On the corner of East Pine and Adams Street is an unassuming two-story house, clearly historic, but “ straightforward and unpretentious.”  With a steeply pitched gable roof and an open front porch, it’s the type of house one would expect to encounter somewhere in the New England countryside. Yet, in Missoula, Montana, the house not only holds the distinction of being the oldest standing house in the city, but it was home to one of the city’s founders, Francis Worden.

Born in Vermont in 1830, Worden ventured west in 1852. He lived in California and Oregon, before taking a job as postmaster in Walla Walla, Washington. It was there that he met C. P. Higgins, with whom he went into partnership to establish a trading post along the Mullan Road in Montana Territory. They located their original operation at the settlement of Hellgate, just west of present-day Missoula. Worden served as the community’s first post master. Along with Higgins and third partner David Pattee, Worden relocated their business four miles to the west and expanded it to include a grist mill in what is today downtown Missoula. For a time, the settlement was known as “ Wordensville”  until Worden change it to “ Missoula Mills”  and finally Missoula.

Worden built his house on what is now East Pine Street in 1874. At the time, the house was set back from the city on an open plain, which made it a much more likely setting for a farmhouse. Besides featuring architecture common in his native Vermont, he also planted maple trees—shipped from Vermont and brought to Montana by Missouri River steamboat—to provide shade for his property. He also planted Missoula’s first lilac bushes in his yard, which still bloom there. With the arrival of the railroad in 1884, the town’s population grew and a neighborhood sprung up around Worden property, but the house remains a visible reminder of Missoula earliest days and a tribute to the man who, according to an obituary published upon his death, “ possessed a undaunted courage, and faced danger wherever his duty called him, calmly and without bravado.”

Credits and Sources:

Cohen, Stan. Missoula County Images, volume II. Missoula: Pictorial Histories Publishing Co., 1993.

Koelbel, Lenora. Missoula, The Way It Was: A Portrait of an Early Western Town. Missoula: Gateway Publishing and Printing, 1972.

Mathews, Allan James. “ A Guide to Historic Missoula,” Montana Mainstreets, vol. 6. Helena: Montana Historical Society, 2003.

Contributions to the Montana Historical Society, with Transactions, vol. 2. Helena: State Publishing Company, 1896.

National Park Service. “National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form, Missoula Downtown Historic District.” 2003.

Photographs courtesy of Archives & Special Collections, Maureen and Mike Mansfield Library, The University of Montana, Missoula, Montana.