The Mesabi Range towns of Virginia, Merritt, and Mountain Iron are destroyed in a forest fire.

Little Mamie Schwartz is kidnapped in St. Paul. Her disappearance causes a sensation, with the legislature offering $500 for her return. The police find her the next year in Superior, Wisconsin.

St. Mary's Falls Canal opens at Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. It connects Lake Superior to Lake Huron and the lower Great Lakes, eventually permitting the mass transport of wheat, coal, and iron ore from Minnesota to points east.

William Willim receives the first known citizenship papers granted in Minnesota. An English-born building contractor in Stillwater, Willim also builds the first limekiln in the state this year.

The first "Minnesota Good Roads Day" is declared. The national Good Roads Movement was spurred by two forces: bicyclists who wanted to ride on better surfaces than muddy country lanes, and Rural Free Delivery, the post office's promise to deliver mail to and from farms that were easily accessible by road.

Elmer L. Andersen is born in Chicago. During his term as governor, from 1961 to 1963, he pioneered progressive legislation in civil rights, special education, mental health care, and metropolitan governance and establish numerous state parks.

The US marshal from St. Paul arrests seven census takers in Minneapolis, the opening salvo of the "Twin Cities Census War." St. Paul's leaders accused Minneapolis of cooking the books in order to claim the title "most populous city." The accusation is proven true; St. Paul, however, is also found to be padding its numbers. A new count completed in August gives Minneapolis 164,581 and St. Paul 133,156.

Frederick L. McGhee becomes the first African American admitted to practice at the bar of the state supreme court. Born enslaved in Mississippi in 1861, as an adult McGhee took on civil rights cases and served as an emissary to Catholic prelates in Minnesota. In 1905 he helped develop the organizational precursor to the NAACP, the Niagara Conference. He died on September 19, 1912, in St. Paul.

Father Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet, Frenchmen traveling down the Wisconsin River, enter the main stream of the "Mechassipi." They are the first Europeans to travel on the upper river.

A tornado travels from Edina to Minneapolis to Roseville, killing one, injuring eighty-three, and causing $47 million in losses.