Missing the Drive
By definition an absentee rancher needs to travel to his ranch. When early fall comes I start missing my weekend summer travel to the ranch. My ranch is 6 hours and two States away from our suburban home --- whether I drive or fly. When I fly I can go into either the Idaho Falls or Butte airports. The itinerary is something like the following: 1) Drive 1 hour to the Salt Lake airport; 2) wait at least 1 hour for the SkyWest plane to board; 3) fly for 1 ½ hours to either Idaho Falls or Butte; and 4) drive for 2 hours from either airport to the HPR. Another 30 minutes can be consumed just waiting for luggage or sitting on the tarmac. So, for a lot of money and the sacrifice of squeezing into those small seats I can get to the ranch in 6 hours flying in a commercial aircraft. One positive aspect of flying is that the people on the planes are always excited in anticipation of their western adventure (e.g. skiing, fishing, hunting, dude ranching, etc.) or telling everyone about it on their way home.
If I drive my old blue Ford F-350 pickup with nearly 140,000 miles, then my 6 hour trip is much different. Our son, Matt, is fond of reminding me that I have driven around the world several times to get to our ranch in Montana. During the summer months, when I spend every weekend at the ranch, I usually get out of the Provo/Orem metropolitan area in mid afternoon on a Thursday or Friday. If I am driving the most dangerous and boring route, I-15, I try to get through Salt Lake City before rush hour (e.g. 4pm). My preferred route is to leave our home on Canyon Road in Provo and avoid I-15 by traveling north to beautiful Heber Valley. I enjoy Provo Canyon and I especially enjoy reviewing the current construction work to widen and improve the road. I only wish that the State of Utah would find a way to eliminate long-haul semi-trailer trucks in the canyon. They are taking a short cut from I-80 to I-15 and pose a safety hazard and are noisy and contribute to smog in the canyon.
When I get to Heber Valley and approach Heber City I survey the Heber airport to see how many corporate jets are parked there and, yes, I dream just a little of what a nice flight it would be from Heber Valley to the Horse Prairie Valley, via a private jet. I have noticed over the last few years how many more jets are at the Heber Airport……..still not as many as Hailey, Idaho (Sun Valley) or Aspen, but at least a growing crowd. After leaving Heber Valley the next private jet I will see will be Leon Hirsch’s Falcon at the old Dell, Montana airport, about 45 minutes from our ranch.
My drive continues from Heber Valley over the mountains, past Park City, and on to I-80 East, toward Evanston, Wyoming (if I am going to Idaho or Jackson Hole sometimes I stay on I-80 to Evanston, then on to Ririe, Idaho or Jackson Hole). At Echo Reservoir I turn onto I-84 West. I like this route because I get to see the long UP Railroad trains slowly winding their way over the mountains toward Wyoming. In honor of my father, who was a locomotive engineer on the Atchison Topeka & Santa Fe railroad out of Winslow, Arizona, and my own experiences working as a brakeman on the Santa Fe, I roll down the window to hear the noise of the diesel engines pulling those heavy trains. As I watch the train huff and puff up the mountains my mind conjures up a thousand thoughts about growing up on Route 66 and on the Santa Fe route from Chicago to LA. I think of the beautiful and romantic scenery in the high plateau country of northern New Mexico (my father’s “Run” was from Winslow, Arizona to Gallup, New Mexico). I also think of climbing the Great Divide, west of Flagstaff, where I worked as a brakeman for two summers while in college. I guess us Duncan boys thought we knew trains.
Memories are a great way to pass the time and stay awake while driving. As I continue west on I-84 and watch the trains climbing east, my mind takes me back to when my older brother, Stu, talked me into jumping a freight train in Salt Lake City headed south for either Las Vegas or Denver, we knew not which! We jumped the wrong railroad car and ended up on a gondola (like half a box car, used to haul grain, etc.) holding on for our dear lives at 60 miles an hour on a full moon, very cold night. I will never forget how cold it was and how hard it was to “hold on”. After hours in the desert the train finally pulled into Milford, Utah and we knew that we were on our way to Las Vegas. We jumped off the train at Milford and walked up to the head engine and told the engineer that we had been on the train since Salt Lake City, our father was a locomotive engineer, and could we please have permission to ride in one of the train’s many empty engines. The kind engineer said that he could not give us permission but that if we did it anyway we would sure get a warm ride into Las Vegas! We jumped in the engines, quickly fell asleep, and awoke as the train was making its way down a canyon north of Las Vegas. When we arrived in Las Vegas, looking like anything but Las Vegas tourists, we got a bite to eat and walked to the highway to Kingman, Arizona……hitch hiking (it must have been our goal to not spend any money on transportation). We soon caught a ride to Kingman but the driver’s car (while I was driving because the driver was stone drunk!) dropped its transmission on the way up the Divide, somewhere west of Williams. I don’t recall how but we got to Williams and I remember the driver, who was a soldier, calling is wife in Oklahoma and informing her that he would not make it home on his leave. We left this poor, drunk soldier on Route 66 and hitch hiked again to Winslow, where we purchased a ticket on a Trailways bus and ended up knocking on the front door of our homestead, waking our sweet mother at 2am for our Easter weekend at home! Yes I love those trains and I do get along fine as long and I am moving. Trains are a great way to move along.
I continue my drive through the Wasatch Front and into Ogden Valley, where I-84 merges into I-80. By now the traffic is not too congested and I point my pickup north. As I get in north Ogden the traffic begins to thin. I pass the “Almosta Ranch” property and notice that it has no animals this year. Maybe the owner is now too old to care for animals. Without any livestock, it really is only “almost a ranch”. One of my next favorite places is when I pass the Smith & Edwards store. I dream of having a gift certificate for that store, in an amount of about $100,000! I could buy everything in the store………and would have so much fun using it all. On occasion I have stopped by the store to pick up some Ferrier supplies for the ranch. Smith & Edwards is a regional combination of a co-op and army surplus store.
I continue north toward Tremonton where I-84 continues to Boise, Idaho and I-15 forks off toward Pocatello, Idaho. Now I can finally relax and set the cruise control, given how sparse the traffic is. It’s time to turn up the country music and settle in for 5 more hours of driving. I feel like a semi truck driver who makes daily runs on I-15. I make the time go by fast as I think about who the HPR guests are this week. I also think about the steak dinner that awaits me if I can get to the ranch by 6:30 p.m.
On I-15 I pass families traveling to or returning from summer vacations to Yellowstone, Teton National Park, Glacier National Park, Waterton Lakes in Canada, Jackson Hole, Driggs, Idaho and all the other beautiful places in the area. I remember all the great family vacations we had to those and many more locations, including Alaska and the Yukon Territory. I love to see families touring and enjoying the west.
I cross the Utah Idaho border on my way to Malad, Idaho. Between the rest stop and Malad I see the two small crosses along the Interstate. This summer someone put small hard hats and flowers on the crosses. I remember when Jaun, who used to work for us at the ranch, returned from Mexico three summers ago and came through the Malad area about the time of the accident. He said that two little boys from California were killed in the accident.
I always enjoy the Malad Pass. There is especially one nice little hay ranch on the east side of the Interstate. The ranch always seems to be taken care of and reaches back to the head of a creek and valley……an apparent “end of road; head of stream” ranch. As I cross the Pass I am reminded that it isn’t always safer to fly. I scan the mountains and landscape, wondering just where it was that my friend, Brad, who was an executive with a soft drink distributor in Salt Lake City, had his plane ice up one cold winter day and flew right into the ground killing all 3 or 4 occupants. Some times I like to fly and sometimes I like to drive. At least at the wheel I feel that I am in control of my destiny and not at the hands of another.
From Malad Pass there is a kind of boring stretch to Pocatello, except for the old white ranch headquarters home at the bottom of the Pass, west of the Interstate. It is a two story white frame ranch home that overlooks the Valley, facing northeast. I always think of the great lives that must have lived in that old ranch house. It must have also been nice years ago, before the Interstate, when it had more privacy in the valley.
In about thirty minutes I come to Pocatello, which goes forever along I-15, it seems. Pocatello is a railroad town and my thoughts often wander again to my father and his railroading times on the Santa Fe in Arizona. The real significance of arriving in Pocatello is that I am halfway to the ranch, having traveled approximately 3 hours. I know that the best 3 hours of the drive are ahead of me.
As I climb out of the Pocatello Valley and toward Blackfoot I cannot pass the Blackfoot exit without recalling nearly 40 years ago when my sweet Mother left her family and husband to drive me to Rexburg, Idaho to attend then Ricks College. For some reason I recall that Mom exited at Blackfoot to get to Shelley where she was going to look up a relative. Mom was such a good sport to drive all the way from Arizona to Idaho to take me to my freshman year of college.
The stretch between Blackfoot and Idaho Falls is not that far but it sure seems like a long way! The farms of southeast Idaho and all the lava rock between these two cities just aren’t that exciting to me. As I arrive in Idaho Falls my thoughts turn to 1969 when I returned from an L.D.S. mission to northern California (imagine Mormon missionaries trying to pitch the love of Christ amidst all that Flower Power and Love in San Francisco!) to resume my schooling at Ricks. This was the spring, on the first day of spring, that I was to go to a girl’s choice prom --- dance, having been invited by Marie Anthony from Ririe, Idaho, just 15 miles from Rexburg. Marie was persuaded by an old mission buddy’s sister to ask me out. We immediately fell in love and have been in that state for the past 37 years!
I also think a lot when I pass through Idaho Falls about Marie’s father, Fay Anthony. Fay was a very astute small business person having developed a nice bulk oil distributorship in Ririe and Idaho Falls. I think of all the farms and ranches where Fay delivered oil and fuel. He seems to know everyone in the area.
I now turn more due north on I-15. Nearly all traffic exits I-15 at Idaho Falls to travel to West Yellowstone, Jackson Hole, Teton National Park and other beautiful areas of Idaho and Montana. For years our little family exited I-15 to spend Thanksgiving at grandpa and Grandma Anthonys and to do our first skiing of the season, usually at Grand Targhee.
I now point my Ford F-350 right toward the Great Divide ahead. The outline of the mountains of the Great Divide beckons to me to come home. I pass the Sage Junction interchange and interstate inspection station and think of a few years ago when one cold winter two great horse people who lived on the Great Divide lost their lives on horses. One was a rancher from Dillon who was gathering cattle on horseback and something went wrong and he got thrown to his death. The other was a young cowboy on the Idaho side of the Great Divide who was rounding up rodeo stock horses and got thrown to his death. Not surprising that lives would be lost on the Great Divide doing cattle work, that’s about all that is done at this point on the Great Divide.
I now come to an area that I have watched develop over the years from sagebrush range lands to irrigated alfalfa pastures. An entrepreneur named Wayne Larsen realized that beneath all that sagebrush was the mighty Snake River aquifer, in other words a virtually underground river that could be tapped with wells and used to irrigate the land with wheel lines. It worked, and Mr. Larsen put thousands of acres under irrigation and has developed one of the largest agriculture businesses in southeast Idaho. This is the last area where I will see farming.
As I pass Dubois I ascend the Great Divide with my country music turned up and my cruise control on again. The traffic is now very sparse, especially after August. I now see herds of Cows and sometimes Sheep. I love this part of the drive. I squint to look ahead to the year-round flashing yellow light at the steep curve just south of Spencer, Idaho. Depending upon what time I got off I may now see the short local run of the Union Pacific running from Dillon, Montana to Idaho Falls, Idaho. I always think of what a great run these guys have. Of course, I also lower my window if I am close to the train.
I made the sharp turn and drive through Spencer, the last small town in Idaho. I have been watching over the years a couple of small cabins built in Spencer. It looks fun. As I leave Spencer I see the beacon light just east of the Interstate that will signal that I am exactly one hour from the ranch. The drive now is much more interesting. I think of the ranches I see along the road as neighbors or kin. I think of their challenges over the years……mortgages, droughts, grasshoppers, harsh winters, low cattle prices, etc. I contemplate my respect for those who have held on in adversity. I think of how miraculously we have held on for 10 years. It never seems to get easier. Soon I know that the clock I watch in my pickup will not pass another hour before I am at the HPR. I pass a lot of white crosses in Idaho and Montana but the largest group of white crosses, eight of them, is near the old steel bridge just on the Idaho side of the Divide. I think of the country song (“three wooden crosses”, Trace Atkins, I believe) and try to imagine what kind of an accident on the Divide would kill so many people and what it did to upset so many lives.
As I approach the summit of the Great Divide I realize that when I was eight years old my father drove over the old, second steel bridge with our family on our way to Montana. I wish so much that I could recreate, just for a few moments, that first trip over the Great Divide. I ascend the summit of the Divide at 75-85 miles an hour, speeding on my way to the HPR. This is Monida Pass (Montana + Idaho), where the MDOT has a web cam which I often view from my office in Utah, wishing that I was in the view of the camera. I look to the east and see the old highway winding its way naturally along the terrain of the Great Divide. I see the remnants of the old “Welcome to Montana” sign and realize that it was probably the same sign that greeted our family when I was a child. Again, I wish so much that I could recreate that experience and ask Dad, again, where we were. “This is Montana, Son” rings in my ears. Then I think of how lucky I am to own a ranch in Montana today.
Soon I begin to see the Italian peaks to the east and the Snowline ranch in the foreground. My family tells me that every time I pass the Snowline exit I say out loud “there’s the Snowline ranch”……it is a check on whether or not we are all awake (like we used to call out the block signals in the engines on the railroad --- “Green Block”, just to assure that the engineer was awake!). The Snowline is the first large Montana ranch on the Montana side of the Great Divide. It is a beautiful ranch.
I am now descending into Lima (pronounced like the bean and not like the city in Peru). If it’s before 10:00 p.m. you can get fuel at Lima; otherwise, you need to drive another hour to Dillon. I pass the state inspection building just north of Lima on my way to Dell. Before I see Dell I see Leon Hirsch’s Falcon jet at the old Dell (WWII) airport. I am reminded that Leon possibly could have left the same time I did from Hawaii or London and beat me to Dell!
Now it’s just the old rest stops, the Kitt exit, and the Red Rock River ahead of me before the exit off I-15. Just before I cross the Red Rock River I see old Ned Wellborn’s reservoir next to the freeway and his pump pumping irrigation water to his large alfalfa field. What a brilliant move on Ned’s part. The state of Montana needed his material to build the Interstate and old Ned knew that the area was close enough to the Red Rock river that the ground water would be quite shallow so he had them build a reservoir from which he could claim rights and irrigate his land up the foothills…….brilliant. Every time I see Ned’s property I am inspired to do a better job of utilizing our precious and limited water at the HPR.
Now, finally, I travel on to Exit 44, at the Clark Canyon reservoir exit. The reservoir is beautiful but I would also like to have seen the small town of Armstead, which was covered up by the reservoir in the early 1960s. I read once that Armstead used to ship more cattle than any other place in America. It must have been quite the town with its Bucket O’Blood bar and railway station. It used to be a transportation hub for the Horse Prairie, Grasshopper, and Big Hole valleys. For awhile there was another small railway that came from Corrine, Utah to Armstead, from the west, it was the old Pittsburgh & Gilmore railway (the P&G also known as the Push and Grunt, which is what passengers had to do on the Bannack Pass to keep the told train rolling along). I think of what a trip it would have been from Corrine, Utah to nearly the front doorstep of the Horse Prairie Ranch.
I glance up at the Buffalo Lodge on my right as I exit on exit 44, then turn left and cross over I-15 and then the dam. I am now heading west and need to keep a sharp eye out for big game, mostly pronghorn or antelope. I soon come to the old LC or today’s Draggin Y ranch headquarters. Roger Peters owns the sprawling Draggin Y and several other ranches in the Horse Prairie Valley and other parts of Montana. In about 12 ½ miles I see the Old Bannack highway, a dirt road from Montana State Highway 324 to the Ghost town of Bannack. Down the Bannack highway about a mile is the headquarters of the Centennial Ranch, formerly known as the Cross and Hairpin ranches. Then, just beyond the Bannack turn off is the town of Grant, including its small school house, which I understand from one of our employees, is down to 5 Hispanic students.
In another couple of miles I turn right on Mansfield Lane, a dirt County road. I pass the old Joe Mansfield white home, now occupied by our neighbors at the Centennial, and onto the mailboxes. If I go straight at the mailboxes I will end up at our Lower Horse Prairie Ranch where our manager, Urs Schmidlin, and his family live. If I turn left at the mailboxes and drive another few miles I will pass Ron and Megan’s 160 acre outfit, an island in the HPR. Past Ron and Megan’s place a few miles is our entrance gate, the Headquarters of the HPR. As I close and fasten the entrance gate shut, I see our home on the hill behind Headquarters and feel a sense of being home and safe.
Now you see what it is like to drive around the world several times just to get to the HPR. The more my mind races the more alert I am and the faster the drive seems. It is a long way and might have frightened some absentee owners off but not me. Every time I drive to the ranch it is like reliving my dream. I would drive a 10 hour drive to be at the ranch, where I feel safe, independent, free, and where “seldom is heard a discouraging word”!
If I drive my old blue Ford F-350 pickup with nearly 140,000 miles, then my 6 hour trip is much different. Our son, Matt, is fond of reminding me that I have driven around the world several times to get to our ranch in Montana. During the summer months, when I spend every weekend at the ranch, I usually get out of the Provo/Orem metropolitan area in mid afternoon on a Thursday or Friday. If I am driving the most dangerous and boring route, I-15, I try to get through Salt Lake City before rush hour (e.g. 4pm). My preferred route is to leave our home on Canyon Road in Provo and avoid I-15 by traveling north to beautiful Heber Valley. I enjoy Provo Canyon and I especially enjoy reviewing the current construction work to widen and improve the road. I only wish that the State of Utah would find a way to eliminate long-haul semi-trailer trucks in the canyon. They are taking a short cut from I-80 to I-15 and pose a safety hazard and are noisy and contribute to smog in the canyon.
When I get to Heber Valley and approach Heber City I survey the Heber airport to see how many corporate jets are parked there and, yes, I dream just a little of what a nice flight it would be from Heber Valley to the Horse Prairie Valley, via a private jet. I have noticed over the last few years how many more jets are at the Heber Airport……..still not as many as Hailey, Idaho (Sun Valley) or Aspen, but at least a growing crowd. After leaving Heber Valley the next private jet I will see will be Leon Hirsch’s Falcon at the old Dell, Montana airport, about 45 minutes from our ranch.
My drive continues from Heber Valley over the mountains, past Park City, and on to I-80 East, toward Evanston, Wyoming (if I am going to Idaho or Jackson Hole sometimes I stay on I-80 to Evanston, then on to Ririe, Idaho or Jackson Hole). At Echo Reservoir I turn onto I-84 West. I like this route because I get to see the long UP Railroad trains slowly winding their way over the mountains toward Wyoming. In honor of my father, who was a locomotive engineer on the Atchison Topeka & Santa Fe railroad out of Winslow, Arizona, and my own experiences working as a brakeman on the Santa Fe, I roll down the window to hear the noise of the diesel engines pulling those heavy trains. As I watch the train huff and puff up the mountains my mind conjures up a thousand thoughts about growing up on Route 66 and on the Santa Fe route from Chicago to LA. I think of the beautiful and romantic scenery in the high plateau country of northern New Mexico (my father’s “Run” was from Winslow, Arizona to Gallup, New Mexico). I also think of climbing the Great Divide, west of Flagstaff, where I worked as a brakeman for two summers while in college. I guess us Duncan boys thought we knew trains.
Memories are a great way to pass the time and stay awake while driving. As I continue west on I-84 and watch the trains climbing east, my mind takes me back to when my older brother, Stu, talked me into jumping a freight train in Salt Lake City headed south for either Las Vegas or Denver, we knew not which! We jumped the wrong railroad car and ended up on a gondola (like half a box car, used to haul grain, etc.) holding on for our dear lives at 60 miles an hour on a full moon, very cold night. I will never forget how cold it was and how hard it was to “hold on”. After hours in the desert the train finally pulled into Milford, Utah and we knew that we were on our way to Las Vegas. We jumped off the train at Milford and walked up to the head engine and told the engineer that we had been on the train since Salt Lake City, our father was a locomotive engineer, and could we please have permission to ride in one of the train’s many empty engines. The kind engineer said that he could not give us permission but that if we did it anyway we would sure get a warm ride into Las Vegas! We jumped in the engines, quickly fell asleep, and awoke as the train was making its way down a canyon north of Las Vegas. When we arrived in Las Vegas, looking like anything but Las Vegas tourists, we got a bite to eat and walked to the highway to Kingman, Arizona……hitch hiking (it must have been our goal to not spend any money on transportation). We soon caught a ride to Kingman but the driver’s car (while I was driving because the driver was stone drunk!) dropped its transmission on the way up the Divide, somewhere west of Williams. I don’t recall how but we got to Williams and I remember the driver, who was a soldier, calling is wife in Oklahoma and informing her that he would not make it home on his leave. We left this poor, drunk soldier on Route 66 and hitch hiked again to Winslow, where we purchased a ticket on a Trailways bus and ended up knocking on the front door of our homestead, waking our sweet mother at 2am for our Easter weekend at home! Yes I love those trains and I do get along fine as long and I am moving. Trains are a great way to move along.
I continue my drive through the Wasatch Front and into Ogden Valley, where I-84 merges into I-80. By now the traffic is not too congested and I point my pickup north. As I get in north Ogden the traffic begins to thin. I pass the “Almosta Ranch” property and notice that it has no animals this year. Maybe the owner is now too old to care for animals. Without any livestock, it really is only “almost a ranch”. One of my next favorite places is when I pass the Smith & Edwards store. I dream of having a gift certificate for that store, in an amount of about $100,000! I could buy everything in the store………and would have so much fun using it all. On occasion I have stopped by the store to pick up some Ferrier supplies for the ranch. Smith & Edwards is a regional combination of a co-op and army surplus store.
I continue north toward Tremonton where I-84 continues to Boise, Idaho and I-15 forks off toward Pocatello, Idaho. Now I can finally relax and set the cruise control, given how sparse the traffic is. It’s time to turn up the country music and settle in for 5 more hours of driving. I feel like a semi truck driver who makes daily runs on I-15. I make the time go by fast as I think about who the HPR guests are this week. I also think about the steak dinner that awaits me if I can get to the ranch by 6:30 p.m.
On I-15 I pass families traveling to or returning from summer vacations to Yellowstone, Teton National Park, Glacier National Park, Waterton Lakes in Canada, Jackson Hole, Driggs, Idaho and all the other beautiful places in the area. I remember all the great family vacations we had to those and many more locations, including Alaska and the Yukon Territory. I love to see families touring and enjoying the west.
I cross the Utah Idaho border on my way to Malad, Idaho. Between the rest stop and Malad I see the two small crosses along the Interstate. This summer someone put small hard hats and flowers on the crosses. I remember when Jaun, who used to work for us at the ranch, returned from Mexico three summers ago and came through the Malad area about the time of the accident. He said that two little boys from California were killed in the accident.
I always enjoy the Malad Pass. There is especially one nice little hay ranch on the east side of the Interstate. The ranch always seems to be taken care of and reaches back to the head of a creek and valley……an apparent “end of road; head of stream” ranch. As I cross the Pass I am reminded that it isn’t always safer to fly. I scan the mountains and landscape, wondering just where it was that my friend, Brad, who was an executive with a soft drink distributor in Salt Lake City, had his plane ice up one cold winter day and flew right into the ground killing all 3 or 4 occupants. Some times I like to fly and sometimes I like to drive. At least at the wheel I feel that I am in control of my destiny and not at the hands of another.
From Malad Pass there is a kind of boring stretch to Pocatello, except for the old white ranch headquarters home at the bottom of the Pass, west of the Interstate. It is a two story white frame ranch home that overlooks the Valley, facing northeast. I always think of the great lives that must have lived in that old ranch house. It must have also been nice years ago, before the Interstate, when it had more privacy in the valley.
In about thirty minutes I come to Pocatello, which goes forever along I-15, it seems. Pocatello is a railroad town and my thoughts often wander again to my father and his railroading times on the Santa Fe in Arizona. The real significance of arriving in Pocatello is that I am halfway to the ranch, having traveled approximately 3 hours. I know that the best 3 hours of the drive are ahead of me.
As I climb out of the Pocatello Valley and toward Blackfoot I cannot pass the Blackfoot exit without recalling nearly 40 years ago when my sweet Mother left her family and husband to drive me to Rexburg, Idaho to attend then Ricks College. For some reason I recall that Mom exited at Blackfoot to get to Shelley where she was going to look up a relative. Mom was such a good sport to drive all the way from Arizona to Idaho to take me to my freshman year of college.
The stretch between Blackfoot and Idaho Falls is not that far but it sure seems like a long way! The farms of southeast Idaho and all the lava rock between these two cities just aren’t that exciting to me. As I arrive in Idaho Falls my thoughts turn to 1969 when I returned from an L.D.S. mission to northern California (imagine Mormon missionaries trying to pitch the love of Christ amidst all that Flower Power and Love in San Francisco!) to resume my schooling at Ricks. This was the spring, on the first day of spring, that I was to go to a girl’s choice prom --- dance, having been invited by Marie Anthony from Ririe, Idaho, just 15 miles from Rexburg. Marie was persuaded by an old mission buddy’s sister to ask me out. We immediately fell in love and have been in that state for the past 37 years!
I also think a lot when I pass through Idaho Falls about Marie’s father, Fay Anthony. Fay was a very astute small business person having developed a nice bulk oil distributorship in Ririe and Idaho Falls. I think of all the farms and ranches where Fay delivered oil and fuel. He seems to know everyone in the area.
I now turn more due north on I-15. Nearly all traffic exits I-15 at Idaho Falls to travel to West Yellowstone, Jackson Hole, Teton National Park and other beautiful areas of Idaho and Montana. For years our little family exited I-15 to spend Thanksgiving at grandpa and Grandma Anthonys and to do our first skiing of the season, usually at Grand Targhee.
I now point my Ford F-350 right toward the Great Divide ahead. The outline of the mountains of the Great Divide beckons to me to come home. I pass the Sage Junction interchange and interstate inspection station and think of a few years ago when one cold winter two great horse people who lived on the Great Divide lost their lives on horses. One was a rancher from Dillon who was gathering cattle on horseback and something went wrong and he got thrown to his death. The other was a young cowboy on the Idaho side of the Great Divide who was rounding up rodeo stock horses and got thrown to his death. Not surprising that lives would be lost on the Great Divide doing cattle work, that’s about all that is done at this point on the Great Divide.
I now come to an area that I have watched develop over the years from sagebrush range lands to irrigated alfalfa pastures. An entrepreneur named Wayne Larsen realized that beneath all that sagebrush was the mighty Snake River aquifer, in other words a virtually underground river that could be tapped with wells and used to irrigate the land with wheel lines. It worked, and Mr. Larsen put thousands of acres under irrigation and has developed one of the largest agriculture businesses in southeast Idaho. This is the last area where I will see farming.
As I pass Dubois I ascend the Great Divide with my country music turned up and my cruise control on again. The traffic is now very sparse, especially after August. I now see herds of Cows and sometimes Sheep. I love this part of the drive. I squint to look ahead to the year-round flashing yellow light at the steep curve just south of Spencer, Idaho. Depending upon what time I got off I may now see the short local run of the Union Pacific running from Dillon, Montana to Idaho Falls, Idaho. I always think of what a great run these guys have. Of course, I also lower my window if I am close to the train.
I made the sharp turn and drive through Spencer, the last small town in Idaho. I have been watching over the years a couple of small cabins built in Spencer. It looks fun. As I leave Spencer I see the beacon light just east of the Interstate that will signal that I am exactly one hour from the ranch. The drive now is much more interesting. I think of the ranches I see along the road as neighbors or kin. I think of their challenges over the years……mortgages, droughts, grasshoppers, harsh winters, low cattle prices, etc. I contemplate my respect for those who have held on in adversity. I think of how miraculously we have held on for 10 years. It never seems to get easier. Soon I know that the clock I watch in my pickup will not pass another hour before I am at the HPR. I pass a lot of white crosses in Idaho and Montana but the largest group of white crosses, eight of them, is near the old steel bridge just on the Idaho side of the Divide. I think of the country song (“three wooden crosses”, Trace Atkins, I believe) and try to imagine what kind of an accident on the Divide would kill so many people and what it did to upset so many lives.
As I approach the summit of the Great Divide I realize that when I was eight years old my father drove over the old, second steel bridge with our family on our way to Montana. I wish so much that I could recreate, just for a few moments, that first trip over the Great Divide. I ascend the summit of the Divide at 75-85 miles an hour, speeding on my way to the HPR. This is Monida Pass (Montana + Idaho), where the MDOT has a web cam which I often view from my office in Utah, wishing that I was in the view of the camera. I look to the east and see the old highway winding its way naturally along the terrain of the Great Divide. I see the remnants of the old “Welcome to Montana” sign and realize that it was probably the same sign that greeted our family when I was a child. Again, I wish so much that I could recreate that experience and ask Dad, again, where we were. “This is Montana, Son” rings in my ears. Then I think of how lucky I am to own a ranch in Montana today.
Soon I begin to see the Italian peaks to the east and the Snowline ranch in the foreground. My family tells me that every time I pass the Snowline exit I say out loud “there’s the Snowline ranch”……it is a check on whether or not we are all awake (like we used to call out the block signals in the engines on the railroad --- “Green Block”, just to assure that the engineer was awake!). The Snowline is the first large Montana ranch on the Montana side of the Great Divide. It is a beautiful ranch.
I am now descending into Lima (pronounced like the bean and not like the city in Peru). If it’s before 10:00 p.m. you can get fuel at Lima; otherwise, you need to drive another hour to Dillon. I pass the state inspection building just north of Lima on my way to Dell. Before I see Dell I see Leon Hirsch’s Falcon jet at the old Dell (WWII) airport. I am reminded that Leon possibly could have left the same time I did from Hawaii or London and beat me to Dell!
Now it’s just the old rest stops, the Kitt exit, and the Red Rock River ahead of me before the exit off I-15. Just before I cross the Red Rock River I see old Ned Wellborn’s reservoir next to the freeway and his pump pumping irrigation water to his large alfalfa field. What a brilliant move on Ned’s part. The state of Montana needed his material to build the Interstate and old Ned knew that the area was close enough to the Red Rock river that the ground water would be quite shallow so he had them build a reservoir from which he could claim rights and irrigate his land up the foothills…….brilliant. Every time I see Ned’s property I am inspired to do a better job of utilizing our precious and limited water at the HPR.
Now, finally, I travel on to Exit 44, at the Clark Canyon reservoir exit. The reservoir is beautiful but I would also like to have seen the small town of Armstead, which was covered up by the reservoir in the early 1960s. I read once that Armstead used to ship more cattle than any other place in America. It must have been quite the town with its Bucket O’Blood bar and railway station. It used to be a transportation hub for the Horse Prairie, Grasshopper, and Big Hole valleys. For awhile there was another small railway that came from Corrine, Utah to Armstead, from the west, it was the old Pittsburgh & Gilmore railway (the P&G also known as the Push and Grunt, which is what passengers had to do on the Bannack Pass to keep the told train rolling along). I think of what a trip it would have been from Corrine, Utah to nearly the front doorstep of the Horse Prairie Ranch.
I glance up at the Buffalo Lodge on my right as I exit on exit 44, then turn left and cross over I-15 and then the dam. I am now heading west and need to keep a sharp eye out for big game, mostly pronghorn or antelope. I soon come to the old LC or today’s Draggin Y ranch headquarters. Roger Peters owns the sprawling Draggin Y and several other ranches in the Horse Prairie Valley and other parts of Montana. In about 12 ½ miles I see the Old Bannack highway, a dirt road from Montana State Highway 324 to the Ghost town of Bannack. Down the Bannack highway about a mile is the headquarters of the Centennial Ranch, formerly known as the Cross and Hairpin ranches. Then, just beyond the Bannack turn off is the town of Grant, including its small school house, which I understand from one of our employees, is down to 5 Hispanic students.
In another couple of miles I turn right on Mansfield Lane, a dirt County road. I pass the old Joe Mansfield white home, now occupied by our neighbors at the Centennial, and onto the mailboxes. If I go straight at the mailboxes I will end up at our Lower Horse Prairie Ranch where our manager, Urs Schmidlin, and his family live. If I turn left at the mailboxes and drive another few miles I will pass Ron and Megan’s 160 acre outfit, an island in the HPR. Past Ron and Megan’s place a few miles is our entrance gate, the Headquarters of the HPR. As I close and fasten the entrance gate shut, I see our home on the hill behind Headquarters and feel a sense of being home and safe.
Now you see what it is like to drive around the world several times just to get to the HPR. The more my mind races the more alert I am and the faster the drive seems. It is a long way and might have frightened some absentee owners off but not me. Every time I drive to the ranch it is like reliving my dream. I would drive a 10 hour drive to be at the ranch, where I feel safe, independent, free, and where “seldom is heard a discouraging word”!
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