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This North Dakota Genealogy Trails website is available
for adoption!
If you are interested in becoming the State Host, read our volunteer information page
and email
Kim. We also need county hosts - we're brand new at
supplying data for this state! Until we get a dedicated volunteer to maintain this site, we'll do the best we can
to add data as we come across it. You can send your family's raw data (birth/marriage/death, cemetery, census,
biography records) to us and we'll include it on this site.
Brief History....
North Dakota is bordered on the north by the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba; on the west by Montana;
on the south by South Dakota; and on the east— across the Red River of the North and the Bois de Sioux River— by
Minnesota. The Missouri River flows through the western part of the state, forming Lake Sakakawea behind the Garrison
Dam.
Farms and ranches stretch across the rolling plains from the Red River Valley in the east to the rugged Badlands
in the west. The geographic center of the North American continent is located near Rugby.
Admitted as a state: November 2, 1889
On March 2, 1861, President James Buchanan signed the bill creating the Dakota Territory, which originally included
the area covered today by both Dakotas as well as Montana and Wyoming. The name was taken from that of the Dakota
or Sioux Indian Tribe. Beginning about 1877, efforts were made to bring Dakota into the Union as both a single
state and as two states. The latter was successful and on November 2, 1889, both North Dakota and South Dakota
were admitted. Since President Benjamin Harrison went to great lengths to obscure the order in which the statehood
proclamations were signed, the exact order in which the two states entered is unknown. However, because of alphabetical
position, North Dakota is often considered the 39th state. Dakota is the Sioux Indian word for "friend."
Capitol City: Bismarck, ND
State Motto: Liberty and Union Now and Forever, One and Inseparable
Nickname: Peace Garden State
- The International Peace Garden straddles the international boundary between North Dakota and the Canadian province
of Manitoba. In 1956 the North Dakota Motor Vehicle Department, on its own initiative, placed the words Peace Garden
State on license plates; the name proved so popular that it was formally adopted by the 1957 legislature.
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