Biohazard and Pathogen Disinfection in Chinook, MT

Chinook is an incorporated city and the county seat of Blaine County, on Montana's Hi-Line in the north-central part of the state.

The town is named for the warm chinook winds that sweep down the eastern slopes of the Rockies in winter; newspaperman D. R. McGinnis is credited with suggesting the name.

Chinook traces its origins to 1871, when Irish immigrant Thomas O'Hanlon settled near the old Fort Belknap trading post, about a mile and a half from the present townsite.

The Great Northern Railway pushed across the Hi-Line in the 1880s, and the first train reached Chinook on September 13, 1887; the town had its own post office by 1890.

When Blaine County was created in 1912, Chinook became its county seat, and the county courthouse was completed by 1914.

The 2020 census counted 1,185 residents in Chinook, down slightly from 1,203 in 2010, living in 570 households.

Chinook sits along U.S. Route 2 on the Milk River, about 22 miles east of Havre, at an elevation of about 2,429 feet.

A Utah-Idaho Sugar Company factory, hauled into town in 100 train cars in 1924 and formally opened on October 1, 1925, processed local sugar beets for about 26 years before closing in the mid-20th century.

The sugar beet era lives on in Chinook: the high school teams are the Sugarbeeters, and the town celebrates a Sugarbeet Festival each September.

Chinook is the gateway to the Bear Paw Battlefield, about 16 miles south of town, where Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce made their final stand in 1877; the site is part of Nez Perce National Historical Park.