Fort Benton

Location: Fort Bentong

Capt. Clark with members of the Lewis and Clark Expedition camped on the site of Fort Benton June 4, 1805.

Originally a trading post of the American Fur Co., it became head of navigation on the Missouri with the arrival of the first steamboat from St. Louis in 1859. She boomed in the early 1860s as a point of entry to the newly discovered placer mines of western Montana. Supplies were freighted out by means of ox teams and profanity.

An early observer states, “Perhaps nowhere else were ever seen motlier crowds of daubed and feathered Indians, buckskin-arrayed halfbreed nobility, moccasined trappers, voyageurs, gold seekers and bull drivers … on the opening of the boating season…’