Fort Keogh

Fort Keogh was established in July 1876 in the few weeks following the Custer loss at Little Bighorn. The army cavalry post takes its name from Captain Myles Keogh who served under Custer and died in the battle. The fort’s commander was General Nelson Miles. In 1879, Miles City—whose name honors the general—became the first seat of Custer County, and the fort grew to be one of the largest in the territory.

A distant view of Fort Keogh, c. 1878. Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, ST 003.63

Sixty buildings once sprawled across the diamond-shaped grounds. In 1907, the army withdrew its infantry troops, and in 1909, the fort became a remount station where the army trained and shipped horses worldwide. The army shipped more horses from Fort Keogh during World War I than any other army post.

Women and children pose in front of the officers' quarters at Fort Keogh, c. 1878.
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, ST 003.62

The military withdrew in 1924 and transferred the land to the U.S. Department of Agriculture for experimental stock raising and the growing of forage crops. This work continues today. The remains of the historic fort include the parade ground, 1883 wagon shed, 1887 flagpole, and seven other pre-1924 structures.

A Cowboy and his Horse

The Great Falls Tribune of August 30, 1951, related a heartwarming true tale of a cowboy and his horse. Henry Haughian and Buck were rounding up cattle in the rugged outback country of the Sheep Mountains north of Miles City in Dawson County. Buck, usually a surefooted horse, probably got to daydreaming and stumbled on the steep hillside. Henry had no time to jump off. He was caught beneath the horse as Buck rolled down the hill. The fall frightened Buck, who got up, shook himself, shied away, and took off down the hill as fast as he could go. But when Buck got over his fright, he realized that his master was missing. He climbed back up the rocky hillside, searching for him. He found Henry lying unconscious on the slope. Buck then climbed to the top of the hill and stood sentinel there.

Henry Haughian. Range Riders Museum Collection, via Range Rider Stories

No one knows how long he must have waited, motionless on that hilltop. Finally sometime later, two sheepherders happened along and saw the horse silhouetted against the Montana sky. They noticed the empty saddle right away and made their way to the riderless horse. Once the men reached the top of the hill, Buck led them down the steep incline to the spot where Henry lay, still unconscious. The men carried Henry to their truck and took him to the hospital. Henry suffered three broken bones and extensive bruises but recovered from his ordeal. The story proves that humans and their animal companions have special bonds. Or maybe it proves that horses know where their next meal comes from. Whatever the explanation, Henry never forgot Buck because Buck did not forget him.

P.S. Remember this heartwarming story?

Mountain View School for Girls

The Montana legislature created the Boys and Girls Industrial School at Miles City in 1893. This reformatory was for boys and girls who were either in serious trouble with the law or had nowhere else to go. It was one step toward the establishment of the juvenile court system that came about in 1907. Some felt strongly that there should be separate industrial schools for boys and girls. One of these advocates was Dr. Maria Dean, a Helena physician whose practice specialized in the diseases of women and children. A great humanitarian, Dr. Dean took up many causes during her lifetime, but she felt most strongly about separating boys and girls in detention. Dr. Dean worked tirelessly with other women’s groups toward this end, and finally, in 1919, legislator Emma Ingalls sponsored a bill establishing the Mountain View Vocational School for Girls in Helena. Dr. Dean died just weeks after the bill passed. The first six girls were transferred from Miles City to the new facility seven miles north of Helena in April 1920.



Stewart Hall, 1961. Image clipped from "State of Montana Vocational School for Girls"
Montana Historical Society Research Center

By 1922, fifty-three girls between the ages of nine and eighteen lived in cottages on the campus. Some were orphans, some were runaways, and others had behavioral problems. Until the 1950s, harsh discipline included solitary confinement and lock up. By the 1960s, there was more emphasis on education and less on punishment. In 1996, the school closed and the Montana Law Enforcement Academy moved in. A few buildings, stables, and attic graffiti recall the former use of the campus.

From More Montana Moments

Friday Photo: Miles City Horse Race

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 981-969

The famous Miles City Bucking Horse Sale is this weekend. Are you going? You can compare it to this photo, which shows what the Miles City fairgrounds looked like at a horse race around the turn of the twentieth century. Photo by L. A. Huffman.

P.S. Remember this racehorse?
P.P.S. L. A. Huffman is famous for his photos of cowboys on the range.

Sedition

Montana had one of the nation’s harshest sedition laws, making it illegal to speak out against U.S. involvement in World War I. Among the dozens of people who went to prison for this crime, Janet Smith was the only woman who did time at Deer Lodge. She and her husband William ran the post office at Sayle south of Miles City and had a ranch in the Powder River country. Mrs. Smith was famous for her cooking and often fed dozens of cowboys at her table. She stood accused of bragging that if the people revolted, she would be the first one to shoulder a gun and get the president. She called the Red Cross a fake and said the disabled, insane, and convicts should be killed to save food instead of the government’s restricting it from the rest of the population. The jury found her guilty. The judge gave her five to ten years, and she was taken from the courtroom sobbing.


Montana Historical Society Research Center, Montana State Prison Records

Her husband had also made seditious statements and was found guilty. Author Clemens P. Work in his book Darkest Before Dawn suggests that the isolation of ranchers like the Smiths made them particularly vulnerable, not realizing the implications of their casual talk. “In 1918,” Work writes, “what was skeptical became unpatriotic, what was thrifty became miserly, and what was opinion became sedition.” Janet Smith served twenty-six months before the Supreme Court reversed her conviction on the grounds that the language with which she was charged was not specific enough to convict her. William Smith was paroled at about the same time. What happened to the Smiths after their release has yet to be discovered.


Montana Historical Society Research Center, Montana State Prison Records

Miles City Christmas 1884

Miles City, Montana, looked forward to the holidays in 1884. On Christmas Eve, the Daily Yellowstone Journal instructed its readers to “Get the hinges of your jaws ready to warble “Merry Christmas” to friends and neighbors. And be sure,” said the Journal, “to clear your chimneys for the descent of Kris Kringle.” But not entirely in the Christmas spirit, the Journal recorded the final percentile grades of public school students, certainly embarrassing several like George Busch of the senior class who earned a 40, Kate Cupples who earned a 56, and others. Now that’s a gift for a parent—to have your child’s ill achievement published in the newspaper, and on Christmas Eve.

From Chronicling America, Library of Congress

On a more festive note, the Journal advertised the perfect Christmas present: The Missouri Steam Washer. No home, said the Journal, is complete without it. Patented in 1883, the advertisement claimed that the contraption was so simple to use that a ten-year-old could do the family wash in an hour. Wouldn’t the kids love that present! Or you could buy a buffalo coat for $15, or pantaloons for $1.50. And the Journal had some advice on sizing up the roasted Christmas turkey: “Don’t look in its mouth as if it were an old horse with a tooth ache,” said the Journal. “Just gently dislocate its wings. If it’s old and tough, you’ll have to tug pretty hard on the flappers.” When it comes to dessert, said the Journal, there will be no poison in your pastry if you use Dr. Price’s pure extract of vanilla. So shake the snow out of the Christmas tree and unhinge your jaws for Christmas dinner.

A Mild Thanksgiving in Wild Miles City, 1882

Miles City was a wild town in its day. Wooden false fronts, wide dusty streets, and saloons where whiskey flowed made the town on every cowboy’s route and a place where a good time was easily found. Cowboys and soldiers at Fort Keogh frequented the numerous houses where the ladies entertained them lavishly, for a fee, of course.

Miles City prostitutes and patrons in a parlor house reception hall.
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, Morrison Collection

But for one day in the 1880s, an unusual atmosphere pervaded the air. The Miles City Daily Press noted after Thanksgiving Day in 1882 that seldom had there been such a mild holiday. The weather that day was clear and brilliant and the temperature balmy, precisely the kind of day one would choose for a holiday. And so Miles City gave itself up to relaxation and enjoyment. The bank and the post office were closed although citizens received their daily mail. Stores were open early for shoppers planning holiday meals, and by noon, all stores had hung their closed signs in their windows. Visitors flocked into town from neighboring settlements and reaches to see what fun might be going on. But, said the paper, there was only the mildest type to be found. There was never a more sober and orderly day witnessed in Miles City. The saloons were all open and they were well patronized and did a brisk business, but the patrons were all unusually well behaved.  Unlike the usual barroom scuffles and rowdy behavior, the spirit of good behavior seemed to hover over all. Miles City was in it glory that Thanksgiving night in 1882, and it was gratifying to record that not a single disturbance occurred to mar the general harmony that had prevailed throughout that pastoral Thanksgiving Day.

May yours be as pleasant.

Civil War Vets

In honor of our veterans...

Montana’s earliest African American population carried the very real memories of slavery and its associated implications. Most of the first black Montanans were born into slavery or had parents or ancestors who were slaves. Many of them saw service during the Civil War. Upon President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, the Union stepped up its recruitment of black volunteers. By the end of the Civil War, roughly 179,000 black men, or 10 percent of the Union Army, had served as soldiers, and another 19,000 had served in the Navy. Nearly 40,000 black soldiers died over the course of the war—30,000 of them succumbed to infection or disease. Black volunteers did many necessary jobs and earned a salary of ten dollars a month, with three dollars deducted for clothing. White soldiers received thirteen dollars a month with no deductions. Three black Union veterans who later made their homes in Montana were Jack Taylor of Virginia City, Moses Hunter of Miles City, and James Wesley Crump of Helena. In the Union Army, Jack Taylor took care of officers’ horses and learned the craft of teamster. Moses Hunter reenlisted after the war, served in the Southwest, and by 1939, was eastern Montana’s only living Civil War veteran. James Crump lied about his age and joined the Union Army. When his superiors discovered he was only fourteen, he convinced them to let him serve out his three-year term as a drummer. Crump thus was the youngest Civil War veteran in Montana, and because of this, he often carried the flag in parades and proudly held the flag at the laying of the cornerstone of the Montana State Capitol in 1902.


A buffalo soldier at the dedication of the Montana State Capitol in 1902
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives

P.S. Remember this invention by buffalo soldier William D. Davis?
P.P.S. What about Mingo Sanders and the soldiers of the Twenty-fifth Infantry?

Evelyn Cameron Scandalizes Miles City

Photographer Evelyn Cameron is a recent inductee into the Gallery of Outstanding Montanans in the state’s Capitol. Evelyn was born in England and raised to be a proper English lady. But once she created a real scandal. Evelyn’s husband was a noted ornithologist and naturalist, but he didn’t care much for their ranch. That was all right with Evelyn who enjoyed the physical work. Chores and most everything from making bread to milking cows and working the horses fell to her. She took to wearing a divided riding skirt that allowed her to ride astride rather than sidesaddle. The long skirt was much like modern culottes. Victorian women, however, did not wear pants. And when Evelyn first rode into Miles City in the dark blue divided skirt she had ordered from California, oh, the scandal it caused. Although the skirt was so full it looked like an ordinary dress when she was on foot, on horseback the division was obvious. Law enforcement warned her not to ride on the streets in town or she might be arrested. But town was forty-eight miles from her ranch, and riding sidesaddle could only be done on a very slow and gentle horse. Evelyn would not ride what she called old “dead heads.” She became convinced that riding in a man’s saddle stride-legged was the only safe way for a woman to ride. Before long, other women took to the divided skirt and it became an accepted way of dressing not only for women on the streets of Miles City, but also on homesteads, farms, and ranches across Montana.


Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 90-87.80-2

One of the Buckley sisters of eastern Montana dismounting, wearing an Evelyn Cameron–designed split skirt, 1914. Click the photo for a bigger version.

P.S. Remember Dillon's fashion scandal?

Friday Photo: Spring Roundup

Happy Friday! Here's an iconic photo of a highly romanticized chapter in Montana history.
 

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 981-460

Photographer L. A. Huffman snapped this photo during the spring roundup near Miles City, probably in the 1890s. He called it "Foreman Telling Off the Men for the Circle," describing the routine to start the day's work.

P.S. Remember this depiction of cowboy life?