Fort Union Trading Post National Historic Site

Visited: August 2017

Duration: 1 hour

Accommodations: Rough Riders Inn, Medora, North Dakota (highly recommend)

We traveled from Glacier National Park across Montana today and headed into North Dakota to visit Fort Union National Historic Site.

Small but worth a stop. We were the only people there when we arrived and got the royal treatment. We stopped into the visitor center and grabbed our Junior Rangers. We got right to work on these. The Ranger explained that all answers are going to be on the information signs located around the park.

We stopped off for a demonstration on how to make arrowheads for trade in these times.  We even got to keep them.  This guy was great giving us fountains of information about the Fort Union also known as the Outpost on the Missouri.  This is where principal plains tribes traded their goods. Fort Union was the Western Department’s most profitable division.

We finished up our Junior Rangers in no time at all and headed back into the visitor center where not only did we earn badges but also earned a bison hide for all of our hard work!  The kids were able to trade this hide for several items. Hunter chose to trade his for beads and Gunnar traded his for a flag (shown in the FUTP picture above).

Great stop to break up the time between Glacier and Theodore Roosevelt National Parks. Kids had a good time trading and we all learned. Success!

Have you been to Fort Union Trading?  What did you think of it?