Waiting for a Chinook: The Winter That Ended the Open Range
Near Great Falls, Montana
The winter of eighteen eighty-six into eighteen eighty-seven dealt the open-range cattle industry across the northern plains a blow it never recovered from. It is still called the Great Die-Up. Temperatures on the northern plains fell far below zero.
Charles Russell was a cowhand in the Judith Basin that winter. When the ranch owner asked for a report on the herd, Russell sent back a small watercolor: a gaunt, hollow-flanked cow standing in grey snow, a wolf pack circling at the edges of the frame. He titled it Waiting for a Chinook.
A chinook is the warm wind off the Rockies that breaks a cold spell. The cow in the painting is past needing it. Someone hung it in a Helena shop window, and people gathered on the sidewalk to look.
Many ranchers estimated losing fifty to ninety percent of their herds. Russell's postcard-sized painting became the defining image of what was lost.
