Park City

By editor

Park City, Stillwater County, Montana

In the late 1870s, as the Yellowstone River cut through the Montana plains, a local farmer named Alonzo Young set up a boat landing a few miles east of where Park City now sits. Young and his wife weren’t just farmers; they ran a stage station on the road to Coulson and Fort Keogh, complete with a restaurant and hotel for the travelers who could afford a roof and a meal after battling dust and mosquitoes. The Bozeman Avant Courier of 1878 advertised Young’s Point as a "Splendid Summer Resort," boasting "strict attention to travelers" alongside "fine hunting, fowling, and fishing." For a time, Young’s Point had its own post office, until the Youngs packed up and moved it to Park City in 1882.

That year, a party of settlers from Ripon, Wisconsin, rolled into the region near the mouth of Valley Creek, about seven miles east of Young’s landing. They arrived in prairie schooners, those canvas-topped wagons that had hauled so many dreams westward. These settlers had plans bigger than mere survival. They planted trees and made improvements intended to "beautify the little city." The Northern Pacific Railway, which was threading steel across the continent, donated a section of land for the townsite, and the railroad eventually established a station there.

But the railroad officials had a different idea about what to call this budding community. The bare sandstone bluffs north of town inspired them to christen it Rimrock. That name, sturdy and geographical, was meant to stick. The settlers, however, had other ideas. They clung stubbornly to the name Park City, inspired by their efforts to plant trees and create a green oasis amid the dust and rock. Rimrock disappeared from the maps, and Park City remained.

This obstinance had consequences. The general manager of the Northern Pacific Railway, evidently not pleased with the settlers’ refusal to accept his preferred name, retaliated in a way that would shape the town’s future. He shifted the location of the proposed railroad yards and shops several miles west to the town of Laurel. Laurel got the shops, the jobs, and the commerce. Park City got the trees.

The railroad’s decision was more than a petty grudge; it was a strategic economic move. Railroad yards and shops meant employment, population growth, and business opportunities. Losing them often meant a town would wither or remain small, a fate Park City could not escape. Meanwhile, Laurel thrived on the railroad’s largesse, becoming a hub for maintenance and freight handling.

Before Park City’s trees were ever planted, the Yellowstone River itself was a thoroughfare for a different kind of travel. In the 1860s, fleets of Mackinaw boats plied the river, carrying passengers and cargo downstream from Montana Territory to the "States." These boats were not your typical riverboats. Built near the Great Bend of the Yellowstone--close to what is now Livingston--they were flat-bottomed craft, up to fifty feet long and twelve feet wide, designed to navigate the gravel bars and rapids of a wild river. Tickets cost around $35 a person, a princely sum in those days, especially considering the dangers involved.

One passenger, Allen Hosmer, son of Territorial Judge Hezekiah Hosmer, published an account of his 1865 voyage titled A Trip to the States. He described the journey as equal parts adventure and terror, with the ever-present threat of attack by Northern Cheyenne and Lakota warriors. In his words, "If it were not for the expectation of being fired into by the Indians every night, the traveler would enjoy the trip hugely." The phrase captures the mix of grim humor and fear that colored life on the frontier.

But the violence along the Bozeman Trail and the Yellowstone River didn’t just make passengers uneasy; it made the whole venture untenable. By 1868, the Mackinaw boats quit running, and the river fell silent except for the occasional ferry or fishing boat. The gold rushes and military campaigns moved on, and the river traffic slowed to a trickle.

Meanwhile, the settlers who arrived in 1882 stuck to their vision. The trees they planted--cottonwoods, elms, and poplars--were not just for shade or beauty. Trees in the Montana plains meant something more: a sign of permanence, an effort to tame a harsh environment that offered little shelter from sun and wind. The settlers’ insistence on the name Park City was an assertion of their claim, their hope, and their identity.

The railroad’s influence in Montana during this period cannot be overstated. The Northern Pacific was more than a transportation company; it was a political and economic powerhouse. It controlled land grants, dictated town development, and had a hand in banking and mining ventures. Its general manager’s decision to favor Laurel over Park City was a move to consolidate power and profit.

This tension between settlers and railroad magnates reveals the larger story of Montana’s development--a story of competing interests, where names and places were not just geographic labels but battlegrounds for influence. Park City’s story is that of a community trying to carve out a place on its own terms, even as powerful forces sought to shape the land and its people according to their designs.

Park City endured, modest and green, a place where trees grew against the odds and a name stuck despite corporate preference. It never became the railroad hub it might have hoped to be, but it survived as a witness to the ambitions and conflicts of Montana’s formative years. The river, once a highway for Mackinaws and a target for raids, quieted down. The railroad bypassed the town’s dreams. And the trees, planted by stubborn hands, grew quietly on.

See also

• Park City at Park City, Stillwater County
• Itch-ke-pe and Clark's Canoe Camp at Columbus, Stillwater County
• Clark's Canoe Camp on the Yellowstone at Park City, Stillwater County