The Great Northern Railway transported people and goods to, and through, northern Montana in the late 1880s and early 1900s. By the mid-1920s, however, automobile travel eclipsed rail travel. Soon, modern roads and new roadside service stations,…

Born in Quebec, Exzelia Pepin followed his uncle Simon Pepin—Havre’s town founder—to Montana in 1888, a year after the Great Northern Railway reached Fort Assinniboine. Not long after, the Great Northern decided to build a division point at what was…

Joseph and Susanne Gussenhoven built this two-and-one-half-story Free Classic Queen Anne style home, known locally as “the Castle,” in 1903. Particular to this style are the irregular roofline, octagonal corner tower, textured walls, large porches,…

With its graceful dormer and full-length front porch supported by Tuscan columns, the front of this one-story, hipped-roof building looks like an attractive and comfortable residence. The back of the building, with its small, arched barred windows…

The bars on the windows of this single-story hipped-roof building weren’t put there to keep people in, but to keep them out. Forty-five caliber Colt revolvers, single-shot Springfield rifles or Krag-Jorgenson rifles after 1892, cannon, and a Gatling…

Load-bearing brick walls three courses thick, a wood-framed gable roof, and metal rain gutters are among the surviving historic features of this 1906 stable. The fort originally had six stables, built between 1879 and 1881, that accommodated…

In its final years as a military outpost in 1904 and 1905, Fort Assinniboine underwent an extensive effort to expand and modernize its facilities. Great Falls contractors Frank Coombs and Duncan Brothers built this residential duplex in 1905 for…

Between 1902 and 1905, the U.S. Department of War spent over a half million dollars modernizing and improving the fort’s infrastructure. The Havre newspaper hailed the investment as assuring “the permanency of Fort Assinniboine.” The improvements…

Before refrigeration, rural Americans preserved perishables in root cellars. The fort’s first root cellar, a 100-by-20-foot structure, was built in 1879-80. In 1902 the government invested $3,900 about $237,000 in 2011 dollars to replace the…

After Custer’s defeat at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, the U.S. Army built eight new forts on the Northern Plains to solidify its control over the region. These included Fort Assinniboine, designated to guard the border from Sitting Bull’s…