American History
Road Trip Through History: The Boom and Bust of Nininger, Minnesota
To my surprise, ghost towns were a recurring theme of our multi-year trips along the Great River Road. More than once we saw small exhibits dedicated to towns that had grown up to support the fur trade, the logging industry, or mining and withered away because industries closed, transportation routes changed, or county seats shifted.…
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Learning Japanese at Fort Snelling during World War II
One of the first things we saw when we got to Fort Snelling was a row of storyboards posted along the sidewalk leading to the visitors’ center. One of them showed a photo of three young Asian-American women in uniform, with a quotation above them: “I was born in the states, in Nebraska, and I’m…
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Buffalo Soldiers on Bicycles
This is one of my favorite stories from our visit to Fort Snelling: After the American Civil War, Congress created six regiments of Black soldiers, led for the most part by white officers, known informally as Buffalo Soldiers.[1] One of those regiments , the 25th Black Infantry, was posted at Fort Snelling in 1880. Eight…
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