Original photo by FotografiaBasica/ iStock
North Dakota was admitted to the Union as the 39th state on November 2, 1889, except it kind of sort of wasn’t. Its constitution left out a key detail that, according to some, was enough of a technicality that North Dakota didn’t actually become a state until 2012. A local historian by the name of John Rolczynski first noticed in 1995 that North Dakota’s state constitution failed to mention the executive branch in its section concerning the oath of office, which he felt made it invalid; the United States Constitution requires that officers of all three branches of a state’s government be bound by said oath, and North Dakota’s only mentioned the legislative and judiciary branches.
Oops, incorrect!
It's a factBoth became states at the same time in 1889, but North Dakota is usually listed as the 39th state and South Dakota is the 40th. The order is alphabetical — President Benjamin Harrison shuffled the statehood papers to conceal which state’s he signed first.
This led to a campaign that included an unanswered letter to then-President Bill Clinton and ended with the successful passage of an amendment to Section 4 of Article XI of the state constitution, which fixed the omission. “It’s been a long fight to try to get this corrected and I’m glad to see that it has,” Rolczynski said at the time. “The amendment will be voted on in November 2012. In the interim, North Dakota is a territory.” North Dakota had enjoyed all the benefits and responsibilities of statehood for well over a century by that point, of course, but you can never be too thorough.
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One of North Dakota’s official nicknames is “the ______ State.”
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One of North Dakota’s official nicknames is “the Peace Garden State.”
Only a few scenes from “Fargo” were shot in North Dakota.
Despite being named for the state’s largest city (population 126,748), the Coen brothers’ classic was filmed mostly in Minnesota, and not a single scene was shot in Fargo itself. It’s largely set in Minnesota, too — aside from the opening scene, in fact, the entire movie takes place in the Land of 10,000 Lakes. (The on-screen text that opens the film by falsely claiming it’s a true story even claims, “The events depicted in this film took place in Minnesota in 1987.”) The only reason any filming took place in North Dakota is that an unusually mild winter forced production to move farther north. The Coens were originally going to name the film Brainerd, the city in Minnesota where much of the action takes place, but changed it to Fargo because it sounded better.
Michael Nordine is a writer and editor living in Denver. A native Angeleno, he has two cats and wishes he had more.
