Minnesota Past And Present Essay Research Paper

Minnesota: Past And Present Essay, Research Paper

Minnesota, state in the north central United States, south of Canada and west of Wisconsin. Its total area is 225,181 sq km (86,943 sq mi). The state name comes from a Sioux word meaning “cloudy water,” first applied to the Minnesota River. Minnesota is known as the Gopher State; no one is sure why. It is also called Land of 10,000 Lakes and in fact contains 15,000. The capital is Saint Paul.

II. Physical Geography

Most of Minnesota has been shaped by glaciers. The northeastern part of the state has low, rounded hills and many lakes. In the east near Lake Superior are sharp, pointed hills. In the southeastern corner, along the Mississippi River, is a narrow unglaciated strip with severe stream erosion. The southwestern corner shows moderate stream erosion. In the south central part of the state are very gently rolling plains, only slightly eroded by streams. The central portion contains plains and many hilly areas. The shoreline of Lake Superior, the world’s largest freshwater lake, lies partly in Minnesota.

Minnesota has extreme seasonal temperature variations, with frigid winters and humid summers, with occasional heat waves. Precipitation is generally adequate, although occasional damaging droughts occur in the western part of the state. Snow cover is common over the state for long periods.

Minnesota’s original vegetation was primarily of three types: northern coniferous forest, eastern deciduous forest, and tall grass prairie. The northeast coniferous forests once covered more than one-third of the state, but early logging removed valuable conifers, now replaced by birch, poplar, and various species of scrub growth. The remainder of the state was cleared for agriculture long ago. A broadleaf deciduous forest, composed predominantly of oak, maple, elm, and basswood, occurred in a diagonal band running northwest to southeast across the state. The south, west, and extreme northwest, with deep, fertile soils, were once part of the great tall grass prairie. The state flower is the pink and white lady’s slipper, and the state tree is the Norway pine.

Minnesota’s population of eastern timber wolves, numbering about 1750, was the largest in the lower 48 states in the mid-1990s. The gopher, the state animal, inhabits open spaces, and the common loon, the state bird, finds perfect habitat in the state’s thousands of lakes.

III. Economic Activities

Cooperatives, organizations that sponsor group buying and selling, particularly for farmers, have long been important in Minnesota’s economic life. Minnesota has more consumer, producer, and business service cooperatives than any other state in the Union.

Minnesota ranks high among the states in farm income. Nearly three-fifths of the state’s agricultural earnings come from the sale of livestock and livestock products, and the remainder comes from crop sales. Dairy products are the leading source of farm income in Minnesota. The state stands first nationally in sales of turkeys.

In the northeast farming is relatively unimportant because of poor soils and the short, cool summers. South and southwest of this region, dairying is a major activity. In the northwest, farmers on the Red River Valley plains grow a wide variety of crops, such as sugar beets, hard spring wheat, corn, and soybeans. Minnesota leads the nation in the production of sugar beets, and is third in soybeans. The southern and southwestern section of the state grows high-yielding corn crops, the state’s most important cash crop.

Between the 1860s and the early 1900s, Minnesota was the leading lumber-producing state. The lumbering industry has declined, but second-growth timber is still important. Most of the revenue comes from pulp and paper production and from other processed wood products.

Minnesota has been the country’s leading iron ore producer almost since the opening of mines on Minnesota’s famed northeastern iron ranges in the 1880s. A century later, Minnesota still produced 70 percent of the nation’s iron ore. Over the years accessible high-grade iron ore reserves have been nearly used up, and most of the mines in northeastern Minnesota have closed. However, the state has an abundance of an iron-bearing flintlike rock known as taconite. A grinding process removes iron minerals from taconite, and the mineral particles are then cemented into pellets for blast furnaces. The uniformity of these taconite pellets has made them a desirable substitute for high-grade iron ores.

Minnesota’s most important manufacturing industry is the processing of food. Workers make dairy products from the milk produced on the state’s farms, package fruits and vegetables, mill grain, and brew malt beverages. Other manufactures include printed material, machinery, and metal products.

IV. The People of Minnesota

The population of 4,685,549 (1997 estimate) is largely and increasingly urban, with more than half in the Twin Cities metropolitan area that joins Saint Paul and Minneapolis, the state’s largest city. In 1990 the population of Minnesota was almost 95 percent white. French Canadians, Swedes, Norwegians, Danes, Germans, and Irish were the first immigrants in Minnesota. Late in the 1800s, immigrants came from Finland, Poland, and Czechoslovakia. More recent arrivals are from countries of the former Soviet Union,