Minnesota State Of Wonders

Brian Peterson and Kerri Westenberg, both native Minnesotans, share a deep affection for their homeland. That sensibility underlies every aspect of the State of Wonders project, which began as a series in the Travel section of the Star Tribune. Through their combined vision, springtime awakes in the northwest with prairie chicken dances and unfurling, delicate plants. Tallgrass prairies and historic American Indian lands trumpet the full glory of summer. Autumn colors dazzle the Mississippi River Valley, and winter in the Arrowhead region holds both harsh cold and exquisite beauty. Collectively, their work illuminates Minnesota's natural glories.

Field biologist Jim Gilbert takes a month-by-month approach to the changing Minnesota seasons, emphasizing the beauties that surround us at every phase. Many seasonal highlights are together here to thrill and inspire children and adults alike.

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.

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

Minnesota comes alive in the pages of Wild Minnesota. Wild Minnesota contains more than 150 full-color photographs of Minnesota's natural wonders. Author Shawn Perich and photographer Gary Alan Nelson traveled thousands of miles to give us this photographic portrait of the diverse and unique natural areas of our state. Minnesota is often thought of as the state of 10,000 lakes, but it is much more. It is the peaks of the Sawtooth mountain range along the North Shore and the winding mighty Mississippi in the east. It is the rainbow palette of wildflowers and native grasses of the prairies and the spectacular limestone bluffs of the southeast. It is the acres of pine forests of Itasca State Park and the Red River valley's exceptionally rich soil. Wild Minnesota is the natural beauty of our state; it is what we see, hear, and feel as we paddle one of the many unspoiled lakes of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, hike the Superior Hiking Trail, view the tremendous diversity of wildlife in the Agassiz National Wildlife Refuge. It is the call of the loon on Mille Lacs, the pounding of a powerful wave on the Lake Superior shore, the experience of history through the rock outcroppings of the Jeffers Petroglyphs. It is that still, golden late summer afternoon when you know the Gopher state is where you're meant to be.

1993 American Institute of Architects International Architecture Book Award

This true crime history recounts more than a century of crime, deviousness, and disaster in the North Star State. In Minnesota Mayhem, local historian and author Ben Welter explores the best of the state's worst moments. Culled from the archives of the Minneapolis Tribune and its successor newspapers, these stories and photos range from the catastrophic to the chillingly curious and the simply strange. Among the true tales told in these pages, Welter recounts the career of a successful con man in 1871; an 1881 fire that destroyed the State Capitol; a flu outbreak that killed more than 10,000 Minnesotans in 1918; the arrest of Frank Lloyd Wright at a Lake Minnetonka cottage in 1926; an arrested stripper who claimed wardrobe malfunction in 1953; and the 1977 murder of a wealthy matron in Duluth.