FORT BENTON, Mont. — A red bus tottered down a rural road here Sunday, and inside, passengers pressed noses against glass as a guide urged them to envision this place 153 years ago, when the path was a muddy new wagon road cutting through wilderness.
It was the final day of the Mullan Road Conference, an annual weekend gathering to celebrate the life and work of John Mullan, an oft-forgotten explorer, fortune seeker and Army captain who completed a vital wagon road for the Northwest in 1862. The 624-mile trail sliced through the Rockies, linking what would become the states of Washington, Idaho and Montana, and became the backbone of several of the major railroads and highways that fed this region’s development.
“The Mullan Road is the reason for our being,” a local historian, Dick Thoroughman, told some of the nearly 150 attendees.
Though the Mullan name is now attached to schools, roads and banks across three states, and even a wine label, Mullan Road Cellars, few here can explain who Mr. Mullan was or comprehend the scope of his contribution to the region.
CANADA
100 Miles
WASHINGTON
Ft. Benton
Seattle
Coeur d’Alene
Great Falls
Spokane
Clark Fork
River
Pacific
Ocean
Missouri
River
Mullan Road
Missoula
Columbia
River
Snake
River
MONTANA
Ft. Walla Walla
IDAHO
Portland
OREGON
“I’m really big into history,” said Sue Mepham, 52, a librarian from Eureka, Mont., who clutched a pink cellphone as the bus passed lush farmland and a morning mist gave way to blue skies. “When I found out about this Mullan Road thing, I thought, ‘Now this is really cool.’ ”
For 26 years, this event has brought together a tiny subset of Western historians who call themselves Mullanites, some of whom attend in period costume. They assert that construction of the roadway is one of the most significant events in the history of the Northwest — an achievement that has been overshadowed by the adventures of two other American explorers, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark.
There are Mullan experts who focus on the man’s biography; others who specialize in the lives of his assistants, Gustavus Sohon and Theodore Kolecki; and still others who study Mullan-era mapmaking.
“We want to fill in the gap of the puzzle,” said Paul D. McDermott, 77, an expert on Mr. Sohon whose studies include transcription of Mr. Mullan’s notoriously bad handwriting. “You have to be kind of nuts to do this,” he said.
The conference is held each year in a city or town along the Mullan Road and is typically attended by about 50 people who have begun to consider themselves a family. This year it was set in Fort Benton, the path’s easternmost point.
The gathering drew three times the usual number, to the delight of hard-core Mullanites.
“It’s kind of become an event in Montana,” said Ken Robison, 76, a historian and organizer, who attributed the higher numbers to his aggressive Facebook marketing, write-ups in local papers and the fact that teachers can now receive recertification credits for attending.
A real estate agent, an insurance salesman, a nurse and a 10-year-old wearing headphones were among the Montanans attending for the first time.
During the first two days, participants packed the Montana Agricultural Center, where they ate muffins made of White Sonora wheat, a grain popular in the 19th century, and dipped in and out of Mullan-related lectures. One talk covered the days when imported camels traveled the road as pack animals for gold-seeking miners.
Two others discussed the history of the Blackfeet Indians, who live along the road’s eastern arm.
On Saturday evening, authors of books about the Mullan Road sat amid wine glasses at a long table, and attendees jostled for autographs.
Keith C. Petersen, 64, the author of a new biography on Mr. Mullan, said people were drawn to the explorer because his boundless ambition — and frequent foibles — made him human. “What really drove him was getting rich,” Mr. Petersen said. “He represents so many people of that era.”
Mr. Mullan was born in Norfolk, Va., in 1830, a time when the West was a largely unexplored patchwork of mountains, rivers and valleys. A blue-eyed, dark-haired man of short stature and modest means, he attended the United States Military Academy at West Point and became an engineer. In 1858, the War Department sent Mr. Mullan, then a lieutenant, to build a wagon path that could serve as a precursor to a railroad, part of a greater effort to create a transcontinental railway.
With a crew of about 240, Mr. Mullan began the work in 1859 and spent three years building the path. The crew cut through side hills, whacked its way into dense landscape, skirted lakes and built bridges. Crew members were maimed by axes and killed by falling trees. They spent a winter camped at a place in Montana named Hell Gate, where the temperature reached 40 degrees below zero.
At the end, Mr. Mullan was promoted from lieutenant to captain. Within months, his road became a crucial passageway for people traveling to gold-mining camps. He quickly petitioned for a promotion to governor of the newly formed territory of Idaho.
But President Abraham Lincoln, a Republican, rejected the request from Mr. Mullan, a Democrat. Later, Mr. Mullan tried to establish two train lines; both failed. Family businesses collapsed in nasty lawsuits that pitted him against his brothers. Mr. Mullan eventually studied law and moved to California, where he joined a firm that bought up vast tracts of land intended for small farms, taking advantage of lax state law.
In the process he became wealthy, but not popular. His wife, Rebecca, warned in her diaries that there would be consequences to his “vaulting ambition.” He spent his later years mired in legal battles and died destitute in 1909.
But his road shaped the Northwest. Although it was heavily damaged by floods in its early years, Mr. Mullan had set a course that today is approximately followed by Interstate 15 and Interstate 90. A highlight of the weekend’s event was the bus trip on Sunday over more than 100 miles of the Mullan Road, including paved and unpaved portions, that carried passengers through farmland and small municipalities.
“We’re all connected to this road,” said Patrice Schwenk, a teacher who lives in Missoula. Ms. Schwenk said she had been born on the Mullan Road, in Wallace, Idaho, and moved to another portion, in Montana. “My address growing up was Route 2 Mullan Road,” she said.
Last year, she attended the conference for the first time and immediately identified with the Mullanites. Without realizing it, “I’ve been one all my life,” she said.
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