When John Mullan built a wagon road across western Montana in 1860, he used a ford across the Sun River just a few yards west of here that Indians had used for generations. In 1862, the crossing was the site of a government farm intended to demonstrate farming techniques to the powerful Blackfeet Indians. Electa Bryan married the Montana outlaw Henry Plummer at the farm in 1863. About 1862, Johnny Healy established a trading post on the east side of the ford to trade with his Blackfeet neighbors and travelers on the Mullan Road. After the gold strikes in southwestern Montana in the early 1860’s, traffic between the mining camps and Fort Benton made Sun River Crossing an important place. Healy and John Largent built a toll bridge at the ford in 1867. A settlement quickly grew up near the bridge and prospered because of the heavy traffic on the road. The arrival of the railroad in Great Falls in 1887 did not diminish the importance of Sun River Crossing, and it continued to thrive until after 1900. Today, the community and the bridge, in its fourth incarnation, attest to the strategic importance of this place in the history of Montana.