Fort Benton, Birthplace of Montana

This quiet town on the Missouri River carries a National Historic Landmark plaque, and it earns it. Fort Benton was founded in eighteen forty-six as a fur trading post, built at the very head of steamboat navigation on the upper Missouri. That single fact made it one of the most important inland ports in the entire country.

For a few decades this was the gateway to the whole northwest. Steamboats by the dozens tied up along the levee here, unloading fur traders, gold seekers, and settlers bound for Montana and western Canada. Goods and people flowed up the river to Fort Benton, then spread out across thousands of miles of unmapped country. People still call it the birthplace of Montana. When the railroads arrived, the steamboat trade faded, and the town settled into the river quiet you are driving through now.