Big Hole National Battlefield Administrative History

Ranger Station Development

As with so much else the Forest Service did, the withdrawal of the Gibbon's Battlefield Administrative Site was made with multiple uses in mind. As noted in Chapter Two, the withdrawal seemed like a prudent thing to do in light of the national park proposal introduced in Congress in 1906. More to the point, Forest Service officials were motivated to make administrative site withdrawals by the Forest Homestead Act of June 11, 1906, which gave citizens the opportunity to enter upon national forest land and claim up to 160 acres provided that the land was suitable for agriculture. From the young agency's standpoint, the Forest Homestead Act produced something of a land rush on the national forests. Quite apart from the threat to the Big Hole battlefield, the many homestead claims competed with the Forest Service's ability to secure good agricultural and pasture land for its own ranger stations; officials recognized the need to make administrative site withdrawals in order to preserve the agency's ability to develop these sites in the future. Thus, in the Beaverhead National Forest and throughout the West, rangers were busy recommending and surveying hundreds of administrative sites – many of which would never be developed. [1]

The Gibbons Battlefield Administrative Site contained all the essentials for a ranger station: enough agricultural land to raise a little hay for stock and to grow a vegetable garden for the ranger and his family, and suitable pasture for a few head of horses. Forest service regulations in the Use Book defined these requirements in detail and noted that care had to be taken to select sites that did not conflict with existing mineral or homestead claims. [2]

Administrative sites functioned as staging areas for the re-supply of backcountry rangers, seasonal forest guards, and fire lookouts. Forest rangers selected administrative sites along common routes of travel – generally no more than one day's horse ride from one another. Prior to the 1920s there were few roads in the national forests and travel by horse was the ranger's primary mode of travel. Consequently, the need for stock pasture was a crucial consideration. Other considerations for a site's selection included proximity to areas with exceptional fire hazard, commercial timber, or other resources (such as the historic battlefield). Finally, administrative sites were selected to be visible and convenient to the public.

It was important to the Forest Service that the Gibbons Battlefield Administrative Site was convenient to the Big Hole ranching community. In the Forest Service's early years, the rangers' most important contacts with the public were not with lumberman as one might expect; rather, they were with stockgrowers, homesteaders, and miners, all of whom required reassurance that the Forest Service was not "locking up" resources. Many forest rangers in Montana assisted with the formation of livestock associations for purposes of regulating livestock grazing on the national forests. [3]

The Forest Service had all these purposes in view when it developed the Gibbon's Battlefield Administrative Site. Built in 1912, the ranger station consisted of a four-room frame house, horse stable, and tool house. [4] The buildings were located about 400 feet up a draw from the soldiers' monument, less than 150 feet west of the five-acre national monument boundary. In contrast to the modern-day visitor center, the development site was practically on top of ground traversed by the combatants in 1877. Other improvements were added over the years. Assorted maps and inventories from the 1920s and 1930s are unclear as to when various structures were built; however, they show a growing number of buildings associated with the ranger station complex. These included a garage, woodshed, two machine storage sheds, latrine, corrals, pasture fences, water pipe line, and yard fence. [5]

The first occupants were Ranger Arthur M. Keas and his wife Frances. [6] The Keas lived at the station until July 1917. Ranger Marshall G. Ramsey moved into the station in August 1917 and remained there until the fall of 1929 when Gibbon's Battlefield and Steel Creek ranger districts were combined to form Wisdom Ranger District and Ramsey moved his headquarters to the town of Wisdom. Ramsey remained district ranger until 1940. [7]

The Forest Service administrative presence provided protection for the national monument. To NPS inspectors in the 1930s, the unoccupied ranger station detracted from the historical integrity of the battlefield. But to visitors in the previous two decades the government buildings may have contributed something to the place's charm. When it was occupied, the ranger station was landscaped with flower beds and a public drinking fountain and the lawn in front of the house was fenced and well tended. Local writer Ella C. Hathaway, describing the Big Hole section of the designated scenic route known as the Park-to-Park Highway in 1919, commented that "one of the beauty spots along the route is the ranger station at the Gibbons battlefield." The government, she noted, had "extensive plans for making this popular resort even more popular." [8]

Some time between 1912 and 1919 the Forest Service built a summer cottage in Battle Gulch for Tom C. Sherrill, a former Bitterroot volunteer and caretaker of the battlefield. Sherrill developed a rapport with visitors to the national monument, regaling them with his own colorful stories of the battle. He and his family spent many summers at the battlefield, housed in what Ella Hathaway described as "one of the coziest bungalows in the hills." [9] Sherrill "retired" about 1923. Assistant Forester Will C. Barnes described Sherrill's position to the War Department in 1925:

For several years we maintained a civil employee who acted as guide to the field but for want of funds we were forced to drop him about two years ago. He was one of the survivors of the battle and told a very good story to the visitors. [10]

There were proposals to reinstate this position but nothing came of it. With improvements in communications and transportation, the trend in the Forest Service was toward consolidation of ranger districts and reductions in the number of summer employees or "forest guards." One official suggested that the battlefield caretaker position "would be a very nice assignment for some ranger who is approaching retirement age, and might be provided for in that way." But the caretaker's cottage remained empty. [11]