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. 19.
That all lands granted in quantity or as indemnity by this act shall be selected, under the direction of the Secretary of the Interior, from the surveyed, unreserved, and unappropriated public lands of the United States within the limits of the respective States entitled thereto. And there shall be deducted from the number of acres of land donated by this act for specific objects to said States the number of acres in each heretofore donated by Congress to said Territories for similar objects.