Gallatin Canyon has played host to summer vacationers for well over one hundred years. In the early 1900s, several dude ranches in the canyon offered outdoor paradise to eastern visitors unaccustomed to ranch life but yearning for a taste of the western lifestyle. Many of these operations began as homesteads or cattle and horse ranches, but soon recognized the benefits of taking in paying guests.

Most early Gallatin Canyon dude ranches provided log cabins for visitors and hearty, home-cooked ranch style meals. Like today’s guest ranches, common activities offered included fishing, overnight camping trips, square dancing, and the always popular horseback riding. Three early 1900s Gallatin Canyon dude ranching industry pioneers were Tom Michener, Pete Karst, and Sam Wilson.

Thomas Michener and his father Lewis began mining and raising horses in the canyon in the late 1890s. In a 1975 oral history interview, Tom Michener’s daughter Dorothy Vick shared that her father answered an inquiry from F.O. Butler of the Chicago Butler Paper Mill Corporation, who was looking for a ranch he could bring his family to in the summer. Dorothy related, “Mr. Butler came first and looked it over [the Michener ranch near what is today Big Sky] then brought his family out and they came for several years... Pete Karst had some people come and Sam Wilson at the 320 Ranch had some.” The Gallatin Canyon dude ranching industry was born. According to Dorothy, Michener, Karst, and Wilson met and decided to work together and charge the same rate for their ranch guests - $12.50 per person per week.

Like Michener, Pete Karst made Gallatin Canyon his home in the late 1890s. At that time Bozeman entrepreneur Walter Cooper operated a logging and railroad tie operation at Taylor Fork. Karst freighted goods and carried passengers and mail to and from the tie camp, as well as further down the canyon to West Yellowstone. Karst Stage, the Bozeman-area transportation service familiar to many today, has its roots in Pete Karst’s turn-of-the-century freighting business.

Even before Pete Karst proved up on his 160-acre homestead in 1911, he began hosting guests at cabins he constructed on the west side of the Gallatin River just south of Moose Creek. Karst related some highlights of his life and work in the canyon in a newspaper article titled, “Pete Karst Recounts Early Period in Canyon History; First Dude Ranching.”

“In 1907, when the tie camp went broke, I decided to go into the dude business. I built my first cabins, and then I went east to Chicago and rustled my first dudes. I had some from Ohio too, that year. I had about 150 guests in 1907, mostly Bozeman people. They had no place to go, and it was a beautiful ride up here, and good fishing when they got here. Used to get a lot from the college, Prof. Cobleigh, and Cooley, Taylor, and Atkinson, they all brought their families up.” Karst’s operation was known by several names until it ceased operating in the early 1980s, including Karst’s Cold Springs Resort, Karst Kamp, and Karst Ranch.

Dude ranching in Gallatin Canyon in those early years could be informal. Initially, Pete Karst did much of the work himself, with the help of only a handful of additional employees. In his newspaper interview, Pete Karst conveyed his hosting style. “The first years we took dudes, I had my own horses and did my own guiding. Everyone had to ride. If they wouldn’t, I just sent them home where they came from...we got twelve dollars a week in those days. It was two dollars extra for the horse. And everyone rode, because if they didn’t, I said: ‘You’ve got to go home on the next stage.’ There was a couple of girls who didn’t like to get up early in the morning, and said they would rather not ride. They said: ‘We’ll pay for the horses, Pete, if you’ll just let us sleep.’ ‘Nothing doing,’ I said. ‘You’ve got to go.’... So it was ride or go home.”
                  Members of the Lamme family at Michener’s Camp in the Gallatin Canyon, circa early 1900s

Sam Wilson, future owner of what would become the 320 Guest Ranch, was born in Iowa and came to Montana in the mid-1880s. Before 1900, he had established 160 acres on the east side of the Gallatin River near the junction with Buffalo Horn Creek. Sam’s father Clinton Wilson homesteaded an adjoining 160 acres, and the pair received their land patents in 1912 and 1913. Known initially as Buffalo Horn Resort or Buffalo Horn Ranch, it was eventually renamed “The 320” in reference to Sam and Clinton Wilson’s combined acreage.

Dr. Caroline McGill, a popular Butte doctor and antique enthusiast whose collection became the basis for the Museum of the Rockies, purchased the 320 Ranch in 1936. Dr. McGill was a conservationist, and in addition to her desire for a retreat for herself, her friends, and her patients, she strove to preserve the beauty of southwest Montana for future generations. Caroline McGill spent a great deal of time at the 320 until her death in 1959, hunting, fishing, and entertaining guests with a variety of outdoor activities.

Gail Goodrich, daughter of Jim and Patty Goodrich, owners of the 320 Ranch from 1959 until 1987, recorded a humorous observation of Dr. McGill which is preserved in the narrative “Dr. Caroline McGill: Her Life and Her Lands.” Goodrich observed, “Doctor McGill’s main drive was to be physically fit... One of Doctor’s favorite stunts was to take ladies younger than herself out riding for hours on end, until they were completely exhausted. Her secret was to ride halfway and then walk halfway, and the poor guest, unsuspecting, would just grit her teeth and keep riding. Then when they finally returned home, Doctor would gloat a little about her fine health.”

Like the 320 Guest Ranch, many other Gallatin Canyon dude ranches born in the early twentieth century continue to operate today. The Nine Quarter Circle ranch at Taylor Fork had its beginnings in 1898 when cattle ranchers Marshall Seymour Cunningham and Hans Biering partnered to acquire land, homesteads, and cattle brands in the region (including the Nine Quarter Circle brand in 1899). According to Marshall Seymour Cunningham’s daughter Helen Cunningham Freese, interviewed in a 1989 Bozeman Daily Chronicle article, the Nine Quarter Circle began attracting dudes as early as 1910. Marshall Seymour Cunningham campaigned for ranch guests in 1930s Hollywood, California and managed to attract a few movie stars.

Actor Gary Cooper, 1922 graduate of Bozeman’s Gallatin County High School, was one guest at the Nine Quarter Circle. Freese related one anecdote about Cooper’s visit: “‘We had cabins for all the guests but had a bathhouse instead of individual bathrooms in the cabins. I guess Mr. Cooper had to get up and go to the bathroom in the night one night and got lost looking for the bathhouse. He wandered around the woods for half the night, I heard.’” The Nine Quarter Circle continues operation today under the leadership of the Kelsey family, who have owned the ranch since 1946.

A survey of Gallatin Canyon dude ranches would be remiss without a mention of Ernest and Grace Nutting Miller. A Massachusetts native, Grace Nutting was introduced to southwest Montana in 1917 after accepting a job at the Extension Service at Montana State College. She met Virginia City resident Ernest Miller during an excursion between Ennis and West Yellowstone. Grace and Ernest were married in 1922 and almost immediately purchased a five-acre property for $500.00. As Grace described in her memoir, the property came with a small cabin and a barn, and “incidentally it had two big piles of beautiful elkhorns piled up each side of the front door.”

                                                                                                                                                  Grace Nutting Miller

The Miller’s Elkhorn dude ranch quickly expanded in the 1920s to accommodate over forty guests. Ernest Miller made a name for himself as an excellent hunting guide and the Elkhorn ranch expanded their acreage near Sage Creek, just north of Yellowstone Park. Ernest and Grace succeeded in establishing a second Elkhorn Ranch in Arizona in 1946, and both the Montana and Arizona ranches remain in operation today. Ernest passed away in 1949, but Grace continued horseback riding through the Gallatin Range and maintained her role as host for decades to come. Grace’s positive outlook, adventurous spirit and sense of humor are evident throughout her memoir. As she expressed, “neither running cattle nor dude ranching is really a guaranteed profitable business. It’s really a way of life!! I think both Ernest and I really liked dude ranching much the better.”

Today’s Gallatin Canyon guest ranches continue the legacy established by industry pioneers like Tom Michener, Pete Karst, Sam Wilson, and Grace and Ernest Miller. Ranches continue to provide their guests with a memorable Montana experience, similar to what the Northern Pacific Railroad’s 1930s Dude Ranches publication promised: “When ‘dudes’ (and most easterners smile over and enjoy the term) come back home from a ranch holiday, the sun and wind tan soon fades away but precious memories of jagged skylines, the mountain outings, the friends made, the strange, pleasant experiences of ranch days warm their souls for all time to come.”