Coulson, Montana

Before Billings existed, there was Coulson. Founded in eighteen seventy-seven on the north bank of the Yellowstone River, the town took its name from the Coulson Steamboat Packet Company, whose boats the settlers hoped would bring commerce and permanence. The town grew to about one hundred residents, with a post office, a sawmill, a hotel, two stores, and enough saloons to prove people were optimistic.

Then in eighteen eighty-two, the Northern Pacific Railway announced its route through the region, and the railroad chose a new townsite just one mile away. Billings was born, and Coulson died almost instantly. The post office closed as soon as the tracks arrived in August of that year.

Most residents moved to Billings, and today little remains of Coulson but its boothill cemetery, where the townspeople had buried their dead from eighteen seventy-seven to eighteen eighty-four. The cemetery still stands near the river today.