On the afternoon of October 12, 1918 in northeastern Minnesota, several forest fires killed over 450 people and decimated 2,000 square miles of forests, homesteads, and townships. The University of Minnesota Forest Experiment Station, known today as the Cloquet Forestry Center, survived the fire. The Center’s archival collection contains photographs that document the aftermath of the fires in the region.

This episode features a woman who achieved many notable firsts, a political leader who used her voice to better her community, implement and sustain diplomacy, and develop her own potentiality: Eugenie Anderson, the first woman to be named a United States Ambassador. A profile of Eugenie’s personal and professional life was featured on KUOM on “Minnesota Honor Roll,” a program of The Minnesota School of the Air - a series of educational radio programs designed for school-age children to listen to in the classroom.

A preview of Calling to Question: 150 of Liberal Education at the University of Minnesota (opening March 4, 2019) is currently on display in the Katherine E. Nash Gallery. This preview is composed of two display cases within On Purpose: Portrait of the Liberal Arts. The preview compliments the style of the portrait exhibit by showcasing retrospective portraits of the College of Liberal Arts alongside the personal accounts of the people involved in these historical snapshots.

Plans for a library on the West Bank campus had been discussed and debated for years, but financial and other support for a new library finally came together in June 1965. O. Meredith Wilson Library opened to the campus community on September 23, 1968.

The West Bank we know today on the Twin Cities campus looked quite different five decades ago. Why, in the 1960s, did the University expand (or to use the preferred term at the time – stretch) to the West Bank of the Mississippi River? To answer that question, the story begins in the 1940s.