Minnesota Prairie Roots

Writing and photography by Audrey Kletscher Helbling

Cornfields into forever in the southern Minnesota countryside July 29, 2026

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Acres and acres of corn grow in fields along this county road near Delhi in southwestern Minnesota. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo July 2026)

SEEMINGLY ENDLESS FIELDS of tasseling corn stretched before us. Row upon row upon row of corn flanking the roadways along with soybeans and the occasional sugar beets. All three crops define the southern Minnesota landscape in July. But corn is decidedly king.

A farm site along U.S. Highway 14 near Janesville. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo July 2026)

As Randy and I traveled from Faribault to the Kletscher family reunion in Echo in Yellow Medicine County on the last Sunday of July, we observed the crops. Most looked good. But the farther west we went, we began to notice signs of stress in the corn.

Driving along State Highway 68 by Morgan in eastern Redwood County. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo July 2026)

A July 21 drought monitoring report from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources confirmed our observations with conditions listed as abnormally dry in my home county of Redwood and neighboring counties. Randy and I, even decades removed from the farm, can still accurately assess crops.

Spraying a cornfield just west of Redwood Falls. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo July 2026)

To the west of Redwood Falls along Minnesota State Highway 19, we watched a bright yellow crop duster swoop low over the road in front of us, barely clearing the power lines to drop chemicals onto a cornfield. It was thrilling to watch the pilot’s daring descent while simultaneously wondering what the plane was unleashing upon the land.

Earlier, outside New Ulm, I saw a woman walking beans, meaning she was walking through a soybean field eradicating weeds by hand, a memory-familiar task. I walked a lot of beans during my youth. No chemicals used, only my hands and/or a hoe.

Corn surrounds this barn along State Highway 19 west of Redwood Falls. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo July 2026)

From inside the cool, air conditioned van, Randy and I pressed onward, sheltered from the sweltering heat and humidity of the July day. We passed massive barns swallowed by cornfields. So much corn. Shortly before noon we reached our destination, the Echo Community Center.

This 1936 photo displayed at the reunion shows my grandparents, Henry and Ida Kletscher, with six of their children. My dad, Elvern, is smack dab in the middle, second row. Others include the oldest, Elaine, then Elvira, Mike, Harold and baby Clarence. (Photo studio unknown)

After several hours of food, conversation and sharing memories with extended family, we were on the road again heading the 130 miles back home to Faribault.

This farm site sits near Delhi. Those are sugar beets growing in the foreground. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo July 2026)

The temperature had only risen, grown more stifling, more oppressive. Temp rising. Corn rising. Farm sites rising like islands in an ocean of crops.

Grain bins west of New Ulm will soon hold the harvest. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo July 2026)

This is rural southern Minnesota, in the thick of the growing season. The promise of a bountiful harvest measured in growth, rainfall, and hail and windstorms avoided.

Transporting Allis Chalmers tractors from a tractor show. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo July 2026)

Just north of Sleepy Eye along State Highway 4, a semi truck hauled three Allis Chalmers tractors returning, said Randy, from the Orange Spectacular (Allis Chalmers Tractor Show) in Hutchinson. I picked up my camera, zoomed in and snapped two images, the second with the tractors appearing to drive atop a cornfield.

From this camera perspective, the tractors appear to be driving on the corn. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo July 2026)

It was only an illusion, similar to the mirage of water slicing across the roadway on this hot summer day.

That’s not water on the road, only a mirage. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo July 2026)

Had we stuck around into the evening and paused beside a cornfield, we likely would have heard the corn growing. There’s scientific truth underlying that statement.

A tractor and baler wait along U.S. Highway 14 between Nicollet and Mankato. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo July 2026)

The adage of “make hay while the sun shines” also rings true. I noticed several farmers baling hay on this hot and humid July afternoon. Farming doesn’t wait for cooler weather. Just like corn continues to grow, stretching across the rural southern Minnesota landscape seemingly into forever.

© Copyright 2026 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

The Smithsonian in Hanley Falls & Hanley Falls in the Smithsonian (exhibit) September 20, 2012

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The Smithsonian’s Museum on Main Street exhibit, “The Way We Worked,” features snippets from Minnesota. Photo courtesy of Minnesota’s Machinery Museum, Hanley Falls, in rural southwestern Minnesota.

I DOUBT MANY of the 304 residents of Hanley Falls, rural Yellow Medicine County, Minnesota, have ever visited the Smithsonian or even traveled to Washington D.C.

But now this internationally-acclaimed museum has come to Hanley Falls via “The Way We Worked,” a Museum on Main Street project developed by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service and adapted from an original exhibition from the National Archives.

Bottom line, if you can’t bring the people to the museum, bring the museum to the people.

Specifically, from now through October 20,  Minnesota’s Machinery Museum in Hanley Falls is hosting the exhibit on where, how, who and why Americans work.

But that’s not all. Hanley Falls is part of “The Way We Worked,” as are several other Minnesota places and people.

Says Museum Director Laurie Johnson: “It is an honor in itself to be hosting a Smithsonian Traveling Exhibit. To be an actual part of the exhibit traveling all over the U.S. is a very big honor.”

Hanley Falls’ place in the exhibit falls in the “Communities at Work” section and features a 1987 aerial view photo of Hanley Falls by Vincent H. Mart sourced from the Minnesota Historical Society. The MHS photographic collection includes 5,697 aerial views from around Minnesota photographed by Mart between 1962-1988.

The 1987 Vincent H. Mart photo showing a portion of Hanley Falls and now part of the Smithsonian traveling exhibit. Photo courtesy of Minnesota’s Machinery Museum.

Mart’s black-and-white shot #5,655 in the MHS archives, and now in the Smithsonian exhibit as image 196, shows the then Hanley Falls Farmers Elevator (now the Farmer’s Co-op Elevator) on the west side of town, plus Bennett Transportation (bus company) and the fourth-generation Oftedahl family farm. As a side note, the elevator celebrated its 100th anniversary this past July on Minnesota’s Machinery Museum grounds with more than 2,000 in attendance.

According to Johnson, the scene in the photograph no longer looks the same. Several of the grain bins were damaged in a wind storm and the main office was  moved and an elevator built to the southwest of the Oftedahl farm. The old elevator remains and is still used by the Farmer’s Co-op.

The exhibit copy which accompanies the Hanley Falls photo reads, in part:

The reminders of a town’s main industry imprint its landscape and identity. Silos dominate the skyline in Hanley Falls, Minnesota as they do in most small, agricultural communities.

And here’s how Johnson summarizes what the Hanley Falls photo tells us about “The Way We Worked:”

Farming is a way of life here and has been for many generations. The exhibit talks about “community” and we are definitely a community that works, worships, (has) neighborhood get-togethers and plays together.

Johnson, who lives on a farm about 10 miles north of Hanley Falls, further explains that the local elevator, banks and gas station provide jobs in town. Some residents work in neighboring towns. Many are retired.

You’ll find plenty of old tractors and farm machinery, along with vintage cars and trucks, in the museum’s outbuildings. Minnesota Prairie Roots file photo.

Already the Smithsonian show is attracting more visitors to Minnesota’s Machinery Museum, defined by Johnson as “an agricultural museum recalling farm life in stories and artifacts from how we farmed with horses to a farm kitchen, bedroom, parlor and general store…preserving our agricultural heritage for generations.”

The entrance to the portion of the museum housed in the former school, a WPA building. Minnesota Prairie Roots file photo.

The five-building Yellow Medicine County museum complex, which includes the former Hanley Falls School built in 1939 by the Works Progress Administration, rests on six acres. You’ll find antique tractors, automobiles, gas engines, threshing equipment and other machinery and artifacts in the outbuildings.

A bushel basket, one of the many ag items displayed at the museum. Minnesota Prairie Roots file photo.

Until October 20, you also can find five multi-sided kiosks featuring photos, videos, flip booklets and other interactive activities as part of the Smithsonian’s “The Way We Worked” exhibit.

Besides Hanley Falls, other Minnesota places/information in the show are a photo of women sorting sweet potatoes; quotes from Earl Bakken, founder of Minneapolis-based Medtronics, maker of the first self-contained pacemaker; a 1974 photo from Danheim Dairy in New Ulm; a SPAM Town banner; mention of the Moorhead Spuds (hometown pride for the town team); and a 1928 photo of St. Paul Gas and Light Company workers at a dance.

Johnson has no idea how the Hanley Falls photo became a part of this national touring exhibit. She discovered the town’s inclusion while vacationing in Tennessee, where she stopped to view the exhibit.

An old Hanley Falls fire truck is among vehicles housed in the outbuildings. Minnesota Prairie Roots file photo.

After leaving Hanley Falls, the exhibit will travel to five other Minnesota locations, including the Wright County Historical Society in Buffalo (Oct. 27 – Dec. 8); the Winona County Historical Society in Winona (Dec. 15 – Jan. 26); the Steele County Historical Society in Owatonna (Feb. 2 – March 16); the Virginia Area Historical Society in Virginia (March 23 – May 4); and the Depot Preservation Alliance in Baudette (May 11 – June 22).

In Hanley Falls, “The Way We Were” can be viewed between 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. Monday – Saturday or from 1 p.m. – 4:30 p.m. on Sunday. The museum season was extended to accommodate the show.

Admission to Minnesota’s Machinery Museum is free, but monetary contributions are accepted via a free will donation box.

Located in southwestern Minnesota, Hanley Falls sits nine miles south of Granite Falls or 20 miles north of Marshall along Highway 23. Go one block west of Highway 23 and then a block north to find the museum.

An old-style farm kitchen on the second floor of the museum. Minnesota Prairie Roots file photo.

“The Way We Worked” is presented in Hanley Falls in collaboration with the Minnesota Humanities Center. Funding, says Johnson, is via the Center; The Clean Water, Land & Legacy Amendment (Arts & Cultural Heritage Fund); the Smithsonian Institute; the National Endowment for the Humanities; and the United States Congress.

Minnesota’s Machinery Museum previously hosted the Smithsonian’s Museum on Main Street projects “Barn Again” and “Between Fences.”

FYI: To learn more about Minnesota’s Machinery Museum, click here to link to the museum website.

For more info about “The Way We Worked,” click here.

To view additional photos by Vincent H. Mart in the Minnesota Historical Society archives, click here.

© Copyright 2012 Audrey Kletscher Helbling