Bismarck North Dakota History & Facts

Bismarck is the capital of the U.S. state of North Dakota and the county seat of Burleigh County. It is the second-most populous city in the state after Fargo. The city's population was 73,622 in the 2020 census, while its metropolitan population was 133,626. In 2020, Forbes magazine ranked Bismarck as the seventh fastest-growing small city in the United States.

Bismarck was founded by European-Americans in 1872 on the east bank of the Missouri River. It has been North Dakota's capital city since 1889, when the state was created from the Dakota Territory and admitted to the Union.

Bismarck is across the river from Mandan, named after a historic Native American tribe of the area. The two cities make up the core of the Bismarck–Mandan Metropolitan Statistical Area.

The North Dakota State Capitol is in central Bismarck. The state government employs more than 4,600 in the city. As a hub of retail and health care, Bismarck is the economic center of south-central North Dakota and north-central South Dakota.

For thousands of years, present-day central North Dakota was inhabited by indigenous peoples, who created successive cultures. The historic Mandan Native American tribe occupied the area long before Europeans arrived. The Hidatsa name for Bismarck is mirahacii arumaaguash ("Place of the tall willows"); the Arikara name is ituhtaáwe.

In 1872 European Americans founded a settlement at what was then called Missouri Crossing, so named because the Lewis and Clark Expedition crossed the river there on their exploration of the Louisiana Purchase in 1804–1806. It had been an area of Mandan settlement. Later the new town was called Edwinton, after Edwin Ferry Johnson, engineer-in-chief for the Northern Pacific Railway. Its construction of railroads in the territory attracted workers and settlers.

In 1873, the Northern Pacific Railway renamed the city to Bismarck, in honor of German chancellor Otto von Bismarck. Railroad officials hoped to attract German immigrant settlers to the area and German investment in the railroad. It is the only U.S. state capital named for a foreign statesman. The discovery of gold in the nearby Black Hills of South Dakota the following year was a greater impetus for growth. Thousands of miners came to the area, encroaching on what the Lakota considered sacred territory and leading to heightened tensions with the Native Americans. Bismarck became a freight-shipping center on the "Custer Route" from the Black Hills. In 1883 Bismarck was designated as the capital of the Dakota Territory, and in 1889 as the state capital of the new state of North Dakota.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the city has an area of 31.23 square miles (80.89 km2), of which 30.85 square miles (79.90 km2) is land and 0.38 square miles (0.98 km2) is water.

Famous Peoples From Bismarck North Dakota

Paula Dean Broadwell

is an American writer, academic and former military officer. Broadwell served in the US Army on both active and reserve duty for over 20 years, including time as a military school undergraduate with experience in over 70 countries. In 2012, she co-authored, with Vernon Loeb, All In: The Education of General David Petraeus, a biography of then-International Security Assistance Force commander David Petraeus She is the co-founder and co-director of the Think Broader Foundation, a media consulting firm that focuses on addressing gender bias in the media and society. Broadwell is most notable for her involvement in the Petraeus scandal.

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