Terry, Montana

Terry, Montana sits along the Yellowstone River in a stretch of badlands that were once among the most contested stretches of the northern plains. The site was first called Joubert's Landing, a supply point for freighters moving between Bismarck and Miles City in the late eighteen hundreds. It was named for General Alfred Terry, who commanded the Army expedition that led to the Battle of the Little Bighorn in eighteen seventy-six.

Terry himself was not at the battle, but his subordinate George Custer was. The town grew from that steamboat landing into a major livestock shipping point, and when Prairie County was carved out of larger counties in nineteen fifteen, Terry was chosen as the county seat. The badlands surrounding the town are now a Bureau of Land Management wilderness study area, eroded into the kind of broken country that gave this stretch of Interstate Ninety-Four its dramatic scenery.