Building the Elkhorn

Elkhorn Ranch from Above

Quick Facts

Location:

Elkhorn Ranch

On August 25th, 1884, Sewall and Dow arrived by train and moved into the shack or the den near the site where the ranch house would be built. By October, they began collecting wood, mainly cottonwood trees, to build the Elkhorn Ranch House. By mid-December, the walls of the house were completed. Years after the home was completed, Sewall gave a good description of the location of the ranch house and how they built it. 

“We started building the ranch house in a clump of large cottonwood trees near the bank of the Little Missouri River, west from the house. It was smooth and grassy for about 100 yards. Then there was a belt of cottonwoods which went back for some 200 yards. They were the largest trees I ever saw in Dakota, and it was from them that we got most of the timber for the house. 

Back of them the steep clay hills rose to the height of 2 or 300ft and looked like miniature mountains. Little to the northwest was a hill with coal veins in it, which burned red in the dark. To the east we looked across the river about 200 yards, then across a wide bottom covered with grass, sagebrush and some small trees to the steep clay hills, which rose almost perpendicular from the river bottom. 

Beyond that was the badlands for perhaps 20 miles. Early in October, we began hewing timber for the house, and we were at work getting materials almost all the time until New Years. I designed the house myself, and it was a sizable place, 60ft long, 30ft wide, and seven feet high, with a flat roof and a porch where, after the day's work, Theodore used to sit in the rocking chair reading poetry.”