page_title: Christopher P. Higgins
section_title: Founding of Missoula
hierarchical_section_title: Christopher P. Higgins / Founding of Missoula
caption_attribution_description: English: Missoula's Higgins Block
context_page_description: Capt. Christopher Powers Higgins was an American Army captain and later businessman who with Frank Worden founded the Hellgate Trading Post and the nearby city of Missoula, Montana. He erected one of the first lumber and flouring mills on the Clark Fork River near present Downtown Missoula as well as many of Missoula's first buildings and establishments. He was one of the original county commissioners, member of first legislature of the Montana Territory, and incorporator of The Montana Historical Society. Higgins Avenue and bridge as well as the Higgins block in Downtown Missoula are named after him. He is buried in Missoula Cemetery.
context_section_description: In 1860 Higgins partnered with Frank Worden, a general merchandise store owner in Washington to set up the Hellgate Trading Post in the Missoula Valley along the Mullan Road, which had only just reached the area that summer.  On March 30, 1863, Higgins married Juliet P Grant, the daughter of another Missoula pioneer Richard Grant (for whom Grant Creek is named).  Hellgate would never grow very large because the water supply was unsuitable to power the lumber and flour mills Higgins and Worden wanted to construct.  The settlement was moved four miles east to the location of today's Downtown Missoula in 1865 and renamed Missoula Mills.  In 1873, Higgins organized the Missoula National Bank as one of the first banks in Montana Territory and located it next to his and Worden's store built two years earlier and now called the Worden & Company Store.  The store itself had, in fact, been built on the location of Higgins' former log home before he constructed a larger home several blocks east.  In 1888, Higgins began construction of the Higgins Block but died before its opening in 1889.  The building is now on the National Register of Historic Places.
caption: Higgins Block
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