Minnesota’s suffragists worked tirelessly to win the vote beginning in the late 1850s, when Mary Colburn delivered what is believed to be the state’s first women’s rights speech. After a long struggle, the dream of equal suffrage took a big leap forward on September 8, 1919, when the state legislature voted to ratify the woman suffrage amendment, making Minnesota the fifteenth state to do so.

With a career spanning fifty years, Anna Arnold Hedgeman was an educator, civil rights advocate, and writer. In 1963, she was the only woman on the planning committee for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

Between 1934 and 1945, many local advocacy and state legislative efforts were introduced to preserve the Nerstrand Woods as the last sizable remnant of Minnesota’s “Big Woods.” On March 28, 1945, the bill establishing the Nerstrand Woods State Park was approved by the legislature. It was signed by Governor Edward J. Thye on April 2.