1846-1865

Logs were floated downstream from Fort Lewis in May of 1847 and erected on foundations built the year before. The fort was called Fort Lewis or Fort Clay before officially named for Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri upon completion of the Bourgeois Quarters in adobe on Christmas Day in 1850. The log buildings replaced by adobe; the trade store was the last to be rebuilt in 1860.
By 1865 the fur trade was over. Chouteau and Company sold its holdings to the Northwestern Trading Company. Buildings deteriorated rapidly at the fort; when the military took over in 1869, the walls and buildings had fallen into such a state of disrepair that the troops were quartered downtown. The army abandoned the fort in 1881 at the end of the Indian Wars.
By the turn-of-the-century, only two walls and one blockhouse remained. Thanks to a major restoration effort by the Daughters of the American Revolution, the blockhouse was saved and today is the oldest standing building in Montana.
In its heyday Fort Benton was the premier Blackfoot buffalo robe trading post on the Upper Missouri and is the only original post still in Montana.

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Buffalo Robe Fur Press
Fort Benton Historic District
Fort Benton and the Indian Wars
Steamboat Relics
The Engage's Quarters
Nez Perce War
Fort Benton - Fort MacLeod Trail
War Dogs Memorial, a War Memorial
The Montana Memorial
Keelboat Mandan

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