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 Seats for Forklifts Minnesota - Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The 12th biggest state of the U.S., it is the 21st most densely inhabited, with 5.3 million people. Minnesota State was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the 32nd state on May 11, the year 1858. Called the Land of 10,000 Lakes, the name of the state comes from a Dakota word for "sky-tinted water." Those waters, together with forests, parks, and wilderness areas, provide tourists and residents different outdoor recreational opportunities.
Practically 60% of Minnesota's inhabitants reside in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul metropolitan area called the "Twin Cities", the center of transportation, industry and education, and home to a globally known arts community. The remainder of Minnesota State consists of western prairies now given over to intensive agriculture; deciduous forests in the southeast, now cleared, farmed and settled; and the less inhabited North Woods, utilized for recreation, mining and forestry.
The Minnesota economy, which was once primarily a producer of raw materials, has been basically transformed over the past 200 years to a main focus on finished products and services. Diversity is perhaps a vital characteristic of the economy, which the relative outputs of its business sectors closely match the rest of the country. The economy of the state of Minnesota had a gross domestic product of $262 billion during the year 2008. 33 of the United States' top 1,000 publicly traded companies, according to 2008 revenues, are headquartered in the state of Minnesota, such as United Health Group, Target, 3M, Medtronic, General Mills, U.S. Bancorp, Ameriprise, Land O' Lakes, Hormel, SuperValu, Best Buy and Valspar. Private businesses based in the state of Minnesota comprise Cargill, the largest privately owned business in the United States, and Carlson Companies, the parent company of Radisson Hotels.
Minnesota's earliest businesses were fur trading and agriculture; the city of Minneapolis grew around the flour mills powered by St. Anthony Falls. Although less than 1% of the inhabitants is working within the agricultural sector, it remains a major part of the state's economy, ranking 6th in the nation in the value of products sold. The state of Minnesota is the U.S.'s largest producer of sugar beets, sweet corn, and farm-raised turkeys and green peas for processing. Forestry remains strong, including logging, pulpwood processing and forest products manufacturing and paper production. The state of Minnesota was famous for its soft-ore mines, which produced a large part of the globe's iron ore for over a century. Though the high-grade ore is presently depleted, taconite mining continues, utilizing methods locally developed so as to save the industry. During the year 2004, the state produced 75 percent of the country's usable iron ore. The mining boom created the port of Duluth that continues to be essential for shipping agricultural products, ore and coal. The manufacturing sector currently comprises technology and biomedical firms along with the older food processors and heavy industry. Edina's Southdale Center is the country's very first indoor shopping mall and its biggest is Bloomington's Mall of America.
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