Wibaux, Montana

Wibaux, Montana is one of the few American towns that quite literally bears the name of the man who willed it into existence. Pierre Wibaux was born in eighteen fifty-eight into a prosperous French textile family in Roubaix. In eighteen eighty-three he traded the mills of northern France for a cattle ranch on the Montana plains, arriving at the Northern Pacific station then called Mingusville.

He built a herd that eventually topped sixty-five thousand head, making him the Cattle King of eastern Montana. After the catastrophic winter of eighteen eighty-six to eighty-seven killed much of the region's livestock, Wibaux bought out struggling ranchers at distressed prices and emerged more powerful than before. He then campaigned to rename Mingusville in his honor.

According to local legend, his cowboys surrounded the town and refused to let anyone enter or leave until they signed a petition for the name change. The railroad agreed and in eighteen ninety-five the town of Wibaux was officially on the map. When Pierre died in nineteen thirteen, his ashes were buried beneath a bronze statue of him on a hill above town, where it stands today.