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Three Forks


Sacajawea Hotel

Travel Montana

Three Forks Directory Listings

A view from 1939:

THREE FORKS, (4,081 alt., 884 pop.), has an air of order and dignity. The homes and business houses are particularly well kept and many have been painted white.

The site of Three Forks, an ancient battleground of Crow and Black-feet, was visited by Lewis and Clark on July 27, 1805. It was here that Sacajawea felt she was at last in the land of her own people, from whom she had been stolen in childhood.

Trappers sent out by the Missouri Fur Company made the first attempt to establish a trading post here in 1810. They built a stockade on a neck of land between the Jefferson and Madison Rivers about 2 miles above the confluence, but the Blackfeet drove them out with severe losses before the year ended. Father De Smet spent a short time in the Three Forks region in 1840. No attempt to establish a town near here was made until 1864, when a group of Missourians laid out Gallatin City at what they believed was the head of navigation on the Missouri. When they learned that the Great Falls of the Missouri stood between their site and the head of navigation, they abandoned it. In 1908 the railroad came through and established a town here as a division point.

Source: Montana: A State Guide Book; Compiled and Written by the Federal Writers' Project of the Work Projects Administration for the State of Montana; September, 1939.