(upbeat music) - We have a little saying here in Kittson County.

Minnesota doesn't end here.

This is where Minnesota begins.

(upbeat music) This museum, the original building here, was built in 1973, and through the years it has been added on.

The main building was 60 by 100.

We added on another building in 1978, and that's the farm machinery building, and then we have the transportation building which was added in the 1990s.

We've also added outside buildings, historic buildings.

We brought in a building from the James J. Hill Farm which was north of Hallock in North Oaks, and we also have the first Swedish settler's cabin in the county.

It was Erick Norland who were the first Swedish settlers of the county, and they came up on the Red River and then they put in a homestead here.

We have a country School depot and a caboose and a country church that have all been moved into the museum ground.

I'd say we'd get between three to 4,000 visitors a year.

A lot of people that have roots here in Kittson County that come back.

I try to get to connect people to the items.

We do a lot of genealogy research here.

I've had wonderful volunteers that have helped get us our genealogy resources together.

- Look at this one.

1916.

- We get an appropriation from the county commissioners.

That covers mainly the salaries.

The rest is through memberships, donations for special projects.

We get grants from the Minnesota Historical Society or the Legacy Fund.

My favorite exhibit would be the country school.

It's so quaint in there.

I just recently had a board member and his wife, they put new curtains in there and they made it all shiny again.

You go in there and it smells like school.

We had gotten a donation from a farmer.

He had bequested a large amount of money to the museum and with that, that was kind of a starter fund, and then we were able to raise money to build this new addition.

It depicts the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s and 1980s.

I had two ladies by the name of Catherine Matson and Cindy Glidden Olsen, who were from Hallock, Minnesota.

They graduated from there and they wanted a project.

They went through the museum's collection first.

They knew people from the area that had some clothing and then they went shopping at vintage shops and they purchased all of the mannequins and they purchased all the clothes.

They did the whole thing themselves.

The military items we have, the Civil War up to the Gulf War.

They all are related to Kittson County veterans.

Odin Langen was a congressman and he was from Kennedy, Minnesota.

It was in the 1950s, early 1960s when he was in office.

The desk came from his office in Washington DC.

We have the 1929 Harley Davidson.

It has a neat story behind it.

The man who lived here in Lake Bronson, he was a collector of a lot of artifacts and we have several of his items in here, and he had went to South Dakota and he found this Harley Davidson sitting in a pig pen, buried in mud halfway up, and then the sidecar was being used as a sled, so it was all wore out on the bottom and he convinced the farmer to let him buy this Harley and then he restored it.

I like how peaceful it is here.

It's quiet.

There's a sense of safety.

The people have supported the museum so well.

I have over 200 members, and that's a lot for a small county museum.

There's less than 5,000 people in the entire county.

I think one thing that helps us too is we're open year round and we're open full time.

In the wintertime, we're closed on weekends but we're usually open five days a week.

(train whistle blowing) This is the county museum.

This is the people's museum, and I just feel that when people come here, they kind of have a little bit of a sense that it is their museum.

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] Funded by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4th, 2008, and by the members of Prairie Public.