Trails to
the Past
of North Dakota is excepting any donations of genealogy materials
that you may have such as marriage announcements, news
articles, old obituaries, births, (you do
not need the birth certificate) just the information, and
biographies. If you have any of these items please
contact me Marie Miller
the North Dakota State Administrator.
History Of North Dakota
Much of present-day North Dakota
was included in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. Much of
acquired land was organized into Minnesota and Nebraska
Territories. Dakota Territory, making up present-day
North and South Dakota, along with parts of present-day
Wyoming and Montana, was organized on March 2,
1861. Dakota Territory was settled sparsely until the
late 1800s, when the railroads entered the region and
aggressively marketed the land. A bill for statehood for
North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, and Washington
titled the Enabling Act of 1889 was passed on February
22, 1889 during the administration of Grover Cleveland.
After Cleveland left office, it was left to his
successor, Benjamin Harrison, to sign proclamations
formally admitting North and South Dakota to the Union
on November 2, 1889.The rivalry between the two new
states presented a dilemma of which was to be admitted
first. Harrison directed Secretary of State James G.
Blaine to shuffle the papers and obscure from him which
he was signing first and the actual order went
unrecorded. However, since North Dakota alphabetically
appears before South Dakota, its proclamation was
published first in the Statutes At Large. Since that
day, it has become common to list the Dakotas
alphabetically and thus North Dakota is usually listed
as the 39th state. It is believed that nobody
recorded which paper was signed first, thus nobody can
actually know which of the Dakotas was admitted
first. Bismarck is the state Capitol of North
Dakota.
A
round of federal construction projects began in the
1950s including the Garrison Dam, and the Minot and
Grand Forks Air Force bases. There was a boom in oil
exploration in western North Dakota in the 1980s, as
rising petroleum prices made development profitable. The
original North Dakota State Capitol burned to the ground
on December 28, 1930, and was replaced by a
limestone faced art deco skyscraper that still stands
today.
