ABOVE: From left: County Commissioner Joe Loughmiller, Senator Amy Klobuchar, Executive Director Lenny Tvedten and Curator James Marushin look at a specially commissioned .30-30 Winchester Rifle in the records room on Wednesday. The rifle is engraved with scenes from Martin County.

FAIRMONT – With the Martin County Historical Society Board, Senator Amy Klobuchar toured the Martin County Museum in Fairmont on Wednesday.

The first stop was the archives, where newspapers are pressed in large books. Curator James Marushin showed Klobuchar the digital records, with a newspaper clipping from her first Senate win in a 2006 issue of the Sentinel queued up on the screen.

Going back to her pre-Senate days, Klobuchar said she used a room just like it when she wrote her first book.

“When I was in college, I wrote a book of the [construction] of the Minneapolis Metrodome,” she said. “I looked back through all the old newspaper clippings. You’d look up stadium, and they had them each in an envelope for the month.”

With funding a hot topic currently, Klobuchar asked Executive Director Lenny Tvedten how they get their funding. Tvedten said they get funding through the county, donations and fundraisers they hold.

The tour snaked its way through the interactive and military rooms as well. A feature of the interactive room was a table in the center, displaying the Fairmont chain of lakes. In the military room, Marushin and Tvedten remarked upon the German POW camp in Fairmont during WWII.

“Some wanted to stay [after the war],” Marushin said. “Farmers could rent them to do the fieldwork because they needed many hands to get that done.”

In the basement, Klobuchar was drawn to the iron lung on display. She talked about fellow Senator Mitch McConnell and his struggle with polio as a child. Klobuchar touched on how important vaccines have been in fighting diseases and eliminating some like polio altogether.

It was also here where Klobuchar heard from board members about community projects. Board Member Jeff Rouse brought up the Fairmont Opera House, which is the oldest one in the state of Minnesota. Klobuchar said projects like these will take more time to approve because 130 earmarked projects for funding were cut from the most recent spending bill.

“We have to redo those and then maybe just add a few more, unless we double the money for 2026,” Klobuchar said.

The project has been sent to sub-committee in the past, but has not been chosenMoving forward, Klobuchar said she will write a letter of recommendation for funding if a proposal is sent like it has been.

After the tour, Klobuchar said she came because she believes in the uniting spirit of history.

“Our country’s in a lot of turmoil,” she said. “I think it’s important to remember where we came from. Our shared history through times of Civil War, the Great Depression, everything. We came out the other side. I’m as concerned as a lot of people are about what’s going on, and not everyone agrees about the solution, but we have to remember what unites us as a country is bigger than what divides us.”

From her continued tours of all 87 counties, Klobuchar said she is continuing to learn about what is important to rural Minnesota.

“It’s not one size fits all,” she said. “We want to keep our small towns strong. One of the reasons I do these tours of all 87 counties is I pick up so much stuff that you don’t get if you’re just sitting in Washington or the metro. I was just at the ethanol plant in Lake Heron. Their biggest trading partner for ethanol outside the U.S. is Canada. That’s like a new factor I did not know as I looked at these trade barriers with Canada being erected.”

Klobuchar also touched on the Farm Bill as the leading Democrat on the Agriculture Committee. She said they badly want to get a bill gone across the aisle. What’s bringing pause currently is reconciliation talks on the budget and taxes, which Klobuchar said could hamper Farm Bill talks moving forward.

“If [funding] is set low for agriculture and Farm Bill programs, it’ll be much harder to get a Farm Bill because we won’t be able to reach an agreement,” she said. “We have to get to a point where I can get the votes. But right now, Senator Boozman [and other committee Republican senators] are working hard to make sure there’s adequate funding for agriculture in the budget.”

As her visit came at the end of the day, Klobuchar said she was staying in Fairmont for the night. On recommendation from an attendee, she said she was excited to try Silo 67.