A large portion of North Dakota northerly of a line running roughly from the southeastern corner of North Dakota digonally about at the line of the Sheyenne River, on to Minot and the eastern Montana line, and including the Red River Valley on both sides and its drainage was not included in the Louisiana Purchase. The rest of North Dakota, containing about one half of its area and which is in the Missouri River drainage was ceded in that purchase to the United States.
The northerly tract in which Devils Lake is situated was claimed by Great Britian from 1763. After the treaty of Ghent in 1814, following the War of 1812 the boundary liine between Canada and the United States was settled only to the Lake of the Woods in Minnesota and even that line was confusing.
The United States claimed all land south of the 49th parallel of north lattitude, all the way from the Lake of the Woods to the Pacific Ocean. (Editor’s note: Meriwether Lewis and William Clark were tasked by President Thomas Jefferson with exploring land west of the Mississippi River shortly after the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, which doubled the size of the United States by acquiring over 800,000 square miles from France. The expedition traveled from Camp Dubois, Illinois on May 14, 1804, up the Missouri River, crossing the Continental Divide near the Lemhi Pass, and eventually reaching the Columbia River and the Pacific in 1805. On the return trip, according to information on the North Dakota Tourism website, they met with the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara peoples in what is now North Dakota in the summer of 1805.)
Finally by the convention of 1818 with England the 49th parallel from the Lake of the Woods to the Rocky Mountains was settled as our northern boundary line. England thus relinquished her old claim to the Red River Valley and this great and valuable tract in the northern half of North Dakota.
Published Friday, June 28, 1957 Section Two of the Devils Lake Daily Journal Diamond Jubilee Edition.