Old U.S. Highway 91

For many years, no direct route connected Helena and Great Falls other than the railroad and the long, treacherous old Benton wagon road. During the Great Depression, the Montana Highway Department built thousands of miles of paved road across the state, often where no road had existed before. Creating a direct highway between Helena and Great Falls was an enormous engineering challenge because it had to pass through two rugged canyons and cross the Missouri River on two major bridges. Over three years beginning in 1930, work crews dynamited, carved, graded, and paved a road through both canyons. The stretch north of here was built by Morrison-Knudsen Company, which also built part of the Beartooth Highway in south central Montana. Billings contractor Bill Roscoe built the steel bridge over the Missouri River near here in 1933, and its innovative design became the model for steel bridges built throughout Montana in the 1930s and 1940s. When the highway opened to traffic in 1933, it appeared to be draped over the landscape. Today, the old road remains a scenic and historic alternative to Interstate 15.

Montana · United States