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Our Genealogy Helper

Introduction ...

So far, we found very little information about Prairie Dale. The little that we've found leads us believe that the community is historic.<1>

We've added Prairie Dale to our Gazetteer with the hope that we can develop more information. If you can help us with Prairie Dale, please Contact Us.

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 Prairie Dale (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 Prairie Dale. 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.

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 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.

Although our information shows that the community of Prairie Dale is historic, it would have been located within present day Carter County.

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 Carter County: Custer, Fallon, Powder River, Butte (SD), Harding (SD) & Crook (WY).

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

  • Carter County     (The home county of Prairie Dale)
    • The following are listed by their distance from Prairie Dale, with the one closest to Prairie Dale listed first.
    • Ekalaka
      (13 miles [20.9 km] to the north)
      • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Ekalaka have been provided by the GNIS.<2> The coordinates still need to be verified.
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Ekalaka
      • Ekalaka is located in Carter County
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 367 people
      • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Ekalaka <3>
    • Capitol
      (27 miles [43.5 km] to the southeast)
  • Powder River County
  • Harding County (SD)
    • Camp Crook
      (27 miles [43.5 km] to the east)
      • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Camp Crook have been provided by the GNIS.<2> The coordinates still need to be verified.
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Camp Crook
      • Camp Crook is located in Harding County (SD)
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 66 people
      • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Camp Crook <3>

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

Cemeteries Near Prairie Dale ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Prairie Dale.

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 Prairie Dale covers a larger area, with the cemeteries listed in alphabetical order.

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

  • Russell Cemetery
    (9 miles [14.5 km] to the north)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Russell Cemetery
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Russell Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<2> The coordinates still need to be verified.
  • IOOF Cemetery
    (13 miles [20.9 km] to the north)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the IOOF Cemetery
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the IOOF Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<2> The coordinates still need to be verified.
  • Pioneer Cemetery
    (18 miles [29 km] to the southeast)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Pioneer Cemetery
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Pioneer Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<2> The coordinates still need to be verified.
  • Fairview Cemetery
    (26 miles [41.8 km] to the southeast)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Fairview Cemetery
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Fairview Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<2> The coordinates still need to be verified.
  • Capitol Church Cemetery
    (28 miles [45.1 km] to the southeast)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Capitol Church Cemetery
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Capitol Church Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<2> The coordinates still need to be verified.
  • Capitol Cemetery
    (28 miles [45.1 km] to the southeast)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Capitol Cemetery
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Capitol Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<2> The coordinates still need to be verified.

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.

While we didn't find Prairie Dale in the Atlas, the following 1895 communities would have been found near the current location of Prairie Dale.

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

  • Capitol
    (27 miles [43.5 km] to the southeast)
  • Camp Crook
    (27 miles [43.5 km] to the east)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Camp Crook have been provided by the GNIS.<2> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Camp Crook
    • Camp Crook is located in Harding County (SD)
    • Population from the 2020 Census: 66 people
    • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Camp Crook <3>
  • Powderville
    (29 miles [46.7 km] to the west)

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

Newspapers Published in Prairie Dale ...

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 4 newspapers that have been published in the area around Prairie Dale.

Although we're unaware of any newspapers that were published in the immediate area of Prairie Dale, there are papers which were published within 13 miles [20.9 km]<4>. A list of those papers, sorted by paper name, can be found on the Extended Newspaper List for Prairie Dale.

Websites to Help With Your Genealogy Research ...

When we do our genealogical research, we start with 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 Prairie Dale:

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

Footnotes ...

<1>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 Prairie Dale, please let us know so that we can improve our accuracy.
<2>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.
<3>While we're fans and frequent users of TripAdvisor, you should know that we're also members of the TripAdvisor affiliate program.
<4>Our distances are not driving distances, but are calculated as a 'straight-line' (or point-to-point) distance. A straight line distance ignores things like rivers, canyons, lakes, et cetera - it's truly a line from Point A (ie- Prairie Dale) to Point B.Our distance measurements begin at a specific point in Prairie Dale. The point we use is located at these GPS coordinates - Latitude: 45.6972, Longitude: -104.5033       In this case, the coordinates for Prairie Dale have been provided by the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS).




 

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This page was last modified/updated: 28 Apr 2025