The St. Paul Society for Improving the Condition of the Poor (later the Society for the Relief of the Poor) is organized to give aid to people who need food, fuel, and work. Early officers include Henry M. Rice, Alexander Ramsey, Henry H. Sibley, and William R. Marshall.

Forest fires destroy Baudette and Spooner, killing twenty-nine people and burning over 220,000 acres of land. During this dry year, over 900 fires had burned in twenty-nine counties, causing forty-two deaths. Graceton, Pitt, Cedar Spur, and Williams also burned.

Construction begins on Ash House, a Hudson's Bay Company trading post at the mouth of Rainy River. The two-story log house, with oiled parchment windows and a clay and stone chimney, is completed a month later.

James Griffin becomes the first African American deputy chief of police in St. Paul.

International passenger ship traffic returns to Minnesota when the Columbus, carrying a load of German passengers, visits the Duluth-Superior harbor.

Rosalie Wahl is the first female justice appointed to the state supreme court.

Horsecars begin hauling passengers in St. Cloud.

Captain Seth Eastman begins the first of his four commands at Fort Snelling, this one lasting until October 26. An artist and former instructor of drawing at West Point, Eastman would record in his paintings images of the fort, traditional Dakota ways, and frontier life.

Congress passes the National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, naming the upper St. Croix River one of eight rivers protected by this legislation. The lower fifty-two miles of the river are preserved on October 25, 1972.

The "Peanuts" comic strip of St. Paul's Charles Schulz begins national syndication in seven newspapers.