Prior to 1956, the area now known as Elk Grove Village was a massive cornfield. On July 17, 1956, Elk Grove Village was incorporated as a village, with a population of 116. Since that time, the growth of the village can only be described as phenomenal. Over 50 years, the village has dramatically changed since those early days of cornfields. The name Elk Grove Village was adopted from the great number of elk that roamed through the fenced-in portion of Busse Woods, along Arlington Heights R...

The story of the Lakota Sioux's loss of their spiritual homelands and their remarkable legal battle to regain itThe Lakota Indians counted among their number some of the most famous Native Americans, including Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. Their homeland was in the magnificent Black Hills in South Dakota, where they found plentiful game and held religious ceremonies at charged locations like Devil's Tower. Bullied by settlers and the U. S. Army, they refused to rel...

Mr. Howells has in the present volume given his writings the form of a series of historical stories, in which his native State is described and pictured from as remote a period as the geologic ice age. The slow-moving glaciers in the distant past covered most of the present State of Ohio. They rounded off the corners of her hills, smoothed the contour of her valleys, left glacial scratches on her rocks, and transported boulders from remote points where they had an origin and left them on t...

St. Louis was a city under siege during Prohibition. Seven different criminal gangs violently vied for control of the town�s illegal enterprises. Although their names (the Green Ones, the Pillow Gang, the Russo Gang, Egan�s Rats, the Hogan Gang, the Cuckoo Gang and the Shelton Gang) are familiar to many, their exploits have remained largely undocumented until now. Learn how an awkward gunshot wound gave the Pillow Gang its name and why Willie Russo�s bizarre midnight interview with a repor...

Duluth's majestic Glensheen Mansion, featuring thirty-nine ornate rooms and expansive landscaped grounds. Minneapolis's stunning Purcell-Cutts House, a showplace of finely crafted woodwork of Prairie School design. Stevens County's Trantow Log Cabin, built in the German style with dovetailed log corners. Minnesota has a remarkable array of house museums, each with its own unique history and architectural significance. Minnesota Open House features nearly two hundred of these grand mansions...

At the turn of the twentieth century, the bustling railroad town of Lone Rock, Wisconsin, was home to about a thousand residents, and Freeland Dexter seemed to know the business of every single one. Dexter reported all the news from Lone Rock—from the significant to the trivial, the tragic to the comical—for the Weekly Home News of neighboring Spring Green from 1884 to 1912.This collection of Dexter’s most fascinating, amusing, and poignant stories and observations brings ...

The area's extreme remoteness, great size, and sparse population have shaped the North Dakota character from the beginning of settlement a century ago.Theirs was not an easy land to master; and of those who tried, it demanded strength, endurance, and few illusions, but it had rewards. Today, as world shortages of food and fuel raise new possibilities--and new problems--North Dakotans face the future with the cautious optimism they learned long ago in sod houses and...

In summer 1862, Minnesotans found themselves fighting interconnected wars—the first against the rebellious Southern states, and the second an internal war against the Sioux. While the Civil War was more important to the future of the United States, the Dakota War of 1862 proved far more destructive to the people of Minnesota—both whites and American Indians. It led to U.S. military action against the Sioux, divided the Dakotas over whether to fight or not, and left hundreds of white settle...

Winner of the Minnesota Book Award and the Red River Heritage Award!The Haymakers is an epic—the history of man's struggle with nature as well as man's struggle against machines. It relates the story of farmers and their obligations to their families, to the animals they fed, and to the land they tended. But The Haymakersis also an elegy—to a way of life fast disappearing from our landscape. In the most heartfelt essays, Hoffbeck chronicles his own family's struggle to hold onto th...

A nostalgic journey into the life of these Wisconsin shopping meccas—including photos and illustrations.For well over a century, Milwaukee shoppers have had Gimbels or Schuster's in their lives. Even if they didn't crave sewing notions or prize-winning apple pies, they were watching holiday parades wind by, tuning in for Billie the Brownie's radio updates, or losing themselves in front of one of the department stores' fabulous window displays. Not only were they ma...

Track the history of the Chicago Great Western Railway through vintage images in this volume authored by David J. Fiore Sr. The Chicago Great Western Railway (CGW) was a Midwestern line that operated in Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Minnesota, Kansas, and Nebraska. Although this territory was served by much larger systems, the CGW was able to retain its share of passenger and freight business for 83 years through aggressive management, dedicated employees, innovations, and efficient operations...

In Hidden Thunder, renowned watercolor artist Geri Schrab and archaeologist Robert "Ernie" Boszhardt give readers an up-close-and-personal look at rock art. With an eye toward preservation, Schrab and Boszhardt take you with them as they research, document, and interpret at the ancient petroglyphs and pictographs made my Native Americans in past millennia. In addition to publicly accessible sites such as Wisconsin’s Roche-a-Cri State Park and Minnesota’s Jeffers Petroglyphs, H...