Prairie County occupies a stretch of the eastern Montana plains where the Yellowstone River has cut its way through the badlands country south of the Missouri, and the communities that grew up in the county in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were shaped by the geography of the river valleys and the routes that connected them. Mildred was one of these communities, a small town in the eastern part of Prairie County that grew up at the intersection of the homestead era's agricultural ambitions and the early automobile age's demand for road services. At its peak, Mildred had a population of three to four hundred residents and the commercial establishments of a functioning small town. Its decline came not from drought or mine exhaustion but from the more prosaic cause of a highway rerouting, which bypassed the community and cut off the traffic that had sustained it.

The Merrill and Sons building, which was constructed between 1892 and 1894, was the commercial anchor of early Mildred. The building served as the community's general merchandise emporium, handling dry goods, clothing, groceries, and hardware for the surrounding population. Its construction in the early 1890s suggests that Mildred was already a functioning community before the homestead boom of the early twentieth century, and that its origins lay in the ranching and agricultural economy of the eastern Montana plains rather than in the mining booms that created many of Montana's other ghost towns. The Merrill family's investment in a substantial commercial building reflected their confidence in the community's future, a confidence that would be tested by the changes of the following decades.

The Yellowstone Trail, which was one of the first transcontinental automobile routes in the United States, passed through Mildred in the early years of the automobile age. The trail was established in 1912 by a group of boosters who wanted to create a marked route from Plymouth Rock to Puget Sound, and it ran through the Yellowstone River valley country of eastern Montana on its way west. The passage of the Yellowstone Trail through Mildred brought automobile tourists to the community, and the businesses that served these travelers were an important part of the local economy in the years when automobile travel was still an adventure rather than a routine. Gas stations, garages, and tourist accommodations appeared in Mildred to serve the travelers who were making their way across the continent on the new roads.

The homestead boom of the early twentieth century brought additional population to the Prairie County country around Mildred. The Enlarged Homestead Act of 1909 opened the eastern Montana plains to settlement, and the communities along the Yellowstone Trail and the other roads of the region grew as the surrounding homesteads were established. Mildred's population reached its peak during the homestead years, when the combination of agricultural settlement and automobile tourism gave the community a commercial vitality that its earlier ranching economy had not provided.

The drought and depression of the 1920s and 1930s affected Mildred as they affected every community in eastern Montana. The homesteads that had been established in the years after 1909 were abandoned as the drought destroyed the crops and the falling agricultural prices made farming uneconomical, and the population of the Prairie County communities declined as the farms around them were abandoned. Mildred survived this period better than many of the Hi-Line communities, in part because its position on the Yellowstone Trail continued to bring automobile traffic through the community even as the agricultural economy contracted.

The decisive blow to Mildred came when the highway that had sustained it was rerouted. The exact timing and circumstances of the rerouting are part of the community's local history, but the consequence was clear: the automobile traffic that had been the lifeblood of Mildred's commercial economy was redirected away from the community, and the businesses that had depended on that traffic lost their customer base. The gas stations, garages, and tourist accommodations that had served the Yellowstone Trail travelers closed, and the community's commercial district contracted to the point where it could no longer support the population that remained.

The Prairie County Water Resources Survey of 1970 noted that Mildred was the only other town of any significance in Prairie County besides Terry, the county seat, a description that captures the community's diminished but not entirely extinguished status at that point in its history. The community had survived the highway rerouting and the agricultural depression, but it had been reduced to a fraction of its former size and commercial activity. The Merrill and Sons building that had anchored the community's commercial life in the 1890s stood as a reminder of what Mildred had been at the height of its prosperity.

The story of Mildred is a story about the vulnerability of small communities to the decisions of road engineers and highway planners. The community that grew up at the intersection of the homestead era and the automobile age was dependent on the continued flow of traffic through its streets, and when that traffic was redirected, the community had no alternative economic foundation to fall back on. The agricultural economy of the surrounding Prairie County country was not sufficient to sustain a commercial community of Mildred's size, and the community that had thrived on the Yellowstone Trail declined when the trail was rerouted away from it.

What Remains Today

Mildred retains some physical evidence of its history as a Yellowstone Trail community. The Merrill and Sons building, constructed between 1892 and 1894, may survive in some form, and the remnants of the community's commercial district provide a tangible connection to the early automobile era. The street grid of the original townsite may be visible in the landscape.

The Prairie County seat of Terry is the nearest city with visitor services, located on Interstate 94 and US Highway 10. The Prairie County Museum in Terry maintains records related to the history of Prairie County communities including Mildred.

Visiting

Mildred is located in eastern Prairie County, in the Yellowstone River country of eastern Montana. Terry, the Prairie County seat, is accessible via Interstate 94 and provides visitor services. The Prairie County Museum in Terry is the best starting point for visitors interested in the history of Mildred and the Yellowstone Trail communities of eastern Montana.

The Yellowstone River country of Prairie County is best experienced in the spring and early summer, when the river is running high and the badlands country south of the Yellowstone is accessible. The open landscape of eastern Montana gives the traveler a sense of the scale of the country that the homesteaders and early automobile tourists traversed, and the scattered remnants of the Yellowstone Trail communities provide a tangible record of the era's ambitions.