During the late 1800s and early 1900s, more than 10,000 orphaned children lived on the campus of what is now the Minnesota State Public School Orphanage Museum. Created in 1885 by Minnesota state legislature, the facility was created to take in orphaned, dependent, abused and neglected children.

The museum campus is quite large, and the city of Owatonna purchased it in 1974 to use for municipal buildings and office space for the mayor, the city council, parks district and more. Close to 20 years later, a former state schooler named Harvey Ronglien went to the city council and said he wanted to see the school recognize its past and memorialize the children who spent so much of their early lives there. He succeeded, and today a few of the buildings on campus tell the fascinating history of the school and shows what life was like for the children who lived there at the time.

“The main museum is one component, and walking the grounds on a tour visiting audio stations is another,” says Museum Director Anne Peterson. The main museum includes a big U-shaped hallway that contains a number of photographs and other items donated by former state schoolers. There’s a restored cottage where boys ages 5 to 13 slept, giving visitors an idea of the living arrangements for children at the time. Overall, the campus was 300 acres, 200 of which were used for farming. “This was a self-sustaining institution on the west side of Owatonna,” Peterson adds. “This is a must-do for someone who has never been here.”