Memories and thoughts from the past

Memories and thoughts from the past

I was raised on the ranch that was, in part, the original homestead proved up by my maternal grandparents. The home ranch, in the photo above, was at the forks of Rosebud Creek, a part of the area where General Crook met the Cheyenne and Sioux in the summer of 1876 and was turned back, rather than being able to continue on to join General Custer. Ranchers along the upper Rosebud Creek found a number of cavalry artifacts over the years and growing up, I often found old rifle cartridges in the hills as well.
Our close family was small. Mother had just one older sister who moved to California and lived there most of her life. We kept in touch, of course, but as adults, the cousins have lost touch. Dad's family was bigger, two brothers, four half sisters, but his mother died when he was very young and his father died when I was still a toddler. Again, though we kept in touch with brothers and sisters, once they were gone the cousins lost touch.
My two children were not raised on the ranch and never knew their great-grandfather, who died when they were too young to remember him. They knew their great-grandmother mostly in her later years and my parents, while they still lived the ranch for a number of years, were no longer actively ranching. While we spent occasional vacations at the ranch but they never truly had the opportunity to live the life I remember and my own grandchildren do not remember the ranch at all.

As an only child myself, once I am gone, the memories will be gone as well. This blog is meant as a tribute to the land I loved, the parents and grandparents I knew and loved and the family, friends and neighbors that contributed to the memories I hold so dear.

Spear Siding

Spear Siding was a railway siding located between Wyola, Montana and Lodge Grass, Montana in the Big Horn valley. Without cattle trucks like there are today, or local livestock auction markets, this was where the cattle ranchers from the area brought their cattle in the fall to be shipped to markets further east..

When I was going to high school in Lodge Grass, mother and I often visited my grandparents, then retired, in Sheridan, Wyoming and we would drive past the corrals at Spear Siding on our way back to Lodge Grass. When she was still a teenager, and later, after she had her teaching certificate but was still living at home and teaching at Big Bend school, she rode with her father from the ranch, driving the cattle they were selling to be shipped out by rail.

It would have been between 30 and 40 miles from the ranch to Spear Siding and driving cattle, would probably have taken two days to get there although I don't recall actually asking how long it took. Once there, the cattle would have been penned, then loaded on cattle cars to be shipped by rail to the markets.

There were no roads across the small mountain range between the ranch and Spear Siding and Mama told me that they would stop and drink from a spring on the way. Grandpa knew where it was from years of riding the area, but they had to get off the horses and walk through the brush along a cow path to get to it. She told of following him once, only to have him stop abruptly, snapping "don't move" ... and looked down to see a rattlesnake between his feet. She said she was absolutely frozen, could hardly breathe, while the snake calmly raised his head, looked her in the eye, then put his head down and slithered off into the brush.

She said she never did walk in to that spring again without watching every single step she took.