A Road Through the Powder River Country
1In 1863, prospectors found gold at Alder Gulch, in what soon became Montana Territory, and Virginia City grew almost overnight. Miners needed flour, tools and clothing, but the gold camps were far from any railroad. The older wagon road ran west along the Oregon Trail over South Pass and then north through what is now Idaho, a long way around the Rocky Mountains.
2In 1863 and 1864, John Bozeman and John Jacobs marked a shorter route. It left the Oregon Trail on the North Platte River and ran north along the eastern foot of the Bighorn Mountains, then west through the Yellowstone River valley to the gold camps. Along the foot of the mountains, streams such as the Powder, Tongue and Bighorn rivers flowed out onto the plains, so wagon trains found water, grass for their oxen and firewood on most days. The high, rugged peaks to the west were no place for wagons.
3The trail crossed the Powder River country. In the 1851 treaty at Horse Creek, the United States had named much of this land as Crow territory, but in the mid-1850s Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho bands pushed the Crow westward and made it their hunting ground. By the 1860s, wagon traffic along the Platte had driven many bison away from that valley, so the herds of the Powder River country mattered more than ever to these nations.
4In June 1866, U.S. officials met Lakota leaders at Fort Laramie to ask for the use of the road. While they talked, an army column arrived to build forts along the trail. Red Cloud, an Oglala Lakota leader, left the council. For two years, Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho warriors attacked soldiers and wagon trains, and travel on the trail nearly stopped. The conflict is often called Red Cloud's War.
5In the Treaty of Fort Laramie of 1868, the United States agreed to close the trail and leave its forts, and warriors burned the empty forts. The treaty also set aside the Great Sioux Reservation, including the Black Hills, and closed the Powder River country to settlers as hunting land. After the transcontinental railroad was finished in 1869, most freight for Montana went by train to Utah and then north by wagon on a road that avoided the Powder River country.
6These nations still live in the region today. The Crow Nation governs a reservation along the Bighorn River in Montana, and the Northern Cheyenne reservation lies beside the Tongue River nearby. The Oglala Sioux Tribe, Red Cloud's nation, governs the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, and the Northern Arapaho share the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming.