This vibrant Victorian Era flower garden was planted and cared for by Augusta Kohrs. She felt a great need to impose a degree of order and elegance to separate her home and its surrounding landscape from the rugged Montana countryside.
The Hard Winter of 1886, forced many ranchers to keep enough hay handy for their livestock to survive the harsh Montana winters. Necessity is the mother of invention and this unique device was invented to easily stack hay and leave it outside all year round.
It took a tremendous amount of patience, practice, and skill to properly butcher a cow. This small structure was added to the ranch in the 1880’s to feed hungry cowboys and ranch hands various roasts, steaks, and other basic cuts from a freshly butchered cow.
When the bell rings, it’s time for the bunkhouse cook to share his food! See the room where the hardworking ranch cook would prepare several hot and hardy meals each day.
The cowboys on the ranch usually had to go into town to wash the dirt and sweat away before this small shower and washroom was added to the bunkhouse row. Even with these modern amenities close by, most cowboys on the ranch typically only bathed once a week in the summer and once a month in the winter!
What did cowboys do in their free time? Did they hang out and sing cowboys songs at night? Did they play games? The bunkhouse sitting room was the place where they would relax and socialize together away from work.
Structures like this chicken house and brooder coop not only provided the family with a never-ending supply of meat and fresh eggs, but also allowed the ranch to be self-sufficient during tough times.
Got milk? In 1932, Conrad Warren developed a small herd of Jersey dairy cattle and constructed this barn as a processing center to sell milk, which guaranteed a monthly income for the ranch during a period of economic hardship across the United States.
This Dougherty wagon has connections to three separate national park sites which makes it a unique artifact to the story of Grant-Kohrs Ranch, the National Park Service and the nation’s transportation history.
Have you ever dreamed of becoming a park ranger? Grant-Kohrs Ranch National Historic Site offers three different Junior Ranger Programs based on the age of the participant, These fun and free activity books allow children and their families to explore the ranch and learn more about the lives of the people who worked and lived on the ranch!
Long before refrigeration was available on the ranch this building was needed to store blocks of ice to keep perishable food such as meat and dairy products from spoiling. As modern convenience's reached the ranch, Conrad Warren repurposed this building to store tack and other equipment for horse and ranching operations.
How does a ranch stack and store enough food for its livestock to eat throughout a harsh Montana winter? With a hay stacker of course! Take a walk to the distant pastures and view the historic Jenkins hay stacker.
Water has always been a precious resource, in the arid western United States, especially to ranchers who need it for hay production. Historical structures like the Johnson Creek flume have been used for over a century to help in determining who controls the rights and usage of the American West’s most valuable resource.
While most of the day-to-day operations of the Kohrs-Bielenberg Ranch were oriented towards beef cattle, the breeding and selling of thoroughbred and draft horses became an integral part of their business. This small barn once housed a prized Shire draft horse named “Leeds Lion.”
For generations several Native peoples passed through the Deer Lodge Valley and used the surrounding area for multiple purposes long before the ranch was established by Johnny Grant and. These pair of tipis help to tell their stories.
The ranch repair shop was instrumental in the success of the ranch as it transitioned from the Open Range Era to a modern style of ranching and was used for maintaining and repairing ranch equipment, machinery, and vehicles.
Come and get it! Life on a cattle drive was exhausting work and the chuck wagon and the resourcefulness of the cook not only boosted the crews moral, but also played a vital role in the success or failure of the entire journey.
A River Runs Through It! The Clark Fork is the largest river in Montana by volume and one of the longest rivers in the state. It flows through 2.5 miles of the Grant-Kohrs Ranch and supports a variety of ranching operations, recreational opportunities, and critical wildlife habitat.
Originally this structure was built as a cabin, then later converted into a bunkhouse and eventually into a small office. This room was the heart of the business operations for the ranch from approximately 1935 to 1947.
Endurance, power, and intelligence. These were just some of the attributes that horses brought to the day-to-day operations of the ranch. Horses were not always left outside on the range, however and this barn was constructed around 1883 to house many of the ranch’s prized Thoroughbreds horses.
This colonial style cottage home was the former residence of Conrad and Nellie Warren. It was built in 1934 as a wedding gift from Augusta Kohrs to her newlywed grandson and his bride. In 2002, the building was converted into the Grant-Kohrs Ranch National Historic Site’s administrative offices.
This small outhouse was constructed in the 1930’s by a Works Progress Administration (WPA) crew and is one of 2.5 million that were constructed during the Great Depression as part of President Franklin Delano Roosevelts “New Deal,” to improve sanitation and public health in rural areas.
