North Dakota

North Dakota is ruled by straight lines on three sides, with the Red River of the North winding the eastern border — and running north, toward Canada and Hudson Bay. That valley is the flattest land in America, the floor of glacial Lake Agassiz, some of the richest wheat ground anywhere. West of it the Missouri Coteau rises in a belt of rolling hills and potholes, and beyond the Missouri the country breaks apart into the Badlands along the Little Missouri, eroded into buttes and clay stripes. Fifty-three counties, most of them plain rectangles.

North Dakota entered on November 2, 1889 as the 39th state — President Harrison shuffled the papers and signed both Dakota bills without looking, so the order between the two has never officially been known. Bismarck, on the Missouri, was named for the German chancellor by railroad promoters hoping to attract German investment. The board carries Theodore Roosevelt National Park, where the future president ranched in the 1880s, and I-94 running the full width past the Missouri crossing.