Bitterroot Apple Trees

Even before the 1909 Enlarged Homestead Act was underway, the Bitterroot Valley apples drew a large population to Ravalli County. The valley’s especially long growing season was realized very early. The first apple orchards in the Bitterroot Valley were planted in the 1860s. Thomas Harris in the Three Mile area planted fruit trees in 1866. The Bass brothers planted the first commercial orchard, obtaining their trees by mail order from Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1870. Removal of the Salish to the Jocko reservation in 1890 opened land for investors. Refrigerated rail cars made long-distance shipment possible. By 1894, the commercial apple trade was underway. Investors bought land for 2 to 15 dollars an acre and planted thousands of MacIntosh apple trees. During the early 1900s, railroad companies sold their unneeded land, new dry land farming methods became popular, and investors began aggressive booster programs to entice easterners west. Montana and the Bitter Root Valley were part of these schemes. By 1906, the boom was on. During the teens, western Montana had nearly one million apple trees. Bitter Root MacIntosh apples were eventually marketed and sold across the United States.

Montana advertised its apples and orchard produce extensively. These early 1900s labels were reproduced in
Good Fruit Grower magazine, April 2010.

Two trees at St. Mary’s Mission in Stevensville are believed to be the valley’s oldest surviving apple trees. Both are listed on the National Register of Historic Places as part of St. Mary’s Mission Historic District. Father Ravalli’s surviving crab apple tree dates to 1869 and serves as a reminder of the agricultural skills the Jesuits brought to the valley. Its aged trunk still puts forth shoots, and its buds, grafted onto rootstock, have produced numerous offspring. The other, a Wolf River apple tree, dates to circa 1870.

Father Ravalli's crab apple tree, planted in 1869 at St. Mary's Mission, still puts out shoots. Ellen Baumler photo.

These trees are all that remain of Father Ravalli’s extensive gardens. Grafts from these trees form the small orchard to the north in adjacent De Smet Park and are the parent trees of many in the Stevensville area.

St. Mary's Mission Historic District

Jesuit priests and lay brothers founded St. Mary’s Mission—the first mission in the Northwest—in 1841. The Jesuits closed the mission in 1850, returning in 1866. For the next quarter century, they helped the Salish adapt from hunting to farming as the buffalo disappeared. The priests supported and advocated for the Salish people and provided medical services and spiritual guidance to both Indians and whites. When the U.S. government forced the impoverished Salish to leave their beloved Bitterroot Valley for the Flathead Reservation in 1891, St. Mary’s closed. An influx of homesteaders prompted the creation of St. Mary’s Parish in 1910, and the old mission church reopened. In 1911, the Salish returned to St. Mary’s for the first time since 1891 to celebrate their Bitterroot heritage. They still maintain this tradition.

A group of Salish visit St. Mary's circa 1955
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 950-754

The historic district includes the 1866 church and pharmacy, designed by the multi-talented Father Anthony Ravalli. Ravalli, also the architect of Idaho’s famed Cataldo Mission, employed log building techniques, ingeniously adapting European ecclesiastical architecture to the remote frontier. St. Mary’s historic church reflects his talents—the carpentry, paintings, and sculpture were all his handiwork.

The interior of historic St. Mary’s Mission Church shows Father Ravalli’s artistic skills

Adjacent is St. Mary’s Cemetery and Father Ravalli’s final resting place. Chief Victor’s log home and the Indian burial ground recall the Salish presence. Two gnarled apple trees provide living evidence of Jesuit agriculture. Father Ravalli planted one of the trees in 1869, and it is the oldest living apple tree in the Bitterroot Valley, where settlers later planted orchards during the Apple Boom. The tree is all that remains of Father Ravalli’s extensive garden. Salish elder Mary Ann Combs recalled her grandmother picking apples from the tree. Its aged trunk still puts forth shoots, and its buds, grafted onto rootstock, have produced numerous offspring in the Stevensville area.

This crabapple tree planted by Father Ravalli is one of two apple trees listed in the
National Register of Historic Places at St. Mary’s Mission in Stevensville. 

The new St. Mary’s Church, built in 1954 with donations from Montana and beyond, represents an unprecedented preservation effort to save the endangered mission church from deterioration through constant use. Today, St. Mary’s churches—old and new—define the historic complex as a place of significance to both Indian and white communities.

Frank Lloyd Wright in Montana

In 1991, the American Institute of Architects honored Frank Lloyd Wright as the Greatest American Architect of All Time. His theory of organic architecture held that structures should be in harmony with humanity and the human environment. When he died in 1959, he had designed over five hundred homes and structures in thirty-six states and Japan, Canada, and England. Some four hundred remain today. Montana claims several examples of his work, including one project from 1908 when Wright’s career was just beginning to take off and another dating to the very end of his long architectural practice. The Como Orchards Colony, also known as the University Heights subdivision, in the Bitterroot Valley near Darby was an experimental planned community. Wright came to Montana in 1908 to research the site and designed the Como Orchards as a summer refuge for university professors.

The Como Orchards Colony lodge. Courtesy Treadway/Toomey Galleries

 A lodge and thirteen cottages were completed. One small cottage, a one-room cabin, and a tree-lined drive are all that remain today of Wright’s experiment. It was an innovative idea and a very early use of the prairie style that made Wright famous.

A Como Orchards Colony cabin. Courtesy ArchiTech Gallery.

He also designed the Bitterroot Inn at Stevensville, but it burned to the ground in the 1920s. The Lockridge Medical Clinic in Whitefish, built in 1961 1959, was one of Wright’s last designs. Dr. T. L. Lockridge insisted on the building’s construction even though his partners did not think it suitable as a medical clinic. For one thing, its hallways were too narrow for wheelchair access. When Lockridge died in 1964 1963, his two partners moved elsewhere, and Mrs. Lockridge sold the building. Now a law office, it is a surprising landmark in the middle of downtown Whitefish.

The Lockridge Medical Clinic in Whitefish

Update: Thanks to Ann Lockridge Christman for correcting the dates in the last paragraph.