A road beloved for being in our backyard could be the next scenic highway in North Dakota.

For now, a 90-mile stretch of old Highway 10 from Mandan to Dickinson is the semi-private domain of the locals who use it, the Harley riders who wind along it for the smell of spring blossoms and the bicyclists who pedal it.

Old 10 used to be the main east-west highway from Beach to Fargo. Interstate-94 whizzed through in the '60s and changed everything.

Before it was the beloved, meandering Highway 10, it was the Red Trail, rutted out across the open prairie by homestead seekers and entrepreneurs.

It connects communities and the past to the present.

Folks who live in Stark and Morton counties are joined through a committee that wants to make something special of the historical road.

For more than a year, an Old Red Trail Committee has been working to attain a scenic highway designation, and those special blue dots on the state map, from the State Park Department-led committee that handles such requests.

Communities located along the Old Red Trail and Highway 10 are Dickinson, Gladstone, Taylor, Richardton, Hebron, Glen Ullin, Almont, New Salem and Mandan.

If it's approved when the scenic highway committee next meets in 2008, it would join only two other scenic highways west of the Missouri River.

The scenic highway on Highway 22 sides the Killdeer Mountains, with their legendary Medicine Hole, before breaking into the rugged Little Missouri River Badlands country up north.

The scenic highway portion of Highway 1806 passes through the sere butte terrain of the lower Missouri River valley from Cannon Ball to South Dakota.

This stretch of old 10 and the Old Red Trail has a completely different flavor, like an old-fashioned milkshake compared to a shot of rye whiskey.

It is more pastoral than ruggedly scenic.

And, these many years later, it clearly shows how a road was an artery of life from one town to the next, to cream stations, gas stations and cemeteries, and from that era to this one, when so much has changed.

Robin Reynolds, who has a pottery store on old Highway 10 in Hebron, is chair of the Old Red Trail committee.

Besides the designation, Reynolds said the committee is planning a brochure that would explain and highlight the Old Red Trail, as the committee is choosing to call it in its application.

Part of the planning involves a 10-year vision of how the Old Red Trail, as a scenic highway, would be managed, she said.

Some ideas are low-tech, like birding, or simply touring the countryside on a leisurely road, instead of today's version of a concrete, high-speed bypass.

Other ideas are high-tech, like using the highway for geo-caching adventures, or tapping into the "talking houses" technology that downloads a talking tour of a historic home, or place, through a vehicle's global positioning system.

A perfect way to use that talking house technology would be on the Curlew Loop, a proposed 20-mile loop off the Old Red Trail that leaves the old highway to go south to Almont and then around over to Glen Ullin, all by gravel road.

Reynolds said the loop will be part of the application and because most is gravel, it would probably be a scenic byway, if it's accepted for inclusion.

The old Sims townsite is out there on the loop, with its restored parsonage and church.

Joel and Donna Johnson are country neighbors to the townsite and volunteer caretakers of Sims' and the area's history.

They'd like to see people travel through, stopping by to see all the work that's been done on the oldest church west of the Missouri River.

There's a well-stocked museum down the road in Almont, where folks gather every Labor Day to sing around a fat-legged grand piano in the museum.

The museum grounds hold the old Curlew house, which was moved over from the 1879 Northern Pacific Railroad siding stop of Curlew. It was named for the long-billed bird, or possibly a Capt. Curlew, killed by Indians in the area.

The loop road connects Almont to Glen Ullin and winds through the sweet valley of Curlew Creek, or Big Muddy Creek.

The valley was a thriving neighborhood of its own with the train whistling through it.

Joel Johnson thinks people would enjoy the history on the Curlew Loop, as a kind of sidebar to the scenic highway.

"It would benefit Almont," he said. "There's still a few businesses there."

Reynolds said the committee believes there are all kinds of treasures along the road. New Salem might be famous for its giant New Salem Sue Holstein, but who knew the town also has more old homes with swooping mansard roof lines than any other town in the state, she asks.

The Old Red Trail, as a proposed scenic highway, would go from Villard Avenue in Dickinson, to Main Street in Mandan, stretches of historic and modern-day commerce.

History and a genuine slice of rural life unfold between the two. And the road, whether it's Highway 10 and the Old Red Trail, just keeps on truckin'.

(Reach reporter Lauren Donovan at 888-303-5511, or lauren@;westriv.com.)