Laws passed at the (session number) of the Legislative Assembly of the State of North Dakota: title varies, 1887–, Bismarck, etc., var. state
printers, 1891– (With the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, the western two-thirds of the area that is now North Dakota became U.S. territory. The eastern
one-third of the territory became part of the U.S. in consequence of the 1818 treaty with Great Britain that established the U.S. boundary with Canada at the
49th parallel. In 1861 the Congress organized a much larger area (including present-day North Dakota, South Dakota, most of Montana, northern Wyoming,
and northeastern Nebraska) as the Dakota Territory {D.T.}. Over the next decade or so, the Nebraska, Montana and Wyoming portions were severed from
D.T. as those entities also became stand-alone territories; so that from 1869 to 1889 D.T. encompassed only present-day North and South Dakota. The
first session of the D.T. legislature met in Yankton, D.T., in March, 1862. Statehood came for North Dakota in 1889, when D.T. was broken in two, with
North and South Dakota being admitted as separate states. The first session of the North Dakota statehood legislature was held in November, 1889. For
laws prior to 1890 for the area that became the State of North Dakota, see Dakota Territory elsewhere on this site.)
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