The first military post in Montana Territory was not built in a town or near a settled community. It was built on a sage flat at the mouth of the Judith River, where the Missouri makes one of its great bends through the badlands of the Missouri Breaks, in a place so remote and so inhospitable that the men stationed there spent much of their time simply enduring it. Camp Cooke was established on July 10, 1866, by the First Battalion of the 13th Infantry Regiment under Major William Clinton, and it was named in honor of Brigadier General Philip St. George Cooke, who commanded the Department of the Platte. It was the first permanent Army post in Montana, and it lasted less than four years.

The Army's reasons for building at this location were logical enough on paper. The Missouri River was the primary artery of commerce and migration into Montana Territory in the 1860s, and the steamboats that carried passengers and freight up the river to Fort Benton were vulnerable to attack from the tribes whose territory they crossed. The Blackfeet, Gros Ventre, Assiniboine, Lakota Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, and Crow all had claims on the country through which the river ran, and the disruption of the buffalo herds and the steady encroachment of settlers had made relations with those tribes increasingly volatile. Camp Cooke was positioned to protect the steamboat traffic and to provide a base from which detachments could patrol the eastern Montana plains.

The post was built of cottonwood logs in a classic quadrangular pattern, with log barracks designed to house up to 1,000 men, a stockade measuring 500 feet by 600 feet, and the standard complement of buildings that a military post required. The construction used considerable adobe alongside the cottonwood logs, a material choice that would prove problematic in the Missouri Breaks climate. No sooner had the camp been established than a trader named Thomas C. Power built a small trading post nearby to supply goods and services to the soldiers. Power also operated the commissary at Camp Cooke, and his establishment, which he called Fort Claggett, became the commercial nucleus of the Judith Landing area.

The problems with Camp Cooke's location became apparent almost immediately. The cottonwood logs used in the fort's construction split, swelled, and cracked as they dried, making it impossible to keep out the weather. When it rained, the buildings leaked; when it snowed, the wind drove through the cracks in the walls. The post was infested with fleas, bedbugs, rattlesnakes, and rats, the last of which proved so destructive to the storehouses that they became a recurring subject of official complaint. The location in the Missouri Breaks, while strategically defensible, was so remote that supplying the post was a constant logistical challenge, and the steamboat traffic that the post was meant to protect was limited to the high-water months of May, June, and July.

The garrison's actual military activity was limited. Detachments from Camp Cooke were dispatched to guard transportation routes in southwestern Montana, and the post contributed men to the construction of Fort Shaw along the Helena road in 1867 and Fort Ellis near Bozeman in the same year. But for the troops who remained at Camp Cooke, there was little to do. The post saw one significant engagement, on May 17, 1868, when a force of Indians attacked while the garrison was shorthanded, a hundred troops having departed for a summer camp on the Musselshell River. With two companies under Major Clinton, the garrison held off the attack for six hours with the aid of several cannons, sustaining only one casualty, caused by an accident rather than enemy action.

The most damning assessment of Camp Cooke came from Lieutenant Colonel Samuel B. Holabird of the War Department, who inspected the post in 1869 and reported: "This unfortunate post is situated on the right bank of the River Missouri, at the mouth of the Judith, upon a sage bottom saturated with alkali. It is entirely overrun with rats and may be said to be in the process of demolition by them. The storehouses are in ruins; they were wretchedly constructed in the first instance, and nothing since has been done to remedy their shortcomings. General neglect and indifference characterized the post. The small garrison merely holds on in spite of rats."

The Helena Weekly Herald seized on Holabird's report and amplified it, calling Camp Cooke a "miserable, outlandish, isolated, bleak, sterile, and worse than useless spot" and arguing that the soldiers would be better employed protecting the settled communities of the territory. The Army agreed. The troops were moved to Fort Benton in 1869, and Camp Cooke was abandoned on March 31, 1870, less than four years after it was built. Thomas Power purchased the remnants of the fort and incorporated them into the large PN Ranch that he established at Judith Landing, a ranch that continues to exist in the area today.

Despite its brief and unhappy existence, Camp Cooke contributed to the development of Montana Territory. The detachments it sent out helped establish the road network and the more permanent posts that would support the territory's growth, and the trading post that Thomas Power built at Judith Landing became an important supply point for the steamboat traffic and the overland routes that crossed the Missouri at that location. Judith Landing continued to function as a river crossing and supply point long after the military post was gone, and the site accumulated additional layers of history through the steamboat era, the cattle drives, and the homestead period.

What Remains Today

Nothing survives of Camp Cooke itself. The cottonwood log structures that the 13th Infantry built in 1866 have been gone for more than a century, and the site at Judith Landing has been returned to agricultural and natural use. The location is within the Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument, which was established in 2001 to protect the landscape and historical resources of the Missouri Breaks.

Judith Landing State Park, established in recent years, provides public access to the Missouri River at the historic crossing point and includes interpretive materials about Camp Cooke and the broader history of the Judith Landing area. The park is located at the end of a long gravel road through the breaks country and offers access to the river, the surrounding badlands, and the historical landscape that has changed relatively little since the soldiers of the 13th Infantry looked out over it in 1866.

Visiting

Old Camp Cooke is located at Judith Landing in Fergus County, accessible via a gravel road from the town of Winifred to the south or from the north via roads through the breaks country. The drive to Judith Landing is long and remote, and visitors should be prepared for rough road conditions and the absence of services. The nearest communities with visitor services are Winifred to the south and Big Sandy to the north.

The Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument Visitor Center in Fort Benton provides information about the monument's resources, including the Judith Landing area and the history of Camp Cooke. The Missouri River between Fort Benton and the Fred Robinson Bridge is a designated Wild and Scenic River and is popular with canoeists and kayakers who travel the same route that the steamboats used in the 1860s.