Camp Cooke (1866-1870), aka Fort Cooke, was the first military post in the new Montana Territory. It was established by the U.S. Army on July 10, 1866 on the Missouri River, just upstream from the mouth of the Judith River, and construction was begun by the 13th Infantry Battalion. After being reinforced by 100 soldiers in 1867, Camp Cooke had a strength of approximately 400 men.[1] During its existence Camp Cooke remained isolated and remote from much of the rest of Montana, and particularly from the mountain-and-valley western portion of the new territory where the gold strikes and related developments of communities and roads were rapidly advancing. Soldiers dispatched from Camp Cook were instrumental in locating and building Fort Shaw (1867) in the Sun River Valley, and Fort Ellis (1867) near Bozeman, Montana in the Gallatin Valley. Soldiers from Camp Cooke guarded the roads between Fort Benton and Helena. The post was abandoned less than four years later on March 31, 1870, amid complaints that the location of the post was too remote.
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The purpose of Camp (Fort) Cooke was to provide protection to Missouri River traffic and settlers in the Montana Territory who were traveling up the Missouri to the goldfields. Following the gold strikes at Bannack, 1862 (Grasshopper Gulch); Virginia City, 1863 (Alder Gulch); Helena, 1864 (Prickly Pear Creek and Last Chance Gulch); and the spectacular gold strikes in 1865 at the Montana Bar and other sites in Confederate Gulch, immigrants poured into the Montana Territory. The gold fields were in the western mountains of Montana, in the intermontane valleys. The immigrants had to cross the extensive eastern Montana plains, to reach the gold fields. The primary access route to the gold fields was up the Missouri River by steamboat to the head of navigation at Fort Benton. A secondary route for overland travelers was over the Bozeman Trail which branched off from the Oregon Trail in Wyoming Territory, skirted the eastern edge of the Big Horn Mountains after which the trail continued up the Yellowstone River valley to reach the Montana goldfields via the Bozeman Pass.
Settlers and miners traveling over the plains and praries to reach the Montana goldfields invaded lands that Indian tribes considered theirs. These lands were occupied by the Blackfoot, Gros Ventre, Assiniboine, Lakota Sioux, Cheyenne, and Crow tribes. The Missouri River steamsboats and the resulting freight routes fanning out from the Missourit River, and the overland immigrant trains coming up the Bozemand trail, drove off the buffalo and other game on which the Indian depended. In reaction, the Indians retaliated by mounting small scale, scattered, guerrilla type attacks and raids.[2] The Indians attacked steamboats and freight wagons. They attacked parties of overland immigrant and mail carriers. They stole livestock and killed travelers and settlers as opportunity presented.
As reports of thefts of livestock and killings by Indians accumlated, the newspapers that had sprung up in the swiftly growing mining and trading communities of the Montana Territory demanded that the U.S. Army provide protection. Petitions and letters went east to Washington. In response the Army established Campe Cooke on the Missouri River in the Montana Territory in July 11, 1866. On the Bozeman Trail the Army had previously built two forts in Wyoming Territory (Fort Reno and Fort Phil Kearney), and on August 12, 1866 the army established Fort C.F. Smith on the Bozemand Trail, just over the boundary in the Montana Territory. Thus, by the narrow margin of one month, Campe Cooke became the first U.S. Army post in the Montana Territory.
Camp Cooke was named in honor of Brig. Gen. Phillip St. George Cook. In 1867 he was in command of the Departmet of the Platte, which included the Montana territory.
Inspector General D.B. Sackett was sent to Montana to select a site for the military outpost to protect the traffic on the Missouri River. The logical site was Ft. Benton, the head of navigation on the Missouri River. However Sackett judged that Ft. Benton had sufficient resources to defend itself, and the considered the area lacked materials for the construction of a post, and also lacked sufficient range for the maintainence of its livestock. He recommended a site at the mouth of the Musselshell River, where a small community existed. As an alternative Sackett suggested the mouth of the Judith River.
The Montana Territory gold strikes were located in the intermontane valley region of western Montana, far removed from Camp Cooke. Camp Cooke was in the broadreaching eastern plains of Montana. Geographically the post was isolated from the western part of the territory. Further, the post was located deep within a several hundred mile stretch of the Missouri River known as the Missouri Breaks, which are steeply eroded badlands bordering the river and separating it from the surrounding eastern Montana plains.
Camp Cooke was located on the south side of the Missouri River, just upstream from the mouth of the Judith River. This location was along the Missouri River, a major artery of commerce from the early 1860's to the late 1880's. In this period steamboats brought traffic and passengers to Ft. Benton in the Montana Territory. Ft. Benton was the head of Missouri River navigation in the Montana Territory. However steamboat traffic on this section of the Missouri was limited to a few months of "high water", which occurred when seasonal runoff of snow melt from the prairies and mountains of Montana made upriver steamboat navigation to Fort Benton possible. Except for the months of May, June and July, steamboat traffic was virtually nonexistent[1]. Downstream from Camp Cooke was the Dauphine Rapids, which were difficult-to-impossible to traverse after the river began to fall, after the spring floods. During low water season on the Missouri, most freight and passengers were offloaded down stream from Camp Cooke, at Cow Island and carried by freight wagon to Ft. Benton. These freight routes did not pass by, or even close to Camp Cooke.
Because of its isolation Camp Cooke was abandoned on 31 March, 1870, although a rapidly growing infestation of rats at the post helped prompt the decision.
The Missouri Breaks have resisted settlement and so the site of Camp Cooke remains remote to this day. The site cannot be easily visited. It can be reached by canoeing/floating down the river through the Missouri Breaks, in the section now designated a wild and scenic river and part of the Missouri Breaks National Monument. Camp Cooke is located at Tiver Mile 86.8 Right.
Huckabee, Rodger Lee, "Camp Cooke: The First Army Post in Montana – Success and Failure on the Missouri" (2010). Boise State University Theses and Dissertations. Paper 153. http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/td/153