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The
history of Minnesota is the
story of a U.S. state
shaped by its original
Native American residents, European exploration
and settlement, and the emergence of industries made
possible by the state's natural resources. Minnesota
achieved prominence through
fur trading, logging, and
farming, and later,
railroads, flour milling and iron mining. While
those industries remain important, the state's
economy is now driven by banking, computers and
health care.
The first
settlers followed herds of large game to
the region during the last Ice Age,
and from them descended the
Anishinaabe, the Sioux, and the
other
Native American inhabitants. Fur
traders from France arrived during the
1600s. Europeans, moving west
during the 1800s, drove out most of the
Native Americans. Fort Snelling,
built to protect United States territorial interests,
brought early settlers to the area. Early settlers used
Saint Anthony Falls for
powering sawmills in the area that became
Minneapolis, while
others settled downriver in the area that became
Saint Paul.
Minnesota
became a part of the United States as the
Minnesota Territory in
1849, and became
the 32nd
U.S. state on May 11,
1858. After the upheaval of the
American Civil War and the
Dakota War of 1862, the
state's economy started to develop when natural resources
were tapped for logging and farming. Railroads attracted
immigrants, established the farm economy and brought goods
to market. The power provided by Saint Anthony Falls spurred
the growth of Minneapolis, and
the innovative milling methods gave it the title of the
"milling capital of the world."
New
industry came from iron ore,
discovered in the north, mined relatively easily from
open pits, and shipped to
Great Lakes steel mills from the
ports at Duluth and
Two Harbors. Economic
development and social changes led to an expanded role for
state government and a population shift from rural areas to
cities. The Great Depression
brought layoffs in mining and tension in labor relations but
New Deal programs helped the state.
After World War II, Minnesota
became known for technology, fueled by early computer
companies Sperry Rand,
Control Data and
Cray. The Twin Cities
also became a regional center for the arts with cultural
institutions such as the Guthrie
Theater, Minnesota
Orchestra, and the Walker
Art Center.
Native American inhabitation
The oldest
known human remains in Minnesota, dating back about 9000
years ago, were found in 1933. The individual was named
"Browns Valley Man" because of his location near
Browns Valley.
Some of the
earliest evidence of a sustained presence in the area comes
from a site known as Bradbury
Brook near Mille Lacs Lake
which was used around 7500 BC. Subsequently, extensive
trading networks developed in the
region. The body of an early resident known as "Minnesota
Woman" was discovered in 1931 in
Otter Tail County.
Radiocarbon dating
determined that she had come through the area in
approximately 6600 BC. She had a conch
shell from a snail species known
as Busycon perversa, which had
previously only been known to exist in
Florida.
Several
hundred years later, the climate of Minnesota warmed
significantly. As large animals such as
mammoths became extinct, native people changed their
diet. They gathered nuts, berries, and vegetables, and they
hunted smaller animals such as deer,
bison, and birds.
The stone tools found from this era became smaller and more
specialized to use these new food sources. They also devised
new techniques for catching fish, such
as fishing hooks,
nets, and
harpoons. Around 5000 BC, people on the shores of
Lake Superior (in Minnesota and
portions of what is now Michigan,
Wisconsin, and
Canada) were the first on the continent to begin making
metal tools. Pieces of
ore with high concentrations of copper
were initially pounded into a rough shape, heated to reduce
brittleness, pounded again to refine the shape, and
reheated. Edges could be made sharp enough to be useful as
knives or spear
points.
Archaeological evidence of Native American settlements dates
back to 3000 BC. The Jeffers
Petroglyphs site in southwest Minnesota contains
carvings from the Late Archaic
Period and from the 1750 BC – 900 BC time period. Pieces
of pottery began to appear at short-lived settlements around
1000 BC. Around 700 BC, burial
mounds were first created, and the practice continued
until the arrival of Europeans, when 10,000 such mounds
dotted the state.
The
Hopewell culture is believed
to have lived along the banks of the Mississippi River from
200 BC to about AD 400. By AD 800, wild
rice became a staple crop in
the region, and corn farther to the
south. Within a few hundred years, the
Mississippian culture
reached into the southeast portion of the state, and large
villages were formed. The
Dakota Indian culture may have
descended from some of the peoples of the Mississippian
culture.
When
Europeans first started exploring
Minnesota, the region was inhabited primarily by tribes of
Dakota, with the
Ojibwa (sometimes called Chippewa, or Anishinaabe)
beginning to migrate westward into the state around 1700.
The economy of these tribes was
chiefly based on hunter-gatherer
activities. There was also a small group of
Ho-Chunk (Winnebago) Indians near
Long Prairie, who
later moved to a reservation in
Blue Earth County
in 1855.
European exploration
Though
highly controversial, an inscribed stone known as the
Kensington Runestone
suggests that a group of Norse
explorers may have ventured as far inland as Minnesota as
early as 1362. Though many consider it a
hoax, recent geological examinations point toward a
pre-19th century origin of the inscription.
It was a
few more centuries before contact between Europeans and
Native Americans of Minnesota could be confirmed. In the
late 1650s, Pierre Esprit
Radisson and Médard
des Groseilliers were probably the first to meet Dakota
Indians while following the southern shore of Lake Superior
(which would become northern Wisconsin). The north shore was
explored in the 1660s. Among the first to do this was
Claude Allouez, a
missionary on
Madeline Island. He made an
early map of the area in 1671.
Around this
time, the Ojibwa Indians reached
Minnesota as part of a westward migration. Having come from
a region around Maine, they were
experienced at dealing with European traders. They dealt in
furs and possessed guns.
Tensions rose between the Ojibwa and Dakota in the ensuing
years.
In 1671,
France signed a treaty with a number
of tribes to allow trade. Shortly thereafter, French trader
Daniel Greysolon,
Sieur du Lhut arrived in the area and began trading with
the local tribes. Du Lhut explored the western area of Lake
Superior, near his namesake, the city of
Duluth, and areas south of
there. He helped to arrange a peace agreement between the
Dakota and Ojibwa tribes in 1679.
Father
Louis Hennepin with companions
Michel Aco and
Antoine Auguelle headed
north from the area of Illinois
after coming into that area with an exploration party headed
by René
Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle. They were captured
by a Dakota tribe in 1680. While with the tribe, they came
across and named the Falls of
Saint Anthony. Soon, du Lhut negotiated to have
Hennepin's party released from captivity. Hennepin returned
to Europe and wrote a book, Description of Louisiana,
published in 1683, about his travels where many portions
(including the part about Saint Anthony Falls) were strongly
embellished. As an example, he described the falls as being
a drop of fifty or sixty feet, when they were really only
about sixteen feet.[11]
Pierre-Charles Le Sueur
explored the Minnesota River
to the Blue Earth
area around 1700. He thought the blue earth was a source of
copper, and he told stories about the
possibility of mineral wealth, but there actually was no
copper to be found.
Explorers
searching for the fabled
Northwest Passage and large inland seas in North America
continued to pass through the state. In 1721, the French
built Fort Beauharnois on
Lake Pepin. In 1731, the
Grand Portage trail was first
traversed by a European,
Pierre La Vérendrye. He used a map written down on a
piece of birch bark
by Ochagach, an Assiniboin guide.
The North West Company,
which traded in fur and competed with the
Hudson's Bay Company,
was established along the Grand Portage in 1783 – 1784.
Jonathan Carver, a
shoemaker from
Massachusetts, visited the area in 1767 as part of
another expedition. He and the rest of the exploration party
were only able to stay for a relatively short period, due to
supply shortages. They headed back east to
Fort Michilimackinac,
where Carver wrote journals about the trip, though others
would later claim the stories were largely
plagiarized from others. The
stories were published in 1778, but Carver died before the
book earned him much money.
Carver County and
Carver's Cave are named for
him.
Until 1818
the Red River Valley was
considered British and was subject to several colonization
schemes, such as the Red River
Colony. The boundary where the Red River crossed the
49th parallel was not marked until 1823, when
Stephen H. Long conducted a
survey expedition. When several hundred settlers abandoned
the Red River Colony in the 1820s, they entered the United
States by way of the Red River Valley, instead of moving to
eastern Canada or returning to Europe. The region had been
occupied by Métis
people, the children of voyageurs and Indians, since the
middle 17th century.
Several
efforts were made to determine the source of the
Mississippi River. The true
source was found in 1832, when
Henry Schoolcraft was guided by a group of Ojibwa headed
by Ozaawindib ("Yellow
Head") to a lake in northern Minnesota. Schoolcraft named it
Lake Itasca, combining the
Latin words veritas
("truth") and caput ("head"). The native name
for the lake was Omashkooz, meaning
elk. Other explorers of the area include
Zebulon Pike in 1806,
Major Stephen Long in
1817, and George
William Featherstonhaugh in 1835. Featherstonhaugh
conducted a geological survey of the Minnesota River valley
and wrote an account entitled A Canoe Voyage up the
Minnay Sotor.
Joseph Nicollet scouted the
area in the late 1830s, exploring and mapping the Upper
Mississippi River basin, the St. Croix River, and the land
between the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. He and
John C. Frémont left their
mark in the southwest of the state, carving their names in
the pipestone quarries near
Winnewissa Falls (an area now part of
Pipestone National
Monument in
Pipestone County).
Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow never explored the state, but he did help to
make it popular. He published
The Song of Hiawatha
in 1855, which contains references to many regions in
Minnesota. The story was based on Ojibwa legends carried
back east by other explorers and traders (particularly those
collected by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft).
Territorial foundation and
settlement
Land acquisition
All of the
land east of the Mississippi
River was granted to the United States by the
Second Treaty of Paris
at the end of the American
Revolution in 1783. This included what would become
modern day Saint Paul but only part of Minneapolis,
including the northeast, north-central and east-central
portions of the state. The wording of the treaty in the
Minnesota area depended on landmarks reported by fur
traders, who erroneously reported an "Isle Phelipeaux" in
Lake Superior, a "Long Lake" west of the island, and the
belief that the Mississippi River ran well into modern
Canada. Most of the state was
purchased in 1803 from France as part
of the Louisiana Purchase.
Parts of northern Minnesota were considered to be in
Rupert's Land. The exact
definition of the boundary between Minnesota and
British North America
was not addressed until the
Anglo-American
Convention of 1818, which set the U.S.-Canada border at
the 49th parallel west of the
Lake of the Woods (except
for a small chunk of land now dubbed the
Northwest Angle). Border
disputes east of the Lake of the Woods continued until the
Webster-Ashburton Treaty
of 1842.
Throughout
the first half of the 19th century, the northeastern portion
of the state was a part of the
Northwest Territory, then
the Illinois Territory,
then the Michigan Territory,
and finally the Wisconsin
Territory. The western and southern areas of the state
were not formally organized until 1838, when they became
part of the Iowa Territory.
Fort Snelling and the
establishment of Minneapolis and Saint Paul
Fort Snelling was the first
major U.S.
military presence in the state. The land for the fort,
at the confluence of
the Minnesota and
Mississippi rivers, was
acquired in 1805 by Zebulon Pike.
When concerns mounted about the fur trade in the area,
construction of the fort began in 1819. Construction was
completed in 1825, and Colonel
Josiah Snelling and his officers and soldiers left their
imprint on the area. One of the missions of the fort was to
mediate disputes between the Ojibwa and the Dakota tribes.
Lawrence Taliaferro was
an agent of the
U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs. He spent 20 years at the
site, finally resigning in 1839.
In the
1850s, Fort Snelling played a key role in the infamous
Dred Scott court case.
Slaves Dred Scott and his wife were
taken to the fort by their master, John Emerson. They lived
at the fort and elsewhere in territories where slavery was
prohibited. After Emerson's death, the Scotts argued that
since they had lived in free territory, they were no longer
slaves. Ultimately, the U.S. Supreme Court sided against the
Scotts. Dred Scott Field, located just a short distance away
in Bloomington, is
named in the memory of Fort Snelling's significance in one
of the most important legal precedents in U.S. History.
By 1851,
treaties between Native American tribes and the U.S.
government had opened much of Minnesota to settlement, so
the fort no longer was a frontier outpost. Fort Snelling
served as a training center for soldiers during the
American Civil War and
later as the headquarters for the Department of Dakota. A
portion has been designated as
Fort Snelling
National Cemetery where over 160,000 are interred.
During World War II, the fort
served as a training center for nearly 300,000 inductees.
After World War II, the fort was threatened with demolition
due to the building of freeways
Highway 5 and
Highway 55, but
citizens rallied to save the historic fort. Fort Snelling is
now a historic site operated by the
Minnesota Historical
Society.
Fort
Snelling was largely responsible for the establishment of
the city of Minneapolis.
In an effort to be self-sufficient, the soldiers of the fort
built roads, planted crops, and built a
grist mill and a
sawmill at
Saint Anthony Falls.
Later, Franklin Steele came to Fort Snelling as the post
sutler (the operator of the general
store), and established interests in lumbering and other
activities. When the Ojibwa signed a treaty ceding lands in
1837, Steele staked a claim to land on the east side of the
Mississippi River adjacent to Saint Anthony Falls. In 1848,
he built a sawmill at the falls, and the community of Saint
Anthony sprung up around the east side of the falls.
John H. Stevens, an employee
of Franklin Steele, pointed out that land on the west side
of the falls would make a good site for future mills. Since
the land on the west side was still part of the military
reservation, Stevens made a deal with Fort Snelling's
commander. Stevens would provide free ferry
service across the river in exchange for a tract of 160
acres at the head of the falls. Stevens received the claim
and built a house, the first house in Minneapolis, in 1850.
In 1854, Stevens platted the city of Minneapolis on the west
bank. Later, in 1872, Minneapolis absorbed the city of Saint
Anthony.
The city of
Saint Paul, Minnesota
owes its existence to Fort Snelling. A group of
squatters, mostly from the ill-fated
Selkirk Colony in what is now
the Canadian province of Manitoba,
established a camp near the fort. A number of the people at
the fort, including Taliaferro, did not appreciate the new
presence. As the fort imposed new restrictions, the
squatters were forced to head down the Mississippi River.
They settled at a site known as Fountain Cave. This site was
not quite far enough for the officers at the fort, so the
squatters were forced out again.
Pierre "Pig's Eye" Parrant, a popular
moonshiner among the group, moved
downriver and established a saloon, becoming the first
European resident in the area that later became Saint Paul.
The squatters named their settlement "Pig's Eye" after
Parrant. The name was later changed to Lambert's Landing and
then finally Saint Paul.
However, the earliest name for the area comes from an Indian
colony Im-in-i-ja Ska, meaning "White Rock" and
referring to the limestone bluffs nearby.
Minneapolis
and Saint Paul are collectively known as the "Twin Cities".
The cities enjoyed a rivalry during their early years, with
Saint Paul being the capital city and Minneapolis becoming
prominent through industry. The term "Twin Cities" was
coined around 1872, after a newspaper editorial suggested
that Minneapolis could absorb Saint Paul. Residents decided
that the cities needed a separate identity, so people coined
the phrase "Dual Cities", which later evolved into "Twin
Cities". Today, Minneapolis is the largest city in
Minnesota, with a population of 382,618 in the 2000
census˛.
Saint Paul is the second largest city, with a population of
287,151. Minneapolis and Saint Paul anchor a metropolitan
area with a population of 2,968,806 as of 2000, with a total
state population of 4,919,479
Early European settlement and
development
Henry Hastings Sibley
built the first stone house in the Minnesota Territory in
Mendota in 1838, along
with other limestone buildings used by the
American Fur Company,
which bought animal pelts at that location from 1825 to
1853. Another area of early economic development in
Minnesota was the logging industry.
Loggers found the white pine
especially valuable, and it was plentiful in the
northeastern section of the state and in the
St. Croix
River valley. Before railroads, lumbermen relied mostly
on river transportation to bring logs to market, which made
Minnesota's timber resources attractive. Towns like
Marine on St.
Croix and Stillwater
became important lumber centers fed by the St. Croix River,
while Winona was supplied
lumber by areas in southern Minnesota and along the
Minnesota River. The
unregulated logging practices of the time and a severe
drought took their toll in 1894, when the
Great Hinckley Fire
ravaged 480 square miles in the
Hinckley and
Sandstone areas of
Pine County, killing over 400
residents.
Saint
Anthony, on the east bank of the Mississippi River later
became part of Minneapolis, and was an important lumber
milling center supplied by the Rum
River. In 1848, businessman Franklin Steele built the
first private sawmill on the Saint
Anthony Falls, and more sawmills quickly followed. The
oldest home still standing in Saint Anthony is the Ard
Godfrey house, built in 1848, and lived in by Ard and
Harriet Godfrey. The house of
John H. Stevens, the first house on the west bank in
Minneapolis, was moved several times, finally to
Minnehaha Park in south
Minneapolis in 1896.
Minnesota Territory
Stephen A. Douglas
(D), the
chair of the Senate Committee on Territories, drafted the
bill authorizing Minnesota Territory. He had envisioned a
future for the upper Mississippi valley, so he was motivated
to keep the area from being carved up by neighboring
territories. In 1846, he prevented Iowa
from including Fort Snelling and Saint Anthony Falls within
its northern border. In 1847, he kept the organizers of
Wisconsin from including Saint Paul
and Saint Anthony Falls The
Minnesota Territory was established from the lands
remaining from Iowa Territory
and Wisconsin Territory
on March 3, 1849.
The Minnesota Territory extended far into what is now
North Dakota and
South Dakota, to the
Missouri River. There was a
dispute over the shape of the state to be carved out of
Minnesota Territory. An alternate proposal that was only
narrowly defeated would have made the 46th parallel the
state's northern border and the Missouri River its western
border, thus giving up the whole northern half of the state
in exchange for the eastern half of what later became South
Dakota.
With
Alexander Ramsey
(W) as the first
governor of Minnesota Territory and
Henry Hastings Sibley
(D) as the
territorial delegate to the United States Congress, the
populations of Saint Paul and Saint Anthony swelled.
Henry M. Rice
(D), who
replaced Sibley as the territorial delegate in 1853, worked
in Congress to promote Minnesota interests. He lobbied for
the construction of a railroad connecting Saint Paul and
Lake Superior, with a link from Saint Paul to the
Illinois Central.
In December 1856, Rice brought forward two bills in
Congress: an enabling act that
would allow Minnesota to form a state constitution, and a
railroad land grant bill. The enabling act was passed in
February 1857, although southern states were in opposition
because they feared their political power would be diluted
by the addition of another free state.
The eastern
half of the Minnesota Territory became the country's 32nd
state on May 11, 1858.
The western part remained unorganized until its
incorporation into the Dakota
Territory on March 2,
1861.
Civil War era and Dakota War of
1862
Although
Minnesota was a new state when the
American Civil War started,
it was the first to contribute troops to the
Union effort, with
about 22,000 Minnesotans serving.
Alexander Ramsey
(R), the
first governor of Minnesota, was in Washington on
April 13, 1861,
when the war broke out. He sent a telegram back to Saint
Paul urging his lieutenant governor,
Ignatius L. Donnelly
(R), to call
out volunteers.[10]
The 1st
Minnesota Volunteer Infantry was particularly important
to the Battle of Gettysburg.
At the same
time, the state faced another crisis as the
Dakota War of 1862 broke
out. The Dakota had signed the
Treaty of Traverse
des Sioux and Treaty of
Mendota in 1851 because they were concerned that without
money from the United States government, they would starve,
due to the loss of habitat of their prey. They were
initially given a strip of land of ten miles north and south
of the Minnesota River, but
they were later forced to sell the northern half of the
land. In 1862, crop failures left the Dakota with food
shortages, and government money was delayed. The conflict
was ignited when four young Dakota men, searching for food,
shot a family of white settlers. The ensuing battles at the
Lower Sioux Agency,
Fort Ridgely,
Birch Coulee, and
Wood Lake punctuated a
six-week war, which ended with the trial of 425 Indians for
their participation in the war. Of this number, 303 men were
convicted and sentenced to death. Bishop
Henry Benjamin Whipple
pled to President Abraham Lincoln
for clemency, and the death sentences of all but 39 men were
reduced to prison terms. On December
26, 1862, 38 men were hanged in the
largest mass execution in the United States. Many of the
remaining Dakota Indians, including
non-combatants were confined
in a prison camp at Pike Island
over the winter of 1862 – 1863, where more than 300 died of
disease, and they were later exiled to the
Crow Creek Reservation,
then later to a reservation near
Niobrara, Nebraska. A
small number of Dakota Indians managed to return to
Minnesota in the 1880s and established small communities
near Granite Falls,
Morton,
Prior Lake, and
Red Wing.
Economic and social development
Farming and railroad development
After the
Civil War, Minnesota became an attractive region for
European immigration and settlement as farmland. Minnesota's
population in 1870 was 439,000; this number tripled during
the two subsequent decades. The
Homestead Act in 1862 facilitated land claims by
settlers, who regarded the land as being cheap and fertile.
The railroad industry, led by the
Northern Pacific Railway
and Saint Paul and
Pacific Railroad, advertised the many opportunities in
the state and worked to get immigrants to settle in
Minnesota. James J. Hill, in
particular, was instrumental in reorganizing the Saint Paul
and Pacific Railroad and extending lines from the
Minneapolis-Saint Paul
area into the Red River
Valley and to Winnipeg. Hill was
also responsible for building a new passenger depot in
Minneapolis, served by the landmark
Stone Arch Bridge which was
completed in 1883. During the 1880s, Hill continued building
tracks through North Dakota and
Montana. In 1890, the railroad, now
known as the Great
Northern Railway, started building tracks through the
mountains west to Seattle. Other
railroads, such as the
Lake
Superior and Mississippi Railroad and the
Milwaukee Road, also played an
important role in the early days of Minnesota's statehood.
Later railways, such as the Soo
Line and
Minneapolis and St. Louis Railway facilitated the sale
of Minneapolis flour and other products, although they were
not as involved in attracting settlers.
Oliver Hudson Kelley
played an important role in farming as one of the founders
of the National Grange,
along with several other clerks in the
United
States Department of Agriculture. The movement grew out
of his interest in cooperative farm associations following
the end of the Civil War, and he established local Grange
chapters in Elk River
and Saint Paul. The organization worked to provide education
on new farming methods, as well as to influence government
and public opinion on matters important to farmers. One of
these areas of concern was the freight rates charged by the
railroads and by the grain elevators. Since there was little
or no competition between railroads serving Minnesota farm
communities, railroads could charge as much as the traffic
would bear. By 1871, the situation was so heated that both
the Republican and
Democratic candidates
in state elections promised to regulate railroad rates. The
state established an office of railroad commissioner and
imposed maximum charges for shipping.
Populist Ignatius L.
Donnelly also served the Grange as an organizer.
Saint Anthony Falls, the
only waterfall of its height on the Mississippi, played an
important part in the development of Minneapolis. The power
of the waterfall first fueled sawmills, but later it was
tapped to serve flour mills. In
1870, only a small number of flour mills were in the
Minneapolis area, but by 1900 Minnesota mills were grinding
14.1% of the nation's grain. Advances in transportation,
milling technology, and water power combined to give
Minneapolis a dominance in the milling industry.
Spring wheat could be sown in the
spring and harvested in late summer, but it posed special
problems for milling. To get around these problems,
Minneapolis millers made use of new technology. They
invented the middlings
purifier, a device that used jets of air to remove the
husks from the flour early in the milling process. They also
started using roller mills, as opposed to grindstones. A
series of rollers gradually broke down the kernels and
integrated the gluten with the
starch. These improvements led to the
production of "patent" flour, which commanded almost double
the price of "bakers" or "clear" flour, which it replaced.
Pillsbury and the
Washburn-Crosby Company (a forerunner of
General Mills) became the
leaders in the Minneapolis milling industry. This leadership
in milling later declined as milling was no longer dependent
on water power, but the dominance of the mills contributed
greatly to the economy of Minneapolis and Minnesota,
attracting people and money to the region.
Industrial development
At the end
of the 19th century, several forms of industrial development
shaped Minnesota. In 1882, a
hydroelectric power plant was built at Saint Anthony
Falls, marking one of the first developments of
hydroelectric power in the United States.
Iron mining began in northern Minnesota with the opening
of the Soudan Mine in 1884. The
Vermilion Range was surveyed
and mapped by a party financed by
Charlemagne Tower. Another
mining town, Ely began with
the foundation of the Chandler Mine in 1888. Soon after, the
Mesabi Range was established
when ore was found just under the surface of the ground in
Mountain Iron. The
Mesabi Range ultimately had much more ore than the Vermilion
Range, and it was easy to extract because the ore was closer
to the surface. As a result,
open-pit mines became well-established on the Mesabi
Range, with 111 mines operating by 1904. The
Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company (3M) was
founded in 1902 in Two
Harbors, Minnesota, and was later moved to
Duluth,
Saint Paul, and then
Maplewood. To ship the
iron ore to refineries, railroads such as the
Duluth,
Missabe and Iron Range Railway were built from the iron
ranges to Two Harbors
and Duluth on Lake
Superior. Large ore docks were used at these cities to load
the iron ore onto ships for transport east on the
Great Lakes. The mining industry
helped to propel Duluth from a small town to a large,
thriving city. In 1904, iron was discovered in the
Cuyuna Range in
Crow Wing County.
Between 1904 and 1984, when mining ceased, more than
106 million tons of ore were mined. Iron from the Cuyuna
Range also contained significant proportions of
manganese, increasing its value
Mayo Clinic
Dr.
William Worrall Mayo,
the founder of the Mayo Clinic,
emigrated from Salford,
United Kingdom to the United
States in 1846 and became a
medical doctor in 1850. In 1864, Mayo and his two sons,
William James Mayo (1861 –
1939) and Charles Horace Mayo
(1865 – 1939) moved to
Rochester. In the summer of 1883, an
F5 tornado struck, dubbed the
1883 Rochester Tornado,
causing a substantial number of deaths and injuries. Dr. W.
W. Mayo worked with nuns from the
Sisters of St. Francis
to treat the survivors. After the disaster, Mother
Alfred Moes and the Drs. Mayo
recognized the need for a hospital and joined together to
build the 27-bed
Saint Marys Hospital which opened in 1889; today, the
hospital has 1,157 beds. Dr.
Henry Stanley Plummer
joined the Mayo Brothers' practice in 1901. Plummer
developed many of the systems of group practice which are
universal around the world today in medicine and other
fields, such as a single medical
record and an interconnecting
telephone system.
Urbanization and government
As a result
of industrialization, the population became more
concentrated into urban areas. By 1900, the
Twin Cities were
becoming a center of commerce, led by the
Minneapolis Grain
Exchange and the foundation of the
Federal Reserve Bank
with its ninth district in Minneapolis. Many of the
businessmen who had made money in the railroad, flour
milling, and logging industries lived in the Twin Cities and
personified the gilded age. They
started to donate money for cultural institutions such as
the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra (now the
Minnesota Orchestra). The
parks of Minneapolis, under the direction of
Theodore Wirth became famous,
and the new Minnesota
State Capitol building and the
Cathedral of
Saint Paul attracted attention to Saint Paul.
The role of
government also grew during the early 20th century. In the
rural areas, most people obtained food and manufactured
goods from neighbors and other people they knew personally.
As industry and commerce grew, goods such as food,
materials, and medicines were no longer made by neighbors,
but by large companies. In response, citizens called on
their government for consumer protection, inspection of
goods, and regulation of public utilities. The growth of the
automobile spurred calls to develop roads and to enforce
traffic laws. The state officially started its trunk highway
system in 1920, with the passage of the
Babcock Amendment that
established 70
Constitutional Routes around the state. New regulation
was necessary for banking and insurance. The safety of
industrial workers and miners became an increasing concern,
and brought about the
workers' compensation system. Since government was
getting more complex, citizens demanded more of a role in
their government, and became more politically active.
Great Depression
Wilbur
Foshay, the owner of utility companies, built the
Foshay Tower in 1929, just
before the Wall Street
Crash of 1929. The building was the tallest building in
Minneapolis (and in Minnesota) at the time. It remained the
tallest building in Minnesota until 1973, when the
IDS Tower surpassed it. The tower
was a symbol of the wealth of the times, but when the stock
market crashed, Foshay lost his fortune in the crash.
The
Great Depression had several
effects on Minnesota, with layoffs on the
Iron Range and a drought in the
Great Plains from 1931 through
1936. One of the causes of the Depression was that United
States businesses in the 1920s had
improved their efficiency through standardizing production
methods and eliminating waste. Business owners were reaping
the benefits of this increase in productivity, but they were
not sharing it with their employees because of the weakness
of organized labor, nor were
they sharing it with the public in the form of lowered
prices. Instead, the windfall went to stockholders. The
eventual result was that consumers could no longer afford
the goods that factories were producing.
The 1930
election saw Floyd B. Olson of
the Minnesota
Farmer-Labor Party elected as the governor. In his first
term, he signed a bonding bill that authorized $15 million
for highway construction, in an effort to provide work for
the unemployed. He also signed an executive order that
provided for a minimum wage of
45 cents per hour for up to 48 hours weekly. This effort
predated the Fair Labor
Standards Act of 1938 that established a nationwide
minimum wage. By 1932, with the Depression worsening, the
Farmer-Labor Party platform was proposing a state income
tax, a graduated tax on nationwide chain stores (such as
J.C. Penney and
Sears, Roebuck and
Company), low-interest farm loans, and a state
unemployment insurance program. The
progressive 1933 legislative session saw a comprehensive
response to the depression including a moratorium on
mortgage foreclosures, a
reduction in property taxes for farmers and homeowners, the
state income tax, and chain store taxes,
tavern reform, ratification of a
child labor amendment, a state old-age pension system,
and steps toward preserving the area that later became the
Boundary
Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.
Meanwhile,
formerly quiet labor unions began asserting themselves
rather forcefully. The
Minneapolis
Teamsters Strike of 1934 turned ugly, with the union
demanding the right to speak for all trucking employees. As
a result of this strike and many others across the nation,
Congress passed the
National Labor
Relations Act in 1935. Government programs such as the
Civilian Conservation
Corps and Works
Progress Administration brought much-needed work
projects to the state. Congress passed the
Indian Reorganization
Act in 1934, giving Minnesota's Ojibwa and Dakota tribes
more autonomy over their own affairs.
Modern Minnesota
Arts and culture
The
Minneapolis
Institute of Arts was established in 1883. The present
building, a
neoclassical structure, was opened in 1915, with
additions in 1974 by Kenzo Tange
and in 2006 by Michael Graves.
The
Minnesota Orchestra dates
back to 1903 when it was founded as the Minneapolis Symphony
Orchestra. It was renamed the
Minnesota Orchestra in 1968 and moved into its own
building, Orchestra
Hall, in downtown Minneapolis in 1974. The building has
a modern look with a brick, glass, and steel exterior, in
contrast to the old-world look of traditional concert halls.
The interior of the building features more than 100 large
cubes that deflect sound and provide excellent acoustics.
Later the Saint Paul
Chamber Orchestra became the second full-time
professional orchestral ensemble in the cities.
The
Walker Art Center was
established in 1927 as the first public art gallery in the
Upper Midwest. In the 1940s, the museum shifted its focus
toward modern art, after a gift from Mrs. Gilbert Walker
made it possible to acquire works by
Pablo Picasso,
Henry Moore,
Alberto Giacometti, and
others. The museum continued its focus on modern art with
traveling shows in the 1960s.
The
Guthrie Theater, opened in
1963, was the brainchild of
Sir Tyrone Guthrie, who wanted to found a regional
theater without the commercial constraints of
Broadway. The high cost of
staging Broadway productions meant that shows had to be
immediately successful and return a high amount of revenue.
This discouraged innovation and experimentation, and made it
difficult to stage important works of literature. These
ideas were first disseminated in a 1959 article in the drama
section of the New York Times,
and citizens in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul area were eager
to support the idea. The theater served as a prototype for
other resident non-profit theaters.
Minnesota in World War II
Like other
U.S. States, Minnesota made its contributions to the effort
of World War II in wartime
manufacturing and other areas. The
United States Navy
contracted with Cargill to build
ships after seeing their success in building ships and
barges used to haul grain. Cargill built facilities in
Savage, Minnesota on the
south bank of the Minnesota River
and turned out 18 refueling ships and four towboats in four
years. After the war, the Cargill facilities became a major
grain shipping terminal. Honeywell
built airplane control systems and
periscope sights for submarines,
and also developed a proximity fuse for
anti-aircraft shells.
The United States government built the Twin Cities Ordnance
Plant to produce munitions. The plant employed 8,500 workers
in 1941, and since there was a shortage of male workers
during the war, more than half of the workers at the
munitions plant were women. The plant also employed nearly
1000 African American
workers, as President Roosevelt had issued an executive
order forbidding racial discrimination in defense
industries.
Native American workers also found opportunities due to
workforce shortages in wartime.
During the
wartime years, Savage was also the home of
Camp Savage, a school designed to
improve the foreign language skills of Japanese-American
soldiers and to train them in military intelligence
gathering. The school was originally established in
San Francisco, but moved to
Minnesota after the bombing of Pearl
Harbor. Eventually, the school outgrew its facilities in
Savage and was moved to Fort
Snelling. Fort Snelling itself served a major role as a
reception center for newly drafted recruits after the
Selective Service Act
was passed in 1940. New recruits were given a physical exam
and the Army General Qualification Test to determine their
fitness for service in a particular branch. The most
intelligent recruits, about 37% of Minnesotans going through
Fort Snelling, were assigned to the
Army Air Corps. Recruits were
also issued uniforms and sent from the fort to other
training centers. Over 300,000 recruits were processed
through Fort Snelling during the World War II years.
Modern economy
Agriculture
evolved from an individual occupation into a major industry
after World War II. Technological developments increased
productivity on farms, such as automation of
feedlots for hogs and cattle, machine
milking at dairy farms, and raising chickens in large
buildings. Planting also became more specialized with
hybridization of corn and wheat,
fertilization, and mechanical equipment such as
tractors and
combines became the norm.
University of Minnesota professor
Norman Borlaug contributed to this knowledge as part of
the Green Revolution.
Suburban development intensified after
the war, fueled by the demand for new housing. In 1957, the
Legislature created a planning commission for the Twin
Cities metropolitan area. This became the
Metropolitan Council in
1967. Minnesota also became a center of technology after the
war. Engineering
Research Associates was formed in 1946 to develop
computers for the United
States Navy. It later merged with
Remington Rand, and later
became Sperry Rand.
William Norris left Sperry in
1957 to form Control
Data Corporation (CDC). Cray Research
was formed when Seymour Cray
left CDC to form his own company. Medical device maker
Medtronic also was founded in the
Twin Cities in 1949.
Northwest Airlines, the
dominant airline at
Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport, was
founded in 1926 carrying mail from the Twin Cities to
Chicago. The airline is now headquartered in
Eagan.
Postwar politics
Hubert Humphrey was a
Minnesotan who became a nationally prominent politician. He
first ran for mayor of Minneapolis in 1943, but lost the
election to the Republican candidate by just a few thousand
votes. As a Democrat, Humphrey recognized that his best
chance for political success was to obtain the support of
the Minnesota
Farmer-Labor Party. Other members of the Farmer-Labor
Party had been considering the idea, as encouraged by
Franklin D. Roosevelt,
but the merger only became reality after Humphrey traveled
to Washington, D.C. to
discuss the issue. Rather than simply absorbing the
Farmer-Labor party, with its constituency of 200,000 voters,
Humphrey suggested calling the party the
Minnesota
Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. He was elected mayor of
Minneapolis in 1945, and one of his first actions was to
propose an ordinance making racial discrimination by
employers subject to a fine. This ordinance was adopted in
1947, and although few fines were issued, the city's banks
and department stores realized that public relations would
improve by hiring blacks in increasing numbers. Humphrey
delivered an impassioned speech at the
1948
Democratic National Convention encouraging the party to
adopt a civil rights plank in their platform. He was elected
to the United States Senate
in 1948 and was re-elected in 1954 and 1960.
In the
early 1960s, the topic of civil rights
was coming to national prominence with sit-ins and marches
organized by Martin Luther
King Jr. and other black leaders. In 1963, President
John F. Kennedy sent a
comprehensive civil rights bill to Congress, based largely
on the ideas that Humphrey had been placing before the
Senate for the previous fifteen years. The bill passed the
House in early 1964, but passage through the Senate was more
difficult, due to southern
segregationists who filibustered
for 75 days. Finally, in June 1964, the
Civil Rights Act of 1964
became law. Humphrey called this his greatest achievement.
Lyndon B. Johnson recruited
Humphrey for his running mate in the
1964
presidential election, and Humphrey became
Vice
President of the United States. Governor
Karl Rolvaag
(DFL)
appointed Walter Mondale to
fill Humphrey's Senate seat. Humphrey voiced doubts about
the 1965 bombings of North Vietnam,
which alienated him from Johnson. He later defended
Johnson's conduct of the Vietnam War,
alienating himself from
liberals, who
were beginning to oppose the war around 1967. In the
1968
presidential election, Humphrey ran against
Richard Nixon and
Independent
candidate George Wallace and
lost the popular vote by only 0.7%. Humphrey later returned
to the Senate in 1971 after Eugene McCarthy left office.
Eugene McCarthy
(DFL)
served in the
United
States House of Representatives from 1949 through 1959
and in the United States Senate from 1959 through 1971. He
gained a reputation as an intellectual with strong
convictions and integrity. In 1967, he challenged Lyndon B.
Johnson for the presidential nomination, running on an
anti-war platform in contrast to Johnson's policies. His
strong support in the New Hampshire
primary convinced Johnson to leave the race.
Democrat
Walter Mondale also achieved
national prominence as Vice President under
Jimmy Carter. He served in the
Senate from his appointment in 1964 until becoming Vice
President in 1977. In 1984, he ran for
President of the
United States, choosing
Geraldine Ferraro as his running mate.
The
election proved to be a landslide victory for popular
incumbent Ronald Reagan. In
2002, just 11 days before election day, when incumbent
Senator Paul Wellstone was
killed in a plane crash, Mondale stepped into the race as
the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate. He lost the
bid by 2 percentage points to the Republican,
Norm Coleman.
In 1970,
Wendell Anderson
(DFL)
was elected as governor of Minnesota. He spent two years
working with a split
Minnesota Legislature to enact a tax and school finance
reform package that shifted the source of public education
funding from local property taxes to state sales taxes, as
well as adding excise taxes to liquor
and cigarettes. This achievement, dubbed the "Minnesota
Miracle", was immensely popular. In the next few years, the
Legislature enacted other facets of their "new liberalism",
including ratification of the
Equal Rights Amendment,
strong environmental laws, increases in workers'
compensation and unemployment benefits, and elimination of
income taxes for the working poor.
Time Magazine featured
Wendell Anderson and the state in an article entitled,
"Minnesota: A State That Works". In 1976 when Mondale
resigned his Senate seat to become Jimmy Carter's running
mate, Anderson resigned the governor's seat and turned it
over to Lieutenant Governor Rudy
Perpich
(DFL),
who promptly appointed Anderson to fill Mondale's vacant
Senate seat. Voters turned Perpich and Anderson out of
office in 1978, in an election dubbed the "Minnesota
Massacre". Perpich was again elected as governor in 1983 and
served until 1991.
Paul Wellstone
(DFL)
was elected to the United States Senate in 1990, defeating
incumbent Rudy Boschwitz
(R) in one
of the biggest election upsets of the decade. In 1996, he
defeated Boschwitz again in a rematch of the 1990 election.
Wellstone was known for being a liberal activist, as
evidenced by his books How the Rural Poor Got Power:
Narrative of a Grassroots Organizer, describing his work
with the group Organization for a Better Rice County, and
The Conscience of a Liberal: Reclaiming the Compassionate
Agenda. He explored a possible presidential bid in 1998,
telling people he represented the "Democratic wing of the
Democratic Party". On October 25,
2002, he was killed in a plane crash
near Eveleth, Minnesota,
along with his wife, his daughter, three campaign staffers,
and the two pilots.
Jesse Ventura, elected governor
in 1998, had a colorful past as a Navy
SEAL, a professional wrestler, an actor, mayor of
Brooklyn Park, and a
radio and TV broadcaster. He left office after one term. His
election brought international attention to the
Independence
Party.
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