A grand tour of the North Star State's geographical, political, and human history, including travelers' guides to historic destinations.

Winner of a Spur Award, presented by the Western Writers of America (WWA), for the Best Western Nonfiction Historical Book. Renowned historian Annette Atkins presents a fresh understanding of how a complex and modern Minnesota came into being in Creating Minnesota. Each chapter of this innovative state history focuses on a telling detail, a revealing incident, or a meaningful issue that illuminates a larger event, social trends, or politics during a period in our past. A three-act play about Minnesota's statehood vividly depicts the competing interests of Natives, traders, and politicians who lived in the same territory but moved in different worlds. Oranges are the focal point of a chapter about railroads and transportation: how did a St. Paul family manage to celebrate their 1898 Christmas with fruit that grew no closer than 1,500 miles from their home? A photo essay brings to life three communities of the 1920s, seen through the lenses of local and itinerant photographers. The much-sought state fish helps to explain the new Minnesota, where pan-fried walleye and walleye quesadillas coexist on the same north woods menu. In Creating Minnesota Atkins invites readers to experience the texture of people's lives through the decades, offering a fascinating and unparalleled approach to the history of our state.

This guide is an essential tool for all genealogists researching Minnesota family, local, and state history. Highlighting the many holdings of the society, this unique handbook features a lengthy, annotated listing of resources in subject areas such as: biographical, census, naturalization, cemetery, school, religious, business, court, government, legal, military, and veterans' records; official state-wide death records and index, 1908-96; photographs, personal papers, oral histories, ethnic resources, and local and county histories; family histories, newspapers, directories, passenger ship lists, and publications of genealogical organizations; maps, atlases, and other geographical resources.

A chronological compendium of remarkable and curious events in the history of the North Star State

Culled from the best of Minnesota History magazine, these essays on 200 years of Minnesota history encompass a wide range of its past, from frontier life to the age of technological innovation, from Dakota and Ojibwe history to the story of a Chinese family in St. Paul, from lumber workers' and truckers' strikes to the women's suffrage movement.

In 1891 Minnesota established its first state park at Lake Itasca, the headwaters of the Mississippi River. In the century that followed, Minnesotans and tourists from other states have enjoyed hiking, picnicking, fishing, camping, canoeing, and skiing at Itasca and Minnesota's 64 other state parks. This helpful guide to the past in the parks will be welcomed by people who regularly visit a favorite Minnesota park, people who have set out to visit every park, and people who are newly discovering the parks' wonders.