Laws passed at the _____ Session of the Legislative Assembly of South Dakota: title varies, 1890–, 1st sess.–, Pierre, etc., var. public printers,
1890–. (With the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, the western two-thirds of the area that is now South 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 South 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 South Dakota statehood legislature was held in January, 1890. For laws
prior to 1890 for the area that became the State of South Dakota, see the Dakota Territory listings elsewhere on this site.)
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