Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
route long used by animals and Paleo-Indians. Today this modern transportation cor-
ridor is rich with evidence from the past: pictographs, petroglyphs, and ledger art.
There are oral histories of trappers and traders in the area that date back to the
mid-1700s; written records from Lewis and Clark, who zigzagged across the trail;
and evidence that mountain men, missionaries, and the U.S. military all used the trail
that, until the first gold rush in southwest Montana in 1862, probably resembled a
well-used, age-old game trail.
Enter Jacobs and Bozeman in 1863. Leading a wagon train toward the gold fields
in Montana, the men were just 140 miles beyond Deer Creek when they met a large
party of Northern Cheyenne and Sioux warriors. Although the bulk of the wagon
train turned back toward the Oregon Trail crossing southern and central Wyoming,
Bozeman and a few of the men continued on horseback through the region. The fol-
lowing year, Bozeman again led a wagon train through the region, this time with
help from Allen Hurlbut and mountain man Jim Bridger. Although nonnative traffic
through the area was illegal under the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851, military support
for the Bozeman Trail was evident in various campaigns throughout the region. The
treaties signed at Fort Sully in 1865 gave the military unchecked authority to build
roads and forts along the Bozeman Trail, and in 1866 alone, more than 2,000 people
traveled on it to Montana, with Fort Reno and Fort Phil Kearny established to pro-
tect civilians. On December 21, with tensions high between Native Americans and
the military, an entire command of 81 men, under Captain William J. Fetterman, was
demolished by Sioux warriors.
In 1868, after several more battles, the Bozeman Trail and the forts along it were
abandoned as indefensible by the U.S. Army. Still, the trail saw traffic from exped-
itions sent to scout the Yellowstone area and the Black Hills. When the Cheyenne
were ultimately defeated by General Crook in November 1876 and forced to live on
a reservation, the Bozeman Trail once again opened the region to significant settler
traffic. Gradually, it became the preferred route for telegraph lines, stagecoaches, and
eventually, an interstate highway.
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