FORT BENTON — Work continues on reconstructing the historic keelboat Mandan in Fort Benton. The keelboat appeared in the 1952 film "The Big Sky," playing a starring role set in the fur trade era.
The Fort Benton Community Improvement Association launched a project last year to restore the keelboat that has long been sitting in Front Street overlooking the Missouri River.
Kirby Matthew, a retired worker from the US Forest Service who also worked as the Historic Preservation Specialist, stated, "It kind of has a fascinating history to it. It was constructed in 1950 as a movie prop for 'The Big Sky,' and then it came to Fort Benton in, I believe, in 1964 and it's been sitting here as kind of a little landmark in Fort Benton for about 60 years now, and it's about 70 years old, so it's old enough to qualify for the national register."
Cascade County historian Ken Robison explained, "Before steamboats were capable of coming all the way up this last part of the upper Misouri River, they used keelboats to bring Indian trade goods from 1831 on ... Having that keelboat on the levy to represent that important era is really important symbolically. It also is important in other ways because that particular keelboat was the movie prop."
Click here to learn more about the Mandan.
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PART 1 - JULY 2022:
