Sieben Ranch

The Sieben Ranch encompasses a vast 115,000 acres in Lewis and Clark County. It has a rich archaeological history that includes fragments of the roads that brought miners to Montana’s goldfields. Trader Malcolm Clarke was the first to settle on a knoll overlooking Prickly Pear Creek in 1864 where he ran a stage stop.

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 941-761

Clarke, embittered over his expulsion from West Point because of an altercation with a fellow student, had come west with the American Fur Company in 1841. The itinerant trader finally settled down on his ranch to raise horses and cattle. A dispute with Clarke’s Blackfeet in-laws and trouble in Fort Benton between whites and Blackfeet led to his murder at the ranch in 1869.

Malcolm Clarke's ranch. Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 941-762

Clarke’s family buried him on a gentle rise north of the house. Pioneer rancher James Fergus added the Clarke ranch to his large holdings in 1875. General William T. Sherman, an overnight guest at the Fergus house in 1877, stumbled upon Clarke’s grave. He was saddened to discover Clarke’s fate. The two had been classmates at West Point and Sherman had long wondered what became of the promising young cadet. Henry Sieben purchased the ranch in 1897, and it remains in the Sieben-Baucus family today, still a working sheep ranch with a legacy its owners treasure.

Grant-Kohrs Ranch

Johnny Grant and his wife Quarra, a Bannock woman, brought 250 head of horses and 800 cattle to the Deer Lodge Valley where they settled in 1859. Indians, Mexicans, Canadian Metis like Johnny himself, and whites soon joined the Grants in the Deer Lodge Valley. It was a lively, ethnically diverse settlement called Grantsville.

Johnny Grant
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 942-460

Floods took the Grant’s cabin in 1861 and the family moved to the new settlement of Cottonwood. In the fall of 1862, Johnny Grant built one of the first clapboard homes in the territory for Quarra. Its twenty-eight glass windows, shipped at great expense by steamboat then freighted overland, were an expression of the Grants' wealth.

The house at the Grant-Kohrs Ranch National Park, built in 1862, is one of the oldest frame homes in Montana.

However, with white miners came racial tension, ending the days when neighbors were tolerant of other cultures, Grant’s numerous wives, and inter-racial marriages. Indians ran off most of his cattle and an arsonist destroyed his best barn. Grant told the Montana Post that he wanted to take his children away from such a rough country. The valley was not safe for his family. Conrad Kohrs, whom Grant had several times assisted financially, purchased the ranch in 1866. Grant sold the buildings and their contents, including the house and many of the furnishings he and Quarra had purchased from the east and shipped at great expense. Grant took his children away from Deer Lodge in 1867, but Quarra did not accompany them. She died of consumption, leaving six children.

Quarra Grant's pierced tin pie safe, dating to 1864, is one of the original pieces in the house.

Conrad Kohrs soon brought his nineteen-year-old bride, Augusta, to the ranch. The furnishings reflect her elegant taste although a few pieces—rosewood parlor chairs and a pie safe—date to the time when Quarra Grant was mistress there. Kohrs pioneered ranch management and cattle breeding and became of the most important cattlemn of the nineteenth  century.  Ownership of the working ranch remained in the Kohrs family until the 1970s. Today a National Historic Landmark and National Park, you can visit the ranch and tour its beautiful home.

Friday Photo: Pet Antelope

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 90-87 200

Netty Archdale feeds her pet antelope on her ranch in eastern Montana. The photo was taken by Evelyn Cameron on June 9, 1908.

P.S. Remember this strange pet?

Pierre Wibaux

Pierre Wibaux, for whom the town and county of Wibaux are named, was born in Roubaix, France, to a distinguished family of textile manufacturers. Pierre’s father sent him to England to study the English textile industry so that he could manage the family business. In England, Pierre heard stories of English relatives who had gone to the American West and made fortunes in cattle ranching. After two years, Pierre returned to France and informed his father that he would not take over the family business, but rather go into ranching in America. He first studied cattle in Chicago and arrived at the settlement of Mingusville in eastern Montana near the North Dakota border in 1883. Pierre established his ranch headquarters, the W-Bar, on Beaver Creek at the eastern edge of Montana Territory. Wibaux was very poor during this time and lived in a primitive dugout cave where he ate and slept and learned how to be a cowboy, foreman, and rancher.

Courtesy State Historical Society of North Dakota, D0187

Except for his financial status, Wibaux was much like his infamous North Dakota neighbor, the Marquis de Morés: young, handsome, courageous, rugged, and somewhat argumentative. Legend has it that on a visit to the Marquis’ chateau at Medora, North Dakota, Wibaux and the Marquis had a heated conversation. The Marquis’ wife excused herself and went to bed. But soon she heard her husband’s “en garde” and the clash of swords. She knew that Wibuax was no match for him, as her husband been involved in fatal duels. She descended the stairs and ordered them to stop. Fortunately, they did. One biographer speculates that the argument had more to do with an evening of champagne than real differences. After the hard winter of 1886-87, Pierre bought up remnant herds of unfortunate ranchers with money borrowed from his father. By the mid-1890s, his ranch was one of the largest cattle operations in the nation, running about 65,000 head of cattle.

Ghost on the Little Rosebud

Bob Ferguson was a cowboy who lived alone on a ranch on the Little Rosebud, a tributary of Rosebud Creek. He ran some cattle and seemed to prosper. In May of 1890, Ferguson disappeared. Neighbors noted that he was missing after a few weeks, and searched for him, but they found no trace of him. During the spring roundup, all the cowboys kept an eye out for him especially since he had been one of their own. Sure enough, one of them eventually came upon Ferguson’s body buried in the red shale hills near his cabin. It appeared that he had been killed by the Cheyenne. Ferguson left a sister who sold the ranch to a man named Beattie. Not long after Beattie and his wife had moved in, they began to experience a nightly rapping on the cabin door. When Beattie flung it open, no one was there. When Mrs. Beattie’s husband was away, as he sometimes traveled, she was not a timid woman and had no hesitation in opening the door. But no one was ever there, and she declared that there was something wrong with the ranch. Beattie thought perhaps someone was playing a trick on him who wanted to drive him away since this was prime ranch land. So he hung onto the ranch. His wife died and he remarried, and the second Mrs. Beattie also experienced the rapping. Finally the government bought the ranch as part of the Cheyenne Reservation. Many Cheyennes applied for this desirable land. The family that secured it moved in and immediately was plagued with the mysterious nighttime rapping. They did not stay long, nor did the next occupants, nor the next. The buildings were abandoned and crumbled back to the earth, and no one can tell where the haunted ranch used to be, or if Bob Ferguson still roams his property.

Caroline McGill

Dr. Caroline McGill came to Butte in 1911 to work at the Murray Hospital, returned to Johns Hopkins to complete her medical degree, and turned down an offer to stay at Johns Hopkins to return to Butte in 1914. She practiced there until she retired in 1956. Dr. McGill was a highly skilled physician, but she was also a friend to her patients through Butte’s ugly labor management strife, fires, explosions, and accidents that were common in the mining town. She made house calls to the crudest of miner’s shacks where she ministered to families under primitive conditions. She once said, “I made up my mind that I would never offend one of these good women by seeming to notice that their standards of sanitation were not mine. I couldn’t abide the habit of some of my colleagues of dusting off a chair with a clean handkerchief before daring to sit on it.” Dr. McGill was a familiar figure in saloons where stabbings, gunshot wounds, fractures, and concussions tested her skills. She frequently visited the women of Butte’s sprawling red light district, calling equally at low-rent cribs and high-class parlor houses. Small, attractive, and full of energy, Dr. McGill was a cut above the rest.

Dr. Caroline McGill relaxes on the front porch of a guest cabin of her 360 320 guest ranch in Gallatin Canyon.
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives

Evelyn Cameron

Today's post remembers Evelyn Cameron. She was born on August 26, 1868.

Terry, Montana, on the state’s eastern edge, was home to Evelyn Cameron, a talented woman who documented the homesteading era and Montana outdoors with shutter, lens, and expert eye. Cameron’s photographs capture the spirit of the West just as surely as Charlie Russell’s famous paintings define Montana cowboys. Cameron came to Montana from England with her husband to raise polo ponies to ship back to the British Isles. Although that idea failed, Cameron learned the art of photography and set about capturing life on the eastern plains. She died in 1928, but years later in the late 1970s, Time-Life books editor Donna Lucey stumbled upon 1,800 photo negatives and 2,700 original prints, stored for half a century in the Terry basement of Janet Williams, Cameron’s best friend. Lucey studied Cameron’s meticulous diaries and photographs to research her book, Photographing Montana 1894–1928: The Life and Works of Evelyn Cameron. Published in 2000, it revealed many of Cameron’s photos for the first time. If you visit Terry, be sure to stop at the Prairie County Museum and visit the Cameron ranch site.


Cameron snapped this photo of her brother Alec Flower with a magnificent cabbage harvest in 1898.
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives PAc 90-87




Dick Brown poses next to a pile of wolf hides in this Cameron photo.
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives PAc 90-87.24-5

Cameron kneads dough in this 1904 self-portrait.
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives PAc 90-87.35-5

From Montana Moments: History on the Go
P.S. Remember the scandal Cameron created when she rode into Miles City wearing this skirt?

Prairie Figs

Johnny Grant, founder of the Grant-Kohrs Ranch, was the son of the factor at the Hudson’s Bay Company fort near Pocatello, Idaho. Johnny’s memoirs, wonderfully edited by Lyndle Meikle under the title Very Close to Trouble, are full of interesting historical anecdotes. One memorable footnote recounts the story of a green Missourian who came into the fort store. Johnny’s father decided to have some sport with the unsuspecting traveler. Castorums are beaver glands that trappers used as bait. There were a number of these foul objects hanging in the store. The Missourian asked what they were. “Prairie figs,” replied the elder Grant. “Are they good to eat?” asked the Missourian. “For those who like them,” answered Grant. “Can I taste one?” Grant answered, “Certainly.” The traveler picked a good full one and bit into it. The putrid gum and oil ran down the sides of his mouth, and Johnny recalled how comical it was to see the man making faces trying to spit it out. For some time he couldn’t speak. Finally he said, “They might be good for those who like them, but I declare I do not.” This comical story and the singular name suggests that Prairie Figs would make a terrific name for a modern-day band!

Johnny Grant posed for this photo sometime after founding the Grant-Kohrs Ranch.
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 942-461

From Montana Moments: History on the Go

Cattle Dog

An undated clipping from the 1940s in a Bozeman newspaper tells a poignant story of man’s best friend. Oldtime cattleman Ott McEwen was devastated when the cattle dog who had been at his side through blizzards and summer winds, long days and lonely nights, suddenly disappeared. The dog had been his constant companion, sharing hardships and joys. McEwen grieved for the loss of the best friend he ever had.

Four years later at a Stockgrowers meeting, cattlemen had gathered in the Bozeman Hotel’s lobby. Someone noticed a shaggy old dog, limping badly, whining outside the door. The man let him in and watched curiously as the dog wandered from man to man sniffing. Finally the dog dove into the crowd and leapt upon an old geezer. Old Ott McEwen couldn’t believe it. He went down on his knees and on the floor of the lobby, threw his arms around the dog as tears ran down his cheeks. Someone said he had seen the dog weeks before way over in eastern Montana. How did the dog make his way across the mountains, and how did he know his master would be there? Many a gruff cattleman wiped away a tear, and the talk grew gentle among the men, for they understood well the special bond between a cattleman and his dog.

From Montana Moments: History on the Go
P.S. Remember this faithful dog?

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: Fannie Sperry Steele



Fannie Sperry Steele rides a steer at the Gilman Stampede, September 1919.
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 947-603

Famed bronc buster Fannie Sperry Steele competed in rodeos until 1925. Then she and her husband bought a dude ranch near Lincoln. After her husband died in 1940, Steele ran the ranch by herself for another twenty-five years. She was one of the first women to receive a packer’s license and well into her sixties spent long days in the saddle guiding hunters into rough country. She stocked Meadow Creek before environmental concerns were fashionable, packing six horses with cans of fish over treacherous terrain, stopping at every stream to keep the water cool. She broke her own horses and at the end of the season trailed her twenty-five pintos seventy miles across the Continental Divide to winter pasture. In 1974 at eighty-seven, Steele could no longer live alone and had to move from the ranch. The worst part for her was leaving her beloved string of pintos behind. In 1975, Steele was honored as was one of the first of three women inducted into the Rodeo Hall of Fame. A few years later at ninety, Steele summed up her life: “To the yesterdays that are gone, to the cowboys I used to know, to the bronc busters that rode beside me, to the horses beneath me (sometimes), I take off my hat. I wouldn’t have missed one minute of it.” Steele died in 1983. She was the quintessential Montana woman: determined, gritty, and independent of spirit.

From Montana Moments: History on the Go

P.S. Remember these rodeo-champion sisters?

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?