Cooperstown, ND

Cooperstown is the Griggs County seat in east-central North Dakota, founded in 1882 and home to 983 people at the 2020 census. The city takes its name from R. Cooper, a bonanza farmer who built the area’s first wood-frame house in 1880. County voters chose Cooperstown as the seat that same year, and the courthouse built in 1883 remains the oldest North Dakota courthouse still used for its original purpose.

That courthouse gives Cooperstown a civic role beyond its size. County offices, local roads, schools, and the surrounding farm country all meet in a city whose history began alongside the early organization of Griggs County. The townsite grew quickly because a county needed a center, but the name also preserves the individual story of the farmer whose house preceded the city. Cooperstown today is both a working county seat and a piece of North Dakota’s early settlement map, with the courthouse keeping the 1882 decision visible in the middle of town.