Grant-Kohrs Ranch Administrative History

Virtually overnight, the area experienced new interpretive challenges in the transition from controlled group access to an intermittent flow of visitation within regular hours. Micki Farmer recognized that the quality of some programs, especially the organization of the house tours, was not what it should be. She sought to make adjustments through trial-and-error experimentation and training. She also worked out visitor flow patterns and, to ensure uniformity of historical information, she and the interpretive staff began compiling a source book of data on historical figures, ranching operations, and Kohrs-Bielenberg family stories. Shortly before the dedication, she and Superintendent Peterson requested the regional chief of interpretation, Wes Wolfe, to conduct a visitor services workshop on-site for the staff. Wolfe considered this "a piece of cake," since several employees had come from ranching backgrounds.

Wolfe may have assumed too much because he quickly saw that the primary interpretive focus was on the elaborately furnished ranch house, rather than on the ranching industry that enabled Kohrs to own such a home. Wolfe stressed that every effort should be made to "impart to visitors an understanding of the cattle industry, before they go to the ranch." After seeing the operation, he expressed concern that, "If the Ranch House becomes a furniture tour and runs away with the show . . . we aren't living up to our legislative responsibility." In comparing the house to something "between a Turkish whore house and a maffia-styled funeral emporium," Wolfe prevailed upon the staff to remove the "gilded stanchions and the 'you ain't welcome here' velvet ropes." "Throw out the Walt Disney 'runners,' he exclaimed, "Where the crap came from, who made the crap ain't the way to give an historic house tour." The flamboyant Wolfe may have tacked subtlety, but his points were well taken. He implored the interpreters to consider the furnishings merely as visual backdrop to brief tours relying on solid anecdotal material crafted to allow visitors to "feel a home, not a house." [29]

The diminutive size and primitive nature of the visitor contact station posed restrictions on visitor orientation that were difficult to overcome, short of a new facility designed for the purpose. Although some interpreters remained wedded to show-and-tell tours at the house, Farmer and her staff began designing a variety of living history activities intended to divert attention away from the ranch house (HS-1). One of these was a campfire program featuring cowboy songs. Blacksmithing demonstrations in blacksmith shop/garage (HS-3) were popular, but they presented a dilemma. Hiring skilled artisans at the allowable general schedule grade was difficult, since they could make more money working in the private sector. Although the jobs might have been classified as wage grade positions, the park lacked the funds to pay the higher salaries. The result was that unskilled persons were sometimes hired for lower pay, with the idea that they could be trained to perform the demonstrations.

There were other problems as well. One blacksmith, while being adept at the forge, tended to produce rather ornate pieces of ironwork not usually associated with ranching. Consequently, the program became more a demonstration of that craftsman s individual skills than an enlightenment to the role of the common ranch blacksmith. In more recent years the program was been re-focused on shorter, more appropriate jobs like making hoof picks and other utilitarian items. [30]

A park "birthday celebration," initiated in 1978 became a new source of interpretive activities. Lyndel Meikle, who had come to the Site early the previous year, suggested that the park commemorate the formal opening by staging a special event on the anniversary. What began as a rather basic program that first year, quickly burgeoned into the park's most popular annual event, an event that has continued to the present day. Beyond its value for attracting a large number of visitors and attracting attention to the Site, perhaps its greater value was as a "proving ground for things that become a regular part of the interpretive program." [31] Activities such as chuck wagon cooking, talks on a wide variety of relative subjects, and demonstrations were tried at the annual celebration. Those found to be effective and well-received were sometimes been incorporated into the regular program. But, while new ideas were one thing, a small staff could do only so much to make them reality. The foundation of summer interpretive activities remained the daily ranch house tours, augmented by blacksmithing, on-going ranching activities, and self-guided walking tours of the grounds of the ranch headquarters.

Chuck wagon demonstration, 1982.
(Courtesy of Grant-Kohrs Ranch NHS)

The late 1970s marked a period of experimentation that eventually inspired Superintendent Tom Vaughan to reflect that, "the program should be thoroughly evaluated" because the staff had "proceeded to expand [the] existing program in new directions without a clear conceptual base." He admitted that while some of these activities had "great potential," he saw a need to "make ranching activity more central to the interpretive operation . . . . The superintendent lamented that the 1979 summer program had been seriously crippled through the resignation of a permanent interpreter at the beginning of the season and the transfer of his historian, Micki Farmer, in mid-season. [32]

Vaughan turned this circumstance into a duel opportunity to make significant changes. Taking advantage of the vacant historian position, he segregated the museum function into an independent division under his direct supervision to place greater attention on the care of the collections. And, he reclassified the historian position as a chief of interpretation heading a new division of interpretation and resource management. These changes were in place by the time Cheryl Clemmensen, the new chief, arrived in the waning days of December. [33]

On a philosophical note, Vaughan challenged the premise upon which the NPS had established the "historic period" at Grant-Kohrs Ranch. He saw this as a critical assumption influencing both restoration and interpretation. Just before Christmas 1979, he penned his concerns to the regional director, stating that he thought the legislative documents, which he termed "first generation documents," ought to provide the most reliable guidance in making that critical determination. He realized, however, that they also reflected NPS policy trends, if not national trends, at that particular moment in time. In the late 1960s, for instance, when Merrill Mattes had presented his alternatives for the area, and still later when the site was authorized, the living history craze was sweeping the country. It was an era that saw the widespread proliferation of such programs throughout historical areas, and even some natural areas, of the National Park System. So popular was this technique that it came to be viewed as a universal interpretive medium, regardless of its appropriateness or effectiveness in conveying the park story. There can be no doubt that living history was popular with both the public and with politicians, but that popularity failed to recognize its limitations and its disproportionately high costs when compared to other forms of media. Period clothing, training, animals, and all of the accessories needed to activate and sustain any demonstration usually escalated the per capita costs far above other types of interpretation.

Vaughan cited an interim interpretive prospectus, prepared in 1975, as "an exceptionally good example of a second generation document that should not be canonized and enshrined in cement." In his estimation, these post-legislative documents generated by the Park Service attempted to interpret congressional intent for a particular park's purpose and resources. But, he cautioned, these interpretations were always subject to "National Park Service policy in effect at the time the document is produced." Accordingly, he thought that such documents "must be flexible enough to allow the management of the resource to be adapted to unforeseen changes in the park environment . . . as well as shifts and drifts in NPS policy." As for living history, he observed that, "Both the desirability and the economic feasibility of large-scale recreations of historic scenes and activities had undergone considerable rethinking from the time of the first generation documents . . . to the present." The real danger in all of this, as Vaughan saw it, was the "interpretation of interpretations" in NPS third-generation documents, such as funding requests and operating plans wherein the true intent of Congress might be lost, or at least distorted. To guard against this, he impressed upon his interpreters the need to review the legislative dictums, bearing them in mind during their interpretive planning. [34]

Vaughan held that, regardless of the transient influences that might have affected later NPS planning, the legislation and its supporting data should be looked to as the "true cross" of what Congress had in mind when it authorized the area. The park's first Statement for Management, a second-generation document, specified in its objectives that interpretation would "instill . . . an empathy of the life and times of the cattle rancher and cowboy [and] demonstrate ranching activities to encourage an understanding of an active frontier cattle ranch."

The literal translation of the enabling legislation was challenged in 1978 when a planning team assembled at the park to create another of those second-generation documents to which Vaughan had alluded. The resulting general management plan, headed by historian John Albright, consciously steered the interpretation of the ranch in new directions. [35] While the team acknowledged the need to focus principally on "the early frontier cattle era and the Kohrs-Bielenberg operation, . . . these aspects of the Grant-Kohrs story will be described by contrasting open-range practices with what has followed." Just as Vaughan had predicted, NPS planners re-defined the purpose of the Site by taking a considerably broader view of the story than what Congress had envisioned. On the other hand, Con Warren was an integral part of the park interpretive story, and the later-period ranch buildings could hardly be ignored. The final GMP outlined the objective as "a working ranch that illustrates the continuity and change involved in cattle ranching from 1862 to today." [36] This represented a significant expansion of the story beyond the open range frontier era personified by Grant, Kohrs, and Bielenberg, and one that profoundly affected site interpretation thereafter.

Vaughan had read the proceedings of the congressional hearings to find that the legislators clearly intended that the ranch represent "frontier life" of the "Old West" of the latter part of the nineteenth century. It may be no accident that these terms were repeated many times by the sponsors of the legislation to establish the Site. They specifically stated that Grant-Kohrs Ranch would be devoted to telling "this story" of the open range era and its contributions to the American experience. However, one of those speaking in favor of the bill qualified this by rejecting any notion that the site was "being created to memorialize any particular individual." [37] By enabling the public to "better understand the nature of ranching operations of the old cattle kingdoms," it was "anticipated that the [ranch] will be a living memorial to the pioneers of the West, and that a concentrated effort will be made to preserve and recreate the historic ranch scene of the 1880-1900 period." [38] Nevertheless, if Vaughan saw this as an example of the very divergence of purpose he feared, he did not make an issue of it.

The period of historical restoration for the ranch house (HS-1), discussed in a previous chapter, had been fixed at 1880-1900, while other buildings were to reflect their "identified periods of time," meaning their last use during active ranching operations. All of the buildings were to be "restored to a working condition," with the specific intent of using them for interpretive ranching purposes. Since it would be impossible to ignore the structures dating after the "frontier cattle era," the 1980 GMP altered the period to be interpreted so that there would an open end extending into the future. By not establishing a firm termination date, the GMP tacitly permitted interpretation to evolve indefinitely, conceivably keeping pace with the beef industry at least through the 1970s. The evidence suggests that Congress and the NPS had in mind only the days of the open range during the latter three or four decades of the nineteenth century, specifically the "frontier era." Yet, the legislators did not clearly define that point. At the time legislation was drafted, the resource had not been fully evaluated. Their concept was confined to that portion of the ranch west of the railroads, i. e., the "old" ranch. The early planning process had been disadvantaged by not having available a basic structural history, bringing to light the mixture of buildings from various eras even in the primary historic zone of the ranch.

That first GMP also addressed the constraints imposed by nearby modern development and the limitations inherent with having only a tiny fraction of the Kohrs-Bielenberg holdings within the Site. Not only were park lands a minuscule portion of the home ranch, this area was not where the family fortune was made, for the most part. At times, the two cattlemen pastured cattle on far-flung open ranges in north-central and eastern Montana, Idaho, Canada, and even in Colorado, controlling all together over one million acres. The great herds were there, not at Deer Lodge, which was a base of operations used primarily for stock-breeding. Thus, the GMP clarified that the ranch site was "not conducive to interpreting the cattle-ranching practices employed on the open range during the early frontier era," which may have provided some of the rationale behind the team's decision to expand the scope of interpretation. [39]

The implications of this debate were not lost on the park chief interpreter. By 1982, when annual interpretive reports became a requirement, Clemmensen began including brief quotations from both the congressional hearings and the enabling legislation. She stated that the purpose of the ranch was "to provide an understanding of the frontier cattle era [and] the nationally significant values thereof." Yet, the influence of the GMP was evident when she went on to define the principal objective as, "the evolution of American cattle ranching from open-range to early farm/ranch cattle raising -- as well as the development of that industry at Grant-Kohrs Ranch. This industry has continued to the present day." [40] Her inclusion of the "early farm/ranch" era recognized the 1930s buildings on the ranch.

Merrill Mattes first saw the potential for presenting the broader story of cattle ranching, exemplified in Grant-Kohrs Ranch, by demonstrating the continuum of ranching operations. However, his thoughts on the matter apparently were not considered in the support data submitted by the NPS, nor in the congressional debates, four years later. Such information might have influenced those discussions, though it became a mute point. Initially, Congress did not intend for the Park Service to buy the Warren Ranch. Yet, through its planning process and its later desire to acquire the Warren easement lands, including the ranch of the 1950s, the NPS transcended the original congressional intent expressed in 1972, i. e., acquiring 208 acres in fee and easements over the remaining 1,280 acres. [41] The Warren Ranch of the post-World War II period posed an incongruity between the enabling legislation and the central theme that both the NPS and Congress thought ought to be interpreted when the Site was authorized.

Even though the 1972 legislation did not envision the acquisition of the remainder of the Warren Ranch buildings, the 1980 and 1993 GMPs stressed that these were to be used adaptively for park administrative and operational functions. While this decision might have been construed to imply that the Warren operation of the mid-twentieth century would be de-emphasized, the 1993 GMP specified an interpretive "focus" spanning from 1860 to the 1970s. Conversely, a cultural landscape analysis contained in the same document, stated that the period of significance spanned the years 1862 - 1954. The GMP admitted that "many visitors are confused as to the story being told." [42]