The Yellowstone Trail was the first coast-to-coast auto route across the northern tier of states, promoted as “A Good Road from Plymouth Rock to Puget Sound.” Before 1912, railroads dominated long-distance transportation, local roads were dusty and muddy, and there was little government help, so owners of the newly arrived automobiles took action. In 1912, small-town businessmen from South Dakota formed the Yellowstone Trail Association to “get out of the mud” and pressure counties to build usable automobile roads, naming the transcontinental route for Yellowstone to attract tourists to the national park. Roads and automobiles were crude and travel was difficult, and without maps tourists relied on guidebooks and yellow rocks to find their way. By 1915 the Yellowstone Trail had been extended across Wisconsin, and by 1917 it reached both coasts, with yellow and black signs posted across the country. In 1929 it became Wisconsin’s first cross-state highway to be concrete. Until 1930, hundreds of towns supported the Yellowstone Trail, and the Association created free campgrounds, travel bureaus, and publications to help travelers. Route numbering, created by the State of Wisconsin in 1918 and now an international system, reduced the need for named roads, and the Depression then brought an end to all trail associations.
