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Items added during: May 2025

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Collection Close-up: Minnesota Place Names: A Geographical Encyclopedia, by Warren Upham [print]

The names of places, the names that people give to the land, the rivers, the towns, and the cities, contain miniature history lessons, stories wrapped up in a few words. Naming a place is a way of connecting to it and making it more familiar. An important aspect of identity, place names honor the past, telling who came before us, and they speak to the future, telling of our hopes and ambitions. And sometimes, they're simply products of our whimsy.

From Big Bird Lake to Cucumber Island, Big Stone to Wanamingo, Puposky Township to the Zumbro River, thousands of discoveries await the reader of Minnesota Place Names: A Geographical Encyclopedia. This classic book tells the stories behind more than 20,000 names of the towns and cities, townships and counties, lakes and rivers of the North Star state.

This comprehensive volume is a browser's delight and a rich reference for historians, linguists, geographers, folklorists, genealogists, and those interested in the origin of place names. It includes tales for such curious place names as Embarrass and Sleepy Eye, Bemidji and Climax, the Rum River and Man Trap Lake. Did you know that the Rat Root River was named for the roots that fed muskrats that populated its banks, or that Winona is the Dakota word for "first-born daughter"?

Published originally in 1920 as the culmination of Warren Upham's lifetime of collecting Minnesota minutiae, this book is a remarkable achievement and classic of Minnesota history. For this revised edition, the staff of the Minnesota Historical Society combed recent literature and databases to update entries and add new names.

In this handsome new edition, Minnesota Place Names captures much of the lost lore of familiar places and of towns that have disappeared—and of the people who made the state what it is today.

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Transportation Research Record

TRB’s journal Transportation Research Record is now published in digital-only format. Full text is available to MnDOT employees. Check out new articles or sign up for an alert at Transportation Research Record.