Old Missoula

Sugar Beet Plant Started Near Fort

Ground was purchased in 1891 for Missoula’s first sugar beet factory on the Bitter Root River near Ft. Missoula. The site was selected because of the access to water of the river, the near-by Bitter Root branch line of the Northern Pacific and also because the principal source of beets was the Bitter Root Valley.

E. L. Bonner, one of the principal backers of the project, went east that year to buy the machinery needed for the plant.