Powder River Examiner -

Commissioners by Vote of Two to One Settle Question of Location

Choice Came as Surprise to All

Olive Believed to be Favorite in Race for Powder River Headquarters

From the Miles City Independent, Friday, March 21st, 1919

Ed: Another article in our continuing coverage of the 100 year PR County Anniversary

The controversy over the temporary county seat of Powder River county, it is understood, was brought to a head Tuesday when the commissioners by a vote of two to one favored Broadus. The action of the commissioners, it is said, came as a surprise in view of the fact that they had previously favored Olive by some sort of an understanding with the various factions concerned.

At Broadus there are two stores and several other buildings and it is understood that two of the latter will be used for the temporary housing of the new officers of the new county.

The matter of transcribing the records will be taken up at a very early date and according to information given out by the commissioners the work will be pushed as rapidly as possible.

Has Fine Water

Three county seat propositions were considered, Olive, Broadus and a site at the mouth of Cache Creek. Each contender for the county seat offered 80 acres of land free to the county. Olive had one building for offices and Broadus had two. The Cache Creek project has no suitable buildings on it. It was decided that Broadus offered the best facilities for the purpose, affording more room in the buildings offered. Artesian water is plentiful, and there is plenty of wood and coal and some timber close to town. None of these features are possessed at Olive, it is said. Eighty acres of land was donated by Mrs. Mary Troutman of Broadus.

F.T. Kelsey, representative from Custer county in the last session of the legislature, and father of the new county, as he introduced the bill for its creation, returned from the meeting of the commissioners at Olive Tuesday. J.H. Morris of Graham, W.H. Peays of Moorhead, Charles Decker of Stacey, commissioners, and N.A. Burkey, county attorney, all returned with him.

“They tried to steal the name of ‘Powder River’ from me down at the legislature,” says Mr. Kelsey. Representative Gullidge tried to amend the bill to name the county Cato, in honor of the late O.C. Cato, a prominent stockman of eastern Montana. He was aided and abetted by McCormick of Missoula county, who said on the floor of the house that it would be ‘a shame and a disgrace to the state to name one of its counties for a muddy little creek in eastern Montana.’ To this I replied that the name was not taken from any such stream, but was selected as a tribute to the Montana men who have carried the slogan, ‘Powder River,’ through bursting shells, clouds of gas and a hail of bullets through “No Man’s Land” and into the very trenches of the Germans.

Is Rich Country

The new county has an assessed valuation of $5,965,915. It has large stock interests, but an enormous amount of grain is produced in the northern portion. In fact, the choicest agricultural land of Custer county was taken when the new county organized. It will be a great benefit to Miles City, as mail will now be sent to Broadus as a distributing point for the county, and wholesalers and other business interests in Miles City will control trade from all the territory that has formerly been supplied from points on the Burlington railroad.

The name “Powder River” is more than a mere name of a stream - it is a phrase which is inseparably connected and interwoven with the history of this section of Montana. It originally meant a tough place; one who came from Powder River was a ‘bad’ man. But its meaning now is to stick, or make good. That is the meaning that it bears in the fields of France, where the allied armies cuss the Kaiser with one breath and yell ‘Powder river’ with the next.