Among the institutions that set North Dakota apart, few are as singular as its state-owned bank — the only one of its kind in the country. Born in a populist era when plains farmers chafed at the terms set by distant financiers, it was founded on the idea that the state's own capital ought to work for the state's own people rather than flow east to the money centers.

Keeping the Capital Home

Rather than compete head-on with local banks, the institution largely works through and alongside them, participating in loans, backing agricultural and student credit, and lending a hand to community lenders that could not carry a large deal alone. In hard times it has served as a stabilizing reserve, a distinctly plains answer to a distinctly plains worry.

From the almanac's reckoning:

• It is the only state-owned bank in the country.
• It was founded in a populist era to keep prairie capital in the region.
• It works largely through and alongside local community banks.

Debated and admired in roughly equal measure, it endures as a monument to a particular prairie conviction — that a community should keep some control over its own money. The almanac counts the state bank among the most distinctive institutions the plains ever devised.