abstract
| - Camp Cooke also known as Fort Claggett as 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, which 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. However 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 their boom towns in the western Montana mountains. The fort was also located deep in the remote badlands, called the Missouri Breaks, which paralleled 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.
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