The Place:
The seat of Teton County (there is actually a Choteau County in Montana, but somehow they were unable to get Choteau County and Choteau, the town, to coincide), Choteau is a small city of about, 1,700. It lies in a grain growing area about 20 miles (32 km) east of the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains. This is evidenced by the two elevators in the town, the larger former General Mills elevator capable of storing 432,000 bushels of grain. Choteau is named for French fur-trader and explorer
Pierre Chouteau, Jr., also the namesake of the aforementioned Chouteau County and Pierre, South Dakota.
Choteau's first post office arrived in the town from a fort and Indian agency, known as
The Old Agency, 3 miles north of Choteau, in 1879. The post office was named
Choteau in 1882. The Postmaster changed it to
Chouteau in 1903 but changed it back to
Choteau when the city incorporated as
Choteau in October 1913. The town is now being served by its seventh post office, opened December 30, 1965.
Choteau's
Teton County Courthouse, a large 2½ story building of locally quarried stone, with a 3½ story tower centered on its front elevation, is a very impressive building for a "small county" courthouse. Teton County's population presently stands at just over 6,000.
Given that Choteau is near one of the most important paleontological sites in the world,
Egg Mountain, Choteau's
Old Trail Museum has many displays relating to paleontology, catching the eye of travelers with three quite noticeable near-life-size dinosaur statues outside.
The Person:
PIERRE CHOUTEAU, JR.
Pierre Chouteau, Jr., (born Jan. 19, 1789, St. Louis [U.S.]—died Sept. 6, 1865, St. Louis, Mo.), American western entrepreneur who started in the Indian trade and died a multimillionaire.
Chouteau’s father, born Jean Pierre Chouteau, was a half brother of Auguste Chouteau, being the son of Marie Thérèse (Bourgeois) Chouteau and Pierre Laclède Liguest. Pierre junior worked briefly in his father’s store, but by the second decade of the 19th century he was in business for himself, trading with the Indians in the upper Mississippi and Missouri valleys.
In 1831 Chouteau joined the firm that acted as the western agent for the American Fur Company of John Jacob Astor. Three years later Chouteau bought out Astor’s interest, and in 1838 the firm of Pierre Chouteau, Jr., & Company enjoyed almost complete control over the Indian trade in the area.
But his business interests extended well beyond the Indian trade. In the 1830s he launched the first steamboat on the upper Missouri, and he later was an owner of an Illinois railroad. To augment his interests in trade and transportation, he was also associated with an iron-mining company in Missouri.
Chouteau’s business acumen was matched by his generosity. He exerted himself to help the Indians, western travelers, scientific expeditions, and many others. A fort and a city (Pierre, capital of South Dakota) were named after him.
From the Britannica