Fort Missoula CCC Walking Guide
Fort Missoula CCC Walking Guide
Fort Missoula’s existing army infrastructure provided an ideal location for the CCC regional district headquarters. The CCC utilized several of the buildings that had already been erected on the Fort grounds. They also built many new ones over the course of their tenure. During the nine years of the program, enrollees made other improvements to Fort Missoula. The stone pylons at the entrance of the Fort grounds were built by CCC men in 1935. Corpsmen also planted most of the Siberian elms lining the fort’s roadways.
Use this interactive map to see the different buildings used by the CCC at Fort Missoula. As you can see, many of them are still standing, and have been reused by the Historical Museum at Fort Missoula, the Rocky Mountain Museum of Military History, the US Forest Service, and other agencies.
Want to see the modern fort for yourself? Click here to begin the walking tour!
How did Fort Missoula Change over the years?
When the CCC arrived at Fort Missoula, the fort had already been in use for over fifty years. Here is a recreation of what the grounds looked like in 1889, about 20 years into the fort's lifespan:
By the time of the CCC's tenure at the Fort, the number of buildings had expanded significantly. This map is from 1944, near the end of the CCC's time at Fort Missoula. The Department of Justice had already begun to use the Fort as an Alien Detention Center, and so a large number of new barracks buildings had been constructed on the east part of the Fort to house Italian and Japanese prisoners.
Finally, here is an aerial view of the Fort grounds today. Fort Missoula was decommissioned in the late 1960s, and so the land has been split up between a variety of different agencies including Missoula County, the City of Missoula, the University of Montana, the US Army Corps of Engineers, and a number of small non-profit organizations.
How does today compare with the CCC era?
Here is the modern aerial view of Fort Missoula with the 1944 map superimposed onto it. How many similarities do you see between what is here today and what the men of the CCC would have seen during their time here?