On the twenty-second day of February 1889, the United States Congress passed the Omnibus Bill which authorized the framing of four new states to be brought into the Union. These four new states were Montana, Washington, North Dakota, and South Dakota. With this brought the separation of Dakota Territory into a north and south half. On November 2, 1889, President Benjamin Harrison signed the Act of Admission papers declaring North Dakota and South Dakota as the thirty ninth and fortieth states of the United States of America respectively.
The signing by President Harrison brought on the need to divide Dakota Territory into a north and south half. Nine years earlier a bill was introduced to the United States House of Representatives by the territorial delegate to Congress, Granville G. Bennett, to separate Dakota Territory at the forty-sixth parallel. A division along this line would have divided several counties, townships, and farm land between the two states and was therefore objected to during a December 5th public meeting in the year 1880 which was held in Fargo.
The Fargo convention resolved this issue voting in favor of using the Seventh Standard Parallel. A line used to separate many counties along the Mid-Dakota region. It was an already established boundary drawn by the congressional survey. This bill was eventually pigeonholed, and as a result of passing the Enabling Act for the Dakotas, Washington, and Montana, it declared that Dakota Territory would be divided on the line of the Seventh Standard Parallel.
The Seventh Standard Parallel north of the public land survey is an extension from the Minnesota survey. Measurement starts at the Minnesota-Iowa boarder and every twenty-four miles to the north is a new parallel. Therefore, the southern border of North Dakota is referenced to the Minnesota-Iowa border, and is 168 miles north of that line, which is considered to be at 45°56'07" North Latitude.
This was not the end of the states boundary dispute. Due to a few small errors when surveying, the Seventh Standard Parallel was not a simple east-west straight line. Actually, there were two Seventh Standard Parallels prior to Dakota statehood. Both of them well defined and endorsed by the Interior Department. A simple number was mislabeled by the Minnesota Surveyor General causing the Seventh Standard Parallel to be about two and a quarter miles south of where it should have been as it traveled across the Sisseton and Wahpeton Indian Reservation. By the time this line would have been extended to the Montana border, a substantial amount of territory would constantly be under a heated debate.
September 25 of 1890 brought the signing of Senate Bill 3089. It stated that the survey of the Seventh Standard Parallel from the Minnesota border on the east to the Montana border on the west would be overseen by the United States Secretary of the Interior.
A contract was signed June 4, 1891 to survey and install monuments along the new boundary. Charles Bates signed a contract and used quartzite monuments made in Sioux Falls to mark the boundary. Each monument stood seven feet tall and ten inches square at the top and were placed every half-mile. The north side of each monument was inscribed with the initials "N.D." on the north side and "S.D." on the south side. Mile monuments were marked with the number of miles from the initial monument (from the east) on the east side of the post. Half mile posts, as well as section line corners, were marked with the letters "S.C." (section corner) below the "N.D." and the numbers of the township and range on their north side.
Bates started his 360.57 mile adventure exactly nine chains west of the Bois de Sioux River on the Seventh Standard Parallel. It took the Yankton, South Dakota man the summers of 1891 and 1892 to finish the Dakota boarder marker project. Considering the tools of that day, Bates encountered some error along the way. The west end bordering Montana is at latitude 45°56'43" while the east end bordering Minnesota is at the latitude 45°56'07" North. There is a discrepancy of 36 seconds along the border. The west end of the state line is approximately 3,660 ft farther north than the east end. This was not detected until more precise survey equipment was developed.
Over the past century many of these markers have incurred some damages. Cattle, farm machinery, erosion, and human activity have altered the line built by Charles Bates. In fact, after completing the survey, Bates told the editor of the Sturgis Weekly Record that his having erected 720 superb cattle-scratching posts qualified him for membership in the Humane Society of the United States. Whether it is human alteration, weather, or nature, the markers may not all be doing their original job today. However, many are still standing strong on the Dakota prairie just as they did the day they were placed there.
