The Open Range and the Winter That Ended It

By eighteen eighty-five, hundreds of thousands of cattle ranged across the grasslands of Montana. The open range era had arrived fully formed, built on the same railroad network that created Billings. Ranchers drove cattle north from Texas and east from Oregon, turned them loose on unfenced public grass, and shipped them out through Billings when the market called. The city functioned as a railhead and regional hub for wool and beef moving toward eastern markets.

The land supported it, until it didn't. The summer of eighteen eighty-six was hot and dry, exhausting the grass that cattle needed to carry body weight into winter. Then the winter itself arrived, and it was catastrophic. Storm after storm hit the northern plains from November through February, temperatures dropping far below zero for days at a time, the snow crusting into ice that cattle could not paw through to reach forage. Estimates vary, but it is likely that half the cattle in Montana died in that single winter.

Ranchers who survived made two decisions: they started growing hay to see herds through cold winters, and they fenced their land. The open range, which had defined Montana ranching for barely a decade, was over.

Sheep endured the winter somewhat better than cattle, and in the years that followed, Montana became one of the leading sheep-producing states in the country. Sheepmen trailed their bands to Billings, the nearest railhead, for shearing and shipping. The stockyards and wool warehouses along Montana Avenue were a direct consequence of a winter that most people living here in eighteen eighty-seven never forgot.