Friday Photo: Hog Ranch

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 2011-65.02

Bob Pewitt and Helen Meisel of Chicago pose in front of a hog ranch located halfway between Zortman and Malta, Montana. The photo was snapped c. 1920s.

P.S. More thought-provoking vintage tobacco ads
P.P.S. Speaking of Zortman, remember the poignant exhumation of Pete Zortman?

Friday Photo: Stage Travel

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 2011-65.13

Today's photo shows women traveling by stagecoach, probably near Zortman, Montana. For our last post in honor of Women's History Month, here's one woman's experience traveling by stage.

Frances M. A. Roe wrote a lively account of a stage ride through the treacherous Prickly Pear Canyon in Army Letters from an Officer’s Wife. Frances describes why she dreaded meeting an oncoming ox train on the very narrow, boulder-strewn road. Sure enough, they had not gone far when a huge freighter lumbered toward them. A sheer precipice dropped on one side and soared skyward on the other. It seemed a hopeless situation. The driver barked, “Get the lady out!” Men from the freighters sidled over. With no words spoken, they knew exactly what to do. They lifted the stage—trunks and all—up, over, and onto some of the boulders and led the horses between others. The horses stood at the edge of the precipice without a twitch while three teams of eight yokes of oxen passed by. “It made me ill,” Frances wrote, “to see the poor patient oxen straining and pulling up the grade those huge wagons so heavily loaded. The crunching and groaning of the wagons, rattling of the enormous cable chains, and the creaking of the heavy yokes of the oxen were awful sounds, and above all the came yells of the drivers, and the sharp, pistol-like reports of the long whips.” After the wagons passed, the men returned and matter-of-factly set the stage on the road. The process was repeated six or seven times as the stage traveled through the canyon.

Pete Zortman Comes Home

Oliver Peter Zortman came west in 1888, lured by gold discovered in eastern Montana’s Little Rocky Mountains. He struck it rich several times, ran a cyanide mill, and left his name on the town of Zortman. He was part of an elite group—one of very few to leave the Little Rockies with a small fortune in gold.

Zortman, Montana, 1908. Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 951-885

He joined the Masons in Chinook and eventually ended up in Big Timber where he died of cancer in 1933, penniless. No stone marked his final resting place, but the local newspaper that documented his passing mentioned that he was buried in a hand-dug pauper’s grave. A few years ago, Zortman residents decided to honor their namesake. It was no small task to discover Zortman’s unmarked resting place. A long search led to Zortman’s membership in the Masons. The leatherbound records of the Big Timber Masonic Lodge offered details of Zortman’s funeral. With permission from Zortman’s relatives, several veterinarians, a Chinook undertaker, cemetery workers, and assorted Zortman residents oversaw the exhumation. The remains of Pete Zortman surfaced from the chocolate soil in Big Timber’s Mountain View Cemetery with some difficulty. Water from an irrigation ditch immediately flooded the hole as the backhoe dug. Three feet of muck was removed, and pieces of the coffin and Zortman began to surface. The yellowed bones were placed in a newly made pine coffin and loaded onto a truck. On August 27, 2005, a vintage hearse carried the pine box to the Zortman Cemetery. A smattering of relatives and most of the town of Zortman attended the graveside services. Pete Zortman was home.