Bozeman Pass

Bozeman Pass

Lewis and Clark NHT Visitor Centers and Museums

This map shows a range of features associated with the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail, which commemorates the 1803-1806 Lewis and Clark Expedition. The trail spans a large portion of the North American continent, from the Ohio River in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to the mouth of the Columbia River in Oregon. The trail is comprised of the historic route of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, an auto tour route, high potential historic sites (shown in black), visitor centers (shown in orange), and pivotal places (shown in green). These features can be selected on the map to reveal additional information. Also shown is a base map displaying state boundaries, cities, rivers, and highways. The map conveys how a significant area of the North American continent was traversed by the Lewis and Clark Expedition and indicates the many places where visitors can learn about their journey and experience the landscape through which they traveled.

Bozeman Pass is a High Potential Historic Site on the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail.

On July 15, 1806, as Clark’s party traveled from the Gallatin River toward the Yellowstone River valley, they were guided by Sacagawea, who knew the area from her childhood. She led them between the Bridger and Gallatin mountain ranges through Bozeman Pass. When still encamped at the Three Forks of the Missouri on July 13, Clark had considered a route through a pass further to the north, but wrote, “The indian woman who has been of great Service to me as a pilot through this Country recommends a gap in the mountain more South which I shall cross.” The party ascended following a “well beaten buffalow road” to “the top of the dividing ridge between the waters of the Missouri from those of the river Rochehone [Yellowstone].”

Although first documented by Clark and later named for John Bozeman, who in the early 1860s helped blaze the Bozeman Trail, the pass had been used as a corridor for thousands of years prior to the Corps of Discovery, particularly by tribes reliant upon following bison migrations. As modes of transportation advanced into the modern era, the Bozeman Pass remained the established thoroughfare into southwest­ern Montana. Substantial development began with the Northern Pacific Railway, completed in 1883. An automobile highway, the Yellowstone Trail, was first constructed across the pass in 1912. This was replaced in 1926 by US 10, and then in 1956 by Interstate 90. There is a historical marker documenting the expedi­tion’s passage.