Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark arrived at the mouth of the Judith River on May 29, 1805, named it for Clark's sweetheart Julia Hancock, and Lewis called it a handsome river while observing recent evidence of Indian encampments there. Fur traders who followed the Corps of Discovery became well acquainted with the area, and beginning in the 1860s Missouri River steamboats bound for Fort Benton often tied up there to buy fuel from woodhawks who cut timber on the surrounding bluffs. In 1865 the U.S. Army established Camp Cook on the west bank of the Judith, one of the most remote military posts in Montana, so difficult to reach that even the Indians moved away and left it alone, before the army abandoned it in 1869. In 1872 Fort Benton entrepreneur Thomas C. Power built Fort Clagett near the mouth of the river, and by 1885 it had become a bustling community with a stone warehouse, saloon, hotel, stable, blacksmith shop, and store.