Box Ideas

Notable Places:

Split Rock Lighthouse
Fort Snelling
State Capital
Cathedral Of St. Paul
Weisman Art Gallery (It's designed by Frank Gehry)
Mall Of America
MN State Fair
Valleyfair
World's Largest Crow in Belgrade on the shore of Crow Lake
Frank's Fill-'er-Up (a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed gas station in Cloquet)
The Hull-Rust Mahoning Mine (a dubious honor-it's the world's largest open pit mine and is visible from space)
Gnometown, USA (aka Dawson, MN)
World's Largest Peace Pipe
Minnehaha Falls (Longfellow's poem The Song of Hiawatha was inspired by this waterfall)
Doc Graham's grave (the inspiration for the Field of Dreams character is buried in Chisholm)
Tiny Tim's grave in Minneapolis
Anoka claims to be the Halloween capital of the world
World's Largest Snowman

Minnesota Natives:
Eugene McCarthy
Walter Mondale
Tammy Faye Baker
Bob Dylan
Judy Garland (Can you say "Wizard of Oz") plenty of ideas there
Jesse Ventura (We're the only state to elect a former pro wrestler as governor)
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Ann Bancroft (Polar Explorer)
Sinclair Lewis
Jeanette Picard (First woman to pilot a hot air balloon into the stratosphere)
Winona Ryder (BeetleJuice, BeetleJuice, BeetleJuice)
Will Steeger
Laura Ingalls Wilder
Dred Scott
James J. Hill
Jesse James (He and his gang robbed a bank in Northfield on Sep. 7, 1876)
Andrew Volstead (MN congressman, "The Volstead Act"-aka Prohibition)
The Coen Brothers
LuccetteDiana Kensack (Paul Bunyan's sweetheart)

Things, etc:
Casey Jones' Locomotive (obviously not the one that exploded)
The Minnesota Iceman (Is it a half-man, half-ape creature or something built by a Disney company artist?)
The Foshay Tower
Mary Richards/The Mary Tyler Moore Show (there's a statue of Mary tossing her cap in the air on Nicollet Mall in downtown Minneapolis)
Happy Chef
Rocky Taconite (cartoonish character created by a mining company)
The Kevin Smith movie "Mallrats" was filmed in Minnesota
The scene in The Good Son that has Macaulay Culkin dangling over the edge of a cliff was filmed at Tettegouche State Park
The Kensington Runestone
Nicknames: The Bread and Butter State
The Beaver State
The Gopher State
Land of 10,000 Lakes
The North Star State
In-line skates were developed in MN.
Water skiing was invented in MN on Lake Pepin in 1922
During the 30's MN was a hideout for gangsters including John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson, and Ma Barker to name a few. You can still tour the caves they used as hideouts and get a drink at the Wabasha Street Caves
Minnesota Golden Gophers
Holidazzle Parade
Jeffers Petroglyphs
When the civil war broke out MN troops were the first to volunteer to fight for the Union
Pillsbury opened the world's largest flour mill in 1881 (There are still a lot of old flour mill buildings along the Mississippi in Minneapolis)
Viking Ship A Heritage Hjemkomst Interpretive Center in Moorhead
Greyhound Bus lines started in MN
MN Renaissance Festival
International Eelpout festival in Walker
Rocky and Bullwinkle say their hometown is Frostbite Falls which is based on International Falls
26 foot tall statue of Smokey the Bear in International Falls
U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame in Eveleth
Real Danish Windmill in Moorheads Viking Ship Park
Tonka Trucks are made in MN
Huge iron ore freighters that dock in the Harbors of Duluth
Snowmobiles were invented in MN
For four years starting in 1873 millions of grasshoppers invaded MN fields eating everything in
sight including clothes hung out to dry
General Mills based in MN
Land O' Lakes dairy based in MN
MN produces more turkeys than any other state
Nordicware headquarters
The Bundt pan was invented in MN
MN leads the nation in the production of Sugar Beets
Vikings (see Kensington Runestone)
St. Urho statue (he drove all of the grasshoppers out of Finland and there's a huge statue of him in Menahga)
Gun #3 from the USS Ward is in the front lawn of the State Capital building. Gun #3 fired the first American shots in WWII