Grant-Kohrs Ranch Kohrs and Bielenberg Home Ranch Historic Resource Study/Historic Structure Report/Historical Data

"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.

B. Con Kohrs's Early Montana Years

In the late spring of 1862, twenty-seven-year-old Conrad Kohrs arrived in the Deer Lodge Valley enroute to gold diggings farther west in Idaho. To date he had enjoyed a rather

kaleidoscopic career as cabin boy, grocery clerk, river raftsman, sausage salesman, California and Fraser River gold miner, with some experience as butcher and assistant in a brother-in-law's packing plant in Davenport, Iowa. [14]

By the time Kohrs entered the Deer Lodge Valley he was out of funds and almost out of provisions. Then he happened to meet Hank Crawford, and quickly accepted his offer of twenty-five dollars a month to run a butcher shop in the boom town of Bannack. With a borrowed scale, a carpenter's saw, and a bowie knife that he ground down to cut steaks, Kohrs dropped his dreams of a prospecting career and began the work that would lead him into the cattle-raising business. [15]

At Crawford's direction, he picked up three heifers at Cottonwood and headed to Bannack (south of Deer Lodge in extreme southwestern Montana) to set up shop. Almost immediately he took over the books for the shop, purchased cattle to replenish the stock, and received a raise to $100 a month from his grateful boss. Through the summer, fall, and winter Con Kohrs worked for Crawford in a rapidly growing butcher business. The hordes of miners made great demands for meat. Kohrs, searching for beef on the hoof, no doubt received an orientation in the cattle business of the region.

In early spring Kohrs's boss, Crawford, faced a local outlaw named Henry Plummer, but failed to kill him as intended. Fearing Plummer's revenge, Crawford cleared out the cash box and fled. Con Kohrs found himself in business "on my own hook," as he recalled it years later. With no operating funds available, Con

resorted to trading. From Dempsey and Bentley I bought on credit eight yoke of work cattle that had come across the plains from Minnesota. These I took to Deer Lodge and traded to Lewis De Mar and Leon Cannell for fat steers, giving @ two head of cattle for one fat steer. [16]

The business prospered enough that Con Kohrs picked up partners to operate the shops he opened in the various gold camps in western Montana. In Bannack "Kohrs and Myers" sold meat from at least February to June of 1863. [17] By early 1864 Con had formed a partnership with Ben Peel. [18] All the while, Kohrs was building herds on credit, and paying the creditors off as butcher shop proceeds came in. The process experienced some reverses, such as the loss to Indians of a herd Con Kohrs had purchased on credit. [19] While Kohrs's technique was classic, it still required no little business courage and a fine touch for knowing just what debts to pay off and how much money to apply to increasing his growing herds. As he put it in describing one deal, "As usual, I carried quite a sum of money, a part to be applied on my indebtedness and the remainder on another purchase..." [20]

By the summer of 1864, "Con and Peel," the name by which his partnership with Ben Peel was known, owned about 400 head of cattle and some workhorses. They grazed in the Deer Lodge Valley, on a ranch at Race Track, about eight miles south of today's Deer Lodge. (Possibly this ranch was one purchased not much later by Kohrs.) In August Con and Peel augmented their holdings with some "Utah Steers" and then some sheep. [21] Con Kohrs's wealth in cattle and his understanding of the cattle trade kept growing during these first two years of his life in Montana. Significantly, he built his herds and businesses while others prospected for gold. He saw that the money to be made was in the constant demand of the miners for beef, and not in the speculative 'diggings' that could, with apparently equal chance, enrich or impoverish a miner overnight. Not that he had dismissed his earlier desires to mine—his later ventures into mining on a major scale testified to a continued love of mining. But Con Kohrs sensed where the money could be made at the moment, and carefully, industriously, and faithfully stayed with the butcher business and concentrated on building herds to supply it. [22] These animals became the basis of his future cattle business.

During Kohrs's busy gold rush career, his half brothers—John, Charles, and Nick Bielenberg—journeyed to Montana. Kohrs had his brothers running some of the butcher shops. John supervised the shop at Last Chance Gulch (today's Helena), and Nick ran the Blackfoot City shop. Charles, known as Charley, managed the Silver Bow shop first and then moved to Deer Lodge to manage the shop there. [23] Kohrs would remain close to them for the rest of his life in Montana and enter partnerships in mining, sheep, and cattle deals with them from time to time. Yet only John Bielenberg became a full-time Kohrs partner in the cattle business and mining activities and lived with Kohrs and his family. The John Bielenberg-Conrad Kohrs association would encompass the great Kohrs cattle holdings and mining interests, and would last until both men died. It began in 1864, during the gold rush operations of the butcher shops at the mining camps.

Also in 1864 Kohrs met Tom Hooban, "a herder," who helped restore a thoroughly chilled Conrad Kohrs to health after Kohrs fell into the Big Hole River while moving some cattle towards Deer Lodge in the winter of 1864-65. The relationship between Hooban and Kohrs quickly matured into one stronger than that usually found between cattle owner and cowboy. Hooban soon became a most trusted cattle handler, a man who took big herds long distances and sold them without supervision.

By 1865 the various cattle herds in Montana had become a real factor in the infant territory's life. A law regulating marks and brands became effective in January 1865, [24] and Con Kohrs began branding then. His first brand was a "CP" for Con and Peel. [25]

The herds kept growing, both by natural increase and purchase. Years later, Kohrs laconically recalled one major transaction:

I saw in the Spring of '65 that cattle were going to be scarce and I borrowed $12,000 of George Forbes in Virginia City and with it bought $85,000 worth of cattle, buying from different parties and paying enough down to make the trade good. In the Spring of '65 I had all the beef in the country in my hands. [26]

Kohrs kept quite busy during 1865. He ran the busy field aspect of the cattle and butchering business, "selling and collecting through the district where we sold our cattle." He rode so much that he had to assemble a string of twelve horses to meet his needs. The business grew to such an extent that Con and Peel sold their meat shops in Summit, and Peel took charge of the Race Track Ranch, now owned by the partners. They bought seed from Johnny Grant and planted oats and barley. For the crop, put in late, Kohrs and Peel dug an irrigation ditch, the first of many, large and small, that Conrad Kohrs, usually in partnership with others, was to build in the coming years. [27]

The next spring the partners brought in 300 to 400 head of "fine steers" from Walla Walla—purchased in February. Kohrs's description of them, "in fine condition and heavy," attests to the good qualities of the Oregon and Washington cattle even in winter. That same spring Conrad Kohrs dissolved the profitable partnership with Ben Peel, buying out Peel's interests for $17,500 in gold brick. Ben Peel had fallen in love and pursued this interest when its object moved east. [28] Bachelor Kohrs remained.

Later in August 1866 Kohrs purchased the John Grant ranch, whose owner he had known for a good while. In 1864 Kohrs had purchased a horse for $250 from Grant and had enjoyed a good business relationship with him. No doubt Conrad Kohrs saw the Grant ranch as a potential headquarters. In the spring of 1865, a year prior to the eventual purchase, John Grant recalled that

Conrad Kohrs offered me thirty thousand dollars for my place and cattle, but I refused it. But if I had known of a place where I could have moved with my family I would of sold out then for I was very anxious to take my children away from such a rough country as Montana was then. [29]

The death of Grant's wife Quarra, in early 1866, no doubt changed his mind, and a year after the first offer he sold the ranch to Kohrs for $19,200 with $5,000 down. The land was not surveyed, and the title described the property as "my ranch situate on Cottonwood Creek." The herd, by then reduced to about 350 head, probably through Kohrs's earlier purchases, went with the ranch, as did all the equipment, corrals, and haystacks. Grant retained his horses, taking them out of the country in September, and then, Kohrs wrote, "I took possession of my property." [30]

The ranch house (described in more detail in Chapter 2) was described in 1865:

The dwelling house, which is large and two storied, is by long odds the finest in Montana. It appears 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. [31]

The former Grant Ranch also had corrals, a threshing machine, and outbuildings. It was the largest ranch headquarters in the Deer Lodge Valley. With its acquisition, Kohrs, already the major cattle grower in the valley, became the most prominent rancher in the settled portions of Montana. For the rest of his life he remained as one of the largest and best known stockmen in the territory and State. In August 1866 the purchase of the Grant Ranch provided Kohrs with an operating base. From the ranch house just north of Deer Lodge, in name and fact the "home ranch," he would supervise the varied and dynamic Kohrs and Bielenberg cattle operation and mining activities.

But his ranch purchases were not yet complete. In September, just a month after purchasing the Grant Ranch, he paid $1,000 for "160 acres near Dempsey Creek, west side of Deer Lodge River . . . and known as the Louis Demers Ranch one light horse wagon and all the farming implements and other tools." [32]

The John Grant era in the Deer Lodge Valley had ended. Con Kohrs had come to the area in 1862, broke; yet four years later he owned most of the cattle in the valley, the Race Track, and the Demers and Grant ranches. The era of Conrad Kohrs, or more accurately, Kohrs and Bielenberg, had begun.