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

"When I first reached Montana, the Deer Lodge Valley was one of the most beautiful stretches of bunch grass country imaginable. The grass waved like a huge field of grain."

Conrad Kohrs [1]

"We crossed the Deer Lodge River, a wide and fine stream at this point. Nooned at 11 A.M. . . . I saw several hundred cows and calves belonging to [John] Grant, the finest I have seen in America."

James Harkness [2]

A. John Grant Introduces Cattle to the Deer Lodge Valley

Cattle came to Montana with some of the initial settlers. As early as 1833 Bob Campbell, Bill Sublette's partner, brought three cows and two bulls to a Rocky Mountain Fur Company rendezvous, their eventual destination the Yellowstone River. That same year cattle grazed at Fort Union, at the junction of the Yellowstone and Missouri rivers. An 1850 inventory listed forty-two head of mixed cattle at Fort Benton on the Missouri, and in 1851 another reported twelve head at Fort Alexander on the Yellowstone. [3] Cattle arrived in the Deer Lodge Valley almost as early. In the winter of 1849 to 1850 Captain Richard Grant and his two sons, James and John, returned to the log cabin base camp in the Beaverhead Valley, not far from the Deer Lodge Valley, from which they roamed to trade, driving a herd of cattle acquired on the Mormon Trail between Fort Bridger and Salt Lake. [4] Granville Stuart, who both participated in and chronicled Montana's early history on a grand scale, described the Grants' trading along the Immigrant Trail.

In 1850 Capt. Richard Grant, with his sons John and James Grant began trading along the Emigrant road in Utah for footsore and worn-out cattle and horses. This stock was usually of good quality and only needed rest and a little care to make them fine animals. The Grants spent the summers along the Emigrant road between Bridger and Salt Lake, and in the fall drove their stock into what is now Montana. [5]

The Grants continued trading and building their herds during the 1850s. Then in 1857 John Grant wintered in the Deer Lodge Valley, presumably taking some cattle with him. [6] He did not stay long, leaving that spring. But in the fall of 1859 he returned to the valley and built a home at the confluence of the Little Blackfoot and Deer Lodge rivers (about twelve miles north of today's Grant-Kohrs Ranch). Grant and his family lived there alone, but maintained friendly relations with the Indians who frequented the valley. Good relations were a necessity in view of the size of Grant's growing herds roaming the richly grassed valley: "two hundred and fifty head of horses and over eight hundred head of cattle." [7] Granville Stuart attested to the quantity and quality of Grant's animals, which he saw when he, too, entered Montana to stay. Stuart described Grant's "several hundred cattle and horses" that had "fattened on the native grasses without shelter other than that afforded by the willows, alders, and tall rye grass along the streams." Stuart, too, brought cattle into Montana in 1858, sixty head, also acquired from the wagon trains on the emigrant trail. [8]

These cattle from the midlands of America, the best that the pioneers on their way to Oregon and California could obtain, formed the foundation of the cattle industry in Montana. There the emaciated stock, weary from the trek across the plains, revived, fleshed out in the grass-rich river valleys of southwestern Montana, and multiplied. These were English breeds, shorthorned animals descended from the cattle that came over from North Europe and England to the Atlantic seaboard colonies. Not until many years had passed and the cattle industry had become a major factor in Montana's economy and culture would the descendants of the Spanish cattle, which had multiplied to form the basis of the Texas cattle boom following the Civil War, come to Montana in any significant numbers. The Montana cattle herds began with English-American shorthorned cattle. The famous Texas Longhorn came later.

Not all of the cattle moving from Missouri and the east along the trail to Oregon failed to make the trip. Many survived, and as these first Montana herds grew, other and larger herds appeared in Oregon, to the west.

Initially cattle may have entered the Oregon country in 1788, coming north to the settlements on Nootka Sound from Monterey, California. These animals were descended from the Spanish types in Mexico, and bore the name "California Longhorns." Then, in the 1790s, Captain George Vancouver shipped some California cattle to the Hawaiian Islands to victual ships calling there. They multiplied well, and by the early 19th century the islands provided cattle to Oregon. Dr. John McLoughlin, chief factor of the Hudson's Bay Company post of Fort Vancouver, started a herd of twenty-seven cows and steers there in 1825, later supplementing it with three Durham bulls (Durham is an English shorthorn breed synonymous with "Short Horn"). McLoughlin kept the herd under close and careful control, until by 1838 it numbered a thousand head. As the Durham strain from the three bulls he imported blended with the Spanish strain of the California cattle, Oregon, like Montana, soon had non-longhorns in its early cattle herds, although of course some longhorn qualities would continue to show.

The immigration of 1843 brought "one thousand persons, with 120 wagons, and 5,000 cattle" to the Willamette Valley from Independence, Missouri. The herds were, of course, comprised of the English-American breeds. More Durhams were brought in 1846, and English breeds quickly dominated the Oregon cattle herds. By the 1860s

Oregon was now beginning to profit by the arrival of better cattle from the east. Surpluses adequate to feed the gold seekers stampeding into Idaho, Montana, and Nevada were accumulating, thanks to the abundant bunch grass in eastern Oregon and southwestern Idaho, with fine grama and wheat plants for winter grazing.

During the three decades preceding 1890, the range-cattle industry of the Northwest prospered mightily. . . . The rugged Oregon winters bred strong, rugged animals, far better suited for breeding purposes in their mountain territories, where settlement had to await the end of the Civil War, than Texas Longhorns, which were not inured to protracted cold. [9]

Thus, by the early 1860s the cattle herds in southwestern Montana, especially in the Deer Lodge Valley, and in Oregon, were developing rapidly, with predominantly English-American breeds. The herds to supply meat to the gold rushes of the early 1860s existed before the strikes opened the territory to frenetic settlement by the miners.

But the fast-growing herds could hardly have furnished a foundation for a future cattle empire had the Indians not—in the main—left the nascent industry and its bovine assets alone. This potential danger to the herds developing in southwest Montana had been eased earlier by a series of treaties with the Indians in the area negotiated by Washington Territory Governor Isaac I. Stevens in the 1850s. Stevens's treaties also allowed construction of a road from Fort Benton on the Missouri River to Fort Walla Walla in eastern Washington. This route became known as the Mullan Road, and provided an important avenue in and out of the area. [10]

So, a fortuitous combination of rich grass, footsore cattle along the Oregon Trail, and a diminished threat from the Indians allowed the herds to grow.

In 1860, not long after John Grant had moved to the Deer Lodge Valley his herds reached size enough to allow some to be trailed to California for sale. He became the first to export Montana cattle to a distant market. [11]

A year after he settled in the Deer Lodge Valley, Grant "concluded to go to the Immigrant road to induce some families to come with me and settle where I was. I took my horses but my cattle, I left, trusting to Providence. As I was leaving two strangers came up the road and one of them asked 'Do you want to hire a man, perhaps you would like to have a house made of hewed logs.' I said to the fellow, 'All right, what is your name and where did you come from?' He replied 'My name is Joe Prudhomme and we deserted Fort Benton.' It was a poor recommendation but it was honest. I liked the man's honest appearance, so I hired him and his partner at twenty-five dollars each per month and left them in charge of my cattle and to build a house."

John Grant's mission succeeded well, and he gathered together about a dozen families. They returned with him to settle at the confluence of Cottonwood Creek and the Deer Lodge River, the site of today's town of Deer Lodge. Upon his return Grant discovered he had been most astute in appraising Prudhomme's character.

Joe Prudhomme had built a good hewed log house with a good floor in it. He was not only a good carpenter but a good blacksmith and tinsmith as well. He had sold thirty head of cattle to Capt. Mullen for twenty six hundred dollars. Joe was a very trustworthy man. I never regretted having trusted him. I was well satisfied with my house but remained in it only one year. In 1861 I gave it away and moved to Cottonwood where the other traders had settled. [12]

This move took Grant to the site of the vicinity of Deer Lodge. In 1862 he decided to build a substantial home for his family "in Cottonwood afterwards called Deer Lodge. It cost me a pretty penny." [13] The structure became the ranch house for his operations in the valley, and would become the property of a young Danish-born entrepreneur, Conrad Kohrs, four years later.

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