Confederate Memorial Fountain (Helena, Montana)

The fountain was commissioned in 1915 by the Winnie Davis Chapter of United Daughters of the Confederacy. The project was approved by the City of Helena Council, through its "Special Committee on the Great Northern Park" (prior name of Hill Park), as reported verbally May 3, 1915 by Alderman Riddell. It was designed by architect George H. Carsley, and built of Montana granite. The fountain's two inscriptions read: "A Loving Tribute to Our Confederate Soldiers," and "By the Daughters of the Confederacy in Montana, A.D. 1916." and again in 2008. The fountain was the only monument to the Confederacy located in the Northwestern United States. In July 2015, in the wake of the Charleston church shooting, some city officials considered renaming it as the "Civil War Memorial fountain". The Lewis & Clark County Heritage Tourism Council suggested they should keep the historic name and contextualize its establishment. By August, a draft proposal for sign language that contextualized the fountain was presented. It was to explain that Confederate memorials were tools in “the South’s quest for vindication after the Civil War.” Nevertheless, by January 2016, city officials discussed adding a sign using revised language drafted by the Montana Historical Society containing a disclaimer about the Ku Klux Klan and white supremacy. Ultimately, the council realized that length of a contextualizing statement in text large enough to be legible would result in a massive sign. So the project was put on hold and no sign was actually designed. ==Removal==

In August 2017, in the wake of the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, members of the Native American caucus in the Montana House of Representatives and the Montana Senate sent a letter asking the City of Helena to remove the fountain. A similar letter in support of removal was sent by seven Helena-area Democratic legislators. In the debate that followed, questioning removal, Pam Attardo, Lewis and Clark County's historic preservation officer, who had created the original draft for a contextualizing statement in 2015, Chere Jiusto, the executive director of Montana Preservation Alliance, suggested it should be moved to "a setting where people can learn from our history." The removal was attended by 15–20 protesters, some of whom had spent the night in the park. Likewise, the City Commission races, also non-partisan, were swept by Progressive candidates. ==Replacement==

In 2019, the City Commission voted unanimously to replace the fountain with a new design. , the original Confederate fountain remains in storage at an undisclosed location. The United Daughters of the Confederacy have asked that it be returned to them so that they may relocate it at a place of their choosing. However, no action has been taken on this request. ==See also==