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

By 1914 the range was pretty well fenced in. The nesters were staking out their claims on every creek and spring in every coulee. No longer was it possible to swing the big herds across the country in a never ending search for grass. Kohrs determined to sell out and by 1918 all that was left were remnants.

Conrad Warren [1]

The arrival of the new century brought no immediate or dramatic change in the development of the Kohrs and Bielenberg cattle empire. Already owning one of the largest cattle enterprises in America, and surely one of the best-known stock-growing businesses in Montana, the brothers continued to enlarge the home ranch even more during the first decade of the new century. Likewise, they continued massive open-range cattle grazing and shipment of the beef to the Chicago market.

Then, in 1908, they transferred their cattle business to the newly created Kohrs and Bielenberg Land and Livestock Company, a corporation of three stock holders: Con, John, and Augusta. They then owned the company that owned the ranch. This arrangement would not have been necessary had the Kohrs's only son and obvious heir, William, not died of appendicitis in the spring of 1901 while attending Cornell University. With the prime inheritor of the ranch gone, an arrangement such as that devised by Con, John, and Augusta probably represented the best choice available to ensure continuity of ownership within the family. Earlier, in 1906, and again in 1907, John's and Con's mining and realty interests had been formalized by the creation first of the Rock Creek Ditch and Mining Company and then of the Kohrs and Bielenberg Realty Company.

These early-twentieth-century years saw Kohrs and Bielenberg prospering as they had in the 1890s. But the growing numbers of homesteaders—"honyockers"— farming the lands that once supported grazing cattle, and the partners own advancing years, perhaps, caused them to liquidate their holdings. By 1915 the process had begun, and before very many years much of the vast acreage owned by Kohrs and Bielenberg was gone. By chance, or possibly by a shrewd ability to guess the probable sequence of events in agriculture, Con and John sold out just a couple of years before American agriculture entered a period of serious economic decline in the early 1920s. By 1924 Conrad Kohrs and John Bielenberg, and John Boardman, who had taken active management of much of their interests, had all died. Augusta Kohrs remained, the sole survivor of the pioneer band at the home ranch in Deer Lodge.

The home ranch itself shrank to about 1,000 acres and slipped into a somnolent caretaker status. This static period in the life of the home ranch lasted only until the early 1930s when Conrad Kohrs Warren, Con's and Augusta's grandson (Katherine's son), took over its management. The thirty years since the beginning of the century, in retrospect, had been years of profit, consolidation, and then, of dissolution.

The story of the Kohrs and Bielenberg home ranch early in the new century is a continuation of the preceding ten years. The home ranch raised thoroughbreds, provided the range herd with Hereford and Short Horn bulls to upgrade the quality of the range herds, and sold plenty of top quality bulls to other Montana ranchers. Market cattle grazed on the range and, as before, the home ranch grew. The year 1900 witnessed the addition of two sections of land to the home ranch pastures, one in August [2] and the other in October. [3] That year the matter of leasing lands also appeared in the Kohrs and Bielenberg account book. Con and John would, in the next few years, buy more and more sections of land for the home ranch on the northeast side of the ranch house, where thickly grassed pastures surrounded sections of state-owned lands that they leased. Possibly these were the leases noted in a 1900 ledger. [4]

Large numbers of imported cattle, mostly from Texas, came in by railroad that year to graze on northern grasses, the heifers perhaps, to be bred to Hereford or Short Horn bulls. One such shipment is reflected in the Kohrs and Bielenberg Day Book, representing herds put out to graze on DHS lands when delivered in 1900:

Freight paid on Stock cattle on a/c of delivery to Pioneer Cattle Co. at Oswego. July 1, 1900
$10,612.19. [5]

The sizes of the DHS herds and of the CK herds were about equal by 1900, if the amount of cattle shipped that year is an accurate gauge of their relative size. The 1900 roundup began in August, and a few small loads were shipped then, but the bulk of the cattle went east in trainloads in September and October. The CK herds provided 940 steers, 324 cows, 8 bulls, and 28 calves, valued at $51,190.07. The DHS herds furnished 1,113 steers, 291 cows, 24 bulls, and 47 calves, which sold for $61,772.27. Other Kohrs and Bielenberg cattle shipped that year included 61 steers, 32 cows, 2 bulls, and 4 calves with the "seven- five" (7-5) brand, which brought a price of $3,846.93. These were cattle from the newly acquired N-N ranch in northeastern Montana. The "five-up-and-five-down" (the numeral 5 followed by an inverted 5 and a period) herds added 344 steers to the total for $16,878.91, and the "wineglass" brand (the letter Y with rounded extensions on the diagonal members, and resting on a bar) provided 55 steers and 53 heifers for $5,200.59. The impressive total in 1900 of range cattle shipped East was 3,326 animals, which brought a gross of $138,888.77. Figuring about 18 cattle per car, 184 stockcars on the Northern Pacific would have been used. [6]

Of course, expenses, such as the cost of labor, had to be applied to gross profits. Examination of the Kohrs and Bielenberg Day Book reveals a fluctuating work crew, heavy during roundups and much lighter in between. The "Labor Account" by month in the Day Book, for the months of May through November 1900, illustrates some of the labor costs incidental to stock raising in Montana.

The crew at the home ranch assisting manager John Bielenberg numbered ten in May 1900.

In December the number of hands was even smaller than in May—including only Henry Vaughn, A. Menard, William Stockman, N. J. Bielenberg, Wilhemenia Schuhardt, "cook" (at the main house), and W. Pinkert. In the winter of 1900 the home ranch crew consisted of about seven persons and John Bielenberg. [9]

With the coming of spring in 1901 the routine of buying cattle and getting them to the range, followed by the roundup, began again. Likewise Kohrs and Bielenberg continued acquiring more land for the home ranch. On 15 June that year Con purchased property equaling one-half section in three separate deals involving two parcels of land of 120 acres each and one of 80 acres. [10] The three pieces of land tied into pastures already owned north of the ranch house.

But 1901 proved to be a year of tragedy for the Kohrs family. Their only son, William, by then twenty-one, lived in the East attending college. Word came one day in the spring that he had become seriously ill. Con and Augusta immediately made ready to travel east, but then were informed that Will had died. "It was the hardest loss Con had ever been called on to bear." [11] Yet the real impact on Con's and John's plans and goals remains unknown. John Bielenberg left no diary or autobiography to reveal his feelings, and Con Kohrs, possibly because of the pain of the experience, never mentioned it in his autobiography. Within seven years Con, John, and Augusta put their land and cattle holdings into corporations, a move that may well have been prompted by the death of the young man obviously destined to inherit the cattle empire his father and uncle had created. The move might also have come for very different reasons involving ease of property management, advancing age of the principals involved, or even tax considerations. There can be little doubt that young Will's death came as a sudden and heavy blow to Con, Augusta, and Uncle John Bielenberg. Yet to view all subsequent actions involving the ranching operations of Kohrs and Bielenberg only in relation to the young man's passing is surely naive, since there is little known yet of the partners' motives in the property consolidations of 1906, 1907, and 1908, and in the sale of the rangelands in the second decade of the century. In addition, Con and John took no major actions immediately following the death of William save to create a library at Deer Lodge in his name. [12]

In the year following William's death, Con continued to buy small parcels of property in Deer Lodge and for the home ranch. Early in the year, on 8 January 1902, he picked up a town lot in Deer Lodge, [13] and the next month bought two separate parcels of pastureland of 120 acres each, [14] and more Deer Lodge town lots. [15] In March the partners bought more town lots and they closed the year by acquiring another quarter section of ranch land. [16] In the next year the pace slowed somewhat, with only two 40-acre pieces of property coming to the home ranch. [17]

By this time the range cattle industry as it had been functioning since the 1870s in Montana had but a few years remaining. The onset of the "honyockers," whose numbers seemed to increase daily on the Montana plains, cut into the open-range cattle business. For the CK, and probably for the "five-up-and-five-down" and "seven-five" herds of Kohrs and Bielenberg as well, 1904 marked one of the last general roundups. The roundup and the creation of the "pool," which had so long been a part of the Montana open-range cattle business, would function only on limited rangelands after 1904. The pool and its activities is described succinctly by one of the Montana cattle industry's best known historians Robert H. Fletcher:

Neighboring outfits using common range found it economical to combine their roundup activities into what was commonly called a pool. The number of riders and chuck and bed wagons to be furnished by each outfit was determined on an equitable basis. Day and night horse wranglers were hired and the custodian of the pots, pans, and dutch oven. 'Reps,' as representatives from other districts were called, rode with each roundup crew. They were usually favored in the work assignments as they had to be in a position to keep an eye out for their employer's brands. [18]

The pool had been part of the Kohrs and Bielenberg and DHS roundup since the very earliest days of grazing cattle on the plains east of the divide. But this year was the last roundup for the CK, "five-up-and-five-down," and seven-five herds in northeastern Montana. [19] The two Gehrmann boys ("J.H." was twelve that year) participated in the 1904 roundup during their visit with Uncles Con and John and Aunt Augusta. Gehrmann provides a retrospective view of the event as remembered over seventy years later:

In the fall of 1904 we were present at the last general roundup in this section. The different owners all gathered their cattle in one big herd. Each 'spread' drove its cattle into a large enclosure where the cowboys each marked its brand. Then the calves were separated from the mothers into another corral and they were branded with the same brand as the mother cow. My brother and I heated and sorted the branding irons as they were called for. All the male calves were castrated for sale as steers.

The roundup was held in an area surrounding a rangers cabin. Each group had its own tents. We were three in a tent: Uncle John Bielenberg, my brother, and I went to bed on a buffalo robe, with another over us. We were completely clothed except for shoes and hats. This was in early September but the nights were cold. In the morning I asked a cowboy where I could wash up. He gave me a hatchet and pointed to the frozen creek. I chopped a hole and took a quick face wash. Probably the only clean face in camp.

At breakfast I asked for a glass of milk, and the cowboys laughed. One of them said, "We are cowboys, not farm hands." With over 10,000 cows right in the vicinity we had no milk. [20]

Gehrmann's recollections are the last ones of a Kohrs and Bielenberg open-range roundup. Doubtless, on the DHS ranchlands, on the N-N lands, and at the home ranch itself, roundups continued for a few more years, but they are not recorded in the Kohrs autobiography. In fact, few activities of the twentieth century are. Kohrs sums up the entire sixteen or so years between the purchase of the last large piece of rangeland—the N-N, bought in Dawson County in 1899—and the end of the whole operation, by noting that

we had many miles of country, and while our losses were heavy, we kept our herd replenished with herds from Texas. With our good friends and our good credit we could always restock with steers and as the market prices increased, we received more for our output. The last large purchase was made in 1898.

Since then we have been gradually winding up our business and have been fortunate as the market prices were such as to make our sales very profitable and by 1915 we had all sold except remnants. [21]

Before Kohrs and Bielenberg began "winding up our business" they formalized it. This they accomplished by gathering the hundreds of separate transactions in city property, mining claims, and thousand of acres of ranchlands into corporate holdings owned by Con, John, and Augusta. The first such action came on 1 June 1906 when the Kohrs and Bielenberg Realty Company was organized to bring the various urban properties under one management system. [22] Then about seven months later, the Rock Creek Ditch and Mining Company, which had long been organized to manage some of the Kohrs and Bielenberg mining properties, received a Certificate of Extension of Corporation, thus ensuring continued control of that side of the multifaceted Kohrs and Bielenberg business ventures. [23] The next corporation was formed on 12 May 1908—the Kohrs and Bielenberg Land and Livestock Company; on the same day the Pioneer Mining Company was organized. [24] Of these two groups, the most important to the story of the home ranch is the Kohrs and Bielenberg Land and Livestock Company.

On the date of incorporation, 1 June 1908, Con, John and Augusta sold the hone ranch to the Kohrs and Bielenberg Land and Livestock Company for $200,000. The deed records the sale as involving three parcels of land, one of 21,388.50 acres, another of 942 acres, and the third of 27 acres. The grand total of land owned, as of that date, totalled 22,307 acres. When the leased lands—and at least seven sections are indicated on an old Kohrs and Bielenberg map of about 1907—are added, the total size of the home ranch as of June 1908 comes to about 26,787 acres. [25]

A. The Ranch in 1907

The ranch at Deer Lodge never retained the same boundaries for long. Small parcels, maybe forty acres here or there, came to be part of the ranch and then were sold off at times in the normal dynamics of the cattle business. But by 1908 the ranch had reached its greatest size, give or take a few small pieces of property added or deleted later. Around this time (1907) a railroad surveyed a right-of-way through the ranch, and in so doing provided the earliest known detailed map of the home ranch yet discovered.

The Northern Pacific Railroad's office at Missoula prepared the map in the Office of the Division Engineer, and dated it 25 February and 6 July 1907, probably the dates the area was surveyed. Then the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul Railway of Montana—the "Milwaukee Road" -- copied the map as they prepared to run their line parallel to the Northern Pacific, in which process they cut off an additional slice of land from the home ranch to enlarge the right-of-way. This map contains some detailed information on the areas surrounding the home ranch house.

Many of the buildings shown on the 1907 map remain today. Among them is the Ranch House (Historic Structure 1), here entitled "Dwelling House." The Bunkhouse (Historic Structure 2) also stands, but has been modified by removal of the eastern thirty-five feet (approximately) . The removal of the eastern portion of the structure came about because the new right-of-way for the Milwaukee Road ran parallel to the Northern Pacific right-of-way but much closer to the ranch headquarters complex. The new right-of-way caused not only part of the bunkhouse to be removed, but brought about the destruction of a "Cow Stable," 193 by 20 feet (Non-Extant Structure A on the historic base map) , and two other structures associated with it. [26] The Cow Stable, the "Open Cow Shed," and the "Machine Shop" formed, with Historic Structure II, a U-shaped complex with its open end toward the bunkhouse. They were destroyed. Other buildings shown on the 1908 map that no longer exist are a "Chicken House," 21 by 36 feet, about on the site of today's Historic Structure 6; and a "Cow Barn," 36 by 62 feet, which filled the now empty space between Historic Structures 7 and 9.

Two of the 1907 structures were moved. One of them, Non-Extant Structure A, was moved intact straight west to its present location, where it is now referred to as Historic Structure 12, Machine Shed. The second is Historic Structure 17 (Buggy Shed), which was once the eastern two-thirds of the "Buggy House," the easternmost section of the bunkhouse.

Many of the existing historic structures appear on the 1907 map in essentially their present configuration. One of these is the "Dwelling," the ranch house. It is shown with the 1890 addition, but without the sun porch or front porch. The yard is fenced about as it is today, except that the fence line running north and south (the front one parallel to the railroad tracks) is shown as parallel to the house on the 1907 map. Today it has a slight east-west cant to it. The gardens associated with the house in 1907 are not shown.

The "Cow Barn" drawn on the map to the west of the ranch house is today's Thoroughbred Barn, Historic Structure 15, one of the major facilities on the ranch. But no corrals or ancillary structures associated with the barn are shown. The barn is the structure farthest from the railroad tracks.

Also shown on the 1907 map is an Ice House, Historic Structure 5, where tack has long been stored. Nearby, another "Cow Stable," 18 by 21 feet, is today's Oxen Barn, Historic Structure 10. Next to it is yet a third building designated "Cow Stable" on the map, and measuring 18 by 36 feet. This is the north portion of today's Historic Structure 7, the Draft Horse Barn.

The remainder of the ranch is not shown on the 1907 map. In summary, today's Historic Structures 1, 2, 5, 7, 10, 11, and 15 are on the map and in their present locations. Today's Historic Structure 12 is shown on its original site, and today's Historic Structure 17 remains as part of the bunkhouse building.

There are, in addition to the buildings, fence lines shown on the 1907 map. Many of these delineate approximations of some of today's fenced-off areas. The area surrounding the ranch house is fenced now about as it was then There was a working pen created by the U-shaped complex of buildings north of the bunk house, of which only Historic Structure 11 remains. The rear of the "Buggy House" (Non-Extant Structure F) had a pen for the horses, about seventy feet square. The pasture through which Fred Burr Creek passes was somewhat narrower than it is at present. In the southeast corner of the house yard a small, rectangular area, oriented east and west, was formed. The pattern of fencing formed a lane from the east that then ran westerly along the front of the bunkhouse, past the side of the house, and past the north side of the 1890 addition, approximating the line of today's road there.

Unfortunately, there is not enough data on the map to determine the configuration of the corrals west of the thoroughbred barn or at the north end of the headquarters complex.

The picture provided by the 1907 map is, of course, an incomplete one. Yet it shows most of today's larger structures in the same sites, with the exception of the machine shed and the buggy shed. The additions of the Warren era, from the early 1930s to the present, were yet to come. But the number of sheds and barns even in 1907 demonstrated a major stock operation at the home ranch involving animals other than range ones. The home ranch, producing breeding bulls, horses, and work horses, possessed an unusually large number of barns and sheds. It was a complex consisting of many more buildings than those portrayed on the limited area of the 1907 map.

B. The Closing Years—to 1933

In his autobiography, originally composed in 1913 and updated at an unknown date after that, Conrad Kohrs closed the story of his life, in which seventy-eight years had spanned 153 pages, with an all-inclusive sentence condensing the last active fifteen years of the life at the home ranch of the Kohrs and Bielenberg cattle empire:

Since then [about 1900] we have been gradually winding up our business and have been fortunate as the market prices were such as to make our sales very profitable and by 1915 we had sold all except remnants. [27]

Yet the exact procedure involved in the dissolution of the land comprising the home ranch remains somewhat unclear. Those legal documents (many quite involved) that appear in the county records do not fill in all the gaps. Nor does the presently available material reveal how and when the other properties, the N-N and the DHS ranches, were sold. [28]

The outlines of the dissolution of the home ranch, however, are fairly well established. The process of selling it off seems to have begun informally with agreements not recorded in the deed books until well after the transactions. Given Kohrs's own date of 1915, it is safe to assume the process began then. The upper ranch was either leased or sold to a group of investors for use in raising wheat, because World War I was providing the impetus to raise wheat prices considerably. [29] Later in the year, 29 December 1915, John, Con, and Augusta transferred whatever land the Kohrs and Bielenberg Land and Livestock Company did not own over to the company, noting that it would then own

all our right, title, interest, and estate in and to any real estate owned by the said Conrad Kohrs and John Bielenberg jointly as members of said co-partnership, in the state of Montana. [30]

So, in the exact sense of the word, Con and John had dissolved their cattle empire. But the home ranch remained intact under the ownership of the Kohrs and Bielenberg Land and Livestock Company until it was sold in three big chunks. First, the lands to the east of the ranch house, those twelve-plus sections of land contiguous to the property around the house, went on the market on 2 June 1919, and on 1 July were purchased for $100,000 by Charles H. Williams and Peter Pauly, a partnership of ranchers in Deer Lodge. [31] Williams and Pauly eventually bought much of the old Kohrs and Bielenberg home ranch, but the June 1919 deal represented the first major portion to pass into their hands. Another part of that day's transactions with Williams and Pauly came with the sale, for $50,000, of about 1,200 acres of land, and most importantly, of the water rights held by the Rock Creek Ditch and Mining Company. [32] By June 1919, then, two major portions of the ranch had been disposed of, and a third smaller parcel of land, 1,120 acres, went to Williams and Pauly on 29 July 1922, after both John and Con had died. [33]

This left lands to the east, fourteen sections owned and seven leased known as the Dog Creek Pasture (although a smaller portion was called the Humber Ranch). From the time of transfer to the Kohrs and Bielenberg Land and Livestock Company from the private Kohrs and Bielenberg ownership, John had remained at the ranch and continued to raise bulls and horses, but on a somewhat reduced scale. The "Helena Herd" of Herefords comprised the foundation of the bull-raising business John ran until his death, and this fine group of animals grazed in the Dog Creek Pasture. Probably, however, much of the land was leased out by this time, since John, who had turned sixty-seven in 1915, could not have been as dynamically active as before. But the 1919 sales left only the upper ranch now under wheat cultivation, and probably it was leased partly for that purpose as was the Dog Creek Pasture.

So a small portion of land totalling about one section on a north-south axis and the huge twenty-one-plus section of pastureland to the east were all that remained of the original holdings into 1920, when Conrad Kohrs died, and 1922, when John Bielenberg passed away. Later that year, John Boardman, who had taken on an increasingly large amount of the management of the rangelands and the investments, died also.

In the fall of 1924, the final portions of the home ranch, fifteen-plus sections of pastureland and seven additional leased sections, the Dog Creek and Humber Ranch portions, sold on contract, for $75,000 ($91,020 when all interest amd principal was paid on 1 November 1931). "Kohrs & Bielenberg Land & Livestock Company, a corporation, with its principal place of business at Deer Lodge, Powell County, Montana, the party of the first part, and NELSON NELSON, NELS EDWARD NELSON AND RALPH A. NELSON, a co-partnership known and designated as NELSON & SONS," agreed on the transfer of the remaining portions of the home ranch, The agricultural depression that had begun in the early 1920s had no doubt lowered the value of pastureland in the valley. The major parcel of land sold in 1919, a little over thirteen sections, had brought $100,000, The land sold in 1924, fourteen sections plus leasing rights on seven more, brought only $75,000. [34]

So,with the exception of about a thousand acres around the ranch house, the home ranch as a major stock-growing concern had disappeared by 1924. The Kohrs-Bielenberg partnership still existed in the holdings of the companies, some of the banking interests, urban property, and stock investments. But the cattle empire had been dissolved, although profitably so. The winding down of cattle-raising at the home ranch paralleled the breakup of the pastures and their sale to Nelson and Sons and to Williams and Pauly. The Helena herd, grazing on the Dog Creek Pasture, formed the basis of the home ranch herd by this time. In 1923, on the eve of the sale to Nelson and Sons and just after John Bielenberg's death the ranch manager sold off about 1,000 cattle, the last big sale of cattle from the home ranch or from any Kohrs and Bielenberg herd. [35] John had kept about 150 to 200 bulls as stock for sale until he died. Remnants of the Helena herd remained on the lands retained around the ranch house.

The next few years saw little of the once dynamic pace of life at the home ranch in Deer Lodge. Managers ran the small herd, supervised haying and occasionally painted a building or repaired a fence. Perry Cline took over active management following John Bielenberg's death, and he in turn was replaced by Perry DeMotte and others. The last manager of the ranch in the period prior to Conrad K. Warren's assumption of control was Pem McComis. Sam McKennon, an old Kohrs partner and friend, ran the Conrad Kohrs Company. [36] But the ranch lay in what was essentially a caretaker status during the period, and little but the passage of time marks the years from Bielenberg's death in 1922 until 1932. Young Conrad Kohrs Warren, Conrad's grandson, attended college, but spent the summers of 1926-28 haying at the ranch. Augusta would come for a few weeks each summer and visit old Deer Lodge friends, but would leave later in the summer for Helena and her home there.

On January 1930 the end of the Kohrs and Bielenberg Land and Livestock Company occurred when their charter expired. The Conrad Kohrs Company received "all real estate, mining property, and water rights owned by said corporation in the State of Montana, which may not have heretofore been conveyed by a specific conveyance." [37] Con Warren came to live at the ranch in April of 1930, settling in the ranch house in the winter and using the shed on the north end of the house in the summer. He worked at the ranch as a hand until 1932.

In the spring of 1932 the ranch manager, Pem McComis, retired. Sam McKennon, still managing the Conrad Kohrs Company, which by now owned the property at Deer Lodge, came to Warren and said "Well, Pem McComis is going to retire, why don't you run the ranch?" Warren agreed.

From 1900 until 1908 the home ranch had continued to grow, then it came under the corporate ownership of the Kohrs and Bielenberg Land and Livestock Company. Beginning in 1919 it was sold off in three major transactions, and by the close of the Kohrs and Bielenberg era in 1932, all that remained was the remnants of the Helena Herd of Herefords, about a thousand acres of land and the ranch house and buildings surrounding it. It would grow again under the management of Conrad Kohrs Warren, who took control of the once great ranch at the depth of the great depression.