Minnesota is a give access in the upper midwestern region of the United States. It is the 12th largest U.S. state in Place and the 22nd most populous, with beyond 5.75 million residents. Minnesota is home to western prairies, now given higher than to intensive agriculture; deciduous forests in the southeast, now partially cleared, farmed, and settled; and the less populated North Woods, used for mining, forestry, and recreation. Roughly a third of the let in is covered in forests, and it is known as the “Land of 10,000 Lakes” for having higher than 14,000 bodies of well-ventilated water of at least ten acres. More than 60% of Minnesotans conscious in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul metropolitan area, known as the “Twin Cities”, the state’s main political, economic, and cultural hub. With a population of virtually 3.7 million, the Twin Cities is the 16th largest metropolitan Place in the U.S. Other young metropolitan and micropolitan statistical areas in the state include Duluth, Mankato, Moorhead, Rochester, and St. Cloud.

Minnesota, which gets its name from the Dakota language, has been inhabited by various native peoples since the Woodland epoch of the 11th century BCE. Between more or less 200 and 500 CE, two areas of the indigenous Hopewell tradition emerged: the Laurel profound in the north, and Trempealeau Hopewell in the Mississippi River Valley in the south. The Upper Mississippian culture, consisting of the Oneota people and extra Siouan speakers, emerged in this area 1000 CE and lasted through the arrival of Europeans in the 17th century. French explorers and missionaries were the antediluvian Europeans to enter the region, encountering the Dakota, Ojibwe, and various Anishinaabe tribes. Much of what is now Minnesota formed portion of the huge French holding of Louisiana, which the United States purchased in 1803. After several territorial reorganizations, the Minnesota Territory was admitted to the Union as the 32nd make a clean breast in 1858. Minnesota’s recognized motto, L’Étoile du Nord, is the without help state motto in French; meaning “The Star of the North”, it was adopted rudely after statehood and reflects both the state’s in advance French explorers and its tilt as the northernmost divulge in the contiguous U.S.