The Minnesota National Forest is renamed the Chippewa National Forest.

Fairmont's first passenger train arrives.

Dakota and Ojibwe warriors engage in two battles: one in present-day Stillwater in an area called Battle Hollow, the other at the mouth of the Rum River in Anoka. The Dakota attacks kill about 100 Ojibwe people, and during the next month the Dakota hold celebratory dances at Bde Maka Ska.

On Women's Equality Day, the Minnesota Woman Suffrage Memorial is dedicated at the state capitol. Titled "Garden of Time: Landscape of Change," the memorial is planted with native grasses and flowers and features a 100-foot trellis imprinted with the names of important suffrage leaders in the state's history.

Giacomo C. Beltrami reaches and names Lake Julia, which he incorrectly declares to be the source of the Mississippi River.

The Stillwater Convention petitions Congress to establish the Territory of Minnesota. Wisconsin's recent admission into the Union meant that settlers in the area between the Mississippi and St. Croix Rivers were without a government. Minnesota Territory would be officially recognized on March 3, 1849.

The air force launches the ultra-high-level balloon Man-High II in Crosby. Pilot David Simons reaches a record 101,516 feet (almost twenty-one miles) before setting down in Elm Lake, South Dakota. The flight takes thirty-two hours and ten minutes, but Simons occupies the balloon's capsule, from pre-launch to landing, for forty-four hours, a period longer than Charles Lindbergh's solo flight across the Atlantic.

During the US–Dakota War of 1862, the Dakota make their first attack on New Ulm, and Governor Alexander Ramsey appoints Henry H. Sibley general of the Minnesota Volunteers.

Jesse Reno is born in Wheeling, West Virginia. In 1853, General Reno surveyed the military road from Council Bluffs, Iowa, to Mendota, a route of 279 miles. He was killed in the Civil War.

A tornado kills nine and injures 222 in the Anoka area.