Minnesota

The state at the top of the river, settled by Scandinavians and Germans and shaped by an uprising most of the country has forgotten. The Mississippi rises here at Lake Itasca, and Fort Snelling anchored American control from 1819 in Dakota territory. Treaties in 1851 took most of the Dakota land in exchange for annuities that arrived late or not at all; hunger and broken promises produced the Dakota War of August 1862, and its suppression ended with the hanging of thirty-eight men at Mankato that December, the largest mass execution in American history, after Lincoln reduced the list from three hundred and three. The Dakota were expelled from the state. Statehood had come in 1858. Wheat and then flour milling built Minneapolis - Washburn and Pillsbury made it the milling capital of the world - while iron ore from the Mesabi Range shipped east through Duluth and supplied much of the country's steel. Scandinavian settlement left a strong cooperative and social-democratic tradition, and the state's Democratic party is still formally the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party. St Paul is the capital. Minnesota has the highest voter turnout in the country most cycles. It holds over eleven thousand lakes. Minneapolis and St Paul together are called the Twin Cities. The state borders Canada and touches Lake Superior. Its name comes from a Dakota phrase for clouded water. Winters at International Falls are among the coldest in the contiguous states. The Mayo Clinic is at Rochester. The Boundary Waters along the Canadian border are among the most visited wilderness areas in the country.

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