Father Ravalli

One of the first white men to come into the Hamilton area was Father Ravalli. Today the county which covers the entire Bitterroot Valley is named after him: Ravalli County.

Arrival of Father Ravalli

The St. Mary's Mission, in Stevensville, is one of the earliest landmarks of European settlers in the Montana territories. Father DeSmet, a Jesuit priest who helped found the mission, sowed the first wheat crops there in 1841. Four years later, in 1945 Father Ravalli arrived with stones to build a flour mill for grinding the wheat into flour. A friend in Belgium had given Father Ravalli two 12-inch burr stones for his mission in the new world. The stones were shipped up the Columbia drainage to Lewiston, Idaho, and then brought over the mountains by mule trail into the Bitterroot Valley to the Saint Mary's Mission.

After his arrival, Father Ravalli started building his flour mill with an over shot water wheel to turn the stones by water power. Lumber for the mill was whip-sawed. The stones were put in place and the first flour ground that year. A French-Canadian named Biledot was the first mill wright for the new mill which could produce four bushels of coarse ground flour a day.

In 1852 the mission and mill was purchased by Major John Owens who made a notation in his journal that he had ground 175 pounds of flour in 6 hours. By 1857 John Owens started constructing a new mill, and the old stones were sent to St. Ignatius.That mill was still being operated until October 1865, and it burnt down in 1889.