Carter Ferry

At the end of Ferry Road, six miles off U.S. Highway 87 and 27 miles north of Great Falls, the road runs down a ramp into the Missouri River. A driver who wants to cross honks the horn, or calls from a phone near the ramp, and the ferry operator brings the boat over. It carries two passenger cars at a time. An engine and cable system pulls its double hulls across the river between two towers anchored on the shore, to a matching ramp on the far bank.

The Carter Ferry is one of three river ferries still working the Upper Missouri. The other two are the Virgelle ferry and the Stafford-McClelland ferry near Winifred. Chouteau County runs it, and the crossing is free. The season depends on the weather and usually opens in April. The state tourism listings give a typical run of April through November, and a 2021 radio station account put the close in late October or early November.

The gravel ramp beside the ferry

Next to the county’s ferry landing is a gravel boat ramp, part of the Carter Ferry Fishing Access Site kept by Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks. The site covers 20.26 acres at an elevation of 2,716 feet. It is for day use only and has a boat launch and toilets. The state lists boating, fishing, and hunting there, with hunting restricted to archery. The tourism listings add motor boating and rafting.

A boat for the Carter station

Chouteau County established the ferry in 1917 so that people living south of the river could reach the Great Northern Railway station at Carter. A. H. Stewart built the ferryboat for $850 to Montana State Highway Department specifications. The county contracted with Sam Denton to run it.

In 1945 the state replaced the original with a newer steel-hulled boat. By then William Ellis Collins had the job. He had taken over the ferry in 1942 and worked it through each ferry season. The Fort Benton River Press of April 9, 1947, reported that he had been hurt on the Carter ferry on a Monday and had died that Thursday at St. Clare Hospital in Fort Benton. His obituary called him the Carter ferryman for the past five years.

The steel-hulled boat stayed in service until 2004. That year the Montana Department of Transportation and Blaine, Chouteau, and Fergus counties put three new ferryboats on the state’s Missouri River crossings, with special federal funding arranged through Montana’s congressional delegation. The new vessels were designed to closely match the old ferryboats.

Clark above the crossing, June 1805

A historical marker in Carter, at the junction of U.S. 87 and Buck Bridge Road, records an earlier party on this stretch of river. The marker has been reported damaged. On June 4, 1805, while Captain Lewis was exploring Maria’s River, Captain Clark explored the Missouri upstream from the Carter Ferry site. His small party, as the marker names it, was Sgt. Glass, the Field brothers, G. Shannon, and York.

Clark noted that the night was cold and that it had snowed in the mountains to the south. Those mountains were named the Snowy Mountains and are now called the Highwood Mountains. He wrote that the current was strong and rapid. The river kept on to the west of south, and Clark judged it unnecessary to follow it farther, since it was flowing from the right direction. The men killed three grizzlies, crossed the plain to the valley of the Teton River, and camped where the “little” river cuts through the ridge. Clark inscribed his name on a large cottonwood there, and they ate venison for dinner. The next morning they went down the Teton to the main camp at the confluence of the rivers.