North Dakota: A Historical Timeline

PRIOR TO 1500 PRE-EUROPEAN SETTLEMENT
9500 BCE	People now inhabit the area that will become known as North Dakota. They survive by hunting mammoths, giant bison, and other mega-fauna.
950	The Plains Village people raise corn and other crops in quantities to store seed and trade for other goods.
1200	A drought reduces agricultural production. The Plains Village people abandon the lower James River area by 1300.
1600	The Cheyenne, living in earth lodges, occupy the Sheyenne River valley. The Hidatsa move west from Devils Lake to the Missouri River. The Sioux move onto the Dakota plains from the woodlands of Minnesota.
1600–1799 EARLY EUROPEAN EXPLORATION
1600s	When Europeans arrive, distinct Native American groups that exist in the region include the Sioux, Cheyenne, Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara.
1610	Henry Hudson claims the Hudson Bay watershed, which includes much of eastern North Dakota, for England.
1670	King Charles II grants the Hudson’s Bay Company a trading monopoly over the watershed of all rivers and streams flowing into Hudson Bay. Called Rupert’s Land after Prince Rupert of the Rhine, the area encompasses 1.5 million square miles (3.9 million square kilometers) and includes a portion of northeastern North Dakota.
1682	René-Robert Cavelier claims the entire Mississippi River drainage, which includes the Missouri River drainage in North Dakota, for France.
1713	England receives the northern part of North Dakota from France in the Treaty of Utrecht.
1738	French explorer Pierre Gaultier de la Vérendyre visits Mandan villages near the Missouri River and is astonished by their level of development. In 1742, his sons return to the area as part of an expedition in search of a western sea.
1762	France cedes land claimed by Cavelier to Spain in the Treaty of Fontainebleau.
1763	The Treaty of Paris grants England part of the state drained by the Mouse and Red rivers.
1781	The first known European business enterprise in the region, a fur trading post, is briefly established near the Souris River. It is soon abandoned due to pressure from unfriendly Native Americans.
1797	English-Canadian explorer David Thompson maps the northern part of North Dakota. Over his career, he maps 3.9 million square kilometers of North America, garnering the reputation as "greatest land geographer who ever lived."
1800–1849 WESTWARD EXPANSION
1800	The Chippewa move into the northern Red River valley. Alexander Henry Jr. establishes a fur post at Park River. He moves his establishment to Pembina in 1801, and it becomes the nucleus for white settlement in North Dakota. Fur traders from Canada become frequent visitors to the region, and a trade route is established between posts near Lake Winnipeg and the Missouri River Native American villages.
1803	(November 20) Spain returns the Missouri River watershed to France. (December 30) The Louisiana Purchase. The U.S. acquires North Dakota (and 13 other eventual U.S. states) from France after U.S. President Thomas Jefferson agrees to the purchase price of 78 million francs ($15,000,000) from French head of state Napoleon Bonaparte. The purchase is lauded by supporters and savaged by critics of Jefferson. It more than doubles the size of the United States and is a defining moment in the expansion of U.S. territory.
1804	French-Canadian fur trapper Toussaint Charbonneau, who lived among the Hidatsa and Mandan Native Americans, buys Shoshone woman and North Dakotan Sacagawea as a slave and marries her. The Lewis & Clark expedition, led by William Lewis and Meriwether Clark, enters North Dakota. The group winters near present-day Washburn on its way to the Pacific Coast to explore the Louisiana Purchase, marking the first substantial American penetration of the region. (November) Lewis and Clark hire Charbonneau as an interpreter, with the understanding that Sacajawea, who is 16 and pregnant, will accompany them in order to interpret the Shoshone language. She becomes integral to the expedition over the next two years, and Clark nicknames her "Janey."
1809	In search of sites for trading posts, fur entrepreneur Manuel Lisa of St. Louis leads the first formal American business reconnaissance along the Missouri River.
1811	Scottish botanist John Bradbury and naturalist Thomas Nuttel survey the region on their journey to Oregon with the Astor Expedition.
1812	Settlers from Canada establish an agricultural colony near Pembina. The effort fails in 1820 after internal feuding, boundary changes, and the destruction of crops by grasshoppers. (June 4) Not including the portion controlled by the British (Rupert’s Land), North Dakota becomes part of the Missouri Territory.
1818	During the Anglo-American Convention of 1818, the U.S. and Great Britain agree to the 49th parallel as the boundary between the U.S. and Canada, which establishes North Dakota’s northern border and ends the dispute over North Dakota’s portion of Rupert’s Land.
1821	(August 10) North Dakota becomes part of an unorganized territory after a portion of the Missouri Territory becomes the new state of Missouri. The area is closed to white settlers, remaining so until the end of the Black Hawk War in 1832.
1823	An expedition led by Stephen Long, an officer in the U.S. Army Topographical Engineers, fixes the boundary between the U.S. and Canada at a point north of Pembina.
1834	With the Missouri River as a demarcation line, the eastern two-thirds of North Dakota becomes part of the Territory of Michigan.
1836	Michigan achieves statehood, and the North Dakota region that was part of the Michigan Territory becomes part of the Wisconsin Territory.
1837	A smallpox epidemic annihilates the Mandan Native Americans near Fort Clark.
1838	(July 4) The area of North Dakota encompassed by the Wisconsin Territory becomes part of the Iowa Territory, which covers approximately 194,000 square miles (500,000 km2) of land in total.
1849	(March 3) The region of North Dakota east of the Missouri River, which had been part of the Iowa Territory, becomes part of the Minnesota Territory.
1850–1888 THE DAKOTA TERRITORY
1853	Isaac Stevens, governor of the newly created Washington Territory, crosses the state to survey a northern route for the proposed transcontinental railroad.
1854	The Kansas-Nebraska Act creates the Territory of Nebraska, which encompasses the area of North Dakota west of the Missouri River.
1858	Military occupation of North Dakota begins with the establishment of Fort Abercrombie on the Red River; the fort is eventually abandoned in 1877.
1861	(March 2) The Federal government officially recognizes the Dakota Territory, which encompasses all of present-day North Dakota. Yankton is named the territorial capital.
1862	The Sioux Native Americans besiege Fort Abercrombie during the Minnesota Uprising. Due to the demands of the Civil War, repeated appeals for assistance are necessary before troops are sent to quell the violence.
1863	The Dakota Territory is opened to homesteading.
1867	The Fort Totten Indian Reservation is established, and Sisseton and Wahpeton Sioux cede lands to the U.S. government by treaty.
1868	The Laramie Treaty defines Sioux lands as land west of the Missouri River in the Dakota Territory. Repeated violations of the exclusive rights to the land by gold prospectors lead to the Black Hills War of 1876–1877.
1870	The Fort Berthold Indian Reservation is established and treaties between the Sioux and Chippewa and the U.S. government cede most of present-day eastern North Dakota to the U.S.
1875	The U.S. War Department permits white settlement on Native American lands reserved by the Laramie Treaty, precipitating a major Native American uprising on the plains.
1876	The Great Sioux War, a series of battles between the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and U.S. government over the encroachment by white settlers and prospectors into Indian lands in the Dakota Territory, begins. Despite General George Custer’s crushing defeat and suicide at the Battle of Little Bighorn (also known as Custer’s Last Stand) in present-day Montana, the U.S. emerges victorious in 1877.
1878	Ranching is introduced in western Dakota Territory and the Great Dakota land boom begins.
1882	The last Native American great buffalo hunt takes place. The buffalo hunts end as a result of the rapid destruction of the herds. Two hundred thousand hides are shipped out of the Dakota territory. A year later only 40,000 are transported, and the following year, just one wagonload.
1883	The capital of Dakota Territory is moved from Yankton to Bismarck. Bismarck remains the state capital to this day.
1886	A severe winter in the western part of Dakota Territory puts an end to open range ranching.
1889–1949 THE STATE OF NORTH DAKOTA
1889	(November 2) The Dakota Territory is divided into the states of North and South Dakota, and North Dakota becomes the 39th state admitted to the Union.
1890	The Ghost Dance War begins. The Sioux Native American religious movement known as Ghost Dance spreads panic among white settlers throughout the Dakotas. U.S. troops arrive to try and quash the movement. The Sioux, upset by a series of treaty violations, engage U.S. troops in a series of battles, culminating in the Wounded Knee Massacre in South Dakota, which results in the deaths of more than 300 Sioux. After a public backlash, the government reinstates the broken treaties.
1905	A wave of immigrants of Scandinavian and Germanic origin settles in North Dakota. By 1915, 79 percent of all North Dakotans are either immigrants or the children of immigrants.
1918	An influenza epidemic, which spreads throughout the world, kills 2,700 North Dakotans.
1919	(December 1) North Dakota becomes the 20th state to ratify the 19th Amendment, granting women the right to vote.
1929	(June) North Dakota is crippled by one of the worst droughts in its recorded history. Drought conditions persist throughout the 1930s, coinciding with the Great Depression.
1947	The North Dakota Legislative Assembly rejects a bill to drop the word "North" from the state name. In 1989 the legislature rejects two similar resolutions intended to rename the state "Dakota."
1950–PRESENT MODERN NORTH DAKOTA
1951	Voter registration is repealed in North Dakota. It is currently the only state not to require residents to register before voting. Oil discovered near Tioga results in an "oil rush." Oil refineries are established at Williston and Mandan.
1953	Construction on the Garrison Dam in central North Dakota is completed. The fifth largest earthen dam in the word, it is over two miles long and covers the ancestral lands of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara tribes.
1956	Construction begins on the Grand Forks Air Force base, which is completed in 1960. In 1957, construction begins at the Minot Air Force base, which is operational in December 1959. The bases are built as a result of the escalating Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.
1978	Sunflowers become North Dakota’s second largest cash crop. By 1997, the state ranks first in U.S. sunflower production, producing nearly 3 billion pounds of sunflowers.
1981	Gambling for charitable purposes is legalized in the state.
1983	The nation’s first coal-to-synthetic natural gas conversion facility enters production near Beulah. The plant uses lignite coal to make synthetic natural gas, which is piped through the North Border Pipeline to homes and businesses throughout the eastern U.S.
2003	The North Dakota State Senate votes to uphold a 113-year-old law making illegal for unmarried couples to live together.