Fort Benton, MT

Fort Benton is the Chouteau County seat on the west bank of the Missouri River, nine miles north of U.S. 87. Founded in 1846, it is Montana's oldest continuously occupied settlement. The 2020 census counted 1,449 residents. For decades Fort Benton was the upper Missouri's last major steamboat port, the place where freight moved toward Montana's mining camps and the Mullan Road. The riverfront, levee, and 1888 bridge preserve that trading geography. Today the Fort Benton Historic District is a National Historic Landmark, and Front Street still faces the water like a working port turned civic center.

Old Fort Benton, the Museum of the Northern Great Plains, and the riverfront keep the fur-trade and steamboat era close to current town life. Wheat country surrounds the county seat, so agriculture and history meet at the same waterfront. Fort Benton's local scoop is a Montana town where the Missouri River once carried the world in, and a preserved levee still tells you why.