Seven coffins holding human remains have come out of the ground at the North Dakota Governor’s Residence in Bismarck, N.D., where archaeologists recovered them, the state’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) said in an email to PEOPLE on Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2026. One of the seven coffins was among the finds confirmed by the agency.
Crews also recovered one empty wooden box of unknown origin. Contractors digging in the yard had first struck a grave nearly five months before the recovery.
Two women, two men, two teenage boys and one toddler are the people the remains belong to, according to a preliminary analysis cited by the agency.
Fieldwork Ends at Site
Crews went through more than 80 anomalies and spots of interest flagged during the investigation, then closed out fieldwork on Sept. 14, according to Brandon Solberg, the OMB’s facilities management director. The excavation had begun on Sept. 1.
Crews have finished searching the grounds, though the scientific work continues. Archaeologists will next review and catalog every set of remains and each recovered object, and the state expects that process to run into early 2027.
How the Case Began
Contractors excavating the southwest corner of the property, near 4th Street and Boulevard Avenue, turned up human remains along with coffin hardware and fragments on May 19, opening the case. Construction halted, and authorities were notified.
Archaeologists with the State Historical Society of North Dakota swept the area with ground-penetrating radar. What the contractors had found looked, in early scans, like only the edge of something larger. Preliminary radar results identified nine more anomalies, and the OMB said at the time that the work area could hold 10 graves.
Reburial Expected Next Spring
The agency has contracted with a local funeral home to handle the reburial. Volunteers from Crisis Care Chaplaincy have offered to help see that the relocation is carried out respectfully.
The North Dakota Monitor heard from a spokesperson for Gov. Kelly Armstrong that the governor “wants to ensure the remains are treated with the appropriate care and respect.”
A local cemetery is expected to receive the remains for reburial in the spring of 2027. Once the cataloging is complete, that step can go forward.
A Cemetery Beneath the Yard
Bismarck used the property as its first community cemetery from 1873 to 1877, during the city’s earliest years. Officials believed most of the graves had been relocated to St. Mary’s and Fairview cemeteries in the 1880s.
Kara Haff, a spokesperson for the State Historical Society of North Dakota, told The Bismarck Tribune: “They had thought in the 1880s that they had exhumed everybody.”
A project at the site uncovered 13 burials in 1903. Five more burials came to light in 1959, evidence that the 19th-century relocation effort left people behind.
