The Mullan Road is carved into the face of the mountains high above the Clark Fork River west of here. Lieutenant John Mullan tried to keep his wagon road as close to the river as possible. But when his work crews ran up against a mountain spur that reached all the way to the edge of the river, he was forced to seek an alternate route. Mullan later wrote that "to make this six-mile cut through rocky spurs was an undertaking that I almost feared to attempt." On May 10, 1860, he assembled his entire work force of 150 citizens and soldiers at the west side of the spur. For the next six weeks, his men dug, whittled, and blasted their way up the mountain side to an altitude of a thousand feet above the river. A premature explosion while clearing a path through the rocks wounded one man and severely stunned another. When completed in June, 1860, the Big Side Cut segment was the most awe-inspiring of the entire 624-mile Mullan Road. A traveler wrote of the Big Side Cut in 1862 that it was "a narrow wagon track which left no room for careless or uncertain driving."
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