Books

Dusting Off the Old Ones

What! -- No Eighth Street?

If you readers will look in your phone books, you will find that practically every business house and dwelling that faces on the street immediately east of Seventh Street is listed with an 8th Street address. Even the nice markers put up by the Miles City Junior Chamber of Commerce on the street corners designate that street as 8th Street. Further, the published maps of Miles City and the Sanborn Fire Map each designate the street as 8th. The peculiar thing about this situation is that there is no Eighth or 8th Street in Miles City. On August 27, 1881 the Northern Pacific Railroad Company filed in the office of the county clerk and recorder of Custer County a plat of what is commonly called the Original Town site or the Original Plat of Miles City. This plat shows a Fourth Street, Fifth Street, Sixth Street, Seventh Street, Ninth Street, and Tenth Street -- but when it comes to the street between Seventh and Ninth Streets, it is designated as EIGHT Street. On an earlier plat of the Miles City Town site, which was never filed for record, but a copy of which is in the possession of the author of these stories, this street is also designated as EIGHT STREET. And, as it is a well known fact that recorded plats govern, Miles City is without an EIGHTH STREET.