Fort Missoula, established in 1877 to provide military control over western Montana’s Indian tribes and protect local settlers, was the only permanent military post west of the Continental Divide. There was little conflict, but the fort’s non-combative service was long and diverse. From 1888 to 1898, the black 25th Infantry Regiment was stationed at the fort. Twenty of the men explored potential military applications of the bicycle, riding 1,900 miles from Missoula to St. Louis in forty days.
During the Spanish-American conflict in 1898, volunteers known as Grigsby’s Cowboys were garrisoned at the fort. Citizens protesting its closure in 1904 prompted U.S. Senator Joseph Dixon of Missoula to successfully lobby for the fort’s reconstruction. Eighteen Mission style buildings from this period (1904 to 1912) form the core of the present complex.
The fort served as a technical training center during World War I, and between 1933 and 1941, it became the nation’s largest regional headquarters for the Civilian Conservation Corps. During World War II, it was the nation’s largest civilian detention camp interning Japanese Americans, Italian nationals taken from merchant and luxury ships in New York’s harbor, and World’s Fair employees. Italian internees affectionately dubbed the fort “Bella Vista.”
After World War II, the fort served as a medium security army prison. Closed in 1948, the fort had a military service that long outlasted other early Montana forts. The army began to sell and lease portions of the property, but adaptability and strong community involvement has assured the buildings at Fort Missoula an active future. Most of the district’s buildings are now administered by the Northern Rockies Heritage Center.
From the NRHP Plaque
Right on this road to FORT MISSOULA, 0.5 m., founded in 1877 when it was believed that efforts to remove the Salish from the Bitterroot Valley to the Jocko Reservation might cause an uprising. The only garrisoned post in Montana, it is manned by two battalions of the Fourth Infantry. The frame buildings at the western end of the reservation are headquarters of the CCC in Montana and northern Idaho.
The military reservation was formerly much larger, but squatters crowded in and were permitted to stay. Abandoned in 1898 the post was re-established in 1901; 5 years later the city of Missoula bought land and increased the reservation to about 3,000 acres. Fort Missoula became a regimental post, and permanent fireproof buildings were completed by 1910. It was abandoned again from 1912 to 1921, except as the site of a mechanics' school during the World War.
The officers' club, of logs, and the powder house, of stone, are all that remain of the early structures. They contrast oddly with the newer barracks and the tiled roof line of officers' residences.
From Montana, A State Guide Book, Page 300