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 sixth one, touches on the Louisiana Purchase, a transaction which immediately doubled the land area of the United States.
The Missouri and Mississippi River drainages determined the boundaries of the ...
LOUISIANA PURCHASE-1803
The acquisition, as well as the exploration, of the Mississippi-Missouri by the white man was carried out against a background of European power politics. In selling the Louisiana territory to the U.S., Napoleon of France acquired money to further his own ambitions against England, while at the same time setting up against England "a maritime rival who will humble her pride." For the United States, the Louisiana Purchase was "an event of such magnitude that its results are beyond measurement. It doubled the area, adding resources of incalculable value, providing a potential that was certain to make the U.S. a great power and guaranteeing our expansion beyond the Rockies to the Pacific ... There is no aspect of our national life, no part of our social and political structure, and no subsequent event in the course of our history that it has not affected." —Bernard DeVoto