Military Roads of the Old West

• A Scouting Expedition for a Military Road on the New Mexico Frontier From 1849 to 1851 the army had a post on the plaza in Las Vegas, New Mexico. The army hoped the Pecos ran south in such a way that an easy road from the river to Albuquerque could be surveyed--though as it turned out, the Pecos did not flow in the direction army planners hoped it would. The second part of the letter shows Henry Judd's frustration with the caliber of men he commanded, and gives an interesting picture of the type of soldier on the New Mexico frontier at that time.

• Bushwhackers on Military Road In and around Benton County, MO

• The Dalles Military Road The Dalles Military Road Company obtained a grant of land from the government to build a road from The Dalles to Fort Boise. A fair road was constructed over which for many years vast amounts of freight were conveyed by pack trains, and by freight companies.

• The Dalles Military Road Roads Bring Soldiers and Emigrants: An Article about the planned road from Fort Boise to Canyon City, from the Canyon City Journal, Oregon, 1869

• Forbes Road In 1758, an expedition was formed under Brigadier John Forbes, with Colonel George Washington in assistance, to create a road from Philadelphia on the Old Wagon Road going west. Its main use by the Frontier Settler was to reach Fort Pitt and the Ohio River, where they could build flatboats for migration down the Ohio to the Western Frontier.

• Fort Hays/Fort Dodge Road The column forded the Arkansas at Fort Dodge and headed straight for Fort Hays. Two years before when the Eighteenth Kansas marched up and down, to and fro, in this part of the country, it was a trackless waste between two forts. Now the column marched all the way over a smooth, well traveled wagon road. Sgt. James Albert Hadley, Nineteenth Kansas Cavalry, April 1869

• Frontier Military Road, KS What you'll find along the Military Road in Kansas. Lots of Links

• The Jacksonville-Fort Klamath Military Road A Map

• Fort Leavenworth/Round Grove, Lone Elm Road On May 15, 1829, four companies of the Sixth U.S. Infantry under the command of Bvt. Maj. Bennet Riley were greeted by a 15-gun salute as they disembarked from the steamboat Diana at Cantonment Leavenworth. While other officers were deployed to procure provisions and draft animals for the expedition, 2nd Lt. Robert Seiver was ordered to reconnoiter two routes from the cantonment to Round Grove, the well known campground on the Santa Fe Trail at which Riley's command was to rendezvous with the traders assembling at Independence.

• The Old Military Road in Oregon A military road from Myrtle Creek to Jacksonville that was declared a territorial road on Jan. 31, 1854

• Old Military Road in Texas The Old Military Road between Fort Brown at Brownsville and Fort Ringgold at Rio Grande City was built as a possible supply route for Zachary Taylor during the Mexican War.qv Taylor had set up a supply base at Camargo, opposite Rio Grande City, for his movement into the interior of Mexico. In the 1960s most of the old road was paved and was a portion of U.S. Highway 281.

• Plans for a Scouting Expedition The possibility of opening a military road south from Las Vegas, NM down the Pecos River Valley. This report was written March 15, 1850

• Fort Riley/Fort Larned Road The mule trains left Riley the tenth of September, 1862, each traveling independently, with instructions to camp on the Smoky at Salina, then a mere station, until I came up. There was a plain road, but little traveled, and this the first government train of any importance to pass over it. Such was the origin of what H. L. Jones, deputy U.S. marshal at Salina in 1864, called the Fort Riley and Fort Larned Road.

• The San Antonio-El Paso Road With the discovery of gold in California in 1849, the need for immigrant roads and commercial freighting routes from Texas' Gulf Coast to El Paso and points west provided additional impetus for the Army to establish and protect routes between Texas's major cities and the Gulf coast.

• Texas: The Military Road Expedition of 1840-41 In December 1839 the Congress of the Republic of Texas passed a law directing military personnel to cut a road between Austin and Fort Inglish (now Bonham). The road was intended to protect and advance the frontier by connecting a series of forts to be erected from San Patricio northward to a point near Coffee's Station on the Red River.

• Trans-Alaska Military Trail and Wagon Road Sections of the trail remain much the same today as when first built by soldiers and destitute prospectors hired by the Army in the summer of 1899.

• The US Camel Corps One of the most interesting military experiments of the American West involved plans to import 77 camels to help build and supply a Western wagon route from Texas to California. It was a dry, hot and otherwise hostile region, not unlike the camel's natural terrain in the Middle East.

• Fort Wallace/Kit Carson/Fort Lyon Road Having no official name, the road to Fort Lyon was known by several designations. Captain W. H. Penrose, Commanding Officer at Fort Lyon, referred to the road as the "stage route to Cheyenne Wells." Luke Cahill, a stage company employee and former first sergeant in the Fifth Infantry at Fort Lyon, called the road "the trail between Lyon and Wallace." At a later date, the road was commonly known as "The Fort Wallace/Fort Lyon Road."

• The Willamette Valley and Cascade Mountain Military Road On September 5th of 1859 a party hardy explorers, consisting of Andrew Wiley, Harvey Wiley, John Brandenberg, and John Gray followed the course of the South Santiam River in an effort to locate a route over the Cascade Mountains to central Oregon. They followed an old Indian trail up the South Fork of the South Santiam River that lead as far as Hackleman Creek.

  
  

  Add your URL to this list!

  Send comments, suggestions or inquiries: Overland Trail

  |Back to The Overland Trail Home Page |

  Created and maintained by Elizabeth Larson
  Copyright © 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000