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The Commemorative Quarter for Montana







Our Genealogy Helper

Introduction ...

We have a couple of goals for our Gazetteer:

  • That it be a tool which helps us with planning our trips.
  • We're trying to shape our Gazetteer as a tool to help us understand the community in which our ancestors lived, the community that was part of their daily lives.
  • On our trips, we try to visit those places where our ancestors left their footprints.

By learning about Miles City (and the surrounding area) during the time that our ancestors lived, we hope to have a better understanding of both their community and its relationship to their lifes. We hope that this tool helps to give us an insight into their world.

As we add data and organize our Gazetteer to help with our family research, we will be adding to this our Genealogical Helper for Miles City. While we don't have information that is specific to any given person or family, we intend to expand our understanding about where and how people lived.

Name Variations for Miles City ...

When searching records, keep in mind that names and their spelling can change over time. Our sources include documents like maps, railroad schedules, Travel, Express and Shipping Guides. Many of these documents date from the 1800's and it's common to find spelling differences.

Although we can't give a definitive list, hopefully the following will give you a feel for the variations that might have occurred.

While the name of this city is Miles City, be aware that it's the common practice of mapmakers to remove the apostrophe from possessive names<1>. So Miles City may originally have been Mile's City.

Sometimes the trailing 's' might be dropped altogether, in which case Miles City might be written as Mile City.

If you have information about these names (such as the reason for the change, date of change, the origin of the name), please Contact Us.

Neighboring Counties ...

When searching for family records, we have frequently made the mistake of not checking the neighboring counties.

For example, we have great-grandparents who lived in the southeast corner of their home county. During their lives, most hospitals and doctors were in the next county to the east. Almost all of the nearby churches and cemeteries were in the county to the south.

So when searching for records, we had our best success by looking in neighboring counties instead of the county in which they lived:  their home county contained property and probate records; the county to the east contained birth and death records; the county to the south contained their burial records. If we hadn't included the neighboring counties, we would have missed many valuable sources of information.

If you're in a similar situation, we hope that the following information helps.

Miles City is located in Custer County and is the County Seat.

To see how the shape of Montana's counties have changed over time, we recommend the Atlas of Historical County Boundaries.

The following counties adjoin and form the boundaries of Custer County: Carter, Fallon, Garfield, Powder River, Prairie & Rosebud.

Below are the counties that are near Miles City. For each of these counties, we show a sample of those communities that are closest to Miles City:

  • Custer County     (The home county of Miles City)
  • Rosebud County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Miles City, with the one closest to Miles City listed first.
    • Angela
      (28 miles [45.1 km] to the northwest)
    • Rosebud
      (30 miles [48.3 km] to the west)

For an expanded list of the communities that are closest to Miles City, see our County-by-County Page for Miles City.

Newspapers Published in the Vicinity of Miles City ...

An ongoing effort between the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has resulted in the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP).

To share their results, the partnership has created the Chronicling America website. The goal of this partnership is to assemble a database about the current and historic newspapers of the United States. This includes a growing collection of scanned images from selected papers. All of it available to the public on their website.

Using information that we've taken from the Chronicling America website, we've identified 34 newspapers that have been published in the area around Miles City.

We have organized these newspapers into two lists:

  • A Local Newspaper List - focusing on the papers published in the immediate area of Miles City. There are actually two parts to this list - papers printed in the immediate area of Miles City and those printed in the larger area surrounding Miles City.
  • An Extended Newspaper List - a longer list, sorted by paper name and containing those papers published within 30 miles [48.3 km]<3> of Miles City.

Websites to Help With Your Genealogy Research ...

When we do our genealogical research, we first visit the websites from Cyndi's List, FamilySearch and Genealogy Trails. These websites offer the information directly or else point to where you can find it. Their information is open to everyone.

To help you get started, the following links will take you to the pages that are relevant to Miles City:

Cemeteries Near Miles City ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Miles City.

This is a new section and is likely to have errors. If you find an error, such as a missing cemetery or we have the wrong name, please let us know. If you know of them, we would also appreciate learning about previous or alternate names.

If you need information about a burial or interment, photos, transcripts, how to contact the cemetery or local authorities, please visit our selection of Genealogy Websites (see below).

If not found below, our Cemetery List for Miles City covers a larger area, with the cemeteries listed in alphabetical order.

The following cemeteries are listed based on their distance from Miles City, with the one closest to Miles City listed first.

  • Calvary Cemetery
    (Less than 2 miles to the south)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Calvary Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<4> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Calvary Cemetery
  • Custer County Cemetery
    (Less than 2 miles to the southeast)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Custer County Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<4> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Custer County Cemetery
  • Pine Hills School Cemetery
    (Less than 2 miles to the east)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Pine Hills School Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<4> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Pine Hills School Cemetery
  • Ft. Keogh Cemetery
    (2 miles [3.2 km] to the southwest)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Ft. Keogh Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<4> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Ft. Keogh Cemetery
  • Pine Crest Cemetery
    (4 miles [6.4 km] to the northeast)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Pine Crest Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<4> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Pine Crest Cemetery
  • Hathaway Cemetery
    (20 miles [32.2 km] to the southwest)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Hathaway Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<4> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Hathaway Cemetery

Nearby Communities in 1895 ...

We've built the following list with information that came from an Atlas published by Rand McNally in 1895. The Atlas had details such as the population of the community (which appears to have come from the 1890 Census) and whether there was a post office and/or railroad service available. We also indicate if the community no longer exists and is now historic.<5>

The Rand McNally Atlas shows that Miles City had a population of 956 people in 1895 with a post office and railroad service. In 2020, Miles City had a population of 8,181 people.

These communities are listed based on their distance from Miles City, with the one closest to Miles City listed first.

  • Horton
    (11 miles [17.7 km] to the southwest)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Horton have been provided by the GNIS.<4> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Horton
    • Horton is located in Custer County
  • Sadie ‑ Historic
    (13 miles [20.9 km] to the southwest)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Sadie have been provided by the GNIS.<4> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Sadie
    • Sadie is located in Custer County
  • Etna ‑ Historic
    (15 miles [24.1 km] to the south)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Etna have been provided by the GNIS.<4> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Etna
    • Etna is located in Custer County
  • Hathaway
    (19 miles [30.6 km] to the southwest)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Hathaway have been provided by the GNIS.<4> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Hathaway
    • Hathaway is located in Rosebud County
  • Garland
    (25 miles [40.2 km] to the south)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Garland have been provided by the GNIS.<4> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Garland
    • Garland is located in Custer County
  • Beebe
    (27 miles [43.5 km] to the southeast)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Beebe have been provided by the GNIS.<4> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Beebe
    • Beebe is located in Custer County

We've also created an expanded list of communities that existed in the 1890's and were located in the area around Miles City. See our List of 1890's Communities around Miles City.

Unfortunately, we don't know of a website for Miles City. If you can help, please contact us through our Feedback Page.

The official website for State of Montana: https://mt.gov/

Footnotes ...

<1>It's generally believed that possessive apostrophes are removed to prevent confusion on maps where the apostrophe may be confused with a cartographic symbol. While this is generally true, it's not uncommon to find possessive apostrophes in administrative names (such as towns or counties).
<2>While we're fans and frequent users of TripAdvisor, you should know that we're also members of the TripAdvisor affiliate program.
<3>Our distances are not driving distances, but are calculated as a 'point-to-point' distance. A straight line distance ignores obstructions like rivers, canyons, lakes, et cetera - it's truly a line from Point A (ie- Miles City) to Point B.Our distance measurements begin at a specific point in Miles City. The point we use is located at these GPS coordinates - Latitude: 46.4084, Longitude: -105.8406       In this case, the coordinates for Miles City have been provided by the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS).
<4>The location has been supplied by the Geographic Names Information System - which is maintained by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). While these values should be definitive, we found that accuracy can vary and you should double-check the location if accuracy is required.
<5>We use the term 'Historic' broadly and it generally means that the community no longer exists. However, it can also mean that the community might still exist, but was significantly larger or had a more 'official' existence in the past than it does now. Unfortunately our sources of data have proven to be unreliable. If you can provide us with more specific information about Miles City, please let us know so that we can improve our accuracy.









 

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This page was last modified/updated: 10 Mar 2024