Researched, authored and posted March 1, 2015 by author Patricia Nell Warren

REPLANTING DAMAGED RANGELAND. When Con Warren took over the Grant-Kohrs home ranch in 1932, it had been reduced to 999 acres -- not enough to support a family with livestock. So he spent the next decade cobbling together several thousand more acres as former homesteads became available in the valley. Often these properties had been overgrazed and otherwise damaged by the big drought, and he believed they could be rescued by replanting. With a team of horses and a seed drill, he patiently worked his way over this new acreage for several years.

The seed mix contained crested-wheat grass, a rugged native of central Asia that was being experimented with by some Western ranchers because it was known to be grazeable and drought-resistant. Warren also included seed of grasses native to the Northwest. His operation probably looked similar to that in the photo, which actually shows a planting scene in New York State, with horse-drawn drills of that same period.


Some rancher colleagues were pessimistic about the future, telling him, "Con, it's no use...the grass is gone forever." But he stubbornly kept at it. When the drought began to break in the late 1930s, he and the family were rewarded with the sight of that first flush of green across the hills, as the new grass started to take hold. By the late 1940s, Con could ride across the summer range through grass that was belly deep to a horse.

When Warren was later inducted into the National Cowboy Hall of Fame, he was recognized for his pioneering in range reclamation.

Researched, authored and posted February 28, 2015 by author Patricia Nell Warren

Con Warren used to talk about that weed plague of the Thirties drought -- the tumbleweed. "When the wind was out of the north," he'd say, "they'd all go rolling and bouncing south across the pasture and pile up against the south fence. When the wind switched into the south, they'd all roll north again, and pile up against the north fence."

Several different species fall into the general category of plants that propagate themselves by rolling with the winds, but the one most familiar to most people is that prickly ball-shaped thing called Kali tragus or Salsola. It arrived in the West in the late 1800s as an immigrant from Eurasia, its seeds contaminating seed stocks of grains and grasses imported from that part of the world.

Kali tragus got to the West just in time to start taking advantage of the first overgrazed ranges, but it really cut loose during the great drought of the Thirties, when dust storms and abandoned farmlands everywhere provided ideal conditions for Kali, which liked to take hold anywhere that soil had been disturbed. The dried mature plants would break loose and roll on the winds for hundreds of miles, spreading their seeds as they bounced along. Sometimes they piled up so high against houses, barns and corrals that they became a safety and fire hazard.

I haven't found any vintage photos of tumbleweed extremes at the Grant-Kohrs Ranch during those years. But this Arthur Rothstein photo, taken elsewhere in Montana in 1939, is a good stand-in.

Tumbleweeds were still very much around after World War II, even with the drought ended..Later on, the popular country song "Tumbling Tumbleweeds" made this pesky plant into a sentimental symbol of rambling cowboys -- but during the drought years, it was a harbinger of very hard times.

More info on Kali tragus: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kali_tragus

(Photo by Arthur Rothstein, Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information, now in Library of Congress photo collection)

Researched, authored and posted February 20, 2015 by author Patricia Nell Warren

Con Warren’s step up to high-profile purebreds after World War II was built on his initial move in 1933, after he first started managing the ranch. He convinced the Kohrs Co. to abandon the small herd (77) of commercial-grade Herefords that had remained on the ranch from when Con Kohrs and John Bielenberg were still alive. At that time during the Depression, Warren had found that there was no market for grade (unregistered non-purebred) cattle. But purebred prices were still holding strong -- a young registered bull could be sold for $100.

So in 1933, with the Kohrs Co.,'s blessing, Con Warren set out to grow his own purebred herd. He went to the Willow Creek Ranch at Belt, MT and purchased a purebred herd bull, Prince Blanchard 5th, along with 10 registered heifers. He bought 11 more registered heifers from the Tash Ranch. Prince Blanchard 5th had a double dose of the desirable Prince Domino bloodline, and became the anchor herd sire at the ranch till the end of World War II, when the herd's numbers had built into the hundreds. At that time, Con replaced the aging "Fifth" with young bulls of the new “compact” type, Proud Star and TT Triumphant.

This photo was taken at Willow Creek Ranch in 1939 by government photographer Arthur Rothstein as part of a historic series documenting American livestock operations for the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Administration. The bull in the photo strongly resembles Prince Blanchard 5th.

More details on herd development during the Warren era at: http://pdfhost.focus.nps.gov/docs/NRHP/Text/03000127.pdf

Researched, authored and posted by author Patricia Nell Warren on December 29, 2013

End-of-year bookkeeping occupied Con Warren during the holidays. He always did his own bookkeeping. Now and then, if he got behind, the family stayed out of his way on a Sunday that he devoted to catching up. At the end of a year, he was proud of the meticulous ledgers that he toted over to Helena to the ranch’s CPA. For many years, the old accounting firm of Galusha, Higgins & Galusha did the ranch’s taxes.

Half a century of these ledgers, representing Con’s 1932-82 stewardship of the ranch’s finances, were turned over to the GRKO archives. He retired from ranching in 1982 and made the second sale of ranch property to the National Park Service, bringing the GRKO to its present acreage.

Together with the older records dating from Kohrs-Bielenberg times, these ledgers in Warren’s neat old-school penmanship tell the economic story of the Grant-Kohrs Ranch.

(Photo from National Park Service website for the GRKO)

Researched, authored and posted October 5, 2014 by author Patricia Nell Warren

Supt. Eddie Lopez with Con Warren in 1989. After Warren retired from ranching and completed his final sale of ranch acreage to the National Park Service, he enjoyed a life estate on the Warren house as well as pasture and shed for his aging horse Whiskey Red. Warren lived out his life there at the ranch, making himself available for numerous interviews and consulting.

In total, some 1600 acres of the Warren-era spread now comprise the Grant-Kohrs Ranch NHS. The remainder of the Warren property, consisting mainly of around 4000 acres of pasture land east of the highways, were sold by Warren to private owners.

(National Park Service photo from "Ranchers to Rangers" administrative history
http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/grko/adhi/index.htm)