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by Stan McCoy
North Dakota ALHN
North Dakota was admitted to statehood on November 2, 1889. It is called "The Sioux State."
History
"The
Territory of Dakota was organized by the Congress of the United
States by the act of March 2, 1861. Prior to the passage of this
act by Congress, a few enterprising spirits had crossed the
confines of Minnesota and Iowa and established homes along the
banks of the big Sioux and Missouri rivers, and founded the cities
of Sioux Falls, Vermilion and Yankton, but settlements in North
Dakota were principally at Pembina, until the Northern Pacific
Railroad crossed the Red River and founded the City of Moorhead on
the east bank and Fargo on the west. From that time forward
settlers, attracted by the liberal provisions of the homestead
law, and the rich and agricultural lands of the Red River Valley,
poured into North Dakota in streams, and the population increased
from 2,405 in 1870 to approximately one hundred and eighty
thousand in 1889, when Dakota was divided on the seventh standard
parallel and North Dakota admitted as a state in October, 1889."
Source: Early History of North Dakota by Clement Augustus
Lounsberry
