Miles City, End of the Trail

Miles City was born the moment the Northern Pacific Railroad arrived in the early eighteen eighties, and for a few years it was the wildest shipping point on the northern plains. Texas longhorn cattle were driven here from the south, loaded onto railcars, and sent east. The brick storefronts on Main Street went up fast during the cattle boom of the eighteen eighties.

Then came the Hard Winter of eighteen eighty-six to eighty-seven, one of the worst on record, which killed cattle by the tens of thousands across the range and bankrupted many stockmen in Montana. The boom collapsed almost overnight. The buildings that survived map that arc perfectly: the hopeful brick blocks of the boom years, a courthouse for civic order, and small hotels that kept serving the rail-and-river trade long after the cattle herds were gone.