Enabling Act
Read the federal law that allowed Washington to become a state.
Preface
AN ACT to provide for the division of Dakota into two States and to enable the people of North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, and Washington to form constitutions and State governments and to be admitted into the Union on an equal footing with the original States, and to make donations of public lands to such States.
(Approved February 22, 1889.) [25 U.S. Statutes at Large, c 180 p 676.]
[President's proclamation declaring Washington a state: 26 St. at Large, Proclamations, p 1552, Nov. 11, 1889.]
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the inhabitants of all that part of the area of the United States now constituting the Territories of Dakota, Montana, and Washington, as at present described, may become the States of North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, and Washington, respectively, as hereinafter provided.
SEC. 18.
That all mineral lands shall be exempted from the grants made by this act. But if sections sixteen and thirty-six, or any subdivisions or portion of any smallest subdivision thereof in any township shall be found by the Department of the Interior to be mineral lands, said States are hereby authorized and empowered to select, in legal subdivisions, an equal quantity of other unappropriated lands in said States, in lieu thereof, for the use and the benefit of the common schools of said States.