Stunning World War II museum among the attractions of Upper Minnesota River Valley

A world-class collection of vintage military planes is the main draw at the Fagen Fighters WWII Museum in Granite Falls, Minn., but this memorial to the 20th-century cataclysm has much more to offer.

Wander through a self-guided tour of the place, housed in three mammoth hangars at Lenzen-Roe-Fagen Memorial Field, and you'll see thoughtful and absorbing exhibits at every turn, all meticulously curated by the Fagen family.

Tommy guns. Flamethrowers. Radios. Knives, grenades, helmets. The paraphernalia of war is everywhere you look.

Yet the human element gets equal time. Exhibits also highlight the civilians on the homefront, with ration books, V-mail and photos of scrap drives. If you look closely, you'll see a heartbreakingly terse Western Union telegram to a family in Canby, Minn., informing them that their son was killed in action in the Philippines.

The latest addition is a boxcar of the type used by the Germans to transport Jews to the death camps and American POWs to prison. The museum's Holocaust exhibit is somber, frank and exceedingly well done. Rare photographs capture the horror of the death camps and the roundups of Jews, gypsies, homosexuals and others targeted for extermination by Hitler.

The photos of families and children being herded onto the trains, their faces frozen in shock, are a stunning indictment of the depths to which humanity can sink.

And the courage of the American soldiers who ended World War II, and the civilians who supported them, are an uplifting antidote to the Nazi atrocities.

In the "Voices of Valor" theater, members of the Greatest Generation tell their stories through video. Murals and timelines mark key events in the conflict. The museum includes a World War II library with scholarly works, newspapers of the era and a shelf of biographies and autobiographies of veterans from the region, men such as Walter Benjamin of Pipestone, Charles "Ace" Parker of Hecla, S.D., and Horace Hansen of St. Paul.

But there's no question that the stars of the show are the airplanes, nearly all of which regularly take to the skies over the Upper Minnesota River Valley.

Evan Fagen, son of museum founders Ron and Diane Fagen, is the chief pilot, and he flies all the planes. Fagen has been flying warbirds for 18 years.

During the war, pilots would have gone to flight school and received months of instruction from seasoned trainers. Fagen has had to learn it on his own.

"You have to read the manuals," he said with a shrug, explaining how he did it. At age 37, Fagen would have been much too old to become a pilot during the war, when a flier of 25 was considered ancient. He often thinks of those young men when he's in the sky.

"You think of those guys who were up there, getting shot at," he said. "The bravery. It's just an amazing thing."

The museum's collection includes a twin-tailed P-38 Lightning fighter, one of only eight in the world still flying. There's a B-25 Mitchell bomber of the type used in the famous Doolittle Raid. That attack, led by Lt. Col. (later Gen.) James Doolittle, lifted American morale in the dark days after Pearl Harbor and proved to the Japanese that American planes could reach and bomb their homeland.

There are two P-51 Mustang fighters, perhaps the best known planes of the war. A fascinating exhibit features a giant Waco transport glider, the sole survivor of more than 1,500 manufactured by Northwestern Aeronautical Corp. at Wold-Chamberlain Field in Minneapolis.

A central exhibit features a life-size depiction of soldiers dashing ashore on D-Day from a Higgins landing boat. Front and center is the late Ray Fagen, Ron's dad and Evan's grandfather, who landed on Utah Beach with the U.S. Army's 4th Infantry "Ivy" Division. It was his experience that inspired his son and daughter-in-law to create the museum.

Other military vehicles dot the grounds: a halftrack truck, a Harley-Davidson motorcycle, a Sherman tank and Gen. Omar Bradley's personal jeep. There's an example of the 2½-ton cargo truck, known as a "deuce and a half," used by the famed Red Ball Express, a convoy outfit whose African-American drivers proved their bravery in a segregated Army.

Another exhibit highlights the Code Talkers, Native American soldiers — including Lakota and Dakota Sioux — who used their ancestral languages to convey vital messages that were impossible for the Japanese to decipher.

The whole place has the feeling of a labor of love. Everything is spotless, flawlessly maintained and expertly interpreted with signs and detailed placards. An easy two-hour drive from the Twin Cities, the museum is also an easy place to lose yourself in a crucial episode of American history (1-320-564-6644; fagenfighters ­wwiimuseum.org).

The Upper Minnesota Valley abounds in historic reminders of an earlier war: the one waged by white settlers and the natives whose land was being overrun. This region was ground zero for the U.S.-Dakota conflict of 1862, one of the most painful events in Minnesota history.

Another painful story that spread nationwide had its roots in the area: Prohibition, which was implemented under the Volstead Act, named after Andrew Volstead, a U.S. representative from Granite Falls.

The river valley offers a wide array of activities.

• Upper Sioux State Park contains historic buildings from the Upper Sioux Agency and even gives visitors the chance to stay overnight in a tepee. The park also offers horse trails and horse camping (1-320-564-4777; dnr.state.mn.us).

• The Minnesota River Valley National Scenic Byway can be enjoyed by car, on bike, on foot or on the water (mnrivervalley.com).

• Stick it to Volstead with a trip to the Bluenose Gopher Brewery in his hometown of Granite Falls (bluenose.coop). Follow up with a visit to the Andrew J. Volstead House Museum, a National Historic Site (volsteadhouse.org; open by appointment only).

• Bring a picnic to Richard Sears Memorial Park in Redwood Falls. The city park commemorates the 22-year old railway agent who sold a shipment of watches from the Redwood Falls station in 1886, the beginning of what became Sears, Roebuck and Co.

• Also in Redwood Falls, Alexander Ramsey Park is the largest municipal park in Minnesota. Its 256 picturesque acres have been called "Little Yellowstone Park," highlighted by Ramsey Falls (redwoodareacommunitycenter.com).

• Historic Chippewa City in Montevideo is home to 24 buildings replicating a late-1800s village (chippewacohistory.org). Montevideo's lively downtown is well worth a visit.

John Reinan • 612-673-7402