In 2011 the Three Forks Historical Society rescued the Trident Northern Pacific Railway Station, moving it to Three Forks. The station was scheduled for demolition by its owner, Montana Rail Link. Built at Trident, Montana in 1910 by the Northern Pacific Railroad, the station was the town's major link to the outside world until the advent of improved highways and motor vehicles. Built by the Three Forks Portland Cement Company, the town of Trident was a company town with but one product, cement processed from the surrounding limestone hills. When, in the 1940s and 50s, it became easier to commute from nearby Three Forks, employees, despite the cheap rent available in Trident, began to build houses in Three Forks. Slowly Trident emptied, the post office closed and the railway station closed, remaining unused until being threatened with demolition in 2010.
When the station arrived in Three Forks it was placed at the northern end of a small historical park named
Milwaukee Railroad Park alongside the Milwaukee Road tracks in Three Forks. Nearby is a Milwaukee Railroad caboose which serves as the Three Forks Visitor Information Centre. The rest of the park is dedicated to educating visitors to the town on the importance of the Three Forks area to the settlement and development of Montana. Signs and placards, large and small, relate the story of Three Forks, the Headwaters of the Missouri River, and the natives, fur traders, explorers and others who came to the area, if only briefly.
Much of the content is dedicated to the Headwaters of the Missouri, where the Jefferson, Madison and Gallatin Rivers meet to form the Missouri River, only four miles northeast of Milwaukee Railroad Park.
Along the south end of the park are a series of nine plaques which cover an array of historical subjects. This, the first one, relays the story of the first settlement in the area, a fur trading post established at the Missouri headwaters by fur trappers in 1810.
Easy river access and large numbers of beaver made the Headwaters a logical place for the ...
THREE FORKS POST-1810
In 1810, Manuel Lisa of the Missouri Fur Co. sent a large party of 32 trappers under the command of Pierre Menard and Andrew Henry to establish a post at the Headwaters. Arriving on April 3, 1810, they built a "small enclosure" consisting of a "fort and trading house at the Forks between the Jefferson and Madison Rivers." They accumulated large numbers of beaver, but grizzly bears and Blackfeet killed several trappers. Among the dead was George Drouillard, the Shawnee half-breed admired by Lewis and Clark for his wilderness skills. Col. Menard finally concluded that it was hopeless to maintain a post at the Three Forks. In the fall of 1810, the trappers abandoned the attempt to establish a permanent trading post at the Headwaters.