The men of the 1st Minnesota are most remembered for their actions on the late afternoon of 2 July 1863, during the second day's fighting at Gettysburg, resulting in the prevention of a serious breach in the Union defensive line on Cemetery Ridge.

The 135th Infantry arrived at the port of New York on 24 January 1919 on the troopship USS General G. W. Goethals and was demobilized on 18 February 1919 at Camp Grant, Illinois.

The regimental headquarters was successively relocated to Madison, Minnesota, on 29 October 1930, and back to Minneapolis on 16 November 1933.

A Silver color metal and enamel device 1+1⁄8 inches (2.9 cm) in height overall consisting of a shield blazoned: Argent, on a saltire Azure between in chief a fleur-de-lis Gules, in fess the Corps badge of the 2d Division, 8th Army Corps during the Spanish War Proper (two Silver circles overlapping each other one-third radius, resembling the figure "8") fringed of the third and two bolos saltirewise and in base a bull's skull of the like, the 2d Division, 2d Corps badge of the Civil War of the fourth (a Silver three-leaf clover with stem, voided).

At the battle of Gettysburg the 1st Minnesota Infantry Volunteers were in the 2d Division, 2d Corps (Hancock's), whose badge was the three-leaf clover.