Former Confederate General Thomas L. Rosser was the chief engineer for construction of the Northern Pacific Railroad from Bismarck through Eastern Montana. During the winter of 1878 to 1879 General Rosser built his famous “ice bridge” across the Missouri at Bismarck by laying ties on the ice and spiking the track. By the time the track was finished all the way to Sentinel Butte in 1880 the railroad threw a big party, thinking they had made it to the boundary between Dakota Territory and Montana Territory. Actually they were about ten miles short of their goal. When the true boundary was correctly surveyed, a pole was placed by the track and a set of deer antlers were nailed to it to mark the spot.

In July of 1880 a few structures immediately south and above Glendive Creek were temporarily built by sutlers, saloonkeepers and others catering to the railroad track-laying crews.

In late 1880 Major Lewis Merrill’s Yellowstone Land and Colonization Company platted the Glendive townsite. The official plat for the town, originally called Yellowstone, was filed on August 20th, 1880.

The location and layout of the town is a product of area topography and the needs of the Northern Pacific Railroad, whose tracks reached Glendive in 1881, when the original settlement of “Old” Glendive migrated to the newly platted town of “New” Glendive.


Lewis Merrill, who had served with the Union army during the civil war, named Rosser Avenue across the tracks on the “south side” after his friend Tom Rosser, an opponent during the civil war. On the “north side” Lewis Merrill named the Main Street through Glendive, Merrill Avenue. If you drive around the older part of town, you will find several additional streets named for army officers.

The building that once served as the 19th Century Train Depot, standing just off its main line, formerly housed the local Chamber of Commerce office..