On June 14, 1869, nine sternwheelers moored along this bank, unloading whiskey, gold pans, salt, bacon, boots, and miners, while ox teams hauled freight to faraway points. Wells Fargo coaches took miners to Helena for $25, and fights with the Blackfoot were free. From 1860 to 1890, six hundred mountain boats, so called because they came nearly to the Rockies, docked at Fort Benton. Steamboats supplied the U.S. cavalry, the Indians they hunted, Canadian Mounties, and whiskey-runners, and Benton merchants were plumb impartial about business, purveying goods from posts at Fort Whoop-up, Qu'Appelle, Last Chance Gulch, and other places with just ordinary names. One spring before the first boat, tobacco sweepings were sold to eager residents at a buck a pipeful. On a fall day in '66, armed miners loaded a wagon full of gold dust onto the Luella bound for St. Louis.