Minnesota even has a two and a half week long celebration of winter which includes ice sculptures, fire works, and parades. They are certainly considered the prize attraction for visitors and residents of the state. Although Minnesota borders on Canada and is 1,000 miles from either ocean, it is nevertheless a seaboard state, thanks to the St. Lawrence Seaway, which makes Duluth, on Lake Superior, an international port and the world's largest inland freshwater port. Dense forests, vast grain fields, rich pastures, and a large open pit iron mine, wilderness parks, outstanding hospitals and universities, high technology corporations and a thriving arts community-these are facets of this richly endowed state. Explored by Native Americans, fur traders and missionaries since the dawn of its known history, Minnesota surged ahead on the economic tides of lumber, grain, and ore.
Manufacturing is important to Minnesota's economy.
It also is a wholesale transportation hub and financial and retailing center of the Upper Midwest. A territory in 1849, Minnesota was admitted as a state in 1858. The vast forests poured out seemingly unending streams of lumber and the people spun legends of Paul Bunyan, an enduring part of American folklore. At the great bend of the Mississippi and tangent to the point where the waters of the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers meet, St. Paul and its twin city Minneapolis, form a mighty northern metropolis. Together they are the center for computer, electronics, printing and publishing.