WI: Dakota territory divided East-West

Then I become a happy, happy man.


Seriously the eastern 1/2 of Dakota should have been admitted as Dakota with the deviding line roughly along the mighty mo' the culture and economy of the east half is so different than the west. The west should have been left to be admitted later on, probably with bits of Wyoming and Montana. In order to get this you have to somehow prevent the split between the Bismark and Yankton governments that lead to so much trouble OTL. You need something to make the Canadian born N Dakotans and American born S Dakotans find common cause. It would help if when the territorial capital was moved from Yankton they put it somewhere not so far north as Bismark. That's my two cents after having taken "the history of South Dakota" last semester.
 
Wasn't one early plan to have the north as a ('White'-settled) state and the south as a collection of Indian reservations like Oklahoma?
Whether or not the idea was ever taken very seriously IOTL, maybe they could do an E-W split on that basis?
 
Wasn't one early plan to have the north as a ('White'-settled) state and the south as a collection of Indian reservations like Oklahoma?
Whether or not the idea was ever taken very seriously IOTL, maybe they could do an E-W split on that basis?

No, the plan was to have the west as a reservation, the south was the first area settled. And black hills gold pretty much screwed that pooch.
 
The big problem with that suggestion is the same one that torpedoed the idea historically, which is that West Dakota simply wouldn't have enough people to make up a state. You'd have to overcome that to make this a reality.
 
The standard operating procedure for creating new states from a big territory was to make one state from the well-settled area and leave the rest as a territory until the population gets bigger. That's what they did with Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and even Louisiana many years before. What was different about Dakota?
 
The standard operating procedure for creating new states from a big territory was to make one state from the well-settled area and leave the rest as a territory until the population gets bigger. That's what they did with Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and even Louisiana many years before. What was different about Dakota?

At a guess, Republicans wanted to get more of their people in Congress in the post ACW years. That's what I've always read about the Plains states, anyway.
 
You need to find some reason to establish a major city in the West; aside from politics their is a reason Dakota was split and split the way it was, Dakota Territory had two primary population centers, one in the South-East and one in the North-East and as a result of this it was split with each forming the population center of a state.
 
You need to find some reason to establish a major city in the West; aside from politics their is a reason Dakota was split and split the way it was, Dakota Territory had two primary population centers, one in the South-East and one in the North-East and as a result of this it was split with each forming the population center of a state.

You mean Sioux City and Fargo, right?
 

katchen

Banned
I found this out in the book "Railroaded". North and South Dakota had totally different patterns of settlement. North Dakota was settled as a result of large railroads bringing in settlers along their right of ways--the Northern Pcific and the Great Northern. Wheras in South Dakota, the railroad followed the settlement instead of vice versa. So you had the Great Sioux Indian Reservation until quite late (late 1880s when it was broken up and a lot of empty land betwen the Missouri River and the Black Hills in South Dakota.
East and West Daktoa would make no sense until the present--when one might if one got a liberal Congress and a liberal legialatue in Pierre, permission to split South Dakota and give the Lakota their own separate state which they deserve (fat chance of that happening!).
During the time of the formation of the states?
One might as well have built a state around the Black Hills stretching from the Missouri River to the Big Horn Mountains to the Yellowstone. Maybe call it Lakota. Or Yankton. Sisseton for what is now South Dakota to the east of the Missouri. Assaniboine for North Dakota east and north of the Missouri. From the Bighorns, Wyoming starts south of the Yellowstone. Montana starts north of the Yellowstone. Assaniboine starts east of the confluence of the Yellowstone and the Missouri.
 
At a guess, Republicans wanted to get more of their people in Congress in the post ACW years. That's what I've always read about the Plains states, anyway.
This is part of it but there was also a major schizim involving the moving of the capital from Yankton, SD to Bismark, ND
You mean Sioux City and Fargo, right?
Sioux City is in Iowa. You are thinking of Sioux Falls, which wasn't a huge city at the time due to raids, the main population centers was the Vermillion/Yankton area where the most fertile farmland was/is.
I found this out in the book "Railroaded". North and South Dakota had totally different patterns of settlement. North Dakota was settled as a result of large railroads bringing in settlers along their right of ways--the Northern Pcific and the Great Northern. Wheras in South Dakota, the railroad followed the settlement instead of vice versa. So you had the Great Sioux Indian Reservation until quite late (late 1880s when it was broken up and a lot of empty land betwen the Missouri River and the Black Hills in South Dakota.
East and West Daktoa would make no sense until the present--when one might if one got a liberal Congress and a liberal legialatue in Pierre, permission to split South Dakota and give the Lakota their own separate state which they deserve (fat chance of that happening!).
During the time of the formation of the states?
One might as well have built a state around the Black Hills stretching from the Missouri River to the Big Horn Mountains to the Yellowstone. Maybe call it Lakota. Or Yankton. Sisseton for what is now South Dakota to the east of the Missouri. Assaniboine for North Dakota east and north of the Missouri. From the Bighorns, Wyoming starts south of the Yellowstone. Montana starts north of the Yellowstone. Assaniboine starts east of the confluence of the Yellowstone and the Missouri.

This is more what I was thinking, you aren't going to have an E Dakota and W Dakota admitted at the same time, that is frankly ASB.
 
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