Regardless of how you feel about the United Nations, there was a time when the organization considered putting its headquarters in South Dakota.

The decision to form the group of nations was made at a conference in San Francisco in April of 1945, the United Nations was officially established in October of that same year, less than a year after the end of World War II.

Getting the UN up and running was the easy part, finding a permanent home for the organization was a lot trickier.

The first meeting of the General Assembly was held in January of 1965 in London, but the United States was always the odds on favorite to be the UN's full time home.

Several cities were considered (Chicago, San Francisco, Atlantic City, Boston), and for a while Philadelphia seemed like it had the inside track.

But out of nowhere, came an unusual proposal: locate the United Nations in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

In a recent Time magazine story entitled: U.N. Headquarters in South Dakota: How It Could Have Happened, the Black Hills angle was justified by its geography, given the uncertain nature of the post-war era:

...the Black Hills region of South Dakota, made the rational argument that it was far from the reach of an atomic bomb, unlike the coastal cities.

The piece referenced a Time story from 1945, that included this attempt, in December of that year, from Paul Bellamy, a businessman representing the Black Hills, to persuade the UN Assembly to bring their headquarters to Western South Dakota:

In the Black Hills there are no military objectives, and the gentlemen who are striving for the peace of the world can live at peace while the atomic bombs are falling.

Ultimately, money won out, more specifically John D. Rockefeller's money.

When the philanthropist gifted a 17 acre parcel of Manhattan land (worth more than $84 million by today's standards) to the U.N., the organization had found its home, leaving South Dakotans wondering what might have been.

 

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