Homesteads to Present
By Sarah Juster
Edited by Wendy Beye
Drought and Bust: 1919-1940
Drought years in the state began in 1919. That year in Musselshell County, wheat production dropped to an average of 2.9 bushels per acre. The winter of 1919-1920 was similar to that of 1886-1887. Prices for wheat were still high in 1919, but in 1920, Europe recovered from war and began to supply its own food. Farm prices declined and the federal government removed its price controls. Wheat dropped to $1.25 per bushel or lower.
Homesteaders with livestock were encouraged by the Roundup Record to plant what feed they could. Clifford Fawcett of the Milton Ranch sowed forty acres to turnips in 1919, which would assure him a crop from 8-12 bushels per acre. This was advertised in the Roundup Record as a suggestion for those farmers with stock to feed. “There is much to gain and very little to lose outside of the labor thus involved.”
On the Milton Ranch, ten homesteaders owed delinquent taxes in December of 1919. It is striking that the sums owed are very small amounts, which suggests just how poor these farmers were. For instance, Amaro Carera owed $76.18; Sam Basto $34.98; Carl Crothers, $52.46 on one piece and $87.06 on another; Leopold Gutowski, $55.02; Thomas Jackson, $36.21; George Naessig, $45.42; William Neuman, $49.02; William Stalwick, $95.52; Frank Sturdevant, $61.18; and Mathias Wagner, $52.63.
Crop yields rose after 1919 to around 12 bushels per acre in 1920 and 1922. This seemed like a recovery to some people. Milton Ranch homesteader Frank Darr, who left in 1919 to return to his old home in Missouri, came back in 1922, thinking that Montana and Musselshell County in particular will redeem itself agriculturally. He wanted to “be in on the era of prosperity which we are soon to experience.” He even purchased a new Fordson tractor and farm implements from McCormick & Co (Roundup Record).
As it turned out, the drought would be much more serious. It is often said that Montana experienced the Great Depression ten years early. The drought which started in 1919 continued through the 1930s.
Homestead Flight from Milton Ranch
As Richard Manning writes, in drought conditions, some wildlife perishes but the rest move on to better areas. Homesteaders were tied to 160 acre plots which, without adequate rainfall, would not make a profit. They did not realize how much land they needed in order to make a living in semi-arid land without rain.
It was after these droughts that Eiselein finally admitted “In our zeal to make dryland farming a success thru the columns of The Record, we may have become somewhat over-enthusiastic and may have made some rather broad assertions.” When the drought hit, prices dropped, and suddenly there was no income for many of these homestead families.
The population of Gage was so depleted by 1935 that the post office almost went out.
In 1935, Musselshell County took title to 312,575 acres of land where taxes were delinquent for more than four years (Roundup Record). Fewer homesteaders meant the county was losing its tax base. The state board of equalization recommended cutting land valuation by 15% in Musselshell County in 1936 (Record 1936). The value was cut so as to lower property taxes and reduce foreclosures. The county would prefer that some taxes were paid rather than people abandoning their land (Schaff).
A few homesteaders such as Mike Tomko, William Neuman, and Dora Teachnor, lost their property to the banks which had financed them. The county took title to their land, as well as much of the abandoned land on Milton Ranch. All of the green sections on the map below are areas abandoned by Milton Ranch homesteaders and picked up by the county:
Map coming soon
Land marked in black is land retained by the county sheriff. Land in red is land which was abandoned by homesteaders but not picked up by the county. It eventually became federal land through the Bankhead Jones Act. More of this process will be described below. Light blue land sections are part of the statehood Enabling Act of 1889 which granted sections 16 and 36 of each Township to the state of Montana to support the common education system, plus some extra pieces obtained by the state in the 1940s.
Northern Pacific land is marked in orange. Private owners are marked in purple. Although Richard and Annie Griffith were ultimately the only original homesteaders to remain on the Milton Ranch Property, two other pieces were privately owned until the 1950s.
In addition to their original 160 acres, in 1925, the Griffiths purchased a 160 acre piece and in 1928 they expanded the second piece to 320 acres. In 1931, the Griffiths lost the headquarters piece of Milton Ranch to the Trustees of Diocese of Fond Du Lac, Wisconsin. In 1935, the Griffiths bought the same piece back. Arthur Griffith, who must have been related to the Griffiths in some way, purchased a piece nearby in 1933.
The Dirty Thirties
The Red Cross had offices in Gage and Roundup during the 1920s where clothing and food drives were held to provide some drought relief. It was not until 1930 that, due to continued drought conditions, an Extension Service was created and an Extension Agent, F.B. Peterson, was hired for Musselshell and neighboring Golden Valley County.
The earliest Extension programs provided emergency relief to ranchers and farmers. The Service helped raise $93,312 in Red Cross relief funds for Musselshell County. Peterson helped secure seed loans for farmers whose grain either dried out or was blown away. A survey of 400 farmers receiving seed loans showed that the farmers had abandoned 85% of their wheat and 95% of their feed grain. Crop Standardization promoted the distribution of good quality seed, but the program was ineffective because so little grain came up.
There was a feed shipment program in 1930 with reduced railroad rates for cotton cake and hay shipments to ranchers. Alfred Adolph remembers slough grass hay was being brought in on boxcars from the Dakotas. “It was said that leafy spurge came into Musselshell County with this Dakota hay.” A few people put up Russian Thistles and mixed salt with them, but this was known to make livestock scoury. Russian Thistles are better known as tumbleweeds, and are now the bane of weed control districts. They first arrived in South Dakota in flaxseed shipped from Russia in the late 1880s. Wind quickly carried the invaders across the west.
Drought was not the only challenge. As Alfred Adolph recalls, “Not much grass grew during the 30s, and what grass did grow was eaten by grasshoppers.” If conditions are right, the hungry insects can hatch in numbers classified as a plague. When grasshoppers invade a field of grass or crops, they go for any green on the plants. Often the last green is on the stem right below the head of a grass. When they eat that part, the grain heads all fall off (Frank Goffena). Selma Giesler grew up in the 1930s on a homestead south of town. She remembers grasshoppers eating the insides of onions in her mother’s garden and her fathers’ gunny sacks. Grasshopper poison bait was distributed by the Extension service. This map shows the damage in 1934 of grasshopper invasions in the area of Milton Ranch. The ranch land is shown with solid black color. It is located within one of the Range Damage areas.
Burley Lackey lived with his family a few sections south of the Milton Ranch. He and his family would later own a few sections on Milton Ranch. Because of the damage from grasshoppers to his property, Lackey was part of an Extension program in 1934 which provided him with four sacks of grasshopper bait to apply on 60 acres of land. Unfortunately, Extension notes show that the timing of grasshoppers was unpredictable, so bait was often put out too early or too late to be effective. Strychnine was distributed for prairie dog and gopher control. Poison was not even distributed for army worms because there was barely any grain to protect with the severe drought.
Peterson encouraged ranchers to cull their herds. He helped locate buyers for ranchers and organized the government purchase of 3,352 head of cattle were purchased from 290 cattle ranchers and 14,674 head of sheep from 81 sheep ranchers in the two counties in 1934. The Lackeys sold 21 head of cattle for $338 through this program. The Griffiths sold 69 head for $941. Drought rate certificates were issued for producers to send away livestock and have them returned later on. Peterson was hopeful this depletion of livestock would give the grass a chance to head out and reseed itself before operators increased to normal herd sizes. “The grass has not had an opportunity to do this for seven years.”
Reducing Wheat Production
Peterson believed that Musselshell County was improperly used for wheat farming. In a 1932 report, he writes:
Everything should be done toward removing the dryland wheat farmer and making both Golden Valley and Musselshell Counties livestock counties. With the exception of three small areas in these counties, which do not cover over five townships, wheat has not been a success, which is proven by the fact that since 1915 there have been only two crops. The two counties are ideal livestock counties due to the fact that it is not necessary to have as much winter feed on hand as you do in most places, for the winters are mild and the livestock is able to graze on the ranges most of the year. If the development of the Dead Man’s Basin puts water into the Musselshell River, it will enable the ranchers along the river to grow sufficient feed for their own stock and have a surplus to supply the ranchers who have stock on the benchland country during the winter.
In addition to drought and grasshopper devastation, soil erosion occurred when wind storms picked up dust from cultivated wheat land. This was common throughout the semi-arid regions of the Great Plains during the 1930s, a period labeled the Dustbowl. Alfred Adolph remembers these effects of plowed up land in the North Country. Without a grassroots system, the soil blew. One example comes from 1935. A piece of land on one side of a road was broken up, and sitting opposite was a piece of summer fallow land surrounded by a hogwire fence 40 inches tall with three barbs on top. The wind blew and blew across the road, until the fence was no longer visible (Adolph).
Dust storms were “worse north of Roundup where there were more plowed fields and flat country and the wind got a good sweep” (Mrs. Hart, Horizons over Musselshell). Peterson promoted planting corn and alfalfa seed to keep soil held down. With stubble holding down the soil there weren’t as many dust storms. Farmers also began contour farming, which helped prevent any moisture from running off the fields (A. Adolph). Peterson ran programs to pay farmers to reduce wheat production. In 1930, 49,200 acres of wheat in Musselshell County were planted. In 1935, that number was down to 28,100 acres.
The Soil Conservation Service was a national program created by Hugh Bennett to address soil erosion after the dustbowl. A pre-cursor to Soil Conservation Districts was the Soil Erosion Service, set up in 1933 on a temporary basis in the Department of the Interior to allow soil stabilization work to start while more permanent plans were made. After President Franklin Roosevelt signed the Soil Conservation District authorization bill in 1937, Montana passed legislation, the Montana Conservation District law (Section 76-15-101, MCA) in 1939. The Lower Musselshell Soil Conservation District was established in 1943.
Rangeland Improvement
By 1934, Peterson was focusing on longer-term projects for improving ranching in Musselshell and Golden Valley Counties. As homesteaders vacated their plots, there were again large swathes of open range; land that was not being used by anyone. There was no regulation as to how the land was used and in Musselshell County there was heavy over-grazing.
Over-stocking was a major problem. Peterson writes that “talking to old-timers who have been in these Counties for years, you will find that at the time the stockmen were making good returns from their operations there were only about 49 ranches in Musselshell County. . . This will give the indication that both counties are over-populated if they are to function on a business basis whereby they can make a decent living.” He considered a decent living running 250 head.
This is why Peterson supported the creation of Grazing Districts in 1934. These Districts addressed over-stocking, but would have great implications for the future of ranching on Milton Ranch and in Western states.
Grazing Districts
The main issues for ranchers in using abandoned homestead land were that the land was still open for settlement, there was no guarantee for long term use, and there was no official organization of which ranchers were using which land. In drought conditions, the rangeland was in terrible condition, there was little infrastructure for watering or fencing.
In 1928, ranchers in the Mizpah-Pumpkin Creek area of Southeastern Montana, received approval from the federal government to remove open range from homestead settlement and divide it among themselves for long term grazing. Based on this cooperative, the U.S. Congress passed the Taylor Grazing Act in 1934, which called on ranchers to create their own districts to improve range conditions and use.
According to the Act, local stockmen could petition the Secretary of the Interior to have a local grazing district created. There had to be public notice and the location of the district had to be acceptable to state officials, settlers, residents and livestock owners of the vicinity. If accepted, the district could form a board to manage range improvements and leases, and the lands within the boundary of the district were removed from settlement.
In order to be protected by state laws, districts had to hold public hearings on boundary lines.
The state of Montana passed a number of laws to encourage the creation of State Grazing Districts. In the 1930s and 1940s, 100 grazing associations were consolidated into 26 Montana State Districts under the Montana Grass Commission, which helped them to draft bi-laws and file paperwork under Montana law. An example of the going lease rate during this time is 3 cents per acre, the charge for the Devil’s Basin district.
By 1934 three grazing districts had been formed in Musselshell County. By 1936 there were seven districts, which covered the entire acreage north of the Musselshell River in Musselshell County. Here is a map of those Districts from 1936. This map has been touched up to make the district boundaries more clear, and to highlight the location of Milton Ranch.
Peterson encouraged ranchers to cull their herds. He helped locate buyers for ranchers and organized the government purchase of 3,352 head of cattle were purchased from 290 cattle ranchers and 14,674 head of sheep from 81 sheep ranchers in the two counties in 1934. The Lackeys sold 21 head of cattle for $338 through this program. The Griffiths sold 69 head for $941. Drought rate certificates were issued for producers to send away livestock and have them returned later on. Peterson was hopeful this depletion of livestock would give the grass a chance to head out and reseed itself before operators increased to normal herd sizes. “The grass has not had an opportunity to do this for seven years.”
Reducing Wheat Production
Peterson believed that Musselshell County was improperly used for wheat farming. In a 1932 report, he writes:
Everything should be done toward removing the dryland wheat farmer and making both Golden Valley and Musselshell Counties livestock counties. With the exception of three small areas in these counties, which do not cover over five townships, wheat has not been a success, which is proven by the fact that since 1915 there have been only two crops. The two counties are ideal livestock counties due to the fact that it is not necessary to have as much winter feed on hand as you do in most places, for the winters are mild and the livestock is able to graze on the ranges most of the year. If the development of the Dead Man’s Basin puts water into the Musselshell River, it will enable the ranchers along the river to grow sufficient feed for their own stock and have a surplus to supply the ranchers who have stock on the benchland country during the winter.
In addition to drought and grasshopper devastation, soil erosion occurred when wind storms picked up dust from cultivated wheat land. This was common throughout the semi-arid regions of the Great Plains during the 1930s, a period labeled the Dustbowl. Alfred Adolph remembers these effects of plowed up land in the North Country. Without a grassroots system, the soil blew. One example comes from 1935. A piece of land on one side of a road was broken up, and sitting opposite was a piece of summer fallow land surrounded by a hogwire fence 40 inches tall with three barbs on top. The wind blew and blew across the road, until the fence was no longer visible (Adolph).
Dust storms were “worse north of Roundup where there were more plowed fields and flat country and the wind got a good sweep” (Mrs. Hart, Horizons over Musselshell). Peterson promoted planting corn and alfalfa seed to keep soil held down. With stubble holding down the soil there weren’t as many dust storms. Farmers also began contour farming, which helped prevent any moisture from running off the fields (A. Adolph). Peterson ran programs to pay farmers to reduce wheat production. In 1930, 49,200 acres of wheat in Musselshell County were planted. In 1935, that number was down to 28,100 acres.
The Soil Conservation Service was a national program created by Hugh Bennett to address soil erosion after the dustbowl. A pre-cursor to Soil Conservation Districts was the Soil Erosion Service, set up in 1933 on a temporary basis in the Department of the Interior to allow soil stabilization work to start while more permanent plans were made. After President Franklin Roosevelt signed the Soil Conservation District authorization bill in 1937, Montana passed legislation, the Montana Conservation District law (Section 76-15-101, MCA) in 1939. The Lower Musselshell Soil Conservation District was established in 1943.
Rangeland Improvement
By 1934, Peterson was focusing on longer-term projects for improving ranching in Musselshell and Golden Valley Counties. As homesteaders vacated their plots, there were again large swathes of open range; land that was not being used by anyone. There was no regulation as to how the land was used and in Musselshell County there was heavy over-grazing.
Over-stocking was a major problem. Peterson writes that “talking to old-timers who have been in these Counties for years, you will find that at the time the stockmen were making good returns from their operations there were only about 49 ranches in Musselshell County. . . This will give the indication that both counties are over-populated if they are to function on a business basis whereby they can make a decent living.” He considered a decent living running 250 head.
This is why Peterson supported the creation of Grazing Districts in 1934. These Districts addressed over-stocking, but would have great implications for the future of ranching on Milton Ranch and in Western states.
Grazing Districts
The main issues for ranchers in using abandoned homestead land were that the land was still open for settlement, there was no guarantee for long term use, and there was no official organization of which ranchers were using which land. In drought conditions, the rangeland was in terrible condition, there was little infrastructure for watering or fencing.
In 1928, ranchers in the Mizpah-Pumpkin Creek area of Southeastern Montana, received approval from the federal government to remove open range from homestead settlement and divide it among themselves for long term grazing. Based on this cooperative, the U.S. Congress passed the Taylor Grazing Act in 1934, which called on ranchers to create their own districts to improve range conditions and use.
According to the Act, local stockmen could petition the Secretary of the Interior to have a local grazing district created. There had to be public notice and the location of the district had to be acceptable to state officials, settlers, residents and livestock owners of the vicinity. If accepted, the district could form a board to manage range improvements and leases, and the lands within the boundary of the district were removed from settlement.
In order to be protected by state laws, districts had to hold public hearings on boundary lines.
The state of Montana passed a number of laws to encourage the creation of State Grazing Districts. In the 1930s and 1940s, 100 grazing associations were consolidated into 26 Montana State Districts under the Montana Grass Commission, which helped them to draft bi-laws and file paperwork under Montana law. An example of the going lease rate during this time is 3 cents per acre, the charge for the Devil’s Basin district.
By 1934 three grazing districts had been formed in Musselshell County. By 1936 there were seven districts, which covered the entire acreage north of the Musselshell River in Musselshell County. Here is a map of those Districts from 1936. This map has been touched up to make the district boundaries more clear, and to highlight the location of Milton Ranch.
Government Purchase of Land and Resettlement Administration
In 1937, the federal government purchased large amounts of abandoned land within the Grazing Districts formed in Musselshell County under the Bankhead-Jones Farm Tenant Act. The Act called on the government to buy back sub-marginal land. The Land Utilization (LU) division of the Resettlement Administration, a New Deal agency, was in charge of improving this land. In Musselshell County, the Resettlement Administration hired local labor between 1936-37 to work on range improvement, a practice which was very popular among ranchers. On Milton Ranch, around 5,000 acres was purchased back by the Federal Government.
http://www.for.gov.bc.ca/hfd/library/documents/bib96089/65.pdf
One of the major improvements undertaken was improving watering sources. Peterson writes that “the water supply plays just as important a part in the livestock program as feed does. Without water at a reasonable distance from feed it is impossible to make economic use of the feed that is growing.” The RA worked with the Extension Service to build dams, locate and clean out springs, and build boundary fences. Increasing the number of water sources for livestock also helped reduce concentrations of animals, spreading them across the landscape.
This map shows all of the dams built by the RA. The rough boundaries of Milton Ranch are drawn. It shows two dams within the ranch property, both on federal land.
In 1937, the federal government purchased large amounts of abandoned land within the Grazing Districts formed in Musselshell County under the Bankhead-Jones Farm Tenant Act. The Act called on the government to buy back sub-marginal land. The Land Utilization (LU) division of the Resettlement Administration, a New Deal agency, was in charge of improving this land. In Musselshell County, the Resettlement Administration hired local labor between 1936-37 to work on range improvement, a practice which was very popular among ranchers. On Milton Ranch, around 5,000 acres was purchased back by the Federal Government.
http://www.for.gov.bc.ca/hfd/library/documents/bib96089/65.pdf
One of the major improvements undertaken was improving watering sources. Peterson writes that “the water supply plays just as important a part in the livestock program as feed does. Without water at a reasonable distance from feed it is impossible to make economic use of the feed that is growing.” The RA worked with the Extension Service to build dams, locate and clean out springs, and build boundary fences. Increasing the number of water sources for livestock also helped reduce concentrations of animals, spreading them across the landscape.
This map shows all of the dams built by the RA. The rough boundaries of Milton Ranch are drawn. It shows two dams within the ranch property, both on federal land.
Alfred Adolph remembers the Works Progress Administration also recruited local labor from the North Country to build dams for livestock watering, as well as larger irrigation projects such as Miller Lake and the Deadman’s Basin Reservoir. This may have come after the Resettlement Administration, which only lasted until 1937. Adolph describes the process of building a dam:
Workers used a Fresno, a big scoop with a big handle on the back and a blade in the front, led by four horses, to survey and build dams. First, one worker would plow the ground with a team. Then, the person with the Fresno would lift up the bar to load a bucket of dirt, move it around onto the dam, pick up the bar, and drop the soil. Meanwhile, the plow kept going to break up more soil. This process could take 8-10 teams per dam. Sometimes liquid leaked away from the dams and there was sub-irrigation below the dam, so spillways were constructed out of rocks for extra moisture to leak around the dam without washing out dirt. On the dam itself, they would lay in rocks partway so wind would not gnaw away the dam (A. Adolph).
A second goal was to improve rangeland cover. The Resettlement Administration sponsored the use of crested wheat for soil conservation and controlling weeds. Crested Wheat was introduced in North America in the early 1900s through USDA foreign plant exploration missions. It was tested in agricultural experiment stations and scientists decided it was useful because it could grow in drought conditions and maintain its quality, even with heavy use. The grass grows early in the spring and lays dormant when it dries. It also grows in the fall if it receives moisture. http://digitalcommons.usu.edu/etd/22/
Test plots for crested wheat grass in Musselshell County showed that “it seems to be the only grass that will succeed at all in these dried areas.” In 1937 the RA supplied the Extension Service with 16,000 pounds of crested wheat for use on federal land in both Musselshell and Golden Valley (extension notes). This is likely where much of the Crested Wheat Grass on Milton Ranch came from originally.
Life on Milton Ranch in the late 1930s and early 1940s
Griffiths
The Griffiths were known as quiet, nice people. Alfred Adolph, who grew up west of the Griffiths during this era, can tell some stories of what life was like on the ranch in the late 1930s and early 40s. As described above, they were the only original homestead family to remain on Milton Ranch through the Depression.
Like most other families left in their area, the Griffiths ran cattle rather than sheep. They were not big farmers, but were known to have a large herd of cattle. Richard “Dick” Griffith also raised a lot of Belgian horses and had a stud horse. “Dick always had new horses coming on and was breaking them. Putting them up for sale helped their income.” Selling horses may be the reason why the Griffiths were the only homestead family successful in remaining on their land through the 20’s and 30’s. Adolph says “families that raised horses could always sell them for good money.”
Many of the horses were saddle horses with a good reputation. “Folks bred their horses to the Griffith horses at a charge. In those days, cowboys were breaking horses for $5 per head, and the stud fee might have been $5 or $10. The Griffiths had a horse named Kernel. He had a Dan Patch background and something else on him. His colts had a lot of buck in them. A lot of the guys who were breaking horses would steer around the Kernel colts. They’d stand you on your head.”
Dick was a horse dealer, a good rancher, and quite a cowboy. He spent most of his time horseback. He moved his cattle around by horseback to areas where they would not overgraze as much. George Smith knew Dick Griffith as one of the first people to move cattle around often: “He changed pasture once a week in the summertime.”
A story was going around in the 1940s about a time when Dick Griffith was short some cattle. He rode and rode to try and find them without luck. One day he was riding in the Gage country. A settler Art Cole was butchering cattle and Griffith realized that the cow being butchered was one of his. He told Art that he had 24 hours to get out of the country or he would kill him. Sure enough, Art left.
Since the Griffith’s property was part of the Kilby Butte Grazing District, it is likely they were leasing the federal land for running cattle. Their ownership of property did not begin to increase until the 1940s.
Families were encouraged by the Extension Service to grow their own gardens. Dick Griffith was known to have “a great big garden.” Kenneth Griffith was involved with the County 4-H Program that Peterson helped to get started. He was a member of the Lions Pig Club in Roundup and was noted as achieving a net profit of $30.00 on eleven pigs, which were “sold as pure bred gilts for breeding purposes.”
Richard Griffith kept a sizeable garden where Dana Milton’s garden is located today. Dolores Kombol remembers it as a “great big garden.” Like many families, the Griffiths were without electricity for a long time and used only a wood stove.
Lackeys
In the late 1930s, the Lackey Family moved to the east side of Milton Ranch from their original homestead, where Burley Lackey and his father William Lackey proved up on homesteads side by side.
The Lackey boys Pete, Willie, and Maurice attended the Gage school from 1924 to 1936. The Gage Schoolhouse was one of many schoolhouses in the North Country to which homesteader children walked or rode horses each day. School records show that the Lackey family earned extra income in the ‘20s and ‘30s by working at the school. Burley’s wife Esther earned $6 for cleaning the school. The three boys frequently earned $2 by carrying water. One year Burley served as the school district clerk (School record).
The main motivation for moving up onto the ridge of Big Wall was better water. In 1939 Esther Lackey wrote about their new home in a letter: “on this place we can have all the water we want and I have often wondered why we stayed on those dry places as long as we did” (Esther Letter). Supposedly before they hit good water, they had to ride a team of horses down around Big Wall to haul up barrels of water from North Willow Creek (Newton), although Leonard Wall, who grew up North of the Milton Ranch, remembers that “North Willow creek never ran except during storms.”
The Gage school record exemplifies the loss of homestead families in the area: in 1914 there were 33 kids at the school. In 1933, there were 20, and in 1936 there were 13. Mrs. Lackey noticed that the range around them was continuing to empty. Writing about her loss of neighbors, Mrs. Lackey said that “Frank Brown moved to Roundup, Terrels moved to Washington, the Tuckers went to Oregon, and the Mattsons are the only ones left over with us” (letter). Still, the North Country surrounding Milton Ranch property had far more families than it does today. This map, drawn by Alfred Adolph, shows some of the families in the North Country neighborhood around the 1930s and 1940s. Milton Ranch would be located just east from the top right corner of the map:
Workers used a Fresno, a big scoop with a big handle on the back and a blade in the front, led by four horses, to survey and build dams. First, one worker would plow the ground with a team. Then, the person with the Fresno would lift up the bar to load a bucket of dirt, move it around onto the dam, pick up the bar, and drop the soil. Meanwhile, the plow kept going to break up more soil. This process could take 8-10 teams per dam. Sometimes liquid leaked away from the dams and there was sub-irrigation below the dam, so spillways were constructed out of rocks for extra moisture to leak around the dam without washing out dirt. On the dam itself, they would lay in rocks partway so wind would not gnaw away the dam (A. Adolph).
A second goal was to improve rangeland cover. The Resettlement Administration sponsored the use of crested wheat for soil conservation and controlling weeds. Crested Wheat was introduced in North America in the early 1900s through USDA foreign plant exploration missions. It was tested in agricultural experiment stations and scientists decided it was useful because it could grow in drought conditions and maintain its quality, even with heavy use. The grass grows early in the spring and lays dormant when it dries. It also grows in the fall if it receives moisture. http://digitalcommons.usu.edu/etd/22/
Test plots for crested wheat grass in Musselshell County showed that “it seems to be the only grass that will succeed at all in these dried areas.” In 1937 the RA supplied the Extension Service with 16,000 pounds of crested wheat for use on federal land in both Musselshell and Golden Valley (extension notes). This is likely where much of the Crested Wheat Grass on Milton Ranch came from originally.
Life on Milton Ranch in the late 1930s and early 1940s
Griffiths
The Griffiths were known as quiet, nice people. Alfred Adolph, who grew up west of the Griffiths during this era, can tell some stories of what life was like on the ranch in the late 1930s and early 40s. As described above, they were the only original homestead family to remain on Milton Ranch through the Depression.
Like most other families left in their area, the Griffiths ran cattle rather than sheep. They were not big farmers, but were known to have a large herd of cattle. Richard “Dick” Griffith also raised a lot of Belgian horses and had a stud horse. “Dick always had new horses coming on and was breaking them. Putting them up for sale helped their income.” Selling horses may be the reason why the Griffiths were the only homestead family successful in remaining on their land through the 20’s and 30’s. Adolph says “families that raised horses could always sell them for good money.”
Many of the horses were saddle horses with a good reputation. “Folks bred their horses to the Griffith horses at a charge. In those days, cowboys were breaking horses for $5 per head, and the stud fee might have been $5 or $10. The Griffiths had a horse named Kernel. He had a Dan Patch background and something else on him. His colts had a lot of buck in them. A lot of the guys who were breaking horses would steer around the Kernel colts. They’d stand you on your head.”
Dick was a horse dealer, a good rancher, and quite a cowboy. He spent most of his time horseback. He moved his cattle around by horseback to areas where they would not overgraze as much. George Smith knew Dick Griffith as one of the first people to move cattle around often: “He changed pasture once a week in the summertime.”
A story was going around in the 1940s about a time when Dick Griffith was short some cattle. He rode and rode to try and find them without luck. One day he was riding in the Gage country. A settler Art Cole was butchering cattle and Griffith realized that the cow being butchered was one of his. He told Art that he had 24 hours to get out of the country or he would kill him. Sure enough, Art left.
Since the Griffith’s property was part of the Kilby Butte Grazing District, it is likely they were leasing the federal land for running cattle. Their ownership of property did not begin to increase until the 1940s.
Families were encouraged by the Extension Service to grow their own gardens. Dick Griffith was known to have “a great big garden.” Kenneth Griffith was involved with the County 4-H Program that Peterson helped to get started. He was a member of the Lions Pig Club in Roundup and was noted as achieving a net profit of $30.00 on eleven pigs, which were “sold as pure bred gilts for breeding purposes.”
Richard Griffith kept a sizeable garden where Dana Milton’s garden is located today. Dolores Kombol remembers it as a “great big garden.” Like many families, the Griffiths were without electricity for a long time and used only a wood stove.
Lackeys
In the late 1930s, the Lackey Family moved to the east side of Milton Ranch from their original homestead, where Burley Lackey and his father William Lackey proved up on homesteads side by side.
The Lackey boys Pete, Willie, and Maurice attended the Gage school from 1924 to 1936. The Gage Schoolhouse was one of many schoolhouses in the North Country to which homesteader children walked or rode horses each day. School records show that the Lackey family earned extra income in the ‘20s and ‘30s by working at the school. Burley’s wife Esther earned $6 for cleaning the school. The three boys frequently earned $2 by carrying water. One year Burley served as the school district clerk (School record).
The main motivation for moving up onto the ridge of Big Wall was better water. In 1939 Esther Lackey wrote about their new home in a letter: “on this place we can have all the water we want and I have often wondered why we stayed on those dry places as long as we did” (Esther Letter). Supposedly before they hit good water, they had to ride a team of horses down around Big Wall to haul up barrels of water from North Willow Creek (Newton), although Leonard Wall, who grew up North of the Milton Ranch, remembers that “North Willow creek never ran except during storms.”
The Gage school record exemplifies the loss of homestead families in the area: in 1914 there were 33 kids at the school. In 1933, there were 20, and in 1936 there were 13. Mrs. Lackey noticed that the range around them was continuing to empty. Writing about her loss of neighbors, Mrs. Lackey said that “Frank Brown moved to Roundup, Terrels moved to Washington, the Tuckers went to Oregon, and the Mattsons are the only ones left over with us” (letter). Still, the North Country surrounding Milton Ranch property had far more families than it does today. This map, drawn by Alfred Adolph, shows some of the families in the North Country neighborhood around the 1930s and 1940s. Milton Ranch would be located just east from the top right corner of the map:
Neighbors were crucial for events like brandings and harvests. There was only one threshing machine in the North Country, run by the Merritt Ranch. When threshing was being done at someone’s place, all of the neighbors came to help and moved from place to place helping each other. The straw left by the thresher would be grazed by cattle after harvesting, rather than baling it, and the grain was brought to Roundup by 60 bushel wagons. Leonard Wall remembers that “99% of the time we all ate chicken. Everybody had chicken. And a few spuds. Chicken was the cheapest way to feed everyone.” Neighbors congregated for brandings also, which Wall remembers were similar to how they are today.
Few North Country families could eat pork or beef during the Depression years. Leonard Wall grew up north of the Milton Ranch remembers his family illegally hunted antelope, sage grouse and other wild game. A family’s only income was from whatever grain, cream, or cattle they could sell (Wall). The Lackeys had a small herd, around 40-50 head. Like most others at the time, the Lackeys did all of their grain farming with horses. Esther Lackey earned income through selling eggs and chickens in town. She raised 200 chickens in 1939 and could get $10 for 19 of them. Eggs sold for 25 cents. She milked two cows (letter). It was common for families to use a hand separator to separate the cream, which was brought to the Chesterfield creamery in town (Wall).
In 1935, the eldest Lackey brother Maurice enlisted in the Civilian Conservation Corps, a New Deal unemployment relief program for 18-25 year old men. He was sent to Fort Missoula for an exam before he was assigned to a camp. In 1936, Pete Lackey enrolled as well and left for Fort Missoula.
The Willie and Pete Lackey liked to get together with Kenny Griffith and his brother Roland at the Baker place, where Rick Adolph lives now. They held rodeos with the Baker boys in their corrals. Alfred Adolph remembers they would “all ride in a big corral to try and outdo each other on bucking horses.” Dick Griffiths’ Kernel colts provided a challenge. “Kenny was a good rider but he had to buy form fitting saddles so he could hang on.”
Few North Country families could eat pork or beef during the Depression years. Leonard Wall grew up north of the Milton Ranch remembers his family illegally hunted antelope, sage grouse and other wild game. A family’s only income was from whatever grain, cream, or cattle they could sell (Wall). The Lackeys had a small herd, around 40-50 head. Like most others at the time, the Lackeys did all of their grain farming with horses. Esther Lackey earned income through selling eggs and chickens in town. She raised 200 chickens in 1939 and could get $10 for 19 of them. Eggs sold for 25 cents. She milked two cows (letter). It was common for families to use a hand separator to separate the cream, which was brought to the Chesterfield creamery in town (Wall).
In 1935, the eldest Lackey brother Maurice enlisted in the Civilian Conservation Corps, a New Deal unemployment relief program for 18-25 year old men. He was sent to Fort Missoula for an exam before he was assigned to a camp. In 1936, Pete Lackey enrolled as well and left for Fort Missoula.
The Willie and Pete Lackey liked to get together with Kenny Griffith and his brother Roland at the Baker place, where Rick Adolph lives now. They held rodeos with the Baker boys in their corrals. Alfred Adolph remembers they would “all ride in a big corral to try and outdo each other on bucking horses.” Dick Griffiths’ Kernel colts provided a challenge. “Kenny was a good rider but he had to buy form fitting saddles so he could hang on.”
Photo of (right to left): Alfred Adolph, Willie Lackey, and neighbor Fred Giesler, 1940s.
The boys also had the task of rounding up horses from the hundreds of wild horses that ran out below Big Wall. These were horses that homesteaders had turned loose when they left. The horses were badly cut up by running through the barbed wire fences that remained in the country. Alfred Adolph remembers the horses “had incredible energy and were hard to group up. Sometimes people who kicked their horses out North would send us to roundup the horses and catch theirs.” By 1940, there was a stockyard by the Texaco plant in town and boys would take horses there to be sold (Schaff).
The Lackey boys worked for Elmer Hinton who purchased the Jack Whalen place under Big Wall. Hinton ran 150 thoroughbred horses out in the basin with all of the other horses. Hinton, who would live below the Big Wall place until his death, was “one of the people who knew how to make money off of horses. Lots of people rode Hinton horses. The horses, though, were never given good enough feed. They were always underfed.”
Coal Mining
Even in depressed times, Roundup prospered because of the mines. Other homestead towns like Ingomar and Sumatra went bust while the town of Roundup was relatively prosperous (Schaff). Aside from the Number Two and Number three mines, there was the Bair-Collins mine, the Prescott Mine, The Number Four mine (abandoned by 1933), the M and M mine east of town, and the Williams Coal Company.
Coal miners provided business for stores in town. Wall remembers there being several clothing stores, twelve or fourteen gas stations, about a dozen saloons, and most of the buildings in town were full. There used to be dances in town every Saturday night which were packed each week (Wall). Many people would drive into town on weekends just to visit different people they knew.
WWII
Leonard Wall remembers a number of men from the North Country were drafted to fight in WWII, including Pete Lackey. When someone was leaving for war, often there were parties thrown (Wall). Some men were able to get drafted through the Selective Service Board to stay on their ranches if they were the only source of labor (Dolores Kombol). Everyone in Roundup was talking about the war. Lots of people brought scrap iron into town to be used in making war items. “There was gas rationing, footwear rationing, sugar, everything. You had to have a little stamp to get sugar or a few gallons of gas.”
WWII provided a market incentive to raise sheep, for the production of mutton to feed soldiers and wool for uniforms (Lefheldt). The average number of inventoried sheep for the six years 1940-1945 in Musselshell County was 47,100. In 1947, that number was down to around 25,000 and it never rose above that afterwards.
Expansion of Ranches
There was a gradual change in the 1940s to more moisture. In 1938, wheat production jumped above single digits to 16.8 bushels per acre. The next highest year was 1942, 18.2 bushels per acre. Ever since, wheat yields in Musselshell County have only twice dropped below 10 bushels per acre, in 1940 and 1949 (USDA data).
Ranchers were expanding their ownership of property in the 1940s. Much of the land that Musselshell County acquired from homesteaders was eventually sold at auctions. As homesteaders cleared out, what Leonard Wall calls the “vulture deal” took place. People who remained had the opportunity to purchase vacant land at low prices from the county.
In the Big Wall area North of Milton Ranch, Charlie Hall came to own between 30 and 60 sections. He first ran sheep and was often seen driving up in a Ford pickup with two greyhounds to herd his sheep. Later he owned 300-400 cattle. There were 50 or 60 wild horses that roamed his property and Hall rounded up a group of them and trained them. He was known as a very good gentleman.
Due to the incentive of WWII, there were far more sheep being run in Musselshell County than cattle. Most of the big places were sheep places, while the smaller places ran cattle (George Smith). The Graves, Elliots, and Sieferts were all large sheep ranches west of Milton Ranch. The Elliots Ranch bought large amounts of land in the 1930s and 1940s. A man named Schuster purchased huge swathes of land in the foothills of the Snowies, which homesteaders were known to graze with their cattle in his absence (A. Adolph). West of Milton Ranch in the foothills of the Snowies, the old Thompson and Asbridge sheep companies were combined into the Wyntana Cattle Company and then became the Pronghorn Ranch under McNeill.
In the 1940s, these operators would use unfenced rangeland. “There was Bair, Glennies, Hollidays, Elliots, they just travelled. They’d go down and get some open country and if someone claimed they had the lease then they’d move on and that’s the way they operated.” This is how the sheep ranchers would move their herds to Ingomar for shearing (Adolph). Whenever they encountered fences, they just lifted them (Lefhedlt). This caused some conflict with cattle owners, such as Nick Raths, who sent his sons out in 1938 make sure that big sheep operators like the Holliday and Bair companies were not using their range. The Raths were early members of the Devil’s Basin Grazing District. At this time, Grazing Districts were still in their formation stages (Raths).
To the East, the Goffena Land and Livestock Company was incorporated in the 1930s. Louis Goffena worked for early livestock companies such as the Arkwright Sheep Company, grubbing sagebrush at a dollar an acre and building ditches. Eventually, he bought the Arkwright Sheep Co. from the Griggs estate. He moved into a big house near the old Arkwright sheep shed at Brockway Crossing on the Musselshell River in 1930. They were big sheep and later cattle operators. In total, Louis Goffena purchased 200 sections, mainly on tax deed at less than 50 cents per acre (F. Goffena).
Roundup came to be quite a shipping center; people would bring in cattle from far distances. Stockyards were built and a spur from the railroad ran directly to the stockyards, where there were lots of pens and alleys and a big wing where big groups of cattle could be trailed in. The cattle were worked, separated, and weighed and there were a few buyers in there. Then they’d load cars and ship them on the railroad, space for 20 cars below the stockyards. Frank Goffena remembers his dad loading 10-12 carloads of lambs to send to Sioux Falls. Ranch hands would go on the train with the sheep to unload them, feed them, and water them every night.
For smaller operators, sometimes a buyer would come and purchase cattle at individual ranches and then trail them into Roundup to be shipped. In the 40s and 50s people were still trailing in (Adolph).
Property purchase on Milton Ranch
These were the years when many of the boundaries of what would become the Milton Ranch were established. Richard Griffith took advantage of the low prices and contracted to purchase two sections of land for around $0.73 per acre in 1941. He paid off this land as well as 320 acres in other areas surrounding the ranch headquarters in 1944. In 1945, Richard Griffith paid the Northern Pacific Railroad $5,692 for three and a half sections of land, a cost of around $2.50 per acre.
Some of the land purchased was not deeded to the Griffiths until 1952, which suggests that they may have paid off their purchase over some time. George Smith remembers the Griffiths used the Production Credit Association to finance major purchases, which may have been the case with these investments. The PCA was created as part of the Farm Credit Act of 1933 to offer short term credit at low interest rates to farmers and ranchers during the Depression when credit was scarce. All of the banks in Roundup and surrounding towns, except for the Handels Bank in Musselshell, closed during the Depression. more information on PCA
In 1942 Burley Lackey purchased Section 31 in T10 R27 from the County for $373. In 1945 Burley Lackey purchased a half section for $212, and in 1947 he purchased just over a half section, both from the County.
More grazing land was added to ranches through leases from the federal government.
The boys also had the task of rounding up horses from the hundreds of wild horses that ran out below Big Wall. These were horses that homesteaders had turned loose when they left. The horses were badly cut up by running through the barbed wire fences that remained in the country. Alfred Adolph remembers the horses “had incredible energy and were hard to group up. Sometimes people who kicked their horses out North would send us to roundup the horses and catch theirs.” By 1940, there was a stockyard by the Texaco plant in town and boys would take horses there to be sold (Schaff).
The Lackey boys worked for Elmer Hinton who purchased the Jack Whalen place under Big Wall. Hinton ran 150 thoroughbred horses out in the basin with all of the other horses. Hinton, who would live below the Big Wall place until his death, was “one of the people who knew how to make money off of horses. Lots of people rode Hinton horses. The horses, though, were never given good enough feed. They were always underfed.”
Coal Mining
Even in depressed times, Roundup prospered because of the mines. Other homestead towns like Ingomar and Sumatra went bust while the town of Roundup was relatively prosperous (Schaff). Aside from the Number Two and Number three mines, there was the Bair-Collins mine, the Prescott Mine, The Number Four mine (abandoned by 1933), the M and M mine east of town, and the Williams Coal Company.
Coal miners provided business for stores in town. Wall remembers there being several clothing stores, twelve or fourteen gas stations, about a dozen saloons, and most of the buildings in town were full. There used to be dances in town every Saturday night which were packed each week (Wall). Many people would drive into town on weekends just to visit different people they knew.
WWII
Leonard Wall remembers a number of men from the North Country were drafted to fight in WWII, including Pete Lackey. When someone was leaving for war, often there were parties thrown (Wall). Some men were able to get drafted through the Selective Service Board to stay on their ranches if they were the only source of labor (Dolores Kombol). Everyone in Roundup was talking about the war. Lots of people brought scrap iron into town to be used in making war items. “There was gas rationing, footwear rationing, sugar, everything. You had to have a little stamp to get sugar or a few gallons of gas.”
WWII provided a market incentive to raise sheep, for the production of mutton to feed soldiers and wool for uniforms (Lefheldt). The average number of inventoried sheep for the six years 1940-1945 in Musselshell County was 47,100. In 1947, that number was down to around 25,000 and it never rose above that afterwards.
Expansion of Ranches
There was a gradual change in the 1940s to more moisture. In 1938, wheat production jumped above single digits to 16.8 bushels per acre. The next highest year was 1942, 18.2 bushels per acre. Ever since, wheat yields in Musselshell County have only twice dropped below 10 bushels per acre, in 1940 and 1949 (USDA data).
Ranchers were expanding their ownership of property in the 1940s. Much of the land that Musselshell County acquired from homesteaders was eventually sold at auctions. As homesteaders cleared out, what Leonard Wall calls the “vulture deal” took place. People who remained had the opportunity to purchase vacant land at low prices from the county.
In the Big Wall area North of Milton Ranch, Charlie Hall came to own between 30 and 60 sections. He first ran sheep and was often seen driving up in a Ford pickup with two greyhounds to herd his sheep. Later he owned 300-400 cattle. There were 50 or 60 wild horses that roamed his property and Hall rounded up a group of them and trained them. He was known as a very good gentleman.
Due to the incentive of WWII, there were far more sheep being run in Musselshell County than cattle. Most of the big places were sheep places, while the smaller places ran cattle (George Smith). The Graves, Elliots, and Sieferts were all large sheep ranches west of Milton Ranch. The Elliots Ranch bought large amounts of land in the 1930s and 1940s. A man named Schuster purchased huge swathes of land in the foothills of the Snowies, which homesteaders were known to graze with their cattle in his absence (A. Adolph). West of Milton Ranch in the foothills of the Snowies, the old Thompson and Asbridge sheep companies were combined into the Wyntana Cattle Company and then became the Pronghorn Ranch under McNeill.
In the 1940s, these operators would use unfenced rangeland. “There was Bair, Glennies, Hollidays, Elliots, they just travelled. They’d go down and get some open country and if someone claimed they had the lease then they’d move on and that’s the way they operated.” This is how the sheep ranchers would move their herds to Ingomar for shearing (Adolph). Whenever they encountered fences, they just lifted them (Lefhedlt). This caused some conflict with cattle owners, such as Nick Raths, who sent his sons out in 1938 make sure that big sheep operators like the Holliday and Bair companies were not using their range. The Raths were early members of the Devil’s Basin Grazing District. At this time, Grazing Districts were still in their formation stages (Raths).
To the East, the Goffena Land and Livestock Company was incorporated in the 1930s. Louis Goffena worked for early livestock companies such as the Arkwright Sheep Company, grubbing sagebrush at a dollar an acre and building ditches. Eventually, he bought the Arkwright Sheep Co. from the Griggs estate. He moved into a big house near the old Arkwright sheep shed at Brockway Crossing on the Musselshell River in 1930. They were big sheep and later cattle operators. In total, Louis Goffena purchased 200 sections, mainly on tax deed at less than 50 cents per acre (F. Goffena).
Roundup came to be quite a shipping center; people would bring in cattle from far distances. Stockyards were built and a spur from the railroad ran directly to the stockyards, where there were lots of pens and alleys and a big wing where big groups of cattle could be trailed in. The cattle were worked, separated, and weighed and there were a few buyers in there. Then they’d load cars and ship them on the railroad, space for 20 cars below the stockyards. Frank Goffena remembers his dad loading 10-12 carloads of lambs to send to Sioux Falls. Ranch hands would go on the train with the sheep to unload them, feed them, and water them every night.
For smaller operators, sometimes a buyer would come and purchase cattle at individual ranches and then trail them into Roundup to be shipped. In the 40s and 50s people were still trailing in (Adolph).
Property purchase on Milton Ranch
These were the years when many of the boundaries of what would become the Milton Ranch were established. Richard Griffith took advantage of the low prices and contracted to purchase two sections of land for around $0.73 per acre in 1941. He paid off this land as well as 320 acres in other areas surrounding the ranch headquarters in 1944. In 1945, Richard Griffith paid the Northern Pacific Railroad $5,692 for three and a half sections of land, a cost of around $2.50 per acre.
Some of the land purchased was not deeded to the Griffiths until 1952, which suggests that they may have paid off their purchase over some time. George Smith remembers the Griffiths used the Production Credit Association to finance major purchases, which may have been the case with these investments. The PCA was created as part of the Farm Credit Act of 1933 to offer short term credit at low interest rates to farmers and ranchers during the Depression when credit was scarce. All of the banks in Roundup and surrounding towns, except for the Handels Bank in Musselshell, closed during the Depression. more information on PCA
In 1942 Burley Lackey purchased Section 31 in T10 R27 from the County for $373. In 1945 Burley Lackey purchased a half section for $212, and in 1947 he purchased just over a half section, both from the County.
More grazing land was added to ranches through leases from the federal government.
Map of land purchases on Milton Ranch 1940-1960
Oil Boom and Drilling on Milton Ranch
There was a big oil boom in Roundup in the 1940s. The first oil discovery was in 1919 at the Devil’s Basin Oil Field. This was the first wildcat oil discovery in Montana. The Van Duzen Oil Company made the discovery. Oil was found at a depth of 1,175 feet though the well was not as lucrative as expected. Its discovery prompted active drilling in the area, and resulted in the discovery of the Cat Creek Oil Field in Fergus County, just west of the lower Musselshell River, the most successful oil discovery in the area.
In 1921, drilling began at the Gage Dome field on sections 13, 14 and 15 in T9 R26 on Milton Ranch. These sections all would become federal land in the 1937 Bankhead-Jones acquisition. It is probable that the government purposefully gained ownership of land with oil potential (Padden). The dome was named after Gage, the closest town. The Gage field, though a minor fold, had the advantage of being a basinward fold, considered more productive than mountainward folds. (Roundup Record 1921). In 1944, three wildcat wells were drilled at Gage Dome by Northwest Ordinance Company of Minneapolis. It was producing 25 barrels of crude oil daily in its first few days. Oil is still being produced in this field.
Oil Boom and Drilling on Milton Ranch
There was a big oil boom in Roundup in the 1940s. The first oil discovery was in 1919 at the Devil’s Basin Oil Field. This was the first wildcat oil discovery in Montana. The Van Duzen Oil Company made the discovery. Oil was found at a depth of 1,175 feet though the well was not as lucrative as expected. Its discovery prompted active drilling in the area, and resulted in the discovery of the Cat Creek Oil Field in Fergus County, just west of the lower Musselshell River, the most successful oil discovery in the area.
In 1921, drilling began at the Gage Dome field on sections 13, 14 and 15 in T9 R26 on Milton Ranch. These sections all would become federal land in the 1937 Bankhead-Jones acquisition. It is probable that the government purposefully gained ownership of land with oil potential (Padden). The dome was named after Gage, the closest town. The Gage field, though a minor fold, had the advantage of being a basinward fold, considered more productive than mountainward folds. (Roundup Record 1921). In 1944, three wildcat wells were drilled at Gage Dome by Northwest Ordinance Company of Minneapolis. It was producing 25 barrels of crude oil daily in its first few days. Oil is still being produced in this field.
Drilling started north of Milton Ranch at the Big Wall oil fields in the 1930s. In 1936, the Roundup Record printed that “oil activity is causing excitement in the Roundup area. Indication of some oil development was given when an oil and gas lease was filed for record in the clerk and recorder office. This lease was in the Big Wall District.” The first well was drilled by Texaco in 1948. Wells at Big Wall produced 23,683 barrels of oil in 1949, which was second in production only to the Cat Creek oil field which produced 28,965 barrels. Gage Dome produced 2,444.
The oil fields provided even more stimulus to the local economy. In fact, so many new workers were being employed in the oil fields that Roundup had to build new housing units for them in town.
The Big Wall oil fields produced a lot of water and they let it run out in Willow Creek. Charlie Hall, ran sheep north of Big Wall in the 1940s, used the water. After Hall’s death, his brother acquired the property and made them shut off the discharge water. His brother thought the discharge would hurt his chances of selling the ranch. Samples taken of the water upstream and the discharge running downstream ironically showed that what was downstream had lower salinity. What was coming from the north was going through alkali bogs. The water was injected underground after it was no longer discharged into the creek (Wall).
1950s-1970s
Griffiths
Alfred Adolph remembers that after World War II, ranching was different in Musselshell County. “Everyone had new ideas about how they wanted to do things.” One major change was a shift to more mechanization. Through the 1940s many people in Musselshell County were still farming with horse-drawn equipment. Dolores Kombol, who ranches west of the Milton Ranch, raked hay with horse drawn equipment in 1948. The next year, though she used a tractor-drawn raker and a few years after she was using a swather.
Her husband, Joe Kombol, designed and built 34 bale stackers, which they called Yellow Monsters. The machine scooped up 14 bales at one time and dropped them on a hay stack, where someone would get on top and arrange the bales. He could stack 2,000 bales this way. Kombol did this for many people in the North Country, including the Griffiths. Eventually, the Griffiths purchased one of the Yellow Monsters.
Kenny Griffith married Irma Gossman in 1945 when he was 31 years old. Her father owned a grain elevator in town. At some point in the 1940s or 1950s, Kenny took over the Griffith Ranch. George Smith worked for Kenny and Irma in the mid-1950s. He helped butcher Hereford cattle from the ranch and transport them to the Safeway store in town. The cows were stored in a cooler at the store and hung for a week or ten days before they were cut up. The Griffiths then came and wrapped them up to sell them. Jack Stevenson was a hired as a ranch hand for the Griffiths.
Kenny purchased many pieces of land in the 1960s. He was known to always drive new pickups and hunt coyotes. He was really a good driver; he could drive and shoot at the same time. He was also a good mechanic and could repair car motors. Kenny had lots of equipment too and ran about 250 cows. Most land was for cattle. Jake Barthule estimates that the ranch was divided between 75% cattle and 25% production of grain and barley.
Between 1944 and 1979, 15 stockwater wells were drilled on Griffith property. Two domestic wells were also drilled.
Rick Adolph began doing some work for the Griffiths in 1972. He remembers Kenny as “A working fool. He would wake at 4 a.m. and work all day.” He remembers only one time that Irma managed to get the family on a vacation to Yellowstone. They packed up and stayed the night at a hotel on the way. First thing the next morning, he was up at 4 a.m., getting the family packed up. He said they’d been gone long enough. Kenny was a big builder of fences and buildings for cows and calves.
Kenny and Irma’s kids were attending the Signe School in 1958. There were 18 kids attending the school from all over the North Country. Irma was a member of the North Country Women’s Home Demonstration Club. The club was sponsored by the Extension Service. Meetings were held for local women in an unused schoolhouse. Each month, one woman would teach the rest a skill. Member Phyllis Adolph remembers teaching the group how to wrap Christmas gifts. One year the club built a float for the New Year’s Parade, with women on one side washing clothes with an old scrub wash board and a new washing machine on the other, suggesting the change many of the ranchers were undergoing from work done by hand to work done by machine.
Ami Hazen
On the west side of Milton Ranch, a new owner Ami Hazen bought one and a half sections in 1950. Hazen lived in Roundup with his family. He owned or rented all of the little buildings surrounding the present-day food bank. Out at the ranch, he ran 40 or 50 sheep. He did not drive so he bummed rides or walked out to check on the sheep. Alfred Adolph sometimes gave rides to Hazen. “He built a sheep shed barely tall enough for sheep to get under. The shed was meant to protect the sheep from coyotes. While he was in town, he would pen the sheep and sometimes not get back to them for several days, without giving them food or water.” One time, Adolph remembers dropping Hazen off and when he opened up the shed, all of the sheep came running out and climbed up trees to eat leaves because they were so hungry.
The sheep had ticks on them and there were ticks on the wool when he sheared. DDT, originally used for disease control in WWII, was commonly used to treat ticks. Hazen bought some DDT at the farmers union in Roundup and a puffer sprayer in the mid-1950s. He puffed a lot of DDT onto his sheep inside the closed shed. After a little while, he noticed that the sheep were biting at their side, so he assumed they had more ticks and he sprayed again. Hazen eventually got DDT poisoning. He began to have regular outbreaks and would take out a knife and cut sores to relieve discomfort. He got a big sore on his leg and the poisoning is what eventually killed him. The land was picked up by the sheriff after Hazen died and was sold to Kenny Griffith in 1967.
Lackeys
Alfred Adolph visited the Lackeys in 1948. That year, he and his wife Doris were working at the Merrit Ranch and bringing the thresh machine around to do custom threshing. They stayed with the Lackeys for a few days to do their threshing. At that time, the Lackeys had no electricity or inside plumbing. They brought water into the house with a bucket. Eventually, Willie moved back into the house to run the ranch, but even then, it still was not modernized. Instead of running water, there was a bucket and dipper in the kitchen.
Maurice never returned to work on the ranch. Pete worked many jobs such as ranch hand, trucker, coal miner, construction. He returned to the ranch eventually to raise wheat. He had lots of equipment. Pete was in charge of agriculture and Willie ran the livestock. Jake Barthule estimates he ran about 100 cows.
This photo, taken 50 years after the original, shows Willie Lackey (center) at age 79:
The oil fields provided even more stimulus to the local economy. In fact, so many new workers were being employed in the oil fields that Roundup had to build new housing units for them in town.
The Big Wall oil fields produced a lot of water and they let it run out in Willow Creek. Charlie Hall, ran sheep north of Big Wall in the 1940s, used the water. After Hall’s death, his brother acquired the property and made them shut off the discharge water. His brother thought the discharge would hurt his chances of selling the ranch. Samples taken of the water upstream and the discharge running downstream ironically showed that what was downstream had lower salinity. What was coming from the north was going through alkali bogs. The water was injected underground after it was no longer discharged into the creek (Wall).
1950s-1970s
Griffiths
Alfred Adolph remembers that after World War II, ranching was different in Musselshell County. “Everyone had new ideas about how they wanted to do things.” One major change was a shift to more mechanization. Through the 1940s many people in Musselshell County were still farming with horse-drawn equipment. Dolores Kombol, who ranches west of the Milton Ranch, raked hay with horse drawn equipment in 1948. The next year, though she used a tractor-drawn raker and a few years after she was using a swather.
Her husband, Joe Kombol, designed and built 34 bale stackers, which they called Yellow Monsters. The machine scooped up 14 bales at one time and dropped them on a hay stack, where someone would get on top and arrange the bales. He could stack 2,000 bales this way. Kombol did this for many people in the North Country, including the Griffiths. Eventually, the Griffiths purchased one of the Yellow Monsters.
Kenny Griffith married Irma Gossman in 1945 when he was 31 years old. Her father owned a grain elevator in town. At some point in the 1940s or 1950s, Kenny took over the Griffith Ranch. George Smith worked for Kenny and Irma in the mid-1950s. He helped butcher Hereford cattle from the ranch and transport them to the Safeway store in town. The cows were stored in a cooler at the store and hung for a week or ten days before they were cut up. The Griffiths then came and wrapped them up to sell them. Jack Stevenson was a hired as a ranch hand for the Griffiths.
Kenny purchased many pieces of land in the 1960s. He was known to always drive new pickups and hunt coyotes. He was really a good driver; he could drive and shoot at the same time. He was also a good mechanic and could repair car motors. Kenny had lots of equipment too and ran about 250 cows. Most land was for cattle. Jake Barthule estimates that the ranch was divided between 75% cattle and 25% production of grain and barley.
Between 1944 and 1979, 15 stockwater wells were drilled on Griffith property. Two domestic wells were also drilled.
Rick Adolph began doing some work for the Griffiths in 1972. He remembers Kenny as “A working fool. He would wake at 4 a.m. and work all day.” He remembers only one time that Irma managed to get the family on a vacation to Yellowstone. They packed up and stayed the night at a hotel on the way. First thing the next morning, he was up at 4 a.m., getting the family packed up. He said they’d been gone long enough. Kenny was a big builder of fences and buildings for cows and calves.
Kenny and Irma’s kids were attending the Signe School in 1958. There were 18 kids attending the school from all over the North Country. Irma was a member of the North Country Women’s Home Demonstration Club. The club was sponsored by the Extension Service. Meetings were held for local women in an unused schoolhouse. Each month, one woman would teach the rest a skill. Member Phyllis Adolph remembers teaching the group how to wrap Christmas gifts. One year the club built a float for the New Year’s Parade, with women on one side washing clothes with an old scrub wash board and a new washing machine on the other, suggesting the change many of the ranchers were undergoing from work done by hand to work done by machine.
Ami Hazen
On the west side of Milton Ranch, a new owner Ami Hazen bought one and a half sections in 1950. Hazen lived in Roundup with his family. He owned or rented all of the little buildings surrounding the present-day food bank. Out at the ranch, he ran 40 or 50 sheep. He did not drive so he bummed rides or walked out to check on the sheep. Alfred Adolph sometimes gave rides to Hazen. “He built a sheep shed barely tall enough for sheep to get under. The shed was meant to protect the sheep from coyotes. While he was in town, he would pen the sheep and sometimes not get back to them for several days, without giving them food or water.” One time, Adolph remembers dropping Hazen off and when he opened up the shed, all of the sheep came running out and climbed up trees to eat leaves because they were so hungry.
The sheep had ticks on them and there were ticks on the wool when he sheared. DDT, originally used for disease control in WWII, was commonly used to treat ticks. Hazen bought some DDT at the farmers union in Roundup and a puffer sprayer in the mid-1950s. He puffed a lot of DDT onto his sheep inside the closed shed. After a little while, he noticed that the sheep were biting at their side, so he assumed they had more ticks and he sprayed again. Hazen eventually got DDT poisoning. He began to have regular outbreaks and would take out a knife and cut sores to relieve discomfort. He got a big sore on his leg and the poisoning is what eventually killed him. The land was picked up by the sheriff after Hazen died and was sold to Kenny Griffith in 1967.
Lackeys
Alfred Adolph visited the Lackeys in 1948. That year, he and his wife Doris were working at the Merrit Ranch and bringing the thresh machine around to do custom threshing. They stayed with the Lackeys for a few days to do their threshing. At that time, the Lackeys had no electricity or inside plumbing. They brought water into the house with a bucket. Eventually, Willie moved back into the house to run the ranch, but even then, it still was not modernized. Instead of running water, there was a bucket and dipper in the kitchen.
Maurice never returned to work on the ranch. Pete worked many jobs such as ranch hand, trucker, coal miner, construction. He returned to the ranch eventually to raise wheat. He had lots of equipment. Pete was in charge of agriculture and Willie ran the livestock. Jake Barthule estimates he ran about 100 cows.
This photo, taken 50 years after the original, shows Willie Lackey (center) at age 79:
Change in Grazing Districts:
In addition to the Kilby Butte Grazing District, the Griffiths joined the Lake Mason Grazing District in the late 1950s. By that time, the Grazing Service and the Department of the Interior had consolidated into the Bureau of Land Management. BLM representatives were involved with each local Grazing District but the Districts were mainly controlled by ranchers.
The Lake Mason District, which still operates, was made up of both private and BLM land. As previous member Walt Newton describes, ranchers “counted off so many head of cattle and ran them with everyone else’s. All the rest were kept on your own property. The rest of the association set a date when you were supposed to pick up your cows. They had corrals there, where they cut yours off.” One of the biggest hang-ups for the District was deciding which was the best breed of bull: Black Angus or Hereford. Members checked all the bulls each spring to see if they were fit to turn in. Sometimes the smaller dryland farmers in the area would turn their bulls loose to graze, so the association had to make sure those did not get in.
It was not until the 1970s and 1980s that Grazing Districts underwent a massive transformation. BLM policy began to be more stringent about how much control ranchers could have in determining grazing allotments. BLM stopped renewing Memorandums of Understanding with State Grazing Districts. One concern was how to hold Districts responsible for rangeland if different ranchers were grazing different areas each year. New district groups were formed with local officials, BLM, and rancher representatives. Also, private leases became increasingly common as ranchers did not want to deal with issues of mixing breeds and calving times in Grazing Districts.
Closing of Coal Mines
Between coal and oil, Roundup had the highest per capita income second to Butte when the coal mines were in full swing. The town had even put off natural gas development because that might threaten the market for coal. (Schaff) In the 1950s, the Milwaukee Railroad began using diesel rather than coal, and the Roundup coal mines lost their main source of business. The Klein mine was sold. Coal was sent to an atomic plant in Washington. The demand for coal decreased until the mine was forced to close in 1956. The town of Klein disappeared with the mine. Many miners left Roundup to follow the mines. The Number Three was closed down 1966.
With the loss of the mines came a big drop in activity in Roundup. Stores closed and the town became, as many residents would describe “desolate” compared to what it was when the mines were active (Dolores).
Decrease in farm and ranch families:
In the late 60s and early 70s, the number of farm families really dropped off as well. The number of kids in groups like 4-H, for example, was lower (Phyllis). Walt Newton says that in the 1970s, “Small ranches couldn’t compete because of rising costs so they started selling off.” Frank Goffena, describing the difference between farming now and farming during the 1940s, says “back then, if you raised 1,000 bushels of grain, you had a lot of grain. Now you need 100,000 bushels of grain to make the payments, because of the cost of everything. Last month our fuel bill was $10,700 for running the farm, the combine, and hauling grain to town. With the combine you run a lot of hours, running a lot of trucks, takes a lot of diesel fuel.”
High land prices in the late 1970s and early 1980s encouraged the sale of land. Jim Raths says in the 1950s and 1960s, you could buy land and pay for it with agriculture. “Now realistically land is never going to pay out.” Land purchase by outside developers for outfitting and residential subdivisions became more frequent, particularly in the Bull Mountains.
Mechanization:
Alfred Adolph points out, while the costs for farming are higher, mechanization provides more assurance and security as well. “The people who are farming now have bigger equipment and better methods and fertilization, farming a particular area properly can double their income compared to what it used to be. Before, with strip farming, it was an uphill deal to break even.” (Alfred). Farmers now need a very different kind of knowledge. They need to be knowledgeable about GPS and computers. In a combine, “you set the GPS and it works itself without you even having to turn it. It has sensors.”
Farm Programs in 1980s
The late 70s and early 80s were tough years for cattle ranching. The consumption of beef dropped. “People couldn’t afford to eat beef steaks every night like they did in the 50s and 60s” (Jim Raths). Cattle prices dropped.
Due to government farm programs, wheat farming picked up again in the 1980s. New government farm program subsidies set a floor under agricultural commodity prices which encouraged farmers to break up more land. A man named John Graytack entered the North Country and broke up around 100,000 acres of land and planted wheat in the pursuit of investment credits and capital gains, from selling land converted to farm. He wouldn’t be taxed on the profit when he sold the land. Banks were handing out massive amounts of money for borrowing (Raths). Frank Goffena remembers tearing up 4 sections in the mid-1980s and being able to collect payments on it after keeping it in farmland for three years.
Tim Schaff worked for the Agricultural Stability and Conservation Service office when Graytack was farming. He remembers that some of the “biggest deficiency payment checks he ever saw were going to Graytack” (Schaff). Graytack had land broken up no matter how tough the terrain and many people who worked for him ended up with broken equipment. Graytack met all of the standards for his payments so even though the local conservation district tried to fight Graytack, they were overridden by D.C.
The effect of breaking up all of this land was similar to some of the effects of wheat farming in the 1930s. Bill and Dana Milton recall dust storms picking up again, and tumbleweeds (Russian Thistles) blowing into fences. This increase in soil erosion was seen across the country as a result of farm programs supporting wheat production and paved the road for the Conservation Reserve Program, introduced in 1985, where farmers are paid for leaving land unused.
Another tool introduced to lower soil erosion was no-till farming: leaving stubble fallow for a year and then air seeding on top of it (Jake). Farmers often spray with Roundup before tilling and then again for weeds. Genetically modified seeds have resistance to Roundup built into them and give farmers more assurance for crop yields (Frank Goffena).
Many people will say that farm programs, including homesteading, have been the hardest thing on the range. This is particularly because of the support of what they see as poor land practices such as sodbusting, mass fertilization and pesticide use.
Decline of Sheep
Coyotes became a major pest despite government trapping. Strychnine was used to poison coyotes but its use was outlawed in 1972. Phyllis Adolph remembers some years losing almost all of the sheep on her ranch due to coyotes. Especially for smaller sheep producers, losing a large proportion of the herd would really hurt them, and they were less likely to be able to afford herders. “The large sheep ranches dwindled from the Elliots, the Graves, until it was down to just the Lefhedlts, who took over a lot of country” (P. Adolph).
In the 1990s the sheep industry took yet another hit when it lost a major wool incentive from the Government. This had large effects on the Milton Ranch decision to stop running sheep. The Lefhedlts have benefited from working with farmers to feed their livestock. For many years they ran sheep on sugar beet farms where sheep fed on the tops of the beet plants. They also used to graze leafy spurge in the Snowy Mountain Country. These deals were stopped in recent years, which the Lefhedlts believe is due to a lack of incentive for farmers: there’s no reason to make a deal like this when government subsidies are so good. Their sheep are now brought north into wheat country.
All the Goffenas had sheep but quit them, mainly because of coyotes. “Wool ain’t worth nothing. At one time the money you got out of your wool would pay for keeping the sheep- feeding. Anymore, it only pays for shearing them. And can’t find shearers. No value in wool because of synthetic fibers. Petroleum took over natural fiber markets. This Musselshell country used to be really big into sheep.”
Milwaukee closes:
In the 1960s, the Northern Pacific, Great Northern, Burlington, and Spokane, Portland and Seattle railroads all merged to become the Burlington Northern, considered by many to be the final blow to the Milwaukee. In 1977 the Milwaukee Railroad went bankrupt and in 1980 the last train ran on the Milwaukee tracks.
Possible conclusion:
Schaff points out that the trends of land ownership in Montana are either external corporate or subdivision into small private parcels. Land plots too big, you can’t care for it all. Land plots too small, then they end up degraded in order to make a living. In the end, the land suffers.
In addition to the Kilby Butte Grazing District, the Griffiths joined the Lake Mason Grazing District in the late 1950s. By that time, the Grazing Service and the Department of the Interior had consolidated into the Bureau of Land Management. BLM representatives were involved with each local Grazing District but the Districts were mainly controlled by ranchers.
The Lake Mason District, which still operates, was made up of both private and BLM land. As previous member Walt Newton describes, ranchers “counted off so many head of cattle and ran them with everyone else’s. All the rest were kept on your own property. The rest of the association set a date when you were supposed to pick up your cows. They had corrals there, where they cut yours off.” One of the biggest hang-ups for the District was deciding which was the best breed of bull: Black Angus or Hereford. Members checked all the bulls each spring to see if they were fit to turn in. Sometimes the smaller dryland farmers in the area would turn their bulls loose to graze, so the association had to make sure those did not get in.
It was not until the 1970s and 1980s that Grazing Districts underwent a massive transformation. BLM policy began to be more stringent about how much control ranchers could have in determining grazing allotments. BLM stopped renewing Memorandums of Understanding with State Grazing Districts. One concern was how to hold Districts responsible for rangeland if different ranchers were grazing different areas each year. New district groups were formed with local officials, BLM, and rancher representatives. Also, private leases became increasingly common as ranchers did not want to deal with issues of mixing breeds and calving times in Grazing Districts.
Closing of Coal Mines
Between coal and oil, Roundup had the highest per capita income second to Butte when the coal mines were in full swing. The town had even put off natural gas development because that might threaten the market for coal. (Schaff) In the 1950s, the Milwaukee Railroad began using diesel rather than coal, and the Roundup coal mines lost their main source of business. The Klein mine was sold. Coal was sent to an atomic plant in Washington. The demand for coal decreased until the mine was forced to close in 1956. The town of Klein disappeared with the mine. Many miners left Roundup to follow the mines. The Number Three was closed down 1966.
With the loss of the mines came a big drop in activity in Roundup. Stores closed and the town became, as many residents would describe “desolate” compared to what it was when the mines were active (Dolores).
Decrease in farm and ranch families:
In the late 60s and early 70s, the number of farm families really dropped off as well. The number of kids in groups like 4-H, for example, was lower (Phyllis). Walt Newton says that in the 1970s, “Small ranches couldn’t compete because of rising costs so they started selling off.” Frank Goffena, describing the difference between farming now and farming during the 1940s, says “back then, if you raised 1,000 bushels of grain, you had a lot of grain. Now you need 100,000 bushels of grain to make the payments, because of the cost of everything. Last month our fuel bill was $10,700 for running the farm, the combine, and hauling grain to town. With the combine you run a lot of hours, running a lot of trucks, takes a lot of diesel fuel.”
High land prices in the late 1970s and early 1980s encouraged the sale of land. Jim Raths says in the 1950s and 1960s, you could buy land and pay for it with agriculture. “Now realistically land is never going to pay out.” Land purchase by outside developers for outfitting and residential subdivisions became more frequent, particularly in the Bull Mountains.
Mechanization:
Alfred Adolph points out, while the costs for farming are higher, mechanization provides more assurance and security as well. “The people who are farming now have bigger equipment and better methods and fertilization, farming a particular area properly can double their income compared to what it used to be. Before, with strip farming, it was an uphill deal to break even.” (Alfred). Farmers now need a very different kind of knowledge. They need to be knowledgeable about GPS and computers. In a combine, “you set the GPS and it works itself without you even having to turn it. It has sensors.”
Farm Programs in 1980s
The late 70s and early 80s were tough years for cattle ranching. The consumption of beef dropped. “People couldn’t afford to eat beef steaks every night like they did in the 50s and 60s” (Jim Raths). Cattle prices dropped.
Due to government farm programs, wheat farming picked up again in the 1980s. New government farm program subsidies set a floor under agricultural commodity prices which encouraged farmers to break up more land. A man named John Graytack entered the North Country and broke up around 100,000 acres of land and planted wheat in the pursuit of investment credits and capital gains, from selling land converted to farm. He wouldn’t be taxed on the profit when he sold the land. Banks were handing out massive amounts of money for borrowing (Raths). Frank Goffena remembers tearing up 4 sections in the mid-1980s and being able to collect payments on it after keeping it in farmland for three years.
Tim Schaff worked for the Agricultural Stability and Conservation Service office when Graytack was farming. He remembers that some of the “biggest deficiency payment checks he ever saw were going to Graytack” (Schaff). Graytack had land broken up no matter how tough the terrain and many people who worked for him ended up with broken equipment. Graytack met all of the standards for his payments so even though the local conservation district tried to fight Graytack, they were overridden by D.C.
The effect of breaking up all of this land was similar to some of the effects of wheat farming in the 1930s. Bill and Dana Milton recall dust storms picking up again, and tumbleweeds (Russian Thistles) blowing into fences. This increase in soil erosion was seen across the country as a result of farm programs supporting wheat production and paved the road for the Conservation Reserve Program, introduced in 1985, where farmers are paid for leaving land unused.
Another tool introduced to lower soil erosion was no-till farming: leaving stubble fallow for a year and then air seeding on top of it (Jake). Farmers often spray with Roundup before tilling and then again for weeds. Genetically modified seeds have resistance to Roundup built into them and give farmers more assurance for crop yields (Frank Goffena).
Many people will say that farm programs, including homesteading, have been the hardest thing on the range. This is particularly because of the support of what they see as poor land practices such as sodbusting, mass fertilization and pesticide use.
Decline of Sheep
Coyotes became a major pest despite government trapping. Strychnine was used to poison coyotes but its use was outlawed in 1972. Phyllis Adolph remembers some years losing almost all of the sheep on her ranch due to coyotes. Especially for smaller sheep producers, losing a large proportion of the herd would really hurt them, and they were less likely to be able to afford herders. “The large sheep ranches dwindled from the Elliots, the Graves, until it was down to just the Lefhedlts, who took over a lot of country” (P. Adolph).
In the 1990s the sheep industry took yet another hit when it lost a major wool incentive from the Government. This had large effects on the Milton Ranch decision to stop running sheep. The Lefhedlts have benefited from working with farmers to feed their livestock. For many years they ran sheep on sugar beet farms where sheep fed on the tops of the beet plants. They also used to graze leafy spurge in the Snowy Mountain Country. These deals were stopped in recent years, which the Lefhedlts believe is due to a lack of incentive for farmers: there’s no reason to make a deal like this when government subsidies are so good. Their sheep are now brought north into wheat country.
All the Goffenas had sheep but quit them, mainly because of coyotes. “Wool ain’t worth nothing. At one time the money you got out of your wool would pay for keeping the sheep- feeding. Anymore, it only pays for shearing them. And can’t find shearers. No value in wool because of synthetic fibers. Petroleum took over natural fiber markets. This Musselshell country used to be really big into sheep.”
Milwaukee closes:
In the 1960s, the Northern Pacific, Great Northern, Burlington, and Spokane, Portland and Seattle railroads all merged to become the Burlington Northern, considered by many to be the final blow to the Milwaukee. In 1977 the Milwaukee Railroad went bankrupt and in 1980 the last train ran on the Milwaukee tracks.
Possible conclusion:
Schaff points out that the trends of land ownership in Montana are either external corporate or subdivision into small private parcels. Land plots too big, you can’t care for it all. Land plots too small, then they end up degraded in order to make a living. In the end, the land suffers.