Sheet music for the official state hymn, composed by poet James Foley in 1927

Foley, James

In 1926, Minnie J. Nielson, North Dakota Superintendent of Public Instruction, asked poet James Foley of Bismarck to write the lyrics for a song about North Dakota. He created a poem that could be sung to the tune The Austrian Hymn. Dr. C. S. Putnam, conductor of the North Dakota Agricultural College Band in Fargo, composed the music for the lyrics. The first public presentation of the "North Dakota Hymn" was in the Bismarck City Auditorium in 1927.