The Lolo Trail

The panel says this trail resisted wheels until the 1960s, and Congress paid to try a century earlier. In 1866, with gold camps on both sides of the mountains, a federal party under Wellington Bird set out to build a wagon road from Lewiston to Virginia City along this route. Guided by William Craig, the surveyors needed from May 24 to July 7 to cross. What they left was a good pack trail graded for wagons, from Weippe to the pass, and never a road. Eleven summers later the Nimiipuu, and the soldiers behind them, came over on it.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Travelers' Rest State Park — 0.5 mi
  The one Lewis and Clark campsite with proof in the ground: hearths, gun lead and a latrine still laced with mercury.
• Fort Fizzle — 4.2 mi
  A log barricade built to stop the Nimiipuu in 1877. They climbed the ridge behind it and walked around.
• Fort Missoula — 6.1 mi
  An 1877 Army post that held Italian seamen and Japanese immigrant men behind its fence in World War II.
• A Carousel for Missoula — 8.9 mi
  A cabinetmaker's promise to the city council: give it a home, and he would carve the horses.

More markers nearby

• The Bitterroot Valley, Homeland of the Selíš — 1.1 mi
• Lewis and Clark in Salish Territory — 1.1 mi
• Fort Fizzle — 4.2 mi
• Lewis and Clark on Lolo Creek — 4.2 mi