This is apparently one of the original series of Captain Mullan monuments, of which I believe thirteen were made and placed along the Mullan Road, which stretched 642 miles from Fort Benton, MT to Fort Walla Walla, WA. Mullan surveyed and built the road in the years 1853 to 1860. It was the first road to cross the Rocky Mountains into the Pacific Northwest.
Designed by Western frontier artist Edgar S. Paxson and fabricated by Western Montana M & G Company, the original statues of
Captain John Mullan were fourteen feet tall, cut from white Vermont marble and placed on concrete bases. They were initially placed at various points along
The Mullan Road. This monument was apparently dedicated in 1916 and was moved from its original location to Circle Park, a small plaza in front of the old Great Northern Railway Depot, in the late 1940s or early 1950s.
See the photo below of the monument being erected at the depot.
The monument was originally located near the hydro dam on the Clark Fork River at Milltown, a few miles east on I-90 from its present location. In the winter of 1861-62 Captain Mullan wintered near that location at the confluence of the Clark Fork and Blackfoot Rivers. Below is a short history of his over wintering there while building a bridge over the Blackfoot River. It is from a historical marker near the original location.
Brave New World
Despite Civil War Turmoil, progress was bravely pushing Westward, leading into the Gilded Age of substantial growth in population and wealth.
CANTONMENT WRIGHT AND HELL GATE
In November 1861, John Mullan established Cantonment Wright just across the Blackfoot River to the east of here. The little camp consisted of six crude log cabins from which he planned the next year's construction program while his men built a bridge across the Blackfoot River. The camp was located near a trading post established by Frank Worden and Christopher Higgins in 1860. Called Hell Gate, it was one of the toughest settlements in the territory. Over its four year history and a permanent population that never exceeded twenty people, nine men met violent ends, including four hanged by vigilantes in 1864.
Mullan clearly did not like the area, which he called a "cold and bleak place" and the camp an "abode of not over much comfort." Mullan's men built the bridge during the winter, completing the 235-foot log structure in March and then abandoned Cantonment Wright two months later. Described as a "picturesque piece of architecture," the bridge carried wagons and pack trains over the Blackfoot for only a couple years before high water destroyed it. Mullan's bridge was the first of many bridges that would span the Clark Fork and Blackfoot rivers here.
From the Historical Marker