A lonely cemetery is all that remains of one of Montana Territory’s busiest settlements, Dearborn Crossing. The Lewis and Clark Expedition named the river after Secretary of War Henry Dearborn in 1805. Fifty-five years later Lieutenant John Mullan built a road between Walla Walla, Washington and Fort Benton, crossing the Dearborn here at “a very good ford.” With the discovery of gold in southwestern Montana in the 1860s, the road to the steamboat port of Fort Benton became critical to the survival of the mining camps. About 1864, French trapper Paul Vermet established a stage station at the crossing. Evan Thomas took over the operation in 1866 and built a saloon and hotel, called Keystone House, along with a stone toll bridge across the river. Hubert Milot soon built a hotel and mercantile on the south side of the river. For over twenty years, the vibrant little settlement flourished, even boasting a post office and a school. At its peak, the settlement had a population of over a hundred people. When the Montana Central Railroad bypassed Dearborn Crossing in 1887, it soon became a near ghost town. By the late 1890s, all that was left of Dearborn Crossing was the cemetery.
Slide toward Today to fade the historical sheet and see the modern map underneath.