A Trail Woefully Hard to Travel: The Bridger Cut-Off

In 1863, John Bozeman and John Jacobs blazed a new trail through the buffalo rich Powder River Country to the southwest Montana mining camps. The Bozeman Trail, however, could be deadly for the men and women who traveled it. The Lakota and Northern Cheyenne Indians hotly defended their land, the last great hunting grounds on the northern plains. By 1864, travelers ran the risk of being attacked and killed on the Bozeman Trail. That year, famed mountain man Jim Bridger established a new trail, the Bridger Cut-Off, through the arid Bighorn Basin to the Yellowstone River where it intersected the Bozeman Trail. Bridger’s trail was safer than the Bozeman Trail, but much tougher to navigate. Plentiful water and wood, didn’t make up for scarcity of grass for the oxen, horses, and cattle and the difficult terrain over the trail passed. The Bridger Cut-Off passed near here, following the Clark’s Fork of the Yellowstone River north to the confluence of Rock Creek where it turned northwesterly, reaching the Yellowstone near present Big Timber. Despite the advantage of being 100 miles shorter than the Bozeman Trail and the avoidance of trouble with the Indians, Bridger’s Cut-Off never caught on with travelers. In all, only 129 wagons and maybe 450 people navigated the trail in 1864.