Historical Museum at Fort Missoula Drummond Depot

The Historical Museum at Fort Missoula occupies part of a post the U.S. Army established in 1877 to reassure settlers in western Montana — an 'open fort' that never had walls. Its most famous residents arrived in 1888: the Buffalo Soldiers of the 25th Infantry Regiment, whose Bicycle Corps tested the military potential of bicycles, capping several short journeys with a 1,900-mile ride from Fort Missoula to St. Louis in 1897. A modern complex of concrete buildings with red tile roofs went up between 1908 and 1914, and the fort went on to serve as Northwest Regional Headquarters for the Civilian Conservation Corps from 1933 and, during World War II, as a detention center that held over 1,200 Italian internees — who called it Camp Bella Vista — and 650 Japanese American men arrested after Pearl Harbor. The post was decommissioned in 1947 and much of the land passed to non-military agencies, including Missoula County, which operates the museum. Founded in 1975, it is one of only two Missoula museums accredited by the American Alliance of Museums, collecting artifacts of Missoula County, the fort itself, and western Montana's timber industry across 32 park-like acres.