Montana

Discover the historic trails that built the Big Sky State.

- QUACKGRASS SALLY

Trails

Montana has always been a land of many trails. For centuries the Native peoples crisscrossed these lands on game trails their ancestors had followed, finding food and campsites in its mountains, valleys and plains. When Meriwether Lewis and William Clark and the Corps of Discovery trekked west and reached this region in 1804-06, they were the first White explorers to use these routes and see these lands. Clark’s journal noted that the fertile landscapes were made all the more wondrous by the abundant rivers, lakes and streams which fed it. Quickly on their heels, fur trappers and traders followed that trail until the 1840s, when the dwindling supply and demand for beaver no longer drew them.

Gold was discovered in Virginia City, Montana, in 1863, and soon a flow of gold miners were following the Bridger Trail (Bridger Road), which connected the Oregon Trail to the goldfields of Montana. The influx of people wanting to head northwest prompted John Bozeman and John Jacobs to scout out a new route from central Wyoming to Montana. This new Bozeman Trail created a more direct route through the Powder River country, the region of the Lakota, Cheyenne, Crow and Arapaho people, who quickly resented the growing stream of White settlers into their lands. Raids on the settlers grew and unrest was brewing between the cultures.