Carver On The Minnesota was founded in 1969 by four amazing women - Edith Herman, Anne Neils-Doerr, Mary Lee Dayton and Helen McNulty for the purpose of “stopping the wasteful deterioration of a typical 19th Century river town.” The original mission was to restore historic homes that had been devastated in the 1965 Minnesota River flood.

In 1970, COTM created the community’s major annual celebration, initially called the Steamboat Jubilee, which turned into today’s popular Steamboat Days.

In 1980, COTM drove the research and validation of Carver’s original Historic Downtown District, and was instrumental in its placement on the National Register of Historic Places, as one of the first (and largest) districts in the state of Minnesota to do so. What followed was COTM spearheading the creation of the Carver Heritage Preservation Commission in 1989, followed by the city’s design guidelines for restoring historic downtown structures.

With the deaths of the two primary founders in 1983 and 1986, COTM gradually went into an extended period of dormancy, which often happens when the key drivers of an organization are no longer there. But in 2010, a handful of key residents took it upon themselves to revive the organization into a growing and cherished source of historic narration, community events and renewed connections of people to this picturesque and historically significant river town.