The Capitol Grounds: One Square Mile of State History

The North Dakota State Capitol campus sits on what was originally the full territorial capitol grounds. When the state sold half of those grounds to fund the new building after the nineteen thirty fire, the remaining campus still grew over the decades into a complex of about one hundred thirty acres holding the legislature, the courts, state offices, and the North Dakota Heritage Center.

The Heritage Center, opened in nineteen eighty-one and expanded in twenty fourteen with ninety-seven thousand square feet of new space, is the state's official history museum. Its collections include approximately six hundred fifty thousand archaeological pieces and forty-three thousand historical artifacts, with galleries covering the Native peoples of the Northern Plains, frontier settlement, and the agricultural and energy economy that defines North Dakota today.

The skyscraper tower at the center of it all still holds a commanding view of the Missouri River valley in every direction. On a clear day you can see for thirty miles.