The Bozeman Trail

The fences and plowed fields the diarists cheered were brand new, and partly a sales pitch. The Gallatin Valley lay mostly within Crow country. John Bozeman meant his trail to deliver settlers to an agricultural colony that would feed the gold camps, and in the summer of 1864 Daniel Rouse and William Beall drew up a townsite, named for him on August 9. Bozeman boasted that it stood in the mountains' gateway, ready to relieve arriving greenhorns of their gold. The valley's first flour mill followed in 1865, and its capacity was doubled the next year.

What the plaque says

The Bozeman Trail On July 14, 1806, Captain William Clark, accompanied by 11 members of the expedition party, camped about a mile east of here on the flat at the mouth of Kelly Canyon. The next day, Sacajawea guided the party up the canyon on an old buffalo trail to a pass at the summit of the Gallatin Range. In 1863, after failing to open the Bozeman Trail, John Bozeman and a small party on horseback traveled west over this pass when they returned to Montana. The men in the party named the pass for Bozeman. The pass became the route of the Bozeman Trail when it was opened in 1864. Most Bridger Trail travelers went through Bridger Pass several miles to the north. From Bozeman Pass, the Bozeman Trail crossed the head of Moffit Canyon to Kelly Canyon. The trail descended Kelly Canyon and entered the Gallatin Valley at the site of Fort Ellis. As they approached the town of Bozeman, diarist enthusiastically recorded seeing the first fences, plowed fields and cabins since leaving the eastern settlements. Today the lower three miles of Kelly Canyon Road follows the historic Bozeman Trail as it winds its way down from the summit to the Gallatin Valley.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Museum of the Rockies — 3.5 mi
  The bronze T. rex on the lawn is a cast of the one that went to Washington.
• Bozeman Trail at Bozeman Pass — 8.2 mi
  The pass at the end of a gold-rush shortcut through other nations' hunting ground, the one road a Native war closed.
• Chico Hot Springs — 27 mi
  A miners' wash pool turned hotel, turned hospital, turned the valley's favorite place to soak.

More markers nearby

• Bozeman Pass — 8.1 mi
• Emigrant Gulch — 25 mi
• Shields River Valley — 28 mi