Agriculture Heritage Notebook

Page 18 - Agriculture Magazine, June 2020

The Bitter Root Cultural Heritage Trust works in partnership with families, neighborhoods and communities to restore historic structures, bring back traditional events and celebrations, encourage interpretation and affirm cultural values. The Heritage Trust provides an article for each edition of Agricultural Magazine, highlighting the Bitterroot Valley’s agricultural history and heritage.

Story & photos WENDY BEYE

Note: Due to CoViD-19 complications, we are sharing this story from a decade ago. It’s still as good as the first time. Thanks, Wendy, for all the great barn stories you have and will share.

Little did I know when I called J. Carter Mason, to ask for an interview about the barn on his property, that I would be visiting an already-famous local landmark. Mr. Mason and his wife Judy graciously agreed to let me visit with them and photograph their barn on Dry Gulch Road north of Stevensville, in spite of recent hip replacement

Agriculture Magazine, June 2019 - Page 19

A view of the Mason barn from the southeast.

surgery that was keeping the mister house bound.

I wake early on the morning of the scheduled interview, listening to a fierce wind whistling around the window. The previous night’s weather forecast for gusts up to 60 mph appears to be accurate. I look out with a sinking heart – the clouds are right down to the base of the mountains, and rain drizzles. A photo shoot is not looking very promising. As I head north to Stevensville, the cloud ceiling rises a little, along with my hopes for some good photographs. I find the mailbox with J. Carter Mason printed on the side, and drive past a wonderfully weathered barn on the way up the driveway to the shake-covered 1920s prairie style house. Mr. J. Carter Mason himself, balanced on crutches, greets me at the door, and

I step into the wood fire-heated kitchen. The barn is visible through the warped glass dining room windows.

There is a stack of framed photographs on the table, along with the yellowed title abstracts for the property. Judy had promised to retrieve the title abstracts from their safety deposit box, and Carter is well-prepared for the interview. He tells me that Judy won’t be able to participate in the interview as she is visiting her mother-in-law in the hospital in Missoula. He shows me the photographs on the table, some taken by a professional photographer who asked for permission to capture the character of the barn and spent a great deal of time doing so. Larger prints by the same photographer hang on the living room wall. I notice that nearly all portray the barn on damp

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drizzly days with low clouds. I keep my fingers crossed for a different atmosphere.

After I have admired the fine quality photos, Carter pulls out a folder full of newspaper clippings. It seems his barn is rather famous in the valley. A local amateur photographer won an Ernst Peterson Photography Contest prize with a lovely print of the barn. The color photograph is accompanied by an article quoting Bitterroot old timer Marie Longley about her childhood explorations around the barn in defiance of her parents’ warnings about hobos living in it. Another clipping from 1982 features a black and white photograph of the barn on the front page of the Ravalli Republic. The short article printed under the photo mentions that the property was once known locally as the Sinnissippi, and that the corporation owning it was involved in selling orchard plots in the days of the Bitterroot apple boom. I wonder about the origin of that unusual name, and we start plowing through the title abstracts for clues.

The earliest conveyance copied in the abstract is a patent deed issued to Mary J. Warren in 1904. The property changed hands quickly over the next few years, eventually becoming a part of the holdings of the Bitter Root District Irrigation Company, which morphed after suffering financial setbacks into the Bitter Root Valley Irrigation Company. That entity took out a mortgage for $30,000 against the parcel, with Frank Jones listed as Trustee for American Trust and Savings Bank in Chicago. The mortgage was subsequently assigned to Henry A. Jones, also of Chicago. Thus, began a shell game. In 1913, Bitter Root Valley Irrigation Company, once again in dire financial straits, sold to Rockford Orchards Company. Rockford sold to the Sinnissippi Farm and Orchard Company in 1915. By 1920, Sinnissippi sold to John Camlin, Adam Gachwindt, and Fred Muller, all directors of the Sinnissippi Farm and Orchard Company. Hmmm... we look back in the abstract to check directors’ names in the Rockford Orchards Company and Sinnissippi. There is one name in common: F.A. Schlick. Rockford Orchards declared bankruptcy as Sinnissippi was incorporated. In 1926, Henry Jones foreclosed on his mortgage (not a penny

The interior of the Mason barn.

A view of the blacksmith shop from the east side of the barn.

The north door of the Mason barn.

Mason barn floor with moss and leaves.

Agriculture Magazine, June 2020 - Page 21

having been repaid as of that date), and a district court issued an opinion that Rockford, Sinnissippi, and the individual directors were all still liable for the debt. Apparently, there was no money available to pay off the mortgage even though Sinnissippi was incorporated in Montana with $300,000 in capital assets. A Sheriff’s auction was ordered, and Henry Jones claimed the property for $4,000. Another series of transfers occurred after Mr. Jones’ death in 1936, ending with a deed issued to Webster Mason and James C. Mason in 1951.

I ask Carter how old he was when his grandfa- ther purchased the ranch, and he says he and his parents and brother moved in when he was 10 years old. His grandfather owned the 150 acres adjoining to the east, complete with a two-room cabin, and when his father James was able to transfer his employment with Montgomery Ward from Butte to Missoula, the family packed up and moved to the Bitterroot. James and his wife con- tinued to work for Montgomery Ward in Missoula to help support the ranch and pay back a $5,000 loan from Mr. Barthels of Barthels Hardware, a Missoula icon. It took James nearly 15 years to pay off every penny borrowed. Carter wistfully recalls Christmases when gifts were nonexistent so that the interest payment could be made on time. Grandfather Webster had died only a year after the property purchase, so the burden fell on Carter’s father. Carter and his brother helped keep up with ranch work and gardening but found time to play a little basketball in the barn’s loft. They had to be careful not to step into the open hay chutes in the floor. When they first moved in, one side of the barn had milking stanchions, and the other, horse stalls on the ground floor. The Masons replaced the stanchions and stalls with sheep jugs for their flock. Carter’s father died only a year after the property was financially cleared, and Carter exchanged sheep for beef cattle. As is usually the case in marginal agricultural opera- tions, he continued to hold a job in Missoula to keep the ranch going, logging over a million com- muter miles before he retired.

We speculate on the barn’s construction date and conclude that it was probably built in the

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early 1920s. In 1923, Sinnissippi Farm and Orchard Company contracted with F.R. Myrick of Kimball, Nebraska, to farm the property. He agreed to plant grain crops and use the grain to feed hogs and milk cows, in exchange for a percentage of the profits after expenses were deducted. This agreement lasted through 1926, when Sinnissippi lost the property to foreclosure. Carter mentions that there was a granary in the barn loft, and hog pens north of the building. He also points out the sawdust insulated ice shed with a walk-in cooler, and a blacksmith shop, both the same vintage as the barn. Until a rare tornado in 1983 destroyed it, there was a long equipment shed between the barn and the blacksmith shop. Carter says the tornado ripped the connecting electrical wires from the barn and the blacksmith shop and twisted them around a gatepost as if children had performed a maypole dance around it. Nothing was left of the shed, but a few boards and pieces of the new metal roof Carter had just installed. The barn survived, minus a few more shingles. Carter also mentions that Sinnissippi is rumored to have wined and dined potential land purchasers at the nearby Bitter Root Inn, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, and built in 1909 by the Bitter Root Valley Irrigation Company at the height of its financial success.

I ask Carter if he knows what the barn’s future will be. He sighs and tells me that he loves the ranch, but his children are probably not interested in keeping the place intact. He and Judy had turned down an itinerant barnwood scavenger’s tempting offer a few years ago, and he thought about re-roofing it until a contractor quoted a $10,000 price tag. He tells me about the herd of deer that cross from creek to hay meadow every night and about the orphaned twin fawns that grew up under the willow tree in the front yard. I can see how attached he is to the land where he spent 60 years of his life making memories. I thank Carter for his time, and wish him a speedy recovery from the surgery, which he told me was the fifth procedure he had suffered through to replace one or the other of his hips. A hard-working man, proud of his place in the Bitterroot.

I drive down the hill to the barn, and the sun peeks through. Leaves on the cottonwoods growing beside the road shimmer like gold coins. It is indeed a very photogenic barn, deservedly famous for its character. I wonder how many other photos of it exist, as I snap several dozen more. Carter had commented that if he had a dollar for every one taken, he would have no financial worries.

Back home, I fire up the computer to do some research on Sinnissippi Farm and Orchard Company. I find that Sinnissippi is an Indian word meaning either “rocky water” or “Son of the Father of Waters” (son of the Mississippi), depending on which historian is interpreting it, and is the name of a lake and a public park near Rockford, Illinois. Like many other of the land development companies operating in the Bitterroot Valley in the early 1900s, the moneyed backers can be traced to the wealthy Midwest. I find a digital reprint of a journal published during the era, called The Irrigation Age. It is filled with fascinating information about the irrigation boom in the west, including Bureau of Reclamation projects and private irrigation districts that duped land seekers into thinking they could make a fortune selling crops that sprang in abundance from previously desert-dry land. Several lawsuits arising in the Bitterroot list the Bitter Root Valley Irrigation Company as defendant, claiming that promised water never came. Financial backers demanded repayment of their investment dollars by the early 1920s, and the B.R.V.I. Company filed for bankruptcy, leaving water ownership records and a water delivery system both in need of repairs. As evidenced by Carter Mason’s abstracts, water rights attached to land subdivided during boom times became a complex snarl that state water courts are still working to unravel. Another headache for local officials is the patchwork of 10-acre orchard lots that, up until the recent recession, were again selling like hotcakes. But on the plus side of the ledger, many valley ranches benefit from water delivered by the Big Ditch after several bailouts by the Bureau of Reclamation, and we can also enjoy beautiful barns that were built when hopes were high and the weather was fair.

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