Minto, ND

Minto is a Walsh County city of 616 residents at the 2020 census, founded in 1881 and incorporated two years later. The name came from Minto, Ontario, the home of many early settlers, so the local story begins with a prairie town carrying a piece of another place across the border. Polish immigrants added St. Joseph's Chapel in 1907, giving Minto another visible marker of the people who helped build it.

The best way to wander through Minto's older years is inside the 1895 Minto School, now the Walsh County Historical Museum. The brick building was made with bricks produced in town, and its classrooms now hold pioneer displays, wildlife, military items, a one-room schoolhouse, and a re-created Main Street with a general store, blacksmith shop, saloon, ice cream parlor, and more. Minto Public School still serves the city and nearby rural areas, so education links the present to the old school building in a very literal way. It is a very local kind of museum: built, filled, and remembered in town.