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'''125. Origin of Montana Place Names'''

Our stories are usually dated during that period when the United States Land Office was located in the Federal Building here instead of being mixed up with the records in the office of the Bureau of Land Management at Billings.

We have recently come into possession of a copy of the Montana Almanac, which has recently come off the press of the Montana State University. Among other things appearing in this publication is information as to the origin of Montana place names. We will use considerable of this information in stories in the future as we believe it will be of universal interest to our local people that they be informed as to how certain of our streams, counties and cities bear the names that they do. So, we will start with some of our neighboring towns and counties and tell how they got their names. Before starting on the neighbors, we should tell how Miles City was named--nearly everyone knows that it was named for General Nelson A. Miles, the man who led the troops in quelling the Indians after the Custer Massacre. And then, we wonder how many folk know that the original name of our county was Big Horn, and that it was not until after the Custer battle that the name was changed to Custer County. Terry was named for General Alfred H. Terry, who commanded the expedition of l876 commonly known as the "Custer Campaign." We have already told you in one of our stories that Ekalaka was named after the wife of David H. Russell, scout, hunter and frontiersman, but did you know that Carter County, of which Ekalaka is the county seat, was named for Thomas H. Carter, a Republican Senator from Montana. Baker was named for A. G. Baker, who was chief engineer for the Chicago, Milwaukee and Puget Sound Railroad when it built through eastern Montana and, parenthetically, Baker Addition to Miles City was platted by this same A. G. Baker. The Almanac says that Fallon county and the town of Fallon were both named for Benjamin O'Fallon, a United States Indian Agent, but we are more inclined to believe that the county was named Fallon (which is a contraction of the name O'Fallon) by reason of the fact that O'Fallon creek--undoubtedly named for the Indian Agent--heads within its borders, and is one of the principal creeks of that county.