Just outside the dusty, high plains town of Ekalaka, Montana, a lonesome historical marker whistles old cowboy songs in the blowing sand.   Having read the sign, your eyes scan the horizon, falling upon rolling hills, eroding buttes and dissected stretches of badlands.  Nothing moves except what is driven by the wind.  

There seems to be no earthly reason for Ekalaka to be here.  There is no river crossing, no mining scar, no mountain pass that gathers just beyond.  The railroad doesn’t pass through, nor a major highway, nor any ancient Indian trails of any account.   The one State highway that wanders in from the north just ends on Main Street, and a second, smaller and less-used road picks up as an afterthought and heads out the other end of town through canyons to the south. 

The way I heard the story differs slightly from the way it is stated on the historical marker which means that the story I heard is probably a little… shall we say… inflated.  The way I heard it, an entrepreneur with a wagon load of whiskey was headed for the new gold fields of Idaho to set up a saloon.  He had been traveling for weeks.  Despite successfully warding off all of the dangers that a lone man transporting a load of whisky might be expected to encounter, when he reached the nothing-special spot where Ekalaka now sits his wagon broke down.  The damages were so great that the wagon couldn’t be repaired.  Squinting at the horizon and then staring down at the dust, the entrepreneur contemplated the laws of supply and demand.

“Well hell,” he was reported to have grumbled, “I suppose one place is as good a place for a saloon as any other.” 

And so right there he built his saloon and to it they came, with stories to tell and thirsts to be slaked – wandering many miles out of their way for the promise of a single golden shot of whisky.  Eventually a town formed around the bar and Ekalaka was born.  This would explain why the roads out of town just seem to wander out into the desert and then stop.  They don’t.  They wander IN.  And then they stop. 

The historical marker actually states that the entrepreneur was a man by the name of Claude Carter who was really only carrying a load of lumber.  He was on his way to Idaho and his wagon DID break down.  And he was reputed to have muttered the quote about building a saloon because he did – it says so on the historical marker and I’m sure the historical marker is right.  It has spent a lot more time keeping an eye on the town than I have.  

But that’s not the point. 

The point is that every town has an Old Road, and that it is there for a reason.  It’s usually the route that brings you into town and the one that takes you out.  Chances are it will go by the town square and the oldest house in town, but not always.  It may have been bypassed over the years, it may have been straightened, relocated, graded or banked.  But it’s always there in every town.  It’s the reason for the town in the first place.  You can ALWAYS find the Old Road if you stop and ask yourself this simple question: “Why is this town right here, in this place? 

As stated about Ekalaka: is it where the road crosses the river?  Is it where two important roads meet?  Was there once a mine there, or a large spring, or a site of enormous resource?  Is it an important juncture with the railroad?  Pittsburg and Detroit were strategic early forts along important water routes, Boston and New York were fabulous, protected, deep ports.  Virginia City sat upon a mountain of silver, while Reno guarded the pass over the Sierra Nevadas.  St. Louis is at the joining of two great rivers, New Orleans is where the river meets the sea.  Dodge City marks the spot where the Texas cattle drives met the overland railroad. Las Vegas is where Los Angeles money met Nevadan indifference.

Northwest of Detroit, there is a featureless sprawling bedroom community curiously called Novi. It’s only a half hour by car, but would have been a day’s hard ride on the old 19^th century corrugated stage coach road that used to run from Detroit to Lansing to Grand Rapids.  Novi was Stop #6 on the route, “No. VI” – Novi.  The Old Road is Grand River Avenue, now paralleled by the busy interstate.  Supposedly lost to the ages are “Noii”, “Noiv” and “Noix”.

Here in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, we happen to live on a Very Old Road, possibly the oldest Old Road in the country.  After America had settled the coast and had moved up the inland rivers to the Fall Line, thoughts turned to the inland migration – over the Appalachians to Pittsburgh, to the Ohio River, to the mighty Mississippi and to all of the splendors that Lewis and Clark later (nearly a CENTURY later) proved lie beyond. 

But before the Appalachians could be crossed, the Susquehanna River “America’s longest non-navigable river” had to be spanned.  Wild and untamed, full of huge crushing boulders, it was a formidable obstacle.  The Susquehannock Indians, or so they were called by the early trappers, had moved south from the Finger Lakes region of upper New York to take advantage of trade with the Dutch and the Swedes, and had cobbled together a rough path based on existing Indian paths from their settlement on the banks of the Susquehanna to the new European ports of New Castle, Wilmington and Philadelphia.  This early Indian route was called the “Great Minquas Path”.  The earliest settlers, led by Swiss Mennonites, followed this path and renamed it the Conestoga Road.  It was the only route through the wilderness, America’s first wilderness.   

By the time Claude Carter opened his saloon in Ekalaka, the Old Conestoga Road had been in use for over 150 years.  Eventually the Old Conestoga Road would become the Lincoln Highway, America’s first super highway, the East Coast predecessor to Route 66.  But the Lincoln Highway would have to wait for a man named Lincoln, at a time when a man named Washington was yet to be born. 

The story of the Old Road is one that I am developing more fully and will be having more to say about either here or elsewhere.  Although there is no remaining evidence of the Great Minquas Path, the dog and I have traced what we believe to be its course to a high degree of certainty.  We think we are following the path of footsteps left lightly for thousands of years. 

I’m interested in hearing of the Old Road where you live, how it comes into your town and why.