Elk River

The Oliver H. Kelley Farm is a historic farmstead once owned by Oliver Hudson Kelley, one of the founders of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry. The... farmstead is a U.S. National Historic Landmark, which also places it on the National Register of Historic Places. The farm is currently operated as a living history museum by the Minnesota Historical Society. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1964. Oliver Kelley moved to Minnesota in 1849, the year that Minnesota Territory was formed. Although he knew little about farming, he taught himself using agricultural journals and correspondence with other "scientific-oriented" farmers. He became an expert on farming in Minnesota, and he learned how adverse events such as bad weather, debt, insect pests, and crop failures could devastate a farmer's fortunes. In 1864, he became a clerk in the United States Department of Agriculture. After the end of the American Civil War, he toured the agricultural resources of the Southern states. When he returned to Washington, he was convinced that farmers' fortunes could be improved through cooperative associations with other farmers.
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Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state on May 11, 1858. Known as the "Land of 10,000 Lakes", the state's name comes from a Dakota word for "sky-tinted water". Those waters, together with forests, parks, and wilderness areas, offer residents and tourists a variety of outdoor recreational... opportunities. Minnesota is the 12th most extensive and the 21st most populous of the 50 United States. Nearly 60% of Minnesota's residents live in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul metropolitan area known as the "Twin Cities", the center of transportation, business, industry and education, and home to an internationally known arts community. The remainder of the state consists of western prairies now given over to intensive agriculture; deciduous forests in the southeast, now cleared, farmed and settled; and the less populated North Woods, used for mining, forestry, and recreation. Minnesota is known for its relatively mixed social and political orientations, and has a high rate of civic participation and voter turnout.
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