University of North Dakota: Older Than the State

The University of North Dakota opened its doors in eighteen eighty-three, six years before North Dakota even existed as a state. The territorial legislature chartered it in Grand Forks for a straightforward reason: Grand Forks was the most populous settlement in the eastern Dakota Territory at the time, with the railroad already in place and a land boom underway. The university was built on faith that statehood would follow, and it did, in eighteen eighty-nine, when North Dakota joined the union and the university became the flagship campus of a brand-new state.

The campus was designed on the Frederick Law Olmsted tradition of open, park-like grounds, and early buildings like Merrifield Hall from eighteen eighty-five still stand. The university's founding mission was explicitly practical: train teachers, engineers, and farmers for a frontier economy. But it also built one of the early American law schools west of the Mississippi, and its medical school, established in nineteen five, eventually became the sole medical school in the state.

Over the twentieth century, the University of North Dakota became particularly distinguished in aerospace and aviation. Its John D. Odegard School of Aerospace Sciences is one of the largest civilian flight training programs in the world, producing commercial pilots for major airlines in numbers that rival dedicated military academies. The school operates one of the largest university-owned fleets of aircraft in the country. Notable alumni include NASA astronaut and engineer Karen Nyberg, among others selected by NASA over the decades. In a state of fewer than eight hundred thousand people, the university is a dominant institution, and in Grand Forks specifically, it is by far the largest employer and the defining fact of the city's identity.