Chouteau County Sheriff's Office

Chouteau County Sheriffs Office is located in North Central Montana, about 100 miles south of the Canadian border. Established in 1865, it is one of the original nine counties of the Montana territory. Chouteau County was once the largest county in the Montana Territory and the second largest in the United States. Chouteau County was subdivided rep... eatedly to form other counties until it reached its present size, an area of 3,936 square miles and a population of 5,738. It is home to the Chippewa-Cree tribe on the Rocky Boys Indian reservation in the Bear Paw Mountains to the northeast and contains part of the Lewis and Clark National Forest in the Highwood Mountains to the south. The county consists of the towns of Big Sandy, Carter, Fort Benton, Geraldine, Highwood, Loma, Square Butte, Knees, and Floweree and all rural areas within Chouteau County. The Sheriff's Office was once responsible for a huge portion of Northeastern Montana. The Chouteau County Sheriff's Office has been continuously in operation from the earliest days of settlement of the county. The county is one of the original nine counties that was created on February 2, 1865, and named after Jean and Pierre Chouteau. The area encompasses plains, two mountain ranges, three rivers, and several lesser creeks and streams as well as the majority of the Upper Missouri National Monument, just under 4000 square miles in all. Old records of trials, sentences, and executions were maintained in ledgers and have since been turned over to the Montana Agricultural Museum in Fort Benton. Artifacts from those early years can be found in that museum, as is a portion of the old jail cells brought to Fort Benton via steamboat around 1880. The "Old Jail" of Fort Benton, Montana was built in 1881. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places and was described in one document as the oldest county jail in Montana. The Sheriff in office at the time it was built was Sheriff John J Healy (b.d 1834 - 1908), one document states "he was neither good nor bad, but a ...Read More