During the 1880s, as Sheridan County was settled and railroads steadily advanced through Wyoming, stagecoach operations shifted from long-distance interstate service between railheads to a network of shorter routes linking rail terminals with isolated communities. The county road here was surveyed between Buffalo and the Montana line in September 1882 and was known as the Buffalo-Montana Road. It bypassed Sheridan and was used by local stage lines to connect several outlying communities in Sheridan County. The Buffalo-Montana Road followed the route of the military cutoff of the Bozeman Trail established between Fort Phi Kearny and Fort C.F. Smith in 1867. The modern county road closely follows the 1882 route, except that the earlier road came from Big Horn through the gap in the Beaver Creek Hills to the east rather than around the hills, crossed Beaver Creek over a bridge, and continued northwest to Beckton, Dayton, and Ohlman.