Thief River Falls: Snowmobiles and Circuit Boards

The name Thief River Falls is a loose translation of an Ojibwe phrase, Gimood-akiwi ziibi, meaning the stolen-land river, marking the spot where Dakota people once camped in secret along this bank before being routed by Ojibwe neighbors. The town that grew here in eighteen eighty-seven began as a lumber and wheat-shipping center at the confluence of the Thief and Red Lake rivers. Today it is known for two companies that make it one of the most unlikely manufacturing centers in the upper Midwest.

Arctic Cat, founded here in nineteen sixty by Edgar Hetteen after he split from the company that became Polaris, built snowmobiles that put the town on the national map. Digi-Key, founded in nineteen seventy-two by a ham radio engineer named Ronald Stordahl, grew into a global electronics distributor employing thousands in a sprawling facility on the edge of town.