MILES CITY - THE COW TOWN
By Louis Woodcock
Fanning the Embers, © 1971, Range Rider Reps, Miles City, Montana

Miles City has often been spoken of as being in the center of a circle, 150 miles in diameter, of the richest natural grassland in the world and while that's taking in quite a lot of territory, it is no exaggeration. Nowhere else can be found grass that is rich and nourishing from the time it starts growing in the spring through every stage of its growth and on into maturity.

It is no accident that the Miles City territory was the last great stand of the buffalo, open range cattle, and, of course, the real old range man and cowboy. Far to the south, there were great expanses of rangeland but the cattle there would not fatten on the natural grass enough to produce high-grade beef. The mountains to the west produced good summer pasture, but could not support cattle through the winter because of the deep snow. To the east and to the north where the rainfall was more plentiful and the winter snowfall heavy, the grass grew big and lush through the growing season, but would not keep its sustaining strength after it finished growing and these lands soon fell to the plow and became wheat farms.

But here we have a fine balance of climate and rainfall that, save for a few exceptional localities, provides enough moisture to grow the grass in the spring and then preserves it in the warm dry summer and fall so that it is available through the rest of the year as rich, nourishing pasture, seldom under more than a scant covering of snow. The climate that causes these conditions to exist will forever safeguard this territory from becoming a thickly populated farming country for that delicate balance will always prevail, just enough moisture for a fine crop of natural grass but not quite enough for general agriculture.

Here the great buffalo herds lived the year around and where there were buffalo, there were Indians. No one knows when the first Indians were here, but they left their stone implements behind them, which proves they were here a long time ago. But stronger and fiercer tribes knew a good thing when they saw it and they took the country in hand. The Crows held this country until tribes stronger than they began coming in from the east, where the white man, with his powder and lead, was making it hard for an honest redskin to let his squaw make a living, so when the first whites appeared here, they arrived just in time to see the Crows being relentlessly driven back toward the mountains by the fierce and powerful Sioux from the east and the Cheyenne from the south.

By the 1860's the Sioux called it their own, and fought so hard and bitterly to hold it that they forced treaties with the whites, ceding them all the territory drained by the Yellowstone River and its tributaries, and all the country from the Bighorn Mountains east to the Missouri River. This worked fine until gold was discovered in the Black Hills. and when the Indians proceeded to kill a few of the trespassers, who were messing up the scenery of this sacred summer playground with their prospect holes, sluice boxes, whoop-up towns, and every other sort of vandalism. the whites rose up in their righteous wrath and showed those Indians a thing or two by taking the whole country over, and as a precautionary measure, they killed off all the buffalo, too, for an Indian couldn't operate very successfully without buffalo to furnish his whole living, from meat to eat, to the fine sinews of his legs to sew hides together to make a teepee in which he slept in a bed of buffalo robes. All this brings us right back to Miles City.

The Yellowstone River runs across the country from the mountains in a northeasterly course to where it joins the Missouri, and into the Yellowstone from the south flows the Tongue. The valley of this fine run little river made a natural highway from the south to the north, and a buffalo didn't need an Engineering department to direct him how to find the easiest way from here to yonder, so he followed the Tongue down to the mouth, swam the Yellowstone and dropped his head and began to graze on the sweetest and richest grass he had eaten since the pickings began to get a little thin up on Pumpkin Creek, or Powder River, or wherever he had spent the winter. Now this buffalo mentioned was not an individual one, he was thousands and maybe millions. And where this buffalo grazed, all was not sweet grass and cool water for him, for an Indian was right there with a cocked bow-gun and a hungry look in his eye, as he aimed for a soft spot, and thought of broiled T-bone steak, with a little choke cherry sauce on the side.

This is where General Sheridan decided to send his army to punish and if possible, destroy, these redskinned savages, who had so fiendishly slaughtered innocent and defenseless white people. Right up the Yellowstone they came on their steamboat, the "Far West." Gen. George A. Custer was in charge, but he and his men had a considerable setback when they finally overtook the enemy not far west and south of here. The next attempt proved more successful. Gen. Nelson A. Miles was sent out to establish a fort in the middle of the Indian country and he located Ft. Keogh on the exact ground where the Range Riders Museum now stands. A year or two later the post was moved to where the headquarters buildings of the Livestock Experiment Station now stand. Traces of the old "Cantonment" are clearly visible to this day. But a more lasting and famous memento was left in the name of Miles City, which came into existence then, and will always bear the General's name. With the army came the buffalo hunter and with military support and protection, he, in a few short years, annihilated the last of the herd.

The noble redskin quickly caught on to the idea that it was easier to go into the Agency and live on government rations than it ever had been running a tough hided old buffalo down to where he could puncture a vital spot with an arrow, so thus ended another chapter of history.

Now this empire of grass was safe to be occupied by the white man and his cattle. The country to the south was giving way to the settler and the cattlemen were looking for new locations. The farms of western Montana, Washington, Idaho and Oregon were overstocked with steers for which there was no market. The Yellowstone country was opening up and to the Yellowstone they came, following the scarcely cool trail which the buffalo had so well surveyed. Miles City was where the trail herds from the south crossed the Yellowstone on their way north, and then the fattened steers were crossed back again when they were driven in to be shipped to market. Miles City was the cow town, not for a brief time but since the beginning and always will be.

Every tributary on either side of the river had its ranches. On the south side the Rosebud, the Tongue. Powder River, Box Elder and the Little Missouri and on the north side of the Yellowstone between it and the Missouri Cherry Creek and Custer, Sunday Creek and the Porcupine, the Dry and the Redwater. All these had their ranches and their herds. The cattle were turned loose to range at will. In the spring, the great Roundups were held and the cattle were thrown together from a small section of country at a time, the calves branded. and then all turned loose again to stay where they had been found except those that had drifted in from adjacent and sometimes distant ranges. These were held together and when enough had been gathered to warrant throwing them back toward home, they were cut out of the stray herd and the Representative or "Rep" would drive those belonging to the outfit he worked for, back to the home range, possibly 100 miles away. The Roundup would then move on to the next camp and so on until they and neighboring outfits, who were all working under a pre-arranged plan, one with another, had covered the entire territory. This same operation was repeated again in the fall. when the beef steers were gathered and the drive came to the shipping point on the railroad to go to the eastern packing plants. Any calves that had been missed on the spring roundup were branded at this time. All this took careful planning in advance. and brought about the organization of the Montana Stockgrowers Association. One of the most important matters of business was planning the Roundup.

While the cattle outfits were operating, the horse business was soon to follow. Where range cattle were worked, there must be horses. Horse breeding grew into a major industry, so that it was not long until there was a larger supply than the local market required. and the local sales yards were the natural result. Here was the largest primary horse market in the world, where horses were auctioned by the carload lot and many days saw 5,000 horses go to new owners, who shipped them to points all over the U.S.A. Many were exported to foreign countries. The English government bought horses by the thousands here during the Boer war, and later during the First World War. The French and Italians also were large buyers during the First World War. Then came the Tin Lizzie and the tractor. and the horse business collapsed like a punctured balloon, never to revive again.

Cattle were here to stay but all had not been calm and serene in the cattle business. Sheep thrived as well as cattle and horses on this fine grass and a cowman's claim to a large section of public domain for no other reason than that he had a log cabin and a pole corral in the middle of it and the surrounding country stocked with cattle didn't sound valid or reasonable to some hard headed old character with a lot of sheep and not enough grass. so he simply moved in with his sheep and the range war was on. Certainly without a lot of the Hollywood trimmings seen in the movies today, but they were bitter and sometimes bloody and perhaps that's a bit of history we should skip over lightly, for both the sheepman and the cowman were soon facing a problem bigger than either one had been to the other-the settler.

The eastern papers were filled with advertisements telling of the great opportunities to be had in the golden west, where a farm could be had for the taking. Why slave your life away on a job when independence and wealth could be had by taking a homestead and growing up with the country? And people who in their own memories had seen land in the states to the east develop from raw homesteads into finely improved, productive farms, could not resist the lure. And who can blame them? The land boomers and locators assured them that all they had to do was file on the land and turn a deaf ear to the Old Timers if they tried to tell them that this was not a farming country, for they were only trying to discourage them from settling on the land and were not only liars, but thieves as well, for if they weren't, where did they get all of those cattle. So again the country underwent a sudden violent change almost equal to the conquest of the Indian and buffalo.

The large cattle outfits were the first to go for they could not compete with thousands of settlers who fenced the grass and water and closed the trails. Neither could the sheep, but a few hardy old timers, with relatively small herds of cattle, somehow managed to survive. They for the most part were of the old cowboy breed who had decided there was more of a future in saving his wages and starting out on his own with a little bunch of cows, than there was in going into town with the last shipment of beef and blowing in his surnmer's wages in a violent blaze of glory that after a couple of days left him as broke as he had been when he started out in the spring.

The homesteaders reign, however, was short but far from sweet. His limited resources were soon exhausted and in desperation and sorrow, he had to leave his dreams and hopes behind him and go on to where he could make a living for himself and his family. It was a sad and pathetic phase of history to see so many people, who for the most part were honest and ambitious and who were only trying to better their condition in life, meet with the disappointments and disaster that they experienced. They had played in a game with the cards stacked against them.

As the abandoned homesteads' flimsy fences fell down, the livestock immediately began to increase again so that in a few years the range was nearly as open as it had been and the old rivalry for free grass was on again. Cattle, sheep, and thousands of nearly worthless horses swarmed over the country. The land was now mostly owned by Eastern loan companies and insurance firms who had invested in Montana farm mortgages and were left holding the bag. A large percentage of it had reverted to the counties in lieu of unpaid taxes. The condition now existed where one man owned the land and another one used it without cost. This could not and did not go on for long. Competition for the grass set the stockmen to buying up the land, for now it could be had for a song. Large blocks of it were bought and again came the barb-wire, but not around half-sections. This time the fences were miles long from corner to corner, enclosing large pastures, which are now under private ownership and careful management. Water was developed by drilling wells and building storage dams. Modern homes, complete with electricity, running water and -town'' plumbing, now house the rancher instead of the old dirt-roofed lop, cabin, and the ranches are served by gravel and oiled roads. Now the ranchers' worries are not those of the old time stockman, such as hard winters, drifting cattle, grey wolves and sheep, but is more apt to be how to keep mother happy in that old Buick, when she has her heart set on a Cadillac, Brucellosis, and income taxes.

But while times and conditions change, the men who handle the cattle never will. Modern methods have replaced the old open Range Roundups, but when there are calves to brand or cattle to be gathered, the cowboy is there on his horse doing the same work today, under a new setting, in the same way it was done in the beginning.

So we have the country today. The grass still grows, the cattle thrive and fatten. The industry is on a safer and more permanent basis today than it even has been before, And until a substitute for beefsteak is found, it will stay that way almost as God created it, grassland producing meat for men to eat.