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Show I In Honor of the Great Western Expansionist When the fur trade died In the great West, there died with it many of the posts which had been the centers cen-ters of this industry. One notable exception ex-ception was Fort Benton In Montana. Built In 1844 by Alexander Culbert-son Culbert-son of the American Fur company, It was originally named Fort Lewis In honor of Meriweather Lewis, the explorer. ex-plorer. In 1846 this post was moved to the head of navigation on the Missouri, Mis-souri, rebuilt with adobe, and on Christmas day dedicated amid great festivities as Fort Benton, thuit honoring honor-ing Thomas Hart Benton, the great western expansionist and a trusted friend of the "A. F. C." In its first period Fort Benton ranked with Fort Union In North Dakota Da-kota as a fur center, and later It became be-came the main center of trade In buffalo robes, when Fort Union was abandoned. The fact that from 20,-000 20,-000 to 50,000 buffalo robes wer shipped from Fort Benton each year tells briefly why the buffalo vanished from the northern plains. The greatest glory of Fort Benton came about the year 1806. When the ! Red Cloud war stopped the rush of miners to the new gold fields In Montana Mon-tana over the Bozeman trail, they were forced to fall back upon the water wa-ter route, the Missouri river. Before 1866 not more than six steamers arrived ar-rived at Fort Benton annually, but in that year the number leaped to 31, and from then until 1869 the number of arrivals ar-rivals constantly Increased. Fort Benton became the principal departing point for the diggings, and no less than 600 wagons gathered there each year to make the long haul of supplies, sometimes as much as 5,000 tons a year, to the gold camps from 150 to 250 miles away. In these years there was no more picturesque place in the country than Fort Benton. Miners from all parts of the land, ex-soldiers ex-soldiers from both the Union and Confederate Con-federate armies, fur traders, hunters, trappers, good men nnd bud, they all made up the constantly shifting population popu-lation of this post. In ISO'.) the government established a military post there, and In 1877 purchased pur-chased the American Fur company's old fort, hut soon abandoned It. When the Great Northern railroad pushed into Montana, Fort P.enton waned rap-Idly rap-Idly UDtil today there remains only a few crumbling walls of what the late Emerson Hough once characterized a "the roost famous and most plctur-eso.ut plctur-eso.ut of all the historic posts on th Cppw Missouri" |