Grant-Kohrs Ranch Historic Resource Study/Historic Structures Report/Cultural Resources Statement

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.

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