A withered cornstalk on bare, dry ground near Terry, photographed in the drought of July 1936

Settled with the railroad, 1881

Evelyn Cameron’s Terry

An English photographer spent more than 30 years recording ranch life around Terry. Her pictures, and the town she photographed, are still here.

Photo: Arthur Rothstein, FSA, Library of Congress

Evelyn Cameron, 1868–1928

The Englishwoman who photographed the open range

Evelyn Flower was born near London in 1868 and married Ewen Cameron, a Scot, in 1889. They came to Montana to hunt, stayed, and in 1893 set up the Eve Ranch near Terry, meaning to raise polo ponies for export. The ponies failed. Evelyn took in boarders, broke horses and ran the ranch while Ewen studied birds.

She bought her first camera in 1894 and spent the next three decades photographing everything around her: cowboys and sheepherders, ranch women and children, homesteaders and the badlands themselves. Her pictures ran in magazines across the country. She kept a diary nearly every day for about 36 years.

She died in Terry in 1928 and is buried here. Fifty years later a Time-Life editor, Donna Lucey, found her diaries, prints and negatives in a friend’s basement, and the book that followed, Photographing Montana, 1894–1928, made her name.

A black-and-white photograph of a man with a horse-drawn wagon piled high with cabbages on the open prairie — Her brother Alec Flower bringing in cabbages, 1898Photo: Evelyn Cameron

“Manual labour … is about all I care about, and after all, is what will really make a strong woman. I like to break colts, brand calves, cut down trees, ride & work in a garden.”
Evelyn Cameron, 1911

Where to see her work

Two collections, across the street from each other

Prairie County Museum & Evelyn Cameron Gallery

101 S. Logan Ave · (406) 635-4040

The museum began in 1975 in the old State Bank of Terry building and has grown into a little complex: historic buildings, a pioneer homestead, a train depot and caboose, the Larsen Memorial Building of artifacts, and the Evelyn Cameron Gallery, with original Cameron prints and copies of all her negatives. It also keeps local research files and old photos you can have reprinted.

Open in season. It was closed for the season when checked in October 2026; call to visit outside the season.

pcmuseum.org

Evelyn Cameron Heritage, Inc.

212 Laundre Ave · (406) 635-4966

A local nonprofit that owns more than 900 original Evelyn Cameron prints, the largest private collection of her work. It puts on the Evelyn Cameron Heritage Gala each fall.

Hours aren’t published. Call ahead.

evelyncameron.org

Most of her photographs are held by the Montana Historical Society in Helena, and many can be seen online through the Montana Memory Project.

The town

Terry, from river landing to Exit 176

Before 1881
A supply point for freighters on the Yellowstone, known as Joubert’s Landing.
1881
The Northern Pacific Railway arrives. The town is renamed for General Alfred Terry, who commanded the 1876 expedition that included Custer’s 7th Cavalry.
1893
Evelyn and Ewen Cameron set up the Eve Ranch near Terry. A year later she buys her first camera.
1902
The Kempton Hotel opens on Spring Street, on June 15. It hasn’t closed since. Visit the Kempton
1900s
The Milwaukee Road builds through town and bridges the Yellowstone west of it.
1910
Terry is incorporated as a town.
1936
Drought and grasshoppers. Arthur Rothstein photographs the ruined fields for the Farm Security Administration.
Today
About 562 people, the seat of Prairie County, and a working farm and ranch town on I-94.

Still standing

Historic places in and around Terry

The parlor of the Kempton Hotel, with antique furniture and framed pictures

The Kempton Hotel, 1902

A frontier hotel on Spring Street, open every year since 1902. The lobby is full of old furniture, saddles and framed photographs, and there’s a bookstore and an antique shop inside.

The hotel’s own history

Grandey Elementary School

A two-storey brick schoolhouse in town, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.

Powder River Bridge

A steel truss on Old US 10 southwest of town, on the National Register since 2010.

The old Milwaukee Road bridge over the Yellowstone is part of the story too, though it’s closed for now. More on the Terry Badlands page.

Give the museum a morning

Stay overnight and you can take the Cameron gallery slowly, then drive out to the country she photographed.

Find a place to stay Or go straight to the Historic Kempton Hotel