Talk to old timers about Fort Assinniboine and the first thing you learn is how to spell Assinniboine (3 n's if you please). The next thing you learned was how shocked the towns around Fort Assinniboine were that this brand new state of the art base and huge military reservation was going to be closed while many much older bases stayed open. Back then, like today, there was no figuring out what the Government was going to do next.

I was always told that Fort Assinniboine was built in Montana Territory because of the confluence of three events. When General Custer was killed at the Little...