with the legend: "I am right; Gorman is wrong." In
the right hand corner of the cartoon is a round ball, with a gopher in
it, coming rapidly down, with the legend: "A _Ball come_ from Winona."
This was a pun on the name of Mr. St. A. D. Balcombe from Winona, who
was a strong advocate of the measure. Under the whole group was a dark
pit, with the words, "A mine of corruption."

The bill was passed, and the state was saddled with a debt of
$5,000,000, under which it staggered for over twenty years, and we never
even got a gopher train out of it.

This cartoon, coming just at the time the name of the state was under
consideration, fastened upon it the nickname of "Gopher," which it has
ever since retained. The name is not at all inappropriate, as the
animal has always abounded in the state. In a work on the mammals
of Minnesota, by C. L. Herrick, 1892, he gives the scientific name
of our most common species of gopher, "_Spermophilus Tridecemlineatus_,"
or thirteen-striped gopher, and says: "The species ranges from the
Saskatchawan to Texas, and from Ohio to Utah. Minnesota is the peculiar
home of the typical form, and thus deserves the name of the 'Gopher
State.'"

Although the name originated in ridicule and contempt, it has not in any
way handicapped the commonwealth, partly because very few people know
its origin, but for the greater reason, that it would take much more
than a name to check its predestined progress.

STATE PARKS.

ITASCA STATE PARK.

In a previous part of this work, under the head of "Lumber," I have
referred to the fact that a great national park and forest reserve is in
contemplation by the United States at the headwaters of the Mississippi,
and made reference to the state park already established at that point.
I will now relate what has been done by the state in this regard. In
1875 an official survey of the land in and about Lake Itasca was made by
the surveyor general of the United States for Minnesota, which brought
these lands under the operation of the United States laws, and part of
them were entered. A portion of them went to the Northern Pacific
Railroad Company under its land grant. The swamp and school lands went
to the state, and much to private individuals under the various methods
of making title to government lands.

On the 20th of April, 1891, the legislature passed an act entitled, "An
act to establish and create a public park, to be known and designated as
the Itas