Powder River Country

Of the places this exhibit names, the Portuguese Houses are the oldest. Antonio Montero, born in Oporto and working for Captain Benjamin Bonneville, built a stockaded post in 1834 on the Powder River east of present Kaycee to trade with the Apsáalooke (Crow), and ran it on and off until 1839 or 1840. Later travelers knew only its ruins. Since 2023 volunteers with the Hoofprints of the Past Museum in Kaycee have recovered more than seven hundred artifacts from the site, which archaeologists now call Fort Antonio.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Occidental Hotel — steps away
  Buffalo's 1880 grand hotel, its 1908 saloon ceiling still pocked with bullet holes, won once in a poker game and nearly torn down in the 1990s.
• Fort Phil Kearny State Historic Site — 14 mi
  A Bozeman Trail fort whose wood trains were attacked for two years, and the wagon-box corral where its woodcutters held out behind new breech-loaders in 1867.

More markers nearby

• Bozeman Trail — 0.7 mi
• Fort McKinney Monuments and Plaques — 2.2 mi
• Fort McKinney — 2.2 mi
• Buffalo — 3.3 mi