(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .



Photo Diary: Fort Missoula MT [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2023-07-12

Fort Missoula was established in 1877. During the Second World War it became an internment camp for Italian “enemy aliens”.

For those who don't know, I live in a converted campervan and travel around the country, posting photo diaries of places that I visit.

In the summer of 1860, Christopher Higgins and Francis Worden packed up a wagon and left Walla Walla, Washington, for the Missoula Valley, a sparsely-settled area of Montana. Here they set up the Higgins and Worden General Store, and called their little settlement “Hellgate”. The store attracted the attention of the US Army, and the military wagon route that led from Fort Benton, Montana, to Walla Walla now altered to pass through Hellgate. The little town grew as more settlers arrived, hoping to make a living from the Army troops who regularly passed through.

Within just a few years, though, the townspeople realized that their settlement could not really thrive without a water-powered grain mill, so most of them relocated to another spot, on the Missoula River just a few miles away. The new town was at first known as “Missoula Mills”, which later became shortened to just “Missoula”. In June 1883 the Northern Pacific Railroad established a station in Missoula.

As the town grew, however, tensions appeared. The US Army was already in conflict with the Nez Perce Nation of Native Americans, led by Chief Joseph. The citizens of Missoula petitioned the Army for an outpost to protect them, and in June 1877 Fort Missoula was established, garrisoned by two companies from the 7th Infantry Regiment. As the Nez Perce approached Missoula that summer in their attempt to flee across the border into Canada, Captain Charles Rawn, in command of a detachment of troops, constructed a hasty barricade in the Lolo Canyon to stop them. The Natives simply went around it, and the effort became known as “Fort Fizzle”.

The only action the Missoula troops saw was in August, when they and other units of the 7th Infantry helped corner the Nez Perce at the Battle of Big Hole, which crippled the Natives and led Chief Joseph to finally surrender a short while later, famously declaring, “I shall fight no more forever.” Many of the surrendered Nez Perce were then confined at Fort Missoula.

In 1888, the garrison at the Fort was replaced by the 25th Infantry Regiment. This was one of four segregated African-American units, with white officers, who had served in the West during the “Indian Wars”, and who were known to the Natives as “Buffalo Soldiers”.

During their time at Fort Missoula, the 25th Infantry was selected by Major General Nelson Miles to carry out an experiment. By the 1880s, bicycles had become immensely popular in the United States, and the Army thought it saw some military potential in a unit of highly-mobile “bicycle troops”. So the African-American soldiers of the 25th Infantry under 2nd Lt James Moss were issued bicycles (provided for free by the AG Spalding Company) and began practicing military maneuvers with them, making trips to the Mission Mountains and then to Yellowstone National Park. In one exercise, a detachment of 20 troopers and 2 officers, each carrying about 25 pounds of gear, bicycled all the way from Missoula to St Louis, covering the 1900 miles in just 41 days. Ultimately, though, the Army decided that horses were more versatile.

When the Spanish-American War broke out in 1898, the Buffalo Soldiers of the 25th Regiment were sent to fight in Cuba and later in the Philippines, and Fort Missoula was now garrisoned by a small volunteer unit called Grigsby’s Cowboys, but by 1900 the Fort had been completely abandoned. This brought protest from the local townspeople, who were heavily dependent upon the incomes they received from the Fort’s soldiers, and Montana Senator Joseph Dixon successfully pressured the Army into expanding and re-garrisoning the facility. Over the next eight years a total of eighteen new buildings were constructed, leading Fort Missoula to be nicknamed the “Million-Dollar Fort”. When the US entered the First World War in 1917, the Fort became the home base for the 4th Infantry Regiment and was utilized as a training center for the military’s truck drivers and engine mechanics.

After the war, however, Fort Missoula was once again neglected and nearly abandoned, until 1933 when it became the regional headquarters for the Civilian Conservation Corps, the New Deal public-works program. CCC teams from Missoula were sent to projects throughout Montana and Idaho, including Glacier National Park and Yellowstone National Park.

By 1940, it was apparent to many in the military that the United States would soon be at war with Japan and the Axis powers, and plans were already being made for the internment of “enemy aliens”—German, Japanese and Italian citizens who were living in the United States. As a neutral country, the US had already interned a number of “belligerents” from these countries, including the entire crew of the Italian passenger liner Conte Biancamano when it entered US territory in the Panama Canal.

Immediately after America entered the war in December 1941, actions were taken. Already that April, the War Department had placed Fort Missoula under the control of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which had the responsibility for “controlling” enemy aliens, as an “Alien Detention Center”, and even before Pearl Harbor some 600 Italian “belligerents” had already been interned at the Fort. Now, some 1200 people of Italian citizenship who were living inside the US and were considered to be potential security threats were also taken into custody and placed under internment. Most of them went to Fort Missoula, where they were housed in rough wooden barracks which had been constructed with their own labor. A short time later, as the US began rounding up over 125,000 Japanese-Americans and placing them into camps, about 650 of these detainees were sent to Fort Missoula for specific questioning before being moved to one of the ten Japanese “War Relocation Centers”.

The Italian internees were held in Missoula for the duration of the war. Though the entire camp was surrounded by a ten-foot fence and guard towers, the prisoners were allowed to work at jobs in town, and were also employed in forestry work (including firefighting), sugar beet farms, and construction work on Highway 12.

After the war, Fort Missoula became an incarceration center for military personnel who were awaiting court-martial for criminal offenses. In 1948 the facility was closed, and many of the buildings were sold or torn down. Portions of the land were given to the US Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management. By 2001, most of the site had been turned over to Missoula County, which set up a Fort Missoula Historic District under the management of the Northern Rockies Heritage Center.

Today the site is one of the best-preserved of the WW2 internment camps. There is a museum with artifacts, and a self-guided walking tour around the existing buildings.

The site also has an area which displays a number of other historic buildings which have been gathered around the area and relocated here for display. That will be a separate diary.

Some photos from a visit to the Fort.

The historic area is part of the Fort Missoula Regional Park

The museum

The museum is housed inside the Quartermaster’s Building, which was built in 1911

This Guard Tower was added in 1941 when the site was chosen to house interned “enemy aliens”.

Inside the museum. There are artifacts from the Fort and from the city history of Missoula.

Flag of the 25th Infantry Regiment, which was based at Fort Missoula

The Non-Commissioned Officers Quarters, built in 1878

The Carriage House, built in 1880

The Fort’s Headquarters Building, built in 1883

This may look like an ammo bunker, but it’s actually a root cellar built in 1908. The troops were not issued any fresh vegetables, and they had to grow and store their own.

The Stables were built in 1910

In 1936 this building was put up as the regional headquarters for the Civilian Conservation Corps. Today it houses the Rocky Mountain Museum of Military History, which will be its own diary.

The Fort’s Recreation Hall was built here in 1939—it burned to the ground in 1946

Two of the barracks buildings that were used to house the internees during WW2

This field, part of the original Fort parade grounds, was filled with barracks buildings

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/7/12/2177778/-Photo-Diary-Fort-Missoula-MT

Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/