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

. . . The old ranch, once a vast area of wild grass, is now dotted with fattening pens, haystacks, sheds granaries, and small barns. It means that a shiny, new three-ton truck and a fleet of horse-drawn hay wagons rumble over the land-scape, hauling hay and grain to feeding pens adjacent to cultivated fields, carrying feed and supplies to farther winter ranges. It means a shedful of the latest styles in farm machinery, numerous gasoline and electric motors, a crew of cowboys who have learned to double as farm hands, veterinarians, milk maids, and nursemaid to mothering cows.

Charles Morrow Wilson [1]

April 1932 began a new era for the home ranch, which during the caretaker period, had remained static, neither shrinking nor growing, but maintaining the herds, buildings, and memories left from the greater days just past. But Con Warren's appointment as manager changed that, ushering in a new period of dynamism. Once again a cattle herd was built up and horses were brought in to form a foundation for a registered breeding herd. As at the height of the active years of Kohrs and Bielenberg cattle raising, the barns and pens again housed blooded stock.

But the old era had not been reborn nor the former ways reinstated. The rejuvenated ranch had a different orientation, and looked for its pastures close at hand, not in the millions of acres of open rangeland east of the mountains. The ranch remained that of Kohrs and Bielenberg, property of the Conrad Kohrs Company, but no longer served as the base of operations for a range cattle, mining, and investment empire. The lands immediately at hand would now have to serve to graze all the cattle and horses that would provide the economic base of the stock-raising venture. So while the facade remained, the purpose changed.

The new manager, Conrad Kohrs Warren, did, indeed, link the present with the past. The grandson of Con and Augusta, he had been virtually raised on the ranch, with time out for schooling in Helena and at the University of Virginia. Among the members of the third generation of the Kohrs-Bielenberg family he remained the most interested in the ranch. Yet Con Warren's link to the former days of glory of the home ranch can be overstated. In 1932 the same assumptions, the same economic options and choices that Con Kohrs and John Bielenberg had exercised, no longer existed. Con Warren's choices would be quite different. Con Kohrs began his cattle growing business amidst a boom when the demand for beef was almost unlimited. Con Warren began his stock-growing career at the depth of the nation's worst depression and with cattle prices almost negligible. So while the buildings and some of the land and even a few of the cattle and horses remained the same as when John and Con had been alive, the new manager would approach the whole exercise of raising cattle from an entirely new perspective. The Warren era, then, began with the heritage of the old days intact, but with the challenges of the new age requiring new approaches.

Con Warren had grown up spending much of his time at the ranch, and after working there for about two years prior to assuming the manager's position, took up his duties with a clear understanding of what was needed for efficient operation. Certainly one major change needed to be made immediately, that of attitude. The "caretaker" approach had to go now that Warren was in control and, recently married, faced the necessity of supporting a family. The ranch would have to become a functioning cattle growing operation once again.

The ranch at this time contained a little less than one thousand acres. [2] But Con Warren knew that "with less than a thousand acres we couldn't live with thirty five cows. It took one hundred cows to support a family, even then." So the new manager convinced the Conrad Kohrs Company to begin buying some contiguous lands and other pastures to bring the ranch to an efficient size. The initial purchase proved to be the Keating Ranch, west of the ranch house complex, about a section of land. Not long afterward, the Conrad Kohrs Company, at Warren's request, picked up two parcels of land from the Larabie family in Deer Lodge (between the ranch house and east to the present site of Interstate 90). To the northeast of the ranch house about four or five quarter sections of pasture near the old Kohrs and Bielenberg Dog Creek Pasture were added. A final purchase early in Warren's tenure as manager put another half section, the Evans Place, into the holdings. With these accretions to the diminutive acreage of 1932, Con Warren felt that he had a "self-sustaining unit without the upper ranch." [3]

In this chapter a detailed examination of the growth of the ranch under Con Warren will not he attempted as it was in the chapters dealing with Kohrs and Bielenberg. While the limited time available is one reason for this, another is that many of the principals involved are still residents of Deer Lodge and nearby communities and cities. Disclosure of their real estate and financial dealings in detail might prove to be an unnecessary invasion of their privacy and, in addition, would serve little purpose in this chapter. The story is told, but in less than exact detail concerning acreages involved and financing—except for those figures already in public print. The appendices in this report, especially Appendix 5, list most of the entries in the public records at the county courthouse. These, of course, can be utilized whenever desired, and when compiled will provide detail for the Warren era matching that of the Kohrs period.

In addition to the problem of overall size, Warren faced the need to stock the ranch. A few animals of the Helena herd of Herefords remained along with some old draft horses, Belgians, and a few dairy cattle. By about late 1933, Warren began to build the Hereford herd back up. He held back most of the heifers, and, with "Dandy Perfect the Second" as one of two herd bulls, began to rebuild the Helena herd. Soon it numbered about 150 animals and the two bulls available reached the straining point in providing their essential services. At this juncture Con Warren reasoned that "we're putting out six, seven, eight hundred dollars apiece for these bulls—why not raise some?" He proceeded to buy cattle to build his own registered herd. It was late 1933 or 1934 when he began to buy, and, with the depression bottoming out then, cattle prices stood as low as they had been or would be for years. So "Prince Blanchard the Fifth," to serve as a herd bull, and ten registered heifers came to the ranch from one owner, and eleven heifers at $75.00 a head from another. Con Warren had then brought a registered herd of cattle back to the old Kohrs and Bielenberg Ranch. By the late 1930s another bull "Domino the Twentieth," son of "Prince Domino," had joined the herd, and as the registered animals grew, sired numerous registered and nonregistered calves. "Domino the Twentieth" was joined in the early 1940s by "D Blanchard," son of "Prince Blanchard the Fifth." [4] The Helena herd grew and became the base of Con Warren's commercial operations.

As the group of registered Herefords grew in numbers, quality, and renown, Con built up the draft horse herd. His reasons for working with draft horses paralleled those for his interest in the cattle. Con saw that the few hold overs from the Kohrs and Bielenberg era, the old "Dutch K" branded horses, were getting old. Rather than replace the herd of workhorses in a piecemeal fashion— and he needed them for the ranch—he decided to raise them there, using draft horse teams as needed around the ranch and selling the others to fellow ranchers. The major difference in his building of the Hereford registered herd and of the draft horse herd was that of financing. He built the herd of Herefords with Conrad Kohrs Company financing. But the bulk of the Belgian draft horse herd financing came from Con Warren.

He began in 1933, about the same time the Hereford development started. Con had decided that "if we're going to raise some horses, let's raise good horses." And he proceeded to do so systematically. First he visited horse shows in Iowa. Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. After viewing the available stock he ranged east to Ohio and picked up his first two brood mares from the State university and then added a third from Earl Brown's herd in Wisconsin. The next year more mares and colts came from Brown's stock farm. [5] By 1936 Warren's herd of Belgians totalled about fifty brood mares, three stallions, and four draft horse teams. [6] Many of the horses carried names still remembered at the home ranch and in Deer Lodge for their fine quality descendants and their own grace and stature. Mares named "Sarah De Chorise," and "Re Coninsante" (all showing their geographic origins within Belgium) were some of the earliest and [7] most fondly recalled animals in the new herd at Deer Lodge. One of the prize stallions, "Bloc II de Nederswalm of Antwerp," sired many colts, [8] as did "Brooklyne De Uccle."

The two herds grew during the 1930s and rose to greater fame in the next decade. And as Warren guided their development, the ranch buildings themselves began to experience some modifications. Numerous old and rotting structures— usually stock shelters made to last only a limited time—were torn down, as were some rotted fences. Useable feed bunkers received new portions of logs, and countless wood in the miles of wooden fence at the ranch were replaced. Most of the buildings received fresh coats of whitewash for the first time in many years. [9]

Among the buildings that came down was a shed, about fifty by sixteen feet with a thatched sod roof, in the corral west of the large barn. Warren directed the removal of that structure, four small feed bunks, and some of the other log structures that no longer served a useful purpose and had not remained in good condition. [10]

Other buildings received new siding, such as the horsebarn (Historic Structure 11) north of the bunkhouse row. Warren erected new structures, too, as needed. A dairy barn (Historic Structure 9) to house the small herd of milk cows he maintained went up about 1932, as did a new wood frame granary (Historic Structure 6) on the site of the Kohrs-Bielenberg chicken house.

In 1935 Warren put up a white wood frame building just to the rear of the main ranch house to house a blacksmith shop and serve as a garage (Historic Structure 3). It, the new granary, and the dairy building were Warren's major additions to the ranch service buildings in the 1930s.

But Warren also added corrals and feedlots west of the main ranch house. He placed corrals on each side of Johnson Creek and erected sheds (Historic Structures 26, 27, 28, 29), feed racks (Historic Structures 45 and 46), and squeeze chutes (Historic Structures 47 and 53) to feed and work the calves and other cattle fed and housed there.

To house the poultry raised on the ranch for use by the family and crew, Con ordered the erection of a frame chicken house and brooder house (Historic Structures 21 and 22 respectively) west of the main ranch house and near the two new feedlots and corrals. [11] As he modernized the facilities, Warren did mot neglect the water supply critical to growing feed and watering his expanding herds. Using long-neglected irrigation ditches and under-used water to which he retained rights, Con soon had pastures producing feed in much larger quantities than before. [12]

The new buildings, the growing herds of Herefords and Belgian draft horses, the paint, and repaired fences, combined to give a new freshness to the ranch and a new vigorous purpose to the establishment. The routine and the appearance of the place, now a busy breeding and feeding ranch, received some journalistic scrutiny in 1937 in Scribner's Magazine. The article describes the ranch as it looked and operated in 1937 and graphically conveys the impact that Con Warren had made on it.

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