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

E. Conrad Kohrs (Born 5 August 1835, Wewelfleth, Denmark; Died 23 July 1920, Helena, Montana)

Stories about Conrad Kohrs abound in Montana literature. No doubt many are apocryphal. Yet one of them neatly illustrates why Con Kohrs succeeded in his myriad business ventures. Kohrs had a rival in the butcher business in Virginia City in the early 1860s, the story goes, who had a big advantage over him because he had a horse to use in making deliveries, while Kohrs had none. But an assistant in Kohrs's shop had $500 in savings. Con borrowed it, bought a horse, and soon outstripped the competition, repaid the money, and soared on to big profits. Kohrs was paying him out of his own money, the assistant would occasionally joke. But the lesson in the episode was that the assistant made a small profit on the money by investing it, and Con Kohrs used it to bring thousands of dollars into the business, amply demonstrating his legendary money making abilities. [35]

And above anything else, Con Kohrs did prove his ability to make money. He made it in mining and in cattle. He invested profits from his stock and mineral enterprises in real estate, in other businesses, and back into cattle and mining. He blended an ability to work exceptionally hard with a sense of business timing little short of miraculous. The result was usually success in whatever activity he entered. In short, he was a classic nineteenth-century entrepreneur, except that he proved himself more successful than most.

He earned the respect of his fellows in the cow business. Of the many who wrote about Kohrs in 1920 when he died, few perceived him as sympathetically, yet as accurately, as John Clay, who penned "The Passing of Conrad Kohrs" for the Breeder's Gazette. [36] Clay had participated in the grandest period of the cattleman's era and had reported it as well. He had watched Conrad Kohrs worked with him, and shared in the bad and good times of those early days. John Clay recalled that Kohrs "threw his whole soul into his work." While surely not the most original thing that Clay ever wrote, it precisely illustrated Kohrs's approach to life and to business. Clay discussed the Kohrs "presence": "Like imperial Caeser, he came, he saw, he conquered. No man could withstand the magnetism, the fascination the human side of Kohrs' character."

Clay, Conrad Kohrs, and a few other old cattlemen spent a pleasant afternoon in the Montana Club one day in 1918 just two years before Con died. That afternoon Clay recalled that Con's words fell somewhat slowly, but surely, a mellow unflection on them that seemed to cover sentences. Kohrs had "a soft voice with a touch of firmness in it, a faint accent of his Danish home still remaining after years of absence." [37]

An old colleague from the 1880s and the early days of the stockmen's associations, Theodore Roosevelt, always remembered his friend Con Kohrs. Once a person met Kohrs, he did not easily forget him.

Another who knew Kohrs described him graphically hut somewhat less than poetically. Kohrs was "a fine, big Dutchman and a likeable man." [38] Like those who knew him, those who studied the cattle empire many years after his death were impressed by his accomplishments and personality. "Of all the cattlemen one of the greatest was Conrad Kohrs," one book notes. The study continues:

As a cattleman Kohrs had his ups and downs, but in the opinion of a contemporary he had a magnetic personality, a great wealth of common sense and splendid judgment, a kind heart, and a definite sense of fair play. He was a great figure, and the color of his personality lay in his vision and the quiet manner in which he worked toward his goals. [39]

Conrad Kohrs holds a high position both in the opinion of his contemporaries and in the writings of those who strive to re-create the era of the great cattle men.

The key to Conrad Kohrs's success in life lay in his judgement. He had the ability, either native to him or a carefully developed virtue, to sense what action to take and when to take it. Displaying a strong, quiet, and firm demeanor to the world, Con Kohrs presented the image of a man who could be trusted to do the right thing. He displayed this quality of sound business judgement from the time he entered Montana. The elements always seemed to be the same, although as he grew more wealthy and powerful the stakes became bigger. The particular mix of prescience and hunch that caused him to drop the fruitless search for quick wealth in mining and pick up three cows to slaughter and sell for meat in 1862 is the early example of his exercise of business acumen. Later deals involving possibly half a million dollars in cattle interests and, perhaps as much in mining ventures resulted from this same shrewdness; only the magnitude was different.

Certainly his contemporaries trusted his judgement, for even a cursory look at his account book reveals that he had no dearth of partners. And these co-investors—fellow entrepreneurs—showed their willingness to enter into deals with Kohrs in about as many and disparate business ventures as existed in Montana during Kohrs's lifetime. The offices in which they placed him in the counsels of the state government, county government, and in the cattlemen's associations also testified to their trust in him.

It seems, too, that Kohrs moved within and not ahead of the most workable and proven ideas of his day. This is not to say he could not innovate when the occasion demanded. He strongly bucked the tide in 1862 when he moved out of the mainstream of those seeking wealth in the mines and perceived that the money was to be made in selling to those who worked the ground. He chose to become a permanent resident in a transient community—a decision that proved profitable. After the disaster of 1887 he realized that more than recouping was possible in the cattle business, and he invested while others fled. But in the main he watched trends and moved when the probability of success looked high. Take his introduction of purebred cattle, for example.

No doubt Con Kohrs and John Bielenberg, like any other cattlemen, took real pleasure in working with blooded stock, beautiful animals representing the highest qualities of their respective breeds. In this they paralleled the joy that a bibliophile finds in a perfectly bound first edition of a rare book, or a hunter might feel in acquiring the best gun dog in the area. But for Conrad Kohrs the overriding factor in any deal remained utility. If a project had value and would probably be successful, it would be undertaken if the time was right. And with the introduction of purebred cattle, timing and planning did mean everything to Con. When he introduced Short Horns into Montana to upgrade the herds that were ranging in the valleys of the western part of the state and beginning to cross over to the eastern slope, he did so with the knowledge that the Short Horn had proven itself in the Mississippi Valley, in the East, and in Canada. Short Horn values were known, certain, and predictable. So in the introduction of the cattle to Montana he is a pioneer of sorts since he began the large-scale upgrading of the range herds. But the animal he chose was a well-established breed from back East, the standard one whose capabilities were known.

As with the Short Horns, Kohrs moved well ahead of his contemporaries in introducing Herefords to Montana. But again it was a firmly established breed, an animal that had demonstrated its value in Kansas and Missouri before Kohrs imported it. [40]

But there is another side to Conrad Kohrs's "pioneering" efforts . In addition to his early endeavors in the development of good quality cattle, in land investments, and in business activities, he lived as a pioneer, a new citizen in a fresh new frontier community, who was interested in building that community he had helped found. Those institutions that permitted a stable business atmosphere should be supported, he felt, and those that tended to bring disorder should he quelled. When the mining camps began to suffer from the constant assaults by outlaws and brigands that seemed the way of life in the new territory, young Con Kohrs joined with the vigilantes who rooted out these undesirables and restored order. On Kohrs's part, it was an early and conscious decision favoring stability. He made many more such judgements . For example, he had not owned the ranch two years when he entered county politics and worked with others who were interested in creating a healthy and active local government in Deer Lodge. When the cattlemen and the cattle grew so numerous in Montana that some regulation was needed, Con Kohrs, along with many others, worked to bring stability and self-regulation to the movement. By this time he had begun to enter state politics as well.

None of these actions were accidental. In fact, little that Kohrs ever did was on the spur of the moment. He saw that the community needed to build, that schools, churches, businesses, and a government needed to be encouraged. He did his part as a businessman, as a cattleman, and as an individual to see that these necessities developed. He began as a community builder and never ceased to be one. [41]

Introduction
Historic Resource Study | Cultural Resources Statement | Historic Structure Report