Sixty-six days into Prohibition, the sheriff of Hennepin County was under arrest. The county attorney was next. A bootlegger, a brothel owner, and the highest law enforcement officials in Minnesota's most populous county had been running Canadian whiskey through Minneapolis in railroad cars full of scrap metal — and a federal court was about to hear exactly how it worked. Today's episode traces the Winnipeg Liquor Conspiracy of 1920, the Norwegian-American congressman from Granite Falls who wrote the law they broke, the Stearns County farmers who turned moonshine into a matter of survival and pride, and the city across the river that became the safest place in America to be a criminal — as long as you did your dirty work somewhere else.

On the evening of May 6th, 1965, six tornadoes, four of them among the most violent on the Fujita scale, tore through the Twin Cities over three hours. Thirteen people were killed. This is the story of the storms. It is also the story of a debate inside a Weather Bureau office, a physical key, and one forecaster's decision to repurpose Cold War infrastructure. This episode is dedicated to Paul Huttner, who retired on May 1 after forty years as chief meteorologist at Minnesota Public Radio News. He was four years old on May 6th, 1965. It is the night that inspired him to be a meteorologist. Thank you for your service to our communities.

On May 5th, 1975, fifty artists and neighbors marched through the Powderhorn neighborhood of South Minneapolis — one of the most culturally diverse communities in the state — with giant puppets, two accordions, and an idea. What they started that day, five days after the end of the Vietnam War, grew into one of Minnesota's most beloved civic traditions. This is the story of In the Heart of the Beast Puppet Theatre and fifty years of May Day in Minneapolis.

On May 4th, 1925, the first Model T rolled off the assembly line at Ford's new Twin Cities plant on the bluffs above the Mississippi River in St. Paul. What followed was eighty-six years of automobiles, union wages, wartime production, and four generations of St. Paul families who built their lives inside those walls. But the story of how the plant got there — and what it left behind — is one most Minnesotans have never fully heard. Today we tell it. From Ford's Minneapolis origins, to the river that powered everything, to the generators still turning after a hundred years, to the contamination still sitting on the riverfront today. The Ford plant is gone. The river isn't.

On May 3rd, 1959, a British cargo ship named the Ramon de Larrinaga sailed under Duluth's Aerial Lift Bridge and became the first oceangoing vessel in history to reach the western end of Lake Superior. She had crossed the Atlantic from Liverpool. She had navigated sixteen sets of locks through the newly opened St. Lawrence Seaway. And she had arrived in a city that sixty years earlier had been described as a lifeless corpse. Today's episode is the story of how Minnesota's Iron Range helped build a waterway, how entire communities were flooded to make it possible, and how a port city at the heart of the continent became connected to the world.

On May 2nd, 1878, a flour dust explosion destroyed the Washburn A Mill in Minneapolis, the largest flour mill in the world, killing eighteen men and devastating the city's milling capacity. What followed transformed not just Minneapolis but the entire country, from the safety innovations that changed flour milling worldwide, to the birth of the Minneapolis Fire Department, to the brands that are still in your kitchen today. General Mills, Gold Medal Flour, Pillsbury, Betty Crocker, WCCO Radio, and the Washburn Center for Children, all trace their origins to one catastrophic Thursday evening on the banks of the Mississippi River.

It's May 1st, 1951. A nineteen-year-old from Alabama wakes up in Minneapolis to snow on the ground and has no idea what happens next. His name is Willie Mays.

Welcome to Pionerd — your daily Minnesota history podcast. One story, every day. Follow now so you don't miss day one.