Camp Cooke also known as Fort Claggett was a U.S. Army military post on the Missouri River in Montana Territory. The camp was established on July 10, 1866, just upstream from the mouth of the Judith River by the 13th Infantry Regiment. By 1867 Camp Cooke had a strength of approximately 400 men. The army established the post to protect steamboat traffic en route to Fort Benton. The boats carried passengers and freight to supply swiftly growing boom towns at the site of rich gold strikes in the western mountains of the Montana Territory.
The location of the fort was along the upper Missouri River as it crossed the broad eastern plains of Montana, far from the gold camps and boom towns in southwest Montana. The fort was also located deep in the remote badlands, called the Missouri Breaks, which parallels the Missouri River for hundreds of miles. Once the fort was constructed the garrison had little to do. Except for the high water months of May, June and July, Missouri River steamboat traffic was limited. As a result, soldiers were dispatched from Camp Cooke to other more strategic locations in the Montana Territory. Detachments from Camp Cooke guarded major transportation routes in Southwestern Montana, including the roads between Fort Benton and Helena. They built Fort Shaw along that route in 1867 in the Sun River Valley. Other detachments from Camp Cooke built Fort Ellis near Bozeman, Montana in the upper Gallatin Valley, which guarded the critical east-west over land route over Bozeman Pass. Camp Cooke was abandoned less than four years after it was built on March 31, 1870, in response to constant well-founded complaints that the location of the post was too remote.
Purpose of Camp Cooke
The purpose of Camp (Fort) Cooke was to provide protection to Missouri River traffic and settlers in the Montana Territory who were traveling up the Missouri to the goldfields. Following the gold strikes at Bannack, 1862 (Grasshopper Gulch); Virginia City, 1863 (Alder Gulch); Helena, 1864 (Prickly Pear Creek and Last Chance Gulch); and the spectacular gold strikes in 1865 at the Montana Bar and other sites in Confederate Gulch, immigrants poured into the Montana Territory. The gold fields were in southwestern Montana, in the intermontane valleys. The immigrants had to cross the extensive eastern Montana plains, to reach the gold fields. The primary access route to the gold fields was up the Missouri River by steamboat to the head of navigation at Fort Benton. A secondary route for overland travelers was over the Bozeman Trail which branched off from the Oregon Trail in Wyoming Territory, skirted the eastern edge of the Big Horn Mountains after which the trail continued up the Yellowstone River valley to reach the Montana goldfields via the Bozeman Pass.
Settlers and miners traveling to the Montana goldfields crossed territory that Indian tribes considered theirs. These lands were occupied by the Blackfoot, Gros Ventre, Assiniboine, Lakota Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, and Crow tribes. The Missouri River steamboats and the resulting freight routes fanning out from the Missouri River, and the overland immigrant trains coming up the Bozeman Trail, drove off the buffalo and other game on which the Indian depended. In reaction, the Indians retaliated by mounting small scale, scattered, guerrilla type attacks and raids. The Indians attacked steamboats and freight wagons. They attacked parties of overland immigrant and mail carriers. They stole livestock and killed travelers and settlers as opportunity presented.
First army post in Montana Territory
As reports of thefts of livestock and killings by Indians accumulated, the newspapers that had sprung up in the swiftly growing mining and trading communities of the Montana Territory demanded that the U.S. Army provide protection. Petitions and letters went east to Washington. In response the army established Camp Cooke on the Missouri River in the Montana Territory on July 10, 1866. To protect the Bozeman Trail, the army had established forts in Dakota Territory at Fort Reno (1865) and Fort Phil Kearny (1866). On August 12, 1866, the army established Fort C.F. Smith on the Big Horn River just inside the boundary of Montana Territory. Thus, by the narrow margin of one month, Camp Cooke became the first U.S. Army post in the Montana Territory.
Naming Camp Cooke
Camp Cooke was named in honor of Brig. Gen. Philip St. George Cooke. In 1866 he was in command of the Department of the Platte, which then included the Montana Territory.