Minnesota
State in north Midwest USA; nicknamed Gopher State/North Star State
Area:
218,700 sq km/84,418 sq mi
Capital:
St Paul
Towns and Cities:
Minneapolis, Duluth, Bloomington, Rochester
Physical:
More than 15,000 lakes; 260 km/160 mi of Lake Superior rocky shoreline;
Voyageurs National Park near the Canadian border, with 30 major lakes;
headwaters of the Mississippi in Itasca State Park; the Falls of St
Anthony on the Mississippi River, and the Minnehaha Falls (mentioned
by Longfellow in The Song of Hiawatha)
Features:
Fort Snelling State Park, with the fort built at the junction of the
Mississippi and Minnesota rivers; Minneapolis, with the American Swedish
Institute, the Walker Art Centre with the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden
(the largest outdoor urban sculpture garden in the USA); St Paul, with
Summit Avenue (7.2 km/4.5 mi long, the longest stretch of residential
Victorian architecture in the USA), including the James J Hill House
(a Romanesque mansion), the Cathedral of St Paul, the state capitol
(with a dome 68 m/223 ft high, the world's largest unsupported marble
dome), the Alexander Ramsey House (1872), the Landmark Centre (Romanesque
Revival Old Federal Courts Buildings, 1902), and the carved onyx God
of Peace statue by the Swedish sculptor Carl Milles (11 m/36 ft high);
Soudan Underground Mine State Park, with tours of Soudan Mine, the state's
oldest iron mine (working until 1962); Hull-Rust Mahoning iron mine,
the world's largest open-pit iron ore mine, at Hibbing; the Iron Range;
the United States Hockey Hall of Fame, Eveleth ; Greyhound Origin Centre
at Hibbing, where the Greyhound bus system began; the Mayo Clinic, Rochester,
including Maywood, former home of Dr Charles H Mayo
Products:
Cereals, soya beans, livestock, meat and dairy products, iron ore (about
two-thirds of US output), non-electrical machinery, electronic equipment
Population:
(1995) 4,609,500
Famous People: Bob Dylan, F Scott Fitzgerald, Hubert H Humphrey, Sinclair
Lewis, Charles and William Mayo
History:
First European exploration, by French fur traders, in the 17th century;
region claimed for France by Daniel Greysolon and Sieur Duluth
in 1679; the part east of Mississippi River ceded to Britain in
1763 and to the USA in 1783; the part west of Mississippi passed
to the USA under the Louisiana Purchase (1803); became a territory
in 1849; became a state in 1858. With the coming of the railway
in 1867, Minneapolis became the major US flour-milling centre.
Iron ore was discovered in the Mesabi, Cuyuna, and Vermilion ranges
in the 1880s, and Duluth became a major Great Lakes port. In 1848
the value of manufactured products exceeded farm cash receipts
for the first time as the state became increasingly urbanized
and industrial.
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