One of the phenomena of recent decades has been the develop ment of electric light and power. Production in kilowatt hours in creased from 87,579,000 in 1907 to 995,182,000 in 1932, and rev enues from the sale of current in the latter year amounted to $35,146,000. Developed water power in the State in January 1936 was 272,000 horsepower. Water power produced 573,000,00o kilo watt-hours of electricity or 47.5% of the total output for Transport.—Both by water and by land Minnesota is excep tionally well provided with transport facilities. Duluth stands at the head of the Great Lakes and through its port passes most of the iron-ore and a large share of the grain grown in the North west. It also is a receiving port and distributing point for coal and other products for the Northwest. Railways connect with the iron ranges, while others, expanding and intersecting, reach out into the wheat lands of the Dakotas, Montana and western Can ada. At the head of navigation on the Mississippi stand Minneap olis and St. Paul. Efforts have been made in recent years, with some success, to develop freighting on the river between Minne apolis and St. Louis, but perhaps the greatest importance of the river is the check it affords against extravagant freight rates by rail. Electric railways covered 616 miles of track in 1932 and carried 121,286,000 passengers.
Of the 11,208 m. in the State trunk highway system, 7,906 m. were paved and 2,689 m. were heavily gravelled at the beginning of 1935. Disbursements for this trunk system amounted in 1933 to $17,079,000 and in 1934 to $22,796,000. Building and main tenance of the trunk highways has been financed by motor tax, gasolene tax and Federal aid entirely, and no bonds have been issued. Provision is made for keeping the trunk system open for motor travel all winter. The rural roads have a mileage of 110, 616 of which 37,217 m. are surfaced. Federal emergency allot ments for road building amounted at the end of 1935 to 000. Motor vehicles registered in the State numbered 726,993 in 1935, as compared with 732,972 in 1930 and 28,776 in 1912. History.—The first European visitors to the territory now embraced in the State of Minnesota found it occupied mainly by two Indian tribes, the Ojibway or Chippewa, who lived in the heavily wooded northern portion, and the Dakota or Sioux, who made their homes in the more open country of the South and West. Between the two tribes there was almost continual warfare. The first white men known to have entered the State were French men. Radisson and Groseilliers may have reached Minnesota ter ritory on an expedition overland from Lake Michigan in 1655. It is more probable that they visited Minnesota on a journey south-west from Lake Superior about 1659. Daniel Greysolon, sieur du Luth (Duluth), is known to have penetrated the territory south-west of Lake Superior in 1679 as far as Mille Lacs, where he set up the standard of Louis XIV. The following year Du Luth
crossed via the Bois Brule-St. Croix route to the Mississippi, where he met a party of three Frenchmen led by Michael Accault. They had been sent up the river by La Salle to make the first explora tion of the upper Mississippi. Accompanying this expedition was Father Louis Hennepin, who during his wanderings before meeting Du Luth discovered and named the falls of St. Anthony, and who later wrote the first published description of the country. Nicolas Perrot, a trader, ascended the Mississippi in 1686 to Lake Pepin, on the east shore of which he built a fort. Again in 1688 he visited the region, and in 1689 he proclaimed the sovereignty of France over it. In 1695 Le Sueur, who had traded on the upper Missis sippi for some years, established a post on Isle Pelee (Prairie island) in the Mississippi between Hastings and Red Wing. In 1700 he ascended the Minnesota river to the mouth of the Blue Earth river at Mankato, whereon he built Fort L'Huillier.
A period of lethargy followed these early explorations, due to the death in 1698 of the energetic governor, Frontenac, who had encouraged them, and the absorption of France in the -War of the Spanish Succession (1701-13). All French garrisons in the north west were withdrawn. Not until Sept. 1727 did another French expedition reach the region. Then the Sieur de la Perriere landed on the west bank of Lake Pepin, built a fort, and the Jesuit fathers who accompanied him established a mission, but both inst:tutions were short lived. In 1731 a party under La Verendrye explored the chain of lakes along the northern border of Minne sota, and a detachment under his nephew, La Jemeraye, built Fort St. Pierre on the north bank of Rainy Lake. In the next year the main expedition pushed on to the Lake of the Woods, where, within Minnesota borders, they built Fort St. Charles, occupied for 20 years, or longer than any French establishment in the territory. In the treaty of Paris (1763) at the close of the Seven Years War in Europe, the French ceded to England all their pos sessions east of the Mississippi except the island on which New Orleans is located; those west of that river they had cautiously ceded to Spain in a secret treaty the previous year.
During the period of English and Spanish possession fur-trading operations were carried on by traders of both nations. The only notable explorer to enter the Minnesota country at this time was Jonathan Carver, who was sent out to treat with the Indians, in 1766, by Major Rogers, commandant at Mackinac, and who spent the winter of 1766-67 among the Sioux of the Minnesota valley.