13 Facts About South Dakota

1. For many years, South Dakota was one of the only states in the country without a NCAA Division I football or basketball team.

2. In 2007 South Dakota passed legislation modeled after Montana's Indian Education for All Act, mandating education about Native American tribal history, culture, and heritage in all the schools, from pre-school through college, in an effort to increase knowledge and appreciation about Indian culture among all residents of the state, as well as to reinforce Indian students' understanding of their own cultures' contributions.

3. South Dakota is one of seven states with only one seat in the US House of Representatives.

4. South Dakota is the sixth leading ethanol-producing state in the nation.

5. South Dakota has the third-highest proportion of Native Americans of any state, behind Alaska and New Mexico.

6. South Dakota has the nation's largest population of Hutterites, a communal Anabaptist group which emigrated in 1874 from Europe, primarily from German-speaking areas.

7. Center of population of South Dakota is in Buffalo County, in the unincorporated county seat of Gann Valley.

8. South Dakota has several sites administered by the National Park Service.

9. South Dakota summers bring frequent, sometimes severe, thunderstorms with high winds, thunder, and hail.

10. South Dakota is bordered to the north by North Dakota; to the south by Nebraska; to the east by Iowa and Minnesota; and to the west by Wyoming and Montana.

11. South Dakota has a total area of 77,116 square miles, making the state the 17th largest in the Union.

12. South Dakota is bordered by the states of North Dakota, Minnesota (to the east), Iowa (to the southeast), Nebraska (to the south), Wyoming (to the west), and Montana (to the northwest).

13. South Dakota is the seventeenth largest by area, but the fifth smallest by population and the 5th least densely populated of the 50 United States.