The month of May was a blur. The final metadata spreadsheets were submitted, lingering corrections were made, digitized collections started to appear on the UMedia Archive, fifty-five drawers that contained over 6,900 glass plate and film negatives were re-housed in…
It is raining with lightning and thunder in Minneapolis today. Taking my cue from the weather, I’ll share another mysterious “M” numbered negative from the Bell Museum of Natural History records: – Stub of Pine tree splintered by lightning, Itasca…
When we started our Itasca themed week, we shared the story of how beavers were introduced to Minnesota’s first state park. It is only fitting then that we close our week-long celebration of the establishment of Itasca State Park with…
Though a dozen or so homesteads were established near Lake Itasca in the 1880s, to include the first by Peter Turnbull in 1883, only William McMullen, who first came to Itasca in 1889, was residing in the area when Itasca…
Welcome to day three of Itasca State Park Week, the week that Exploring Minnesota’s Natural History celebrates the 123rd anniversary of Minnesota’s first state park by sharing early images of the park found within the natural history collections at the…
On April 20, 1891, the Minnesota state legislature adopted an act to establish the first public park for the state of Minnesota on land that surrounded the headwaters of the Mississippi River at Lake Itasca. “An act to establish and…
Earlier this week we introduced you to Ernest M. Brown, a taxidermist in Warren, MN who served as a field guide to Thomas Sadler Roberts when Roberts visited Warren and nearby Thief Lake and Mud Lake in the summer of…
Yesterday we shared the wedding story of former Bell Museum preparator and director Walter J. Breckenridge and his wife Dorothy, who married within a moments notice in order for Dorothy to accompany her new husband on a planned field excursion…
Yesterday, February 5th, was National Weatherperson’s Day, a holiday that honors the birth of John Jeffries, one of the first men in America to record daily weather observations, which he began doing in 1774. While the never ending below-zero temperatures…
Today marks the celebration of Chinese New Year – the beginning of the Year of the Horse. Though Chinese culture is not well represented in the collections of the Minnesota Geological and Natural History Survey, which is the primary subject…