Many Cultures Forged Strong Communities

The panel's last line has the mill still prospering; it closed in 2008. Hammond's Blackfoot mill began cutting in 1886, Marcus Daly's Anaconda Company bought it in 1898 for nearly $1.5 million, and Anaconda ran mill and company town until 1972. Champion added a plywood plant, and Stimson Lumber bought the works in 1993, then shut them and auctioned the machinery, ending 122 years of continuous production. Snow caved in a third of the plywood plant's roof in 2011. The site is now the Bonner Mill Industrial Park, and a museum beside the post office keeps the mill's story.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• A Carousel for Missoula — 5.3 mi
  A cabinetmaker's promise to the city council: give it a home, and he would carve the horses.
• Fort Missoula — 8.7 mi
  An 1877 Army post that held Italian seamen and Japanese immigrant men behind its fence in World War II.
• Missoula Smokejumper Visitor Center — 10 mi
  The base of the crews descended from the first two men ever to parachute onto a forest fire.
• Travelers' Rest State Park — 13 mi
  The one Lewis and Clark campsite with proof in the ground: hearths, gun lead and a latrine still laced with mercury.

More markers nearby

• Homeward Bound on a Risky Shortcut — steps away
• Brave New World — steps away
• Twilight of an Era — steps away
• The Lolo Trail — 12 mi