I guess it shouldn't be that much a surprise. We already violated Idaho's sovereignty by visiting a NPS site in Utah so why not also stop in Montana? No, don't worry. This isn't an abbreviated stop at one of the big Parks like Yellowstone or Glacier. Those will be dedicated trips unto themselves. This stop was at Grant-Kohrs Ranch National Historic Site.
Yee ha! Let's be cowboys!
In the 1800s Montana was a place of opportunity if you were male and white. People like John Grant and Conrad Kohrs made the most of their privilege building operations servicing the westward flow of immigrants.
The site has the Grant-Kohrs ranch house and outbuildings, not to mention 1600 acres of operating ranch lands. There were horses, cows, a chuckwagon, interpretive rangers dressed as cowboys, and mosquitoes. So many mosquitoes. So many I had to return to the car to get spray and that wasn't sufficient. We used spray provided by NPS and it kind of worked. Kind of.
The tour of the house was great. Seeing a Montana ranch was cool. Getting driven away by a HUGE thunderstorm that rolled through was a bonus.
There wasn't much discussion about the Ql̓ispé (Kalispell/Pend d’Oreille), Sqelixw (Salish), Ktunaxa (Kootenai), Nimiipuu (Nez Perce), and Siksikaitsitapi (Blackfoot) people that were displaced so the white man could establish themselves. A search turns up a NPS page with a little information, but it's isn't actually linked from the Grant-Kohrs site itself. Hmph.
Regardless, it's a good site for a visit even if you're not trying to hit all the NPS sites in the system.
