In the early morning of Sunday, December 28th, 1930, the North Dakota State Capitol building burned down. People capture this historic and momentous event on film and in photos. Newspapers across the state reported on it.
Matilda Towne Rupp, who grew up in Bismarck, was born in 1927. Although very young at the time, she remembered the event when interviewed by State Archives staff in 2017. She said:
“When the Capitol burned down, my mother drove my brother and me up to the beginning of the driveways. And I can still see that brick building, and something about the building coming down.” After they returned home, they continued to watch the fire from the roof of their house.
The State Historical Society in Bismarck experienced its own unique situation due to the fire. Luckily, its offices and historical collections had recently moved from the basement of the Capitol building into the Liberty Memorial Building across the street.
Librarian Florence Davis reported that the Historical Society had gotten most of the move completed by the evening of December 27th, just hours before the fire. This included clearing a section of the basement, nicknamed “the pit”—an “outstanding achievement” because, in her words, it had “accumulated such a conglomerate of storage from both the Memorial Building and the old Capitol.”
After the fire, the Board of Administration sent a delegation to the Historical Society requesting offices and space with vaults for some of the state agencies, a challenge that disrupted normal operations and took away spaces they had just arranged.Top of Form
Documents, photos, and even some film of the Capitol burning can be viewed by contacting the North Dakota State Archives.
Dakota Datebook by Sarah Walker, Head of Reference Services at the North Dakota State Archives
Sources:
- Interview with Matilda Towne Rupp, SHSND 21352-00001
- SHSND 30213 folder 13, folder 15
- The Bismarck Tribune, November 1, 1933, p7
- The Bismarck Tribune, April 16, 1934, p3
