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

"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]

B. 1871-1876

January of 1871 closed with a party at the Kohrs residence, and one attendee wrote of the "very social and happy company of ladies and gentlemen" there. The writer, a newspaper reporter, continued with the earliest description of the interior of the ranch house on the home ranch: "The residence of Mr. Kohrs is one of the largest in Montana, having seven finely furnished rooms on the first floor, besides a magnificently furnished parlor and a spacious dining room, the second floor contains a large hall." [49]

Two weeks later, John Bielenberg "left for the States." He planned to travel first to Iowa to visit his family and then to California or Texas to buy "1000 cattle which he will drive to Montana next year." [50] The influx of Texas cattle had slowly been growing steadily larger, though it would not reach its eventual massive proportions until the early 1880s. The 1,000 Texas cattle John Bielenberg planned to buy and those of Dan Floweree on the Sun River ranges, for example, were relatively small herds in relation to the hundreds of thousands of Texas cattle that would graze on the central and eastern Montana plains until the bad winter of 1886-87.

Con and some of his ranch hands drove a flock of sheep from the home ranch towards Helena in early March. The snow became too deep at one point to allow them to continue, so presumably they returned to the valley to await the spring melt. [51]

Con's work during April involved keeping the home ranch beef herd up to required numbers. Early in the month he purchased a few cattle from Flint Creek; [52] he then went up to the Sun River grazing areas after two or three hundred head ("a little bunch") that had wintered well in this valley [53] and that were needed in the Deer Lodge Valley for sale to the butcher shops he supplied.

From April to June Con, as an administrator of an estate, disputed payments to the county from the estate. The case went to court, resulting in a ruling in favor of the county. It must have been an interesting proceeding because Kohrs still served as a county commissioner — his term expired in 1872 — and thus he found himself on both sides of the case. The parties shared court costs, indicating that the whole business was probably more friendly than most such proceedings. [54]

Con drove a small herd to Sun River in mid-June [55] and again in the fall, after deciding which cattle he did not want to carry in the valley over the coming winter. He also purchased "several fine mares," paying as high as $150 per head, at the same time he purchased cattle that fall. [56]

During the late summer and into the fall Con picked up land both in and outside of town. [57] His most significant purchases came in early October, when he acquired about half a quarter section north of the home ranch house and about the same amount upstream on the Deer Lodge River, about four miles south of town, on the "upper ranch." [58] These were the initial purchases of land for the home ranch, which would eventually result in holdings of over 25,000 acres.

Just before he bought the land, Con took a quick trip to the Sun River range to look over the herd. [59] Presumably he wanted to check his hooved assets prior to the trip to Europe the family planned for late the next month. They laid no plans for exhibiting at the Territorial Fair that year, probably because of the pending trip. But the local newspaper also noted another reason: "Last year Con Kohrs was the territorial fair's largest exhibitor of cattle and collected over $300 in premiums but his expenses were double that. He did not exhibit this year." [60]

In mid-October Con, Augusta, Anna, and Catherine left by stage coach on their trip. [61] The journey took them by way of Denver, where Con formalized the arrangements probably begun earlier by John Bielenberg to bring in Texas cattle in the spring of 1872. John had returned to Deer Lodge from his visit of Davenport that spring to run the home ranch during the family's German trip. As the family visited in Davenport, en route to New York, John fought early winter storms driving a herd to the Sun River range. [62] Just before leaving for the range, John filed the full power of attorney at the county courthouse that Con and Augusta left him. He would manage the ranch and the various Kohrs and Bielenberg mining and business interests until the family returned to Deer Lodge late in the spring of 1872. [63]

Con, Augusta, and the girls sailed on 29 November on the Harmonia, bound for Hamburg, a fact duly noted in the "Local Brevities" column of The New Northwest. [64] Another item appearing not long thereafter testified both to the level of affluence to which Kohrs had risen and to the charming and open quality of journalism on the northwest frontier. Under a heading of "TAXES" Con's hometown newspaper reported:

Every once in a while the poor man gets his play in on the rich. One occasion is when it come to paying taxes. As an instance of the per centage we Poverty Flat (broke) rustlers hold in that awful time of reckoning, we give below the amounts paid by a few persons in this county:

	Property Value	Taxes
Con Kohrs	$40,218	$885
Rock Creek Ditch	$60,000	$1,320

For instance, the entire individual tax paid by Con Kohrs is over $1,400. [65]

The Kohrs' winter trip to Germany was pleasant, Con later recalled, save for an incident on the way over. Their ship was a "German steamer," which, although fitted for passengers, would book none for the voyage.

Finally a few of the ship's officers gave up their cabins to me and four other passengers. . . . The main salon and cabins were not used during the voyage, and we were so glad to secure passage that we never inquired why. Our meals were served in the smoking room and one morning the head steward was missing. I asked where he was and one of the waiters spoke up and said, "He has the small-pox." I never before experienced such a shock and I must admit I was dreadfully frightened, for at that time small-pox was far more malignant and fatal than at the present day. Fortunately there was a doctor on board and after breakfast we were all vaccinated. None of us contracted the disease. [66]

The return to Deer Lodge the following spring was by way of the Bielenberg home (of Con's mother and stepfather) at Davenport, Iowa. In Davenport, Con selected a herd of Short Horn cattle from "Paddleford, a man living on the Illinois side of the river." The herd was shipped to Deer Lodge by way of Corinne, Utah, the farthest the railroads could carry them, and then driven overland by Tom Hooban. [67]

Con, Augusta, and the girls arrived home on 5 May, travelling the last leg of their trip by coach. [68] The cattle and a "ten horse power Davenport threshing machine" arrived soon afterward. [69] As well as improving his stock, Kohrs was acquiring the equipment necessary for running an efficient ranching business. He demonstrated his interest in building up the home ranch a few weeks after his return from Europe. In a transaction that probably had understandings not appearing on the document of sale, Kohrs purchased from John Bielenberg about a quarter section of land — but in a long axis, not a corner of a section — just north of the ranch house. The transaction included

Nine Hundred head of Cattle and four head of horses, now on Sun River in Lewis and Clarke County: With all the spring calves, belonging to said herd, also about Eighty-six head of horses in said Deer Lodge County . . . and about one hundred head of cattle in said Deer Lodge County . . . the object, interest & Meaning of this conveyance is to convey to said Kohrs all my right, title, interest and claim in and to all the real and personal property of Con Kohrs and Bro. wherever situated in Montana Territory, whether particularly described herein or not. [70]

Probably John had purchased the land using the power of attorney during Con and Augusta's German trip, and was putting the land into Kohrs's hands upon his return. The deed at least outlines the Kohrs and Bielenberg ranch as of l June 1872 and describes the minimum size of the Sun River herd that spring.

After Hooban delivered the registered Short Horns to the home ranch, he rode south, back to Corinne, to pick up equipment (mowing machines, racks, and wagons) and a few animals for "fitting up the ranch he had located on the west side of Snake River, below the mouth of Portnip [Portneuf] River, and some distance above American Falls." [71]

The ranch in Hooban Bottom, named after Tom Hooban, would receive the herd of Texas cattle that had been arranged for the previous fall. The herd of about 2,500 arrived late, and, because of its generally poor condition, was split. About 1,200 cattle, "a lot of strong horses, and 100 mules on the North Platte" remained in central Wyoming, near today's town of Rawlins. The remainder of the herd was taken overland to the ranch Hooban had prepared along the Snake River, arriving quite late in the fall. Con was less than happy with Wesley Roberts, his partner in bringing in the Texas cattle, and dissolved the partnership once the herds were safely in pasture. [72]

There were other cattle-moving and selling activities that year. Kohrs recalled 1872: "That season we sold the beef we had at fair prices and it was about the last to bring us a profit on our cattle for some years to come, and from this time on dates my hard work."

The part of the Sun River herd that Kohrs and Bielenberg wanted to market and a load of steers picked up in the Bitterroot Valley were driven down to the Idaho ranch Hooban was managing. Cold and wet weather marked the drive, which came late in the fall and featured a stampede one day away from the pasture. [73]

The summer had not been totally devoted to the cattle business, however. The local Republican Party County Convention had seen Con Kohrs's active participation and subsequent election to the Territorial Convention. [74]

Late in the summer a notice appeared in the local newspaper, drawing attention to some of the dangers faced by the cattlemen who had ventured into the Sun River Valley while the area was still actively used by the Indians: "A few stand of arms were shipped to Con Kohrs for use at Sun River. These arms are government issue and [are] to be used for protection in raids by the Indians." [75]

Con Kohrs closed the year on an upbeat, of sorts. Possibly through his buying and selling of property to and from John Bielenberg, or by some other technique, such as selling off the butcher shops in Helena and Blackfoot, and possibly because cattle prices were not that good, his personal property assessment dropped to $12,674 with a resulting county tax of $443.58 — half of the previous year's bill. [76]

The year 1873 opened with the purchase of the property about four miles south of Deer Lodge on which the houses of the '"upper ranch" now stand. [77] At the rate of $1,000 for 160 acres of bench land overlooking the Deer Lodge River and including parts of both riverbanks, he cannot be said to have spent his money unwisely.

Early in the year Con discussed the cattle business with a newspaper reporter, and upheld his herds' quality in relation to any herd in the United States. He stated that he had compared his cattle with those in California and the East and remained convinced that the Kohrs and Bielenberg herds were as good as any he had seen, if not better. He found, however, that his imported registered bulls did not produce as good a "grade animal" as his best native ones. [78]

But herds had not fared that well over the winter, and when he received an enquiry about buying 1,000 head at Corinne Utah, Con demurred, not yet ready to set a price and put in a bid. [79] By early March Con and his partner with the herd on the Snake River, Joseph Bell, knew that they would suffer significant winter losses in the Idaho herd. Deer Lodge Valley cattle, however, had held up well. [80] Yet for these latter animals to fare better over a winter than those in other parts of the region was not unusual. Possibly the mountains lining each side of the valley mitigated the harshness of the weather, but Deer Lodge Valley winters often were milder than those in neighboring areas, and usually always easier on the cattle than those on the eastern prairies.

Late that month the figures began to arrive in letters from the various herders watching over Kohrs and Bielenberg herds. From the Sun River Valley came a report of no losses, but at least twenty-five were known dead in the Texas herd along the Snake River, and the expectation was that the loss would easily go to one hundred. The North Platte herd (wintered near Rawlins, Wyoming) had lost ten head to the cold and snow. The animals in the Deer Lodge Valley survived well, with no deaths at all. On considering his winter losses, Kohrs planned for the next winter's feed for the home ranch herd, determining to sow excelsior oats that spring, "100 pounds to the acre."

Kohrs purchased a small outfit late that March, the Prowse Brothers Ranch on Dempsey Creek. The ranch, farming implements, 100 tons of hay, and 200 bushels of grain went to Con for $11,000 — a bargain. Con then immediately sold his new acquisition to Nick Bielenberg. [81]

Con spent much of the spring of 1873 at the territorial legislature, watching over the struggles to move the State capital to Helena (done) and to grant the Utah and Northern Railroad a subsidy to build into western Montana (not done). [82] In May both Kohrs and Granville Stuart were nominated by the territorial governor as prison commissioners, their nominations soon confirmed. Kohrs, planning a busy summer, and possibly already pondering a visit to his sister in California that fall, declined. [83] He and Bielenberg (in partnership with Joseph Bell on some of them) now owned over 4,500 [84] head of cattle. Some grazed in the Sun River Valley, others in the North Platte range, and a number on the ranch along the Snake River cared for by Tom Hooban. A sizeable herd at the home ranch formed the fourth increment. In early June Con and Joseph Bell left for a two-month trip to inspect the herds and evaluate any cattle they might want to buy as they worked their way to central Wyoming and into southern Idaho and northern Utah. That part of the herd from Texas wintering along the North Platte was sold, but the herd along the Snake River in Idaho remained intact. [85]

John Bielenberg ran things at the home ranch that summer, as usual. John had a fondness for horses and was a racing devotee, and must have taken some pride in his trotting horse "Ben" winning the Fourth of July trotting races at the fairgrounds. [86]

Con left town again, not more than six weeks after his summer trip with Bell, to visit his sister in California, whom he had not seen since 1862. The visit was a pleasant one for Con, apparently not accompanied by Augusta, and his reminiscences of it in his autobiography are infused with delight. After his return from California, he took time to inspect hydraulic mining near Butte. All told, Kohrs had travelled more in 1873 than he had been home. The year had been initiated with a lengthy stay at Virginia City with the territorial legislature, followed by a trip up to the Bitterroot Valley, then the two-month trip to Wyoming, Idaho, and Utah, and finally the trip to California, from which he returned late in November. [87] In addition, Con must have made a few local trips to buy cattle. Augusta, on the other hand, had confined her trips to short ones that year, such as the mid-November jaunt she and her sister (visiting from the East) and another lady made to Helena.[88]

Kohrs and Bielenberg bought another ranch and its cattle that fall. This place, between the home ranch and the town of Deer Lodge, had been owned by Pemberton and Kelly, who had stocked it with "a fine herd they had brought from Missouri." [89]

Winter struck hard that year, and Con Kohrs graphically described its effects:

It was a had winter with periods of intense cold. I remember one spell of three days. My brother John Bielenberg and I were out one day. We were well clad, wore mocassins and buffalo overshoes, had a blanket from our saddle that we wrapped around our legs and thighs. We experienced no trouble except with our mouth and eyes. The breath froze on our lips and we had trouble keeping our eyes open. All the quicksilver thermometers in Deer Lodge were frozen and the way we found out how cold it was by Chris Wibeau's thermometer at Silver Bow, which registered sixty below. [90]

The year 1874 proved to be as active a one for cattle buying, selling, and driving as the Kohrs and Bielenberg operation had experienced to date. The partners sold the ranch along the Snake River, probably late in the summer. [91] But a great number of cattle remained to care for. Con and John Bielenberg were busy at the home ranch, and Con, Mitch Oxarart, and Tom Hooban assembled herds and moved cattle to market.

The cow business took second place, however, the last evening in February, to a party at the ranch house. Honoring Augusta's visiting sister, about fifty persons danced and played cards in the house where, the newspaper noted, there was "ample room in the largest dwelling in Montana." [92] Con and L. R. Maillett, an old acquaintance dating from Kohrs's early Montana days, did not attend the festivities, having left two days previously for Missoula on the coach. Their trip was planned to check the cattle situation in the Bitterroot Valley and surrounding areas. The return, two weeks later, was reported in the local press, and Con's evaluation of the stock situation was not too rosy:

Con Kohrs, Esq., returned from Bitter Root this week. He was unable to make any purchases of cattle, stock men holding them at higher figures there than they command here. Mr. K had propositions from dealers east to take a large number of cattle from him at certain figures, the cattle to be delivered at Corrine, but the price offered does not leave a sufficient margin to warrant investment. [93]

Con's inability to buy cattle at prices low enough to make a profit did not appreciably slow the operation, since the cattle contracted for in the Bitterroot and Deer Lodge valleys the previous fall were delivered, and, together with the stock on hand, made up at least two herds for Kohrs and his partner. [94]

Kohrs did not neglect his other business interests, and with the price of cattle high, decided to purchase a meat market in the nearby town of Pioneer. The deal, consummated late in the month, included the building, utensils, "a stable on the west side of Main Street," and "a slaughter house below town." [95] Kohrs continued to invest in both the production and marketing ends of the stock-raising business, at least on the regional level. He also entered the business of selling high quality stock to other ranchers as cattle-growers in western Montana began to upgrade the quality of their herds. In late April of 1874 Kohrs and Bielenberg sold two fine thoroughbred animals, both on record in the American (Short Horn) Herd Book, one to Joel Moss and one to N. Bielenberg. The local press claimed this as evidence of the interest by stock growers in the upper valley's ability to improve their herds: "Con Kohrs is the owner of the biggest and best herds in Montana and has expended many thousands of dollars in the importation and raising of thoroughbred cattle. He claims to have the best herd of its size in America." In the same issue of The New Northwest Kohrs and Bielenberg offered other thoroughbreds for sale and stud service. They also advertised bulls for breeding service — "Hannibal" and "Comet" — both among the initial imports Con had brought in from the Davenport, Iowa, area a couple of years before. [96]

Kohrs's interest in upgrading the quality of his own and his neighbor's herds is one of the many reasons he is numbered among Montana's cattle pioneers. It is significant that his registered Short Horns were offered for sale and for breeding purposes just two years after he began their importation into the territory. It seems to demonstrate a judgement that the betterment of all the herds, his as well as others in the valley, would eventually work to the benefit of all: producing better stock bringing better prices. It was another manifestation of his belief in "building up" the community, the territory, and commerce associated with them. What he had been doing for his own business interests, and for local and then territorial government, he now did for the cattle herds of the area. As before, this was classic pioneering — improving personal assets, and those of the community, and doing so consciously.

That May the Chicago market for cattle became the object of interest in Deer Lodge. Con considered taking a herd of 3-year old steers to be composed of Sun River, Snake River, and Deer Lodge Valley cattle to Corinne, Utah, for sale. If the animals did not bring good prices there, he would ship them to Chicago to "test the market." [97]

Possibly Kohrs did not need to pursue the test, since a buyer from the Chicago market appeared in Deer Lodge later that month, the local news paper reporting that

A Mr. Allen, a noted stockbuyer from Kansas City is in the area with the purpose of buying not less than 1,000 cattle to drive and ship to the Chicago market. He is paying $18 to $20 for three year old steers, $22.50 for four year olds. He bought a considerable number from Kohrs. [98]

Continuing to serve the local market as well, Kohrs and Bielenberg sold 425 head of 3- to 7-year old cattle to the Diamond R. Company late in May at an average of $20 per head. [99] Presumably this took place as he was consolidating his herds for the drive to the railhead near Cheyenne, Wyoming. Hooban and Oxarart each took a herd. Initially Tom gathered the herd, about 2,500 head, which had wintered in the Bitterroot Valley, and drove them across the Bitterroot Range to the Big Hole Valley, south of Deer Lodge, then down along the Snake River in Idaho and across southern Wyoming to Cheyenne. Mitch Oxarart picked up a small bunch of CK cattle on the Sun River Range, added another that had been awaiting him at the home ranch, and drove the combined group of 2,000 over virtually the same route. Kohrs recalled "the steers from this herd were the first I shipped to Chicago, and were sold by Rosenbaum Brothers."

Con accompanied the cattle to Chicago that first trip. There he began the association with Rosenbaum Brothers, cattle brokers at the stockyards, that would last into the 20th century. [100]

That part of the herd not shipped to Chicago from the eastern Wyoming railhead was sold off in small lots, some in western Montana [101] and some at Laramie City, Wyoming. [102] Kohrs cattle would continue to be sold in Montana despite the opening of business with the Chicago market.

During the gathering and trailing of the herds that summer, Con took time to file notice of intent to homestead portions of section 28 and 33 (township 8 north of range 9 west) — land encompassing the house and outbuildings of the home ranch. The homestead (approved on 10 January 1876) regularized the purchase of the Grant Ranch as to metes and bounds, and gave Con and Augusta Kohrs legal and registered ownership of the land upon which the home ranch sat. [103] His ownership and possession probably never stood in danger of being disputed. Yet until he filed for the homestead, and laid out the property involved, Conrad Kohrs cannot be said to have had full and legal possession of the land. He and Grant probably had a clear understanding of the boundaries involved, and the matter did not weigh particularly heavily on Kohrs's mind as he went about buying up other lots of land, butcher shops, and portions of the upper ranch and home ranch not directly connected with that portion upon which the house sat.

As the ranch hands gathered in the cattle and shipped them to Chicago, Kohrs and Bielenberg bought others, building herds for the coming year. In early September 600 head were purchased, [104] and in mid-October another 117. [105]

In October 1874 Con again traveled to California to visit his sister. He returned before too long, recalling later "that winter I was home a few months but as soon as spring came commenced buying cattle for the drive of 1876." [106]

Cattle purchases, drives, and the sales and purchase of mining properties continued in 1875. Late in March good news arrived from the Snake River area; the herd wintering there, about 1,800 head, had suffered only about one percent loss. [107] This augured well for a good year of stock raising on the Montana ranges.

In May John Bielenberg and Fred Loeber returned from a visit to the herd on the Sun River to report "an unconfirmed rumor on Sun River that Mr. Fred Kanouse, who was on trial here a couple of years ago, killed a man near Whoop-up recently and was captured and hung the next day." [108] Such were the vagaries of cattle-raising along Montana's Sun River in 1875.

With Mitch Oxarart injured and unable to ride for a while, the spring and early summer gathering of the cattle purchased over the winter and early in the spring took a bit longer than usual. That year, as before, the cattle would be fattened and driven in the fall to Cheyenne for rail transport to Chicago, a route and system by now well established.

During the summer, Kohrs continued cattle sales in the Deer Lodge Valley, advertising "Cattle for sale! I have now at my ranch 100 head of prime beef cattle from my Sun River Herd, which I offer for sale at reasonable figures." [109]

As in 1874, Kohrs' and Bielenberg's cattle, and Kohrs' and Peel's cattle — a combination that had been active for at least two years by then — "were again driven in two herds, one from Sun River and Deer Lodge and the other from Bitter Root." [110] The drive came in the fall. [111] They sold off some of Oxarart's herd near the railhead in eastern Wyoming, while the remainder of the steers went by rail to Chicago. Part of Hooban's herd went to Iowa feeders, with the remainder, "a thousand and four head," going to pasture along the North Platte (presumably near today's Rawlins) to winter because Kohrs could find no buyer. [112]

During that fall of 1875 two items appeared in the local press testifying to Con Kohrs's continuing financial growth (and by inference, to John Bielenberg's). The October 15 issue of The New Northwest reported the financial condition of the First National Bank in Deer Lodge, whose total resources and liabilities each amounted to $289,079.08. Conrad Kohrs served as a director, and while his salary is not mentioned nor the amount of his bank stock noted, his directorship showed his important place in the local economy and infers that his wealth was considerable. A month later the local press reported under its "Heaviest Taxpayers" column that Kohrs's personal property evaluation had remained about the same for tax purposes as the preceding year — $17,896, requiring a tax of $394.69. [113]

Con returned from the Cheyenne trip the week before Christmas, 1875. He had sold 1,600 head at Cheyenne, and had taken about 500 to Chicago, where they sold at low prices. He bought a ranch near the railroad, probably near Cheyenne, and reported plans to winter a herd there and sell them in 1876. [114]

The Centennial Year of 1876 saw Con travelling in January to the Bitterroot Valley to buy cattle, utilizing an area that had been a source of at least part of his herds for the past few years. [115] Later in the spring Con and John added 400 head of stock cattle to the herd at the home ranch. These small bunches, and two others, combined to form a herd of about 1,500, which he planned to drive to Cheyenne around 1 June. [116] The herd formed earlier than planned, and was slightly smaller: 1,200. In late May Con left with them [117] Almost three months later, in mid-August, Kohrs arrived near Cheyenne. [118] Not long afterward, John Bielenberg, with Augusta and the girls, met Con, Tom Hooban, and Mitch Oxarart at Laramie, and the group "started on our trip to the Centennial at Philadelphia."

The group left the girls with Con's mother in Davenport, Iowa. Then the adults travelled to the Philadelphia Exposition by way of Chicago and Niagara Falls. The trip continued following the closing of the Exposition in November. The group first went to Washington and then to Cincinnati. From here they journeyed to Chicago, where they split up. Con, Augusta, and John continued on to Davenport to pick up the children, Hooban went to Wisconsin to visit family, and Mitch returned to Montana. [119]

C. 1877-1880

The pleasant trip to the Centennial Exposition apparently included a Christmas and late winter stay at Davenport, since Con, Augusta, and the girls did not plan to return to Deer Lodge until March. [120] The rest of the year made up for the leisurely vacation the family, Tom Hooban, and Mitch Oxarart had enjoyed.

Kohrs's autobiography introduces the eventful year with: "In 1877, as usual, I purchased cattle in the Bitter Root making a drive from there and also from the Sun River." Typically the younger cattle went to graze on the ranges and grow, while the steers were driven to the eastern railhead and shipped to Chicago.

Con and his crew drove the herd that had wintered along the head waters of the North Platte south into Colorado to graze in one of the three grass-rich plains, called "parks," behind the front range of the Rockies. Kohrs described it as having "an abundance of grass, and there were not cattle in it besides ours." [121] Con Kohrs spent much of the summer in Wyoming, and recalled that he met the herds being driven down from western Montana near their crossing of the Green River — in west central Wyoming — and then, presumably after assessing their numbers and quality, would take a stagecoach to the Black Hills (southeast Wyoming, in the vicinity of Laramie) and attempt to prepare deals for their sale.

Con had the steers grazing in the Colorado park driven to Laramie that fall, but found no cattle cars available there, and continued east with the herd toward the eastern Wyoming-western Nebraska railhead at Pine Bluff. Even there no cars were available and he sold the lot to Alex Swan, of Wyoming's Swan Land and Cattle Company. "We made a nice profit," Kohrs recalled years later, "as the cost of keeping and driving them to the railroad had been less than $4,000.00."

The herd Mitch Oxarart brought in from Montana did not do as well. Part were successfully sold at Laramie. The rest "were shipped to Iowa for feeders. They were sold this way, that I was to have half of what ever they gained in weight. Corn fed cattle were low in the spring and I did not make anything." [122]

The sale of the two herds epitomizes the business risks that cattle growers had to take. The inability to gather enough cattle cars to ship the beef to Chicago was not common, but could happen from time to time, as it did to the Kohrs and Bielenberg herds in 1877. Luckily, Swan wanted some cattle, and so Con Kohrs managed to unload his herd at a nice profit. He lost money on the other herd, but it might have been profitable had the prices for corn-fed cattle not dropped. Drops in prices, and other vagaries of the beef cattle market place, always stood between the cattle producers and a sure profit. It was a normal way of conducting business, but it could show its harsh side as it did for Kohrs and Bielenberg that year.

The summer marked the only major Indian scare the town of Deer Lodge, and the home ranch, ever had. Chief Joseph's epic march, one of the more successful evasions and retreats in military history, passed Deer Lodge about eighty miles to the south, where the Battle of the Big Hole occurred in August 1877. Con was probably not home at the time, since his autobiography infers that he was in eastern Wyoming with the herds. John Bielenberg probably was there preparing, like the rest of the town, for a brush with Joseph's Nez Perce warriors. Kohrs's description of the events in Deer Lodge is terse but illuminating:

Great excitement prevailed in Deer Lodge. The men determined to put the women and children into the penitentiary and then go out for the defense of the place. Our ambulance was waiting at the door for the warning. Fortunately, Chief Joseph chose another route and later the ambulance was sent to the Big Hole for the care of the wounded. [123]

The family spent the winter of 1877 to 1878 together at the home ranch. Con began cattle buying in March of 1878, purchasing a herd near Flathead Lake, north of the Deer Lodge Valley. This herd and another were gathered and driven down to eastern Wyoming along the standard route, but this was to be the last time the western route (south out of Montana, through Idaho, into western Wyoming, and then east across Wyoming) would be taken. The next year would see a new trail utilized until the rail road came to eastern Montana.

That fall Con travelled east — presumably to Chicago — with the cattle, and stopped off in Iowa. Near West Liberty he purchased two thoroughbred stallions, "Regent" and "Strideway." He also picked up some additional thoroughbred cattle there, and shipped them all to the home ranch. Mitch Oxarart left Kohrs and Bielenberg that fall to work in Texas. [124]

In 1878 John and Con added some lands to the home ranch. In February about a quarter section of land contiguous to the upper ranch was purchased. [125] In August Con and Augusta sold an "undivided one-fourth interest in lands already owned, part of the home ranch, to John Bielenberg." [126] But this represented no large-scale acquisition of land for the home ranch property. Throughout the 1860s and 1870s the ranch remained relatively small, since Kohrs's and Bielenberg's large herds grazed on public domain, as did the other large herds of the day, making a large home ranch unnecessary. Con and John added small amounts of land in the 1880s, although the overall size of the home ranch remained small. It was not until the last decade of the century, when much of the desirable public land was beginning to be taken over by homesteaders and railroads, that the huge land purchases came about, bringing the home ranch to its maximum size of about 27,000 acres.

A turning point in the Kohrs and Bielenberg operation came in 1879. That year they chose a new route to market, and that year also the Kohrs and Bielenberg herds began increasing rapidly in size, attaining their largest number in the late 1890s and early 1900s. Kohrs "spent the winter at home"; in the spring he bought a large herd that was driven to the Sun River Range to graze and fatten. They drove the herd east that June, in company with another one because "of the Indian scare." The "eastern route" to Pine Bluff, on the Wyoming-Nebraska line, began on the Sun River Range, then turned southeast to the Missouri River. High water prevented a crossing anywhere but at Great Falls, which Kohrs described as "a dangerous crossing," but noted: "we managed to get over safely." From there the trail went southeast along the southern edge of the Judith Basin, across the upper drainage of the Musselshell, and across the Yellowstone. At the crossing the trail turned south through the Tongue and Powder River valleys, continuing south until it encountered the North Platte. It followed this river toward Fort Laramie and western Nebraska. With minor variations, this became the "eastern route" to take cattle to the railheads and to southeastern Wyoming. It served also to bring cattle north from Texas until the railroads took over the chore. [127]

The initial trip on the eastern route did not start well, nor had the last one on the western route ended too comfortably. On the last western route drive in 1878, Kohrs had been caught in a blizzard. On the first eastern route drive he recalled:

We had a great deal of trouble crossing the Missouri. Tried for days to cross right below Cascade. The water was high and very swift. The cattle would not swim across, would go in but started to milling as soon as they got in deep water. I was in a boat trying to get them to head up stream, but in vain. They struck the boat with their horns and l came near to losing my life. Several of the riders were in charge and one horse was lost.

Somehow, amidst the busy routines of summer, Con found time to travel to Canada (Bow Park, in the province of Ontario) and add some blooded stock to his holdings at the home ranch. He bought "a carload" of Clydesdale mares and two stallions, "Clyde of Brent" and "Glancer" (Clydesdale is the name given to a breed of large draft or work horses, some of which are featured today in beer commercials on television). On the way, he stopped in Iowa and added thirty head of thoroughbred cattle "from Brownlee Brothers, Hickory Grove, Iowa, and at West Liberty (in nearby Illinois) enough cows and heifers to make about 100 head." The registered cattle — Short Horns — went to the home ranch. [128]

The home ranch was becoming bigger, and probably the addition of the registered cattle and over a half-section of land to the upper ranch were not coincidental. The addition to the ranch came in late June, and the transfer of lands from the previous owners was to "Conrad Kohrs and John W. W. [John N. W.] Bielenberg." Whatever arrangements there had been previously for ownership of the home ranch land, this parcel and one purchased just prior to it were in the names of Bielenberg and Kohrs. [129]

The herd on the Sun River had grown significantly, and late that spring the roundup produced about 4,900 calves for branding. [130] The registered Short Horn bulls Kohrs and Bielenberg had imported from Iowa had sired many of these. The Kohrs and Bielenberg "CK" cattle now numbered among the largest herds in the territory. An outbreak of "black leg" [131] among the animals caused some losses, but not enough to cripple the cattle growing operation at all. Indeed, Kohrs's comment that "we lost a good many" cattle to the disease could mean as few as ten or as many as ten percent. At any rate, it did not merit further discussion and may be characterized as one of the many problems cattle growers then (and now) fall heir to in the normal pursuit of the trade.

The major event concerning the family proved to be the birth of a son to Augusta and Con. The child, William Kruse, arrived on 1 November 1879.

The 1880 sequence began the same as the previous few years, with the Sun River herd gathered for trailing to the east across Montana and then southeast toward southeastern Wyoming. "In June Tom Hooban started with a big herd of steers, mostly two and three years old, some four, and between 300 and 400 head of the oldest cows that I wanted to get rid of, taking the same route as the year before until we got to Tongue River." But in the Tongue River Valley, near the junction of the Tongue and Goose Creek, the herd was stopped and wintered. That year Kohrs and Bielenberg sold no cattle, though in his autobiography Kohrs does not mention why. [132]

That October Con, Augusta, Anna, Katherine, and young William travelled to Dillon, south of Deer Lodge, "in their own conveyance" (possibly the ambulance) to catch the railroad there for the trip to Iowa. There they picked up a niece, "Willie," and at Hoboken, New Jersey, Miss Anna King, the Kohrs children's governess. The family boarded a steamer and went over to the old country for an extended holiday. In Germany Con settled in for a lengthy stay, and "took the first rest I had in many years." The children enrolled in a local German school, and kept up their music and English with the governess. Con, Augusta, and Miss King enjoyed the opera and concerts in Hamburg. Con remained until March of 1881, leaving the family there while he returned to a rapidly changing cattle business in Montana.

D. 1880-1883

The 1870s had served as foundation years for the boom of the early 1880s in Montana. Cattle growers like Kohrs and Bielenberg, John T. Murphy, Henry Sieben, Dan Floweree, Granville Stuart, and many others had built on the early herds in western and southwestern Montana's sheltered valleys, and had added thoroughbred stock to improve the overall quality. They had moved onto the western edge of the eastern Montana plains, and, most important of all, had opened trade — on a scale large enough to promise great expansion — with the Chicago, Omaha, and Kansas City markets. As the western supply of beef grew — and Montana cattle formed only a part of that supply — the eating habits of the nation changed and Americans began to include more and more beef in their diet. The meat-packing industry moved operations west toward the supply, and refrigerator railroad cars were developed as well. [133] As the herds multiplied, and the demand of eastern and midwestern cities grew larger in the late 1870s, other factors influenced the cattle industry in Montana. Texas cattle, surplus in their homeland, proved to be most profitable on northern ranges, where they added weight and produced more saleable beef than if they had remained in the south. They furnished a large reservoir of animals to fill the eastern Montana plains.

But until the late 1870s and early 1880s buffalo grazed on the plains of Montana Territory, and provided food and shelter — and subsequent mobility — to an aggressive Indian population dependent on them. But by 1880 the supply of buffalo had dwindled greatly, and the Indians were more easily controlled. In 1879 the Sioux, the Northern Cheyenne, and the Crow nations settled on reservations. By 1880 what remained of the northern buffalo herd no longer competed seriously with grazing cattle. [134]

In 1879 four investors had created a cattle-raising operation and put in a ranch headquarters on Box Elder Creek about four miles south of Fort Maginnis. Construction of the fort and of the ranch had begun within weeks of each other. This ranch, east and slightly south of the Sun River Range, in the drainage of the Judith River, was organized by Samuel T. Hauser, a territorial entrepreneur and politician; Granville Stuart, who had been among the earliest settlers and cattlemen and an old friend of Con Kohrs; and two Davis brothers, Butte banker A. J., and his brother Ervin who lived in New York City. Called the "DHS" (Davis, Hauser, and Stuart), it too brought cattle onto the central and western portions of the Montana plains east of the continental divide. [135]

With the Indians no longer threatening the herds that now began to spill onto the Montana plains out of the southwestern valleys and up from Texas, and with the buffalo no longer competing with them for grass in any appreciable numbers, only one factor was still necessary to start the cattle boom. That element was transportation, and it arrived by 1881 in the east and by 1883 in the west. The economic uncertainties of the 1870s had slowed the frenetic pace of railroad construction across the United States. Western Dakota (the Northern Pacific) and central Idaho (the Utah and Northern) had been the points where the westbound and north-south lines, respectively, had stopped. But by 1881 the Northern Pacific had reached Miles City in eastern Montana. By 1883 the Utah and Northern and the Northern Pacific joined at Garrison Junction, just north of Deer Lodge, within sight of John Grant's original settlement. [136]

The winter of 1880-81 had been hard, and the Kohrs and Bielenberg herds along the Sun River sustained some losses from it. Thus in one respect this winter bore a great deal of similarity to that of 1886-87, but, as Kohrs noted "that of 1881 was responsible for heavy losses in a local rather than general sense, as it was what is called a 'spotted winter.' " Some of the losses came during the cold weather, but others resulted from water rising behind ice dams on the Sun River late in the winter and drowning cattle on islands. Kohrs's and Bielenberg's aggregate losses stood at about fifteen percent [137] when the count was made at spring roundup. Kohrs had problems elsewhere that year. One of them involved the railroad long awaited by the western portions of Montana Territory.

The railroad coming north along the Deer Lodge River to join the Northern Pacific at Garrison — the Utah and Northern — laid its tracks on the low benchland immediately adjacent to the Deer Lodge River on the east. This meant that just south of Deer Lodge, perhaps three and one-half miles, and again just on the north edge of town, lands of the home ranch were crossed. As usual in such cases, a three-man group of commissioners formed to assess the damage to property owners whose lands would be utilized for the railroad right-of-way and who felt that the railroad's offer was too low. The landowner involved chose one man, the railroad the second, and those two commissioners chose the third. Their decision was then affirmed in a district court and the damages paid to the landowner. The case of Kohrs and Bielenberg was like this, and when Con returned in March of 1881 to Montana the decision had been made on his lands. Con objected vociferously, and his description of his reaction shows the intensity of his feeling:

They appraised the right-of-way in front of my house and through my land at a very low figure, only $5.00 per acre. I blamed Sam Word for the low appraisal, abused him for everything that was out and had it not been for Alex Mayhew, in whose office our quarrel occurred, there would have been a shooting scrape.

Kohrs describes no other episode in his autobiography with this level of emotion, and it is not surprising that he brought suit to right the wrong. [138] Kohrs settled eventually for $1,500, a miniscule sum in comparison to those he handled frequently in his business operations. His dogged fight was probably a reaction to the railroad tracks being laid almost at his doorstep.

That summer Con tried to induce John Bielenberg to marry, explaining, "that season I bought the Olin property Had been trying to induce my brother to marry and intended to turn the property over to him . . ." Bielenberg did not marry during that or any other summer.

The herds on Goose Creek remained there, and Con bought additional cattle, one of the earliest purchases coming from the DHS operation. These and an additional herd were shipped to Chicago; Kohrs accompanied them, then moving on to New York and boarding a steamer for Germany to rejoin his family for a second winter abroad. [139]

Kohrs and Bielenberg, like other cattle-raisers that summer of 1881, expanded their range areas. They brought about three thousand cattle to Flat Willow Creek — the major water source south of the DHS-located southeast of Lewistown in central Montana. [140] Adding that area to their total, Kohrs and Bielenberg now had sizeable herds along the Sun River (in the western part of Montana east of the continental divide) along Goose Creek in northeast Wyoming, and at the home ranch in Deer Lodge Valley. Their animals took part in the great expansion of the cattle herds of Montana beginning in the early 1880s.

The winter in Germany, 1881-82, must have been a most pleasant one for Kohrs. He later recalled that it was "even more enjoyable and delightful than the previous one. I began to get fleshy, weighing almost 250 pounds, and was fleshier than I had ever been before."

In April 1882 he returned to Montana, and upon reaching Miles City hired a livery horse, intending to visit Tom Hooban with the herd at Goose Creek and Tongue River. The ride of 150 miles down and back proved difficult for the "fleshy and soft" rider and not too easy on the horse bearing the load. An additional mount provided by Tom Hooban eased the situation on the return trip to Miles City. The rest of the journey was by stagecoach. [141] The year 1882 proved to be active for Kohrs and Bielenberg and the cattle industry as a whole. By this time European investors, especially Scottish and British speculators, had plunged millions into the business. One veteran described the situation:

The year 1882 was prolific in cattle companies. As I have said the Scotch and English investors were early in the game. New York, Boston, and other cities contributed capital to this western mushroom. It was marvellous how quickly news spread. The business which had such pillars to support it in the west as Swan, Carey, Sturgis, Kohrs, Murphy, Granville Stuart and hosts of others had grown up since 1870. [142]

The DHS cattle, as well as Kohrs's and Bielenberg's, numbered in the thousands that year, as natural increase and importations of Oregon and Texas cattle helped fill the spaces left open by the demise of the buffalo and removal of the Indian. The range cattle book for the DHS showed

Kohrs spent much of his time on the range that summer. In June he purchased a herd of 4-year-old steers and added another of about 1,200 picked up from settlers "across the river," presumably the area just south of the Missouri River near Fort Benton. The first herd — that of Downs and Allen — was rebranded and left on the range. The mixed herd from the settlers stampeded during the drive to Billings near Bull Creek, and "often after that we had a stampede at the watering places." These cattle were the first that Kohrs and Bielenberg had shipped from Billings to Chicago, and, no doubt in part because of their skittishness on the way to the railhead, were in "bad condition and even with the good prices in Chicago made but little money."

With the Downs and Allen herd still on the range and the other one sold in Chicago, Con turned his attention to the bunch Tom Hooban had been overseeing on the Tongue River. The herd of 1100 were driven to Miles City and loaded: 700 3-year-olds and 400 4-year-olds for the Chicago market. Kohrs's description of them testifies to the condition that range-fed cattle could be in if they had access to good grass not overgrazed:

They had been on a new range, had gotten very fat and brought big prices in Chicago.

The four year olds weighed 1583 pounds [average] and brought $5.85 per hundred, the three year olds weighed 1365 [average] and sold at the same price. The family and young stock was sold to P. B. Wears and Howard Conrad the latter at that time having a store at Fort McKinney. [144]

With the last of the herds to be shipped safely on their way, Con journeyed to New York to meet the family returning from their twenty month stay in Germany. In New York they shopped for household goods and purchased a set of Rogers silverware — "the first we had." In Chicago they added furniture and carpets to the goods destined for the home ranch house. [145] Kohrs and Bielenberg had seen their cattle enterprise and their numerous other business and mining interests grow along with the territory, and in keeping with this prosperity Con and Augusta would furnish their house in much more than Spartan style.

By 1883 the cattle boom on the plains of Montana showed no signs of slowing, and Con's and John's herds grew along with others. So too did the market area for the beef. The Canadians, now filling their open spaces in the West with settlers and (more importantly for cattle growers) crossing the Canadian West with a railroad, became new customers. Construction crews, a large contingent of Northwest Mounted Police, and numerous reservation Indians in the Canadian provinces on Montana's border all required large amounts of beef, and Montana ranchers helped meet the demand. Kohrs recalled that

Our Sun River herd had been improved until it was one of the finest in the state and [the] summer was a busy one. The Sun River herd, including the Downs & Allen steers, were sold to Charley Conrad and to I. G. Baker & Company, who had a large contract to furnish beef to the Canadian Pacific while they were building to the coast. I sold them over 1500 head at $62.50 per head, the total sale amounting to nearly $94,000.00. I was busy so Johnny gathered and delivered these cattle. [146]

Conrad Kohrs had plenty of reason to be busy early in 1883. He spent a great deal of money in one major transaction that year, and being the alert and serious entrepreneur that he was, no doubt also spent a great deal of time in investigation prior to consummation of the deal.

Kohrs's laconic report of the transaction begins: "In the mean time I bought out A. J. and Irvin Davis in the firm of Davis, Hauser & Stuart at the rate of $400,000.00 for the cattle, horses, ranches, and everything belonging to the firm." [147] Another account puts the matter into clearer perspective to the times:

In July, 1883, Conrad Kohrs, for Kohrs and Bielenberg, and Granville Stuart, for Stuart and Anderson, bought of A. J. Davis, of Davis, Hauser & Company twelve thousand head of cattle at $400,000. Since Stuart and Anderson were former owners of the herd the sale represented in fact a purchase of the two-thirds interest of Judge Davis by Mr. Kohrs for $266,667. Of the sale it was written at the time: "this is the heaviest transaction in cattle that has ever taken place in the territory. . . ." By this transaction Conrad Kohrs placed himself at the head of the Montana cattle business. It was a distinction he was to enjoy for many years, while his interests steadily grew. [148]

Kohrs and Bielenberg now owned herds on the Sun River, in the Deer Lodge Valley, and a major interest in the central Montana DHS open range ranch. Their cattle now showed the "DHS" brand as well as the "CK," an identification that became well known in Montana cattle history.

While the Con Kohrs-DHS deal was the signal event of the year, other things happened in 1883. It proved to be a most active year for the principals of Kohrs and Bielenberg. The year had opened, literally almost, since the date of the transaction was 2 January, with a small land purchase that added eighty acres to the upper ranch. [149] Improvements, too, took place, though the typically tantalizing yet incomplete announcement in the local press noted only that "Kohrs and Bielenberg are building two large stock barns and stables." [150] Whether these were on the home ranch (which is probable) or on the upper ranch (at least possible) is not stated. Somewhere on the Kohrs and Bielenberg property at Deer Lodge, in Montana Territory, however, stables and barns went up in late 1883.

The travels of Conrad Kohrs, of the whole Kohrs family, and of John Bielenberg during the second half of 1883 demonstrate graphically the demands a widespread cattle business made on its participants, and the ardor with which Con and John addressed both their vocation and recreation. In early August Con, R. S. Kelley, and Lew Coleman [Kohrs's partners in some of his mining ventures] journeyed to Boulder, a day or so away to the east, "to look after their many interests there." [151] Shortly afterward Con, Augusta, and the children, probably accompanied by John Bielenberg, went up to Garrison Junction, about thirteen miles north of the home ranch, to witness the Golden Spike ceremony as the Northern Pacific and Montana Union railroads joined, linking Montana rail service on an east-west axis to that coming north out of Utah and Idaho. (The Montana Union was a Utah Northern subsidiary, with some ownership by the Northern Pacific as well.) Then, on August 20, the family embarked for a leisurely trip to Yellowstone Park, equipped for at least a modicum of comfort. Con Kohrs drove the ambulance and

Kenyon the four-horse provision wagon. We had a hostler along and in addition to our teams we had a riding horse for every member of the party, besides one or two extra horses, eighteen in all. We were well equipped with tents, beddings and provisions and camped from the time we started until we reached home in early October. [152]

John Bielenberg, meanwhile, had been out for five weeks of range riding. The local press noted that "John Bielenberg returned last Friday after a five weeks inspection for Kohrs and Bielenberg on Sun River. 'The cattle on a Thousand Hills and in one valley' are all right." [152]

During John's trip on the range, Tom Hooban "and another man" each took a large herd to the Fort Maginnis range because the Sun River range now experienced serious overcrowding with cattle herds and even larger numbers of sheep. The Fort Maginnis range, the center of the DHS grazing area, while crowded, remained less so in 1883.

After the family's return from Yellowstone, and with John back and running things at the home ranch, Con left in mid-October for the Judith Basin (central Montana, near the DHS herds) and shipped 1,200 to 1,300 head to Chicago after driving them to Custer Station for loading. [154]

The drive must have been a hard one for Con Kohrs, since it was made without the help of his old friend and cattle foreman, Tom Hooban. Tom's health had been growing worse, and the drain of life on the range proved too hard on him. Tom stayed briefly with the Kohrs family in Deer Lodge, and Con then persuaded him to travel to California "where the climate was mild."[155] The local press took note of Tom's departure, misspelling his name in the process:

Tom Hogan [Hooban], a cattle foreman, who has been in the employee of Kohrs and Bielenberg for many years, left Tuesday for California, his health requiring a milder climate. His employers say he was the most faithful employee they ever had, and are sorry to part with him. [156]

After Con delivered the cattle shipped at Custer Station he returned by way of Davenport, Iowa, bringing his stepfather, Claus Bielenberg, with him. By this time it was early November 1883. The "Personals" column of The New Northwest picked up the story of Kohrs's travels upon his return: "Conrad Kohrs, Esq. returned Saturday last and on Monday went east to ship cattle from Custer and market them in St. Paul. He will probably be absent until nearly the holidays." [157]

The momentous year, filled with travel for everyone at the home ranch, closed with the usual public recitation of taxes paid in "The Heaviest Taxpayers in Deer Lodge County For The Year 1883" column of the local paper. It noted that "Kohrs and Bielenberg paid 866.20 in taxes, Several ranchers paid more." [158] The year that had seen the largest investment in Montana cattle history to date, with the Kohrs and Bielenberg purchase of a share of the DHS, had not seen concomitant additions to the home ranch, which remained smaller than many in the Deer Lodge Valley.

By the end of 1883 the open range lands of eastern and central Montana were filled to near capacity. Twelve herds grazed in the range where Granville Stuart had located the DHS headquarters. Texas cattle by the hundreds of thousands now shared the grass only recently relinquished by the vanished buffalo with an equal number of sheep and a few thousand horses. "By the first of October there were six hundred thousand head of range cattle in the territory and these together with the horses and sheep was as much stock as the ranges could safely carry." [159] The last of the open lands of the West suitable for large-scale cattle raising now stood at maximum capacity or near it.

By early 1884, as greater and greater numbers of Texas cattle came into the State, the problem of diseases they carried became of immediate concern. In March Con called a meeting of cattlemen to discuss the issue. From the meeting a committee of five — Kohrs, John H. Ming, R. S. Hamilton, John T. Murphy, and 0. R. Allen — was appointed to watch the progress of disease in imported cattle. If necessary, they were to call a convention of all Montana cattlemen to discuss the problem. This appears to be Kohrs' first active and open effort to organize the cattle men of the territory to deal with mutual needs and problems. [160]

At the same time, Kohrs and Bielenberg's purebred cattle continued to aid in the upgrading of Montana stock. Late that March they shipped three young registered bulls to a Madison County ranch. Two of the bulls, "Duke of Knox" and "Meadow Lark Duke," were Short Horns, and the third, "Harry Allen," was a Hereford. This is the first specific mention of Herefords at the home ranch. This breed had been growing in popularity in the late 1870s in Kansas, but had not yet arrived in any real numbers in Montana. In bringing in registered Herefords, Con and John moved somewhat ahead of most of their contemporaries, and although they might not have been the very first ranchers in Montana to raise these cattle, they certainly numbered among the first. [161]

Con continued to show his interest in Montana cattle-raisers and their needs the next month, when he attended the Wyoming Stock Growers Convention in Cheyenne. He discussed the trip with the local newspaper's reporter, for the notice of his trip mentioned

Mr. Kohrs realizes the necessity of some further legislation in relation to cattle interests in Montana and visits to Cheyenne to learn the working laws of Wyoming and neighboring Territories and States, with a view to ascertaining their merits and having brought up in the Montana legislature next winter a bill that will be equitable and adequate to the stock interests in this territory. [162]

Shortly after Kohrs returned from the Cheyenne trip, news of Tom Hooban's death arrived. The loss was a major one to the family, and Conrad Kohrs's recollection of it was touched with a quality of devotion and real sense of loss:

The reports from him were not favorable. The damp climate [at his initial location in California] seemed to aggravate his disease. From Los Angeles he moved to Riverside and as he showed no improvement, his physician advised him to go to a dry altitude in New Mexico. He died at the Sisters" Hospital in Santa Fe in April. I received the telegram notifying me of his death and telegraphed back to place his remains in a metallic casket and send them to his home in Wisconsin and send expense bills to me.

Tom had left some money with me on which I paid interest and which I afterwards paid over to his sister. My wife and I went to Wisconsin and followed him to his last resting place. [163]

With Hooban gone and Mitch Oxarart in Texas, the two employees (foremen, really) who rated specific mention in the Kohrs autobiography pass from the picture. Both had been with Kohrs and Bielenberg for many years and had been of major assistance as their cattle business grew from supplying mining camp butcher shops in western Montana to herds that filled dozens of cattle cars en route to Chicago and other eastern markets. The personal element of "Mitch's herd" and "Tom Hooban's herd on the Tongue" had yielded to far larger herds but far greater impersonality. The size of the 1884 herds, grazing in widely separated ranges throughout Montana, Con Kohrs's present tendency to view the larger picture of the western cattlemen's needs, and Hooban's death all seemed to mark — with complete finality — the transition that had been taking place for the preceding three or four years. Kohrs and Bielenberg had grown far too big to foster the personal element in the business.

April of 1884 brought a small acquisition to the home ranch. The addition was the Tom Stuart place, between Deer Lodge and the ranch house. [164] Possibly the addition of the meadowland with the creek running through it provided additional grazing for the growing herd of registered stock at the home ranch.

The year continued its full-forward pace, with Bielenberg and Kohrs busy with the scattered large herds, gathering and driving them to rail loading points for shipment east. In early May a report from the Sun River range reached Deer Lodge

stating that three cowboys had eaten some wild parsnips about noon one day recently, and then before 2:30 p.m. two of them were dead. The third was saved by the most active exertions of physicians. One of those who died was Tim Leary (or Tim Fenton as he was sometimes called) whose mother lives in Phillipsburg. He was employed for several years here by the Bielenberg boys, and they speak highly of him. He was about twenty-five years old. [165]

Later that year, in August, a Kohrs and Bielenberg cowboy, "Austin L. Clapper, alias Frank Austin," was killed by lightning while driving a Kohrs and Bielenberg herd near Square Butte, close to the Sun River. [166]

Con took a trip back to Iowa that June, [167] returning by way of the central and eastern Montana ranges. Upon his return in the middle of August, Kohrs reported that the calf crop on the ranges had not been as good as expected. The crop in the herds north of the Yellowstone was light, that south of the Yellowstone better. His solution, apparently reflecting what he and other stock growers had discussed, was to have a larger proportion of bulls in the herds. [168]

Statewide organizations took some of Con's attention that August as well. The revitalized Montana Stockgrowers' Association named Con Kohrs as Deer Lodge and Meagher County representative, and to the executive committee. At the same time a call went out for citizens in the territory to join a new Pioneer Association. [169] Kohrs remained active in both these groups for many years.

Early fall brought the territorial fair, and in 1884 Kohrs and Bielenberg entered Short Horn and crossbred heifers, Short Horn bulls, one Polled Angus bull, and an Ayrshire cow. The results attested to Kohrs's and Bielenberg's stock quality, because their animals took a total of ten prizes, or as they were then termed, "Territorial Fair Premiums."

Roundup time followed the fair: the third week in September saw them gathering horses for the drive to the Sun River country; then came the fall roundup of cattle to be sold in the east. The drive would be from Sun River to Billings and Custer for shipment to Chicago. [170]

Con had travelled to the ranges more than once that summer, making "several trips to Fort MacGinnis" (the DHS headquarters were just four miles south of the fort) to check the part-Kohrs-owned DHS herds as well as his own CK cattle. [171] The train that ran through Deer Lodge, connecting with the Northern Pacific, which in turn traversed much of the range country, considerably eased and facilitated travel to and from the ranges. In early November Con left Deer Lodge for the DHS to ship cattle to Chicago and, after seeing the process underway, returned just three weeks later in order to take Augusta and "Willie" back to Miles City, bound for Chicago, St. Louis, and then New Orleans. [172]

Con made the trip to St. Louis to attend the stockgrower's convention there. It proved to be a stormy session, with conflicting sides — the northern and southern cattle growers — dividing on the issue of a National Cattle Trail. Con recalled later that "it was a large convention, attended by most of the prominent men of Montana as well as other states and St. Louis entertained these members royally." [173]

Kohrs managed to keep goodwill among all factions. John Clay, both participant in and historian of the open range cattle business, recalled Conrad Kohrs's part in the proceedings with a great deal of fondness:

He took no part in the discussions. He did not join in the fray. We went for the fellowship more than anything . . . However, we had a pleasant time and one night the grand old man from Montana entertained a lot of us to supper at Tony Fausts's where sausages and sardines were washed down with a special brew. [174]

The Kohrs family returned by late November. Kohrs had been elected to the legislature that fall and remained at home over the Christmas holidays and up until the time the legislature met in early 1885. [175]

In review the year had been a rather good one for Kohrs and Bielenberg, whose stock had won so many prizes at the territorial fair, and whose cattle herds had grown to be — with the CK and the DHS combined — probably the largest in the territory. Con had sat among the leaders at the cattlemen's meetings, and his opinions formed a considerable part of group policy. Ranchers throughout Montana still sought Kohrs and Bielenberg registered stock, and in May and June some of the Kohrs and Bielenberg Short Horn bulls were sold to Montana ranchers. [176] In numbers of stock, too, it had been a significant year. The DHS shipments of cattle from Miles City (possibly CK and DHS combined) had utilized sixty-nine stock cars. [177] The recapitulation for 1884 for the DHS herds showed a good increase despite over 1100 cattle being shipped from Custer Station. The herds had stood at 13,113 at the beginning of the year and had grown to 16,927 with the spring calf crop and some small additions. The total sold was 1,322, and with a few calves branded on neighboring ranges, the total at the end of the year for the DHS was 15,686. [178] The increase in Con Kohrs's wealth, in Deer Lodge County at least, was reflected in his tax bill of $917.80, up a little over $50.00 from the preceding year. [179]

The year 1884 also saw a decision by a secret group of cattlemen to deal with the menace of cattle rustling along the Missouri River in Montana and in western North Dakota. Apparently led by Granville Stuart, and possibly involving such luminaries of the cattle industry in Montana as Kohrs, Fergus, Ford, Adams, Bryan, and others, the group planned their moves in a meeting at the DHS ranch after spring roundup, in June of 1884, and not long thereafter swooped down on various rustlers and hanged, shot, or burned them out. The vigilantes planned their moves with great secrecy and struck fast. While some complaints have been heard since that in the process of cleaning out the rustlers, not a few small farmers and ranchers were also taken care of, the overall effect was to "put such fear into the hearts of the rustlers that those alive soon quit the country and wholesale stealing became a thing of the past." [180]

Con Kohrs mentions the activities of the vigilantes in his autobiography, and names Granville Stuart, one of his partners in the DHS and the manager at the ranch headquarters, as the leader. He does not cite his own participation, but neither does he display any remorse at the fate of what he calls "the outlaws." [181] Whether Con Kohrs or John Bielenberg, or both, played an active part in the operations of the "stranglers," as they were once called, is a moot question, but one that should at least be considered. There is no evidence yet uncovered to indicate that either did. so their participation in this unique chapter of Montana cattle history is unproven.

The second day of 1885 witnessed another addition to the home ranch, Con purchasing, "for $1.00 and other considerations," a quarter of a quarter section, totalling 160 acres for the home ranch, from one of his half-brothers Charles Bielenberg and his wife Mary. It was to be the last addition to the home ranch for five years, because Con's and John's attention, as far as land was concerned, lay with the open range grazing lands on which the CK and DHS herd ran.

Con spent much of the late winter and early spring in Helena, as a member of the legislature known in Montana history as the "Cowboy Legislature," and recalled by Kohrs as "a great legislature that had great times." This body reflected the strong influence that the cattle men wielded by 1885, and it passed many laws regulating and protecting the cattle industry. As Kohrs noted, "many of them are used to-day [1913] though several, on account of their being considered class legislation, were repealed in l909." [183] Typically, Con worked a demanding schedule. He had expected to spend most of the session at Helena, but managed to come home three weekends in February, some for just a Sunday with the family, sometimes longer. [184] The explanation for the frequency of his visits was not long in forthcoming. The local press explained that

Representative Kohrs was home last Sunday. When he went to the Legislature he proposed to only come home once during the session, but it has so fallen out that all the wedding and birthday anniversaries in the family for several generations come on the Sunday or Monday of January and February — and of course he has to be home on these occasions. If there is any place our worthy representative would rather be than with his family, we don't think he has found it yet — and don't think he ever will. [185]

The major event of the year came in the first month, when many of the principals of the DHS organization came to Helena to attend the legislative session. Granville Stuart recalled that "The name was changed from Stuart, Kohrs and Co. to the Pioneer Cattle Company." [186] It was as the Pioneer Cattle Company's symbol that the DHS mark would become one of Montana's most widely recognized cattle brands. The owners decided on 10,000 shares of $100 each, bringing the total capitalization to one million dollars. The stock was divided as the shares had been; Con Kohrs became president, and Samuel T. Hauser vice president. A. J. Seligman was named secretary and Granville Stuart retained his role as superintendent. [187]

Despite overcrowding on the range that year, the DHS herds did well. Their books showed

So 1885 proved to be a signal year for the State of Montana, with the "Cowboy Legislature" passing its code for the cattle growers, and the DHS formally becoming the Pioneer Cattle Company. The home ranch in 1885 underwent no startling or unique changes The fame of the Kohrs and Bielenberg Short Horn herd was trumpeted in the local press, which carried a story from England noting that "Mr. Morton Frewen says, in the London (England) Telegraph: Mr. Kohrs, of Deer Lodge, in Montana, has the largest herd of Bates Shorthorns in the world." [189]

Con travelled into the Pacific Northwest in the later part of the spring, but found no Oregon or Washington cattle at prices he liked. He ran into a severe rainstorm in the Musselshell country not long after his return from the northwest, but after that things settled into the routine of "shipping and going east" with the cattle.

The nineteen years between Conrad Kohrs's purchase of the John Grant Ranch and the close of the year 1885 had seen many changes besides Con's marriage and the growth of his family. He and John Bielenberg had increased their regional cattle and butcher business to a range cattle operation ranking among the very largest in the new state of Montana. From hundreds of cattle, raised for sale in a local market, they had expanded their herds to thousands, destined for both local and far distant sale. They had improved the already good quality stock on which the Montana herds had been based, and had been in the forefront of the movement to bring in registered cattle to the territory. Con had been a major figure in the stockgrowers' associations and a respected member of the local community and State legislature. It had been a period of great growth for Kohrs's and Bielenberg's enterprises, and they would prosper more in the years ahead. But in the immediate future lay transformation of the cattle industry in Montana, and the response to it at the home ranch.