About Minnesota

Minnesota takes its name from the Minnesota River, which the Dakota Sioux called "Mnisota," meaning "cloudy water" or "sky-tinted water," referring to the milky, silt-laden appearance of the river. "Mni" means water in Dakota, and "sota" means somewhat cloudy or sky-blue. French traders who worked with the Dakota adopted the name for the river, and it was applied to the territory when it was organized in 1849. Minnesota became a state in 1858, just three years before the Civil War. The state is home to one of the largest concentrations of lakes in the world, including more than 11,000 lakes, a landscape shaped by glaciers that retreated roughly 10,000 years ago.

Minnesota is the northernmost of the contiguous 48 states, a land shaped by glaciers that left behind more than 11,000 lakes, vast stretches of boreal forest, and some of the most productive agricultural soil on Earth. The Dakota called it 'mni sota makoce', the land where the water reflects the sky. That name has never lost its aptness: the lakes, the rivers, the wetlands, the wild rice paddies all mirror something elemental about the place.

Minnesota's modern identity is built on an unlikely set of foundations. It is home to the Mayo Clinic, one of the world's great medical institutions. It is a corporate powerhouse, Target, Best Buy, 3M, UnitedHealth Group, and a dozen other Fortune 500 companies call the Twin Cities home. Its Iron Range produced the ore that made American steel. Its farms produce turkeys, corn, soybeans, and wild rice at a scale that feeds the world. And from its modest northern cities came two of the most transformative musicians of the 20th century, Bob Dylan and Prince, whose influence on global culture is difficult to overstate.

Minnesota's political culture is distinctive: a progressive, civic-minded tradition rooted in its Scandinavian immigrant heritage, its union-organizing Iron Range, and the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party that Hubert Humphrey helped build in 1944. The state has not voted Republican for president since 1972, the longest such streak of any state in the country. It is not immune to polarization, but it retains a tradition of civic engagement and institutional trust that many states have lost.