The road from Three Forks to Helena began long before those cities existed as a trail used by Montana's first citizens following bison herds and other game animals. By the 1860s, when the Gallatin Valley had become an important agricultural area, it was a well-worn route for freight wagons, pack animals, and passenger coaches traveling between Bozeman, Virginia City, Helena, and Fort Benton, and James Sheed built bridges across the Gallatin, Madison, and Jefferson rivers to aid travelers in the headwaters area. That thoroughfare joins the highway a short distance north of here as Old Town Road. Automobiles changed the road's character in the early twentieth century, and in 1960 the Montana State Highway Commission designated this route U.S. Highway 287. In the early years of automobile tourism, Montana's highways had names rather than numbers, and nineteen named highways crossed the state after World War I, linking county-maintained roads to national parks and other historic and recreational attractions through distinctive signs and symbols. Organizations such as the Yellowstone Trail Association promoted these routes, while local commercial clubs subscribed to association brochures and advertised hotels, garages, and tourist camps in their communities. Among these named roads were the Yellowstone Trail, Roosevelt Highway, Vigilante Trail, and Custer Battlefield Highway. The route of U.S. Highway 287 between Three Forks and Helena originated in the 1910s as the Geysers to Glaciers Motor Trail, dedicated by Governor Sam Stewart in June 1919 as a route from Gardiner's geysers at Yellowstone National Park's north entrance to Glacier National Park's east entrance at East Glacier. This 396-mile chain of unpaved roads, marked by red, white, and blue signs with arrows, passed through eight Montana counties, and in 1920 a new branch carried motorists along this route through Townsend to Helena. Promoters hailed it as the shortest path between Yellowstone and Glacier, with pathfinders in each community prepared to repair roads and assist tourists, but the Geysers to Glaciers Motor Trail had disappeared from Montana maps by 1930.