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w w w. d i s t i n c t l y m o n t a n a . c o m
more than glorified wagon trails cratered with ruts and potholes big enough to bend
car rims and cause even prim Montana ladies to swear like a drunken sailor stubbing
his toe on a cleat. The path to the smooth, durable blacktop we take for granted today
was, to quote the Beatles, a long and winding road.
The Mullan Trail was incredibly ambitious. It crossed the Rocky Mountains, pro-
viding a reliable shipping route between the Columbia River and the Missouri at Fort
Benton. Around the same time, to the southeast, the Bozeman Trail began carrying
horse-drawn wagons between the gold town of Virginia City and the Oregon Trail
in Wyoming. Emigrants, miners, farmers and homesteaders moved further into the
Montana Territory, traveling through the heart of Indian country. It was a bloody time
in the West, and conflicts with the Crow, Araphahoe and other tribes were frequent,
sometimes fatal. The relentless spread of colonialism brought more people, more
mining and logging, more livestock and more horse-drawn vehicles. The continuous
establishment of army forts effectively put the military in the construction business,
and that included roads.
