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

"In his lifetime Mr. Kohrs had many financial adventures. As he used to say to me: 'I guess, John Clay, I have been broke oftener than any man in the west, but I have always taken it cheerfully and gone to work again.'"

John Clay [1]

In the twenty years between the purchase of the Grant Ranch in 1866 and the disastrous winter of 1886-87, the Kohrs and Bielenberg cattle business grew with the territory of Montana. The herds increased greatly in quantity and quality. The partners introduced registered Short Horn cattle into the herds first, followed a few years later by registered Herefords. The Kohrs and Bielenberg herds, along with others, roamed the open range east of the mountains in Montana. They travelled overland to eastern Wyoming and western Nebraska for shipment to the eastern markets, primarily Chicago and Omaha. Late in 1883 Kohrs and Bielenberg purchased a major part of the DHS Ranch in the largest cattle deal, to that date, in Montana.

As the range cattle herds increased, Kohrs and Bielenberg added small portions of land to the home ranch, as well as to the ranch four miles south of Deer Lodge known as the "upper ranch." Kohrs regularized the purchase from John Grant — which had not been surveyed — by homesteading the land he had bought earlier from Grant.

Conrad Kohrs's personal life changed as well. He married, moved his bride to Montana Territory, and began a family. He entered politics, first on the county and then on the State level, and helped organize and run the Montana Cattlemen's Association. As Conrad Kohrs moved through the territory arranging for mining claims and cattle sales and purchases, John Bielenberg remained at the home ranch, managing it.

The era contained a brief Indian threat when Chief Joseph led his Nez Perce band in their march toward Canada, trips to Europe for the Kohrs family, and the death of a highly trusted and respected employee. The period saw the Kohrs and Bielenberg cattle become one of the major herds in Montana, and witnessed the continued financial growth of the family. It was an active and dynamic period in the history of the Kohrs and Bielenberg home ranch.

A. 1867-1870

Con had started branding his cattle in 1865, using "CP" for "Con and Peel." After he purchased the Grant herd along with the ranch, he used Johnny Grant's "G," branding on the left hip. He began using the brand that would be synonymous with Kohrs and Bielenberg, the ubiquitous "CK," in 1867. [2] The growing Kohrs and Bielenberg cattle business remained confined to the Deer Lodge Valley, however, Kohrs recalling that "the whole country was community range and the cattle were mixed together." [3] Much of Kohrs's energy in 1867 went toward development of the Rock Creek Ditch Company, which involved digging the water ditch from the vicinity of Rock Creek Lake west of the ranch down towards the valley floor where the water could be sold for use in placer mining. [4]

Yet he and John Bielenberg did have the time to purchase Utah and Oregon cattle at prices that enabled them to "sell to the butchers and make a fair profit." [5] There was time, too, that summer of 1867, for parties at the Kohrs ranch house. In his autobiography, Con Kohrs took time to describe one of them in some detail, "just to give an idea of the condition of the country. . . ." He recalled that

Everybody within a radius of twenty miles had been invited and the attendance was large. A couple of fiddlers provided the music, the only kind that could be procured. There was no dress parade. The majority of women wore nice clean calico dresses. Those that had babies brought them and a room with beds was provided for the children and Tom Strange was put in charge as a baby tender. Boots and shoes were scarce articles and most of the men danced in mocassins made out of deer hide by the Indians, some with fancy beads, others plain.

As we had no refreshments except tea, coffee, and sandwiches, many of the men brought their chemicals and cached them in the woodpile. David L. Irvine, who was running for the office of Clerk and Recorder, was known as a man who never had taken a drink. He was electioneering for votes and the first thing the boys took advantage of him, took him to the woodpile and induced him to drink and ere the evening was over, had him intoxicated. The Missouri ladies were strict Campbellites, had never danced and the boys had been very temperate. During the evening Jim Brown tapped me on the shoulder and said: "Con, the country is saved." "Why, how so?" I asked. He replied: "The girls have gone to dancing and the boys are drinking." [6]

A tradition for parties in Deer Lodge City had prevailed for at least the past two years. An 1865 gathering, possibly at the Grant home, rated a lengthy review in one of Montana's early newspapers, Virginia City's Montana Post. The correspondent noted that since there were not "more than seven dances a week in Cottonwood — I humbly beg pardon-in Deer Lodge City — the hospitable folks got one up for my special benefit." [7]

In December 1867 Con Kohrs left for the "states," specifically Iowa, to visit his mother, brother, and stepfather, Claus Bielenberg, in Davenport, and to spend the Christmas holidays with them. [8] The trip proved to be somewhat more eventful than a mere winter holiday. He later summed up this major episode in his life rather laconically.

Embracing the opportunity I went to Davenport, married and returned to Montana by the Missouri River that fall. [9]

In reality, the event was not quite so spartan. Con heard of Miss Augusta Kruse from his brother, Henry. Augusta was the daughter of Henry's nurse. [10] Con remembered that he had "known her as a child, but had not met her since." He left Davenport in January travelling to Covington, Kentucky, to look for Augusta. There he discovered that she had moved to Cincinnati. He found her there, "renewed our acquaintance," courted the nineteen-year-old beauty, gained her acceptance, and took her back to Davenport, Iowa. On the twenty-third of February they were married in the family home. [11] A stay of over a month in Davenport followed the quiet wedding, and then, in early April, came the beginning of the journey to Deer Lodge. The newlyweds took a river steamer out of Omaha, and inched their way up the Missouri River to Fort Benton, the head of navigation in Montana Territory. They were on the boat from April 16 to June 8. During the trip the young bride was introduced to some of the hardships of the West, Kohrs writing that "the trip was so long that provisions gave out and consequently the fare was very poor, consisting mainly of beans and bacon." [12]

Tom Hooban met the couple at Fort Benton. He was, by now, Kohrs's and Bielenberg's most trusted employee. John Bielenberg remained at the home ranch to run things. Tom reported with the spring wagon for passengers and an ox team and wagon for the furniture Con had purchased in St. Louis and brought with them. The overland trip of 180 miles to Deer Lodge proved to be a difficult one, with rain most of the way. Augusta particularly suffered. Her husband described her as being "unaccustomed to roughing it." [13]

During the whirlwind courtship in Cincinnati, Augusta had asked Con how far he lived from the railroad. The answer had come "Oh, just a short distance." Years later Augusta would tell the family that had there been a way to get back to Cincinnati from Deer Lodge the marriage would have ended when they arrived after six days in a wagon in the rain, after seven weeks on a riverboat. [14] There was no way to get hack, of course. The marriage did not end and over the next fifty-two years the couple retained a strong devotion to each other. The tall rancher who took Augusta away from Cincinnati and onto the frontier shared with her a long and satisfying life.

But at the beginning of their tenure at Deer Lodge things did not come easy for Augusta Kruse Kohrs. She entered a household composed of bachelors running a ranch. Presumably the "large crew of men delivering my cattle to various parts of the country" headquartered out of the home ranch as well. The house could not have presented much of a genteel appearance to Augusta. Con himself admitted

There were no carpets. The floors were all pine and were kept spotlessly white by scrubbing . . . We had an old homemade bed; strings of rawhide stretched across in place of springs, a straw tick for a mattress. [15]

No doubt a disarray of clothes, equipment, and miscellaneous accouterments of Bielenberg, Hooban, Mitch Oxarart, (another highly trusted employee) and some of the other hands complemented the austere furnishings of the house. Family tradition has it that the place looked like a boar's nest, and that the mess immediately became the target of the new mistress of the manse. Kohrs admits as much in his autobiography, noting that "my wife had the German pride in taking care of her own household." [16] He added a description of her horror at the presence of a male cook in the house and insisted that he be dismissed. She would do the work herself. With the ranch workers to feed, eight cows being milked, coffee to be roasted soap and candles made, and "altogether too much work for one woman," the lady of the house, age nineteen, fresh from the east, and carrying the couple's first child, brought order and domesticity into the scene.

Bedbugs proved to be one of the initial problems. But applications of kerosene and boiling water sufficed to end that irritation at least.

The summer passed in a flurry of work as Mrs. Kohrs impressed her stamp on home and family. Late that summer Con and Augusta drove to Helena for the Territorial Fair. The Kohrs and Bielenberg enterprise exhibited cattle, sheep, and horses. John Bielenberg, showing a devotion to horse racing and race horses that he retained throughout his life, had a trotting horse — "Sorrel George" - at the fair as well. [17]

Following the fair the "old routine of hard work" was resumed. Then on the 18th of December our first baby was born. There was no woman help in the country, no nurse. Dr. Crippen and I were the nurses. The doctor knew nothing, neglected my wife and she suffered for months. [18]

They named the child, a daughter, Anna Catherine. [19]

For Conrad and Augusta Kruse Kohrs, and for life at the ranch, 1868 had been a significant year.

In his usual sparse prose, Conrad Kohrs noted in his autobiography that "there was little to mark the year 1869," and then proceeded to show that it was a vitally significant one for the Montana range cattle industry and Kohrs and Bielenberg.

Con started off the year purchasing a small ranch from Henry DeWitt for $150, specifically, the "ranch known as Alexander Pemberton Ranch on Tin Cup Joe Creek, adjoining Frank Mason's Ranch." [20] He needed more land, since the Deer Lodge Valley daily housed more cattle. Grass kept getting scarcer, and the Kohrs and Bielenberg herd was be coming "too large to winter in the valley without feeding."

Tom Hooban suggested moving part of the herd to the Sun River Valley, northeast of the Deer Lodge Valley and on the eastern slope of the mountains. So in the fall they sent about a thousand head of their best cattle to the grasslands south of the Sun River. The move marked a major thrust of the cattle business into the central and eastern plains of the State, and into Indian country; it was the initial entry of the first of the hundreds of thousands of cattle that would eventually cover the Montana plains — the last free-grass area in the Nation.

The stock that furnished beef to the mining camps remained in the Deer Lodge Valley. Mitch Oxarart supervised the delivery of animals to the various mining camps. Kohrs and Bielenberg continued "furnishing Blackfoot, Bear Gulch, Washington Gulch, Deer Lodge, Helena, and some at Virginia City and German Gulch and were doing well." [21]

Augusta, caring for Anna, kept busy ministering to child and household. Yet that fall she managed to win a "1st Premium" at the Territorial Fair for a sofa cushion. The ranch sold three steers at the fair, ranging from two to four years old and grossing 5,480 pounds. The size of the animals from the Deer Lodge Valley attested to the quality of the Kohrs and Bielenberg herd, attributable to the rich grasses along the Deer Lodge River. [2]

The year closed with a rhetorical question in an advertisement in Deer Lodge's excellent newspaper The New Northwest. The ad asked "Can we get as good meats in Deer Lodge as anywhere in Montana Territory? Of Kohrs, we can, try him." Presumably the "Con and Bro." meat market—the brother at this meat market being Charles Bielenberg—benefited from such sparkling publicity. [23]

In 1869 Con Kohrs was nominated on an independent ticket to the post of one of three county commissioners. The independent slate carried, and Kohrs became a county commissioner for two years. Forty-five years later he recalled with pride his service as a county official:

When we went into office Deer Lodge scrip was sold for twenty-five cents on the dollar and at the end of our term of two years the script sold at seventy-five cents. There was a corresponding improvement in the other offices; there was less shooting scrapes and murders in the county and the change of officers did a great deal of good. [24]

Con Kohrs's entry into politics and government had been successful; and his actions as a county level officer were based on a practical need, as he saw it, to improve local government. That attitude would prevail in his service in State-wide organizations such as the Montana Stock-Growers Association and in the State Senate. His practicality and pragmatic approach to life and business seemed to remain as consistently strong in politics.

Con remained busy in his first year as a county commissioner. In early November he visited and inspected the county jail, announcing that escape from it was impossible if the jailer was present. Such are the duties of cattlemen who shoulder governmental burdens. [25]

The weather cooperated nicely as 1870 opened, Kohrs noting that "there was not a great deal of snow in the valley in 1870, and this was considered the third of the mild winters." [26] To Montana cattlemen, Kohrs and Bielenberg included, a mild winter boded well for a good herd of cattle in the spring.

While Deer Lodge Valley was still gripped by the Montana winter — which, even in its mildest years, is a hard season — the report of the county board of commissioners was released, and commented on in The New Northwest. The editor was fulsome in his praise:

The form of publication is the most comprehensive and complete yet presented by a board in the territory . . . We have good officers, efficient and economical, and the most careful, prudent, sagacious and thoroughly interested Board of Commissioners we have ever seen in office. [27]

The commissioners, Conrad Kohrs among them, also recommended an increase in taxes to cover an $82,000 county debt. Being "thoroughly interested" in area affairs was probably a natural attitude of someone like Kohrs and his business contemporaries. All were building the community in one way or another. Kohrs and Bielenberg concentrated their efforts on cattle and mining, but concurrently retained a vested interest in a solid government and a strong community resting on a firm economic base. Kohrs, the cattle grower and miner, also invested in city lots, and kept an interest in the meat selling business. He and many of his contemporaries actively built their communities, acting as classic pioneers. For Kohrs not to have been "thoroughly interested" in the affairs of the county would have been unusual. What is surprising is that he found time to participate in local government with the obvious intensity that he did, given his numerous commercial and cattle raising ventures. [28]

On March 2 Con and Augusta had their second child, another daughter Katherine Christine. His memory seared by Augusta's travail during her initial confinement, Con sent Mitch Oxarart to Helena for a Dr. Glick. The doctor came to the ranch, remained for a week, "and received a thousand dollars for his professional services." [29] Obviously Conrad Kohrs had moved to a position of some real affluence by March of 1870, and the payment to the doctor assisting at the birth was hardly a mean one. His business activities during the year further testified to his growing wealth.

In early April a scarcity of cattle in the Deer Lodge Valley caused some of the town's meat markets to close. "Con and Bro." even found it necessary to kill 2-year olds to supply their meat market in Deer Lodge. [30]

In the middle of the month Kohrs toured the valley looking for cattle, but the scarcity had driven prices up and he bought only a few. In this instance and in every cattle-buying deal in the future, Con Kohrs insisted on buying cattle at low prices. With less invested than most of his contemporaries, he could sell when he wanted, waiting for the best price. He made his money buying cattle cheap, not in selling them at high prices. (Possibly, by sending a large portion of his herd to Sun River, Kohrs added to the shortage in the valley.) [31]

Kohrs consolidated some of his business affairs in May, buying out his longtime partner Ben Peel, for $7,000. [32] Consummated early in the month, notice of the deal appeared later that month in The New Northwest, with the statement that the

firms named Con Kohrs and Co. and Con and Peel, Helena dissolved [with] Conrad Kohrs becoming purchaser and sole owner of all property of said firms.

signed: Con Kohrs
Joseph Peel
John Bielenberg [33]

Thereafter the businesses would carry the name ""Con Kohrs & Bro.," a title which appeared frequently in relation to the home ranch as well over the next few years.

Miscellaneous ranch activities continued that spring. Con scoured the territory for cattle, finding 300 head in the Beaverhead Valley for the high price of $14,000. The seller refused Con's draft and he had to return to Deer Lodge for currency. [34] Late in May he advertised a thoroughbred horse for ""stallion service," at $25. [35]

That spring—the exact date is unknown—Kohrs's and Bielenberg's Sun River herd was worked for beef, and the fat cattle driven west over the Lewis and Clark Pass toward Hell Gate, today's Missoula. Purchasing enough additional cattle from ranchers in the Bitterroot Valley there to bring his total to 2,000, Kohrs drove the herd south into Idaho and then into northeastern Utah. From Utah they turned generally east toward Soda Springs, Wyoming, paralleling the overland trail to the vicinity of Cheyenne, Wyoming, and Fort Laramie. From there the herd was driven to North Platte, Nebraska, loaded on railroad cars, and shipped to Chicago to market. Until the Union Pacific came to eastern Montana in the mid-1880s, this route and variations of it served to deliver cattle to railheads in Wyoming and western Nebraska for shipment to the cattle markets further east.[36]

By mid-summer Kohrs had purchased two town lots in Deer Lodge, [37] was well established in cattle holdings in the Deer Lodge and Sun River Valleys, and had — in partnerships with John and Charles Bielenberg — solidified his hold on sale of meat in various western Montana towns. He also held interests in mining and selling water from ditches for placer mining. He used two techniques of business activity that would mark his operations as they grew in the years to come. The techniques, possibly better described as entrepreneurial approaches, are classified today as "vertical integration" and "horizontal diversification." His use of the vertical integration concept involved the cattle and meat business. He owned the cattle and oversaw the processing and marketing of the meat, thus controlling all facets of the business: supply, processing, transportation, and sale. In fact he strengthened his hold on meat sales, in Deer Lodge at least, that August by purchasing a twenty-three by thirty-foot lot in town for a two-story brick building to house a new butcher shop.

Kohrs's horizontal diversification involved his activities in separate fields, all centrally managed by him. With his interests in mining, butcher shops, and the buying, raising, and selling of cattle, he operated dynamic business activities in different fields, addressing disparate markets, yet being assured of overall stability because weakness in one business sector could be balanced by strength in another. In such a way his investment risks remained compartmentalized, with potential loss minimized and overall profits unimpaired.

Within these various businesses, Kohrs often worked with different partners. One herd of cattle was owned by Kohrs and Bielenberg and one or two others, and another herd would be owned by Kohrs and yet another partner. At the same time, different mining operations were owned by Kohrs and one or more partners. Thus the sums of money invested in each of the many business efforts of Con Kohrs were smaller than those which would have been required had he made the investment alone, and, correspondingly, the risk of crippling financial loss was equally lessened.

As Kohrs's and Bielenberg's activities grew in scope and size over the years, it became more difficult to achieve additional vertical integration. Raising cattle in the Deer Lodge Valley, having a cowboy or two drive a few each week to market at a Kohrs-owned butcher shop a few miles at most from the pasture, and then selling the meat was not a difficult feat. But when the yearly sales of cattle rose to number in the thousands, and when the transportation required was not to a local market but to Chicago, Omaha, or Kansas City, Kohrs could not exercise complete control of the raw materials or their transportation and processing. He was then forced to utilize a trusted agent, Rosenbaum, in Chicago, and had to surrender any additional vertical integration in the cattle business. Yet in the 1880s and 1890s and into the 20th century, he continued his many varied business activities, thus staying with horizontal diversification. He had set the pattern by 1870.

That September saw work beginning on the new butcher shop—estimated to cost about $3,000—and another purchase of cattle in the Beaverhead Valley, 320 head this time, for about $13,000. The onset of cool weather meant fair time, and Con and Augusta again entered the various competitions. The Kohrs and Bielenberg stock merited high appraisals as they came in for grooming just before the fair. One news man commented that the Kohrs stock were sure to win some premiums. Another comment at the same time noted "as they are just off the range, they will require to be excellent stock to compare favorably with the well cared for stock that will be in competition." [39]

The Kohrs and Bielenberg entries reflected the variety of stock being raised at the home ranch. Five cows, two bulls, two beef steers, one brood mare and colt, and one stallion comprised part of the group, and a "drove of Southdown and Scotch Wool Sheep" completed the total Kohrs and Bielenberg stock entries at the fair. [40] (Apparently Conrad Kohrs had little truck with the supposedly rigid caste lines between cattle growers and sheep growers. This is not surprising. Kohrs never bore a reputation for anything except business considerations in stock raising. He would raise and sell any animal that adapted to the market and to the country they grazed. Sheep apparently had a place in the operations in 1870, but never comprised a major portion of the business.) In the "Ladies Department" Augusta entered an ottoman cover. [41]

In general, Kohrs, and Kohrs and Bielenberg, achieved impressive results at the Territorial Fair. Con took twelve premiums on stock, and Augusta took a "1st Premium" on her ottoman cover, repeating her first premium in needlework (for her sofa cushion) the year before. The victory was less than complete, however, because "'Al Peacock rode Con Kohrs' trotter George in a race against 3 others and took last." [42]

Cattle buying and selling continued at the normal pace that fall. Con reported to the local press that about 800 of the herd of 1,300 on the Sun River would be wintered there. They were slaughtering about twenty head of cattle per week to sell to the Deer Lodge butcher shops, which satisfied most of the town's beef consumption. [43] Purchases of ninety head of cattle ($3,500) in one deal, [44] and fifty 3- and 4-year olds near the end of the year [45] ($2,500) helped fill the need for beef in the butcher shops and replenish the stock at the home ranch.

In mid-October the new meat market in Deer Lodge opened, giving the home ranch a larger and improved outlet for beef sales. [46] Late in the month the territorial governor appointed Conrad Kohrs a member of the board of prison commissioners. [47] Kohrs had now entered the territorial level of office-holding. [48]

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