Historic Cattle Ranching

Today we decided to visit the Grant-Kohrs Ranch National Historic Site, location of one of the largest cattle ranches in Montana.  It is unique because it was acquired by the National Park Service and retains all of the original buildings and furnishings from the original ranching days - and further because the family preserved detailed records of the entire history of the ranch, which enables historians to document the smallest details of life on the ranch.

The ranch was settled originally by Johnny Grant in 1859 at the age of 28 years.  He was married to several Native American women (all at once) and initially built a log home that eventually became the ranch hands' bunkhouse.  Eventually, he built this beautiful home, originally only of logs --

-- but eventually sided it and decorated it in this style to resemble the standard look of Hudson Bay's familiar trading posts - thus encouraging people to stop and trade.

Grant built his business by trading one well-fed, healthy cow for a traveler's three thin and weak head of cattle, then fatten those up and made similar trades again, reserving some of the revived cows to build his herd.  Conrad Kohrs, a German immigrant living in the town of Deer Lodge, became his butcher, and when Grant moved to Canada (citing the complaint that this part of Montana had gotten "too crowded"!), Kohr bought the ranch from Grant in 1862, along with 365 head of cattle, and branched into cattle raising.  Eventually, the ranch in Deer Lodge comprised 30,000 acres, but Kohrs built the empire further until it had millions of acres of land in eastern Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho and parts of Canada.

Here's Kathy playing with what could be descendants of some of those many head of Kohrs cattle:

Of course, cowboys didn't play with cattle - they herded them.  And no self-respecting cowboy can herd cattle without roping skills.  So the historic site has ropes and wooden calfs set out to teach enterprising visitors some new roping skills.  Here's Kathy proving her mettle:

After touring the main house and some of the outbuildings, we took a wagon tour of the greater ranch, on which a volunteer ranger explained how the ranch was set up and operated.  The ranger also showed us a "beaver slide" hay stacker, which was used before the days of machinery to help stack hay after mowing into large haystacks.  Here is the ranger and one of the ranch teamsters getting the wagon ready for the tour...

...and here's a photo of the wagon, fully loaded with visitors as it makes its rounds of the ranch:

After our wagon tour, we sat down with a ranger at an old chuck wagon, similar to the ones used on the great cattle drives.  He prepared us some camp coffee and we swapped tall tales about national parks we've known and loved:

After some hearty conversation and coffee, we headed off to tour the stables and other outbuildings.  We found the tack house.  Here, Kathy is checking out the saddles --

-- and David is trying on some tack for size:

Perhaps our favorite display was the old barn where the Kohrs family kept its prize thoroughbred horses.  The barn is now used as a museum to show off the various wagons, sleighs and such that were used on the ranch before the days of motor vehicles.  We particularly liked this bright yellow show wagon that is being pulled by a team of thestrals:

Ultimately, Conrad Kohrs Warren, the grandson of the original Kohrs, who had grown up loving the ranch and was himself an expert in ranching and raising cattle and horses, turned the entire ranch over to the National Park Service in the early 1970's, and the NPS has retained the ranch as it was, even down to a beautiful wildflower garden beside the main house:

The visit was well worth the effort.  We had bicycled up to the ranch from our RV campground, and on our way home, the bicycles turned into a genuine 1950's A&W Drive-In that has been used since the 1950's and still hasn't changed any of its decor.  You can still drive up and park under the canopy, order your meal through speakers, and be served at your car window.  Since we had bikes, we didn't try that, but we greatly enjoyed the genuine 1950's decor inside the diner, along with our rootbeer floats.