Agriculture Heritage Notebook

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

It’s difficult to miss seeing the historic barn at the north end of the Eastside Highway - large block letters made of red metal on the roof identify its owner: HURTT. It was time to do a story, and I hoped that owner Dave Hurtt’s mind was still sharp and witty. August is supposed to be warm and dry in Montana, but Murphy’s law always seems to kick in when it’s time for me to photograph a barn. My trip to the Hurtt barn is no exception. A heavy fog covers the valley, with nary a peep of sunshine. I decide to go ahead with an interview, and hope

An old photo of the Waddell Barn.

the weather improves before I have to leave. As I park by the massive barn, a man driving a green 4-wheeler with a cab roof pulls up next to me. Dave Hurtt greets me with a smile, apologizing for not jumping out of his jitney because of a bad hip.

“Back in 1985, when I was putting new metal on the lower part of west barn roof, I slipped on the ladder and bounced down, hitting the rungs with my hipbone. You’ll see a red dot toward the south end of the barn. That’s where I fell.” At nearly 90, it appears to me that he’s doing pretty dang well, all things considered.

After we chat a bit, he takes me into the barn, and points to the steep stairs that lead to the loft. “We used to have a lot of dances here, and my uncle wanted to come to one. We had to carry him up these stairs, and I built a special chair for him to sit in so he could watch the festivities.” We arrive at the top of the stairs, and I spot that special chair, along with two rows of old auditorium seats that are lined up on each side of the

loft floor.

“What’s the story on those?” I ask. “They came from the Mullan, Idaho school, via the Florence-Carlton school. Florence got them after the rebuilding of the Florence school following its fire, about 1964. Florence used them until they were able to build a new gym with seating and then were looking to get rid of them, so I hauled them home and upstairs into the barn.”

The loft ceiling has some old stains from water leaks, but the new roof has been doing its job to protect the sturdy ridge and rafters. The last section of roof on the south end where Hurtt fell had to be completely replaced because the sheeting began to rot before that piece could be repaired. The loft floor is swept clean, and there’s no evidence that pigeons have been a problem. The complete hay fork and trolley set-up is still in place, high up in the north gable end.

Hurtt has pointed out the tall concrete foundation under the barn, and I see wooden ventilation shafts leading from the bottom floor where

there used to be dairy stanchions all the way up to the two cupolas on the roof. Those features, along with the barn’s size, are nearly identical to the design of Anna Mae Paddock’s barn north of Darby. There is no way to verify that the same builders were involved in both barns, but the time of construction is also very close.

Hurtt relates several stories that were passed down to him from elderly friends and relatives when he was a young man.

Albert Tillman was the oldest son of Newton Jasper Tillman, who moved to the Bitter Root from Missouri and obtained the property through an 1896 homestead deed and other purchases. He told Hurtt that a man named Robert Lemon used the adjacent house to entertain prospective orchard tract buyers in the early 20th century when the boom related to the Big Ditch was at its peak.

Lemon also reportedly operated a dairy he called Meadow Croft, perhaps after the apple boom bloom faded and landowners turned to other means of making a living. The barn was definitely built to house dairy operations, with a washing-up trough poured into the concrete floor, and a set of shallow stairs built to allow cows to walk into the milking parlor from the adjacent corral.

During the time the land was irrigated by flooding the fields, water collected in the basement of the house. Hurtt recalls that Curtis Taylor, a neighbor to the south, said he used to dive off the basement steps into the pool that rose underneath the house every summer.

After the sun burns off most of the fog, I snap some photos of the outside of the barn, and visit with Hurtt’s daughter Leslie. She now operates a horse boarding service in the fields and corrals around the barn. She says so much land in the area has been subdivided into small lots that people moving to what they think is “the country” find out that a few backyard horses need a lot more to eat than they can find on a few weed-infested acres, so bring their animals to her to care for.

The Hurtt family had to downsize their ranch, too, due to financial stresses, selling lots for prices far higher than what they could produce through agricultural endeavors. I later research the chain of title and confirm

Waddell barn milk cooling shed.

Waddell Barn milking stanchion

the Newton Jasper Tillman obtained a U.S. pat- ent deed to the land in 1896, and Robert Lemon purchased the property from the Ravalli County Sheriff in 1941. He may have leased the property from Tillman or had a contractual agreement before then, as Hurtt heard that Tillman was a “wheeler-dealer” and land speculator. Tillman died in 1936, and the surviving children may not have kept up with property tax payments after that. Hurtt’s parents bought the ranch in 1963 after it passed through other ownership several more times.

The Chronicling America website of newspaper archives yielded confirmation that Robert Lemon was General Sales Manager for the Bitter Root Valley Irrigation Company, based in Chicago, Illinois, from 1908 through its demise due to bank- ruptcy in 1916.

A short paragraph on the society page of The Missoulian, July 20, 1913, says that Mr. and Mrs. Robert Lemon were guests of honor at a party near the Bitter Root Inn (designed by Frank Lloyd Wright for the BRVI C, and destroyed by fire in 1924). The Lemons were in the valley “for the summer.” Lemon placed numerous half- and fullpage advertisements in Popular Mechanics and Saturday Evening Post touting the $2,000-$5,000 a year income that was practically guaranteed from a 10-acre apple orchard in “one of the most mag- nificently endowed natural environments on the Creator’s footstool.” If fledgling orchard owners did not want to actually put in the labor necessary to achieve these fabulous profits, the BRVI C would contract to “develop your orchard under expert horticul- tural supervision for five full growing seasons from date of planting, including all land taxes and irri- gation charges.”

Of course, the valley was “frostless and worm- less,” and BRVI C was backed by $5,000,000 in assets. At the time, the Big Ditch did not yet reach the area, and cost overruns, weather, insects, and technical disasters soon bankrupted the company, leaving absentee landowners with apple saplings dying on the dry benches east of the river.