I need to do a report for my job training [just got hired, yay!] and I was assigned these two states. Ive already done some preliminary research, but mostly formal demographics. If anyone can provide me with some interesting or weird facts abouth these states, it would be greatly appreciated, maybe some great tourist spots or great Washingtonians/Dakotans.
I presume you've asked wikipedia and google already?
What's the job? It might help us to tailor the information that we're gathering for you.
Mount Rushmore and the Corn Palace are in the Dakotas.
I tried google, thingstodo and some other travel sites, but I wanted to check if maybe someone here are from Dakota or Washington [or perhaps just knowledgeable of these places] who maybe can spare a bit of trivia that i could've missed.
Im a call center agent now, the research is just to familiarize us with US culture and geography.
Let's see....Cogidubnus already covered the Corn Palace and Mount Rushmore. Adding in Crazy Horse would pretty much cover anything interesting in South Dakota.
But Trivia? Hm. The state dinosaur of South Dakota is the Triceratops, apparently due to the number of fossils of them that turn up around here.
The T-Rex named "Sue" was found in western South Dakota, prompting a ton of legal disputes.
The Native American population of South Dakota are the Sioux. There are eight reservations here, which are a mix of "open" and "closed". Closed reservations are Sioux only, while Open, like the Yankton Reservation, are a mixture of Native American and regular American people, with less defined borders.
A side note: The word Yankton is a mispronunciation of the Sioux word "Ihankatown". Over a century of common usage has made it, well, common.
South Dakota is mostly open plains and farmlands, with a very low population. There are under a million people total in the entire state.
The weather shifts often here, with one of the few constants being the wind. Winds are near-constant, and can range from 5-15 miles an hour (usual), to 35-60 miles an hour (often), to upwards of 100 miles an hour (a few times a year).
Temperatures range from as high as 120 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer to as low as -40 degrees Fahrenheit in the winter. Snow usually begins in mid-October and lasts through until late April or early May, with accumulations that can amount to several feet high.
One last note: "Dakota" doesn't exist. North Dakota and South Dakota do; two seperate states. "Dakota" was a lame idea put forth a few years back by North Dakotans who felt that the name of their state incurred too much negative response, and tried to petition the United States government to change it to "Dakota". They failed, which proves Congress isn't always as stupid as, say, most North Dakotans...
Washington grows apples! ;)
Thanks, I added Crazyhorse's monument and Crazyhorse's story itself should give me good time for the report.