Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted as the 32nd U.S. state.

Minnesota is a state in the Upper Midwestern region of the United States. It is bordered by the Canadian provinces of Manitoba and Ontario to the north and east and by the U.S. states of Wisconsin to the east, Iowa to the south, and North Dakota and South Dakota to the west. The northeast corner has a water boundary with Michigan. It is the 12th-largest U.S. state in area and the 22nd-most populous, with about 5.8 million residents. Minnesota is known as the "Land of 10,000 Lakes"; it has 14,420 bodies of fresh water covering at least ten acres each. Roughly a third of the state is forested. Much of the remainder is prairie and farmland. More than 60% of Minnesotans live in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul metropolitan area, known as the "Twin Cities", which is Minnesota's main political, economic, and cultural hub and the 16th-largest metropolitan area in the U.S. Other minor metropolitan and micropolitan statistical areas include Duluth, Mankato, Moorhead, Rochester, and St. Cloud.

The Territory of Minnesota was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from March 3, 1849, until May 11, 1858, when the eastern portion of the territory was admitted to the Union as the state of Minnesota and the western portion became unorganized territory and shortly after was reorganized as part of the Dakota Territory.