Rochester is located in Southeastern Minnesota. It’s about an hour and a half drive south west of the Twin Cities and about 50 miles due east of Winona on the Mississippi River. Today, Rochester has residents and visitors from all around the world. The population of the city is about 120,000 and the Mayo Clinic employs over 40,000 of them.
On the corner of Myrtle and Main Streets in Stillwater, Minnesota began.
So why here? Well… when Wisconsin became a state in 1848, that left people west of the St. Croix river “high and dry” with no government.
So, the people of Stillwater held a territorial convention right here and voted to send a delegate to Washington D.C. to organize a new territory called “Minnesota” which became a territory in 1849, and a state in 1858.
