The Mullan Road’s Big Side Cut

The Mullan Road is carved into the face of the mountains high above the Clark Fork River west of here. Lieutenant John Mullan tried to keep his wagon road as close to the river as possible. But when his work crews ran up against a mountain spur that reached all the way to the edge of the river, he was forced to seek an alternate route. Mullan later wrote that “to make this six-mile cut through rocky spurs was an undertaking that I almost feared to attempt.” On May 10, 1860, he assembled his entire work force of 150 citizens and soldiers at the west side of the spur. For the next six weeks, his men dug, whittled, and blasted their way up the mountain side to an altitude of a thousand feet above the river. One premature explosion while clearing a path through the rocks wounded one man and severely stunned another. When completed in June 1860, the Big Side Cut segment was the most awe-inspiring of the entire 624-mile Mullan Road. On September 11, 1862, a wagon train that included a young author named Randall Hewitt passed over the road on its way to Walla Walla, Washington. In his reminiscence of the trip, Hewitt wrote: We started out as early as possible, as we fully realized that for many miles the road ahead of us was mountainous and rough beyond anything yet traversed. The scenery was the wildest ever gazed upon, and grand, if as feeble a word as that can be used to properly express anything in this amazing range of mountains. Up, up, still up, we went, winding along over a trail made barely passable by some the larger boulders having been broken and removed, [though] enough were in the way to cause all kinds of trouble, wrenching and jolting the wagons terribly, and causing the poor mules infinite misery. The gorge was narrow, its walls narrow and steep. . . . Around the points of the rocky ridges, almost over an almost vertical wall, the road, a narrow wagon track, had been blasted out, which left no room for careless or uncertain driving. The Scenic Bridge One of Montana’s most unusual bridges is located eight miles east of here near the I-90 Fish Creek Interchange. Built by the William Roscoe Company of Billings in 1928, the structure is a seven- span deck truss bridge. Located in the spectacular Alberton Gorge below the Big Side Cut section of the Mullan Road, the bridge is spanned by a railroad bridge at its northern end. Business leaders and promoters designated it the Scenic Bridge, in the hope that “thousands of dollars worth of Kodak film will be exposed from that particular bridge,” where cars will stop and their occupants view the surroundings. The Interstate bypassed the bridge in 1982. Today the bridge is a popular embarkation point for kayakers and other recreationalists.