Mr. Fisk Ellis in the 1950s stated that: "No older, no more picturesque trail exists than the old Helena-Fort Benton stage road.  Laid out in 1860 by Lt. Mullan, connecting Fort Benton, head of navigation on the Missouri river, with the Dalles or Walla Walla, the head of navigation on the Columbia, it is now ninety years old, alive with human interest, romance and pictures of by-gone days.  Over it, supplies landed from steamboats at Fort Benton were hauled by wagons, pulled by oxen or mules to Helena, Bozeman, Deer Lodge, and other cities.  From the whistle of the first steamboat at Fort Benton till the last big outfit toiled back and forth over may streams, over miles of hot dust or floundered through flooded streams, across stretches of bottomless mud, in Territorial days the history of this road was practically the history of north and central Monana."