New museum tells Minnesota veterans’ stories from Civil War to post-9/11
Go Deeper.
Create an account or log in to save stories.
Like this?
Thanks for liking this story! We have added it to a list of your favorite stories.
After five years of planning, the new $40 million Minnesota Military and Veterans Museum opens Saturday at Camp Ripley near Little Falls.
The immersive museum aims to tell the stories of Minnesota men and women — and their families — who’ve served and sacrificed for their country over the past 160 years.
The museum outgrew its former location behind the Camp Ripley gates, a barrier that likely deterred some people from visiting.
The chance to move to a new location just off Highway 371 is a “complete game changer,” said Randal Dietrich, the museum’s executive director.
Turn Up Your Support
MPR News helps you turn down the noise and build shared understanding. Turn up your support for this public resource and keep trusted journalism accessible to all.
“All that lake traffic moving between the Twin Cities and the Brainerd lakes area and beyond travels right past this new site,” he said.
The 40,000-square-foot building is eight times the size of the old museum, allowing more space to display more than 25,000 historical artifacts.
There’s also space on the grounds to display historic vehicles, including a World War II tank and parts of a Cold War-era submarine, the USS Minneapolis-St. Paul.
Inside, the first thing visitors see when they enter the permanent exhibit gallery is a massive naval gun from the USS Ward destroyer.
On the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, the gun fired the first American shot of World War II. It sunk a Japanese submarine attempting to sneak into Pearl Harbor an hour before the actual attack began.
“It’s a priceless World War II artifact,” Dietrich said. “It is the gun that announced our entry into the Second World War.”
The 50-caliber gun was moved from the Minnesota State Capitol grounds last year to the new museum, where it can be restored and protected from the elements.
But more striking than the weapon itself is the huge black-and-white photograph projected above it — the grim faces of the ship's crew, naval reservists based in St. Paul who fired the historic shot.
“Minnesotans on the front line of history, providing a warning of what was to come,” Dietrich said. “They took decisive action an hour before what was happening became apparent to so many others.”
The photo of the Ward crew is an example of how the new museum aims to bring to life what Minnesotans experienced in military conflicts since the Civil War.
The Legislature provided $32 million for the new building. Supporters raised another $7 million in private donations for exhibits and galleries.
The larger building offers space to tell more veterans' stories, including those of the 40,000-plus Minnesotans who've served since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in 2001.
Many endured multiple overseas deployments, missing their children’s birthdays and other milestones, Dietrich said.
“They paid a heavy cost for that conflict,” he said. “The chance to deliver to them a space where they can bring their families and show his or her story in the larger context of what this conflict meant, I think, has value.”
The museum’s curator, Doug Thompson, has been sorting through thousands of artifacts collected over the years. Some are more than a century old.
“They've been kind of hidden away,” he said. “So in many ways, this museum is going to be a brand new experience, even for people that have been to the old museum. They’re going to see things they haven’t seen before.”
One rare artifact is a complete uniform from one of about 300 women who served in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve during World War I.
“It kind of tells not just the story of the men that went off and fought, but really it was a national effort across gender lines,” Thompson said. “So we had a lot of women that joined the military back in the days.”
One hall displays items donated by the late Gen. John W. Vessey Jr., who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President Ronald Reagan.
Visitors also will see somber mementos contributed by Gary Guggenberger, a Cold Spring native who now lives in Bemidji. He was a prisoner of war in South Vietnam and Cambodia from 1969 until his release in 1973.
Dietrich said Guggenberger entrusted the museum with a rosary he’d made while in captivity and a link from the chain that bound him to a tree for four years.
The museum uses not only artifacts and photos, but sound too, often letting Minnesotans tell their own stories.
In a small theater, visitors can hear firsthand accounts of Minnesotans on 9/11 and feel the rumble of the World Trade Center towers collapsing.
The daughter of Bloomington native Tom Burnett describes his heroic actions as one of the passengers who helped bring down United Flight 93, likely preventing a greater loss of life.
Jessica Potter Zajac, executive director of the Blue Earth County Historical Society in Mankato, previewed the museum last week and called it “a beautiful space.”
“It’s covering all of the military conflicts that Minnesotans have been involved in,” she said. “It really tells that comprehensive story about where we've been as a state since 1858.”
The museum will host a three-day grand opening this weekend, commemorating the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Among the speakers will be retired U.S. Army Gen. Paul Nakasone, the former director of the National Security Agency.
And on Saturday, the museum will welcome its first official volunteer greeter: Minneapolis native Don Halverson, a World War II veteran who recently turned 103.
“He puts a smile on the face of everybody he meets, and rightfully so,” Dietrich said.
