Laurel

Early Laurel, like many Montana frontier towns, was shaped by tenacious settlers who struggled to carve a living from a harsh, often unforgiving landscape in the wake of the Indian Wars. Laurel started as little more than a railway station and a handful of businesses serving railroad workers, farmers, and ranchers in the early 1880s. Irrigation projects soon transformed the dry, dusty prairies along the Yellowstone River near Laurel into productive farmlands. Homesteaders flocked to the val...