Mullan Road

The letters cut into the pine were M.R., for Military Road, with the year. Visitors added initials of their own around them and peeled the bark for souvenirs until a wrought-iron fence went up to protect the tree. Accounts of its end disagree: one has a windstorm wrecking it in 1962, another lightning splitting it in 1988. Either way, the blazed section was cut out and taken to the Museum of North Idaho in Coeur d'Alene, and a plaque and a stretch of the original road mark the spot on a short trail off Exit 28.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Cataldo Mission — 9.6 mi
  The Schitsu'umsh built it, the 1873 reservation line left it outside, and every August 15 they come back.
• Trail of the Coeur d'Alenes — 17 mi
  Seventy-two paved miles laid over a railbed poisoned by a century of ore trains.
• Farragut State Park — 23 mi
  The Navy built its second-largest boot camp 375 miles from the ocean, and still tests submarines on the lake.

More markers nearby

• Coeur d'Alene Lake — 5.6 mi
• Restoring the Lake — 5.6 mi
• Old Mission of the Sacred Heart (sq'wt'u) — 9.6 mi
• Joseph Garry (1910-1975) — 17 mi