Bozeman Trail

This stone marks a road far less traveled than its fame suggests. Between 1864 and 1868 Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho resistance kept the Bozeman Trail's traffic to fewer than a thousand people, and by 1867 civilian travel had nearly stopped. Clear Creek, where Buffalo later grew, was the third of the trail's major fords north of the North Platte, after the Powder River and Crazy Woman Creek, and parties camped at least a night at each. The stone's own dates are 1865 and 1867; the trail opened in 1863.

What the plaque says

Bozeman Trail Marked by the State of Wyoming 1865 John Bozeman killed by Indians on Yellowstone 1867

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Occidental Hotel — 0.7 mi
  Buffalo's 1880 grand hotel, its 1908 saloon ceiling still pocked with bullet holes, won once in a poker game and nearly torn down in the 1990s.
• Fort Phil Kearny State Historic Site — 14 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

• Powder River Country — 0.7 mi
• Buffalo — 2.8 mi
• Fort McKinney Monuments and Plaques — 2.9 mi
• Fort McKinney — 2.9 mi