Crown Prince Olav of Norway dedicates Duluth's Enger Tower, which offers spectacular views of Duluth Harbor and Lake Superior. Bert Enger (1864-1931) was a Norwegian-born businessman who ran a successful furniture store in Duluth. He donated much of his estate to the city after his death.

William Hamm Jr., son of the owner of the Theodore Hamm Brewing Company, is kidnapped at Minnehaha Street and Greenbrier Avenue in St. Paul. He is released after a ransom of $100,000 is paid. Gangster Roger Touhy is brought to trial but acquitted, and investigators later learn that the real culprits were the Barker-Karpis gang.

The St. Paul police activate motorcycle patrols, with two plainclothes officers watching traffic on Summit Avenue.

Artist Frank Blackwell Mayer arrives in St. Paul from Baltimore to make drawings of the pending treaty negotiations at Traverse des Sioux. These drawings and his diary, published as With Pen and Pencil on the Frontier in 1851, provide a valuable record of frontier and Native American life.

The US Senate ratifies treaties with the Ojibwe and Dakota that formally transfer ownership of the land between the Mississippi and St. Croix Rivers to the federal government. Squatters quickly claim land in St. Paul and Marine on St. Croix.

The last commercially cut logs pass through Stillwater's boom on the St. Croix, marking the end of large-scale logging in the St. Croix valley. The boom was a chain of logs stretching across the river. Logs floated from upstream, each carrying their owner's brand, were sorted and measured so that each logging company got credit for what it had cut.

Rocky Mountain locusts cross into Minnesota and begin destroying crops in the southwestern part of the state. Relief efforts are organized to keep the settlers from starving. The locusts return for the next four years, finally leaving in August 1877.

Captain Frederick Marryat, author of numerous sea tales, most memorably "Mr. Midshipman Easy," visits Fort Snelling while on a trip to investigate American democracy. The next year he publishes Diary in America, which contains several chapters on his Minnesota experiences.

John H. Stevens is born in Brompton Falls, Quebec. A farmer, merchant, editor, and legislator, he built a house on the west bank of St. Anthony Falls in 1849.

Faribault's first passenger train arrives.