Stevensville: Montana's First Permanent Settlement

Stevensville holds a claim most Montana towns can't match: it is the site of the first permanent non-Native settlement in the state. In eighteen forty-one, Jesuit priests Pierre-Jean De Smet, Nicholas Point, and Gregory Mengarini founded Saint Mary's Mission here in the Bitterroot Valley, answering a request from the Salish people for Catholic missionaries. Father Anthony Ravalli joined in eighteen forty-five and helped the community build a grist mill and a sawmill.

The Jesuits sold and later reclaimed the mission, but when the federal government forced the Salish from their beloved valley to the Flathead Reservation in eighteen ninety-one, Saint Mary's ended as a mission to the Salish. The restored chapel and apothecary still stand in Stevensville today, marking a beginning that predates Montana statehood by nearly fifty years.