What in the world are we doing in Deer Lodge, MT? In short: R&R. We’ve come from 2 weeks in 2 National Parks and are on our way to 2 more weeks in 2 more National Parks. We need some time off to just relax, catch up and chill for about 7 days. We want a nice RV park where we can just sit for a while and catch up and we want a town with a few things to do but not too many to fill 7 days - we do want some time off. So, here we are in Deer Lodge, half way between where we’ve come from and where we’re going with some clear days to spend catching up. Perfect.
We spent one day washing and waxing the RV and the Jeep.
We can have great weather when we’re in a campground but - get us out on the road and it’s gonna rain. Sure enough, 7 nice days in Glacier and the day we move down to Deer Lodge, it rains. I’m expecting rain next Monday when we move to a campground near West Yellowstone. I’ve spent time trip planning and cleaning up our monthly mail which we got when we arrived. Gary’s been working on some small projects around the RV and doing the laundry that built up with 7 days without a sewer in Glacier. We’ve taken several walks through town. Guess what? The only ice cream shop in town is 2 miles from our RV, and we like to walk 4 miles a day. How perfect is that?
HOWEVER, and there’s always a ‘however’, we took one day to explore the Grant-Kohrs Ranch National Historic Site in town. We walked through it one afternoon just to check it out while we were walking anyway. We met Katie with her horse who was in the role of a cowgirl from the 1890’s. She had learned her role well and could tell us all about being a female in the ranching era. She told us about Cattle Kate who owned some land which, unfortunately had water on it. The local large rancher, who grazed his cattle anywhere he wanted without regard to deeds wanted those rights, offered to buy her out but, when she refused, trumped up a charge that she was rustling cattle, put a vigilante group to get her and hung her in the valley. And, what happened to him? He was later made the President of the Ranchers Association, of course.
Then Liliana came along, a Junior Ranger who just loves horses.
In its heyday, the ranch had 30,000 acres but today it’s a 1600-acre working ranch that commemorates the open range era in American history. The open range era lasted about 20 years from the end of the Civil War in 1866 to the harsh winter of !888 when hundreds of thousands of cattle died in the cold. Cowboys (note how young they look - the average was 25 and there were many who were in their early teens),
Texas long horns,
cattle drives, chuck wagons. All icons of American history and all centering on the open range period. Here’s the amazing statistic that led to the open range system: because so much rain falls in the east and Midwest, it takes about 1 - 2 acres for one cow. Out west with its lack of water, it takes 100 - 200 acres. A herd of 100 cows needs close to 20,000 acres. Not many people have that much land so they branded their cattle and turned them loose on the open range, unfenced, public land not claimed or deeded to any one individual but all part of the US.
The Grant-Kohrs Ranch began with Johnny Grant who built the 4000 sq. ft. house in 1862, using it as a trading post and headquarters for his ranching operations.
You can tell it is a trading post because it is white with green shutters - the Hudson Bay system which he came from. (Waiting for us on the front porch is the volunteer who will give the tour.)
He was pretty smart and when, pioneers came across the plains with tired, skinny, broken hoofed oxen he traded two skinny ox with hoof problems for 1 good one. Then he let the sick ones graze to fatten them up and cure their hoof problems and then traded one for two to the next pioneer with sick, tired oxen. He doubled his herd that way.
However, he was a part of the French-Canadian trapper/trader culture and had married 6 or 7 Indian wives to solidify relations with the surrounding tribes. The new pioneers coming into the area did not understand this and he finally felt that he had to return to his native Canada. He sold his home and ranch to Conrad Kohrs for $19,200 in 1866.
Conrad Kohrs left his native Germany at 15 with only the clothes on his back, rattled around for a bit but finally settled on butchering as his occupation. He eventually had his own shops and bought his beef from a rancher named Johnny Grant. And, you can see where this is headed: in 1866, he bought the ranch from Johnny when Johnny left to return to Canada.
He was lonely out on the ranch and he remembered a childhood friend from Germany who had also come to the US, Augusta Kruse. He returned east, courted her for 3 weeks and married her in Iowa in 1868. Imagine her surprise when she came out west to his house and found bare floors, spittoons, an old bed strung with rawhide in place of springs, cowboys sleeping all over and lots of bed bugs and mice. Oh, boy. Too bad there wasn’t a train nearby - she might have taken it back home.
She began a 1-year ‘War of Extermination’ and won. She turned the house from one of bed bugs and mice into an elegant Victorian manor. But it took time and a terrible drought that wiped out 60% of the Kohrs herd. Decision time: sell out and move back east or borrow $100,000, buy cattle in Texas, bring them up here and try again. Kohrs chose the second and paid off the loan in 3 years since beef prices had skyrocketed by this time. He also added a 5000 sq. ft. brick addition to his house and he was on his way to becoming the Cattle King in Montana.
We took a tour of the house but could not take pictures. It was an elegant Victorian home with all original furnishings and even some needlepoint by her. She was quite an expert and even earned prizes for her work. The ceilings were all decorated, the oak woodwork was all intricately carved, the furniture was all brought in from the east and it was even wired for electricity though electricity was not in Montana yet. Since she was 6’ and Conrad was 6’2”, the built-in furniture was tall. We could only see our hairlines in the bathroom mirrors. When she brought her 4’10” cousin Wilhelmine over from Germany to help her in the house, they bought a chair that converted into a short step ladder so Wilhelmine could reach the top shelves of the cupboards
The Kohrs ranch eventually became 30,000 acres, countless buildings, thousands of cattle that ranged over millions of acres from Wyoming, through Montana and into British Columbia. He had also adopted a mixture of open range and fenced range, had developed a gravity dam/canal system for a more predictable supply of water and had predicted the decline of Texas longhorns and the growth or Herefords, which come to market earlier and have more tender meat. He also had a copy machine, actually a letter press. Imagine that. He used a special ink in the ranch documents, placed them into the press with a damp sheet of translucent paper and pressed the sheets together transferring the ink - voila, a copy.
Augusta and Conrad had 3 children: 2 girls, Katharine and Anna and 1 boy, William who died in college. Left without an heir, they turned the business into a trust which managed it when they died and began to sell off much of it. Then Anna’s son Conrad Warren, who saw his future in the ranch, bought the ranch from the trust and ran it, preserving all artifacts from his grandfather for the future. The National Park system purchased the ranch in 1772 and opened the ranch in 1993 to the public.
Very interesting and very informative. Not only did we tour the house, we also visited the chuck wagon and sipped on cowboy coffee, toured the original thoroughbred barn which now contains about 10 different wagons, buggies and carriages, watched the blacksmith, walked through the chicken coop
and toured several other buildings on the ranch.
We also toured what used to be bunkhouse row where the cowboys lived,
their shower, (Kohrs required each and every one to take a shower once a week whether they needed one or not (I think he said that even though he knew everyone needed one.) You can see the pans they used to wash up in on the bench. And, there’s a stove to heat the water.
and checked out the draft horse barn where the draft horses stayed.
Here’s the typical fencing system they had. Imagine fencing in acres of land with this intricate system. In this case, the vegetable garden is in back of it.
But, more importantly, we developed a real appreciation for life on a ranch and how much work it took to raise cattle. I was surprised to see how large the operation was how many people were involved, how many animals and how may different processes there were. Since sometimes, there wasn’t enough water to support large herds, ranchers grew their own hay. This meant that they had to mow it, rake it to turn it over to dry, bale it and keep it for the winter. All big operations needing men and big machines with big draft horses. Of course, ranches needed to have chickens and their own vegetable gardens to feed everyone and housing for everyone.
The National Park Service has done a great job with this site: much is original, everything is labeled, they have people playing the roles of people in this era and the era comes through well.
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