The lace-making school that operated at Birch Coulee at the turn of the twentieth century is an important part of the history of the Lower Sioux Indian Community. Although the school was an extension of the assimilation efforts directed towards Dakota people in the late 1800s, the Birch Coulee lace-makers used the project to support their community, and to continue a long tradition of communal artmaking among Dakota women.

From early inns and boarding houses to the magnificent three-hundred-room Hotel Lafayette, during the last decades of the nineteenth century, Lake Minnetonka was transformed into one of the resort capitals of America. In the 1870s and 1880s, tourists from across the nation came to stay at the resort hotels that prospered on the shores of one of Minnesota's most famous lakes.

The Lake Vermilion–Soudan Underground Mine State Park occupies over four thousand acres in the far northeast corner of Minnesota. The site contains a historic underground iron mine as well as the fifth largest lake in Minnesota and its surrounding habitat.

The Memorial Chapel at Lakewood Cemetery (3600 Hennepin Avenue) in Minneapolis is one of the few buildings that can claim to be modeled after two World Heritage Sites. Its exterior, designed by architect Harry Wild Jones, was inspired by the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. Its interior was designed by J&R Lamb Studios of New York and drew inspiration from St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice.

Expert Essay: Associate professor of history Jeff Kolnick looks at agriculture through several lenses and offers his view on its overall impact on Minnesota, past and present.

For more than seventy years, the Minnesota-based writer and activist Meridel Le Sueur was a voice for oppressed peoples worldwide. Beginning in the 1920s, she championed the struggles of workers against the capitalist economy, the efforts of women to find their voices and their power, the rights of American Indians to their lands and their cultures, and environmentalist causes.

Finished in the mid-1860s after years of logistical and financial challenges, the LeDuc Historic Estate in Hastings is an excellent example of the Gothic Revival style. It is also one of the few surviving homes designed by influential architect and horticulturist Andrew Jackson Downing.

By the late 1950s Minnesota’s legislative districts—last configured in 1913—had become alarmingly imbalanced. Though the state constitution required the districts to be drawn “in proportion to population,” the populations of House districts ranged from 7,290 residents to 107,246, and Senate districts from 16,878 to 153,455. It would take fourteen years, three federal lawsuits, three special sessions of the legislature, three governor’s vetoes, one trip to the Minnesota Supreme Court, and one to the US Supreme Court to fix the problem, and then temporarily. Twenty years and one more governor’s veto later, the US Supreme Court intervened again.

When Minnesotans think about leprosy, they may recall Biblical references to the “unclean,” the National Leprosarium in Louisiana, or a Hawaiian leper colony. In our state, however, leprosy was a medical concern during the late 1800s and early 1900s, when many of the affected were Norwegian immigrants.

Sauk Centre’s Sinclair Lewis, short story writer, novelist, and playwright, was the first American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.

On April 12, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson called upon Americans on the home front to help fight what would become known as World War I. In response, many Minnesotans turned to backyard gardening to increase their food supply. Homegrown vegetables filled pantries and stomachs and allowed “citizen soldiers” to conserve wheat, meat, sugar, and fats that were essential for U.S. troops and their European allies.

In 1880, two Minneapolis businessmen built the Lincoln Flouring Mill in Anoka, Minnesota. The Lincoln Mill became one the largest country flour mills in the state, surviving until 1939 in spite of catastrophes like the Anoka fire of 1884.