Frontier capitalist C. A. Broadwater received the contract to provide locally manufactured bricks and timber, hauled from the Bear’s Paw Mountains, for the construction of Fort Assinniboine. He hired five hundred Métis (mixed-blood Chippewa-Cree) from the Upper Red River Valley to make bricks with a machine capable of producing up to 25,000 a day. As post trader, he also received the stage and freight contracts and the franchise to operate the post store. Using his own brick, he built one of the largest structures at the fort, a remnant of his 1879 trading post that ultimately included a large general store, two large warehouses, a photography studio, barbershop, saloon, attached officer’s club, and hotel/restaurant. Military families could buy luxuries such as smoked oysters, hair brushes, and silk handkerchiefs there, and the store soon became a center of trade for the surrounding territory. Broadwater also built an Indian trading hut to take in furs from the Métis and other Indian peoples. Around 1892, the army bought out Broadwater, and the post quartermaster ran the operation until the army abandoned the fort in 1911.