Location: 45 miles northeast of Great Falls
Welcome to historic Fort Benton
Fort Benton, the nearest town to the great Lewis & Clark Decision Point site, is well worth a morning or afternoon in itself. This is truly a town of the Great Plains, nestled along the Missouri River amidst low rolling hills covered in dry yellow grass. Outside of the town, there’s nary a tree in sight.
Old Shep by Bob Scriver (1992). The Grand Union hotel is in the background.
We arrived about lunchtime and found a great spot for a picnic along the banks of the Missouri. Fort Benton has landscaped their riverfront with picnic tables and several statues and historical displays. The most adorable is a statue of a dog named Old Shep. Shep was a border collie who belonged to an old sheepherder. In 1936, his master became gravely ill and was brought to the hospital at Fort Benton, where he died. Old Shep waited outside the hospital and the funeral home, then followed the coffin to the train station and watched sadly while his beloved friend was shipped back east to be returned to his family for burial.
Old Shep was adopted by the station master and became a fixture of the town, sleeping under the platform, greeting every arriving visitor, and giving a wagging sendoff to every train departing the town. His was the kind of sentimental story tailor-made for Depression-era journalists, and the dog’s supposed vigil for his departed master became the subject of articles in the national press. When the aging dog slipped on the tracks in 1942 and was dispatched to the next world by an incoming train, Fort Benton held a funeral for him and buried him on a bluff overlooking the train station.
Explorers at the Marias by Bob Scriver, at the Fort Benton riverfront
After lunch we had a great relaxing stroll along the river. The view of the Missouri River here is beautiful — straight out of Ken Burns. There are a number of fun and amusing things to see and photograph along the riverfront, from the wonderful Lewis and Clark statue by Bob Scriver to a replica keelboat that was used in the movie The Big Sky. Many historical markers tell the story of Fort Benton’s heyday in the 1870s and 1880s, a truly roaring era in which this now-sleepy town was one of the nation’s major inland ports.
Fort Benton got its start in 1846 as an outpost of the American Fur Trading Company and was named for Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri. Though no one knew it at the time, it would actually be the last fur-trading fort built on the Upper Missouri River. A few years later, the army mounted the first major explorations of the region since Lewis & Clark, focused on finding good routes for future railroads. As part of these explorations, a 24-year-old West Point engineer, Lieutenant John Mullan, was tasked with surveying and building the first wagon road through the Rocky Mountains. Commanding a work crew of over 200 civilians and soldiers, Mullan managed to carve out a 25-foot-wide road from Fort Benton in the east to Walla Walla, Washington in the west. The Mullan Road was completed in 1860.
Fort Benton during the boom
The gold rush of the 1860s would be the making of Fort Benton. The location happened to be the further point on the Missouri which was navigable by steamboats. The gold strikes at Grasshopper Creek, Alder Creek, and Last Chance Gulch fired the imaginations of Americans just recovering from the devastation of the Civil War, and the word went out: “All trails lead out of Fort Benton.” Prospectors hoping to strike it rich poured into the town by the thousands, each stopping long enough to partake of the saloons, dance halls, and brothels that sprang up to fleece them out of a little of their stake. Tiny Fort Benton became known as the “wildest block in the west.” As many as ten steamboats a day were unloading cargo and wagons and taking gold back to St. Louis.
Indians at "Fort Whoop-Up," a whiskey trading post near Lethbridge, Alberta
At one point, more than half the cargo arriving at Fort Benton was whiskey. Until 1869, the Alberta territory in Canada had been controlled by the Hudson’s Bay fur company. With the fur trade at an end, the company had turned it over to the Canadian government, leaving it a lawless no-man’s land. Traders from Fort Benton hacked out a road known as the “Whoop Up Trail” that led well into Alberta and Saskatchewan, and set up more than 40 whiskey outposts to trade firewater to the Blackfoot Indians in exchange for buffalo hides. In 1873, the Canadian government created a special police force (which became the legendary Royal Canadian Mounted Police, or “mounties”) to shut down the Whoop-Up Trail.
The amazing boom times at Fort Benton came to a sudden, shattering end in 1883. That year, the Northern Pacific Railroad was completed to Helena, and the Canadian Pacific was completed to Calgary. There was no more reason for anyone to come to Fort Benton anymore. The beautiful Grand Union hotel went belly-up, and most of the people left. But Fort Benton survives, a small town serving the surrounding ranches and providing a fun place to spend time for the history-minded traveler, too. The people we met were very nice and friendly, eager to share their town’s history, and curious to learn about visitors and what brings them to their neck of the woods.
We were lucky enough to spend one night at the historic Grand Union hotel. This hotel is like a museum in itself, full of fascinating historic photographs of past times in Fort Benton. The beautiful restoration makes a stay here like going back in time. This hotel, and Fort Benton itself, has a checkered past and a warm, welcoming present. Montana is famous for its integrity and pride of place; look no further than Fort Benton for a good example.
I first visited this town in July 2001. My friend and I traveled the entire Lewis & Clark Trail via small aircraft. We had traveled from N. Dakota earlier in the day and needed to refuel in mid afternoon. Got a ride into town from the gentleman at the airstrip the operator and crop duster. Spent 2-3 hours visiting the town sites and the Old Hotel. Found Fort Benton to be historical, peaceful, and full of out door experiences. Want to return. Thanks to a fine lady working at the local resturant who gave us a ride back to the air port. Her story alone was worth stopping. She ran or still runs a B& B with a stagecoach trip into the outback for a campfire and over night stay. Her ranch was southeast of the Missouri. Fort Benton was one of the more memorable stops on our trip. Thank you.
I’ll paste in a pertinent reply that I made to a friend recently about my MS in Soils and the origin of the word Bentonite: _______________________
Yes, it’s true that bentonite and montmorillonite are the same thing. I don’t know if montormorillonite was named after a town, but was told as a student that bentonite was named after Fort Benton in Montana, which used to be called Fort Clay, and later renamed Fort Benton after a Senator in Missouri. We were told that Montana had almost all of the world’s supply of bentonite, aka montmorillonite. The clay is used to make the smooth taste in commercial candies as well as tons of other stuff. I actually worked as a soil scientist in Fort Benton in 1979. It’s a nice little town, famous for the dog Shep: http://franceshunter.wordpress.com/2010/03/17/lewis-clark-road-trip-fort-benton-montana/
I went to work there because I had 2 infants and had been near starving for 8 years trying to get through school on $175/mo GI Bill and fend off thieves during the same time. I was poorly nourished, approaching exhaustion, worried about the babies, and guess I shouldn’t have, but abandoned my PhD the coming year just to take off some of the pressure and put some food on the table. It was the worst decision, my coworkers had no sincere work ethic but were focused on trying to have sex on demand and drink alcohol. At the same time I was taking a beating from Christians who felt that I wasn’t doing enough for God. They were right about that, but they were also jealous about my academic track, and you couldn’t please anybody. I also took extremely ill from amalgams in the confusion, very nearly died, and finally left everything and took off to hide out five years w/o money. That was in 1981 when Jesus literally came down and took me to Heaven for a while, a very astounding experience.
Anyway, I never got back to complete a PhD, but an accomplished mathematician and scientist is still my identity and after 32 years still not acceptable, because most people can’t begin to relate to that. My forte is not a matter of extensive knowledge, but rather a good instinctual grasp of certain forces in nature and an efficient approach to problem solving that made possible a high gpa. The statistics theorem is ignored not because it is difficult to understand, but because it challenges the status quo in scientific research and would establish my own unique contribution to the best that scientific inference can be. It may never get a response, of course. But for me it is not important to make a name or change the world, it’s just a way of releasing the energy in my soul and expressing what to me is divine revelation.