Daylight Saving Time 2017: When Spring Has Sprung

MINNEAPOLIS, MN — Don’t forget to “spring forward, fall back” this weekend. Daylight Savings Time officially begins at 2 a.m. Sunday, March 12.

You’ll lose an hour of sleep Saturday night and Sunday morning with the switch to Daylight Saving Time and it will mostly likely be dark outside when you get up.

But you’ll also get an extra hour of daylight in Minnesota.

Daylight Savings Time In Minnesota

Minnesotans will move their clocks ahead one hour with scarcely a fuss, but it wasn't always that way.

More than 40 years ago, the issue of Daylight Saving Time was one of the most hotly debated topics in the state.

It pitted rural interests against the metro area, and the judiciary against the executive branch. The Legislature, as usual, was caught in the middle.

The concept of Daylight Saving Time had been around for years. In fact, Minnesota adopted it during the two world wars to save energy.

But the skirmishing in the Legislature began in earnest in 1957 with the passage of two laws concerning Daylight Saving Time, or "fast time," as it was called then.

The first bill allowed Hennepin and Ramsey counties, and counties contiguous to them, and the city of Duluth to adopt Daylight Saving Time on their own.

But in a lawsuit brought by an alliance of movie theaters, the Minnesota Supreme Court issued a ruling that barred the counties from adopting a different time from the rest of the state and urged the Legislature to adopt a uniform policy.

Then Attorney General Miles Lord issued an opinion that claimed the high court's action had no effect on the counties. The result was that some parts of the state were on a different time than others, a schism that was reflected by state government in 1957.

On the second floor of the state Capitol, the Legislature and the Minnesota Supreme Court remained on standard time while the Governor's Office adopted "fast time."

"The fast time issue was one of the greatest legislative battles in Minnesota history," declared the St. Paul Dispatch, May 20, 1960. The dispute was temporarily resolved with passage of a bill in 1957 that allowed the governor to adopt Daylight Saving Time for the whole state.

And in 1959 in a special session of the Legislature, a permanent Daylight Saving Time law was approved. But in a compromise, its length was made the shortest in the nation, extending from the fourth Sunday in May to the Tuesday following Labor Day.

In 1966, the U.S. Congress, tired of the patchwork Daylight Saving Time zones across the country, passed a law that pre-empted state law and made Daylight Saving Time, which runs from the first Sunday in April to the last Sunday in October, uniform.

Although many rural Minnesotans were adamantly opposed to "fast time," a 1961 Minnesota poll showed that a majority of Minnesotans supported the concept, according to the Minnesota House Public Information Office.

The poll in April showed 57 percent in favor of "fast time" while 35 percent opposed it, although 68 percent of the "farm people" still opposed Daylight Saving Time.

Its time had come.

In fact, a woman from southern Minnesota made it clear that she was adopting daylight standard time no matter what the Legislature did.

"A housewife in so far standard time Le Sueur County...says her house is going on daylight savings, law or no law," stated an Associated Press story of April 25, 1959.

Information Provided By The Minnesota House Public Information Office.

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