The Minnesota Vikings professional football club has competed in the National Football League (NFL) since 1961. The team ranks among the most successful franchises in the NFL, with seventeen divisional titles since 1970. They have reached the playoffs in twenty-nine of their fifty-seven seasons and made four Super Bowl appearances. Eleven former players, one coach, and one general manager from the Vikings have been inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, in Canton, Ohio.

The conservatory at Como Park in St. Paul, which opened on November 7, 1915, is a well-maintained example of a Victorian greenhouse. While many similar “crystal palaces” have been torn down, St. Paul’s conservatory has remained a center for horticulture, recreation, and education for over a century.

Blue Mounds State Park, named for a long, high Sioux quartzite cliff, is located in southwestern Minnesota on the Iowa and South Dakota borders. The cliff, one and one-half miles long and up to ninety feet high, appeared to be blue in color to the early Euro-American immigrants who saw it from a distance. A unique herd of bison, the largest North American mammal, makes its home in the park on 533 acres of native tall grass prairie, which escaped plowing due to poor soil quality.