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This Day in Minnesota History

July 21, 1820

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Lewis Cass, governor of Michigan (which at the time included present-day Minnesota), reaches what he erroneously believes to be the source of the Mississippi River: a lake called Gaa-miskwaawaakokaag (where there are many red cedars) by the Ojibwe. Afterward, settler-colonists began to call it Cass Lake.

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