Fort Harrison Historic District
In the 1870s, the U.S. Army dotted the territory with forts as it worked with brutal efficiency to confine Indians to reservations. With that mission well underway by the 1880s, it closed most of its nine Montana forts and decided to consolidate operations at a new location. Eager to benefit economically, Helena businessmen campaigned for the new headquarters, pointing to the capital city’s strategic location on two transcontinental rail lines and the valley’s healthy climate. The fact that President Benjamin Harrison’s son Russell lived in Helena may have helped their cause. In 1892, Congress authorized $300,000 to build the fort at Helena. Construction began in 1894; Nicholas Kessler’s nearby brickyard likely supplied the brick. Architect C. S. Johnson designed the “plain but substantially built” buildings using standard army plans and situated them facing a central parade ground. The rectilinear buildings reflected the Army’s preference for order and symmetry, and the residences’ sizes and detailing reflected their occupants’ ranks. African American soldiers with the Twenty-fourth Infantry returned to the fort after serving with distinction in the Philippines in 1902. Threatened with closure after World War I, Fort Harrison found new life in the 1920s, first as a tuberculosis sanitorium and then as a veterans hospital. Construction of a new hospital building in the 1930s modernized the facility. The Devil’s Brigade (First Special Service Force) and Montana National Guard troops trained here during World War II, only briefly interrupting the fort’s primary, continuing mission as a Veterans Affairs healthcare facility.
Fort Harrison Original Hospital
Fort Harrison Veterans Hospital Historic District
The hospital at Fort Harrison was the last of twenty-two original buildings completed in September 1895, just before the hospital corps and Companies B and E of the 22nd Infantry Regiment arrived from Fort Assiniboine to their new quarters. By 1906, the Army had added open-air verandas for…
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Parade Ground
Fort Harrison Veterans Hospital Historic District
Historic military forts across the United States differ greatly, but most share a common landscape feature—the parade ground—where soldiers practiced military drills, held ceremonies, and gathered for recreation. Fort Harrison’s parade ground has changed little since 1895. Using standardized plans,…
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Hospital (Building #141)
Fort Harrison Veterans Hospital Historic District
The need to serve World War I’s returning Veterans led the Veterans Bureau to expand its services in the 1920s and 1930s. However, by the early 1930s, Fort Harrison’s hospital (Building #2) was overcrowded and antiquated. In 1932, the Veterans Administration (VA) completed a new 165-bed brick…
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