The division was built from scratch with veteran transfers and new recruits, mostly from Minnesota and North Dakota, under the command of Major General Norman Hendrickson.

General Hendrickson was the Chief-of-Staff for the 34th Division in the North African and Italian campaigns in 1943 and the IX Corps in occupied Japan.

The unit returned to Minnesota, with active army personnel from Camp Rucker taking a convoy from Fort Benning, Georgia in 1954.

Battle group designations were dropped and substituted by battalions assigned flexibly to brigades.

Principal among them was the extension of the division into Iowa and Illinois as a result of Pentagon-mandated cutbacks of the Guard in those states.