New MHP campus in Boulder named in honor of Hansen

A brand-new location for the Montana Highway Patrol headquarters has been named in honor of a former Hill County attorney and state senator who represented Havre.

The Kris Hansen Campus in Boulder was dedicated to the late Kris Hansen Sept. 4.

Hansen spearheaded the creation of the location while serving as chief deputy state attorney general, a position she took in 2021.

The Highway Patrol office was spread out in multiple offices and storage locations, and Hansen suggested moving the headquarters to a single location in an unused state facility in Boulder.

Hansen, who died at age 52 July 7. 2022, is credited with cutting through red tape and getting the move approved in days instead of the years many believed it would take.

The campus became the new MHP headquarters April 12, 2021.

The state Legislature in 2023 passed, with overwhelming support, a bill naming the campus after Hansen.

Hansen was born in Illinois in 1969, and interned for and later worked for the CIA after graduating with honors. She was stationed in Mogadishu in Somalia, and then evacuated to Kenya, where she and her team ran operations.

She then earned a law degree with honors at John Marshall School of Law and to work as a law clerk with a federal bankruptcy judge.

Hansen moved to Montana in 2003, were she clerked for a Montana Supreme Court justice for a year then worked for a Bozeman law firm.

She also joined the Montana National Guard and was deployed in 2007 to Iraq serving with the Judge Advocate General corps as a captain..

Hansen moved to Havre in 2009 and served as a deputy Hill County attorney.

She ran for the Legislature and served two terms as a state representative, then was elected to the Senate.

In 2016, she took a position with the state auditor's office as a deputy auditor, then moved to the Department of Justice as chief deputy state attorney.

Her parents, Fred and Sue Hanson, who adopted her as an infant in Illinois, moved to Havre to be with their daughter.