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hoof-sucking muck known as gumbo, and in the summer heat they dried into a
cement-hard surface riddled with cracks, washboard ruts and potholes. To top it
off, so to speak, the roads that ran through Montana's prairies were coated with
an inch or two of dust that guaranteed travelers would arrive at their destination
filthy dirty, wheezing the fine particulate out of their lungs.
Roadbeds were not banked on the tight curves, and drivers had to slow their
horses to a crawl, lest a door fling open and deposit a passenger onto the ground.
Switchbacks were often spurned in favor of a road that went straight up a steep
incline. People frequently had to get out of the wagon on these hills and push.
Sometimes a tailgate would flop open and the wagon would spill its contents—
including passengers—onto the road. As the railroads were carrying more and
more of Montana's people and goods across the state, the roadways were looking
like a Three Stooges movie.
A crusade to demand better roads began to gather steam in the 1880s. The
Good Roads Movement didn't come from the railroads, nor was it from the driv-
