Twenty-Eight Mile Station

Lieutenant John Mullan built a wagon road through this area in late July 1860. The 624-mile road connected the head of navigation on the Columbia River at Walla Walla, Washington Territory and Fort Benton, the world’s innermost steamboat port on the upper Missouri River. With the discovery of gold in southwestern Montana in the early 1860s, the road became an important freight and passenger route between Fort Benton and the mining camps. In 1866, Charles C. Huntley established a stage line between Fort Benton and Helena. One of the stage stations was located near here and called Twenty-Eight Mile Station because it was that distance from Fort Benton. For the next twenty-one years, the station was an important stop on the Benton Road. For a while in the 1870s, the imposing two-story station was famous for the high quality of the meals served there and the hospitality of its operator, Irish emigrant Edward Kelly. A decade later, however, the meals were much less appetizing, as one passenger recalled, “No excuse should condone for such nauseous ‘provender.’ With a feeling of disgust we bolted on to Bull’s Head….” When the Montana Central Railroad was completed in 1887, the old stage line was abandoned and the station closed.