North Dakota

Friends and allies

North Dakota takes its name from Dakota Territory, which President James Buchanan created on March 2, 1861, and which was named for the Dakota, or Sioux, people. In the Dakota language the word is generally rendered as “friend” or “allies”; Dakota, Lakota and Nakota are dialect forms of the same name. When the territory was split for statehood in 1889, newspapers floated other names, such as Lincoln, Wheatland and Pembina, but the northern half kept the name North Dakota.

Two states in one day

Dakota Territory’s capital was at first Yankton, in the far southeast. In 1883 the seat of government moved north to Bismarck, where a capitol was already going up. When the territory was divided and both halves were admitted on November 2, 1889, that building simply became North Dakota’s state capitol, while South Dakota built its own at Pierre. North Dakota is counted as the 39th state and South Dakota as the 40th; according to North Dakota Tourism, the order follows the alphabet.

Bismarck and its tower

Bismarck has been the capital ever since. When the original brick capitol burned in December 1930, the state rebuilt on the same hilltop rather than move, and the result was startling: instead of a dome, an Art Deco office tower, built in the depths of the Depression. The capital page tells the story.

Three nicknames

North Dakota’s official nickname, the Peace Garden State, honors the International Peace Garden on the border with the Canadian province of Manitoba. The phrase went on state license plates in 1956 and proved so popular that the Legislative Assembly made it official the next year. Two older nicknames have never been adopted. The Flickertail State refers to the Richardson ground squirrel, which flicks its tail as it runs; a 1953 bill to make the flickertail a state emblem failed. The Rough Rider State recalls Theodore Roosevelt’s Spanish-American War cavalry, which included North Dakota cowboys, but bills to make it the official nickname were defeated in 1971 and 1973.

Mottos and the flag

The motto on the state seal is “Liberty and Union Now and Forever, One and Inseparable.” In 2011 the Legislature added a Latin motto alongside it: Serit ut alteri saeclo prosit, “One sows for the benefit of another age.” The state flag is a copy of the blue eagle banner the First North Dakota Infantry carried in the Spanish-American War, with the state’s name on the lower scroll.

Roses, meadowlarks and rhubarb

North Dakota has 26 official state symbols. The wild prairie rose became the state flower in 1907, and the western meadowlark the state bird and the American elm the state tree in 1947. The fossil is teredo petrified wood, about 60 million years old and riddled with holes bored by shipworm clams. The Nokota horse, believed to descend from Sitting Bull’s herds, is the honorary state equine, and curling has been the state sport since 2023. A single session in 2025 added a state rock, Knife River flint, a state vegetable, rhubarb, and a state waltz, “Dancing Dakota.” See them all on the North Dakota symbols page.

Land and people

North Dakota covers 70,698 square miles, 19th among the states, but it had only about 799,000 residents in 2025, 47th in the country, with 11.6 people per square mile. It borders Minnesota to the east, South Dakota to the south and Montana to the west, and Canada to the north. Fargo, with about 136,000 people, is the largest city, followed by Bismarck, Grand Forks, Minot and West Fargo.