Event Details

Terry

Montana County Seat Challenge

Terry, Montana; Prairie County

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Event Elevation: 2,254 feet

Terry, is a town in Prairie County, Montana, United States, and the county seat. The population was 562 at the 2020 census. The site where Terry is located was first called Joubert's Landing, in recognition of the man who built a supply point along the Yellowstone River for freighters traveling from Bismarck, Dakota Territory, to Miles City, Montana Territory. When the Northern Pacific Railway's transcontinental rail line arrived in 1881, the town was renamed for Alfred Howe Terry, a general in the Union Army who commanded an 1876 expedition in connection with George Armstrong Custer’s campaign against Native Americans, specifically in the west. Terry became a two-railroad town when the Milwaukee Road constructed a transcontinental line known as the Pacific Extension through the town in the early 20th century. The Custer Creek train wreck, the worst rail disaster in Montana history, occurred near Terry along this line in 1938. The town was incorporated in 1910.

Prairie County is a county in the U.S. state of Montana. As of the 2020 census, the population was 1,088, making it the fifth-least populous county in Montana. Its county seat is Terry. Prairie County was created by the Montana Legislature in 1915 out of parts of Custer, Dawson, and Fallon Counties. The name was selected in a contest and reflects the predominant landscape of the region. The county was the site of the 1938 Custer Creek train wreck that killed 47 people and injured 75.