Ghost Ranches of Montana Roundup Area
No More Harvests
Oil on Canvas 14″ x 11″ Sold Beckman Ranch Partially destroyed with parts strewn and buried in the long Buffalo grass this header seems to be waiting for Albert to bring his team of horses and start the job. Instead, the wind, blowing through its ancient frame, just makes an eerie, mournful sound.
Room for a Friend
Oil on Barnwood 13″ x 20.5″ Sold Alfred Matson Ranch The outhouse intrigued me immensely. Why would a hermit such as Alf build a two-seater outhouse? Perhaps it was built before his brother and he had separated, and he thought they might both have the urge at the same time. Perhaps he planned to marry someday. Whatever the reason, there it is, a two-seater on the ranch of a bachelor hermit!
The Housekeeper Is Gone
Oil on Canvas 9 ” x 12″ $500 Contact to Purchase Beckman Ranch Even in scorching summers tasty meals were prepared in this kitchen by first the Beckmans, then the Goffenas. Albert Beckman built the kitchen cabinets, and Frank updated the kitchen with this slightly newer wood-burning stove. Insulation was no more than wishful thinking, so in winter everything froze, and getting up in the morning to fix a meal was quite a challenge. Yet, much love and happiness were forged within these walls, children were nursed, then toddled about. For the Beckmans, they returned as adults to help their […]
It Never Had Brakes
Oil on Canvas 20 ” x 16 ” $800 Contact to Purchase Beckman Ranch To operate a ranch one needs a tractor. Unfortunately, the Goffena brothers bought the land and the house, not Beckman’s tractors. Vince desperately needed one but was a little hard pressed for cash. He solved the problem by buying at auction a 1925 McCormick Deering that had a slight problem; its brakes did not work. To this day he and Arlene tell tales of creative jumping and plowing a field, so Vince would always end the job up-hill. The old tractor still stands patiently awaiting a […]
Tub and Two Barrels
Oil on Canvas 12 ” x 9 ” Sold Beckman Ranch The tub is beautiful, a true antique, but there it sits in the front yard beside two bullet-ventilated barrels. When Frank and Susan moved into the Beckman house, she wanted a pond for ducks and birds in the yard. Frank, to accommodate his wife, took an old footed bathtub and buried it in the ground. Everyone, including the ducks, was happy. When Frank built the family a new house on a different section of land, the hired help lived in the old Beckman house. These gents had to mix […]
The Wind Inherits
Oil on Barnwood 40 ” x 23.5″ $1300 Contact to Purchase Alfred Matson Ranch Emil and Alfred Matson were brothers who decided to buy neighboring ranches and for tax purposes, later traded properties. When times got a little tight financially they both went to work at their own saw mill. There, the brotherly philos ended when they got into a fight and an accident occurred; Emil was running the saw when Alfred’s face was split open by a flying piece of wood. Not having extra cash for doctors, he somehow made it home, and there he lay until it healed, […]
The Wash House
Oil on Canvas 24 ” x 20 ” $900 Contact to Purchase Beckman Ranch This wooden structure, though a shade shorter than the leaning tower of Pisa, had a much more powerful sway. Albert moved it from a vacant farm, for Cora wanted a separate place to wash the family clothes. The washer was a boiler on a wood stove; the dryer, her clothesline; for soap she used lye. If the hired help actually washed their duds out there in those modern machines, we shall never know, for they found housing in the jail. In a big wind storm the […]
Revenants Haunt the Old Place
Oil on Canvas 24″ x 30″ $1700 Contact to Purchase Lackey Ranch Grandpa William and Grandma Lackey were early homesteaders in Musselshell County. When they died, their ranch was bought by Alfred Mattson when he and his brother wanted adjoining places. The Mattsons traded their properties for tax purposes, and the Lackey place became Emil’s. In old age, ill health forced him to sell and move to Roundup. Little is left to identify the ranch except the iron enclosed burial site of one of the Lackey’s grandsons. William insisted that the family live in his backyard, as he would say, […]
Sheep Shearing Pen
Oil on Canvas 16 ” x 12″ Sold Hall Ranch The Sweat Shed was an important aspect of sheep shearing. Inside this building Hall could keep 800 sheared sheep warm. For shearing, his 2,000 sheep were run through an alley way, while the shearer waited inside with his generator-powered shears. He was paid by the pound of wool cut, so time was of the essence. Ranch hands tromped on the wool in the sacks to compress the contents. Fully loaded these weighed 600-700 pounds, were stitched shut, and then rolled to the truck.
Old Time Branding
Oil on on Old Barnwood 24 ” x 15.5 ” Sold Hall Ranch According to folklore the original owner, a Mr. Tupper of Chicago, was a Mafia figure seeking to hide from the FBI. If true, apparently he succeeded. When he died, Mrs. Tupper, much younger, a local school teacher, sold the place in 1938 to 45-year-old Charles Henry Hall from Curtis, Nebraska. Charlie was a loner, tight-fisted about money, whose trusty dogs subsisted on potato peels. The ranch never had a decent well, water was carried from a now dry spring near the house. Never squandering this precious fluid on such superfluities as washing clothes, […]
Beckman House
Oil on Canvas 14″ x 11″ Sold Beckman Ranch Born in Minnesota Albert Beckman came to Roundup to work as a carpenter, found the homestead land all claimed, and bought a section from the Northern Pacific Railroad for $9.00 per acre.In 1917, when he was 30, he married Cora Strike, 18, who lived around Devil’s Lake. For a couple of years they camped in a tent until Albert hauled lumber 100 miles by horse and wagon and built a house. For school their three children boarded with neighbors who had a school house and a teacher, and at one point […]
Thanatopsis
Oil on Canvas 12 ” x 9 ” $500 Contact to Purchase Alfred Matson Ranch As I walked the land around his serenely beautiful site, I became so sad. It was as if the spirit of Alf was attached to all the equipment and buildings, even the furniture in the house. As I walked by one vacant building there on the ground was this little cottontail. At first I thought it was just resting in the sun, but upon approaching, I saw it had recently died. How, why? It, too, was now one of the Matson Ranch spirits.
The Well Ran Dry
Oil on Canvas 14″ x 11″ $600 Contact to Purchase Tucker/Branum Ranch Little is know about these two pioneer farmers. One owned an L-shaped half-section, the other 280 acres mostly rocks, trees and gullies. An old-time resident, Lois Beckman Dietz, remembers there were children here, though they were far too distant ever to play or school together. Both the Tuckers and Branums moved on in the Great Depression, and all that remains are the fragmenting stone walls of two buildings, rotting boards, some square nails, fencing, a dug-out place, and the pipe leading to the well.
Wild Horse Pen
Oil on Canvas 24 ” x 12″ $850 Contact to Purchase Hall Ranch Fifty to sixty wild horses roamed Hall’s ranch. At first he attempted to run them off, but finally built the pen, rounded up several, trained them, and kept one for himself. In the background of the picture are many of his sheep sheds. One spring storm he lost 300-400 sheep, so then he built these sheds to protect them. Pregnant ewes were caged and transported from the open range into these shacks until the lambs were safely born and big enough to fend for themselves.
The Grain Elevator at Delphia
Oil on Canvas 18″ x 18 ” $800 Contact to Purchase Delphia n 1908, the Milwaukee, St. Paul, and Pacific Railroad laid track and began service to the Roundup and beyond areas. About seventeen miles east of Roundup they built a bridge over the Musselshell River and had the Globe Elevator Company of Lewistown construct an elevator for all the neighboring ranchers to store their grain for shipment on their line. They started the bustling town named Delphia so that their steam engines could have water. A fifteen-horsepower gas engine was added to the elevator when they realized it had […]
The Bride Had to Shovel
Oil on Canvas 24″ x 18 ” $900 Contact to Purchase Beckman Ranch It was their first wedding anniversary and they were to celebrate it on their ranch. They had survived their first year of marriage in a house in which kitchen water was frozen solid in winter, rattlers cavorted and rattled under their bedroom floor boards in summer. They had invited their family and friends to join them, but it was springtime on a rural, Montana ranch in the sixties. Last year’s bride awoke to over a foot of snow, and Vince had the animal chores to attend, so […]
Mrs. Tupper’s Ford
Oil on Canvas 14 ” x 11″ $600 Contact to Purchase Hall Ranch Directly behind all the ranch buildings is a gully where the Tuppers and Charlie Hall dumped garbage they did not burn. There, surrounded by sage brush, scraps of wood and metal junk reposes Mrs. Tupper’s car, with a beautiful patina of rust.
The End of the Road
Oil on Canvas 24 ” x 20 ” Sold Alfred Matson Ranch Walking Alf’s ranch overwhelmed me; it was as if time had stopped and there, everywhere, were remembrances rustling in the wind. Why his pickup was deserted in the middle of the field, rusted an autumn orange, nobody knows. Yet, it seemed to be waiting, almost begging, for this kind, disfigured man to turn the key, start it up and get back to work.
Father’s Not Coming Home
Oil on Canvas 10″ x 8 ” $400 Contact to Purchase Tucker/Branum Ranch With his wife and ten children, William Tucker claimed his second homestead at the age of 56. Their first had been in South Dakota, but the government took the land away when minerals were discovered on the property. Unfortunately his 161 acres consisted mainly of rocks, pines, gullies and hills. The land could never support a family of this size, so his wife and children did the farming, while he was the hired hand on other ranches and graded the new roads for the county. He did […]
It Housed His Buick
Oil on Canvas 6″ x 12 ” Sold Hall Ranch Whether this building housed Charlie’s Buick or his Lincoln, depending upon who tells the tale, or whether it was actually the shop doesn’t matter. What signifies is the story of his love of his vehicle. Hall’s pride and joy was his car, and although he lived on a gumbo mess of a road (which is now our road and still a gumbo mess) and rarely could drive it anywhere important, he replaced it every couple of years. His loyal ranch hand always bought the old vehicle, when Charlie got the […]