Bristol is located in the western half of Day County on Section 25 of Bristol Township, on the main line of what is now the Burlington Northern Railroad on US Highway 12.
Like so many other small towns of the upper Midwest, Bristol came into being as a result of railroad expansion. In the late 1870’s, the site which was to become Bristol was known to railroad graders as Station #70. C.P. Prior, a district railroad surveyor and townsite agent, was given credit for naming Bristol in 1881. He named the town after Bristol, England. The people who settled in and around Bristol were mostly of the Norwegian, Swedish and German descent.
Bristol is a part of the Yellowstone Trail, which once was a wagon track guided by yellow paint marks on telephone poles and rocks.