The Stage Station

Oil on Canvas
27″ x 21″
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The Beecher Ranch
Perhaps the most variously-owned and used land and building I have painted, began as the Dovenspeck homestead and was a cattle ranch.  Then John and Verda Middleton bought it in 1927, after which it was owned by the Millers for one year, then the Olsons for three. Within the last fifty years it has had six owners: George Kneeland, Clifford Swift, Tom and Lois Stash, the Bellwoods, the Collins, and now the Beechers.  The building was the Stage Station for Fergus County and carried passengers, gold-mining equipment, and supplies to stops that included Gilt Edge, Flat Willow, and Musselshell.  There was a stage stop about every fifteen miles, for that was the distance a coach could travel per day.  The Olsons, were successful sheep ranchers with 500 head until a gent named Flurry, half Indian and half French, let his dog drive all the sheep into a snow filled coulee.  When he saw what had happened, Flurry calmly walked to the diner where Mr. Olson ate, had his dinner, then broke the news.  Crying desperately, Mr. Olson tried to save his sheep but lost both them and the ranch and would have starved, but his daughters were hand-raising seventy lambs that had lost their mothers.  With the sale of these the family was kept alive for the winter.  For a few years the building became the McDonald Creek School  Afterwards the structure became a home again.  On the high hill behind is a dipping vat for animals; a long deep trough where they were submerged in creosote and water, until in 1936 an earthquake moved the water supply to the bottom of the hill.  The Depression years were hard times in the Grass Range Area.  With the hopes of settlements that would grant the injured parties the lands they desired, many law suites were filed for alleged injuries or problems while others tried to grab land that contained watering holes. With their horses grazing about, the Beechers have an idyllic place, where one could not guess the secrets hidden in those beautiful surroundings and that historic building.