Bonanza Farms in the Red River Valley

Bonanza Farms in the Red River Valley. Welcome to Minnesota. The fertile areas along both banks of the Red River of the North were once the bed of a huge lake known to geologists as Glacial Lake Agassiz. When the last glacier retreated and the lake slowly drained some 9,000 years ago, the plain left behind contained some of the richest farmlands in North America. , The flat valley lands were well suited to the new farm machinery of the 1870's and 1880's. Settlers followed the railroads west and sent their huge wheat crops back to the growing flour mills in the Twin Cities. Many of the "bonanza" farms of the valley were more than 2,000 acres in size, and the largest was more than 30,000 acres. , Farm protest movements followed the wheat belt, because the single-cash-crop farmers with heavy machinery investment were especially vulnerable to price fixing by the railroads, grain buyers, and milling monopolies.. The Farmers' Alliance, the cooperative marketing movement, the Nonpartisan League, and the Farmer - Labor Party in turn found strength in the Red River Valley. , Although wheat is still grown, sugar beets, sunflowers, and potatoes are today the staples of valley agriculture, which is still characterized by large-scale operations, high capital investment, and the employment of seasonal workers., Welcome to Minnesota. , Known to her citizens as the North Star State for the Gopher State, Minnesota has never claimed to be the Land of Giants. But two famous American giants do hail from Minnesota. The giant lumberjack Paul Bunyan cut the pine forest of the north that helped build America's town and cities, and the Jolly Green Giant towers over the south's lush corn, vegetable, and soybean fields, a part of the the midwest's fertile farm belt. , Like its neighbors, the thirty-second state grew as a collection of small farm communities, many settled by immigrants from Scandinavia and Germany. Two of the nation's favorite fictional small towns -- Sinclair Lewis's Gopher Prairie and Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegpn -- reflect that heritage. But the vast forests, the huge open pit iron ore mines, and the busy shipping lanes of Lake Superior attracted different settlers with different skills and made Minnesota a state of surprising diversity. , Best known for its more than 15,000 lakes, Minnesota has some 65 towns with the word "lake" in their name, not counting those whose names mean "lake" or "water" in the Chippewa or Dakota Indian languages. There are also 13 "falls." 10 "rivers," 5 "rapids," and a smattering of "isles," "bays," and "beaches." Even the state name starts as a small stream flowing out of Minnesota's Lake Itasca, and a Minneapolis waterfall called Minnehaha inspired "The Song of Hiawatha," even though Longfellow never actually visited the falls his poem made known to every schoolchild. , Minnesotans are proud of their state's natural beauty and are leaders in resource conservation and concern for the quality of life.