admin | August 26, 2010
At 2:22 p.m. on Aug. 26, 1862, C.W. Spillman, horse thief, became the first man executed in what’s now Montana. Spillman was strung up from a tree near Gold Creek, which appeared on maps as Hangtown for years after. James Stuart, one of the town’s founders, described Spillman as “a rather quiet reserved pleasant young [...]
admin | June 8, 2010
We were in Milltown at the end of our last post. In just a few hundred yards, before you get to the churches and school at Bonner, turn right off Highway 200 onto Highway 210 through Piltzville. The Mullan Road tended to hug the base of the mountain tighter than the today’s highway does because [...]
admin | June 8, 2010
It’s safe to say that if you’re going to follow the footprint of the original Mullan Road this summer, you’ll probably have one of those moo-ving Montana experiences. You know, the kind that occurs when your backroad is blocked by languorous broods of red or black bovines. Admit it: you’ve leaned out the window and [...]
admin | May 25, 2010
The yellow sign in the rearview mirror said “No Regular Maintenance: Travel At Your Own Risk” and I had to laugh. From the stories I’ve heard, Lt. John Mullan probably should have been required to post such signs every few miles or so when he came through here with his road-builders in 1860 and 1862. [...]
admin | May 9, 2010
As the commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the Mullan Road approaches (May 20-22, see previous post and the conference website) we should check in with the road-building crew’s progress in May of 1860. Remember, they’d wintered at Cantonment Jordan near DeBorgia, after topping the Bitterroots in late 1859, working their way eastward from Walla [...]
admin | May 9, 2010
The Mullan Road conference, marking the 150th anniversary of the road’s construction, is May 20-22 in Fort Benton and there’s still time to register. They want the registration forms by May 17 for those who want to take part in the whole shooting match, which includes what should be a great bus trip to the [...]
admin | February 22, 2010
Ken Robison, the Mullan Road guru from Great Falls/Fort Benton, sends this update: From May 20-22, 2010 the River & Plains Society will host the 150th Anniversary Mullan Road Conference in Fort Benton. The conference celebrates completion of the Mullan Military Wagon Road in 1860, the first wagon road from Fort Benton to cross the [...]
admin | January 29, 2010
When you think about it, Butte and Helena were started by miners, Billings as a transportation hub for steamboats and railroads, Great Falls for its water power, coal mining and agriculture. Kalispell was a railroad and agriculture town. Missoula was attractive for its lumber and agricultural possibilities, and eventually the railroads. But its roots are [...]
admin | December 8, 2009
We’re in the early stages of the 150th anniversary of construction of the Mullan Road (see story in Missoulian, Dec. 5) and if you’re like me you get to wondering what it was like around here in 1859-60. George Weisel’s trusty “Men and Trade on the Northwest Frontier,” a remarkable study based on the ledger [...]
admin | August 23, 2009
Anybody know whatever happened to Cantonment Stevens? I can’t remember where I first heard of the place, but I thereafter assumed it became the town of Stevensville. Wrong. It seems Cantonment Stevens (cantonment being a military term for a temporary post) was located up the river from Fort Owen, near what became Stevensville. Isaac I. [...]
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