One of the first buildings to be built on the site when the Jesuits returned to the Bitter Root Valley, the only older building at the mission would be Chief Victor's cabin, built about 6 to 8 years prior. Built of squared logs, Father Ravalli’s House is a single storey 16 foot by 20 foot house with a sleeping loft above. The simple gable roof if covered in wood shakes. This is one of the buildings included on the tour of the mission, with the interior furnished with period pieces to appear much as it would have when Father Ravalli lived here.
Today the original (contributing) components of the mission consist of the restored chapel/residence (Logs from the first mission were utilized to build the present church.), Father Ravalli's log house/pharmacy, Chief Victor's cabin, the smokehouse, the cemetery, including Father Ravalli's grave, the Indian Burial Plot, and two trees, Father Ravalli's Crabapple Tree and Wolf River Apple Tree, as well as a stone survey marking the cemetery’s east boundary.
In order to preserve the original chapel a new church was built on the site in 1954. Beside it is the church's bell, hung in a stand alone bell tower. Both contribute to the historic district.
Father Ravalli’s House/Pharmacy
Father Ravalli’s House/Pharmacy (previously listed October 1970)
Father Ravalli’s house and pharmacy sits just north of the mission church, toward its west end, and was part of the complex built when the Jesuits reopened the mission in 1866. Square-hewn logs of “blockhouse” construction and chinked with clay form the first story walls of the two-story building. Half-dovetail hewn logs form the upper story’s walls. The logs are approximately 10” in size. The overall dimension of the house is 16’ 8” x 20’ 10”. The wood-shingled gable roof is slightly flared. A stovepipe off-center on the south pierces the roof. The house sets on a concrete foundation to better preserve it.
The front, or south façade, includes a central wood door (not original) simply framed with wood surrounds. Two windows, one on either side of the door, are 6/6 light, double hung. The wood surrounds fit together to form a slight arch at the hood, matching those on the mission church. The ends of the floor planks are visible in the outer walls at the second-story floor level.
The north elevation has no openings. Planks forming the second-story floor line break the wall surface.
The east elevation once had a single door opening. This has been infilled with logs to match the wall.
On the west façade, there is one square, offset window on the first floor, added sometime later to serve as a “drive up” dispensary. A wooden shutter closes off the opening. A second window, double hung with 6/6 lights, sits in the middle of the second story, centered under the gable end.
From the NRHP Nomination Form
The story of St. Mary's Mission begins in 1823, when twelve Iroquois, employed as trappers by the Hudson's Bay Company, remained with the Salish through the winter of 1823-24. Exposed to Christianity 200 years previous, they told the Salish stories of Christianity and of the "Black Robes", the missionaries who taught them. The Salish proved to be an interested audience and, between 1831 and 1839 they sent four delegations to St. Louis in an attempt to obtain a Black Robe of their own.
On September 24, 1841, Father Pierre Jean DeSmet, together with his fellow Jesuit missionaries, Fathers Gregory Mengarini and Nicolas Point, and three Lay Brothers arrived in the Bitterroot valley with their belongings and supplies in three carts and a wagon, the first vehicles to enter the area. They established the first white settlement in what was to become Montana, on the east bank of the Bitterroot river, immediately west of the present town of Stevensville.
The fathers built two chapels, residences and outbuildings, and began farming, planting wheat, oats, potatoes and garden crops. From Fort Vancouver they brought into Montana the first cattle, swine and poultry. A third chapel was under construction by 1846 but soon trouble with the Blackfeet forced the closure of the mission, the entirety being sold in November 1850 to John Owen, a former army sutler, for $250.00.
It was sixteen years later (1866) when Father Joseph Giorda, Superior for the Rocky Mountain area, called back Father Ravalli and Brother William Claessens and re-established St. Mary's Mission about a mile south of Fort Owen. Brother Claessens built a little chapel, the fourth he had built for St. Mary's, to which he attached a study, dining room, kitchen and a story and a half barn. Father Giorda made the "new" St. Mary's the Jesuit mission headquarters for the Rocky Mountain province. In 1879 an addition to the front of the building doubled the size of the chapel. (The entire Mission complex has been restored to that date - the peak of its beauty.)
The mission served the Salish people until their forced removal in 1891, during that time teaching them methods of farming and gardening to aid in their survival following the demise of the buffalo.
A Visitor's Center with gift shop, research library, art gallery and museum was built on the site in 1996.
Italicized sections above are from
St. Mary's Mission, Inc.