RECEPTION AND BANQUET GIVEN IN HONOR OF THE CAPITAL COMMISSION BY THE CITIZENS OF BISMARK, D.T. AT SHERIDAN HOUSE. Thursday, May 24, 1883 [Cover title]
1883 · [Bismark, D.T.
by [Dakota Territory] [Menu printed on silk]
[Bismark, D.T.: Bismark Tribune ?], 1883. 12mo (15 x 12 cm.). Printed on beige silk, with fringe (partly worn away), including a title page, a menu for the event on the interior pages, and members of various committees printed on the verso of the second leaf. Among the offerings at the elaborate multi-course dinner that give the flavor of the area: Fried Speckled Brook Trout, Buffalo Tongue in Tomato Sauce, Young Pig with Liver Gravy, Saddle Venison, Loin of Mountain Sheep, Roast Pigeon, Plover on Toast, and Wild Goose. The back page lists the committees and members in charge of the reception; C.A. Lounsberry, owner of the Bismarck Tribune which likely printed the menu, is listed as head of the printing committee. A few old stains at edges, slightly affecting a word or two, but an elegant survivor from Dakota Territory. (9850). This banquet was held in honor of the members of a commission that had been appointed by the territorial legislature to select a new capital (Yankton had been the capital since 1862). Eleven towns submitted bids (guaranteeing $100,000 and 160 acres of land) and the committee set out on a train trip through the territory in the spring of 1883 to examine the various sites and their prospects. The festivities and possibilities of Bismarck won the day, and that town was chosen as the new capital when the commission met on June 1. A suit was brought by the other towns and, after appeals, was finally decided in Bismarck's favor in the United States Supreme Court. When the territory was split in 1889, with North Dakota and South Dakota becoming the 39th and 40th states late that year, Bismarck became capital of the former. (Inventory #: 62773)