The Bozeman Trail

The lucrative market at the end of this road was built on hunger. Snow shut the roads from Salt Lake City in December 1864, and by April 1865 flour in Virginia City had climbed from about $25 to $100 for a 98-pound sack. On April 22 some four hundred armed men, led by a rider waving an empty flour sack, searched the town, seized every sack they could find, paid the owners about $27 to $30 apiece and rationed it out by the pound. Freight got through with the thaw, and the shortage ended.

What the plaque says

The Bozeman Trail Trailblazers John Bozeman and John Jacobs opened the Bozeman Trail in 1864 as a shortcut between the Overland Road and the newly discovered Montana gold fields. The trail began near present Casper, Wyoming and ended just over the Bozeman Pass in the Gallatin Valley. While some emigrants left the trail at present Livingston and went up the Yellowstone River to Emigrant Gulch, most continued over the pass and traveled over existing local roads to Bannack and Virginia City. The road over Norris Hill already existed when it was used in1864 as an extension of the Bozeman Trail from Bozeman and the Gallatin Valley to Virginia City. Heavy Bozeman Trail traffic continued on this road in 1865 and 1866. Although Indian resistance to the trail in the Powder River country forced the closure of it to emigrants after the 1866 travel season, the Bozeman to Virginia City portion of the road continued to be a major thoroughfare. Agricultural products produced by Gallatin Valley farmers, ranchers and mill owners found a lucrative market in the gold camps of southwestern Montana. Today's U.S. Highway 287 remains an important route in southwestern Montana. The old Bozeman Trail extension to Virginia City is still visible to the west of this highway.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Virginia City — 19 mi
  A gold camp one couple began buying in 1944, and the state bought from their family in 1997.
• Madison Buffalo Jump State Park — 24 mi
  A limestone cliff where people drove bison over the edge for two thousand years, until horses made it unnecessary.

More markers nearby

• The Shining Mountains — 10 mi
• Virginia City — 18 mi
• Nevada City — 19 mi
• Gold in Alder Gulch — 19 mi