Pionerd

The Battle of Deputies Run

In 1934, Minneapolis was run by a shadow group of wealthy barons who ruthlessly crushed unions, but they pushed the city's truck drivers too far. On May 22, tens of thousands of citizens flooded the North Loop for a brutal hand-to-hand street battle between corporate elites and working-class families. When the dust settled, the elites were running for their lives, two men were dead, and American history was altered forever.

The Lone Eagle's Ascent and Darkest Descent

On May 21, 1927, he was the most celebrated man on earth. A decade later, he was a national pariah compared to a Civil War traitor. How did the exact same icy, clinical detachment that allowed a Minnesota airmail pilot to survive the Atlantic completely blind him to the horrors of the twentieth century? We pull back the curtain on the triumph and the tragedy.

The 14 Minute Catastrophe That Broke Minnesota's Gallows

Minnesota hasn't executed anyone in over a century, and we reveal the gruesome reason why. Discover how a smooth talking Minneapolis sociopath and a catastrophic mathematical error in a St. Paul basement collided on the exact same calendar day to force a statewide moral reckoning. This is the dark history the state tried to censor until the newspapers risked everything to print it.

He Saw It First

Before the mines, park or carnival, Louis W. Hill looked at Minnesota and Montana and saw what nobody else had figured out yet and spent his life building it for everyone else. Born in St. Paul on May 19, 1872. This is where his story starts.

Before the Country Was Ready

Minnesota has a habit of being first, not because it plans to be, but because the right people show up at the right moment and do not wait for permission. Today, one date in three different years and more firsts than you can count. A baseball player and a community that answered a question the rest of the country was still arguing about. A coffee shop on the West Bank where something started one month before Stonewall. A courthouse, a student body election, a party platform, a marriage, and a legal fight that lasted 45 years. All of it happened here first.