The new Minnesota Military and Veterans Museum opens this weekend, just north of Little Falls.
Right outside of Camp Ripley, the 40,000 square foot facility is dedicated to Minnesotans who've served from Civil War to present day.
Randal Dietrich, the museum's executive director, advises visitors buy tickets online ahead of time for the indoor gallery.
There will also be outdoor activities free and open to the public Saturday and Sunday, including food trucks and music.
"Veterans telling stories out at our jet fighter F-16, a tanker crew out there talking around a Jumbo Sherman from the World War II era, and even some of our Navy friends, submariners who are out there," Dietrich explains. "We've installed a memorial to the USS Minneapolis-Saint Paul, a Los Angeles class nuclear submarine."
Veterans who served aboard the sub will be there to share their experience.
The new museum is situated on 30 acres, and Dietrich says it's been a daunting process to pick stories and objects that are emblematic of something larger than themselves.
"So, we've been collecting artifacts of veterans have essentially voted with their feet, walking through our doors at the existing museum inside the walls of Camp Ripley for five decades," Dietrich said.
The Minnesota Military History Museum is open Thursday through Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., except national holidays.
Admission is $5 for adults and $2 for children.
A rendering shows the inside of the new Minnesota Military History Museum near Little Falls and Camp Ripley.
(Minnesota Military History Museum)
Museum will share stories of 9/11 this weekend
Special for this weekend and inside that new museum is an exhibit of Minnesotans sharing their stories of 9/11 as Americans remember that tragic day 25 years ago this Friday.
Minnesotans were in the towers, planes and Pentagon on the morning of 9/11 and on the frontline of the war that followed.
The images will forever be etched in our minds: the burning towers and the people rushing out covered in dust after a devastating terrorist attack in New York City, with subsequent attacks in Washington D.C. at the Pentagon, and a plane that never reached it target after crashing in Pennsylvania.
"And I remember getting on that stairwell and I looked at the stair marker and it says 63. And I thought, oh man, we have a long way to go down," says Scott Wallace, who made his way out of the building to safety.
His story is part of the immersive experience at the museum.
"I remember praying to myself, just say, Lord, give me the strength to stay calm and get down and get out," he recalls.
Visitors will see things as the people that were there that day 25 years ago saw them. That includes Bloomington, Minnesota's Tom Barnett who helped to take down flight 93 in a field in Pennsylvania.
"After the plane crashed in the Pentagon, Denna thought that that was Tom's plane, and so she didn't think she was going to hear from him again. She thought that was that he had crashed," describes an exhibit.
But then, another call.
"And he told her that they're going to do something. He and a group of passengers were going to get together and they were going to do something. And that was the last time she heard from him."
Other features include Chief Master Sergeant Jeffrey Rosenthal, who was flying a C130 from Andrews Airforce Base and witnesses the crash.
"At that very moment, the aircraft went through our windscreen from left to right, Flight 77, and dived right into the Pentagon," he describes.
