Michael Dowling and the Yellowstone Trail

Mud up to hubcaps. Gumbo so slippery it felt like an ice rink. Dust so thick in the summer, travelers wore long duster coats, goggles and hats. Roads were so bad in most of the nation in 1912 that private citizen grassroots groups formed to “get out of the mud,” which was a national cry. Automobile sales were burgeoning but there were no connected, long distance roads out of town (mostly in the West) on which to drive the new black beauty. State and federal governments were doing nothing about auto road building. The time had come.
The Yellowstone Trail Association (YTA) was one of many groups pushing for long-distance roads, and it was the first group to create a transcontinental route through the northern tier of states. In 1912 a small band of men in Ipswich, S. D., envisioned a road “from Plymouth Rock to Puget Sound.” They called it the Yellowstone Trail (YT) to honor the national park.
The YTA did not build roads with pick and shovel. Its 8,000 members persuaded governments to build a single road that connected to a single road from adjoining counties. Thus, a long-distance road resulted, piece by piece. They promoted cross-country tourist traffic, marked the route with yellow signs, and provided maps. It was a grassroots effort, not a governmental effort, and not the effort of a few wealthy business leaders, as was the Lincoln Highway through the Lincoln Highway Association, which was formed a year after the YTA.
Communities along the route paid a membership fee to the YTA to be advertised in its travel literature. People fought to get their towns on the Trail, envisioning tourist trade, economic development, and an efficient way to get farmers’ produce to rail heads.
The YT quickly expanded. The Trail was three years old by the time it reached Wisconsin in 1915. By 1919, the entire route was firmly established coast-to-coast. It shadowed the route of the Milwaukee Road Railroad from the Twin Cities into Montana, and then the Union Pacific further out west.

YTA President Dowling
When Michael Dowling died in 1921, it mattered to the thousands who paid their respects and it mattered to the old YTA because he had been a robust, recent association president. Dowling had also been a teacher, newspaper editor, banker, mayor, auto salesman, Great Lakes and St. Lawrence tidewater commissioner, inspirational speaker for the World War I veterans, Speaker of the Minnesota House, congressional and gubernatorial candidate and friend of U.S. presidents. Of course, he also founded a school for physically handicapped children (Dowling school in south Minneapolis). And he performed all these accomplishments in spite of the amputation of both legs, an arm and all but the stub of his thumb on his other hand following severe frostbite as a child.
While president of the YTA (1917-1919), Dowling visited military hospitals here and in Europe after World War I, inspiring wounded veterans to self-reliance. Whether he spoke to one vet alone or to 5,700 at New York’s Hippodrome, his message was the same: Don’t spend your time thinking about the things that are gone. Think of what you have left. He was, unaffectedly, leading by example.
The YTA caught Dowling’s imagination. As an auto dealer in Olivia, Minn., and the first to own a car in Renville County, he had foreseen the role of the auto in the development of early 20th century of America. He knew the value of roads as an absolute economic and cultural necessity that the federal government was ignoring.
Dowling determined to assist the YTA by driving the Trail along the whole of its barely discernible 1913 route from Minnesota to the Yellowstone National Park. The trip was immortalized in the book “We Blazed the Trail” as recounted by Dowling’s daughter Dorothy Dowling Prichard to book author, Barry Prichard, her son.
Dowling led a three-car caravan with his Oakland 660 with a right-hand wheel and electric starter. Fording streams, wading through mud and fixing punctures while parked in the tall prairie grass occupied the party, but they did it! 
Anxious to expand the trail east, in 1914 he shipped his car through the Great Lakes to Buffalo, N.Y., and began looking for a space to locate the Trail on the popular Rochester-Albany-Boston corridor. He was told that “there was no more room for colored markers on poles on that route.” Indeed, 11 different colors festooned some poles already. He then blazed a more southern route: Plymouth Rock to Hartford, Conn. and southern New York to northern Pennsylvania.
During his tenure as YTA President, Dowling oversaw the establishment of at least 10 tourist bureaus; he saw the northern route through the East, which was refused to him in 1914, become a reality; and he spoke at all state and national YTA conventions.
The calamity of the blizzard that took Dowling’s limbs would have diminished lesser men, but instead it brought out his strength of character. This remarkable man invigorated the Yellowstone Trail Association as no other had. His very appearance inspired resolve amongst the membership. Newspapers often referred to him as the world’s most optimistic man.

Return of the YTA
With the onset of the federal highway system, the YTA disbanded in 1930. Then, 25 years ago, a pair of retired professors from Eau Claire, Wis., John and Alice Ridge sought to revitalize the organization, inviting historical enthusiasts, economic development entities and others to again the raise banner of the YT brand and legacy.
In 2018, the Yellowstone Trail of Minnesota (YTMN) was formed.
In 2021, coincidentally on the day after the 100th anniversary of Dowling’s death, YTMN was awarded a Minnesota Historical Society grant to develop a Cultural Heritage Tourism Master Plan for the state of Minnesota.
The document has aided YTMN in developing connections along the trail from the Twin Cities to Ortonville. Additionally, YTMN seeks to model proactive, state affiliations, that work cooperatively with the national YTA.
The Ridges recently retired from their roles as the leaders of the YTA, handing off the organization to a reformed board.
The group is working on several initiatives to grow the organization and modernize its operations. Individuals interested in learning more or getting involved can visit the YTA’s website at http://www.yellowstonetrail.org and the YTMN website at yellowstonetrailmn.com.
Scott Tedrick of Granite Falls is the editor of the Renville County Register, the newspaper that Michael Dowling started. He drives to work on the road Dowling built. In 2018, he formed the Yellowstone Trail of Minnesota (YTMN) after becoming captivated by Dowling through a historical theatre project (yellowstonetrailmn.com). He is also president of the national Yellowstone Trail Association. Reach him at STedrick@yellowstonetrail.org.