. Israel Becker was the first rabbi hired, in 1923. An estimated twenty-five rabbis served the Rochester community over the next forty years. Congregants came from nearby Stewartville, Eyota, Chatfield, Kasson, Preston, Spring Valley, and St. Charles. In 1927, Rochester’s Jewish population was ninety-six. During the 1920s, Mayo Clinic charged a $100 deposit for patients who were “Jews, actors, and other indigent types.” The deposit was subtracted from their final bills. B’nai Israel members provided the funds for those who could not pay upfront. The clinic withdrew the deposit requirement in 1927. It also hired a Jewish medical social worker. This took some of the burden off the local Jewish community. Mayo Clinic ended the service in 1956. By 1944, the thirty-five member families of B’nai Israel had outgrown the house on Fifth Street. They bought the larger Knowlton house, located two blocks from the clinic. It held a seventy-two-seat synagogue and four-room religious school. It also housed chaplaincy offices and a community center. Jewish medical staff who lived in town for short periods enlarged Rochester’s small Jewish population. While not all Rochester Jews were members of the synagogue, up to two hundred people attended High Holidays services in the 1950s at the Mayo Civic Auditorium. Official membership of B’nai Israel was forty families in 1952. The same year, the Jewish service organization B’nai B’rith (Sons of the Covenant) International joined with B’nai Israel to create the B’nai B’rith Center of Rochester. The center served the spiritual and practical needs of Mayo Clinic’s Jewish patients and their families. The two groups split the salary and expenses for a rabbi. They agreed that he would serve half-time as spiritual leader of the synagogue and half-time as the Jewish chaplain for Mayo Clinic. Over eight thousand visitors used the center during one documented year in the 1950s. The 1970s brought many changes to B’nai Israel. First, in 1975, the B’nai Brith Center closed its doors when B’nai B’rith International ended its support. B’nai Israel, B’nai B’rith’s Upper Midwest district, and other Jewish agencies continued to provide chaplaincy and social services to the estimated thirty thousand Jewish patients seen annually at Mayo Clinic and local hospitals. Second, after almost sixty-five years of leadership by Orthodox rabbis, in 1974 B’nai Israel affiliated with the liberal Reform movement of Judaism. Third, in 1977 B’nai Israel bought a former Mormon meetinghouse at 621 Second Street Southwest. The congregation then numbered ninety families. In 2008, B’nai Israel commissioned a fifteen-thousand-square-foot facility to take the place of the old Mormon meetinghouse. Joan Soranno of HGA Architects created the award-winning, two-story building. It was Rochester’s first purpose-built synagogue. The light-filled sanctuary seated 150, and an adjacent social hall expanded seating capacity to 250. In 2013, B’nai Israel membership was 110 families and individuals. Some lived in Albert Lea, Mankato, Owatonna, Red Wing, Winona, and other southern Minnesota cities. B’nai Israel’s mission has persisted since its founding: serving local residents and Mayo Clinic patients.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/B’nai Israel Synagogue.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246089,"name":"Religion and Belief","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/b-nai-israel-synagogue-rochester"},{"alt":"Photogravure of Jane Williamson, undated.","author":[{"name":"Lois A. Glewwe","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/lois-glewwe"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"November 10, 2014","eraTag":[{"id":186622056203,"name":"1792–1861 (Expansion and Reform)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Williamson, Jane Smith (1803–1895)","postbody":"Jane Williamson was a schoolteacher and anti-slavery activist in Ohio before she came to the Presbyterian Dakota Mission at Lac qui Parle in 1843. She spent the remaining fifty-two years of ...","searchtext":"Jane Williamson was a schoolteacher and anti-slavery activist in Ohio before she came to the Presbyterian Dakota Mission at Lac qui Parle in 1843. She spent the remaining fifty-two years of her life working with Dakota people. Jane began teaching school in Manchester and West Union, Ohio, in the 1820s, when she was a teenager. Slavery was against the law in Ohio at that time. Directly across the Ohio River in Kentucky, however, it was legal. Many enslaved people risked their lives crossing the river to reach the Ohio side, where they could be free. The Williamson family had been involved in the Underground Railroad since 1805, helping fugitives escape from slavery. Jane welcomed the children of former enslaved people to her classroom, even when men from Kentucky tried to recapture them at every opportunity. At times, armed guards from Jane||s family and her father||s church had to surround the school to protect her and the children. When Jane was eleven years old, her mother died. She lived with her father and stepmother until her father passed away in 1839. Four years later, she left behind her school and family in Ohio at the age of forty. Her brother, Rev. Dr. Thomas Williamson, worked at the Dakota mission at Lac qui Parle with his wife, Margaret. Jane joined them there in 1843, intending to help with their growing family. After moving to the mission, Jane learned the Dakota language and taught at the mission school. Her students called her Dowan Duta Win, or Red Song Woman, because her favored method of teaching was to translate English hymns into Dakota and instruct the students by singing the words. Called “Aunt Jane” by her fellow missionaries, she was less than five feet tall. She was known for her habit of giving cakes and nuts to her students from her apron pockets. In 1846, the Williamsons moved their ministry to the Dakota village of Kaposia on the Mississippi River in what is now South St. Paul. In 1851, the Dakota sold their land on the west side of the Mississippi River to the US government and moved to a reservation. The Williamsons accompanied the Sisseton and Wahpeton bands to their new location along the Minnesota River in western Minnesota Territory. There, they established a new mission the Williamsons called Pajutazee (after the Dakota place name Pejuhutazizi Kapi: the place where they dig for yellow medicine). On August 18, 1862, a faction of the Dakota attacked the Lower Sioux Agency. It was the first organized incident of the US–Dakota War of 1862. Thomas and Margaret sent their children and grandchildren away with others attempting to escape, then followed two days later with Jane. They all made it safely to St. Peter thanks to the assistance of several Dakota men who were members of the mission church: Simon Anawangmani, Robert Hopkins Caskedan, Lorenzo Lawrence, Paul Mazekutemani, and Peter Tapetatanka. After the war ended in September, a US military commission sentenced 303 Dakota men to death. They were imprisoned in Mankato, where Jane and Thomas ministered to them. Jane received permission to bring the men pencils and paper so they could write to their families. She wrote letters to President Abraham Lincoln on behalf of Robert Hopkins Caskedan and Peter Tapetatanka that helped bring about the stay of their death sentences. Lincoln later pardoned both men. On December 26, 1862, thirty-eight of the men were executed at Mankato. In the spring, the remaining prisoners were moved to Davenport, Iowa. Thomas followed and continued to serve them. Back in St. Peter, Jane welcomed several of her Dakota former students into her home while they attended school in the area. By the mid-1880s, Thomas and Margaret had passed away. Jane began having trouble with her eyesight, and it became difficult for her to live alone. John Williamson, Thomas and Margaret’s oldest son, was in charge of the Dakota Mission on the Yankton Reservation in Greenwood, South Dakota. He brought Jane to live with him and his family. It was there that she spent the final years of her life among the Dakota people to whom she remained devoted. Jane Williamson died on March 24, 1895. She is buried in the cemetery at Greenwood, South Dakota. A Daughters of the American Revolution emblem, awarded to her in honor of her father’s participation in the Revolutionary War, adorns her tombstone.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Jane Williamson.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246089,"name":"Religion and Belief","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246086,"name":"Women","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/williamson-jane-smith-1803-1895"},{"alt":"Color image of Ada Village Hall, c.1998.","author":[{"name":"Peter J. DeCarlo","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/peter-j-decarlo"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246064,"name":"Structure","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"November 03, 2014","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"1904","name":"Ada Village Hall","postbody":"The Ada Village Hall served as the center for local government in Ada for over a century. It was an important public meeting hall and social facility through the 1970s. Architecturally, the ...","searchtext":"The Ada Village Hall served as the center for local government in Ada for over a century. It was an important public meeting hall and social facility through the 1970s. Architecturally, the building is an excellent example of the combined city hall and fire hall buildings that were constructed in Minnesota during the early 1900s. The Village of Ada was founded in 1876. It was platted as a railroad town and served as a hub for transporting wheat from the Red River Valley to market. In 1881 the Village of Ada was incorporated and became the seat of Norman County. By the beginning of the twentieth century the town was expanding quickly. In 1904 civic improvements were made, which included the Village Hall. It was built to replace the previous village hall and fire hall that had been constructed shortly after 1881. The hall was built during the spring and summer of 1904 and completed by October of 1904. It was constructed of brick made at Ada||s only brickyard. The formal, Classical-Revival styling of the hall was meant to symbolize the democratic principles, strength, and order of American government. Built for approximately $6,000, it was a modest structure in comparison to other major construction in Ada during the period. The Ada Village Hall was one of three major public buildings in Ada that were designed by O||Meyer and Thori. The firm also designed the Norman County Courthouse and the Ada High School The firm designed hundreds of buildings in Minnesota and other midwestern states. The entire city bureaucracy was located on the first floor of the building. The Ada Fire Department was headquartered in the hall until 1965. The police office and jail were located in the northern corner of the building until the 1970s. All local elections except school board elections were also held in the building. The Ada Village Hall was the principal public gathering place in Ada for many decades. The Ada Commercial Club and several other organizations held their meetings in the Hall. Most community functions, special events, and meetings were held in the second floor meeting room. There was a large assembly room, a kitchen, a dining area, and a small meeting room on the second floor that served the public. Meetings and events were held in one of the rooms on the second floor nearly every night of the week from 1904 through the 1970s. A portion of the building was used as a public library for nearly forty-five years. The library was established around 1914 by the Commercial Club and was operated by the Ada Public Library beginning in 1941. In 1959 the library was moved to the Zion Lutheran Church building. The second floor of the Ada Village Hall was no longer used by the early 1980s. The First State Bank of Ada constructed a new building that included a community room. Most community organizations moved to that location. During the 1990s the second floor of the city hall was closed to the public. In 1998 the hall was added to the National Register of Historic Places. The first floor of the hall continued to serve as the city government offices until 2010. In 2012 a local retailer occupied the building but went out of business. As of 2014 renovation of the building was postponed due to the prohibitive cost.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/Ada Village Hall, Norman County.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056206,"name":"Architecture","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246079,"name":"Cities and Towns","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/structure/ada-village-hall"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph of women in the Jewish Home for the Aged, St. Paul, 1925.","author":[{"name":"Laura Weber","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/laura-weber"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246075,"name":"Group","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"October 27, 2014","eraTag":[{"id":186625246133,"name":"1870–1920 (Development of Industrial US)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246056,"name":"1980–Present (US in a New Global Age)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Sholom Home, St. Paul and St. Louis Park","postbody":"Two Jewish homes for the poor and elderly operated in the Twin Cities area through most of the twentieth century. They merged in 1971, then merged again in 1995 with another agency devoted ...","searchtext":"Two Jewish homes for the poor and elderly operated in the Twin Cities area through most of the twentieth century. They merged in 1971, then merged again in 1995 with another agency devoted to eldercare to form Sholom Community Alliance. Sholom operates two campuses, one in St. Louis Park and the other in St. Paul. After years of planning, the Jewish Home for the Aged of the Northwest opened in an old mansion at 75 Wilkin Street in St. Paul in 1908. It opened with eight “inmates”—the term then used for residents. The fire marshal condemned the Wilkin Street facility in 1916. In response, one hundred Jewish community leaders from St. Paul and Minneapolis decided to purchase land midway between the cities for a new home for the aged. This home would serve the entire Jewish community of the Upper Midwest. After a seven-year fundraising drive, the new facility opened in 1923 at Midway Parkway and Snelling Avenue in St. Paul. The Jewish Home for the Aged only accepted elderly people in reasonably good health. If residents fell ill after they moved in, they were allowed to stay. Already-ill patients were not admitted. Meanwhile, a group of women called the Daughters of Abraham formed in 1918 to address the need for a kosher facility for the infirm elderly. Over the next thirty years, this group raised about $18,000 through luncheons, picnics, bake sales, and rummage sales. In 1947, they offered the funds to the Home for the Aged in return for their promise to care for the chronically ill. Fearful of losing its autonomy, the Home for the Aged turned down the funds. The Daughters of Abraham then bought a house at 45 South St. Albans Street in St. Paul. They named the twenty-bed home Sholom Residence and changed their name to Sholom Auxiliary. By the 1930s the term “inmate” had been replaced with “resident.” Still, beyond food and shelter, there were minimal recreational and occupational services for residents at either home. The board of the Jewish Home for the Aged was slow to adopt modern social service practices through the 1940s and 1950s. In the mid-1950s, both Jewish elder care homes struggled. The state health department ruled that Sholom Residence needed expensive renovations. A report in 1957 criticized the management of the 150-bed Jewish Home for the Aged for its lack of concern with the personal needs of its residents. It recommended adding a medical and nursing program and organized physical and occupational therapy. The logical solution was for the Home for the Aged to merge with the Shalom Residence. But they could not reach an agreement. Shalom Residence opened a new facility in 1958 at 1620 Randolph Avenue that doubled its capacity. The Home for the Aged addressed long-standing concerns in 1966 when it hired more professional medical staff and added two wings. The overdue merger of the Jewish Home for the Aged and Sholom Residence occurred in 1971. The new entity was named Sholom Home, Inc. The building on Randolph was sold. The Midway Parkway facility was enlarged and remodeled multiple times during the 1970s. A complete medical, occupational therapy, and social work staff cared for the residents. Women volunteers played a crucial role in maintaining both the Jewish Home for the Aged and Shalom Residence. This continued when the auxiliaries merged in 1971.Fundraising events, beginning in the 1920s with the Purim Ball, provided major financial support. Meanwhile, in Minneapolis a group called the Community Housing and Service Corporation (CH/SC) was founded in 1971 to meet the housing needs of the elderly Jewish community. In 1990, CH/SC broke ground on Sholom West, a separate seventeen-acre campus in St. Louis Park. CH/SC and Sholom Home, Inc. merged in 1995 to create the Sholom Community Alliance. Shalom East left its long-time home on Midway Parkway in 2009 and moved to a new campus on West Seventh Street and Otto Avenue in St. Paul. An addition was completed in 2013. In 2013, Sholom cared for over a thousand residents, patients, and clients at its Shalom West and Shalom East campuses. Both campuses include senior apartments, short- and long-term care nursing facilities, assisted living, and memory care units, as well as community-wide home care and hospice.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/HV1.44 p24.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246089,"name":"Religion and Belief","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/group/sholom-home-st-paul-and-st-louis-park"},{"alt":"Black and white photograph pf Francis H. Shoemaker, 1934.","author":[{"name":"Frederick L. Johnson","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/frederick-l-johnson"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"October 20, 2014","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Shoemaker, Francis H. (1889–1958)","postbody":"Francis H. Shoemaker’s 1931–1932 journey from a Leavenworth prison cell to a seat in the U.S. Congress ranks among Minnesota’s most bizarre political odysseys. But little about Shoemaker ...","searchtext":"Francis H. Shoemaker’s 1931–1932 journey from a Leavenworth prison cell to a seat in the U.S. Congress ranks among Minnesota’s most bizarre political odysseys. But little about Shoemaker surprised those following the meteoric career of the radical newspaper editor from Red Wing. Francis Shoemaker was born in Renville County to Francis M. and Regina D. Shoemaker on April 25, 1889. He later claimed working as a “known speaker” by age fourteen and a labor organizer by age seventeen. He also alleged aiding the prominent, radical labor leader “Big Bill” Haywood. Yet even Shoemaker’s political allies didn’t trust his statements. Henry G. Teigan, a founding father of the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party (F-L), said Shoemaker leaned toward “spilling fabrications instead of facts.” In the early 1920s Shoemaker was active in the farmer labor group Progressive Farmers of America (PFA). A PFA official charged him with misuse of funds in 1926, resulting in Shoemaker’s expulsion and a serious rift within the group. In 1928 Fred A. Scherf, a Nonpartisan League activist and former state legislator, chose Shoemaker as editor of the Scherf-owned Red Wing newspaper the Organized Farmer. Shoemaker used the newspaper to denounce the area’s dominant Republican party and its leaders. Three-term Republican Congressman August H. Andresen became a popular target of the feisty editor. Shoemaker hoped to replace Andresen in Congress. “Jellyfish,” “rodent,” and “Wall Street tool” were among the names given to the incumbent in the Organized Farmer. Shoemaker, the Farmer-Labor party candidate, ran for Andresen’s Third District seat in 1930. He proclaimed, “Vote for me in November and make it the last of August.” Shoemaker lost. A bigger challenge now faced the editor. He had written a letter to a Red Wing banker addressed to “Robber of Widows and Orphans, Red Wing, Minn. in care of Temple of Greed and Chicanery.” Local postal workers took note. Shoemaker found himself charged with improper use of the mail. U.S. District Court judge John B. Sanborn Jr. heard his case in St. Paul and sentenced the newsman to a $500 fine. Sanborn added a year and a day in federal prison but suspended that term. An angry Shoemaker struck back, using his newspaper to question Sanborn’s decision. The now-irate federal judge sent the editor to prison. Shoemaker spent nearly his full term in Leavenworth Penitentiary before being released on November 4, 1931. America’s Great Depression deepened while Shoemaker served his time. He returned to the newspaper, ready for another run at Andresen. A talented and combative speaker, Shoemaker campaigned aggressively. He knocked out a Clarkfield heckler. A Twin Cities radio station forced him off the air. A Faribault jury, meanwhile, heard an Andresen slander lawsuit against Shoemaker. It took just twenty minutes to find him not guilty. Shoemaker caught a break when political stalemate resulted in Minnesota’s 1932 race for Congress being run on an “at large” basis. The top nine vote-getters statewide were to be sent to Washington, D.C., and 1932 appeared to be a Farmer-Labor year in the state. Backed by voters from Greater Minnesota, Shoemaker captured the eighth of nine seats. Andresen placed tenth. Once in Washington, Congressman Shoemaker did little lawmaking. But he did take revenge on his old Minnesota enemies—“ravenous fiends” and “alley rats”—in a June 9, 1933 speech, “My Judicial Crucifixion—How a Judicial Oligarchy Railroaded Me to a Penitentiary.” During his term, Washington police twice arrested the erratic Shoemaker for assault. Minneapolis officers topped that total, jailing him three times—most notably for a high-speed chase down Hennepin Avenue and during the 1934 Minneapolis truckers’ strike. Shoemaker overreached in March 1934 when he challenged Farmer-Labor Party leader Henrik Shipstead for his U.S. Senate seat. A bombastic Shoemaker speech nearly stampeded F-L convention-goers to his cause. Party regulars finally put down his mutiny. Shoemaker ran for Congress four more times, but without success. In July 1934 he claimed he was going overseas as a foreign correspondent. A St. Paul Pioneer Press editorial noted archly, “Never have the citizens of the state more anxiously and passionately desired to believe the congressman’s word.” Shoemaker later moved to Redwood Falls, where he was arrested for assault in 1938 and 1939. He died in Minneapolis in 1958.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/2008_254_000_resized.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/shoemaker-francis-h-1889-1958"},{"alt":"Black-and-white engravings of Dred Scott (at right) and Harriet Robinson Scott (at left) that appeared in the Jun 27, 1857 edition of Frank Leslie||s Illustrated Newspaper.","author":[{"name":"Annette Atkins","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/annette-atkins"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246068,"name":"Event","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"October 13, 2014","eraTag":[{"id":186622056203,"name":"1792–1861 (Expansion and Reform)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"1836","name":"Dred and Harriet Scott in Minnesota","postbody":"African Americans Dred Scott and Harriet Robinson Scott lived at Fort Snelling in the 1830s as enslaved people. Both the Northwest Ordinance (1787) and the Missouri Compromise (1820) ...","searchtext":"African Americans Dred Scott and Harriet Robinson Scott lived at Fort Snelling in the 1830s as enslaved people. Both the Northwest Ordinance (1787) and the Missouri Compromise (1820) prohibited slavery in the area, but slavery existed there even so. In the 1840s the Scotts sued for their freedom, arguing that having lived in “free territory” made them free. The 1857 Supreme Court decision that grew out of their suit moved the U.S. closer to civil war. The Scotts were among the enslaved people taken by their army owners to Fort Snelling in the 1830s. The U.S. Army supported slavery there by allowing its presence and by paying a supplement to employ servants (including enslaved people). U.S. Indian Agent Lawrence Taliaferro owned Harriet Robinson. Army Surgeon John Emerson, not previously a slave owner, purchased Dred Scott in St. Louis. The pre-statehood community in the 1830s–1840s included enslaved and free blacks, a larger number of white army personnel and fur traders, and a still larger population of mixed-race and métis people. The majority population was Dakota and Ojibwe. This diversity, along with the absence of a cash-crop economy, made for more fluid race dynamics than elsewhere in the U.S. In addition, enslaved people exercised greater independence and freedom of association than was common in the plantation south. Like all enslaved people, those at the fort were owned as property. Even so, Dred Scott earned independent income. He and Harriet Robinson married, lived together, and formed a family. When the army reassigned Emerson to the South, the Scotts eventually joined him. For a time, they lived at Fort Jesup in Louisiana. In 1838, they returned to Fort Snelling via St. Louis. Eliza, the first of the couple’s daughters, was born during this trip. Their second daughter, Lizzie, arrived around 1846. Though Eliza was born in free territory, Lizzie was not. After Emerson’s death in 1843, his widow, Irene Sanford, assumed ownership of the Scotts. She rejected Scott’s attempts to buy freedom for himself and his family, leaving them afraid that they would be sold and separated. Supported by abolitionists and inspired by court precedents (including the Missouri Court’s 1836 decision to free a woman named Rachel based on her residence at Fort Snelling), the Scotts pursued their case. They brought suits in a Missouri court in 1846/1847, then filed in federal court in 1853 while trying to keep themselves and their daughters out of harm’s way. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney handed down the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in 1857. In Scott v. Sandford, the Court decided that African Americans—enslaved and free—were not citizens “within the meaning of the Constitution.” Therefore, the Scotts had no right to sue. It further ruled that slave owners could take their “property” anywhere, thereby declaring that Congress could not determine what was free territory. In addition to denying the rights of African Americans, the decision contributed directly to the sectional fury already inflamed by the Kansas-Nebraska Act, “Bloody Kansas,” and the Fugitive Slave Law. It nullified the Missouri Compromise and the Northwest Ordinance. It strengthened the new Republican Party and helped elect Abraham Lincoln in 1860. It challenged the American nation’s idea of itself as a “free country.” The decision also strengthened divisions in Minnesota. From the 1840s Minnesota was home to fervent abolitionists. Its vibrant tourist economy catered to a summer population of slaveholders. After Scott v. Sandford, local abolitionists both pushed for laws to declare black men citizens and helped enslaved people escape. Minnesota joined other northern states in adopting personal liberty laws that protected African Americans brought into free territory. The new, anti-slavery Republican Party took deep root in Minnesota. Ultimately, the Scotts secured their freedom. Taylor Blow, a previous owner of Dred Scott who helped fund the cases and employed the Scotts during their suits, purchased the Scott family and set them free just before Dred Scott’s death in 1858. Harriet and her daughters stayed in St. Louis. She worked as a laundress until her death in 1876.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Mnopedia%20Blogs/dred_and_harriet.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056216,"name":"African Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/dred-and-harriet-scott-minnesota"}]

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