Beltrami County Board marks 160th anniversary with proclamation

A birthday proclamation put Beltrami County’s 160th anniversary in the spotlight just as local leaders are balancing the cost of preserving records, funding community services and telling the county’s story in a more crowded present.

The Beltrami County Board signed the proclamation during its Tuesday, March 3, 2026 meeting, recognizing a county created by the Minnesota State Legislature on February 28, 1866. The county was not formally organized until 1896, three decades later, a reminder that the land existed long before local government took its present shape.

Emily Thabes, who leads the Beltrami County History Center, said the county’s formation grew out of the Minnesota Historical Society’s early effort to organize counties using historical information. That origin matters now because the county’s own story is inseparable from the institutions and communities that grew here over time, including farms, towns, Tribal communities and public offices.

Beltrami County is named for Giacomo Costantino Beltrami, the Italian explorer associated with the northern sources of the Mississippi River. Today, the county’s population is far larger and more diverse than it was in 1866. The 2020 Census counted 46,228 residents, and the U.S. Census Bureau estimated the number had grown to 47,055 in July 2025.

The anniversary also lands in a county where Tribal relations are central to any honest historical account. Portions of both the Leech Lake Indian Reservation and the Red Lake Indian Reservation lie within Beltrami County, making the county’s past and present part of the same larger regional story shared with the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe and the Red Lake Nation.

That history is being preserved more deliberately in downtown Bemidji. The Louis and Mary Lou Marchand Library and Archives opened with a ribbon cutting on February 21, 2026, at 130 Minnesota Ave. SW, giving the Beltrami County Historical Society a climate-controlled research space for records and collections. The society says it has served the county since 1952 through its History Center, Museum, archives, research room, exhibits, publications and gift shop.

But the milestone comes with financial pressure attached. Beltrami County budget proposals in 2025 included cuts to community services that affected the historical society, a reminder that decisions about taxes and services shape which parts of county memory are preserved and which are left vulnerable.

Seen that way, the 160th anniversary is more than a ceremonial nod to the past. It is a test of what Beltrami County chooses to protect now, and whose version of its story will be formally recognized in the years ahead.