Fort Parker
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Fort Parker was a United States Army fort in spring of 1870 about ten miles to the east of present-day Livingston, Montana near Interstate 90 on a bench by Mission Creek in the territory of the Crow Indian nation. It was the site of the first Crow Indian agency before the agency's relocation eastward first to Absarokee and then to Crow Agency. There was no mission on or near the site; it took its name according to Thomas Leforge "merely by reason of the fact that in those days and earlier most of the Indian agencies were set up where a Christian missionary enterprise had already been in operation. This was not the case here".
Its first construction was of cottonwood logs with a canon mounted on one side, which burned completely within a few months and was replaced new agency buildings completely of adobe. The first agent had been a Major Camp, succeeded by a Mr. Pease because of his native marriage and connections, thereafter styled Major Pease by virtue of his new office, and a Dr. Wright.
The fort was built for the purpose of defending area whites newly moving into the area and Crow Indians from raids by nearby Sioux, Cheyenne, and Blackfeet and not very successfully sought to encourage the Crow to an agricultural lifestyle.
Fort Parker was abandoned by the US Army in 1875.
