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…
In early July my fiancé and I, along with his brother and wife, spent two nights and three days camping at Schoolcraft State Park in northern Minnesota. The park is named after Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, the geologist that discovered the…
When he wasn’t in the field making bird observations in pursuit of his ornithological hobby, Thomas Sadler Roberts shared his love of nature with his family members. Here Roberts is pictured having lunch with Mrs. Roberts and their three children…
– Silver bass, Lake Itasca, 1902 – Yellow Perch, Lake Itasca, August 1902 Did you “catch” something different about the first image of the Yellow Perch?…
In 1902, ornithological enthusiast and photographer extraordinaire Thomas Sadler Roberts traveled to Lake Itasca, the head waters of the Mississippi River, to document and study avian life. Here he photographed Arctic Woodpeckers, Least Flycatchers, Red-eyed Vireos, Pine Warblers, Juncos, Eagles,…
In yesterday’s Tuesday Tweet, I shared an image from a glass plate negative of a Black-backed Woodpecker from June of 1902. The images were from a series of negatives Thomas Sadler Roberts produced on his collecting trip to Lake Itasca…
– Arctic Woodpecker [Black-backed Woodpecker], Lake Itasca, June 1902. On a sunny June afternoon in 1902, Thomas Sadler Roberts captured this Black-backed Woodpecker peeking out of it’s nesting place in the hole of this tree near Lake Itasca in…