Grant-Kohrs Ranch Historic Structures Report

With all of the Deer Lodge Valley before him, John Francis Grant chose to construct his large home on a slight rise in the bottomlands along the Deer Lodge River. No doubt the good grazing there for his cattle helped him arrive at that decision. Possibly the presence of a nearby spring (now covered by Historic Structure 35) was also a factor in his choice. [1] As a trader, Grant must have appreciated the closeness of the little settlement of Cottonwood, later named Deer Lodge. Whatever the reasons,

In the fall of 1862, I built a house in Cottonwood afterwards called Deer Lodge. It cost me a pretty penny, I hauled my lumber from the Flathead Reserve which was one hundred fifty miles away. The square of the house was made of hewed logs with posts in the corners. It was sixty four feet long, thirty feet wide and sixteen feet high. I paid five dollars a day to McLeod the hewer and to the carpenter Alexander Pambrun, I paid nine dollars per day. Now came the plastering. There was no lime to be had. I did not know lime when I saw it. Some people said it was one color and some said it was another. So I went up on the mountain and picked up stones of different colors and put them in the stove to burn. The one that slacked I knew to be limestone. I then went with a wagon and hauled plenty more of this kind and burnt it. Now that I had lime a plasterer was needed. I got one and be charged me one hundred and fifty dollars to plaster the first story but it was very well done. I went back to the house twenty years after and the plaster was still sound as ever. At first I had only home made furniture but about four or five years after I bought Capt. Lebarge's freight and among the lot there were some parlor chairs. I paid twenty dollars each for these chairs and ten dollars each for four other chairs. I also bought ten thousand dollars worth of flour and grocer[ies] from him. My house was not finished until 1863 but we lived in it before it was completed and Quarra, my little wife, showed a wonderful skill in taking care of it. She was a good cook and could make very nice butter and sew as well as any tailor. [2]

And with that straightforward account, the earliest data on the house is presented. Grant did not explain why he built where he did or from whence came the plan, the design, or the reason for so large a structure. It is probable that the French-Canadian quality of the house resulted from the experience of Alexander Pambrun, the builder. But the imposing log house, clapboarded when constructed, rated mention more than once in the years to come as a substantial dwelling. The earliest account calls it "by long odds, the finest in Montana." This 1865 report noted that it was "large and two-storied," and that it appeared "as if it had been lifted by the chimneys from the bank of the St. Lawrence and dropped down in Deer Lodge Valley. It has twenty-eight windows, with green-painted shutters, and looks very pretty." [3]

This was the house that Conrad Kohrs purchased in 1866, along with "Household furniture Stables Corrals Ricks of hay and all of my farming implements Wagons yokes & chains, with all improvements on said ranch." [4] During the long ownership by Con and Augusta Kohrs, the house changed considerably.

Among the Kohrs family members, Augusta's mark on the home came first, as she cleaned and scrubbed and generally made it more orderly than she had found it. [5] Judging from the mature trees shown in the yard in the 1883 Stoner drawing of the place, Con and Augusta must have begun planting trees and laying the ground for a lawn almost as soon as they arrived. Presumably the interiors came under some consideration at the same time, since the 1884 Leeson view shows curtained windows at the front of the house. [6] The same picture features a picket fence surrounding the house and protecting the yard from the depredations of the cattle. These and many other modifications became routine almost from the first day Con and Augusta set up housekeeping at Deer Lodge. But only the major modifications, the external ones at that, are easily dated.

The first major work must have been the addition of the small room on the north side of the house. It certainly did not appear on the 1865 Stuart drawing although it should have, considering the angle from which Stuart chose to show the house. So the addition postdates 1865 and predates 1884, the date of the Leeson drawing. This is the first modification. The front porch as it is seen today also was added between these dates.

The next major change to the house came in 1890, when a large brick addition was added to the rear of the house. This was the major alteration to the Johnnie Grant house, [7] which became a profoundly different place than it had been before.

In the summer [of 1890] we began remodeling and putting an addition to our house, which was not completed until after the holidays . . .

The new addition to the house proved a great comfort. The furnace, water works and gas plant gave us all the conveniences of the city and lightened the burdens of the housekeeper perceptibly—no carrying of wood for six or seven stoves and the filling of lamps. [8]

The addition brought far more than the convenience of lighting and running water, although those two luxuries added immeasurably to the quality of life at the ranch house. The main floor of the new part of the house contained a dining room, living room, and a large kitchen connecting to a shelved pantry. The addition, which was attached to the rear of the house, thus making the structure a T-shaped one, required a basement as well. This housed the furnace and various utility rooms and had two rear entrances.

The upstairs had five bedrooms and a bath. Added to the bedrooms on the upper floor of the Johnnie Grant portion of the structure, this allowed plenty of room for guests, family, and drop-in visitors as well.

When the original house was built in 1862, it was the largest house in the territory, and contemporary references indicate that it remained so for many years. By the time the 1890 addition was built onto the Grant structure, many other imposing homes had been built, and even with the addition the Kohrs home would never again be the largest residence in Montana. But it was a large home, even among affluent members of Montana society. For the Conrad Kohrs family, it proved to be more than merely commodious; it became almost the last word in comfort.

The "water works" that Kohrs referred to in his autobiography consisted of a hydraulic ram located out in the pastures northwest of the house about 400 hundred yards. There the ram, housed in a sunken wooden box about four by eight feet and about four feet in depth, constantly fed by a spring at the site of the mechanism as well as by a tap off the Kohrs-Manning Ditch, propelled water through wooden pipes sunk in the pasture to the house. Once in the house, pipes (cast iron) carried the water to the attic of the addition, at the west end of the house, and to a square, lead-lined wooden storage tank extant. From there the water flowed to the various spigots and water heaters in the house. Since a hydraulic ram runs at all times, and must in order to operate effectively, the gentle thump of the water being propelled through the lengthy pipe reverberated through the house at regular intervals day and night. An overflow pipe carried the excess to the basement and out to a drainage system into Johnson Creek. [9] The system dates to the 1890 addition.

A carbide gas generator for the lights stood outside the house on the south side of the brick addition. It provided light for the entire house, including gaslights put into the John Grant portion of the newly enlarged Kohrs home. [10]

On the south side of the brick addition a small solarium was added for the copious number of houseplants Augusta Kohrs enjoyed tending. A large covered porch was added to the south side of the west end of the brick addition. By 1890 the house contained the essential elements remaining today. Only interior changes were made after that date.

Despite the addition to the house, the family continued to live there only ten more years. In 1900 Augusta and Con moved to Helena, leaving John Bielenberg at the large home. By this time the children had all left. The girls had married, and William was at college. No major changes were made to the structure during the next two decades while John Bielenberg lived there alone, nor for years after that. A coal-burning furnace was added around 1915, with an automatic feeder added later. Con Warren lived in the house in 1930 when he returned to work first as a ranch hand and then as manager. He remained there until 1934 when he married and built the house across the railroad tracks in which he and his wife still reside. [11]

Augusta would come to visit the house during the summer and it would be opened and made ready for her by a local housekeeper and cook. But after John's death in 1922 no one lived in the house regularly during the cold months of the year. Throughout the years that Con Warren first managed and then owned the ranch (1932-72) he protected it with care and attention. Furnishings, papers, and items of ranch life and work remained there. And, for the most part, the house too remained unaltered. The home that "Ohma" Kohrs returned to every summer until just a few years before her death in 1946 remained virtually as she had left it in 1900.

Con Warren did modify three of the rooms at the head of the stairs in the 1890 brick addition into a small apartment, complete with bath and kitchen, in 1950. It is this apartment, remodeled and improved somewhat, that will serve to house a park family living at the site for protection purposes.

Restoration of various parts of the home is discussed in the Architectural Data section of this report.

Introduction
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