St. Ignatius, MT

St. Ignatius sits in the Mission Valley on the Flathead Indian Reservation, and the town’s name comes straight from the mission that shaped the place. Jesuit missionaries Pierre-Jean De Smet and Adrian Hoecken moved the mission here in 1854; by 1864 it had a church, flour mill, sawmill, school, and hospital. That history is inseparable from the Salish, Pend d’Oreille, and Kootenai people whose homelands surround the town, and from the mission-school era that left real harm in Native families. Today U.S. 93 runs through town, while the mission church, library, and Mission Mountains keep the local map easy to read. People around here still call St. Ignatius “Mission.”