Chouteau County Courthouse

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.

From the record

“The Chouteau County Courthouse is a historic building in Fort Benton, Montana. It acts as the county courthouse for Chouteau County, Montana.”
Wikipedia article Chouteau County Courthouse, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 20 National Register listings published here for Chouteau County · listed in 1980 · category: Building.

Sources: the Wikipedia article · the case file at the National Archives · the National Register database, National Park Service

The listing

What is counted as historic. The nomination lists 1 building as contributing to the listing.
Address. 1308 Franklin St., Fort Benton, 59442
When was it listed? September 1980
Category. building
Census division. Fort Benton
National Register reference number. 80002404 - the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.

Fires near this property

5 since 2010

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 5 fires within 5 miles of Chouteau County Courthouse between 2010 and 2019, burning about 438 acres in total. None started naturally. None was recorded as arson. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Reported cause	Fires
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	3
Power generation/transmission/distribution	1
Smoking	1

The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.

Date	Cause	Size	Reported by	Name on the report
10 September 2018	Power generation/transmission/distribution	200 acres	Northeastern Land Office	not named
30 July 2019	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	15 acres	Chouteau County	FDH-MTLG19-99
18 July 2019	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	100 acres	Chouteau County	FDH-MTLG19-70
20 April 2018	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	3.0 acres	Northeastern Land Office	not named
26 March 2010	Smoking	120 acres	Northeastern Land Office	WILRAY

Every fire recorded in Chouteau County

Mines and quarries near this property

4 within 5 miles

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 4 workings within 5 miles of Chouteau County Courthouse: 3 unknowns, 1 producer. 1 still produces. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Site	Commodity	Status
Naesethe Sand and Gravel Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Producer
Unnamed Gravel Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Unknown
Unnamed Gravel Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Unknown
Unnamed Gravel Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Unknown

Every working recorded in Chouteau County

Storms near this property

3 since 1993

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Fort Benton, the town this property stands in, in 3 storm reports between 1993 and 1995: 2 thunderstorm wind, 1 hail. No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date opens the federal record of that event.

When	Event	Place named	Harm	What the report says
May 1993	Thunderstorm Wind	Fort Benton	$50,000	Trees and power lines down.
May 1993	Thunderstorm Wind	Fort Benton	$5,000	Trees and power lines down.
June 1995	Hail	Fort Benton	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in Chouteau County

Map coverage status

No historic map-sheet match is published for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary. Browse the county's mapped places while that work is pending.

Listed places nearby

6 within 8 miles

Other National Register properties close enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties to their map sheets.

Property	Distance	Listed
St. Paul's Episcopal Church	under 500 feet	1980
I.G. Baker House	0.1 miles	1966
Masonic Building	0.2 miles	1980
Fort Benton Engine House	0.2 miles	1980
Fort Benton Bridge	0.2 miles	1980
I. G. Baker House	0.2 miles	1980

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 80002404 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Chouteau County	All 20 listed properties in this county.

Provenance

Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.