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Minnesota History

WE HOLD THIS TREASURE; The Story of Gillette Children's Hospital

by Steven E. Koop, M.D.

Told through the experiences of its patients, We Hold This Treasure is the inspiring story of the first state-funded hospital in the United States to provide care for indigent, handicapped children. It begins with Jessie Haskins, a Carleton College student who dreamed of a place where disabled children could receive an education, and Arthur Gillette, a St. Paul doctor who loved children and persuaded reluctant legislators to create the hospital by pledging to give free medical care.  It continues with the men and women who served the children as doctors, nurses, administrators, teachers, therapists, and brace makers.  Based upon interviews and correspondence with more than four hundred patients.

GRAND EXCURSION
Antebellum America Discovers The Upper Mississippi

The Most Magnificent Excursion of the Age!

To celebrate the completion of the first railroad to reach the Mississippi River, the owners of the Chicago & Rock Island invited a distinguished group of Eastern notables and investors to travel by rail to Rock Island, Illinois, and from there by steamboat to St. Anthony Falls in fledgling Minnesota Territory, all at the railroad's expense.

Nearly a thousand invited guests gathered in Chicago on the morning of June 5, 1854, to board two long trains that pulled out of the La Salle Street Station, bound for Rock Island on newly completed track. Arriving in Rock Island that same evening, the trains were greeted by spectacular fireworks, which saw the steamboats and their passengers off on their seven-day trip upriver.

This "Grand Excursion" occurred a week after President Franklin Pierce signed the Kansas-Nebraska Act revoking the Missouri Compromise (1820), which had prohibited slavery in Kansas and Nebraska. Historians agree that this act was the decisive event setting the nation on a collision course to civil war.   A microcosm of antebellum society, the excursionists debated national policy and happily viewed the spectacular Upper Mississippi scenery, while their country was careening headlong into disaster.

To narrate the story of the seven-day Grand Excursion of 1854, author Steven Keillor makes excellent use of editors' accounts, journals, and letters.  

Two idyllic river towns on the historic St. Croix!

AFTON REMEMBERED

by Edwin G. Robb

Longtime resident Ed Robb combines memoir with narrative history to profile this idyllic river town. A nineteenth-century lumber town and farming community on the west bank of the lower St. Croix below Stillwater, Afton today remains blessedly unspoiled by progress. 

"Everyone loves their hometown town, but not every hometown has the benefit of such marvelous historical and illustrative handling as has Afton." —Minnesota Governor Elmer L. Andersen

STILLWATER: Minnesota's Birthplace

by Patricia Condon Johnston

Few cities have had such colorful yesterdays as Stillwater. Fewer still can boast a hometown photographer who so faithfully preserved them. The spectacular Runk Collection spans one hundred years of Stillwater history.

Historic Photographs by John Runk!