Open 12pm - 4pm Saturday - Sunday through Labor Day.
Lewis and Clark named nearby Belt Butte for its girdle of rocks and, in 1877, John Castner named his town Belt. Coal brought Castner here, and Fort Benton was the first market for his Castner Coal Company.
The town experienced a boom time and in 1900 was Cascade County’s second-largest community, with a population above 2,800, including French, Finnish, Slav, German, and Swedish immigrants. It was during this boom that the jail was constructed, late in the 1890s, when 32 saloons flourished in town.
The historic Belt Jail, built in late 1890s, is on the National Register of Historic Places Inventory. This one-story jail was built of native stone to serve a small coal mining town. The exterior walls are of buff colored sandstone laid up in a random ashlar pattern.