Grant-Kohrs Ranch Historic Resource Study/Historic Structures Report/Cultural Resources Statement

By 1914 the range was pretty well fenced in. The nesters were staking out their claims on every creek and spring in every coulee. No longer was it possible to swing the big herds across the country in a never ending search for grass. Kohrs determined to sell out and by 1918 all that was left were remnants.

Conrad Warren [1]

The arrival of the new century brought no immediate or dramatic change in the development of the Kohrs and Bielenberg cattle empire. Already owning one of the largest cattle enterprises in America, and surely one of the best-known stock-growing businesses in Montana, the brothers continued to enlarge the home ranch even more during the first decade of the new century. Likewise, they continued massive open-range cattle grazing and shipment of the beef to the Chicago market.

Then, in 1908, they transferred their cattle business to the newly created Kohrs and Bielenberg Land and Livestock Company, a corporation of three stock holders: Con, John, and Augusta. They then owned the company that owned the ranch. This arrangement would not have been necessary had the Kohrs's only son and obvious heir, William, not died of appendicitis in the spring of 1901 while attending Cornell University. With the prime inheritor of the ranch gone, an arrangement such as that devised by Con, John, and Augusta probably represented the best choice available to ensure continuity of ownership within the family. Earlier, in 1906, and again in 1907, John's and Con's mining and realty interests had been formalized by the creation first of the Rock Creek Ditch and Mining Company and then of the Kohrs and Bielenberg Realty Company.

These early-twentieth-century years saw Kohrs and Bielenberg prospering as they had in the 1890s. But the growing numbers of homesteaders—"honyockers"— farming the lands that once supported grazing cattle, and the partners own advancing years, perhaps, caused them to liquidate their holdings. By 1915 the process had begun, and before very many years much of the vast acreage owned by Kohrs and Bielenberg was gone. By chance, or possibly by a shrewd ability to guess the probable sequence of events in agriculture, Con and John sold out just a couple of years before American agriculture entered a period of serious economic decline in the early 1920s. By 1924 Conrad Kohrs and John Bielenberg, and John Boardman, who had taken active management of much of their interests, had all died. Augusta Kohrs remained, the sole survivor of the pioneer band at the home ranch in Deer Lodge.

The home ranch itself shrank to about 1,000 acres and slipped into a somnolent caretaker status. This static period in the life of the home ranch lasted only until the early 1930s when Conrad Kohrs Warren, Con's and Augusta's grandson (Katherine's son), took over its management. The thirty years since the beginning of the century, in retrospect, had been years of profit, consolidation, and then, of dissolution.

The story of the Kohrs and Bielenberg home ranch early in the new century is a continuation of the preceding ten years. The home ranch raised thoroughbreds, provided the range herd with Hereford and Short Horn bulls to upgrade the quality of the range herds, and sold plenty of top quality bulls to other Montana ranchers. Market cattle grazed on the range and, as before, the home ranch grew. The year 1900 witnessed the addition of two sections of land to the home ranch pastures, one in August [2] and the other in October. [3] That year the matter of leasing lands also appeared in the Kohrs and Bielenberg account book. Con and John would, in the next few years, buy more and more sections of land for the home ranch on the northeast side of the ranch house, where thickly grassed pastures surrounded sections of state-owned lands that they leased. Possibly these were the leases noted in a 1900 ledger. [4]

Large numbers of imported cattle, mostly from Texas, came in by railroad that year to graze on northern grasses, the heifers perhaps, to be bred to Hereford or Short Horn bulls. One such shipment is reflected in the Kohrs and Bielenberg Day Book, representing herds put out to graze on DHS lands when delivered in 1900:

Freight paid on Stock cattle on a/c of delivery to Pioneer Cattle Co. at Oswego. July 1, 1900
$10,612.19. [5]

The sizes of the DHS herds and of the CK herds were about equal by 1900, if the amount of cattle shipped that year is an accurate gauge of their relative size. The 1900 roundup began in August, and a few small loads were shipped then, but the bulk of the cattle went east in trainloads in September and October. The CK herds provided 940 steers, 324 cows, 8 bulls, and 28 calves, valued at $51,190.07. The DHS herds furnished 1,113 steers, 291 cows, 24 bulls, and 47 calves, which sold for $61,772.27. Other Kohrs and Bielenberg cattle shipped that year included 61 steers, 32 cows, 2 bulls, and 4 calves with the "seven- five" (7-5) brand, which brought a price of $3,846.93. These were cattle from the newly acquired N-N ranch in northeastern Montana. The "five-up-and-five-down" (the numeral 5 followed by an inverted 5 and a period) herds added 344 steers to the total for $16,878.91, and the "wineglass" brand (the letter Y with rounded extensions on the diagonal members, and resting on a bar) provided 55 steers and 53 heifers for $5,200.59. The impressive total in 1900 of range cattle shipped East was 3,326 animals, which brought a gross of $138,888.77. Figuring about 18 cattle per car, 184 stockcars on the Northern Pacific would have been used. [6]

Of course, expenses, such as the cost of labor, had to be applied to gross profits. Examination of the Kohrs and Bielenberg Day Book reveals a fluctuating work crew, heavy during roundups and much lighter in between. The "Labor Account" by month in the Day Book, for the months of May through November 1900, illustrates some of the labor costs incidental to stock raising in Montana.

The crew at the home ranch assisting manager John Bielenberg numbered ten in May 1900.

In December the number of hands was even smaller than in May—including only Henry Vaughn, A. Menard, William Stockman, N. J. Bielenberg, Wilhemenia Schuhardt, "cook" (at the main house), and W. Pinkert. In the winter of 1900 the home ranch crew consisted of about seven persons and John Bielenberg. [9]

With the coming of spring in 1901 the routine of buying cattle and getting them to the range, followed by the roundup, began again. Likewise Kohrs and Bielenberg continued acquiring more land for the home ranch. On 15 June that year Con purchased property equaling one-half section in three separate deals involving two parcels of land of 120 acres each and one of 80 acres. [10] The three pieces of land tied into pastures already owned north of the ranch house.

But 1901 proved to be a year of tragedy for the Kohrs family. Their only son, William, by then twenty-one, lived in the East attending college. Word came one day in the spring that he had become seriously ill. Con and Augusta immediately made ready to travel east, but then were informed that Will had died. "It was the hardest loss Con had ever been called on to bear." [11] Yet the real impact on Con's and John's plans and goals remains unknown. John Bielenberg left no diary or autobiography to reveal his feelings, and Con Kohrs, possibly because of the pain of the experience, never mentioned it in his autobiography. Within seven years Con, John, and Augusta put their land and cattle holdings into corporations, a move that may well have been prompted by the death of the young man obviously destined to inherit the cattle empire his father and uncle had created. The move might also have come for very different reasons involving ease of property management, advancing age of the principals involved, or even tax considerations. There can be little doubt that young Will's death came as a sudden and heavy blow to Con, Augusta, and Uncle John Bielenberg. Yet to view all subsequent actions involving the ranching operations of Kohrs and Bielenberg only in relation to the young man's passing is surely naive, since there is little known yet of the partners' motives in the property consolidations of 1906, 1907, and 1908, and in the sale of the rangelands in the second decade of the century. In addition, Con and John took no major actions immediately following the death of William save to create a library at Deer Lodge in his name. [12]

In the year following William's death, Con continued to buy small parcels of property in Deer Lodge and for the home ranch. Early in the year, on 8 January 1902, he picked up a town lot in Deer Lodge, [13] and the next month bought two separate parcels of pastureland of 120 acres each, [14] and more Deer Lodge town lots. [15] In March the partners bought more town lots and they closed the year by acquiring another quarter section of ranch land. [16] In the next year the pace slowed somewhat, with only two 40-acre pieces of property coming to the home ranch. [17]

By this time the range cattle industry as it had been functioning since the 1870s in Montana had but a few years remaining. The onset of the "honyockers," whose numbers seemed to increase daily on the Montana plains, cut into the open-range cattle business. For the CK, and probably for the "five-up-and-five-down" and "seven-five" herds of Kohrs and Bielenberg as well, 1904 marked one of the last general roundups. The roundup and the creation of the "pool," which had so long been a part of the Montana open-range cattle business, would function only on limited rangelands after 1904. The pool and its activities is described succinctly by one of the Montana cattle industry's best known historians Robert H. Fletcher:

Neighboring outfits using common range found it economical to combine their roundup activities into what was commonly called a pool. The number of riders and chuck and bed wagons to be furnished by each outfit was determined on an equitable basis. Day and night horse wranglers were hired and the custodian of the pots, pans, and dutch oven. 'Reps,' as representatives from other districts were called, rode with each roundup crew. They were usually favored in the work assignments as they had to be in a position to keep an eye out for their employer's brands. [18]

The pool had been part of the Kohrs and Bielenberg and DHS roundup since the very earliest days of grazing cattle on the plains east of the divide. But this year was the last roundup for the CK, "five-up-and-five-down," and seven-five herds in northeastern Montana. [19] The two Gehrmann boys ("J.H." was twelve that year) participated in the 1904 roundup during their visit with Uncles Con and John and Aunt Augusta. Gehrmann provides a retrospective view of the event as remembered over seventy years later:

In the fall of 1904 we were present at the last general roundup in this section. The different owners all gathered their cattle in one big herd. Each 'spread' drove its cattle into a large enclosure where the cowboys each marked its brand. Then the calves were separated from the mothers into another corral and they were branded with the same brand as the mother cow. My brother and I heated and sorted the branding irons as they were called for. All the male calves were castrated for sale as steers.

The roundup was held in an area surrounding a rangers cabin. Each group had its own tents. We were three in a tent: Uncle John Bielenberg, my brother, and I went to bed on a buffalo robe, with another over us. We were completely clothed except for shoes and hats. This was in early September but the nights were cold. In the morning I asked a cowboy where I could wash up. He gave me a hatchet and pointed to the frozen creek. I chopped a hole and took a quick face wash. Probably the only clean face in camp.

At breakfast I asked for a glass of milk, and the cowboys laughed. One of them said, "We are cowboys, not farm hands." With over 10,000 cows right in the vicinity we had no milk. [20]

Gehrmann's recollections are the last ones of a Kohrs and Bielenberg open-range roundup. Doubtless, on the DHS ranchlands, on the N-N lands, and at the home ranch itself, roundups continued for a few more years, but they are not recorded in the Kohrs autobiography. In fact, few activities of the twentieth century are. Kohrs sums up the entire sixteen or so years between the purchase of the last large piece of rangeland—the N-N, bought in Dawson County in 1899—and the end of the whole operation, by noting that

we had many miles of country, and while our losses were heavy, we kept our herd replenished with herds from Texas. With our good friends and our good credit we could always restock with steers and as the market prices increased, we received more for our output. The last large purchase was made in 1898.

Since then we have been gradually winding up our business and have been fortunate as the market prices were such as to make our sales very profitable and by 1915 we had all sold except remnants. [21]

Before Kohrs and Bielenberg began "winding up our business" they formalized it. This they accomplished by gathering the hundreds of separate transactions in city property, mining claims, and thousand of acres of ranchlands into corporate holdings owned by Con, John, and Augusta. The first such action came on 1 June 1906 when the Kohrs and Bielenberg Realty Company was organized to bring the various urban properties under one management system. [22] Then about seven months later, the Rock Creek Ditch and Mining Company, which had long been organized to manage some of the Kohrs and Bielenberg mining properties, received a Certificate of Extension of Corporation, thus ensuring continued control of that side of the multifaceted Kohrs and Bielenberg business ventures. [23] The next corporation was formed on 12 May 1908—the Kohrs and Bielenberg Land and Livestock Company; on the same day the Pioneer Mining Company was organized. [24] Of these two groups, the most important to the story of the home ranch is the Kohrs and Bielenberg Land and Livestock Company.

On the date of incorporation, 1 June 1908, Con, John and Augusta sold the hone ranch to the Kohrs and Bielenberg Land and Livestock Company for $200,000. The deed records the sale as involving three parcels of land, one of 21,388.50 acres, another of 942 acres, and the third of 27 acres. The grand total of land owned, as of that date, totalled 22,307 acres. When the leased lands—and at least seven sections are indicated on an old Kohrs and Bielenberg map of about 1907—are added, the total size of the home ranch as of June 1908 comes to about 26,787 acres. [25]

Introduction
Historic Resource Study | Cultural Resources Statement | Historic Structure Report