from fresh water on the alkali flats above the Yellowstone River, and was far from an ideal location to start a town.
The nearby town of Coulson, five years old and perched on the river's edge just to the northeast, appeared a far more likely site. Coulson was a rough and tumble town where arguments were often followed by gunplay. Coulson's first sheriff was none other than Liver-Eating Johnston. Perhaps the most famous person to be buried in Coulsons Boothill cemetery is Muggins Taylor, the scout who carried the news of Custer's Last Stand to the world. Most buried here were said to have died with their boots on. Settlers moving east from the Gallatin Valley had farmed the flats around Coulson since 1877, and rejoiced at the news that the railroad was coming their way. In the end, though, Billings edged out Coulson, to the great disappointment of those living in the settlement. The town of Coulson had been situated on the Yellowstone River, which made it ideal for the commerce that Steamboats brought up the river. However, when the Montana & Minnesota Land Company oversaw the development of potential railroad land, they ignored Coulson, and platted the new town of Billings just a couple of miles to the Northwest. Coulson quickly faded away; most of her residents were absorbed into Billings. Yet for a short time the two towns co-existed: a trolley even ran between the two. But ultimately there was no future for Coulson as Billings grew. Though it stood on the banks of the Yellowstone River only a couple of miles from the heart of present day Downtown Billings, the city of Billings never built on the land where Coulson once stood. Today Coulson Park sits along the banks of the Yellowstone where the valley's first town once stood.
Early railroad town
Billings railroad ancestry is seen in its townsite configuration. Unlike mining towns of the region whose contours traced the haphazard routes of streambeds and ore bodies, railroad
