President Benjamin Harrison signed proclamations admitting North Dakota and South Dakota as the 39th and 40th states on the same day, a deliberate arrangement to avoid favoring either territory. Harrison reportedly had the documents shuffled before signing so that history would never record which state was formally admitted first, a small act of political diplomacy amid the era's rapid westward statehood expansion.
The Dakota Territory had long petitioned for statehood, and by 1889 Congress finally passed the Enabling Act allowing it to split into two. The rivalry between the northern and southern halves of the territory over which would gain seniority and prestige was intense enough that Harrison, ever the careful politician, asked his secretary of state to shuffle the two proclamations before he signed them, so that he himself would not know — and could not be blamed for choosing — which state came first.
Both proclamations were signed within minutes of each other, and to this day the official designation lists North Dakota first, purely alphabetically, not by any documented order of signature. Montana and Washington were admitted later that same month, part of a remarkable stretch in which four states joined the Union within weeks of each other.
The rapid admission of these territories reflected the final closing of the American frontier, as railroads, homesteaders, and mining interests had transformed the Dakotas from contested indigenous land — including the heart of Sioux territory — into settler farming states within a generation, a transformation that came at devastating cost to the Lakota, Dakota, and other Native nations who had lived there.
Key people: Benjamin Harrison