Minnesota loses to Canada two and a half acres of water area from the Northwest Angle (the northwestern point of Lake of the Woods) when the United States and the Dominion of Canada sign an agreement that more accurately defines the international boundary between the two countries established by the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842.

Minnesota gets its taste of the nationwide savings and loan debacle when Hal Greenwood, Jr., former chairman and CEO of the failed Midwest Federal Savings and Loan Association, is sentenced by a federal judge in St. Paul to forty-six months in prison and ordered to forfeit $3.6 million. Following federal deregulation of the thrift industry during the 1980s, savings and loans around the country had become over-extended, and many engaged in loans without sufficient reserves to cover themselves if the loans failed. Greenwood was one of the few savings and loan officials to be sentenced.

More counties are created. Three are named for bodies of water; Big Stone for Big Stone Lake, Chippewa for the Chippewa River, and Traverse for Lake Traverse; and two for notable individuals; General John Pope, cartographer (see June 6), is honored with Pope County, and Isaac I. Stevens, railroad surveyor (see May 31), is remembered with Stevens County.

Minnesota Territory is legally organized when territorial governor Alexander Ramsey signs a proclamation written by Judge David Cooper.

Congress passes a law extending citizenship to all Native Americans in the United States.

Gerry Spiess departs from Chesapeake Bay in his ten-foot sailboat Yankee Girl, built in his White Bear Lake garage in 1977. After a solo voyage across the Atlantic, Spiess arrives in Falmouth, England, on July 24, 1979.

Harper and Brothers publishes the first English edition of Ole E. Rolvaag's Giants in the Earth, a novel of Norwegian immigration to the Great Plains. Rolvaag, a professor at St. Olaf College, wrote the original text in Norwegian.

Stillwater's first sawmill, owned by John McKusick, cuts its first board, the start of over sixty years of milling in the city. Stillwater's mills cut primarily white pine, a wood prized for ornamental carving.

James J. Hill's Hotel Lafayette opens at Minnetonka Beach. It becomes one of the most popular resort hotels around the lake.

At Gettysburg, 262 members of the First Minnesota Volunteer Infantry Regiment charge a much larger Confederate force, succeeding in slowing their advance but resulting in 215 casualties—a stunning 82 percent. The next day, the remaining soldiers help repel Pickett's charge, capturing the flag of the Twenty-eighth Virginia Regiment in the process.