Archives: RMJ Articles

Welcome to the summer issue of the Rural Minnesota Journal. In this quarter’s issue, we continue looking at the question of “Who owns rural Minnesota” with two articles concerning the complex and sometimes confusing issue of land ownership by Minnesota’s Native Americans. Solving a land-control dilemma As the land owned by American Indians dwindled to a small patchwork of property ...

The Case of Mille Lacs v. Minnesota Usufructuary rights: The right to use the property owned by another without altering it. When discussing who owns Minnesota, no issue stands out more than that of treaties between the U.S. government and Indian tribes, and in recent years no case has reshaped our understanding of ownership more ...

Two governments work together to overcome more than a century of distrust by Larry Schumacher Located in and around the Chippewa National Forest, the Leech Lake Indian Reservation is home to more than 10,000 people, making it the largest reservation in the state. But to many Minnesotans, even those who live nearby, Leech Lake and its ...

Property values: According to a Minnesota Department of Commerce fact sheet, general trends observed in various reports include the following: Negative impacts on property values range from 1 percent to 10 percent, with positive impacts in some cases; Negative impacts are often attributed to aesthetics, concern over potential health effects, noise, and safety; Negative impacts ...

Nearly 100 years ago, Charles Haralson, superintendent of the University of Minnesota’s Fruit Breeding Farm, developed a crisp, juicy, slightly tart apple. The Haralson, along with the Beacon, Fireside, and Regent, grew into mainstays for apple growers. But by the late 20th century, the U.S. apple industry was in a funk, depressed by low-cost apple ...

For the Bemidji-Grand Rapids line. Return to article. April 2, 2008 Office of Energy Security recommends establishing an advisory task force 5064019 April 24, 2008 PUC Order to establish an advisory task force 5138381 June 4, 2008 Application for a Route Permit for the Bemidji to Grand Rapids 230 kV Transmission Line Project 5264771 June ...

  Public Policy and Electricity Transmission Lines in Minnesota by Roderick Squires The visible landscape and the artifacts comprising it clearly reflect how we use the land to produce the goods and provide the services that we individually and collectively demand. As geographer Pierce Lewis remarked in his essay “Axioms for Reading the Landscape”: The ...

by Tom Teigen Nine new utility poles stand on Dale and Julie Schwartz’s dairy farm near Arlington, Minnesota, 60 miles southwest of Minneapolis. The 150-foot steel poles, stitched together by 345-kilovolt electric transmission wires, are part of the largest expansion of Minnesota’s power grid in more than 30 years. “We didn’t even have a telephone ...

by Tom Teigen Jerry Demmer’s father was happy to harvest just over 50 bushels of corn per acre on his farm near Clarks Grove, Minn., in the early 1960s.[i] When Jerry took over the farm north of Albert Lea in 1972, he brought in around 105 bushels per acre. Last fall, Demmer’s corn yielded 166 ...