Official souvenir program of North Dakota's golden jubilee: August 21st through 25th, 1939; featuring "Wagons West" mammoth historical spectacle

• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: North Dakota State Library 2013
• Subjects: Arctic; Arctic Ocean; Bismarck; Black Hills; Bonanza; Canada; Homestead; Pacific
• Online Access: http://cdm16921.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/ndsl-books/id/5284

GOLD IN THE GRASS ROOTS Interesting Facts About North Dakota North Dakota was born Nov. 2, 1889, when President Benjamin Harrison signed a proclamation of admission. What had been Dakota Territory since March 2, 1861, by proclamation of President James Buchanan became the 39th state in the United States of North America. Abraham Lincoln appointed his personal physician, Dr. William Jayne, the first territorial governor. North Dakota entered the union a full-fledged commonwealth. All officers of the executive, judicial and legislative branches had been elected Oct. 1, 1889, when the people of the north half of the territory ratified a constitution and its amendments as submitted to them by a constitutional convention that had sat in Bismarck from July 4, 1889, to August 18. In the exact center of the North American continent is North Dakota. It is approximately 1,500 miles to the Arctic ocean, the Atlantic ocean, the Gulf of Mexico, the Pacific ocean. It is the only non-mountainous state that is a continental divide for its waters drain in Hudson's bay and the Gulf of Mexico. North Dakota, with 70,837 square miles, ranks 16th of the states in size. The census of 1930 sets its population at 680,845 with a density of 9.6 to the square mile. In that year 105,148 residents were foreign born and 45.4 per cent were only one generation removed from the 42 old world countries that contributed their immigrants to North Dakota's citizens of today. All residents of North Dakota are dependent upon agriculture. Ancient seas and glaciers left the land fertile. Eighty-seven per cent of the land is devoted to crops. In L930 there were 77,975 farms on 38,657,894 acres with all farm property valued at $951,225,446. Wealth that year was estimated at $2,580,000,000 or $3,802 per inhabitant. Since Alexander Henry, Jr., harvested his first crop of vegetables from a garden he planted on the banks of the Park river near its confluence with the Red just 130 years ago; since Joseph Rolette became the first white man to file on a homestead just 71 years ago, North Dakota has steadily risen in importance among the agricultural states of the union. Today North Dakota produces more rye- and flax than any other state. It raises more hard wheat than any other state, but is second to Kansas in all varieties. It raises three-fourths of the nation's durum wheat. It is second to Minnesota in barley; second to Texas in turkeys; third in production of grain seeds; seventh in all cereal crops. North Dakota's seed potatoes command a premium. Its sheep and cattle regularly top the markets. Its clover honey is unequalled in quality and flavor, Sweet and red clover, alfalfa, timothy, brume and crested wheat grass grow lush. Its corn fattens hogs and cattle beyond belief. Its sugar beets are superior. Its ducks, geese and chickens steadily grow in quality and quantity. From 1800 until just after the Civil war, the only trade was in furs. Today, in addition to the millions of dollars of business done in agricultural products, 325 manufacturers, employing 3,306 workers, turn out products that were valued at $40,076,326 in 1935. The annual output of 27 flour mills is valued at 12 million dollars. Beneath the undulating prairies is the most extensive and important artesian water basin in the world. There also are some 600 billion tons of lignite coal, millions of tons of building and pottery clays, 250 million tons of bentonite, 50 million tons of sodium sulphate, rich deposits of fuller's earth, sandstone, granite, gneiss and flour gold —natural resources scarcely touched. Dakota means, in the language of the Santee Sioux, confederation of tribes. Its name came into use with the first French explorers, trappers and traders who ventured here after Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, Sieur de la Verendrye, visited the Menoken village of the Mandans a few miles east of Bismarck in 1738. Recent discoveries indicate European influence first touched Dakota shortly after 1000 A. D. when Icelanders of Norwegian and Irish descent are believed to have traversed the Red river. History records Indians dealing with the Spanish of New Mexico in 1620. First white settlement was at Pembina in 1812 when Lord Selkirk divided land there among Scotch and Irish who had been evicted from their native heaths. But it remained for the year 1874 to stimulate settlement as we know it today. That year Custer returned from the Black Hills with word t he-re was "gold in the grass roots." But the most important "gold" found in the grass roots that year was the golden grain the Dalrymplo brothers reaped from their bonanza farms in the Red river valley, the real foundation of prosperity. Between 1874 and 1885 more than Kit).000 people poured onto the Dakota plains. In 1882, Clement A. Lounsberry used the words "North Dakota" in the sense of a state tor the1 first time in a datelined story carried in The Bismarck Tribune. His inspiration was not only a desire for statehood but also for a capital. Yankton, in the extreme southeastern corner of the- territory, was then the capital. But on June 2. L883, the territorial capitol commission meeting at Fargo, moved the capitol to Bismarck in consideration of 320 acre! of land and $100,000 cash. North Dakota averages 210 miles north and south and 335 miles east and west. It is bounded on the north by Canada, on the east by Minnesota, on the south by South Dakota, on the west by Montana. The only natural boundary is the Red River of the North on the east, the only river originating in the United States thai flows north. The state rises in three broad prairie' steps from east to west one-half mile in altitude. With an average mean temperature In winter of 9.7 degrees and in summer of 65.7 it is one of the lieallliie-sl climates in the world with low humidity, moderate rainfall and long hours of sunshine. Earthquakes are unknown. Tornadoes are rare. Floods an- lew. Rare extremes of temperature are noteworthy, because they are unusual. Highest ever recorded was 121 degrees, Sept. 3, 1912, at Medoraj the lowest, -60 degrees, Feb. 15. 1986, at Parshall. Warm winds of the Japan current borne ae-ross the Rocky mountains modify severe winter weather. Here, someone has said, live the most cordial people in the world — educated, intelligent, neighborly, social, healthy, ambitious, resourceful, enterprising, loyal and honest. 1889 WAGONS WEST 1939 l'a ge Twenty-three Scanned with a Zeutschel Zeta book scanner at 300 dpi. Edited with Multi-Page TIFF Editor.