Grant-Kohrs Ranch Historic Structures Report

E. The Four Illustrations: An Evaluation

Much of what can be learned by considering these four illustrations of the ranch in sequence is so readily apparent that it merits but little additional discussion. The main house, for example, is seen to have remained about the same in its overall configurations in all of these drawings until the 1907 map, which is the first document showing the 1890 addition. The appearance of minor exterior modifications and landscaping also is easily determined. The consistent use of the jack-leg fence on all four documents, too, is strikingly clear. But taken as a whole, the four pictures show a little more general, yet substantive, data about the site.

First of all, it appears that the nature of the scene changed a great deal with the change in ownership. The Grant ranch that Granville Stuart pictured is a rougher kind of place than that illustrated in the earliest of the Kohrs period drawings, produced eighteen years later. The yard is full of trees already full grown and mature. The area in front of the house during the last full year of Grant's ownership accommodated two tepees some kind of utilitarian rack, and a trough, and served as some sort of pasture or corral, its borders graced by the rough-cut jack-leg fence. Conrad, Augusta, and John lived in the same house, which by that time was a physically imposing structure sporting a more formal front yard, with flower beds, a picket fence, and walkways, and which, probably because of the addition of soil and grass even seemed to sit on a slightly higher grade. So a big change in veneer and a formalization of the ranch house that now served as the home of a family accustomed to some refinements characterized the Kohrs era as compared with the Grant period.

Another difference is degree of sophistication of the entire cattle raising operation. Grant's ranch is hardly representative of a serious cattle growing business. Yet by 1883 and 1884 the Kohrs and Bielenberg ranch is proudly acclaiming that it is the home of "Clyde of Brant . . . Strideway, Miss Ella & Colt . . . Regent . . . Figaro," and the "Residence of Conrad Kohrs, Deer Lodge. Mont., Kohrs & Bielenberg, Breeders of Short-Horn & Hereford Cattle, Thoroughbred, Clydesdale, Percheron-Norman and Coach Horses." So, during the eighteen intervening years the entire site had become quite complex compared to the large house in the wilderness that John Grant owned near Deer Lodge City in 1865. The level of sophistication really did not change very much after that, although the ranch acquired more buildings, of course, such as the large barn—Historic Structure 15. But this is a matter of degree, and the essential change had already occurred. The 1907 map confirms a few of the details hinted at in the 1883 and 1884 views. The road in front of the bunkhouse is shown a bit more clearly, and the land determined by the jack-leg fence to the rear of the birdhouse in the 1884 drawing is also shown, as are the pastures adjacent to it. The 1883 and 1884 views picture a family proud of its accomplishments, aware of the imposing nature of its ranch headquarters. In that sense, the addition of lands and buildings in the decade of the 1890s was not very important . The essential quality of the Kohrs family, as an important unit in Montana play their material gains, was already established.

The change from the simple to the elaborate, from the merely functional to the heavily landscaped, was dramatic. The difference in the use of the home and in the kind of family that occupied the dwelling house during the two different periods of ownership was most apparent as well.

Introduction
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