In Minnesota, the first reported case was in 1961 from the Highland area of St. Paul where a tree service company brought in branches to be tested. It was estimated that the tree from which the branches were recovered from had been infected in 1960 as a result of people bringing the fungus in from Wisconsin. In 1961, there were several trees in Monticello that had acquired Dutch elm disease from trees in Iowa from a location 140 miles away. The disease was also brought to Litchfield, Minnesota from Illinois from a person who had been visiting their relatives in Illinois in 1961 (French, 1993). Once the disease had been introduced in Minnesota its spread was inevitable due to the fact that elms dominated yards, streets, and parks because it had been the shade tree of choice with 140 million elm trees in Minnesota. However, people believed that the European elm bark beetle would not survive the harsh Minnesotan winters and thus little was done to prevent the spread of the disease. There had been the formation of Dutch elm disease committee in the 1950’s, which had representatives from the Minnesota Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources and the University of Minnesota whose goal was to establish procedures to reduce elm populations most vulnerable to the disease. This was to no avail as people, especially nurseries, were reluctant to discontinue elm sales and there were no government restrictions in place to enforce the termination of elms for landscaping purposes (French 1993).

The spread of Dutch elm disease did not occur as quickly in Minnesota as it did in Wisconsin and Michigan (Table 1). Research in rural areas of Minnesota was not conducted until forty years after the first case of Dutch elm disease was reported. In 1982, the disease was not present in three of the 87 Minnesota counties. The counties it was not present in were in northern Minnesota: Cook, Kittson, and Marshall. However, by 1969 all three of these counties were showing infected trees in the southern part of the county. This meant that to begin with the greatest impact was seen in southern Minnesota with little effects showing in northern Minnesota. However, as time progressed northern Minnesota was soon facing increased loss of elms due to Dutch elm disease.

Table 1. Laboratory confirmed cases of Dutch elm disease in Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin for comparable years following introductions of Dutch elm disease in each state (French, 1993).

Table 2. Number and percentage of elms with pitchouts (beetle attacks) and number and percentage of those with pitchouts that became infected (French, 1993).

Table 3. Percent losses to Dutch elm disease in sex federally funded demonstration cities (in bold) and in 12 comparable cities in size, location, and incident of Dutch elm disease which were not recipients of federal funding (French, 1993).