Wagon Road - Hwy 7 - Montana Historical Marker
N 46° 29.642 W 104° 14.077
13T E 558735 N 5149224
On Highway 7 between Wibaux and Baker, Montana, you'll find a single pull over with a Montana Historical Marker that describes an old wagon road that is still visible today, and the wagon trains that used to travel it.
Waymark Code: WM97X0
Location: Montana, United States
Date Posted: 07/11/2010
Views: 12
TEXT OF SIGN IS AS FOLLOWS:
WAGON ROAD
Around these gumbo buttes and across these ridges and valleys, an old road wended its way between Fort Abraham Lincoln on the Missouri River in Dakota Territory and Fort Keogh on the Yellowstone River in Montana. Although the Indians blazed the trail generations ago, it was not until railroad surveyors utilized it shortly after the Civil War that it saw heavy use by non-Indians. Government mail stages, heavily-loaded freight trains destined for forts Keogh and Custer, covered wagons, buffalo hunters, soldiers, and people searching for homes, wealth, or adventure plodded along this meandering trail after the end of the Great Sioux War in 1877. In 1887, one freight train of 95 wagons, each drawn by 4 to 6 horses or mules, and each loaded with supplies of all kinds made up the largest known train to make the trip. All were constantly watched and harasses by the Indians, whose lands and way of life were, by trick or treaty, being forever forced from them. With the building of the Northern Pacific Railroad, and also the fences by homesteaders, the trail was abandoned. A few grassy ruts may be seen on the ridge to the southwest.
Describe the area and history:
Its been a fairly wet spring, and summer season this year (2010), but even with that, you still make out the wheel ruts described on the hill to the southwest of this historical marker.
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