The Minnesota Seaside Station

In 1900, Josephine Tilden, a 31-year-old botany professor from the University of Minnesota, purchased three acres of remote Vancouver coastline. For a brief time, the Minnesota Seaside Station became an outdoor classroom for Midwest college students to study the varied and bizarre flora and fauna living in the windswept tidepools.

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Producer: Britt AamodtEditorial support: Emily KrumbergerMixing & mastering: Chris Harwood

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Transcript

Welcome to MN90: Minnesota History in 90 Seconds.

Summer 1901, the thirty-odd college students, mostly girls, must have felt like they were on Mars, when they were plunked down at the Minnesota Seaside Station. It was located nearly 2000 miles northwest of Minnesota, on the west coast of Vancouver, Canada. The year before, an enterprising botany professor, 31-year-old Josephine Tilden, had traveled there to study algae. This remote stretch of wind buffeted coast was slick with algae covered rocks, but also home to a dizzying array of flora and fauna, with her own money, she purchased three acres. Then, with help from her school, the University of Minnesota, she established the station as a summertime outdoor classroom. These students were the first class to arrive. Many were Midwest kids from farms and small towns, so nothing prepared them for low tide, orange starfish, purple sea urchins, giant green anemones. The Minnesota Seaside Station introduced students to this tidal wonderland until 1907 when funding ran out.

MN90 is produced by AMPERS, diverse radio for Minnesota's communities, made possible by funding from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund. Online at MN90.org.