The Beltrami County Historical Society recently received a Minnesota Cultural & Heritage Grant in support of revising and republishing “A Brief History of Beltrami County.”
The original book, written by Charles Vandersluis and published in 1963, traced the early events of the area, including settlements, treaties, logging, the building of railroads, farming, the formation of villages and towns, schools and churches, local citizens, and everyday life in the county.
The updated work includes 60 years of new information and much more extensive material on local Native American history, as well as photographs and maps, in an accessible format conducive to both research as well as general interest.
BCHS intends to use the grant funding to help cover the cost of editing, layout & design, and printing for the book.
“We believe this new publication will be quite interesting to county residents and community members,” says Sue Bruns, President of the BCHS Board.
“We also hope it will become a significant source of information for schools and libraries in northern Minnesota, as well as historians and researchers interested in this region. We’re very grateful to the Minnesota Historical Society for their support. And we want to thank Beverley Vandersluis French for her consent to publish this updated county history, and Leo Soukup for his untiring efforts in researching and writing it.”
