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Survey of Historic Sites and Buildings
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FORT BENTON
Montana
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Location: Chouteau County.
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Growing up around a fur trading post on the Missouri
River, the town of Fort Benton became the hub of traffic moving westward
to the goldfields of Idaho and Montana. At the head of steamboat
navigation on the Missouri, it was the eastern terminus of the Mullan
Road. Between 1869 and 1881 it was also the site of a military post.
In 1847 Alexander Culbertson of the American Fur Co.
established the fur trading post that was first known as Fort Lewis but
3 years later was renamed Fort Benton. It soon became the foremost
establishment in Montana, but the fur trade was rapidly declining. After
the arrival in 1859 of the Chippewa, a stern-wheeler, the first
steamboat to penetrate that far up the Missouri, the post became a
trade-transportation center and a town grew up next to it.
Following the 1862 gold strike in Montana, Indian
hostilities closed many overland routes, particularly the convenient
Bozeman Trail. Prospectors sailed up the Missouri by steamboat to Fort
Benton and then pushed overland to Bannack, Virginia City, Helena, and
other mining camps. Sometimes as many as 30 to 40 steamboats were docked
at the riverfront. Ox teams and mule pack trains carried food and other
supplies, which St. Louis and Portland merchants keenly competed to
furnish, to settlements in Idaho, Montana, and Canada. Much of this
commerce, as well as emigrants en route to the Pacific Northwest, passed
over the Mullan Road, a military road running westward from Fort Benton,
Mont., to Fort Walla Walla, Wash. Constructed in 1859-62 under the
supervision of Lt. John Mullan, it was the first wagon road over the
northern Rockies. The town of Fort Benton remained a major
transportation center until the arrival of the railroads in the region
in the 1880's.
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Gustav Sohon's drawing of Fort
Benton, probably sketched in the early 1860's. (National
Archives) |
In 1869 the U.S. Army had leased and occupied the
trading post from the American Fur Co., but by 1874 most of the troops
were living in town. The one-company post served mainly as a supply
depot for Forts Shaw and Ellis, Mont., and in 1881 the garrison was
transferred to Fort Shaw.
All that remains of the early fort are a blockhouse
and a portion of the adobe walls, located in a city park overlooking the
Missouri River on the eastern edge of the lousiness district. Nearby is
the privately owned Fort Benton Museum, which contains historical
exhibits. The riverfront. where steamboats once docked, is little
changed. Several brick and stone commercial buildings of 19th-century
vintage give a historic flavor to the town.
NHL Designation: 11/05/61
http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/soldier-brave/siteb14.htm
Last Updated: 19-Aug-2005
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