The Bozeman Trail
The Bozeman Trail was blazed by John Bozeman, who came to Montana in 1862. By February 1863 he moved on to the Gallatin Valley. At Three Forks a town had sprung up on December 30, 1862 when townspeople drew up "Articles of Association of the Gallatin Town Company." Bozeman staked a 160-acre claim there. This is when he began to get the idea for a new wagon trail.
There were only two routes to the Northwest at that time. The water route up the Missouri River to Fort Benton and then on horseback to the mines was slow and expensive. The other route was to come on the Oregon Trail over the southern plains up to Fort Hall in Idaho, which was dry country and went through Indian territory. So Bozeman began to look for another route. In Bannack he met John M. Jacobs who had come west in 1852 and had been guiding wagon trains in the area. Jacobs knew the valley well. One of the earliest maps between the Oregon Trail and the Montana mines is credited to Jacobs.
In mid March 1863, Bozeman, Jacobs, and Jacobs' daughter Emma set out to look for a more convenient road between the mid-west cities and the western mines. They left Bannack and crossed the Gallatin Valley and went over what was later known as Bozeman Pass into the Yellowstone Valley. On the Yellowstone, near the mouth of the Bighorn River they narrowly missed encountering an Indian war party. On May 11, 1863, fifty miles up the Bighorn, James Stuart and his Yellowstone Expedition tried to stop them. Bozeman and Jacobs did not know what the group was up to so set out at a rapid pace to scale the steepest ravines and outdistance them. Unfortunately right after that, they ran into a large party of Indians who took their horses, clothes, weapons, and food and left them. Emma was beaten with a ramrod for being in the company of white men (her mother was a Flathead).
After struggling across the plains they arrived at the mouth of Deer Creek on the North Platte about 25 miles below the present city of Casper, Wyoming, about May 27. There they rested and recuperated. When ready they headed out with a wagon train of 46 wagons and 89 men, with a few women and children. They hired Rafael Gallegos from the Deer Creek Station to guide them to the crossing of the Big Horn River. The route promised to reduce the 800 miles of taking the Oregon trail to Idaho to about 450 miles.
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