The Mullan Road stimulated growth in the Northwest.
John Mullan reached the Big Side-cut, also known as Point of Rocks, near present-day Alberton, Montana, in the spring of 1860. He knew where he wanted his road to go, but it wasn’t that simple. It was a case of “You can’t get there from here”—at least not directly. And that was cause for frustration for a man eager to make progress on the first federally funded highway in the West. It would take Mullan and his men six weeks to complete the difficult 15-mile stretch ahead. But he would persevere; that was his nature. His reputation for getting things done had landed him this assignment—laying out a wagon road from Fort Walla Walla on the Columbia River, by way of Coeur d’Alene Lake in what was then Washington Territory, to Fort Benton on the upper Missouri River.
John Mullan, the eldest of 10 children, was born on July 31, 1830, in Norfolk, Va. He attended the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, where he placed 15th in the class of 1852. The next year the young first lieutenant was assigned to do surveying work for Washington Territory Governor Isaac Stevens.
Born in Andover, Mass., in March 1818 and No. 1 in the West Point class of 1839, Stevens had received his appointment as governor of the newly created territory from President Franklin Pierce on March 2, 1853. As he traveled west to take up his new position that November, Stevens considered developing a wagon route and later a railroad right-of-way from St. Paul, Minn., to Puget Sound, Washington Territory. During a stopover at Fort Benton he determined this would be the ideal eastern terminus for such a route across the Rocky Mountains. Mullan surveyed the passage for the governor in the winter of 1854–55, but by spring he was helping the Army quell unrest among the Seminoles in Florida. The report for Stevens got buried in the bureaucracy.
When Stevens’ term ended in 1857, he went to Washington, D.C., as the newly elected, nonvoting representative from Washington Territory. There he hobnobbed with movers and shakers and resurrected the report Mullan had made on the best northern route through the Rockies. Stevens’ intent was for the War Department to endorse the road, Congress to fund it and Mullan to build it. But with a civil war looming (and the Union Army looking for ways to move troops quickly), the War Department became Stevens’ main source of funding. Stevens managed to appropriate $230,000, and the secretary of war sent a March 31, 1858, telegram to Mullan: PROCEED IMMEDIATELY….ORGANIZE A FORCE TO COMMENCE AT ONCE TO WORK ON OPENING A WAGON ROAD FROM FORT WALLA WALLA ON THE COLUMBIA TO FORT BENTON ON THE MISSOURI….PUSH FORWARD…AS RAPIDLY AS POSSIBLE…IT BEING THE INTENTION OF THE GOVERNMENT TO MAKE IT A FIRST–CLASS ROAD.
The Army saw the road as a way to funnel troops from the Midwest or East up the Missouri to Fort Benton and then over land to the Northwest. Visionaries saw it as a way to boost settlement. Others saw it as a fulfillment of Thomas Jefferson’s dream of a portage between the navigable waters of the Missouri and Columbia rivers. In any case, federal funds for a Western road were a first.
Lieutenant Mullan was supposed to start the road from Fort Walla Walla in 1858, but the waning Yakima War delayed the project until early July 1859. With him was a company of 140 civilians and a small military detachment. Using only picks, shovels and black powder, the work crews broke ground at Fort Walla Walla and moved east. Where bridges were required, Mullan’s men built them from local timber.
By December 1859 the road had reached what is now Montana. But the following spring progress slowed at the Big Side-cut, where the men found plenty of rock to blast and not much space in which to work. They carved a high, winding road along the edge of a mountain, just wide enough for a single wagon. Beyond the going got somewhat easier. The rough road crossed the Continental Divide west of Helena through a pass later named for Mullan. On August 1, 1860, the road crew finally reached Fort Benton. Soon after, Mullan and some of his men guided Major George Blake’s 300-man command back over the new Mullan Road to Fort Walla Walla. The 624-mile trip took 57 days, with Mullan’s crew traveling ahead of Blake’s soldiers and making road repairs along the way. This would be the only military contingent to actually traverse the road.
For the next two years Mullan and his men continued to repair and refine the road. Although the route bearing his name officially opened in August 1862, Mullan was not satisfied. He regarded it as a work in progress and estimated it would take another $700,000 to achieve his desired state of perfection. The additional money never materialized. Still, Mullan was promoted to captain that year and in 1863 described his successful project in Report on the Construction of a Military Road from Fort Walla Walla to Fort Benton. Two years later he promoted the road again in his Miners’ and Travelers’ Guide to Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana,Wyoming and Colorado via the Missouri and Columbia Rivers.
The Mullan Road did see use as a supply route, from both the Fort Walla Walla and Fort Benton ends to the gold camps. Due to the difficult terrain in certain stretches, pack trains worked better than freight wagons or stagecoaches. These trains averaged 25 animals, though some used more than 100. The region’s miners and settlers used the Mullan Road as their highway to and from towns along the route.
During the 1865 freight-hauling season 100 pack trains reached Last Chance (present-day Helena) in what had become Montana Territory. Each train averaged 50 animals, with each animal packing 300 pounds. That season the trains hauled 750 tons of freight with a retail value of $1,440,000 to Helena. Transportation costs were $240,000, so there was plenty of profit to be made. Still, entrepreneurs looked for better hauling methods, and some brought in camels, in the belief they would be less expensive to maintain than horses or mules. As was the case elsewhere in the country, the humped beasts turned out to be more trouble than they were worth.
Following the Civil War, Congress gave little support to the Mullan Road. But as railroads had yet to reach the area, freighters still valued the route, despite deterioration of the road surface and bridges. No place benefited more from the
road than Walla Walla, whose merchants catered to area miners and farmers. In 1860 the town comprised fewer than 10 houses, but a decade later its population had grown to 1,394, making it the largest settlement in Washington Territory. The stretch between Fort Benton, sometimes referred to as the“World’s Innermost Port,” and the Montana Territory capital of Helena remained well traveled.
On a tour of the country north of the Union Pacific Railroad in the summer of 1877, General William Tecumseh Sherman concluded that other transcontinental railroads would not be operable for many years. Pointing to the continued need for forts on the western slope of the Rockies, Mullan suggested that an improved Mullan Road was the way to get materials and men to the sites. He proposed that two detachments of soldiers could repair the road and rebuild the bridges—and that the project could be completed without congressional funds. To lend his proposal credence, Shermans aid that had the road been in better shape, General O.O. Howard could have caught up with the fleeing Nez Perces much sooner during that year’s campaign. But Sherman’s influence appeared to be waning, and the Mullan Road remained neglected.
After building his road and publishing his traveler’s guide, John Mullan dealt in real estate in Walla Walla; started a stage line to haul mail and freight between Idaho and California; practiced law in San Francisco; moved to Washington, D.C., as the land agent for Nevada, Oregon and Washington; and, finally, was appointed Catholic commissioner for Indian missions. On September 8, 1883, Mullan witnessed the Northern Pacific Railway’s “golden spike” ceremony in Gold Creek, Montana Territory—completing that transcontinental route. From the ceremony ground he could peer down the steep mountainside and see a vestige of his road. John Mullan died of natural causes in the nation’s capital on December 28, 1909.
Originally published in the June 2011 issue of Wild West. To subscribe, click here.