Fort Owen State Park is one of the smallest in Montana, being located in what amounts to a corral on an active cattle ranch, Fort Owen Ranch. The site of the original St. Mary's Mission, this was the first non native settlement in the state of Montana, later giving rise to the town of Stevensville, Montana's first town. Montana's oldest continuously occupied settlement, Fort Owen was the site of the first sawmill, flour mill, cattle herd, irrigation and public school in Montana.
The American Guide Series writers had a bit to say about Fort Owen, mostly that it was pretty much gone in 1939. A lot has been done at the site since then.
Left on this road to the SITE OF FORT OWEN, 0.5 m. (R), a trading post established in 1850 by Maj. John Owen. Nothing remains of the buildings but part of one wall made of crude bricks. In the spring of 1841 Father De Smet and six companions had erected a small chapel here of whipsawed lumber held together with wooden pins. They had built a sawmill and a gristmill, making the saw from the iron band of a wagon wheel. The mill stones, shipped from Antwerp, Belgium, had been brought ashore at Fort Vancouver on the Columbia and carried overland. Oxen and wagons, carts and plows had also been brought to the mission and in 1842 the Mission garden had produced some wheat and vegetables.
Major Owen differed from many of the early citizens of Montana in that he came with definite intent to settle. He began by buying the buildings from the Catholic authorities at St. Mary's Mission, and added others of his own. Refusing to be diverted by gold rushes and booms, he stayed at his fort and developed it into the most important travel and trade center in the valley. A genial host, he made the post popular with white and red visitors alike.
From Montana, a state guide book
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.
Beginning about 1857 John Owen built a fort here which he used as a trading post. He operated the post until suffering a mental breakdown in 1872, dying in Pennsylvania in 1889. Though the post continued in use as a trading post for some years after, it was eventually turned into a cattle ranch. In 1937 a group of citizens purchased one acre of land surrounding the fort for the purpose of establishing a historic site. In 1956 the land was donated to the state to become Fort Owen State Park. The park also became a state monument at that time.
Italicized sections above are from
St. Mary's Mission, Inc.
Fort Owen
Construction of the fort in its final form began in earnest in 1857, with adobe bricks replacing the original logs. By 1860 the root cellar was completed as was a well house; then the gates on the north and south sides of the fort were hung. In the 1880s the construction of a highway into Stevensville destroyed the north wall and gate, and in 1889 a severe windstorm
ripped off a roof and further damaged the buildings. In the early 1900s the bastions were removed and in 1912 the unoccupied west barracks were leveled.
Only the east wing of the fort remains today. This includes the previous living quarters, bedroom, office, and library of Major Owen in addition to dormitory rooms. Archaeological
investigations have exposed the foundations for the fort's walls and bastions.
This site appears to be Montana's oldest continuously occupied settlement. When Major (non-military title) John Owen arrived in the Bitterroot Valley in 1850, he purchased the grounds and built an adobe trading fort. Trade at the post, mostly with westbound immigrants, was threatened in the mid-1850s by constant harassment from Blackfeet Indians, but flourished again when gold was discovered in the surrounding areas. The town of Stevensville grew around the fort and trading post, but was replaced as a center of commerce in 1865 by Hellgate (now
Missoula).
At Fort Owen was the site of the first sawmill, flour mill, cattle herd, irrigation and public school in Montana.
Fort Owen became a state monument in 1956.
From the NRHP Registration Form