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Luther Wallace Youngdahl (May 29, 1896 – June 21, 1978) was Minnesota's twenty-seventh governor from January 8, 1947 to September 27, 1951. He was determined to rid the state of its pernicious gambling problem and he began, during the first of his three terms, by outlawing slot machines.

Soon after dealing a sharp blow to racketeering, Youngdahl launched his "humanity in government" program. Appalled by the conditions of state mental hospitals, Youngdahl introduced a more humane concept of care. His sincere efforts to improve the lot of troubled youth, enhance public education, and give returning World War II veterans a financial boost earned this Republican administrator bipartisan respect and support. So popular was Youngdahl that he won each successive gubernatorial election by an ever-larger margin. That some conservatives found him "too liberal" didn't diminish his appeal or effectiveness.

One of ten children of a Minneapolis grocer, Youngdahl was a promising student at Gustavus Adolphus College, where he excelled in athletics and oratory and was active in campus government. In 1930 Governor Theodore Christianson appointed the young lawyer to a municipal judgeship, the first of several judiciary positions he would hold before and after governing the state.

Although Youngdahl, on the advice of his doctor, chose not to seek a fourth term as governor in 1952, he continued in public service as a federal district judge in Washington, D.C. appointed by President Harry Truman. Long a believer in the benefits of rigorous exercise, Judge Youngdahl was still hearing cases and hiking four miles a day in his early eighties. He died in 1978 in Washington, D.C. and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Youngdahl's son, Rev. L. William Youngdahl, was the subject of the documentary film A Time for Burning about efforts to integrate an all-white Omaha church in the mid-1960s.

• Minnesota Historical Society

• http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/lwyoungd.htm

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