This week in state history

Historic Minnesota events that took place Aug. 23-29.

August 23

1862 Twenty-four townspeople are killed at the second Battle of New Ulm during the U.S.-Dakota War. Although the Dakota come close to victory, the barricaded defenders, led by Judge Charles E. Flandrau, manage to hold the town’s center. Among the dead is Capt. William Dodd, who had founded St. Peter in 1853 and laid out the Dodd Road from St. Paul to Mankato.

August 25

1827 Minnesota’s first post office is established at Fort Snelling.

1937 Congress establishes the state’s first national monument: Pipestone National Monument in southwestern Minnesota. Native Americans, including the Dakota, have mined pipestone (catlinite) from the quarry inside the monument for hundreds of years.

August 26

1731 Frenchman Pierre La Verendrye and his voyageurs land at Grand Portage to begin an expedition into the region west of the Great Lakes. La Verendrye eventually establishes a trading post, Fort St. Charles, on Lake of the Woods.

1848 The Stillwater Convention petitions Congress to establish the Territory of Minnesota. Wisconsin’s recent admission into the Union meant that settlers in the area between the Mississippi and St. Croix Rivers were without a government. Minnesota Territory would be officially recognized on March 3, 1849.

August 27

1979 In the early morning, in northwest Minnesota, Marshall County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Val Johnson is driving his car near Warren when he sees a bright light and then loses consciousness. An investigation by Sheriff Denis Brekke finds the car’s windshield inexplicably damaged. The Ford Motor Company determines that the windshield cracked due to a combination of high pressure inside the car and low pressure outside. Later it is discovered that Johnson’s wristwatch and the car’s clock are both fourteen minutes slow. No further explanations of the event have come to light. The squad car sits in the Marshall County Museum in Warren as “The U.F.O. Car.” It is put on display each year at the county fair.

August 28

1977 Lake City’s Ralph Samuelson, the “father of water-skiing,” dies. In 1922 Samuelson had successfully tested water skis on Lake Pepin, having fashioned the skis by boiling and curving the tips of boards purchased at a local lumberyard.

This column is derived from MNopedia,

an online encyclopedia project that has a “This Day in Minnesota History” feature on its website,

mnopedia.org. Developed by the Minnesota Historical Society and its partners, it is a free, curated, and authoritative resource about state history. The information here is culled from “The Minnesota Book of Days,” published by the Minnesota Historical Society Press.