Travelrific® Travel Journal

Montana’s Birthplace

June 22, 2017 8:00 am

By Linda Tancs

A quaint river town, Fort Benton is known as the birthplace of Montana. It’s a National Historic Landmark, a monument to western expansion and once the world’s innermost port, a place where steamboats shuffled along the Missouri River for 30 years. It served as the terminus for the 642-mile-long Mullan Wagon Road, the first wagon road to cross the Rockies, binding together the navigable headwaters of the Missouri and Columbia rivers for easy movement of troops and supplies during periods of Indian hostilities. The town’s history is celebrated every year at this time at the weekend Summer Celebration, one of the state’s premier events.