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MINNESOTA, Hail to Thee!
A Sesquicentennial History

"My Heart It Is Delicious"
The Story of the Center For International Health

LATINO MINNESOTA

THE GRAIN MERCHANTS: 
An Illustrated History of the Minneapolis Grain Exchange

At precisely 9:30, a bell clangs.  Pandemonium erupts. 
It's the beginning of another day of controlled chaos at the Minneapolis Grain Exchange.

In the fall of 1881, just one year after Minneapolis surpassed St. Louis as the nation's leading producer of flour, twenty-one prominent businessmen met in the basement of a fledging bank to create one of the Mill City 's most enduring commercial enterprises. Known originally as the Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce, the Minneapolis Grain Exchange provided a market for most of the grains grown in the rich, dark soil of the Upper Midwest , particularly the much-prized spring wheat. As its members traded thousands, then millions, then billions of dollars in cash grains and futures, the exchange grew into one of the premier grain markets in the world. What began as an essential element in the making of modern Minneapolis, as well as personal and philanthropic fortune, continues to play a vital role in the city's and the regions' economic success

“Within the four walls of this [new] building, business will be transacted which will affect the breadstuffs of the world.”  —George  A. Pillsbury, 1884

For 125 years, such has been the self-fulfilling prophecy of the Minneapolis Grain Exchange.
Published in collaboration with the Minneapolis Grain Exchange

THE FOUR HILLS OF LIFE
Ojibwe Wisdom

OL' MAN RIVER
 Memoirs of a Riverboat Captain

A swashbuckling tale of derring-do from a Minnesota legend! 

Bill was twenty when he volunteered for the army following the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. Trained as a paratrooper, he jumped into Normandy on D-Day and fought in the Battle of the Bulge—two of the war’s most decisive campaigns. Following World War II, he came home to St. Paul to get a college education, raise a family, make a small fortune in printing and plastics, and build the enormously successful Padelford Packet Boat Company. His life’s story is a model for how he and others of “the greatest generation” shaped this country.   

AUTHOR William D. Bowell, Sr. grew up in the river city of St. Paul, Minnesota, where his Padelford Packet Boat Company has offered excursions on the Mississippi for thirty-five years.  Among his many achievements, he is the founder of the Passenger Vessel Association, and the winner of the National Rivers Hall of Fame Achievement Award.  His Captain William Bowell River Library opened in 2004 at the National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium in Dubuque, Iowa.  He summers in Minneapolis and winters in Scottsdale, Arizona. 

Bill Bowell inspired me as a mayor to reconnect the city with our river.  
St. Paul's renaissance began with Bill's Drive to make it happen. 
—Norm Coleman U.S. Senator and former mayor of St. Paul

BANKING IN THE GREAT NORTHERN TERRITORY:
An Illustrated History

Banking in Minnesota was born on the frontier and provided financial support for the new communities of the Upper Midwest—the land that James J. Hill identified as the fertile region that would serve and be served by his Great Northern Railroad. As the communities grew into cities, as primitive agriculture was supplemented by grain milling and a burgeoning industrial base, the banks also grew, struggled, and survived to eventually provide the complex and sophisticated needs of Fortune 500 companies. 

Over a seventy-five-year history, Northwest Bancorporation and First Bank Stock Corporation created regional financial empires, managed their survival through the Depression, and positioned them to meet the growing needs of Upper Midwest business. The two holding companies were competitors indeed—the Federal Reserve System and anti-trust legislation saw to that—but they were managed by homegrown talents who were more similar than different.  

The twentieth century was not an easy time for banking, as these dedicated men adjusted to new technologies and marketing strategies and watched their companies outgrow their regional roots to become part of the global banking system.

G. Richard (Dick) Slade is uniquely qualified to tell this intriguing story! 

As the great-grandson of railroad baron James J. Hill—who acquired and orchestrated the reorganization of the First National Bank of St. Paul, a cornerstone of First Bank Stock Corporation, now U.S. Bank—Dick has a personal, family interest in the history of banking in Minnesota.  As a longtime participant in Twin Cities banking—he worked five decades for predecessor banks of both U.S. Bank and Wells Fargo—Dick had a front-row seat as the regional banks disappeared and the two national bank goliaths emerged.

MINNESOTA'S CAPITOL: 
A Centennial Story

Minnesota’s Capitol is an educational and entertaining look at the house that Minnesota built. Replicated in butter sculpture and picture postcards by creative and enterprising citizens, the Capitol building in St. Paul was the pride of the state and the envy of the nation when it opened in 1905.

For one hundred years the Capitol has been the hub of government and an enduring  symbol for an ever-changing Minnesota. Through lively historical narratives, plentiful pictures, and creative activities, learn how the Capitol came to represent the North Star state and how Minnesota made itself at home in a gleaming marble structure on the hill.

"In 1895 a commission was appointed and some money appropriated to build a [new] capitol. Instead of carrying it down to the minimum, instead of doing what they thought they could afford, they had a vision of what the state of Minnesota was going to be, and that it should have a capitol worthy of the state that was to be. They built this magnificent Capitol building, complete with a wonderful dome and gold horses and Italian marble all over the place. What a vision!  What a challenge! What an inspiration!"
—Elmer L Andersen Governor of Minnesota (1961-1963)

PRIDE OF THE INLAND SEAS: 
An Illustrated History of the Port of Duluth–Superior

Before there were cities, states or a nation, there was the port!

French-Canadian Voyageurs began striking inland from the Head of the Lakes in the 17th century, searching for pelts to transport back down the Lakes to Montreal.  Today, more than 300 years later, Duluth-Superior remains one of North America’s most important ports, handling millions of tons of commodities during the ten months the Great Lakes are ice-free each year.

Set against a backdrop of the key industries that helped build North America: iron and steel, forest products, grain, and coal, Pride of the Inland Seas tells the fascinating tale of the development of the Twin Ports during three centuries of economic, technological, political, and social change. This is the story of the people at the Head of the Lakes who built, loaded, and sailed the ships that have made Duluth-Superior synonymous with Great Lakes maritime commerce.

In the early 1900s the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers undertook a fifteen-year harbor improvement program that solidified Duluth-Superior’s leading role in maritime commerce.

  Authors Bill Beck and C. Patrick Labadie bring lifetimes of Great Lakes experience
 to the labor of love that is Pride of the Inland Seas.

Published in collaboration with the Duluth Seaway Port Authority

MISSISSIPPI ESCAPADE
Reliving the Grand Excursion of 1854

 A celebration of the life and times of the Mississippi River 
illustrated throughout with glorious color and b/w photos!  

The Grand Excursion of 1854 brought 1200 people to the edge of the world. Of course, they knew the actual world went far beyond the  Mississippi River. But they were city folk. To them a world without large cities, thriving businesses, and factories belching clouds of black smoke was still "savage." The small settlements between Davenport and St. Anthony hardly made an impression, and Indians were regarded as exotic and fearsome creatures.

When the excursionists debarked in St. Paul, continuing their quest, they immediately jumped onto stages and wagons bound for the Falls of St. Anthony. What they wanted all along was a taste of nature in the raw. What they saw as participants during their seven-day "Grand Excursion" more than answered their expectations in beauty and rugged spectacle.

Retracing the route of the Grand Excursion is an exhilarating experience. The grand vistas, picturesque islands, and awe- inspiring bluffs are still there. Eagles still soar overhead, and waterfowl continue to nest in the sloughs and backwaters. But today's skyline along the shore is as much shaped by steeples and smokestacks as by willow and cottonwood trees. In the space of 150 years, the river has spawned the flourishing cities that today line its banks and pay tribute to its nurturing presence.

OJIBWE: Waasa Inaabidaa (which translates “we look in all directions”) is a uniquely personal history of the Ojibwe nation by Ojibwe educator Thomas Peacock. Illustrated with color and historic black-and-white photographs, artwork, and maps, it is the story of how the Ojibwe people and their ways have continued to survive, and even thrive, from pre-contact times to the present.  The story visits contemporary Ojibwe and non-Indian issues, including tribal sovereignty, treaty rights, casino gambling, and education.

from OJIBWE: Waasa inaabidaa

 "An amazing and wondrous set of stories told by those who dearly love their history and peoples—a great gift to us all: the scattered and dispersed leaves of our stories brought together with this generation’s faces and living words." —Winona LaDuke