"Our work ... from the 16th of August to the 4th of December, 1859 consisted of cutting through this densely timbered section of one hundred miles, building small bridge were required, and grading thousands of places.... the work was heavy, and ... justice cannot be done to the industry and fortitude of the men while mastering this wilderness sections." -- John Mullan, 1863

In July 1859, Lieutenant John Mullan and 230 workers, soldiers, and teamsters began construction on a 624-mile wagon road from Walla Walla, Washington through the Rocky Mountains to Fort Benton, the head of steamboat navigation on the upper Missouri River in Montana. The topography between Lake Coeur d'Alene and the Missoula Valley was a tangle of towering mountains, serpentine rivers, steep rugged hillsides, low swampy areas, deep ravines, and fallen timbers. Mullan's men constructed 47 bridges across the St. Regis-DeBorgia River between base St. Regis Pass and its confluence with the Clark Fork 28 miles east of here. The road, although primitive, was a triumph of engineering and a tribute to Mullan's engineering ability and his optimism about the future of the Pacific Northwest and Montana. Originally intended as a military road, it was only used in that capacity once, instead parts of it became important emigrant and freight roads in western and central Montana. Unfortunately, the Mullan Road west of Missoula was not heavily used by pioneers because of the difficult terrain. Indeed, within a couple of years after its completion, most of the bridges had washed out and timber and landslides had blocked portions of the road. By the 1870s, the Mullan Road through this area was little more than a pack trail. The road still exists in places through here, high on mountainsides overlooking Interstate 90.

"We started out as early as possible, as we fully realized that for many miles the road ahead of us was mountainous and rough beyond anything yet traversed. The scenery was the wildest ever gaze upon, and grand, if as feeble a world as that can be used to properly express anything in this amazing range of mountains. Up, up, still up we went winding over a trail made barely passable ... wrenching and jolting the wagons terribly, and causing the poor mules infinite misery." -- Randall Hewett, 1862

A Plague Spot of Vice: Taft In 1908, the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific (Milwaukee Road) Railroad completed its west coast extension along the Clark Fork to Seattle.

The railroad camp of Taft was located near here. Founded in 1907, it became the center of operations for the construction of the railroad's 8,750-foot tunnel through the Bitterroot Divide at St. Paul's Pass. For a little over a year 2,000 men worked day and night boring the tunnel through the mountains. Taft was a wide open town with 27 saloons, gambling halls, and brothels ready to separate the men from their hard-earned pay. In 1909, the Chicago Tribune called Taft the "wickedest city in America." The tunnel completed, the men moved on, leaving the town all but deserted. Most of the town was destroyed in the 1910 forest fire and the rest buried beneath I-90 in 1962.

Erected by Montana Department of Transportation.

Undaunted Stewardship® is a statewide partnership involving 19 agricultural and conservation groups in Montana, managed and directed by Montana State University, the Montana Stockgrowers Association and the federal Bureau of Land Management. The program helps preserve historic sites and encourages sustainable stewardship on private rangeland.

Undaunted Stewardship® certifies farms and ranches that use state-of-the-science land management practices. These Undaunted Land Stewards protect the long-term health of Montana's natural resources. Undaunted Stewardship® partners with farms and ranches to preserve historic sites and find ways to share them with the public. In some cases, the program also helps farms and ranches develop new tourist-service businesses, like guest ranches, trail rides and campgrounds. By generating new revenue, these businesses improve the odds that farmers and ranches will be able to continue preserving the scenic beauty and natural environment of their private agricultural lands.

Please show the same respect for the Hamilton Ranch that its residents, managers and all their predecessors have shown. Don't litter, and please don't venture onto private rangeland.

Erected by Montana State University (Bozeman), Bureau of Land Management, Montana Stockgrowers Association.

In 1806, Captain William Clark and his crew traveled through here on horseback moving quickly on their return trip to St. Louis. Arriving at present day Jackson Hot Springs in the afternoon of July 7th, they stopped to experiment with cooking in the water that Clark later wrote "bubbers with heat." That night, camped less than a mile east of where you stand now, Clark noted in his journal that "this butifull extensive valley" is "extreemly fertile" - and he called it "the hot spring Vally." French trappers referred to it as the "Big Hole," their term for a large mountain-surrounded valley - and the name stuck.

Ranching first began in this area in the mid-1800s, in support of wagon trains on the Oregon Trail. For years thereafter, ranchers who lived elsewhere turned their cattle loose to graze these lands - and when the first person intending to live here arrived he found some 27,000 cattle already feeding in the Big Hole Valley. Ranchers learned that the natural rangelands here offered superb nutrition for cattle - grass-fed animals from this valley fetched the same high prices in midwestern markets as did grain-fattened cattle from other parts of the county. The Big Hole earned the nickname "Land of 10,000 Hay Stacks" because of the superiority of is native grasses - and because here, where the 'beaver slide' was first developed as a method of stacking hay, heaps of it looked like giant loaves of bread became a year-round sight.

Erected by Montana State University (Bozeman), Bureau of Land Management, Montana Stockgrowers Association.

John Francis Grant

Grant chose this ranch site for its rich grasslands, abundance of water, and the sheltered valley. He completed this house in 1862 as a trading post and family home. He first traded cattle with emigrants on the Oregon Trail to build up a large herd. He later made a hefty profit by selling meat to miners during the Gold Rush.

New settlers brought racial discrimination and shady business practices. Discouraged by these changes, Grant sold the ranch to Conrad Kohrs in 1866 and moved his family back to Canada.

Carsted (sic) Conrad Kohrs

Kohrs left Germany at 15 to work at sea as a cabin boy. Lured west by gold, his biggest profit came from selling beef to miners. In time, he built a business that shipped 10,000 head of cattle a year to the Chicago stockyards. His herds grazed over 10 million acres, which are now part of four states and two Canadian provinces.

Two years after Kohrs bought this ranch, he married Augusta Kruse, who made the house a home. Kohrs served as a territorial and state senator and a founding member of the Montana Stockgrowers Association.

He lived here until his death in 1920.

Erected by National Parks Service.

The western gold rushes not only lured miners but entrepreneurs seeking business opportunities. Armed with blacksmithing and wagon-making skills, adventurer Joshua Armitage and his wife Martha arrived at Alder Gulch in December 1863. They moved to Helena in 1867 where the multi-talented Armitage was a placer mining engineer and taught singing. In 1870, the Helena vigilantes appointed Armitage to the jury that convicted Joe Wilson and Arthur Compton of attempted murder. The two were the last of a dozen men hanged on Helena’s infamous Hangman’s Tree. Armitage then served as Blackfeet Indian agent under President U. S. Grant and later as Helena’s police magistrate. As the population boomed with the advent of the Northern Pacific, Armitage rose to prominence in real estate. In 1889, he built this comfortable home in the Montana Avenue Addition he helped to plat. With its steep terrace and commanding view of the Helena valley, the Neoclassical style home reflects conservative taste during a time of Victorian flamboyance. Martha Armitage, a devoted mother of nine and renowned practical nurse, filled this home with music and laughter. But adventure continued to beckon, and the Armitages moved on in 1896. After several owners, Herman Lindstrom bought the property in 1918. A Swedish emigrant, Lindstrom was a skilled carpenter whose sons followed in their father’s footsteps. Their home, too, was filled with music, laughter, and family gatherings. The Lindstroms’ seventy-year tenure established a pattern for the home’s careful preservation. In 2005, daughter Marian Lindstrom Larson returned the original stained glass transom to the current owners. Thus the legacy continues today.

Erected by Montana Historical Society.

The Fisk or Northern Overland Expedition camped at the future site of Montana City just east of I-15 in 1862. The outfit, consisting of 125 emigrants, left Minnesota in June, 1862, under the leadership of Capt. James Fisk for the purpose of opening a wagon route across the northern Great Plains to Fort Benton, the eastern terminus of the Mullan Road. After arriving in Montana, expedition members drifted south toward mining camps in Idaho and Grasshopper Creek in Montana.

The found "Gold Tom," one of Montana's first prospectors, holed up in a tepee near here scratching gravel for gold along Prickly Pear Creek. The few colors he panned out wouldn't have made much of a dent in the national debt, but about half of the Fisk outfit caught gold fever and wintered here. By 1864, a few hundred men mined along the creek with only marginal success.

Montana City faded away as richer gold strikes elsewhere in the territory lured its residents away. By 1870, it was little more than a memory. The Montana Central Railroad reestablished it in 1888 as a station on its line. Today, Montana City is a distinct community that is proud of its heritage.

Erected by Montana Department of Transportation.

Trailblazers John Bozeman and John Jacobs opened the Bozeman Trail in 1864 as a shortcut between the Overland Road and the newly discovered Montana gold fields. The trail began near present Casper, Wyoming and ended just over the Bozeman Pass in the Gallatin Valley. While some emigrants left the trail at present Livingston and went up the Yellowstone River to Emigrant Gulch, most continued over the pass and traveled over existing local roads to Bannack and Virginia City.

The road over Norris Hill already existed when it was used in 1864 as an extension of the Bozeman Trail from Bozeman and the Gallatin Valley to Virginia City. Heavy Bozeman Trail traffic continued on this road in 1865 and 1866. Although Indian resistance to the trail in the Powder River country forced the closure of it to emigrants after the 1866 travel season, the Bozeman to Virginia City portion of the road continued to be a major thoroughfare. Agricultural products produced by Gallatin Valley farmers, ranchers and mill owners found a lucrative market in the gold camps of southwestern Montana. Today’s U.S. Highway 287 remains an important route in southwestern

Montana.

The old Bozeman Trail extension to Virginia City is still visible to the west of this highway.

A Trail Through History

The road from Three Forks to Helena is an old one. Long before the establishment of those cities, it originated as a trail used by Montana's first citizens as they followed the bison herds and other game animals. By the time the Gallatin Valley became an important agricultural area in the 1860s, the trail was well-worn and easy to follow for the freight wagons, pack animals, and passenger coaches making their way between Bozeman, Virginia City, Helena, and Fort Benton. The dusty road echoed with the sounds of creaking leather harnesses and wagons, and the curses of the bullwhackers and muleskinners urging their animals along. To assist travelers in the headwaters area, James Sheed built bridges across the Gallatin, Madison, and Jefferson rivers. That thoroughfare joins the highway a short distance north of here as Old Town Road. The arrival of automobiles in the early twentieth century changed the character of the road. The Montana State Highway Commission designated this route US Highway 287 in 1960.

When Montana's Roads Had Names

In the early days of automobile tourism, Montana's highways had names instead of numbers. Nineteen named highways crisscrossed Montana in the years following World War I, mostly providing connections to the national parks and other historical and recreational attractions. The roads were interlinked county-maintained roads united by distinctive signs and symbols so motorists could easily follow their destination, Organizations such as the Yellowstone Trail Association, created and promoted by the named highways. Local commercial clubs subscribed to the association brochures and advertised hotels, garages, and tourist camps in their communities in them. The roads had colorful names like Yellowstone Trail, Roosevelt Highway, Vigilante Trail, and Custer Battlefield Highway among others.

US Highway 287 between Three Forks and Helena originated in the 1910s as the Geysers to Glaciers Motor Trail. Dedicated by Montana governor Sam Stewart in June 1919, the Geysers at Gardiner to Glaciers Motor Trail connected the north entrance of Yellowstone National Park to the east entrance of Glacier National Park at East Glacier. The 396-mile chain of unpaved roads was marked by red, white and blue signs with arrows pointing motorists to Yellowstone and Glacier national parks in the eight Montana counties it passed through. In 1920, a new branch of the highway took motorists along this route through Townsend to Helena.

Road promoters touted the trail as the shortest path between Yellowstone and Glacier with "pathfinders" in each community ready to make road repairs and assist tourists. The Geysers to Glaciers Motor Trail had disappeared from Montana maps by 1930.

Erected by Montana Department of Transportation.

Lieutenant John Mullan built a wagon road through this area in late July 1860. The 624-mile road connected the head of navigation on the Columbia River at Walla Walla, Washington Territory and Fort Benton, the world's innermost steamboat port on the upper Missouri River. With the discovery of gold in southwestern Montana in early 1860s, the road became an important freight and passenger route between Fort Benton and Helena. One of the stage stations was located near here and called Twenty-Eight Mile Station because it was that distance from Fort Benton. For the next twenty-one years, the station was an important stop on the Benton Road. For a while in the 1870s, the imposing two-story station was famous for the high quality of meals served there and the hospitality of its operator, Irish emigrant Edward Kelly. A decade later, however, the meals were much less appetizing, as one passenger recalled, "No excuse should condone for such nauseous 'provender.' With a feeling of disgust we bolted on to Bull's Head...." When the Montana Central Railroad was completed in 1887, the old stage line was abandoned and the station closed.

Erected by

Montana Department of Transportation.

Settlers came to the Gallatin Valley on the heels of the first Montana gold strike at Grasshopper Creek near Bannack, Montana, in 1862. As Meriwether Lewis had predicted, farmers found the valley well suited for agriculture. They planted crops and raised stock to supply the rapidly growing town.

John Jacobs and John Bozeman laid out a cutoff from the Oregon Trail into western gold fields of Montana in 1863. Bozeman brought the first wagon train of miners and settlers over the Bozemen Trail.

Erected by Montana Department of Transportation (MDT) & Qwest.

Conflicts along the Bozeman Trail between Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho Indians and settlers escalated with the establishment of forts along the route in 1866. After Indians killed John Bozeman, in the Yellowstone Valley in 1867, the federal government established Fort Ellis in the Gallatin Valley that same year. For the next two decades, soldiers from the 13th Infantry and the 2nd Cavalry manned this post, participating in battles at the Little Bighorn in 1876 and the Big Hole in 1877.

In 1870 Lieutenant Gustavus Doane departed Fort Ellis to survey what would later become Yellowstone National Park. The first tourist parties, outfitted in Bozeman and escorted by soldiers, established the Gallatin Valley as the gateway to the Park.

A century later this valley remains a primary corridor into the wonders of Yellowstone. Fishing, hunting, dude ranching, skiing, a land grant university and mountain scenery continue to make the Gallatin Valley a destination.

Erected by Montana Department of Transportation (MDT) & Qwest.

First Peoples utilized the valley for over 11,000 years before the arrival of Lewis & Clark, and the others that would follow. Trails brought cattle and homesteaders to an agricultural paradise. The military followed, defending settlers, consuming local products and mounting expeditions into the Yellowstone. The railroad brought material goods and tied the region to the national economy.

Over 11,000 years ago The First Peoples moving into North America across an ice age land bridge came to this area to hunt.

1803 - President Thomas Jefferson commissioned Captains Lewis and Clark to lead an expedition in search of a Northwest Passage. They reached the Headwaters of the Missouri River on July 25, 1805.

1806 - Returning from the Pacific Ocean on July 13, 1806, Capt. Clark and his party rode through the Gallatin Valley with 50 horses enroute to the Yellowstone River.

1808 - The streams of the beaver-rich Gallatin Valley lay at the heart of the fur trade industry.

1833 - William Clark publishes his map of the Gallatin Valley and Yellowstone River that will be known as the Clark Maximillian Map.

1860s - Homesteaders followed gold discoveries, blazing trails, bringing cattle and raiding crops.

1862 - A hub of economic endeavor grew around the settlement of Bozeman.

1867 - From Fort Ellis military expeditions surveyed and explored the marvels that would become Yellowstone National Park.

Today - Visitors follow the same route through this landscape on Interstate 90.

Erected by Montana Department of Transportation (MDT) & Qwest.

The grand opening of the Bozeman Hotel and Annex in 1891 brought 500 theater-goers to the celebration. A temporary footbridge was constructed across Main Street between the second stories of the hotel and theater so that quests could come and go dressed in their finery without getting their feet wet. By the turn of the century cement walkways constructed across the main street served only to collect more mud, and women became tired of trailing their long skirts in the dirt. Main Street also served as the parade route for Bozeman's annual Sweet Pea Carnival, instituted in 1906 to bring visitors to town. Dust did not agree with tourism. These considerations led to arguments at city hall over what to use as paving. Finally one exasperated alderman cried, "For God's sake pave the street with something!" This was finally accomplished in 1908. Cement scored to resembled bricks, evident in this photograph circa 1910, helped prevent horses from slipping on the smooth surface. The Sweet Pea Carnival was held through 1916 and re-emerged in 1977 as the Sweet Pea Festival.

On July 14, 1806 Captain William Clark accompanied by 11 members of the expedition party camped about a mile east of here on the flat at the mouth of Kelly Canyon. The next day, Sacajawea guided the party up the canyon on an old buffalo trail to a pass at the summit of the Gallitan Range. In 1863, after failing to open the Bozeman Trail, John Bozeman and a small party on horseback traveled west over this pass when they returned to Montana. The men in the party named the pass for Bozeman. The pass became the route of the Bozeman Trail when it was opened in 1864. Most Bridger Trail travelers went through Bridger pass several miles to the north.

From Bozeman Pass, the Bozeman Trail crossed the head of Moffit Canyon to Kelly Canyon. The trail descended Kelly Canyon and entered the Gallitan Valley at the site of Fort Ellis. As they approached the town of Bozeman diarist enthusiastically recorded seeing the first fences, plowed fields and cabins since leaving the eastern settlements. Today the lower three miles of Kelly Canyon Road follows the historic Bozeman Trail as it winds its way down from the summit to the Gallitan Valley.

The black-capped bluffs located on the east side of the Yellowstone River are called Hepburn's Mesa. The mesa is capped by a basalt lava flow the erupted from a small local volcano vent that has long since eroded away. Geologically, the lava flow is very young, perhaps having erupted as recently as 2.2 million years ago. Large amounts of iron in the basalt make it dark colored. She of the iron crystallized as magnetite, which as the name implies is magnetic, and in large concentrations can cause compasses to behave erratically. The basalt flow overlies unconsolidated gravels, which in turn overlies older light-colored fine-grained sedimentary rocks that were deposited in an ancient lake that once occupied this site. The sedimentary beds of Hepburn's Mesa contain abundant Miocene fossils, including ancient rodents, moles, and a porto-horse called Merychippus, the first equine to exhibit the distinctive head of today's horses. On top of Hepburn's Mesa, overlying the basalt is glacial till of Pleistocene age. The surface these deposits is hummocky and is littered with abundant glacial erratic boulders. For generations, Native Americans drove bison off the mesa's cliffs to obtain food, hides, and other materials important to their way of life.

Hepburn's Mesa is named for John Hepburn, a local rancher, rockhound and amateur paleontologist. He arrived in the Emigrant area in 1909 after working in Yellowstone National Park for many years. From 1935 until his death in 1959, he operated a museum next to Secondary Highway 540 that displayed many of the geologic specimens and fossils he had found in this area. The museum was a local landmark for many years. It still stands next to the old highway and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Geo-Facts:

• The fine-grained sedimentary rocks were deposited in a shallow, alkaline lake and on surrounding mudflats.

• Fossils discovered near Hepburn's Mesa indicate that this area had an arid to semi-arid climate during Miocene time about 11 to 18 million years ago.

• The Absaroka Range east of the highway is the western end of the Beartooth Plateau and consists mainly of Precambrian basement rocks with a local cover of volcanic rocks. The Beartooth Plateau pushed its way upward through sedimentary rock about 55 million years ago and contains some of the oldest exposed rock on earth.

Geo-Activity:

• Hepburn's Mesa is just one of the many igneous features in the Paradise Valley. See how many places you can spot for the car that look like they might be volcanic in origin. Can you give examples of what they might look like?

Erected by Montan Department of Transportation.