41. McCone County

McCone County, Montana, is a place I would venture to say even most Montanans have never visited.  No federal highway crosses the county, although Montana Highway 200 does serve the area, and even forks just east of the county seat of Circle into 200 and 200S, the former heading on to Fairview and the North Dakota state line and the latter turning south toward Glendive in neighboring Dawson County (#16).  The Montana State Legislature established McCone County in 1919 from land taken from Dawson (#16) and Richland (#27) counties, both of which now border McCone on the east.  They named the county for state senator George McCone who was instrumental in the creation of the new jurisdiction.  There is a fascinating biography of McCone included in H. Norman Hyatt's book A Hard Won Life available as an e-book here.  The county covers 2,683 square miles and as of the 2013 estimate, 1,709 people call it home, for a population density of .7 people per square mile.  This is the fewest number of people counted in the county's history, down from a high of 4,790 in 1930.  Every census since then has shown a substantial decrease with the single exception of 1960.

The only incorporated city in the county serves as county seat.  Circle is one of those Montana towns named for a cattle brand.  According to the historic point sign, in 1883 (or thereabouts), a Confederate Army veteran, Major Seth Mabrey, drove a herd of longhorn cattle up from Texas.  He branded his cattle with a simple circle design, and the ranch he founded became known as the Circle Ranch.  In time, the ranch spawned a saloon, and the saloon brought business (and drinkers).  The town that grew up around the saloon got the name from the ranch.  Today, those ubiquitous flags seen flying from lightposts all over the country say this, should you read them in town:  Circle, Montana  A Great Place to Be Around.  In 1919, Circle had some competition for the title of county seat.  Brockway, thirteen miles east along Montana 200 was in the running.  Circle won.  The 2010 Census counted 644 people living in Circle, roughly 38% of the county's population.

McCone County Court House

Circle, Montana

Circle is a pretty, little town, not unlike many other eastern Montana communities, but today it is the only town of any size in the county.  This has not always been the case.   As noted above, in 1919 Brockway gave Circle a run for its money in the race to become county seat.  These days, there's not much left of Brockway, but in the not too distant past, the community was a major shipping point on the Great Northern's branch line.  According to the book As It Was Yesterday,   as recently as 1963, more than a million bushels of wheat were shipped out of the Brockway station.  (It strikes me that that was over fifty years ago, now.)  Bob Fletcher, who wrote the text for all the original Montana Historic Marker signs said that Brockway "became a major livestock shipping point, reaching number one in the U.S. in 1934."  In 1910, James Brockway and his two brothers laid out a townsite, and soon there was a grocery store, a hardware store, a hotel, and the first high school in the county.  (The high school's last class graduated in 1943.)  As It Was Yesterday lists some twenty businesses located in Brockway over the years, including a bank, a creamery and a flour mill.  For thirteen years there was even a drive-in theater that closed in 1963.  Brockway has an "official" web site, but the most recent event listed there happened back in 2012, and most of the links on that site are broken.  One link that still works, takes you to the Brockway Mercantile's site, where you learn that you don't even have to visit Brockway to shop at the Brockway Mercantile.  The owner is a registered e-Bay seller.  The most recent population count I can find for Brockway comes from the 2000 census when 140 people called the Brockway area home. From Brockway south to the Prairie County (#45) line, the landscape is rolling, semi-arid land, suitable for dry-land farming and livestock.

Farmland in Southern McCone County

Vida is the only other town still extant in McCone County, with a 2000 census count of 70.  Vida is actually made up of two separate communities, Vida and Presserville, which merged in 1951.  According to Wikipedia, Vida today has an elementary school, a post office, a convenience store and gas station, and two churches.  Seeing as how none of the links on the Wikipedia site work, I won't vouch for the accuracy of their description, and sad to say, even though I drove through Vida on my travels around the state, I found nothing noteworthy there.  I'm sure I missed something.

To illustrate the fever and disappointments of the homesteading era, we need look no further than to the list of post offices on page 430 of As It Was Yesterday.  Fourteen area post offices make the list, opening as early as 1903 (Hedstrom) with all but Brockway now closed.  Some were only open a short time (one year or less), many closed in the 1930s as the homesteads dried up and blew away in the dust bowl.  Watkins stayed open until 1959, but Paris, and yes, there was a Paris, Montana, closed in 1937.  There's a picture of the Paris Post Office in the book on page 431.

The Lewis and Clark Bridge over the Missouri River

AKA The Wolf Point Bridge

(note my Volvo trying to hide in the lower left corner)

Montana Highway 200 is the only east-west highway to cross McCone County, but two Montana state highways run north-south.  Montana 13 runs north from Circle to the Canadian border at the Port of Scobey, passing through Wolf Point (Roosevelt County #17) and Scobey (Daniels County #37).  Where it crosses the Missouri River, it connects McCone County with Roosevelt County.  One of the county's two National Historical Registry sites is located here.  Since supplanted by a more modern highway bridge, the Lewis and Clark Bridge is the longest "and most massive through-truss" bridge in Montana.  Its 400 foot span is the longest in Montana, according to the Historical Marker sign at the location, which also notes that at its dedication on July 9, 1930,

The celebration included speeches, bands, a float, cowboys, and a daylight fireworks show.  The bridge was blessed by tribal elders from the Fort Peck Reservation.  A crowd of perhaps 15,000 people attended the festivities.

Along the western edge of the county, Montana Highway 24 runs from Highway 200 north to the Saskatchewan border at the Port of Opheim.  It crosses the Fort Peck dam on the Missouri, and passes through country lined with sandstone bluffs and other colorful geologic formations.  All in all, McCone County may well be out of the way, but still very much worth a visit.

Northeastern McCone County 

as seen from Montana Highway 24

19. Chouteau County

NOTE: Clicking on any picture will open a new window with a full-screen view of the picture. Also all links open in a new window.

One of the original nine territorial counties created on February 2, 1865, Chouteau County covered all of north central Montana. Eventually Meagher (Number 47), Fergus (8), Cascade (2), Teton (31), Broadwater (43), Hill (12), Blaine (24), Toole (21), Phillips (11), Wheatland (44), Glacier (38), Pondera (26), Liberty (48), Judith Basin (36), and Petroleum (55) counties would all be formed (at least in part) from land taken from the original Chouteau County.

Pierre (1789 - 1865) and his brother Auguste (1786-1838) Chouteau grew up in an important American fur trading family. Their father (Pierre, senior) and uncle (Auguste) were born into a French family in New Orleans, New France, and uncle Auguste later founded St. Louis, Missouri. The older generation, still French nationals, proved very helpful to Lewis and Clark, The younger generation were involved in John Jacob Astor's American Fur Company and founded several mercantile forts including Fort Pierre (across the river from Pierre, South Dakota) and Fort Benton (now the county seat of Chouteau County). Choteau, Montana (Teton County's seat) bears Pierre's name and Chouteau, Oklahoma was named for Auguste. The Chouteau brothers named Fort Benton after their friend, influential Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton.

The Chouteau County Court House
Fort Benton, Montana

The Chouteau brothers established Fort Benton in 1847, making it one of the oldest communities in the American West. It was the last trading post on the Missouri River, and as such the town around the fort grew into a major shipping center. Steamboats based as far away as New Orleans docked at Fort Benton, and in 1860, the U.S. Army began construction of the 642 mile Mullan Road, designed to connect the Missouri River at Fort Benton to the Columbia River (well, actually the Snake River) at Fort Walla Walla (now in Washington State). The city's website claims that the town was once the "world's innermost port." Built in 1884, the county's court house is the second oldest such building still in use in Montana. Fort Benton is also home to the first bridge built in Montana spanning the Missouri River, the Grand Union Hotel (once deemed the "finest accommodations between Minneapolis and Seattle"), the "Bloodiest Block in the West" where twelve of the thirteen establishments were saloons, dance halls, or brothels, the Museum of the Upper Missouri, and the Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument Interpretive Center. It is also home to Montana's oldest Episcopal Church, St. Paul's, in continuous service since 1881. In short, there's plenty of places to visit in historic Fort Benton.

St. Paul's Episcopal Church
The Oldest Episcopal Church in Montana

Chouteau County today covers 3,997 square miles, of which 24 are water. The 2010 U.S. Census counted 5,813 county residents, down from 5,970 in 2000. The highest population count for Choteau County in its present formation was in 1930, when the Census counted 8,635 residents. The county is Montana's number one winter wheat producer, and as across all of Montana, agriculture forms the principal industry. Forty-seven percent of the industry in Chouteau County is agriculture, dwarfing the second largest industry, construction, with eight percent. Forty-four percent of the men and eight percent of the women are employed as farmers, farm managers or agricultural workers. The average size farm is 2,924 acres, and 63.15% of all farms in the county are owned by individuals or families.

At the very northern edge of the county, you'll enter the Rocky Boy Indian Reservation (most of which is in neighboring Hill County.) Rocky Boy is home to the Chippewa-Cree tribe, made up of Chippewa and Métis who moved south from Canada and Cree who moved west from North Dakota. Rocky Boy, the smallest of Montana's seven reservations, is home to Stone Child College, one of the tribally run junior colleges in Montana.

The Missouri River, which divides the county in half and was responsible for the county's historical importance, is the county's most prominent topographical feature, along with its tributaries the Teton and Marias Rivers. US Highway 87 is the only federal highway in the county. Fort Benton sits 40 miles north of Great Falls and 75 miles south of Havre on the east side of US 87, a two-lane road. The highway passes miles and miles of wheat fields, and bypasses the towns of Floweree, Carter, Loma, Big Sandy and Box Elder as you cross the county. For my money, the best way to cross Chouteau County is the same way Lewis and Clark, the Chouteau brothers, and thousands more did it--on the Missouri River.

The Old Fort Benton Bridge
Fort Benton, Montana

Driving north from Fort Benton, about fifteen miles past Loma, you will see a sign on the right pointing to Virgelle. Turn off 87 and take the dirt road approximately seven miles to the Virgelle Mercantile. You can't miss it. It's the only building in Virgelle. The Virgelle Merc is a combination bed & breakfast and antique store, and is the home of Don Sorensen and the Missouri River Canoe Company. Don will put you up overnight, fully outfit your trip, and send you on the adventure of a lifetime. I know, I did it four years in a row back in the mid 1990s, and I'd gladly do it again and again. Once on the river, you'll see the country virtually unchanged from the way Lewis and Clark saw it in 1804. There are no bridges on a fifty-mile stretch of the river, and once you put in at Virgelle Landing, you can spend the next four days crossing one of the most amazing landscapes in the western United States. Be forewarned, Montana weather is highly unpredictable, so be prepared for everything from blazing sun to pouring rain. The river is slow, and there are stretches where you will have to paddle with all you've got in you, just to move on downstream against the prevailing head winds. But oh is it worth it. And by all means, take along the relevant portion of Lewis & Clark's journals. As you camp each night, you can read about the section you've just passed and feel as if you've traveled back two hundred years in time. (I'll take my canoe over their boats, though, and my tent, sleeping bag and air mattress over their gear any day.)

The Missouri Breaks
Chouteau County, Montana

Photo Information:

Chouteau County Sign: Taken 4/23/2011 on the Chouteau/Hill County Line, US Highway 87. ISO 200, f /16.0, 1/125 second. Nikkor 16-85 mm lens set at 32 mm.

Chouteau County Court House: Taken 3/14/2010 in Fort Benton, Montana. ISO 125, f /11.0, 1/60 second. Nikkor 16-85 mm lens set at 16 mm.

St Paul's Episcopal Church: Taken 3/14/2010 in Fort Benton, Montana. ISO 125, f /11.0, 1/20 second. Nikkor 16-85 mm lens set at 16 mm.

Fort Benton Bridge: Taken 3/14/2010 in Fort Benton, Montana. ISO 125, f /11.0, 1/180 second. Nikkor 16-85 mm lens set at 22 mm.

Missouri Breaks: Scanned from a photograph taken in August, 1995, looking down at the Missouri River. No data available.