Frenchtown is sixteen miles northwest of Missoula. The Salish called the valley In which Frenchtown sits Qua elth, "State of tranquility". The early inhabitants of this area settling in the area around the 1860's. Many residents are descendants from the Brunswick French of Eastern Canada. Some intermarried with the Native Americans and others are descended from the Quebec French.

Fathers Joseph Menetrey and Urban Grassi built a log cabin church in 1868. The post office was opened in 1868, with Charles Cusson as postmaster. It closed in 1869 and reopened in 1870. In 1884, the beautiful St John Baptist Church, with its gleaming Steeple, replaced the earlier church. The holiday, St. John's Day, was celebrated on June 24th in honor of the town's "patron saint". The town really celebrated the holiday. The St. John's celebration was discontinued in the 1960's, Vivid Marketing and Design has continued the tradition in the form of Frenchtown Day’s in 2021.

In 1869, Louis Barrette discovered gold and staked out a claim for his mine, a stampede soon followed and 3,000 prospectors wintered in the gulch. 

Between Missoula and Frenchtown, the highway follows the full length of the Missoula Valley, a broad structural basin formed during the crustal movements that created the Rocky Mountains. West of Frenchtown, the valley continues as the Ninemile Valley, the same basin.

If you exit the freeway at Frenchtown and proceed north towards Missoula on Mullan there is a box-fire brick structure known as Primrose Station. It is the best-preserved transformer brick house remaining from the era when the Milwaukee Road ran electric locomotives from Harlowton, Montana, to Avery, Idaho.

If you turn on a small dirt road near milepost 5, you will reach Council Grove. Council Grove is the site of one of Montana's most important treaty councils between whites and native Americans. With it meadows and clumps of tall trees near the Clark Fork River, the place could look much as it did in 1855. In mid-July, more  than 1,200 members of three tribes parleyed with a band of twenty-two whites led by Washington territorial governor Isaac Stevens. The Indians sat on their blankets as their leaders: Victor of the Salish (Flathead), Alexander of the Pend d'Oreilles ( Kalispell), and Michel of the Kutenai, listened to Stevens trying to persuade them to give up most of their land and move onto common reservations. It took eight days of negotiating before it was settled. The final Hellgate Treaty was vague at best and left Victor's Salish tribe unsettled as where to move.

Frenchtown Pond is a very popular State Park (day use only). It sits on a 41-acre site which contains a spring-fed lake making it ideal for swimming, fishing, and boating. Today Frenchtown is growing steadily in population. The plethora of opportunities that Montana has is all encompassing in Frenchtown. The Frenchtown High School is ranked consistently in the top 5 school districts in the state and the abundance of public property, hunting, fishing and outdoor adventuring continues to lure families to move here.