To qualify for government land grants, the company was supposed to build a wagon road from The Dalles, Oregon, to Fort Boise in Idaho.
The road was used by wagons pulled by oxen or mules to haul food and other supplies to military forts and stations spaced every 30 miles or so along the route.
Steep grades, large rocks, poor water control, and swampy areas all contributed to a rough trail.
Between the endpoints, the main route passed through or near places such as Antelope, Mitchell, Dayville, Canyon City, Brogan, and Vale, Oregon.
[1] The fraction of the route used by a stage line that began operation in 1864, is referred to simply as The Dalles – Canyon City Wagon Road in the Dictionary of Oregon History which says "numerous freight wagons, pack trains and tramping feet of miners moving to and from the John Day Valley, gradually hammered it into a fairly good road."
[3] An article in The New York Times in 1888 cited a letter from William Vilas, the U.S. Secretary of the Interior, who said in part: The wagon roads have never been built as designated.
[4]The route of The Dalles Military Road generally followed Native American trails that were later used by white explorers such as Peter Skene Ogden and John Work on their travels through northeastern Oregon in the 1820s and early 1830s.
In 1860, soldiers led by Enoch Steen developed a military wagon road from Fort Harney, near what later became Burns, to The Dalles.
To protect miners and other whites from the native peoples, who had not yet ceded this territory, the Federal government established military forts along the route.
[5] As early as the 1850s, the United States Congress had been giving land to private companies to induce them to build railroads and wagon roads across the West.
[6] Of these five, all but the Corvallis–Yaquina City road are considered to have been "almost total frauds" involving "local speculators" aided by "the connivance of state officials".