Making History at the HPR
Every ranch has a “history” or, as the late Stephen E. Ambrose, Ph.D., described history, a “story”. I have attempted, with minimal resources (mostly minimal time resources) to discover the “story” of the Horse Prairie Ranch. I have only put together bits and pieces. Some day I hope to have the time to learn the real story of the Horse Prairie Ranch and Valley.
When I first purchased the ranch in 1995 I had heard that Meriwether Lewis of the Lewis & Clark Expedition came on or near the property of the HPR looking for Sacagawea’s people to obtain horses to ascend and cross the Great Divide. I learned that Mr. Robert Bergantino, a hydrologist and cartographer of Lewis and Clark camp sites, employed at the Technology College in Butte, had pinpointed the locations where Lewis and Clark had camped. I learned also that it was on August 11, 1805 that Meriwether would have been on or around the present day HPR. I called Mr. Bergantino, told him of my interest, and drove with Marie to Butte to see what I could learn from him. Mr. Bergantino took us to a room full of rolled up maps and pulled out a map that covered Beaverhead County and the location of our ranch. Mr. Bergantino knew of our ranch and the event that occurred on our near our ranch when Meriwether Lewis had his encounter with a young Shoshone Indian. Mr. Bergantino opened up one of his maps and pointed to an area and ask if I knew where the Idaho Power lines transected Painter Creek. I told him that I knew exactly where the location was and that it was approximately a quarter mile from our LakeSide guest area. I thanked Mr. Bergantino for his time and information and invited him to the ranch.
With the confirmation from Mr. Bergantino, I now felt confident enough to write a letter of invitation to Dr. Ambrose, whose bestselling book, Undaunted Courage, was at the time creating much interest in the upcoming bicentennial of the Lewis & Clark Expedition. Dr. Ambrose thanked me for the invitation and said that he had attempted, unsuccessfully, to access the ranch in the past. In about 1997 Dr. Ambrose made his first of what were to be many visits to the HPR. Dr. Ambrose confirmed Mr. Bergantino’s declaration of where Meriwether had his encounter with the young Shoshone Indian. As we saddled up and attempted to retrace a portion of Meriwether’s tracks that first morning, we learned even more. It was quite a treat to ride to the “elevated situation” (a small knoll or hill where Meriwether stopped to eat breakfast and survey the area to see where the young Indian might have gone) and sit on horseback while Dr. Ambrose read from the journals of Lewis & Clark and gave commentary like only he could.
In case you are not familiar with the story of Meriwether’s encounter with the young Shoshoni, you might be interested in Larry Zabel’s (a Montana artist), write up below:
Montana Trails Gallery
Upon seeing my painting, Legends of the Fall (Lewis & Clark portage at Great Falls, MT) Steven Ambrose mentioned that there was a gaping hole in the general collection of Lewis & Clark art and why wouldn’t I plug it. He put me in touch with Ken & Marie Duncan, owners of the Horse Prairie Ranch, and I have been swept along by the power and fascination of this historic event. Here’s my interpretation of it.
Riding Away from History
Thirty miles southwest of Dillon, Montana Lewis & Clark encountered the first horse they had seen since the Dakotas. They desperately needed horses because they had just run out of navigable river.
On Sunday morning August 11, 1805, Lewis and three men set out to investigate a horse track they had run across the prior evening. After a 17-mile hike, at the heart of what is now the Horse Prairie Ranch, Lewis spotted an Indian on horseback.
“……..with my glass I discovered from his dress that he was of a different nation from any that we had seen and was satisfied that of his being a Sosone (Shoshone), his arms were a bow and quiver of arrows an was mounted on an elegant horse without a saddle and small string which was attached to the underjaw of the horse which answered as a bridle……”
“I therefore hastened to take out of my sack some beads, a looking glass and a few trinkets which I had brought with me for this purpose and leaving my gun and pouch with McNeal advanced, unarmed towards him he remained in the same steadfast posture until I arrived in about 200 paces of him when he turned his horse about and began to move off slowly from me. I now called to him in a loud voice as I could command repeating the word tab-ba-bone, which in their language signifies white man. But looking over his shoulder he still kept his eye on Drewyer and Shields who were still advancing neither of them having sagacity through to recollect the impropriety of advancing when they saw me thus in parley with the Indians.
I now made a signal to these men to halt, Drewyer obeyed but Shields who afterwards told me that he did not observe the signal and still kept on, the Indian halted again and turned his horse about as if to wait for me, and I believe he would have remained until I came up with him had it not been for Shields who still pressed forward. When I arrived within 150 paces I again repeated the word ta-ba-bone and held up the trinkets in my hands and striped up my shirt sleeve to give him opportunity of seeing the color of my skin and advanced leisurely towards him, but he did not remain until I got nearer than about 100 paces when he suddenly turned his horse about, gave him the whip, leaped the creek and disappeared in the willow brush in an instant and with him vanished all my hopes of obtaining horses for the present.” From the journals of Lewis and Clark.
Had he stayed this Indian would surely have become one of the most famous in history.
Larry Zabel.
It was more than 55 years after Meriwether Lewis first set foot on today’s HPR when miners and ranchers came to the Horse Prairie Valley. Gold was discovered on Grasshopper Creek in 1862 and the town of Bannack was created and grew to become Montana’s first territorial capital. President Lincoln later used the Great Divide (hence the jagged southwest corner of Montana) to mark the boundary between the new states of Idaho and Montana. In the flurry of activity and blind ambition the miners hired Chinese immigrants (there was even a China town on the west side of the Horse Prairie Valley) who dug a series of canals to gather water from Coyote, Painter, Browns, and Watson’s creeks and transport it 17 miles to Bannack to help with mining and dredging activities. In 1865 (the year the Civil War ended) the Blair family, who first started ranching in the vicinity of today’s HPR, ingeniously filed irrigation and stock water rights on the water sources for the old Bannack ditch. The early ranchers claimed the water in the creeks as well as what flowed in the canals.
Another great Horse Prairie Valley story is the one about Henry Plummer, the dapper ex convict from San Quentin prison in California who showed up in Bannack and became the sheriff. As the legal authority in the town Sheriff Plummer was responsible for safe passage of all gold taken out of Grasshopper Creek. For some curious reason, everyone who shipped gold out of Bannack got held up and their gold stolen. The ranchers grew weary of this lawlessness and formed vigilante groups. One day the vigilante’s were about to hang a robber and the robber told them that he worked for the Sheriff and that the Sheriff was behind all the looting. The vigilantes quickly got the Sheriff to the hanging stand and put a rope around his neck and were ready to hang him when he asked if he could have a horse and a few hours and he would find some gold and surrender it to the vigilantes. He fooled the vigilantes and hid the gold somewhere in the Horse Prairie Valley. The vigilantes eventually found and hanged the Sheriff but never found his gold!
Yet another great “story” of the Horse Prairie Valley is when Chief Joseph and his small band of holdout Nez Perce Indians were camped in the Big Hole (the valley just north of the Horse Prairie Valley) and were surprise attacked by the U.S. Calvary. There were many deaths and Chief Joseph and his people were driven out of the Big Hole and took a southwesterly route through the Big Hole Divide and into the Horse Prairie Valley via Bloody Dick Creek. The proud but beaten down Chief and his warriors came upon a handful of ranchers putting up hay on what today would be the Lazy E4 ranch (now Bar Double T) and killed a couple of the ranchers. It was this incident that started the defeat of the Nez Perce to the point that Chief Joseph said that “My people will fight no more”, and he and his people fled to Canada.
When we first set up our web site for the HPR, one of the first ranch web sites published in the late 1990s, I received an email from a lady in Connecticut who said that she discovered our site and recognized the Old Red Barn. She said that many years ago her father worked on the ranch when she was a little girl and that she and a friend were chased up the stairs one day to the second level of the Barn by a pet fawn with a bandana around its neck. The lady said that the only way that she and her friend could get away from the Fawn was to climb up into the loose hay in the loft on the second floor of the Old Red Barn.
On another occasion I was contacted by a gentleman from Yakima, Washington who related the story of when he was taken by is father at the age of 16 from Butte to work on the ranch (his uncle had met the Hughes family when they were in Butte buying or selling cattle). This person, Dennis Pierce, was a treasure trove of information. He told me about the old two-story home that the Hughes lived in at the headquarters of the ranch, where there was a bar on the top floor where the Hughes hosted their cattle buyers and where everyone could count on a good meal at Noon. He told me about the Bucket O’ Blood bar at Armstead (owned by Emerson Hughes), where many ranchers spent too much money and time. He told me of the old bar in Dillon where a young neighbor boy was always welcome upstairs, kind of like old Gus in Lonesome Dove.
When the HPR was written up in February in the Western Horseman magazine, the article uncovered Don Lewis, according to people I have talked with around town one of the finest stewards of the HPR. Don has given me a lot of valuable information about the ranch including a vintage photo of someone in the shadows of Bachelor Mountain feeding hay from a sled with a team. Don was a very good roper and had a fine son, Ben, who worked with him on the ranch. The son was diagnosed with a brain tumor and died in his late teens. Shortly thereafter Don sold the ranch. One of the stories Don told me was when the Goggins brothers owned the ranch, after him, and brought to the ranch and auctioned off 5,000 head of Steers.
The HPR has been owned by more than 10 people, including surgeons from Florida, local cattlemen of some renown, politicians from the east (Joseph Sullivan), and those looking to make a quick buck. The ranch was initially homesteaded by the Blair family and really developed by three generations of the Hughes family (George, Emerson, and Denton). On U.S. Forest Service maps the ranch is denoted as the Hughes ranch. I believe that, other than the Hughes family, the Duncans have owned the ranch the longest, assembled the most properties (i.e. blocked the ranch with the acquisition of neighboring properties), and spent the most on improvements!
If you come to the HPR, you can not only ride into history, but you can help us make it…..you can contribute to our “story”.
When I first purchased the ranch in 1995 I had heard that Meriwether Lewis of the Lewis & Clark Expedition came on or near the property of the HPR looking for Sacagawea’s people to obtain horses to ascend and cross the Great Divide. I learned that Mr. Robert Bergantino, a hydrologist and cartographer of Lewis and Clark camp sites, employed at the Technology College in Butte, had pinpointed the locations where Lewis and Clark had camped. I learned also that it was on August 11, 1805 that Meriwether would have been on or around the present day HPR. I called Mr. Bergantino, told him of my interest, and drove with Marie to Butte to see what I could learn from him. Mr. Bergantino took us to a room full of rolled up maps and pulled out a map that covered Beaverhead County and the location of our ranch. Mr. Bergantino knew of our ranch and the event that occurred on our near our ranch when Meriwether Lewis had his encounter with a young Shoshone Indian. Mr. Bergantino opened up one of his maps and pointed to an area and ask if I knew where the Idaho Power lines transected Painter Creek. I told him that I knew exactly where the location was and that it was approximately a quarter mile from our LakeSide guest area. I thanked Mr. Bergantino for his time and information and invited him to the ranch.
With the confirmation from Mr. Bergantino, I now felt confident enough to write a letter of invitation to Dr. Ambrose, whose bestselling book, Undaunted Courage, was at the time creating much interest in the upcoming bicentennial of the Lewis & Clark Expedition. Dr. Ambrose thanked me for the invitation and said that he had attempted, unsuccessfully, to access the ranch in the past. In about 1997 Dr. Ambrose made his first of what were to be many visits to the HPR. Dr. Ambrose confirmed Mr. Bergantino’s declaration of where Meriwether had his encounter with the young Shoshone Indian. As we saddled up and attempted to retrace a portion of Meriwether’s tracks that first morning, we learned even more. It was quite a treat to ride to the “elevated situation” (a small knoll or hill where Meriwether stopped to eat breakfast and survey the area to see where the young Indian might have gone) and sit on horseback while Dr. Ambrose read from the journals of Lewis & Clark and gave commentary like only he could.
In case you are not familiar with the story of Meriwether’s encounter with the young Shoshoni, you might be interested in Larry Zabel’s (a Montana artist), write up below:
Montana Trails Gallery
Upon seeing my painting, Legends of the Fall (Lewis & Clark portage at Great Falls, MT) Steven Ambrose mentioned that there was a gaping hole in the general collection of Lewis & Clark art and why wouldn’t I plug it. He put me in touch with Ken & Marie Duncan, owners of the Horse Prairie Ranch, and I have been swept along by the power and fascination of this historic event. Here’s my interpretation of it.
Riding Away from History
Thirty miles southwest of Dillon, Montana Lewis & Clark encountered the first horse they had seen since the Dakotas. They desperately needed horses because they had just run out of navigable river.
On Sunday morning August 11, 1805, Lewis and three men set out to investigate a horse track they had run across the prior evening. After a 17-mile hike, at the heart of what is now the Horse Prairie Ranch, Lewis spotted an Indian on horseback.
“……..with my glass I discovered from his dress that he was of a different nation from any that we had seen and was satisfied that of his being a Sosone (Shoshone), his arms were a bow and quiver of arrows an was mounted on an elegant horse without a saddle and small string which was attached to the underjaw of the horse which answered as a bridle……”
“I therefore hastened to take out of my sack some beads, a looking glass and a few trinkets which I had brought with me for this purpose and leaving my gun and pouch with McNeal advanced, unarmed towards him he remained in the same steadfast posture until I arrived in about 200 paces of him when he turned his horse about and began to move off slowly from me. I now called to him in a loud voice as I could command repeating the word tab-ba-bone, which in their language signifies white man. But looking over his shoulder he still kept his eye on Drewyer and Shields who were still advancing neither of them having sagacity through to recollect the impropriety of advancing when they saw me thus in parley with the Indians.
I now made a signal to these men to halt, Drewyer obeyed but Shields who afterwards told me that he did not observe the signal and still kept on, the Indian halted again and turned his horse about as if to wait for me, and I believe he would have remained until I came up with him had it not been for Shields who still pressed forward. When I arrived within 150 paces I again repeated the word ta-ba-bone and held up the trinkets in my hands and striped up my shirt sleeve to give him opportunity of seeing the color of my skin and advanced leisurely towards him, but he did not remain until I got nearer than about 100 paces when he suddenly turned his horse about, gave him the whip, leaped the creek and disappeared in the willow brush in an instant and with him vanished all my hopes of obtaining horses for the present.” From the journals of Lewis and Clark.
Had he stayed this Indian would surely have become one of the most famous in history.
Larry Zabel.
It was more than 55 years after Meriwether Lewis first set foot on today’s HPR when miners and ranchers came to the Horse Prairie Valley. Gold was discovered on Grasshopper Creek in 1862 and the town of Bannack was created and grew to become Montana’s first territorial capital. President Lincoln later used the Great Divide (hence the jagged southwest corner of Montana) to mark the boundary between the new states of Idaho and Montana. In the flurry of activity and blind ambition the miners hired Chinese immigrants (there was even a China town on the west side of the Horse Prairie Valley) who dug a series of canals to gather water from Coyote, Painter, Browns, and Watson’s creeks and transport it 17 miles to Bannack to help with mining and dredging activities. In 1865 (the year the Civil War ended) the Blair family, who first started ranching in the vicinity of today’s HPR, ingeniously filed irrigation and stock water rights on the water sources for the old Bannack ditch. The early ranchers claimed the water in the creeks as well as what flowed in the canals.
Another great Horse Prairie Valley story is the one about Henry Plummer, the dapper ex convict from San Quentin prison in California who showed up in Bannack and became the sheriff. As the legal authority in the town Sheriff Plummer was responsible for safe passage of all gold taken out of Grasshopper Creek. For some curious reason, everyone who shipped gold out of Bannack got held up and their gold stolen. The ranchers grew weary of this lawlessness and formed vigilante groups. One day the vigilante’s were about to hang a robber and the robber told them that he worked for the Sheriff and that the Sheriff was behind all the looting. The vigilantes quickly got the Sheriff to the hanging stand and put a rope around his neck and were ready to hang him when he asked if he could have a horse and a few hours and he would find some gold and surrender it to the vigilantes. He fooled the vigilantes and hid the gold somewhere in the Horse Prairie Valley. The vigilantes eventually found and hanged the Sheriff but never found his gold!
Yet another great “story” of the Horse Prairie Valley is when Chief Joseph and his small band of holdout Nez Perce Indians were camped in the Big Hole (the valley just north of the Horse Prairie Valley) and were surprise attacked by the U.S. Calvary. There were many deaths and Chief Joseph and his people were driven out of the Big Hole and took a southwesterly route through the Big Hole Divide and into the Horse Prairie Valley via Bloody Dick Creek. The proud but beaten down Chief and his warriors came upon a handful of ranchers putting up hay on what today would be the Lazy E4 ranch (now Bar Double T) and killed a couple of the ranchers. It was this incident that started the defeat of the Nez Perce to the point that Chief Joseph said that “My people will fight no more”, and he and his people fled to Canada.
When we first set up our web site for the HPR, one of the first ranch web sites published in the late 1990s, I received an email from a lady in Connecticut who said that she discovered our site and recognized the Old Red Barn. She said that many years ago her father worked on the ranch when she was a little girl and that she and a friend were chased up the stairs one day to the second level of the Barn by a pet fawn with a bandana around its neck. The lady said that the only way that she and her friend could get away from the Fawn was to climb up into the loose hay in the loft on the second floor of the Old Red Barn.
On another occasion I was contacted by a gentleman from Yakima, Washington who related the story of when he was taken by is father at the age of 16 from Butte to work on the ranch (his uncle had met the Hughes family when they were in Butte buying or selling cattle). This person, Dennis Pierce, was a treasure trove of information. He told me about the old two-story home that the Hughes lived in at the headquarters of the ranch, where there was a bar on the top floor where the Hughes hosted their cattle buyers and where everyone could count on a good meal at Noon. He told me about the Bucket O’ Blood bar at Armstead (owned by Emerson Hughes), where many ranchers spent too much money and time. He told me of the old bar in Dillon where a young neighbor boy was always welcome upstairs, kind of like old Gus in Lonesome Dove.
When the HPR was written up in February in the Western Horseman magazine, the article uncovered Don Lewis, according to people I have talked with around town one of the finest stewards of the HPR. Don has given me a lot of valuable information about the ranch including a vintage photo of someone in the shadows of Bachelor Mountain feeding hay from a sled with a team. Don was a very good roper and had a fine son, Ben, who worked with him on the ranch. The son was diagnosed with a brain tumor and died in his late teens. Shortly thereafter Don sold the ranch. One of the stories Don told me was when the Goggins brothers owned the ranch, after him, and brought to the ranch and auctioned off 5,000 head of Steers.
The HPR has been owned by more than 10 people, including surgeons from Florida, local cattlemen of some renown, politicians from the east (Joseph Sullivan), and those looking to make a quick buck. The ranch was initially homesteaded by the Blair family and really developed by three generations of the Hughes family (George, Emerson, and Denton). On U.S. Forest Service maps the ranch is denoted as the Hughes ranch. I believe that, other than the Hughes family, the Duncans have owned the ranch the longest, assembled the most properties (i.e. blocked the ranch with the acquisition of neighboring properties), and spent the most on improvements!
If you come to the HPR, you can not only ride into history, but you can help us make it…..you can contribute to our “story”.
posted by Kenneth W. Duncan | 7:07 PM
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