This week in state history

Historic Minnesota events with anniversaries this week.

Feb. 7

1851 The Minnesota territorial legislature votes to make St. Paul the capital and to put the prison in Stillwater.

1867 Laura Ingalls (Wilder) is born near Pepin, Wisconsin. Her family would settle in Walnut Grove, in Redwood County, from 1874 to 1880 (living briefly in Iowa for the year 1876-77). She is remembered for writing the “Little House on the Prairie” books, which chronicle her family’s experiences as pioneers. She died Feb. 10, 1957, in Mansfield, Missouri.

Feb. 9

1920 Peter M. Gideon is born near Woodstock, Ohio. A self-educated horticulturist, he would develop the Wealthy apple (named for his wife) and others hardy enough to endure the Minnesota climate. Gideon Memorial Park marks his farm on the shore of Lake Minnetonka. He died in 1899.

1895 The University of Minnesota’s School of Agriculture defeats Hamline University 9-3 in the world’s first basketball game between two universities, played on the Hamline campus. Under the nine-foot tall ceiling of the Hall of Science, players ran through a makeshift basketball court, which had been used previously as a mess hall. Players threw a football into hoops made out of peach baskets with no backboard. The nine-person teams included goalies to guard the baskets. Ray Kaighn, who organized the contest as Hamline’s athletic director, learned the game from James Naismith, who invented the sport in 1891. Colleges had played the sport before 1895, but against YMCA teams.

Feb. 10

1763 In the treaty ending the French and Indian War, France transfers to Britain the territory that would become Minnesota.

Feb. 11

1893 The Duluth, Missabe & Northern Railroad is established by the Merritt brothers to carry iron ore from the Mesabi Range to Lake Superior ports. Leonidas Merritt had discovered iron near today’s Mountain Iron the previous November. The Merritt brothers put their company stock up as collateral to borrow money from J.D. Rockefeller to fund the railroad. In the span of several months, as a financial panic occurred, the Merritt Brothers lost their personal wealth and interest in both their mining and railroad corporations. In a series of financial transactions, Rockefeller came to own both the Mountain Iron Mine and the railroad, leaving the Merritts financially ruined. Rockefeller’s move attracted the attention of Andrew Carnegie and through consolidations, the world’s first billion-dollar cooperation, the United States Steel Corporation, would be founded.

Feb. 12

1895 Minnesota is the first state to declare Abraham Lincoln’s birthday a legal holiday.

1939 More than 3,000 people (two-thirds of them children) rush out of the amphitheatre in Duluth seconds before the steel-and-wood roof of the expansive sports arena collapses under the weight of snow during an intermission in the annual Duluth police department and Virginia fire department hockey game. The swift evacuation is credited to the fact that many spectators were in the front lobby at the time, as well as to the presence of most of the city’s police officers and the calmness of organist Leland McEwen, who remained at his post playing soothing music until the last moment.

1988 Famed restaurateur Gim Joe Huie dies in Duluth. Born in Guangdong province, China, in 1892, Huie first came to the city in 1909 and made it his American home while returning to the land of his birth for extended stays until the Communist government established control there in the late 1940s. In 1951 he opened Joe Huie’s Cafe, on Lake Avenue in Duluth, which was open for 22 years.

Feb. 13

1909 President Theodore Roosevelt establishes Superior National Forest. Six weeks later Ontario’s government responds in kind by creating Quetico Provincial Forest Reserve. Exploitative practices are restricted in these areas, thereby preserving the beauty of lakes and trees for future generations.

1857 Isanti County is created and named for an eastern group of Dakota: the Isáŋyathi (dwellers near Knife Lake in Kanabec County.) The Isáŋyathi are from the Mdewakanton, Sisseton, Wahpeton, and Wahkpekute bands.

This column is derived from MNopedia, an online project at mnopedia.org. and developed by the Minnesota Historical Society and its partners.