100 Fun Facts About North Dakota

What is the capital of North Dakota?

Bismarck became the capital in 1883, when the territorial governor moved the seat from Yankton to the railroad town, and the resentment pushed southern Dakotans to seek a state of their own.

The 1889 act admitting the Dakotas also admitted which two other states?

Montana and Washington were covered by the same Enabling Act, which Grover Cleveland signed in his last weeks in office, leaving his successor Benjamin Harrison to proclaim the new states.

How did President Benjamin Harrison hide which Dakota he admitted to the Union first?

He shuffled the papers before signing and the order was never recorded, so the two states are simply listed alphabetically, which is why North Dakota counts as the 39th.

The word 'Dakota' comes from a Sioux word meaning what?

Allies or friends is what the bands called themselves, after the alliance between them, while 'Sioux' was an outsiders' label, shortened from the French Nadouessioux.

Which two Canadian provinces border North Dakota to the north?

Saskatchewan and Manitoba lie across the 49th parallel, the line agreed with Britain in 1818, a deal that handed the United States the southern end of the Red River Valley.

A stone obelisk in which North Dakota town claims to mark the geographic centre of North America?

Rugby built the marker, but the US Geological Survey places the continent's centre about 15 miles away, near the village of Balta, and says no government agency has ever marked the spot.

What is North Dakota's highest point, at 3,506 feet?

White Butte stands on a family's private ranch south of Amidon, so hikers reach the state's summit by an easement across the land and leave donations in a box at the trailhead.

Which dam on the Missouri River holds back Lake Sakakawea in North Dakota?

Garrison Dam flooded the river bottomlands of the Fort Berthold Reservation, drowning Elbowoods, the main town of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara, and forcing families to resettle on higher ground.

North Dakota's flat, fertile Red River Valley is the bed of which vanished glacial lake?

Lake Agassiz pooled where the retreating ice sheet blocked north-flowing rivers, and the silt and clay that settled on its floor left the valley almost perfectly level.

What is the largest natural body of water in North Dakota?

Devils Lake has no natural outlet, so a wet spell that began in the early 1990s raised it more than 25 feet, swallowing hundreds of homes and thousands of acres of farmland.

Langdon, North Dakota, set a contiguous-US record in early 1936 by staying below 0°F for how many straight days?

For 41 days from January 11 the town never climbed above zero, yet that same year North Dakota logged both its all-time low, −60°F in February, and its all-time high, 121°F in July.

Farmer-populists left North Dakota as the only state to own which pair of businesses?

A bank and a flour mill were built so wheat farmers could get cheaper loans and bypass the big Minneapolis millers, and both still pay a share of their profits into the state's general fund.

Oil extraction from which shale formation drove North Dakota's 21st-century boom?

Bakken oil was struck in 1951 on the land of Henry Bakken, a Tioga farmer, but it stayed locked in tight rock for half a century until horizontal drilling and fracking made it pay.

Which state overtook North Dakota as the second-biggest oil producer in March 2021?

As of June 2025 it ranks third.

North Dakota grows most of which US crop, pressed for a common cooking oil?

Canola was bred from rapeseed in the 1970s by researchers across the border in Canada, and North Dakota's farmers now grow most of the American crop.

Which sweet product is North Dakota the leading US producer of?

Honey here comes largely from travelling hives: beekeepers who rent their bees to California's almond growers in winter truck them to North Dakota to make honey through the summer.

North Dakota's State Capitol, finished in 1934, is which kind of building?

An art-deco skyscraper rose in the depths of the Depression: labourers paid 30 cents an hour went on strike for more, and the building site was put under martial law in June 1933.

The Northern Pacific renamed the Dakota rail town of Edwinton for Germany's chancellor in 1873, hoping to win what?

German investors and settlers were the prize: railroad officials borrowed the Iron Chancellor's name to coax German capital into their transcontinental line, dropping one that honoured their own chief engineer.

William Fargo, namesake of North Dakota's largest city, co-founded Wells Fargo and which other financial giant?

American Express was formed in 1850 by merging three rival express companies, with Henry Wells as president and Fargo, a future mayor of Buffalo, as its secretary.

Despite its title, the Coen brothers' 1996 film Fargo plays out mostly in which state?

Minnesota is where the opening card puts the events, 'in Minnesota in 1987', a true-story claim the Coens made up; only one early scene, in a bar, happens in Fargo itself.

Lewis and Clark built which fort in present-day North Dakota to sit out the winter of 1804–05?

Fort Mandan was where the captains hired the fur trader Toussaint Charbonneau as an interpreter, and where his young Shoshone wife, Sacagawea, joined the expedition.

Which prop from the 1996 film Fargo is the star exhibit at the Fargo-Moorhead Visitors Center?

The wood chipper has pride of place there and tourists line up to be photographed with it, even though its notorious scene does not take place in Fargo at all.

What first brought the young Theodore Roosevelt to the Dakota Badlands in 1883?

A bison hunt drew him west, though commercial hunters had left so few animals that finding one took days; before heading home he had bought into a cattle ranch instead.

Medora, gateway to Theodore Roosevelt National Park, was founded in 1883 by a French nobleman who named it for whom?

His wife, Medora von Hoffman, was a New York banker's daughter; his scheme to slaughter range cattle there and ship the beef east in refrigerated cars collapsed after three years.

North Dakota's Enchanted Highway is a 32-mile stretch of road lined with what?

Giant scrap-metal sculptures were Gary Greff's bid to save Regent, his shrinking farm town: he welded them along the road to tempt drivers off Interstate 94, 32 miles away.

Salem Sue, in New Salem, North Dakota, is the world's largest statue of which animal?

The Holstein cow was put up by the New Salem Lions Club in 1974 to honour the area's dairy farmers, and at 38 feet tall she watches over Interstate 94 from a hilltop.

Which nickname went onto North Dakota's licence plates in 1956?

Peace Garden State honours the International Peace Garden on the Canadian border, and the slogan proved so popular on the plates that lawmakers made it the official nickname a year later.

North Dakota's KVLY-TV mast was the world's tallest structure until which skyscraper outgrew it in the late 2000s?

Burj Khalifa ended a reign in two parts: the 2,063-foot mast lost the title to a Polish radio tower in 1974, then won it back when that tower collapsed in 1991.

Norsk Høstfest, a Scandinavian festival, ran from 1978 to 2025 in which North Dakota city?

Minot hosted the festival until it was wound up after its 2025 edition, and a successor, the Fjord Folk Fest, was founded in the city the following year to carry the traditions on.

Months of protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016 centred on which reservation straddling the two Dakotas?

Standing Rock became the rallying point because the pipeline was routed under the Missouri just north of the reservation, and the tribe said a leak would foul the water its people drink.

Which big-band leader, famous for "champagne music", was born in Strasburg, North Dakota?

Lawrence Welk struck a deal at 17: his father bought him a $400 accordion, and in return he worked the family farm until his 21st birthday and handed over every dollar he earned playing.

Which jazz and pop singer was born Norma Deloris Egstrom in Jamestown, North Dakota?

Peggy Lee got her stage name in Fargo: when the 17-year-old auditioned at radio station WDAY in 1937, the programme director rechristened her before putting her on the air.

Fargo teenager Bobby Vee got his break in 1959 by filling in for which star at a Moorhead concert?

Buddy Holly had died that morning when his plane crashed on the way to the show, so a local radio station appealed for acts and the 15-year-old's hastily formed band, the Shadows, stepped in.

Which slugger, raised in Fargo, hit a then-record 61 home runs in 1961?

Roger Maris is buried in Fargo, and his museum sits in a shopping mall there because he would only hand over his memorabilia if it went where plenty of people would see it.

Which future NBA coach starred at Williston High before winning the 1973 title as a Knicks player?

Phil Jackson was raised by two strict ministers who allowed no dancing, films or television at home, so school sports became his outlet and eventually his ticket to the wider world.

Which Transformers actor, a North Dakota native, has fronted the state's tourism campaigns?

Josh Duhamel was a quarterback at his home-town college who meant to become a dentist, but he left just short of his biology degree and only went back to finish it years later.

Which actress, born in Kulm, North Dakota, starred as Sergeant Pepper Anderson in the 1970s hit Police Woman?

Angie Dickinson caught the film bug in Kulm, where her father edited the local newspaper and ran the projector at the town's only cinema, so the family got in free.

Which North Dakota-raised novelist won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for a novel about her grandfather's fight to save his tribe?

Louise Erdrich drew The Night Watchman from her grandfather Patrick Gourneau, the Turtle Mountain Chippewa chairman who rallied his reservation against a 1950s bill to terminate the tribe.

Which NFL quarterback from the state capital won two FCS national titles as North Dakota State's starter?

Carson Wentz went from Century High to the Bison and then straight to the top of the 2016 NFL draft, where the Philadelphia Eagles traded away a stack of picks to take him second overall.

What team name did the University of North Dakota adopt in 2015 to replace the Sioux name?

Fighting Hawks beat Roughriders in an online runoff, taking 57 percent of some 27,000 votes, three years after the university had retired its old name and logo.

Which conference did the North Dakota State Bison football team join in 2026, moving up to FBS?

The Mountain West took the Bison for football only, in a deal announced just months before the season, so the school's other teams stayed behind in the Summit League.

The first European known to reach North Dakota, in 1738, was a fur trader exploring for which country?

France's man was Pierre de La Vérendrye, a fur trader from Trois-Rivières in New France who, with his sons, had pushed a chain of trading posts west from Lake Superior.

Which political movement, founded in 1915, won North Dakota's governorship a year later and set up state-owned businesses?

The Nonpartisan League ran its slate as Republicans and swept Lynn Frazier into the governor's office in 1916; five years later its opponents made him the first US governor ever removed by a recall vote.

Which three states have fewer people than North Dakota, the fourth-least populous?

Alaska, Vermont and Wyoming are the only smaller states; North Dakota itself peaked near 680,000 people in 1930, then shrank for four decades as families left, bottoming out around 618,000 in 1970.

Which Amtrak train crosses North Dakota on its run between Chicago and the Pacific Northwest?

The Empire Builder carries the nickname of James J. Hill, who bought a nearly bankrupt Saint Paul railroad in 1878 and drove it west across the northern plains to the Pacific.

What is thought to have ignited after janitors varnished desks in North Dakota's first capitol in 1930?

Their oily rags, stuffed into a top-floor closet when the night's work was done, are believed to have burst into flame on their own, and most of the state's records burned with the building.

North Dakota is the top US grower of durum wheat, which is milled mainly to make what?

Pasta is made almost entirely from durum semolina, and in the early 1990s the state's wheat growers set up their own co-operative at Carrington to turn their crop into pasta themselves.

South-central North Dakota was settled largely by ethnic Germans who had emigrated from which country?

Russia had drawn their ancestors east under Catherine the Great with promises such as freedom from army service; when the tsars took those back, families left for the prairie and built mud-brick houses as they had on the steppe.

Which type of coal does a plant at Beulah, North Dakota, turn into synthetic natural gas?

Lignite is the lowest grade of coal, too damp and crumbly to be worth hauling far, so North Dakota uses it beside the mines, in power stations and in the Beulah gas plant.

Which former North Dakota governor became US Secretary of the Interior in 2025?

Doug Burgum literally bet the farm: in 1983 he mortgaged inherited farmland to back a Fargo software start-up, Great Plains, which he built up and sold to Microsoft.

Which burrowing rodents live in sprawling colonies across the grasslands of Theodore Roosevelt National Park?

Prairie dogs are named for a warning call that sounds like a dog's bark. Their colonies are called towns, and a single one can spread across hundreds of acres.

Which beetle, a favourite of gardeners, is North Dakota's official state insect?

Ladybug is the American name for the insect. In Britain it is a ladybird, and the lady in both names is the Virgin Mary.

Dakota Thunder, a 26-foot, 60-ton statue towering over Jamestown, North Dakota, depicts which animal?

A buffalo so big that it gave Jamestown its nickname, the Buffalo City. It stood nameless for half a century until a 2010 contest drew more than 3,500 entries.

A rebuilt house at Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park was the last home of which cavalry commander, killed in 1876?

George Custer lived at the fort from 1873, though his first house there burned down within months. He rode out in 1876 and never returned from the Little Bighorn.

The University of North Dakota's $104 million Ralph Engelstad Arena was built as the home of which sport's team?

Ice hockey is the university's showpiece sport. The arena, paid for by a casino owner who once played goalie for the university, has granite floors and leather-upholstered seats.

Which yellow-breasted songbird, a state emblem shared with five other states, is North Dakota's official state bird?

Western meadowlark is the state bird of six states in all, and despite its name it is no lark: it belongs to the New World blackbird family.

North Dakota's Prairie Pothole Region, dotted with glacial wetlands, is a vital breeding ground for which birds?

Ducks breed there in vast numbers. The region holds about a tenth of the continent's waterfowl breeding habitat, yet roughly half of its main game species nest there.

Which Winter Olympic sport is North Dakota's official state sport?

Curling is nicknamed the roaring game, after the rumble its granite stones make as they travel down the sheet.

Fort Yates, North Dakota, and Mobridge, South Dakota, both claim to hold the grave of which Lakota leader?

Sitting Bull was buried at Fort Yates in 1890. In 1953 relatives dug up what they believed were his bones and reburied them near Mobridge, his birthplace.

Which Scandinavian country do the most North Dakotans trace their ancestry to?

Norway sent farmers to the Red River country from about 1870. The ties ran so deep that one North Dakotan in eight still spoke Norwegian in 1940.

Which native wildflower, an emblem North Dakota shares with Iowa, is the state's official flower?

Wild prairie rose is a loose label in state law. North Dakota's statute accepts either of two native species, Rosa arkansana or Rosa blanda.

Which bestselling author of frontier novels, creator of the Sackett family saga, was born in Jamestown, North Dakota?

Louis L'Amour was born Louis LaMoore, a spelling his father had adopted. Almost all of his 105 books were still in print when he died in 1988.

North Dakota is the only US state that has gone without which election requirement since abolishing it in 1951?

Voter registration ended there in 1951. North Dakotans instead show approved identification at the polls, though cities may still keep rolls for local elections.

Which children's bath-time brand was created in 1961 by Harold Schafer's Gold Seal Company of North Dakota?

Mr. Bubble first sold for 59 cents. Schafer later put much of his fortune into preserving the Badlands tourist town of Medora.

Which hot breakfast cereal was first produced in 1893 by struggling millers in a North Dakota city?

Cream of Wheat was a rescue plan. With prices low after the Panic of 1893, the firm's chief miller proposed boxing a porridge made from grain that would otherwise go unused.

Which brand of compact skid-steer loader was launched by the Melroe company of Gwinner, North Dakota?

Bobcat grew from a small loader that two welders built for a turkey farmer, who needed a machine light enough for the upper floor of his barn.

Which technology company paid $1.1 billion for Great Plains Software, an accounting software company based in Fargo?

Microsoft announced the purchase in 2000 and later folded the Fargo firm's accounting products into its Dynamics range for small and mid-sized businesses.

Which crop do Red River Valley farmers grow for the processing plants of the cooperative American Crystal?

Sugar beets are big business in the valley. The cooperative's farmer-owners raise about a third of the nation's acreage, and it sells roughly 15 percent of America's sugar.

Which North Dakota city, home to the state's oldest university, was swamped by flood and swept by fire in April 1997?

Grand Forks had to evacuate more than 50,000 people when the Red River spilled over, and a blaze downtown engulfed eleven buildings before it was put out.

The Red River flows north out of North Dakota and empties into which large body of water in Canada?

Lake Winnipeg passes the river's water on toward Hudson Bay. Flowing north worsens its floods, because snowmelt starts in the warmer south and runs into a still-frozen channel downstream.

Knoephla, a thick potato soup with its own North Dakota version, takes its name from which ingredient?

Dumplings give the soup its name. Knoephla are small dough dumplings, and the word comes from a dialect term for a little knob or button.

Which line of latitude, fixed by an 1818 treaty with Britain, forms North Dakota's northern border with Canada?

The 49th parallel was the tidy compromise of 1818. Early surveyors' markers still stray from the true line by as much as 810 metres.

Which North Dakota State quarterback was picked third overall by the San Francisco 49ers in the 2021 NFL Draft?

Trey Lance threw 28 touchdown passes without a single interception in 2019, an NCAA record for the most attempts in a season with no pick.

Which Missouri River town, now in South Dakota, was the first capital of Dakota Territory from 1861 to 1883?

Yankton was named capital just after President Buchanan created the territory with two days left in his term. Abraham Lincoln then sent his own physician to govern it.

Fort Union Trading Post, near the mouth of the Yellowstone River, was bankrolled by which tycoon's American Fur Company?

John Jacob Astor had built a virtual monopoly in furs. The post, raised in the late 1820s near today's Williston, served as a headquarters for his company.

Which North Dakota border town, a fur-trading post from 1797, is the oldest European-American community in the Dakotas?

Pembina grew up around the posts of rival fur companies. Until an 1823 survey, both governments believed it lay north of the border, in British territory.

Which Secret Service agent, raised in Washburn, North Dakota, leapt onto President Kennedy's car in Dallas in 1963?

Clint Hill ran from the follow-up car into the line of fire and shielded the president and Jacqueline Kennedy with his own body as the limousine raced to hospital.

Fargo-based federal judge Ronald Davies ordered the 1957 desegregation of a famous high school in which southern state?

Arkansas got Davies by chance. He was on temporary assignment to a federal court in the state capital that had sat empty for months when the Central High case reached him.

In 1921 North Dakota's Lynn Frazier became the first US governor ever removed from office by what means?

A recall vote ousted Frazier amid an agricultural slump, yet North Dakotans sent him to the US Senate the following year. No other governor was recalled until California's in 2003.

The 1969 Zip to Zap, which ended with the National Guard clearing a tiny North Dakota town, began as what?

A spring break party was the pitch of a student newspaper article that drew up to 3,000 people. When the little town's supplies ran out the mood soured, and troops dispersed the crowd.

The concrete pyramid looming over the prairie at Nekoma, North Dakota, was built in the 1970s as part of what?

A missile defence system called Safeguard was based there, armed to shoot down incoming warheads. It became fully operational in October 1975 and was shut down the following year.

What name was given to the vast, factory-style grain operations set up in the Red River Valley from the mid-1870s?

Bonanza farms were mostly owned by companies and run by professional managers, using the efficient new machinery of the 1870s on cheap, abundant land.

Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site preserves the earth-lodge villages of which Native American people?

Hidatsa families lived there in earth lodges whose remains still show as large circular hollows in the ground, beside old storage pits and travois trails.

In 1886 Theodore Roosevelt chased thieves down the Little Missouri River after they stole what from his Dakota ranch?

His boat gone, two ranch hands built a flat-bottomed scow in three days to give chase. Roosevelt caught the three thieves, marched them overland and collected about $50 in deputy sheriff's fees.

Which tree, a state emblem shared with Massachusetts, is North Dakota's official state tree?

Elm trees of the American species were once planted in living archways over city streets. That overplanting left a monoculture with no resistance when Dutch elm disease arrived.

Which ambush predator of weedy lakes, armed with sharp backward-pointing teeth, is North Dakota's official state fish?

Northern pike hold perfectly still, then strike with remarkable acceleration, seizing prey sideways before turning it to swallow head first.

Which astringent wild fruit, usually sweetened into jam or syrup, is North Dakota's official state fruit?

Chokecherry was a staple fruit in the traditional diet of many Northern Plains peoples, and an ingredient of pemmican.

Which horse breed, North Dakota's honorary state equine, developed from wild herds in the Little Missouri Badlands?

Nokota horses were nearly lost. Two brothers began buying them at auction in the 1980s to save the breed, and later founded a conservancy.

North Dakota's old nickname, the Flickertail State, honours which small animal with a constantly trembling tail?

A squirrel, Richardson's, earned the name because its tail never stops twitching. Around one of the state's air bases it has a blunter nickname, the Dakrat.

Which Democrat was the only one to carry North Dakota for president between 1940 and 2024?

Lyndon Johnson took nearly 58 percent of the state's ballots against Barry Goldwater in 1964. North Dakota had not backed a Democrat since Franklin Roosevelt in 1936.

The million-acre Little Missouri in North Dakota's Badlands is the largest US example of which type of federal land?

National grassland covers just over a million acres there, and all of Theodore Roosevelt National Park sits enclosed within its borders.

Which interstate runs 352 miles across southern North Dakota, passing Medora and Jamestown before reaching Fargo?

I-94 roughly follows the main line of the former Northern Pacific Railway, and crosses the Missouri within sight of the railway's historic bridge.

North Dakota's state motto, a line about liberty and union, comes from an 1830 Senate speech by which famous orator?

Daniel Webster delivered it in his Second Reply to Hayne, long called the most eloquent speech ever given in Congress. The line also appears on the state seal.

The University of North Dakota operates North America's largest civilian training fleet of which machines?

Aircraft, more than 120 of them, make up the fleet. The university's aerospace school began in 1968 with just two donated planes and two faculty members.

Dakota, a dinosaur fossil found near Marmarth, North Dakota, in 1999, is prized because which soft tissue survived?

Its skin survives in extensive patches, earning the 66-million-year-old Edmontosaurus the label of dinosaur mummy. A high school student found it on his family's land.

Which employee-owned sporting goods chain, begun in 1902 as a small hardware store, has its headquarters in Fargo?

Scheels began when an immigrant farmer put down the $300 from his first potato harvest on a general store.

An unusual North Dakota law requires that nearly every drugstore in the state be majority-owned by whom?

Pharmacists must hold the majority stake in nearly every drugstore. Only hospital dispensaries and shops that predate the law are exempt.

Which Secretary of State under President Bill Clinton was born in the small town of Scranton, North Dakota?

Warren Christopher took office in 1993 after leading Clinton's transition team. He had earlier served as deputy secretary under Jimmy Carter.

Which CBS commentator, one of Edward R. Murrow's wartime recruits, was born in Velva, North Dakota?

Eric Sevareid was the first to report the fall of Paris in 1940, and later spent thirteen years as a commentator on the CBS Evening News.

Which athlete from Jamestown, North Dakota, was chosen first overall in the 1995 MLB draft by the California Angels?

Darin Erstad was also the punter on Nebraska's 1994 national championship football team, and once kicked a 50-yard field goal in high school.