Bozeman Trail

The register files this stone under Beckton, a settlement called Milltown at first, for the flour mill George T. Beck built on Big Goose Creek in 1884. Beck, a Kentucky senator's son, had come in the spring of 1879 and ran sheep here for ten years; his own biographical entry calls the mill the first in Wyoming. Two years later he built another at Buffalo, with an electric plant and waterworks. In 1889 he presided over the last territorial council, and in 1895 he went in with Buffalo Bill Cody on the irrigation company that laid out Cody.

What the plaque says

Bozeman Trail Marked by the State of Wyoming 1914

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Trail End State Historic Site — 9.0 mi
  A Texas trail hand's Flemish Revival mansion, five years in the building, that he barely lived in once Wyoming sent him to the governor's office and the Senate.
• Sheridan Inn — 9.7 mi
  A hunting-lodge hotel with sixty-nine gables, where Buffalo Bill is said to have auditioned Wild West acts from the porch.
• Connor Battlefield State Historic Site — 12 mi
  In 1865 General Connor's troops attacked Black Bear's Arapaho village here while many of its men were away; women and children died with the warriors.
• Fort Phil Kearny State Historic Site — 21 mi
  A Bozeman Trail fort whose wood trains were attacked for two years, and the wagon-box corral where its woodcutters held out behind new breech-loaders in 1867.

More markers nearby

• Bozeman Trail — 8.0 mi
• O. P. Hanna Cabin Marker and Sundial — 8.3 mi
• Site of the First Cabin Built in Sheridan — 9.3 mi
• Crook Monument — 9.4 mi