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(upbeat music)

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There are, I think, undeniably,

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new winds sweeping across America.

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They are indeed gusty and
changeable, but they are new.

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And they will alter
what happens in Montana.

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And whether for better or
worse, does depend on Montanans,

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and how they or you, read those winds.

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(upbeat music)

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[Presenter] The buffalo
was near extinction.

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The Indians were moving
to reservation areas,

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and the railroad was expanding

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into the remote regions of the northwest.

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To Montana cattlemen, the open range

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of the Eastern Montana
plains appeared to be

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an ideal environment for
expanding their herds.

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Eastern and European investors also viewed

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the Western grasslands as an
opportunity for quick profit,

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and they joined Montanans
in flooding the plains

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with herds from the Northwest,
Texas, and the Midwest.

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By 1886, the Montana
ranges were overcrowded,

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and during the hard winter of 1886-87,

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nearly 60% of the entire
cattle population died.

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Recovery was good for the
few ranchers who stayed,

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but the boom of the industry was over.

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Smaller ranches developed
on owned or leased property

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rather than the open
range, and winter feed

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for the cattle became a priority.

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The Montana livestock industry endured

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many hardships those first few years,

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as we shall see in this discussion

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of its boom and bust cycle.

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I want to talk now about the
cattle industry in Montana.

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And in a moment I'd like to move

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from Western Montana to Eastern Montana.

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I know that those of you from
Eastern and Central Montana

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didn't think I'd ever get around

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to your great and beautiful land,

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but I will, not only in
this lecture but in others.

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The cattle industry in Montana

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is much older than most people believe.

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The first permanent herd in Montana

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rose right up here in
the Bitterroot Valley.

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It was further disbanded,
one was St. Mary's Mission.

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They had, by 1848, about
30 head of cattle there.

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But when John Owen took over Fort Owen,

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by about 1858 he had 1,000
head of cattle there.

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And that's a lot of cattle.

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In 1858, Richard and Johnny
Grant, father and son,

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had a herd of about 600 head of cattle

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over in the Deer Lodge Valley.

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Because in '58, this is very early,

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this is before the mining rushes.

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By the late 1850s, herds were very common

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in the Bitterroot Valley,
in the Beaverhead,

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in the Deer Lodge Valley,

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in the Gallatin Valley, and elsewhere.

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Where were these cattle sold?

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Well initially, they were
sold to the Military,

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because there wasn't any other market.

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But the moment you start
getting the gold strikes,

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you get a tremendous boom
in the cattle market,

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because these are beef hungry men.

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The first Texas Trail
herd drive into Montana

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took place in 1866,
notice how early it is,

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up into the region of Bozeman, Montana.

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Again, what is happening elsewhere

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has a profound effect on Montana.

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By 1870, the population in Oregon,

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there had been a tremendous
pouring of people,

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as you know, over the
Oregon Trail to Oregon,

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had stabilized and there
was an excess of cattle.

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What you now begin to get,
these are Longhorns mind you,

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you get drives through the rugged timbered

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mountain country from Oregon into Montana.

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How they ever got the Longhorns
through timbered country,

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I don't know, these are
wild animals really,

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not fundamentally the good
old Hereford of today,

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or the Shorthorn, or the Simmental.

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There are almost no studies of
the drives from West to East.

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The best book that I know
on the subject is a novel.

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It is A.B. Guthrie
Junior, and it is called

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"Cattle on a Thousand
Hills", and it is the story

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of one such drive, and
it's a very good book.

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But most of the cattle
are coming up from Texas.

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The reason is this, by the '70s,

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the Texas ranges are
very badly overstocked.

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That is also true of the
ranges in Southern California,

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so that in the '70s and
early '80s, you begin to see

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great drives into Montana,
and you begin to see,

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that since the mountain valleys
in the West are filling up,

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a spilling over of these
cattle into Central Montana,

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and subsequently into Eastern Montana.

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The first place, Montana grass,
native grass, or Bunchgrass,

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or Buffalograss, or any
of its various names,

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was in Montana, very considerably superior

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to the grass in Wyoming or
Colorado or anywhere else

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in the North American
Continent, it was beautiful.

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The altitude in Montana was
lower than the high plains.

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The terrain was more broken,

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for more protection,
there was more shelter.

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And so that by the early
1870s, or middle 1870s,

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Texas Trail herds were becoming
rather regular into Montana.

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You are getting this
surplus in Western Montona

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so you get a mingling of domestic cattle,

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though they were Longhorns,

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and Texas Trail herd drive Longhorns

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all coming together in Central
and then in Eastern Montana.

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Now these animals were
grazed on the open range,

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and they were fattened there.

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Take the word fattened with some caution

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because Longhorns didn't fatten very much.

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They were then, after a
year, sometimes two years,

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because they were more often sold

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as two year olds than as one year olds,

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driven to Rails End and shipped

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to Chicago, or Omaha, or Sioux City.

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So that by about 1880,
1879, you're getting

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some very big ranches,
especially in Central Montana.

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For instance, the great DHS Ranch,

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DHS stands for Davis, Stuart, and Hauser,

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all men that you've heard of.

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They had 5,000 cattle
on their ranch in 1880.

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But by 1885, again, with the
importation of foreign capital,

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in this case coming largely from Nebraska,

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they were running 12,000 head of cattle

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at the foot of the Judith Mountains,

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worth about a million dollars.

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Notice the beginning
now of outside capital

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coming in on the cattle industry.

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By 1882, 1883, Central Montana
was beginning to fill up

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with great big cattle
outfits, and then it begins

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to spillover, because the buffalo are gone

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and the Indian is, quote, tamed, unquote,

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so the cattle industry
continues to move eastward.

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These cattle as I say
were driven to Rails End

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at Bismarck, North
Dakota, after fattening,

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or when N.P. hits Montana in 1883,

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Billings becomes the launching point.

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Okay, we've come the year
1886, a very important year.

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There were approximately
1,050,000 cattle in the Territory,

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almost all of them in
Central and Eastern Montana.

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These cattle were the best in the world.

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They were now beginning
to be a cross between,

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or a series of crosses, between
Longhorns and not Herefords,

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Herefords don't come in until 1883,

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Shorthorns or Durhams, for the most part.

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The running of cattle on the open range

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posed some enormously difficult problems

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as well as enormous profit.

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The problems were essentially these.

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In the first place, rustling,
both by Whites and Indians,

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on a rather massive scale.

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Secondly, hard winters, that's
winter country over there.

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All right, now remember, you're running

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this huge number of cattle
divided into customary range,

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that is to say, these
cattlemen did not buy the land

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on which they were running
the cattle, at all.

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They didn't even homestead it.

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Although occasionally, if
there was a good spring

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or somewhere along a river,
they would homestead 160 acres.

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But the rest of this
land is completely free.

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It's public domain, it
cost them not one cent

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to run their cattle on this range.

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That's why it was so
enormously profitable.

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For instance, a two year old
heifer or a two year steer

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brought in Chicago about 20 bucks.

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The cost of running him for
two years was about $1.50.

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So it's a tremendous business.

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And that draws in the speculators.

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And the speculators are
largely English and Scotch.

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Now there are New Yorkers,
there are Americans involved

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in speculation, the jamming
of cattle onto the range,

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but mostly, this is foreign,

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this is European, English, and Scotch.

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There is a very good book on that subject.

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It's called "Bankers and Cattlemen".

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It's by Eugene Gressler, G-R-E-S-S-L-E-R,

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of the University of Wyoming.

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Again, people say, well,
this outside capital business

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didn't apply to the cattle industry,

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or the sheep industry, or
the agricultural industry.

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Oh yes it did, and it applied because

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of the enormous profits to be
made, and that's why you get

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the enormous overcrowding of the range.

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By 1886 it's in very serious condition.

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I want to talk a little
more about the problems

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until I come to the year 1886.

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There had to be some kind of organization.

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There were no fences,
just customary range,

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they were all mingling together,

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in huge numbers on the open range.

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I might add, this is of
course the year of the cowboy,

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which lasted only about 15 years.

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The literature on it will go on forever,

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the open range cowboy.

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But it's a very, very short
period in our history.

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What they did was hold two
roundups a year, spring and fall.

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The purpose of the spring
roundup was to brand the calves.

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Now remember, they would
mark off a huge district.

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They would then appoint a captain,

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elect a captain, who had absolute power.

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Then each rancher would
send a man to the roundup

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depending on how many cattle he had.

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If you didn't send a man,
he sent $2.00 per head

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for each calf branded,
and all roundup expenses

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were prorated according to
how many cattle you owned.

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The cowboys would then fan out

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from a central point
over this huge country,

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and they would drive into
a central spot again,

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say 12,000 to 15,000 head of
cattle to brand the calves.

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Please remember there were no corrals,

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there were no fences, there
were no squeeze shoots,

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there were no propane
fired branding irons.

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You had to rope each calf,
you had to build a bonfire,

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heat up the branding
irons, and brand them,

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and turn them loose.

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It must have been one hell of a sight.

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This is of course the year of the cowboy.

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Rustling was very serious.

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It was made grand larceny in 1897.

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In 1899 it was made a hanging
offense, a capital offense.

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A group of vigilantes organized
in 1884 in Central Montana.

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They were called the Stranglers.

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Very little is known about them,

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because unlike the vigilantes of the '60s,

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they were not careful about
who they aimed at all.

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If you were riding across
Central or Eastern Montana

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without impeccable identification,

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it was very simple, you were hanged.

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It's very difficult to
get at the Stranglers,

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and no successful effort has
really been made to date.

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All right, by the fall of 1886

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the range was in very bad shape.

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It had been a very hot
and very dry summer.

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The price of cattle was low.

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As a consequence of it,
many ranchers held over

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their two year olds to be three year olds,

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waiting for a better
price the following year,

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so that the range is tremendously crowded.

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The grass is eaten
right down to the roots.

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And early in November,
1886, the first storm hit.

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It was a heavy, heavy, wet snow.

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And then there were a series of Chinooks

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which melted the snow so that most

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of Central and Eastern Montana became,

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when the freeze now comes,
a great sheet of ice.

247
00:15:35,253 --> 00:15:39,560
And then there were a
succession of blizzards,

248
00:15:39,560 --> 00:15:43,610
with temperatures ranging
down to 45 below zero.

249
00:15:43,610 --> 00:15:48,060
And these storms lasted all
the way through February.

250
00:15:48,060 --> 00:15:50,430
And by the time of the March Chinooks,

251
00:15:50,430 --> 00:15:54,610
when the cowboys could get
out to look at the range,

252
00:15:54,610 --> 00:15:57,173
all of the coulees were
filled with carcasses.

253
00:15:58,660 --> 00:16:01,210
Let me give you an
example, this is written

254
00:16:01,210 --> 00:16:06,210
by Teddy Blue, a cowboy
who was riding for the DHS,

255
00:16:06,220 --> 00:16:09,430
or the Pioneer Cattle
Company, Granville Stuart.

256
00:16:09,430 --> 00:16:10,803
He described it this way.

257
00:16:12,297 --> 00:16:17,217
"We had branded by actual
count 10,000 DHS calves

258
00:16:17,217 --> 00:16:19,227
"on the Flatwillow and McGinnis roundups

259
00:16:19,227 --> 00:16:22,937
"in the spring and fall of 1886.

260
00:16:22,937 --> 00:16:26,920
"This meant, as we
estimated, 40,000 cattle.

261
00:16:26,920 --> 00:16:31,920
"On the spring roundup of 1887,
not 100 yearlings showed up.

262
00:16:32,207 --> 00:16:34,107
"And on a rough count, there were only

263
00:16:35,199 --> 00:16:39,287
"7,000 cattle all tolled,
mostly steers and dry cows.

264
00:16:39,287 --> 00:16:42,787
"And these were cattle
raised on the Montana range.

265
00:16:42,787 --> 00:16:46,913
"The loss on trail cattle
that had just come in was 90%.

266
00:16:47,927 --> 00:16:51,037
"Fully 60% of all the cattle in Montana

267
00:16:51,037 --> 00:16:55,647
"were dead by March 15,
1887, and that is why

268
00:16:55,647 --> 00:17:00,450
"everything on the range
dates from that winter."

269
00:17:00,450 --> 00:17:04,601
This is the so-called hard
winter of 1886 and '87.

270
00:17:04,601 --> 00:17:08,676
Many of the ranchers indeed
lost 3/4 of their herds.

271
00:17:08,676 --> 00:17:12,731
It was a catastrophe of
enormous proportions,

272
00:17:12,731 --> 00:17:16,323
and one has to ask the question why?

273
00:17:17,830 --> 00:17:21,650
Because of the fragility of the land.

274
00:17:21,650 --> 00:17:25,853
Because those great plains
looks tough and flat and ugly,

275
00:17:27,010 --> 00:17:29,510
it isn't, it's extremely fragile,

276
00:17:29,510 --> 00:17:32,050
and we simply pumped more cattle

277
00:17:32,050 --> 00:17:34,730
onto the land than it could sustain.

278
00:17:34,730 --> 00:17:38,430
We abused the land, we
destroyed a good deal of it,

279
00:17:38,430 --> 00:17:40,540
and it has never returned.

280
00:17:40,540 --> 00:17:43,710
And this is 1886 and 1887.

281
00:17:43,710 --> 00:17:45,734
I am an environmentalist.

282
00:17:45,734 --> 00:17:50,734
This is the kind of a thing
that happens repeatedly.

283
00:17:51,140 --> 00:17:52,410
It's a kind of thing of course

284
00:17:52,410 --> 00:17:54,750
that we've got to stop from happening.

285
00:17:54,750 --> 00:17:59,106
The open range never,
never really came back.

286
00:17:59,106 --> 00:18:01,960
The end of the open range did not occur

287
00:18:01,960 --> 00:18:05,430
on May 2nd, Wednesday at 2:00 p.m..

288
00:18:05,430 --> 00:18:09,300
It came more gradually
than that, but it came.

289
00:18:09,300 --> 00:18:14,300
Now you begin to fence, foreign
capital, for the time being,

290
00:18:14,590 --> 00:18:17,468
but only for the time being, pulls out.

291
00:18:17,468 --> 00:18:21,233
The size of the herds is greatly reduced.

292
00:18:22,460 --> 00:18:27,460
A big herd would be
1,500 rather than 15,000.

293
00:18:28,300 --> 00:18:31,850
You see fencing, it's
often with barbed wire.

294
00:18:31,850 --> 00:18:33,590
It's often thought that the homesteader,

295
00:18:33,590 --> 00:18:37,220
or the honyocker, or the
nester, was the person

296
00:18:37,220 --> 00:18:39,460
who strung barbed wire all over the west.

297
00:18:39,460 --> 00:18:41,623
It's not true, the ranchers did.

298
00:18:42,720 --> 00:18:45,740
You see a great increase in irrigation,

299
00:18:45,740 --> 00:18:49,050
and in the cutting of
hay for winter feeding.

300
00:18:49,050 --> 00:18:52,810
So the whole cattle industry
changes in aspect and form.

301
00:18:52,810 --> 00:18:56,470
As speculators are pulling out now,

302
00:18:56,470 --> 00:18:58,470
it becomes a local industry.

303
00:18:58,470 --> 00:19:00,767
It doesn't last that long, maybe 10 years.

304
00:19:00,767 --> 00:19:05,767
The cowboy becomes an irrigator,
he becomes a fence fixer,

305
00:19:05,780 --> 00:19:08,180
a little bit later, a tractor driver,

306
00:19:08,180 --> 00:19:09,920
and a jack of all trades.

307
00:19:09,920 --> 00:19:13,340
Between 1887, which is the
end of the hard winter,

308
00:19:13,340 --> 00:19:18,340
and 1900, Central and Eastern
Montana was ranch country.

309
00:19:18,870 --> 00:19:22,080
It's true as I told you that
it was changing very rapidly.

310
00:19:22,080 --> 00:19:25,040
But still it was ranch
country, and nothing else,

311
00:19:25,040 --> 00:19:28,730
dotted with ranch towns geared totally

312
00:19:28,730 --> 00:19:30,720
to the ranching industry.

313
00:19:30,720 --> 00:19:35,117
And this land was utterly
dependent on grass, native grass,

314
00:19:35,117 --> 00:19:39,112
and not planted grass,
not introduced species,

315
00:19:39,112 --> 00:19:42,327
native grass often called Bunchgrass,

316
00:19:42,327 --> 00:19:46,320
or the whole country is
sometimes referred to,

317
00:19:46,320 --> 00:19:49,457
or was, as the Shortgrass Country.

318
00:19:49,457 --> 00:19:52,090
This grass, very, very high in protein,

319
00:19:52,090 --> 00:19:55,601
doesn't grow and wave
beautifully in the wind,

320
00:19:55,601 --> 00:19:59,450
but it is enormously nutritious.

321
00:19:59,450 --> 00:20:02,570
Now the old time rancher knew this,

322
00:20:02,570 --> 00:20:05,280
knew this country and knew it well.

323
00:20:05,280 --> 00:20:10,280
He knew above all else that
the moisture in this area

324
00:20:11,090 --> 00:20:15,440
was cyclical, and that
when that moisture came

325
00:20:15,440 --> 00:20:19,260
was as important as how much of it came.

326
00:20:19,260 --> 00:20:24,070
The average annual rainfall
over in your neck of the woods

327
00:20:24,070 --> 00:20:28,320
is between 12 and 15 inches per year,

328
00:20:28,320 --> 00:20:30,423
not rainfall, but precipitation.

329
00:20:31,700 --> 00:20:36,570
The old time rancher knew,
because he watched the grass,

330
00:20:36,570 --> 00:20:40,140
that only a very slight variation

331
00:20:40,140 --> 00:20:43,433
in the pattern of precipitation,
let alone in the quantity,

332
00:20:44,568 --> 00:20:47,773
and very quickly you got a drought,

333
00:20:48,690 --> 00:20:52,040
because the average precipitation

334
00:20:52,040 --> 00:20:56,913
was so near the minimum
required for plant life.

335
00:20:57,897 --> 00:21:00,330
Now this as a matter of fact had been true

336
00:21:00,330 --> 00:21:02,970
for at least 3,000 years,

337
00:21:02,970 --> 00:21:05,110
which I will come back to in a moment,

338
00:21:05,110 --> 00:21:07,410
the cyclical nature of drought.

339
00:21:07,410 --> 00:21:10,403
We persist to this day,
as we're doing right now,

340
00:21:10,403 --> 00:21:13,093
because we've got a
drought in Eastern Montana,

341
00:21:14,070 --> 00:21:16,360
that drought is an aberration,

342
00:21:16,360 --> 00:21:20,100
that the norm is the wet period.

343
00:21:20,100 --> 00:21:23,640
Not so, drought is as
inherent in the Great Plains

344
00:21:23,640 --> 00:21:27,791
in Eastern Montana and Central
Montana as is the wet period.

345
00:21:27,791 --> 00:21:30,730
We don't seem to understand that.

346
00:21:30,730 --> 00:21:34,650
And not understanding that,
we constantly come across it.

347
00:21:34,650 --> 00:21:37,000
I might add that the
drought now afflicting

348
00:21:37,000 --> 00:21:39,640
Eastern Montana is right on schedule.

349
00:21:39,640 --> 00:21:43,640
In any event, the old
time rancher also knew,

350
00:21:43,640 --> 00:21:46,099
as ranchers often do today,

351
00:21:46,099 --> 00:21:49,830
that the native grass, what's left of it,

352
00:21:49,830 --> 00:21:51,410
and there isn't a great deal of it left,

353
00:21:51,410 --> 00:21:56,410
was adapted to that
cyclical drought system,

354
00:21:56,946 --> 00:21:59,680
but that introduced or domestic grasses

355
00:21:59,680 --> 00:22:02,520
are not adapted to that system at all,

356
00:22:02,520 --> 00:22:05,800
so that drought, well
let me put it this way.

357
00:22:05,800 --> 00:22:08,173
Native grass is smart grass.

358
00:22:09,300 --> 00:22:12,430
One way or another it
simply doesn't sprout

359
00:22:12,430 --> 00:22:15,160
in drought periods, to be seared off.

360
00:22:15,160 --> 00:22:20,160
Domestic grasses sprout
invariably, to be seared off,

361
00:22:20,690 --> 00:22:23,160
and they refuse then, of course,

362
00:22:23,160 --> 00:22:25,130
to reseed because they're dead.

363
00:22:25,130 --> 00:22:27,600
What I'm driving at you already know.

364
00:22:27,600 --> 00:22:32,020
Starting about 1900, an
enormous number of people

365
00:22:32,020 --> 00:22:34,678
flooded into Eastern and Central Montana.

366
00:22:34,678 --> 00:22:37,460
We have come to call the honyockers,

367
00:22:37,460 --> 00:22:39,517
we don't really know
the origin of the word,

368
00:22:39,517 --> 00:22:43,500
nesters, scissor-bills, what have you,

369
00:22:43,500 --> 00:22:47,450
but what they were of
course were homesteaders.

370
00:22:47,450 --> 00:22:51,263
They were filing on public domain.

371
00:22:53,951 --> 00:22:58,070
About 80,000 people in a very short time

372
00:22:58,070 --> 00:23:01,650
flooded onto this enormously delicate land

373
00:23:01,650 --> 00:23:06,650
and began to plow it up,
in 160 to 230 acre plots.

374
00:23:07,414 --> 00:23:11,310
There were a series of
fortuitous circumstances,

375
00:23:11,310 --> 00:23:13,030
and fortuitous doesn't mean lucky,

376
00:23:13,030 --> 00:23:17,300
it simply means accidental,
that came together at one time

377
00:23:17,300 --> 00:23:19,881
to bring about to bring the tragedy

378
00:23:19,881 --> 00:23:23,010
of this particular boom and bust.

379
00:23:23,010 --> 00:23:27,100
So let me analyze what those factors were

380
00:23:27,100 --> 00:23:31,463
that brought this flood
of people into Montana.

381
00:23:33,010 --> 00:23:37,310
In the first place, the wet period is on,

382
00:23:37,310 --> 00:23:42,240
starting in about 1900, and
extending until about 1918.

383
00:23:43,448 --> 00:23:46,770
It rained at the right
time, and when it rains

384
00:23:46,770 --> 00:23:49,292
at the right time and you
get sufficient moisture

385
00:23:49,292 --> 00:23:53,340
you can raise superb
wheat, as many of you know

386
00:23:53,340 --> 00:23:55,773
over there, high protein, superb wheat.

387
00:23:56,763 --> 00:24:00,283
So first of all the wet
period begins about 1900.

388
00:24:01,120 --> 00:24:05,099
Secondly, after many
years of the absurdity

389
00:24:05,099 --> 00:24:10,099
of the 160 acre homestead
plot, the congress got around

390
00:24:10,560 --> 00:24:13,395
to saying, well, that doesn't
seem to be working too well,

391
00:24:13,395 --> 00:24:15,450
so they passed a new act,

392
00:24:15,450 --> 00:24:19,130
the Enlarged Homestead Act of 1909.

393
00:24:19,130 --> 00:24:22,110
A tragic piece of legislation.

394
00:24:22,110 --> 00:24:25,780
What it did was to increase the land

395
00:24:25,780 --> 00:24:30,180
that you could get free, except
for a very small filing fee,

396
00:24:30,180 --> 00:24:35,180
from the federal government,
from 160 to 320 acres,

397
00:24:36,960 --> 00:24:40,350
essentially absurd, because
it isn't enough more land

398
00:24:40,350 --> 00:24:42,760
to do anybody any good at all.

399
00:24:42,760 --> 00:24:45,760
But people outside of
the West, people outside

400
00:24:45,760 --> 00:24:50,020
of arid country, people in
Kentucky, people in Virginia,

401
00:24:50,020 --> 00:24:53,826
people in Illinois, people
in Ohio, didn't know that.

402
00:24:53,826 --> 00:24:58,190
160 acres was an economic
unit where you had 60 inches

403
00:24:58,190 --> 00:25:02,950
of precipitation per year and
three feet of deep black loam.

404
00:25:02,950 --> 00:25:07,950
To them, 320 acres, free,
was simply magnificent.

405
00:25:08,690 --> 00:25:12,925
So two factors are now involved,
one, the wet period is on,

406
00:25:12,925 --> 00:25:17,925
and two, the Enlarged Homestead
Act of 1909 has been passed.

407
00:25:20,010 --> 00:25:25,010
Then there was the fact that
World War I started in 1914,

408
00:25:27,322 --> 00:25:30,280
and the price of wheat
begins to skyrocket.

409
00:25:30,280 --> 00:25:35,280
It's approaching, as of
1909, $3.50 per bushel.

410
00:25:35,430 --> 00:25:37,700
The United States government is urging

411
00:25:37,700 --> 00:25:40,030
everybody and his
brother, plant more wheat,

412
00:25:40,030 --> 00:25:42,950
plant more wheat, and they did.

413
00:25:42,950 --> 00:25:47,950
And then, there was James J.
Hill, the founder and owner

414
00:25:49,060 --> 00:25:50,743
of the Great Northern Railroad.

415
00:25:52,239 --> 00:25:55,960
The Great Northern Railroad,
which cut across, as you know,

416
00:25:55,960 --> 00:26:00,760
the northern Great Plains,
was not a land grant railroad,

417
00:26:00,760 --> 00:26:02,510
it had not been given land

418
00:26:02,510 --> 00:26:04,633
like the Northern Pacific had been.

419
00:26:05,510 --> 00:26:09,690
And if there was anything that
James J. Hill hated to see,

420
00:26:09,690 --> 00:26:14,690
it was an empty train of boxcars
headed from west to east.

421
00:26:14,874 --> 00:26:18,250
And he is a father of
what came to be called

422
00:26:18,250 --> 00:26:21,383
the Railroad Colonization Program.

423
00:26:23,639 --> 00:26:25,700
This was quickly followed, I might add,

424
00:26:25,700 --> 00:26:28,073
by the Northern Pacific
and by the Milwaukee.

425
00:26:29,700 --> 00:26:31,720
In other words, get people out here,

426
00:26:31,720 --> 00:26:33,950
make it easy to get people out here,

427
00:26:33,950 --> 00:26:36,303
because it's going to
be good for business.

428
00:26:37,150 --> 00:26:42,150
So all these factors
conspired with this result.

429
00:26:42,320 --> 00:26:47,320
Between 1902 and 1909,
the honyockers took up

430
00:26:49,147 --> 00:26:51,630
on the public domain for the most part,

431
00:26:51,630 --> 00:26:55,060
although not exclusively,
I'll explain that in a moment,

432
00:26:55,060 --> 00:26:59,513
a million acres in Eastern
and Central Montana.

433
00:27:00,400 --> 00:27:03,470
By 1910, the year after the passage

434
00:27:03,470 --> 00:27:05,570
of the Enlarged Homestead Act,

435
00:27:05,570 --> 00:27:09,660
this rush gets into full swing.

436
00:27:09,660 --> 00:27:13,230
And in that year alone,
just the year 1910,

437
00:27:13,230 --> 00:27:17,657
they filed on and
occupied, 4,750,000 acres

438
00:27:20,685 --> 00:27:23,123
on which they planted wheat.

439
00:27:24,130 --> 00:27:28,960
Between 1909 and 1922, they took up,

440
00:27:28,960 --> 00:27:31,270
the homesteaders, the honyockers,

441
00:27:31,270 --> 00:27:36,270
42% of the entire area
of the State of Montana.

442
00:27:36,620 --> 00:27:39,390
Almost all of it, in the semi-arid,

443
00:27:39,390 --> 00:27:41,950
Central and Eastern Montana section.

444
00:27:47,848 --> 00:27:50,515
(upbeat music)