- Pre 1700's: Native Americans primary inhabitants of the Great Plains
- 1730's: Era of European exploration and trading
- 1780: First fur trader settled in Pembina, ND
- 1804-1806: Lewis and Clark Expedition
- 1812: Euro-American farm settlement in Red River Valley
- 1840-1870: Oxcarts take furs and bison hides from Pembina, ND, to St. Paul, MN
- 1849: California Gold Rush
- 1850-1870: Native Americans cede lands by treaty and warfare to U.S. government; reservations established
- 1859: First Stagecoach and steamboat service
- 1860's: Bison herd, estimated at several hundred thousand, seen near Lisbon, ND
- 1861: Dakota Territory formed
- 1862: Homestead Act: government gave 160 acres/family to people who for 5 years could live on and improve a ¼ section. Railroad companies given 90 million acres of public land to sell or build on.
- 1866: First threshing machine used.
- 1870-1873: Northern Pacific Railroad built through Fargo and Bismarck. Commercial bison hunting causes demise of large bison herds
- 1874: Barbed-wire invented
- 1875: Railroads proliferate, Bonanza farms (wheat farms 3,000 to 65,000 acres in size) established
- 1876: First Wheat crop harvest Dalrymple farm (23 bushels/acre)
- 1880: Texas cattle drives begin; era of free cattle range ends due to barbed-wire
- 1881-1884: Expansion of Northern Pacific Railroad aids in extermination of bison; 5,000 hunters harvested a quarter million buffalo hides in 1882; by 1884, northern bison herds almost exterminated
- 1888: Last of the bison in ND killed
- 1889: ND and SD granted statehood
- 1900: Peak immigration of Europeans, who began to plow prairie sod
- 1920: All-weather roads built as automobiles become available. Lincoln Highway (precursor to Interstate system) completed through Nebraska
- 1930's: Widespread drought causes departure of people from rural areas
- 1937-1939: 71,109 acres of land in Sheyenne Sandhills purchased by the federal government under the Bankhead-Jones Farm Tenant Act
- 1954: U.S. Forest Service assumed administration of the Sheyenne National Grassland
- 1985: Conservation Reserve Program initiated
|
|
 |
U.S. Department of the Interior |
U.S. Geological Survey