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, St. Mary's Mission was the site of the first sawmill, flour mill, cattle herd, irrigation and public school in Montana.
This is one of the millstones from the original flour mill, used circa 1850. Though the fathers of the mission were quite handy we doubt that they were capable of fabricating their own millstones. Hence this stone was most likely imported from the eastern or central states.
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 MILLS
Montana's first grist and saw mills were built on Mill Creek just northwest of Fort Owen and were included in the Mission sale. Owen hired David Pattee to rebuild both mills in 1857 In 1865, Owen completed a commercial grist mill to serve Montana's booming mining camps. This three-story mill was powered by an overshot wheel driven by water carried over a 750-foot flume.
From the plaque by the millstone