University of Minnesota. North Central Experiment Station (Grand Rapids, Minn.)

The Minnesota State Legislature and the University Board of Regents created the Minnesota Agricultural Experiment Station in 1885 near the University’s Minneapolis campus. The 1897 Biennial Report of the Board of Regents explained how the subsequent experiment sub-stations were established, “A law, enacted at the last session of the state legislature, required the regents to purchase and equip two substations, each to contain not less than 320 acres, and appropriated $20,000 for that purpose, and the additional sum of $10,000 for the biennial period of 1895-96 with which to pay the expenses of conducting experiments.” At their May 1, 1895, meeting, the Board of Regents appointed an agricultural committee “to carry out the provisions of this act.” After the committee’s evaluation of possible locations, one sub-station was established in Crookston, and the other in Grand Rapids, which was called the Northeast Sub-experiment Station and opened in 1896. Warren G. Pendergast was named the first superintendent of the Northeast Sub-experiment Station.

“It has been the effort to direct energies of the station towards solution of those problems which are of especial interest to the settlers in the cut over pine regions, which embrace so large an area in the state,” Herman H. Chapman, second superintendent of the Northeast Sub-experiment Station, reported in the 1899 Biennial Report of the Board of Regents.

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