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.
Shown below and in the gallery is the cabin of Joseph Wagner and his wife Mary Elizabeth, built in the early 1870s, which stood on the Wagner homestead near the old highway a mile north of Florence. We can't say for how long the cabin was occupied, but it was donated to the park and moved here in 1973. The text from the historical marker at the cabin is further down.
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.
Wagner Cabin
This old log cabin was the first home of Joseph Wagner and his wife Mary Elizabeth. It was built in the early 1870's and stood on the original Wagner homestead claim one mile north of Florence and just east of the old highway from Missoula.
Joseph Wagner arrived from Germany in 1867 and was soon joined by his brothers Sebastian and Isadore. He came to Montana in 1869, settling first in Helena. All three brothers homesteaded in the Bitterroot Valley near Florence in the 1870's, and lived in the area on adjacent farms for many decades.
This cabin is typical of log construction of the time and the area. Other homestead cabins still exist, finding new life as storage buildings and the like. The logs were originally sealed with local clay, which has now been replaced by a more stable mortar. The logs are undoubtedly hand hewn Ponderosa Pine, harvested right here in the valley.
The Wagner property remained in the family until February, 1958, when Mr. and Mrs. Marion Davis purchased it. They eventually donated the cabin to the Stevensville Historical Society and it was moved to Fort Owen in 1973. When it arrived at the Fort, it was floorless and had a rough partition separating the areas right and left of the door. The roof was replaced with board and batten construction and the windows were reinstalled.
The Wagner cabin is representative of a type of cabin that was found throughout the Bitterroot Valley in the late 19th and-early 20th century.