Montana Yesterday

Posted By admin on 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 the river channel used to do the same before the railroads came. Just past the fire station in Piltzville, the highway drops down into what used to be the channel. At several points in the next 30 miles or so,  the Road took to the side of the mountain to avoid river crossings, and you can see remnants of the side cuts east of Turah.

Just past Donovan Creek Road (on your left) there’s a turnoff to the right on E. Mullan Road. It crosses the tracks, passes under the interstate and continues into and through Clinton before dead-ending. You can save a few miles by hopping on the interstate at the Clinton interchange (Exit 121). Frontage roads between here and the Bearmouth exit always dead end. The Mullan Road was generally to the north (left) or right under your wheels, past Rock Creek and on.

I don’t know its exact route over Beavertail Hill (before Exit 130), but there’s a faint trace of a road visible from the interstate as you go down the hill, past Beavertail Pond.

Hugo’s Bridge, where the Road crossed to the south side, was in the Nimrod area at what was long known as Medicine Tree Hill –  just before the warm springs pond and rocks that attract summer revelers along the north side of the interstate. Exit  I-90 at the Bearmouth exit (I’m not sure of the exit number; maybe 137), and you’re done with interstate travel on the Pacific slope.

Note that the town of Bearmouth was several miles east of the Bearmouth interchange. From the Bearmouth on, there’s the old highway on the north side of the interstate and a gravel road on the south. The latter mirrors most closely the Mullan Road.  It was a stage stop on the Road and later the scene of daring train robberies in 1902 and 1904.  North of the river is Bear Gulch, which is the Clark Fork River access road to Garnet, the cool ghost town (note: access to Garnet from the Blackfoot River side is not as steep).

Here’s where the Mullan Road left the river valley to avoid the canyon. You’re 50 interstate miles from Missoula now. The going gets rough on the next post.

Category: 1850s-1860s, John Mullan, Mullan Road, Railroads, Stagecoaches, Western Montana history
Tags: Bearmouth, Beavertail Hill, Clinton, Medicine Tree Hill, Milltown, Mullan Road, Nimrod, Piltzville, Rock Creek, Turah