The keen observer of southwest Minnesota finds it is in a continual state of transformation and turbulance. From the settling of the prairie to the present no fragment of the landscape has escaped this metamorphosis. Immigrants built churches, schools, and homes, drained wetlands, and constructed roads. Diverse ethnic groups and cultures brought a range of languages, customs, and expectations. Technology, markets, laws, and individual's hopes and dreams altered and transformed the landscape, the environment, and ultimately the people themselves. Local history focuses on this laboratory of change. It satisfies an innate desire to be connected to a place. Local history gives to people of every place and time what they deserve--a history.

Sponsored by the Center for Rural and Regional Studies and the Society for the Study of Local and Regional History.

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Joseph Amato is a professor emeritus of History and Rural and Regional Studies at Southwest State University. He is the author of numerous books including his recent Rethinking Home: A Case for Writing Local History and Dust: A History of the Small and the Invisible, as well as When Father and Son Conspire, The Great Jerusalem Artichoke Circus, The Decline of Rural Minnesota, and Servants of the Land.

Janet Timmerman holds a B.A. degree in History from Southwest State University. She was a Center fellow in the fall of 2001 and currently is the Information Officer/Community Educator for the Center. Early regional settler and fur trader, Joseph Laframboise, was the focus of her research as a fellow. She is co-editor of Draining the Great Oasis: An Environmental History of Murray County, Minnesota and At the Headwaters: The 1993 Flood in Southwestern Minnesota. She is the author of the essay, "Draining the Great Oasis: Claiming New Agricultural Land in Murray County, 1910-1915."