Dakota Territory

Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer was busy in the summer of 1874. General Phil Sheridan had selected Custer’s Seventh Cavalry for an expedition…

The 1980s were years of celebration for many towns across North Dakota. It was 100 years since the coming of the railroad that gave rise to the towns, and…

The Marquis de Mores already had one heck of a personal story before he broke a bottle of wine on a tent stake and christened the town of Medora in the…

North Dakota’s masonic history reaches back almost as far as Dakota Territory itself. Far from any population center, soldiers stationed at Fort Buford…

President Lincoln appointed William A. Jayne, mayor of Springfield, Illinois, as the governor of the newly established Dakota Territory in the spring of…

Michigan City is the oldest town in Nelson County. Like many towns in Dakota Territory, it began with the coming of the railroad. In this case, it was the…

Oliver County has always been small. So has its county seat. Sanger was the county seat for fourteen years. It’s on the eastern edge of the county, right…

Dakota Territory had a messy few years under Governor Nehemiah Ordway. He was a New Hampshire state legislator who President Hayes appointed as the…

Johnson Nickeus, born in 1850, played a number of roles in the final years of Dakota Territory. He was an attorney in Jamestown who served two terms on…

While the shape of North Dakota has been the same since 1889, its puzzle pieces have changed a bit. North Dakota had fifty-three counties at statehood.…