The University of Minnesota Landscape Arboretum is the state's largest, most diverse and complete horticultural site. The grounds have more than five thousand types of plants, including fruits, vegetables, bushes and flowers. Located about twenty miles west of the Twin Cities, it is a significant horticultural resource.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Count William Rudolph Martinovich von Rovigno was born a European nobleman but became a big-game hunter, worldwide traveler, bronco-buster, wilderness guide, and friend of "Buffalo Bill" Cody. After falling in love with Minnesota's North Woods, he lived and worked in the state as a game warden, forest guard, and wilderness advocate.

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.

On August 20, 1904, a large cyclone hit the City of Waconia, changing the face of the city forever.

In spring 1829, Wacouta (Shooter) faced two challenges upon becoming leader of the Red Wing band of Mdewakanton Dakota. He needed to fend off challenges from rivals within his village and also find success in dealings with United States government officials.