Notes on Memories of a Bear Hunter 



portant that it should reach its destination as soon 

 as possible, whether that point was Benton or Alder 

 Gulch, which we now know as Helena. For this work 

 many freight outfits sprang up. The "Diamond R" 

 <R> was organized for this purpose at Fort Benton 

 by John C. Rowe, of St. Louis, and finally passed into 

 the hands of Montana owners. It was a great and 

 well organized concern, and did not wholly disappear 

 until the railroad had begun to put an end to steam- 

 boat traffic on the Missouri. 



That water transportation was threatened had been 

 long foreseen, yet the blow did not really fall until 

 the year 1883, when the Northern Pacific Railroad 

 was completed. When the Union Pacific reached 

 Ogden in .1869, a freight line was established from 

 that point to Helena, but the distance was too great 

 for profit, and the steamboats on the river still carried 

 most of the freight. Ten years later the narrow gauge 

 road the Utah Northern R. R. laid its tracks north 

 from Utah, entering Montana in 1880, and finally the 

 road, which is now the Great Northern, gave the 

 last blow to steamboating on the Upper Missouri. 



Up to that time Fort Benton had been the greatest 

 city in all that northwestern country, and there seemed 

 every promise that it would become a great metropolis, 

 but with the advance of the railroad and the end of 

 steamboating came also the end of the buffalo and 

 the end of the fur trade, on which the existence of 

 Fort Benton then depended. Henceforth, her only 

 hope was to rank high as an agricultural center. 



4. F.ort Stevenson, N. D., on the Missouri, was 

 247 



