THE CHURCH ON
THE CHANGING FRONTIER

BIG HOLE RIVER, MONTANA

COMMITTEE ON SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS SURVEYS

TOWN AND COUNTRY DEPARTMENT
Edmund deS. Brunner, Director

THE CHURCH ON
THE CHANGING FRONTIER

A STUDY OF
THE HOMESTEADER AND HIS CHURCH

BY
HELEN O. BELKNAP

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
MAPS AND CHARTS

NEW

YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1922,
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

PREFACE

The Committee on Social and Religious Surveys was organized in January, 1921. Its aim is to combine the scientific method with the religious motive. The Committee conducts and publishes studies and surveys, and promotes conferences for their consideration. It coöperates with other social and religious agencies, but is itself an independent organization.

The Committee is composed of: John. R. Mott, Chairman; Ernest D. Burton, Secretary; Raymond B. Fosdick, Treasurer; James L. Barton and W. H. P. Faunce. Galen M. Fisher is Associate Executive Secretary. The offices are at 111 Fifth Avenue, New York City.

In the field of town and country the Committee sought first of all to conserve some of the results of the surveys made by the Interchurch World Movement. In order to verify some of these surveys, it carried on field studies, described later, along regional lines worked out by Dr. Warren H. Wilson[1] and adopted by the Interchurch World Movement. These regions are:

I. Colonial States: All of New England, New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

II. The South: All the States south of Mason and Dixon’s line and the Ohio River east of the Mississippi, including Louisiana.

III. The Southern Highlands Section: This section comprises about 250 counties in “The back yards of eight Southern States.”

IV. The Middle West: The States of Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa and northern Missouri.

V. Northwest: Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and eastern Montana.

VI. Prairie: Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska.

VII. Southwest: Southern Missouri, Arkansas and Texas.

VIII. Range or Mountain: Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, Idaho, Wyoming, Nevada and western Montana.

The Director of the Town and Country Survey Department for the Interchurch World Movement was Edmund deS. Brunner. He is likewise the Director of this Department for the Committee on Social and Religious Surveys.

The original surveys were conducted under the supervision of the following:

Beaverhead County—Rev. Charles T. Greenway, State Survey Supervisor of the Interchurch World Movement for Montana. The County Leader was Rev. Thomas W. Bennett.

Hughes County—Mr. C. O. Bemies, State Survey Supervisor of the Interchurch World Movement for South Dakota. The County Survey Leader was Rev. H. H. Gunderson.

Sheridan County—Mr. A. G. Alderman, State Survey Supervisor of the Interchurch World Movement for Wyoming and Utah. The County Survey Leader was Rev. M. DeWitt Long, D.D.

Union County—Rev. H. R. Mills, State Survey Supervisor of the Interchurch World Movement for New Mexico. The County Survey Leader was Professor A. L. England.

In the spring of 1921 the field worker, Miss Helen Belknap, of the Committee on Social and Religious Surveys, visited these counties, verified the results of the survey work previously done, and secured additional information not included in the original study.

Special acknowledgment should be made to the ministers, county officers and others in these counties for their helpful coöperation and assistance in the successful completion of the survey.

The statistical and graphical editor of this volume was Mr. A. H. Richardson of the Chief Statistician’s Division of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, formerly connected with the Russell Sage Foundation.

The technical advisor was Mr. H. N. Morse of the Presbyterian Board of Home Missions, who was also associate director of the Town and Country Survey in the Interchurch World Movement.

Valuable help was given by the Home Missions Council; by the Council of Women for Home Missions through their sub-Committee on Town and Country, and by a Committee appointed jointly by the Home Missions Council and the Federal Council of Churches for the purpose of coöperating with the Committee on Social and Religious Surveys in endeavoring to translate the results of the survey into action. The members of this Joint Committee on Utilizing Surveys are:

Representing the Federal Council of Churches

Representing the Home Missions Council and the Council of Women for Home Missions

INTRODUCTION

THE POINT OF VIEW

This book is a study of the work of Protestant city, town and country churches in four counties on the Range. It discusses the effect on the Church of the changing conditions in the Rocky Mountain States, and the task of the Church in ministering to the situation which exists to-day. This survey, therefore, does not attempt to deal directly with the spiritual effect of any church upon the life of individuals or groups. Such results are not measurable by the foot rule of statistics or by survey methods. It is possible, however, to weigh the concrete accomplishments of churches. These actual achievements are their fruits and “by their fruits ye shall know them.”

The four counties studied in this book are Beaverhead in Montana, Sheridan in Wyoming, Union in New Mexico and Hughes in South Dakota. Many considerations entered into their choice. For one thing, it must be borne in mind that this book, while complete in itself, is also part of a larger whole. From among the one thousand county surveys completed or nearly completed by the Interchurch World Movement, twenty-six of those made in the nine most representative rural regions of America were selected for intensive study. In this way it was hoped to obtain a bird’s-eye view of the religious situation as it exists in the more rural areas of the United States. All the counties selected were chosen with the idea that they were fair specimens of what was to be found throughout the area of which they are a part.

In selecting the counties an effort was made to discover those which were typical, not merely from a statistical viewpoint, but also from the social and religious problems they represented. For example, the four counties described in this pamphlet were chosen because they are representative of large sections throughout the Range area.

It is recognized that there are reasons why exception may be taken to the choice of counties. No area is completely typical of every situation. A careful study of these counties, however, leads to the conclusion that they are fair specimens of the region they are intended to represent.

All these studies have been made from the point of view of the Church, recognizing, however, that social and economic conditions affect its life. For instance, it is evident that various racial groups influence church life differently. Germans and Swedes usually favor liturgical denominations; the Scotch incline to the non-liturgical. Again, if there is economic pressure and heavy debt, the Church faces spiritual handicaps, and needs a peculiar type of ministry. Because of the importance of social and economic factors in the life of the Church the opening chapters of this book are occupied with a description of these factors. At first glance some of these facts may appear irrelevant, but upon closer observation they will be found to have a bearing upon the main theme—the problem of the Church.

Naturally the greatest amount of time and study has been devoted to the churches themselves; their history, equipment and finances; their members, services and church organizations; their Sunday schools, young people’s societies and community programs, have all been carefully investigated and evaluated.

Intensive investigation has been limited to the distinctly rural areas and to those centers of population which have less than five thousand inhabitants. In the case of towns larger than this an effort has been made to measure the service of such towns to the surrounding countryside, but not to study each church and community in detail.

The material in this book presents a composite picture of the religious conditions within these four counties. Certain major problems, which were found with more or less frequency in all four counties, are discussed, and all available information from any of the counties has been utilized. The opening pages of the book, however, summarize the conditions within each county. While this method has obvious drawbacks it is felt that the advantages outweigh them, and that this treatment is the best suited to bring out the peculiar conditions existing throughout this area. The appendices present the methodology of the survey and the definitions employed. They also include in tabular form the major facts of each county as revealed by the investigation. These appendices are intended especially to meet the needs of church executives and students of sociology who desire to carry investigation further than is possible in the type of presentation used for the main portion of the book.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS, MAPS AND CHARTS

THE CHURCH ON THE CHANGING FRONTIER

CHAPTER I

The Range Country

A vast expanse of endlessly stretching plains, dun-colored table-lands, mysterious buttes against a far horizon, and “always the tremendous, almost incredible distances”—this is the typical Range country. There are a sweep to it and a breadth, and such heavens over the earth! In the East, unless some crimson sunset attracts indifferent eyes, the sky makes less of the picture than the earth. But this is sky country.

Roughly, the Range area comprises the states between the Middle West and the Far West, and includes a wide variety of landscape. Contained in this picturesque area are eight states with parts of others, a million square miles over which are spread four million people about a third less than are crowded into New York City. The four counties here studied, each in a different state, provide fair samples of a great deal of the country. Beaverhead County, in Montana, and Sheridan County, in Wyoming, are not far distant one from the other. Both are partly mountainous, rugged in contour, with wide valleys rimmed by mountains, and miles of undulating range land and low-lying hills traced by rivers. This is the country where “the smoke goes straight up and the latch-string still hangs on the outside of the old-timer’s cabin,” where still the “sage-hen clucks to her young at the water-hole in the coulee ... with lazy grace, the eagle swings to his nest in the lofty pinnacle and the prairie dog stands at his door and chatters.”

Beaverhead is in the extreme southwestern corner of Montana, slightly northwest of Yellowstone Park and straight south from Butte. It is bounded by Rocky Mountain ranges on the west, south and northwest. On the south and west it faces the State of Idaho. The county is well drained and watered by the two principal rivers, the Big Hole and Beaverhead, and by their tributaries, and here, too, the Missouri River has its source. Beaverhead County embraces 5,657 square miles or 3,620,480 acres. Of this area, 1,365,000 acres are included in the Beaverhead National Forest Reserve scattered over the north, west and southern parts of the county. A small part of the Madison National Forest also extends into the county on the west. The altitude at Monida, in the southern part of the county, is about 6,500 feet above sea level.

MONTANA AND WYOMING

Locating Beaverhead and Sheridan Counties.

The Wyoming county, Sheridan, lies in the extreme north central section of the state, about 110 miles east of Yellowstone Park, Montana forming its northern boundary. Sheridan is about 100 miles long and thirty miles wide, the total area being 2,574 square miles, or 1,647,360 acres, less than half the area of the Montana county, Beaverhead. The Big Horn Forest Reserve covers 383,493 acres of Sheridan County. Rivers and creeks are numerous, the chief ones being Tongue River, Powder River and Big Goose, Prairie Dog and Clear Creeks. The city of Sheridan, the county seat, has an altitude of 3,737 feet above sea level.

The other two counties, Union in New Mexico and Hughes in South Dakota, consist largely of plain lands. Union lies in the northeastern corner of the state of New Mexico, with three states, Colorado, Oklahoma and Texas, to the north and east of her. Union included 5,370 square miles, or 3,436,800 acres, at the time this survey was made. About one-sixth of the southwestern part of Union County has, however, been added to part of Mora County, to the southwest, to form a new county named Harding which was formally inaugurated on June 14th, 1921. The land consists mainly of dry, level plains and mesas, although there are some mountains and isolated hills or buttes. Aside from the mountainous area, which is wooded, there are scarcely any trees with the exception of a few along the larger creeks and those cultivated around ranch houses. The northwestern corner of the county is the most mountainous. The county is drained chiefly by Ute Creek, flowing southeast through the western and southwestern sections into the Canadian River, and in the northern part by the beautiful Cimarron. There are a number of small streams, but many are dry during a large part of the year. Union has exhilarating, bracing air and radiant sunshine.

SOUTH DAKOTA AND NEW MEXICO

Locating Hughes and Union Counties.

Hughes is a small county almost exactly in the center of the State of South Dakota. It has the shape of a right-angled triangle with the Missouri River forming its hypothenuse from the northwest to the southeast corner. It covers 485,760 acres of high and rolling prairie, with river and creek bluffs and bottom lands. Several creeks and small rivers flow directly through Hughes, and it is on the whole one of the best-watered counties in South Dakota. Pierre, the county seat, is the capital of the state.

Early Days on the Frontier

The story of these counties is bound up with the discovery and subsequent history of the West. It is, as Viola Paradise says, “the story of Indians and early explorers; of hunters and fur traders in the days not so very long ago when the bison ranged the prairies; then of a few ranchmen, scattered at great distances; of great herds of cattle and sheep, succeeding the wild buffaloes; and of the famous cowboy; then of the coming of the dry farmer with his hated fences; and of the crowding out of the open range cattlemen and the substitution of the homesteader.”

THE TOWN LOCK-UP

This primitive jail at Bannock, once chosen as the capital of Montana, has held some rough characters in its time, but is now abandoned.

It was at Two Forks, in Beaverhead County, near what is now the village of Armstead, that Lewis and Clark, at a critical point in their expedition, were met and befriended by the Shoshones, the tribe of their Indian girl guide, Sacajawea.[2] This was on August 17, 1805. White fur traders soon followed in the track of this famous expedition, and after them came Jason and Sidney Lee, in 1834, the first missionaries to reach Montana.

The next landmark in the county’s history is the “gold strike” on Grasshopper Creek, in 1862. News of the find spread like wild-fire. Miners rushed to the creek and set up their tents, shacks and log cabins. Unlike Rome, this first town of Montana, called Bannock, was built in a single night. Soon after the gold seekers had settled down to work in earnest, the road agents, a well-organized gang of “roughs” from all over the West, began to rob the stage-coaches travelling between Bannock and Virginia City. “Innocent” was their pass-word; mustaches, beards and neckties tied with a sailor’s knot, their sign of membership. After a succession of miners, homeward bound with their gold-dust, had dropped from sight, never to be heard of again, those who remained decided to elect a sheriff. Their choice fell upon a certain Henry Plummer, who was also sheriff of Virginia City. Plummer, however, never seemed to arrest the right man, a circumstance which was explained later when it was discovered that he was the chief of the gang of road agents. The funeral of a miner who had died of mountain fever, the first man for some time to die from a natural cause, gave the community the opportunity to organize secretly the “Vigilantes,” and finally to round up the road agents, either hanging them or giving them warning to leave the country.

Montana was established as a territory in 1864, Bannock becoming the first capital, and in the sane year the first county seat of Beaverhead County. The capital was removed to Virginia City in 1865, but not until 1882 did Dillon become the county seat. The boundaries of Beaverhead changed very little until 1911, when 938 square miles of Madison County, 600,320 acres in all, were annexed. Men began settling on the land west of Bannock as early as 1862; stock men mainly with herds. A few farmers also began to take up choice bits of land along the rivers. The railroad, then the Utah Northern, entered from the south in 1879. As it was being built, tent towns were established every fifty miles. One of these towns was never moved and grew into the present town of Dillon.

The first attempt to open up to the white man the land along the Powder and Lower Tongue Rivers, in what is now Sheridan County, was made by General Patrick E. Conner on August 29, 1865, and was eminently successful. He attacked the Arapahoe Indians with a force of 250 regular soldiers and successfully routed seven hundred warriors. The next effort ended, however, in disaster. On the twenty-first day of December, 1866, at a point on Sheridan’s southern boundary now known as Massacre Hill, eighty-two officers and men sacrificed their lives to the hostile Sioux and Cheyennes in attempting to open a road across the country from Fort Laramie to Montana.

LONELINESS IN UNION COUNTY

The black spot in the center of this not very attractive picture is a squatter’s hut.

AFTER SOME YEARS

In contrast with the top picture is this one of an attractive farmhouse which shows what can be done on the plains of New Mexico.

The first claim ever taken up in this region was in 1878, on Little Goose Creek, near Big Horn, and the first irrigation ditch was constructed the next year. Big Horn was laid out in 1880, and the first store opened. The first newspaper in the county was the Big Horn Sentinel, and the first agricultural fair was held in Big Horn in 1885. The first cabin was built on the present site of Sheridan City in 1878. Sheridan was laid out in 1882 and incorporated as a city in 1884. Until 1881, the territory contained in Johnson and Sheridan Counties was unorganized and had no county government, but lay within the jurisdiction of Carbon County courts. It became Johnson County in 1881. In 1887 it was divided by popular vote, the northern portion being named Sheridan County in memory of the gallant General Phil Sheridan, whose army, in the 1881 expedition, camped on the site of Sheridan City.

Union County, in centuries past the camping grounds of vanished tribes, is now white man’s country, but it did not become so until the Santa Fé trail opened the great Southwest. With the Rabbit Ear Mountains to guide settlers the old trail came across Union County, untravelled until 1822, and finally, two years later, the first wagons crept slowly westward, facing in that pioneer mood now become historic the hardships of climate and the perils of hostile redskins. In Union County the story survives of a massacre by Indians, which accounts for the tardy white settlements in this region.

In 1870, there were about a dozen homes of white settlers in the whole area. The railroad, in 1887-88, encouraged development which began with Clayton a year later. In February, 1893, the Territorial Legislature incorporated into Union County parts of Colfax, Mora and San Miguel. The original boundaries of Union County were not changed until 1903, when 265 square miles were added to Quay County. Beginning in the northern part of the county and gradually working southwards, stockmen took up claims close to water and used public land for grazing. Up to about 1900, most of the territory remained open range land in which cattle were raised on a large scale, but since that time, it has gradually been homesteaded.

TWO COMMUNITY CENTERS

The local store and the school of De Grey community, Hughes County, S. D., the only meeting places for widely scattered “neighbors.”

The section around Pierre, in Hughes County, was the oldest settlement in the State of South Dakota. Fort Pierre, across the river from Pierre, was established in 1817, and there was continuous settlement after that. At the conclusion of the Red Cloud War of 1866-68, the Laramie Treaty with the Sioux Indians established a great Sioux reservation embracing all the land west of Missouri, from the Niobrara River on the south to the Cannon Ball River on the north and northwest, to the Yellowstone. This reservation lay unbroken until 1876, the year when the Indians surrendered the Black Hills. When the gold rush to the Black Hills began, Fort Pierre was the nearest settled point and the traffic center. Because the railroad had no right of way through the reservation, the line could not be extended to the Black Hills.

The first permanent American settlement in Hughes County was made in 1873, when Thomas L. Riggs established the Congregational Indian Mission at Oahe, where he still continues a church. When the railway reached Pierre in 1881, there came the first “boom” in the history of the county. All sorts and conditions of people took up half sections, and Hughes County was almost homesteaded between the years 1881 and 1883. The second boom came in the years 1899-91, later followed by a reaction and slump. About the year 1903, Pierre was selected as the State capital. All sorts of efforts were made to steal the honor for some other town until in 1905 a bill provided for a capitol building at Pierre which was completed in 1913. The railway began in 1906 to extend to the Black Hills. Thereafter, until 1910, all the region west of Missouri was settled, and practically all of these new settlers came through Pierre. In 1911 the construction was finished, people were out of work, and there came another slump. There was also a drought during the period 1911-12-13.

Transportation and Roads

There is practically no competition between railroads in any of these counties. Each has one main line running through it, along which are located the county seat and other smaller centers. Beaverhead has the Oregon Short Line; Sheridan the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy; Hughes the Chicago & Northwestern; and Union the Colorado & Southern. Three counties also have small sections of branch lines, and Sheridan has twelve miles of trolley line giving city service, and reaching all but one of the mining camps to the north of Sheridan City. None of these counties has really adequate train service. The distance from markets thus becomes an acute problem in certain parts of all four counties, but especially in Beaverhead, Sheridan and Union on account of their greater distances.

Each county has at least one good stretch of road. A large proportion of the crossroads have never been improved. Many of them are only trails. Beaverhead has 2,365 miles of roads, of which 1,500 miles are improved and 865 are unimproved. Approximately $278,147.00 has been spent on roads in the last five years. The combined length of public roads in Sheridan County is 796 miles. Five miles are hard-surfaced, five are red shale, seventeen are gravel, 150 are State Highway and 410 are legally established traveled roads, sixty-six feet wide and dragged when necessary. There are also 200 miles of unimproved roads known as “feeders.” During the last five years, approximately $310,000.00 has been spent on county roads, not including the amount spent on State roads. Both Sheridan and Beaverhead are fortunate in their location on highways leading to Yellowstone Park; Beaverhead is on the Western Park-to-Park highway, and Sheridan is on the Custer Battlefield highway.

During the past four years roads in Union County have improved. The Colorado to Gulf highway from Galveston to Denver, enters the county at Texline and continues for seventy-five miles to the Colfax County line northwest of Des Moines. This is graded road and it is maintained partly by the Federal Government, which pays 50 per cent., and partly by the State and county which pay 25 per cent. each. There are 180 miles of State highways in the county for which the State and county each pay 50 per cent. Two Federal Aid projects are also under way in the county at present. Something over 650 miles of roads are maintained by the county, and there are about 2,000 miles of community roads which are dependent upon local care.

The total road mileage of Hughes County is 978, with no hard-surfaced but with four miles of gravel roads, and 175 miles of other improved roads. There are also 799 miles of unimproved road. Forty-five miles of highway have been built by the State between Pierre and Harrold and are maintained by the county.

The People

All these counties were settled chiefly by homesteaders who came from all over the United States, but chiefly from the Middle West and Southwest. Missouri, Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, Texas and Oklahoma are the states most widely represented. A great many are children of original homesteaders.

The breathless haste with which settlers occupied and developed this great primeval region of the West, rich in natural resources, is shown by the following figures of population:

The greatest period of growth for Beaverhead was from 1870 to 1880; for Hughes from 1880 to 1890; but both Union and Sheridan made their largest increase from 1900 to 1910, while Beaverhead during those years has made a slow, steady gain.

Hughes has had “booms,” and has gained and lost population in succeeding decades. Sheridan and Union, the newer counties, have forged rapidly ahead of the others in population. Sheridan, on account of her city, has made a rapid urban increase, but her rural increase has been slow and steady. Union is a large county with no Forest Reserve area and has been homesteaded rapidly. Although, in 1903, 265 square miles were taken away from Union, the population in 1910 was 11,404, or an increase of 151.9 per cent. during the decade from 1900. The density of rural population per square mile in Beaverhead is 9.8, in Sheridan 3.5, in Hughes 3.3 and in Union 3.

The West has a smaller percentage of foreign-born population than the East or Middle West. In three of the states represented, Montana, Wyoming and South Dakota, the percentage of foreign-born has decreased in the last decade. In Montana, it decreased from 24.4 per cent. to 17 per cent.; in Wyoming, from 18.6 per cent. to 13 per cent.; and in South Dakota, from 17.2 per cent. to 12.9 per cent. New Mexico, with the smallest proportion of foreign-born of any of the four states, went from 6.9 per cent. in 1910 to 8 per cent. in 1920.

Sheridan, with 15.9 per cent., is the only one of the four counties studied whose foreign-born population remained constant. In Beaverhead, the proportion fell from 18.1 to 14, in Hughes from 11.4 to 8.1 and in Union from 2.2 to 1.7. The total number of foreign-born in all four counties is 4,670, or 9.7 per cent. of the total number of people. Germans predominate in Union, Hughes and Sheridan. In Beaverhead, the predominating nationalities are Danes, Swedes and Austrians. The New Americans in Beaverhead, Hughes and Union are largely on the land; in Sheridan County, the majority are in the mining camps.

A SPANISH-AMERICAN TYPE AND A TYPICAL ADOBE HOUSE IN NEW MEXICO

Less than one hundred Indians are reported in the combined four counties, and the number has been diminishing in every county except Union. Sixty-nine of the eighty-one reporting are in Hughes County, a small section of which is included in the Crow Creek Indian Reservation. But Hughes had 169 in 1910. Spanish-Americans in Union, a cross between Mexicans and Pueblo Indians (the Spaniards brought no women with them for 400 years), equal between one-fourth and one-third of the total population. They live chiefly in the south-central and southwestern sections of the county, and together with their habitations remind one of picturesque Mexico. Sheridan County has the largest proportion of negroes of any of the four counties—147 out of a total of 214; but these western states in general have only a small percentage of negroes in their population, varying from 1.6 per cent in New Mexico to 9.7 in Wyoming. The Chinese and Japanese in the four counties number, all told, less than 150.

Wide Spaces and Few People

County areas ordinarily group themselves into so-called “communities,” where individuals share common social and economic interests centering in a definite locality. In this country, with its scattered pioneer population, community groupings are less definite and permanent than in the East or Middle West. Here they are usually determined by topography, and especially by the rivers and creeks and the railroad. Along the railroad are trade centers which serve the entire county. The majority of these communities are of small population and large area, with a small trading center containing stores, hotel, school, possibly a church or two and some houses huddled together. The county seat largely centralizes the life of each county.

Outside the trade centers and the open country area included within their community boundaries, the counties fall into certain social groupings. Where the land is good, and is being intensively developed, there are well-defined permanent communities. Some have even grown staid and conservative. In other sections the story is pathetically different. One lonely family, a forlorn row of claim shacks along the horizon, are all that is left of a real social life that existed only a few years before. A woman standing at the door of the only habitation in a round of sky and stretch of plain, tells how “all the good neighbors are gone and us left grieving for the fine times we once had.” Transiency is usual in homesteading country, many people only remaining long enough to homestead their land. In Beaverhead and Hughes, which have been longer homesteaded, there is a larger proportion of residents of more than fifteen years than in the other two counties. But in all four counties, there are temporary groups of people with some social life at present, which may or may not have significance in the future. On the whole, present development tends to be permanent because most of the desirable land in Beaverhead, Sheridan and Union, and all of the land in Hughes has long since been taken up. All community limits are more or less indefinite. For example, a rancher living near the boundary of two communities may go to two or more centers for trade. And a dance or barbecue will bring people from any number of the communities.

WHERE MAIN STREET MIGHT HAVE RUN

The hut of a lonely homesteader.

County interests tend to become concentrated in increasing proportion in the county seat. Dillon, the Beaverhead County seat, is fairly well located in the central eastern section. It is considered one of the best business towns of the state, drawing trade from every point in Idaho. Dillon is a retired ranchers’ town, conservative and wealthy. Community spirit is not manifest. The old settlers run the town and are not friendly to the ideas of others. Even a Commercial Club has found it hard to survive in Dillon. Sheridan City, the county seat of Sheridan County, with a population of about 10,000, is wide-awake and progressive. Although there are a number of growing industries and it is a division point on the railroad, Sheridan is also dependent to a large extent upon farming. Clayton, the county seat of Union, a town with a spirit of “boost,” informs travellers by means of a bill board that it is “the smallest town on earth with a Rotary.” Clayton’s large proportion of transient population is at once typical of the frontier in its nonchalant spirit, in its cowboys with sombreros, jingling spurs and high-heeled boots that click along the pavements; it typifies the Range country in the canvas-covered wagons, coming in provided with camping outfits and rations to last for several days because “home” is far away. But all this is gradually changing, and Clayton is becoming more of a farming center, less like the frontier and more like the Middle West. Pierre, the Hughes County seat and State capital, is a busy town. It has a number of industries and is the center for an extensive farming and stock-raising region, but the capitol overshadows the rest of the town in importance.

Means of Livelihood

Cattle were once raised on a large scale in this country. That was the day of the cowboy. But with the coming of the homesteader and his fenced land, stock has had to be raised in smaller herds and more restricted areas. In the old days, there was a great deal of open range land. Most of this has now been homesteaded. Naturally the rancher has resented the steady appropriation of his “free range” by the farmer.

While cattle raising is still the chief source of income, there has been a steady gain in the relative value of farming, especially since the introduction of irrigation and dry-farming methods. About half the farm land in both Beaverhead and Sheridan is under irrigation, and there is some irrigated land in the northern part of Union, but practically no irrigation in Hughes County. Some dry farming is carried on in every section of each county. General farming and dairying rank next to stock raising. Hay and forage are the chief crops. Considerable farm land is fit only for range land for cattle; it is too broken or dry for crops. Dairying is comparatively a new development.

Forest Reserve land in Beaverhead and Sheridan is allotted to ranches for cattle range. In Beaverhead National Forest, 10,530 acres have been homesteaded and seventy-five claims have been listed, chiefly in 160 acre tracts. Very little homesteading has been done in the Big Horn National Forest because the entire area is above the practical range of farm crops, and killing frosts occur every month in the year. In the entire forest, only about a dozen tracts have been taken under the homestead laws, averaging a little over one hundred acres each; all have been abandoned, except a few used as summer resorts.

A WYOMING RANCH

The home of a well-to-do rancher in Sheridan County.

As is usually the case in frontier country, a large majority of the farms and ranches are operated by owners. South Dakota, at the threshold of the West, has a larger proportion of tenancy than any of the other states represented. The percentage in South Dakota is 34.9 per cent., in New Mexico it is 12.2 per cent., in Wyoming it is 12.5 per cent., and in Montana it is 11.3 per cent. In Beaverhead tenancy has decreased from 10.2 per cent. in 1910 to 7.2 per cent. in 1920. In Sheridan, it has remained about the same, 20.5 per cent. in 1910 and 20.4 per cent. in 1920. Hughes has had a marked increase—from 16.6 per cent. in 1910 to 30.9 per cent. in 1920. Tenancy has increased 11.9 per cent. in Union during the past decade. This has been partly because so much of the land is held by absentee owners who have proved up on the land, moved away, and are waiting for property to go up in value; also because on account of the high taxation some cattlemen find that they make better profits by renting instead of owning.

Beaverhead County is rich in minerals, including gold, silver, copper, lead, ore, graphite, coal and building stone. Comparatively little mining has been done since the war on account of low prices. A large amount of coal is produced in Sheridan County. Stretching out one after the other in a compact series, there are six large mines north of Sheridan City, set in the midst of an agricultural area and having little relation to the rest of the county. There is also a small coal mine being operated at Arvada in the eastern part of the county. A number of farmers and ranchmen are lucky enough to have small coal veins on their land, and mine their own coal with pick and shovel.

A MONTANA MINING CAMP

Oil is thought to be present in both Hughes and Union, but very little has been done with its development. There is some coal in the mountains in Union, and building stone and deposits of lime and alum are found in some communities. There are numerous gas wells in Hughes County. Many ranches have wells giving sufficient gas for all domestic purposes.

Each county has a number of smaller industries, such as printing establishments, lumber yards, etc. Sheridan City has several large plants, including an iron works, flour mill, sugar beet factory and a brick and tile plant. All the counties benefit from the summer auto-tourist trade. The city and towns all have camping grounds for tourists. Sheridan has a tourist building, with a sitting-room, fire-place for rainy days and rest rooms, in her city park. Sheridan also has a park in the Big Horn Mountains. Both Beaverhead and Sheridan have a small number of resorts. Sheridan has three “Dude” ranches, the largest of which is the Eaton ranch, established in 1904.

The Young Idea

Good school systems have been developed in the comparatively short time since these counties were organized and running as active units of group life. Buildings are almost all fairly well built. Teachers receive good salaries. Of course, the schools are nowhere near ideal. The isolation and distances present serious school problems. Small rural schools persist where distances are great. Union is the only county of the four with any consolidated schools. The problem of supervision is great. Each county has local school districts and a local board of trustees in each. The county superintendent, a woman in each county, has a difficult time visiting the more remote schools and does not reach them often. Many roads and trails are practically impassable during the largest part of the school year. Because of the isolation it is often difficult to find a teacher or to get a place for her to live, when one is secured. School terms vary from five to nine months, the longer terms predominating. Only six communities in the four counties have active Parents’ and Teachers’ associations.

WHEN OIL IS FOUND

The Snorty Gobbler Project at Grenville, N. M.

Besides the two elementary schools in Dillon, used as model schools by the State Normal which is located there, Beaverhead County has forty-six elementary schools. Two of these, the schools in both villages, Wisdom and Lima, offer one year of high school. The only four-year high school in the county, located at Dillon, has sixteen teachers and a student enrollment of 185. The entire school enrollment in the county in 1920-21 was 2,671; the total number of teachers, 100; the total cost of school maintenance $510,006.00. The State Normal had an enrollment of 561 during the summer of 1920; 190 in the winter of 1920-21 and 620 in the summer of 1921.

There were seventy-four schools running in Sheridan County in 1920-21, not including the city schools. In addition to the Sheridan High School, there are five schools in the county offering some high school training. Big Horn has had a four year course, but this year (1921-22) is sending her third and fourth year high school pupils to Sheridan City in a school bus; Dayton offers two years of high school, and Ranchester, Ulm and Clearmont each have one year. An annual county graduation day is held in the Sheridan High School. It is an all-day affair with a picnic in the park in the afternoon. The total number of pupils in rural schools in 1920-21 was 1,850, the total cost of maintenance, $264,647.21. The Sheridan High School with its enrollment of 522 is the largest in the state. The total school enrollment of the county, including the five Sheridan City elementary schools and the high school was 4,772. There was a total of 173 teachers, of which ninety-six were employed in the rural schools. A parochial school in Sheridan City has an enrollment of about 180 and four teachers. The city also has two privately owned business colleges with a total enrollment of 150.

In Union County, there are 108 elementary schools outside of Clayton, with a total enrollment of 4,500 and a force of 170 teachers. Nine schools have some high school work. Five have a two-year course; two have a four-year course. Several elementary schools have been consolidated within the past few years, and occupy new buildings to which the children living at a distance are transported in motor trucks. Besides four earlier issues of school bonds, totalling $79,000, the people have voted, in this year of hard times, an additional issue of $88,000. Clayton has four elementary schools with seventeen teachers and an enrollment of 723. The Clayton High School has twelve teachers and an enrollment of 225. It has a new well-equipped building.

Hughes County has thirty-nine rural schools outside of Pierre. Four schools offer some high school work, two offering one year, one two years and one three years. Pierre has three elementary schools. The Pierre four-year high school has 220 students. The total school enrollment of the county, including the schools in Pierre, was 1,530, the total number of teachers seventy and the total cost of maintenance $130,199.35. There is a Government Indian Industrial School located just outside Pierre.

The lack of opportunity for high school training in so large a part of each county, brings about an increasing migration into the county seat for educational advantages. Many families leave their ranches and move in for the winter instead of sending a child or two. Some come in for elementary schools, because of bad roads and the inaccessibility of their country school. This is one of the greatest factors in the growth of these centers. To illustrate the number of pupils from the country, 150 of the 522 pupils of the Sheridan High School are non-resident and all but about ten are from Sheridan County. In Union County, fifty of the 225 pupils in the Clayton High School come from all over the county, the majority coming from ten miles around Clayton. The number of county children attending Clayton schools is increasing at the rate of about 15 per cent. a year. These children have certain marked characteristics. They are older for their grade than the town children, they average higher marks, and are anxious to make the best of their opportunity. In other words, they do not take education for granted, like the town or city child.

CHAPTER II

Economic and Social Tendencies

Growth of the Farm Bureau

No greater laboratory exists for scientific farming than in this western country. A Farm Bureau, popularized through county agents, is an asset of prime significance to a region that will endow the rest of the country with the fruits of its development. Hughes, in 1915, was the first of the four counties to organize a Farm Bureau. Sheridan and Union followed in 1919. Beaverhead County has no Farm Bureau. A County Farm Agent was employed for eight months in 1918, but did not have the support of the ranchers. They felt that an agent, in a stock raising county like Beaverhead where hay flourished without cultivation, was a needless expense. As one rancher remarked, “We did not want some one who knew less about our business than we did.” As an index to the success attending expert farm advice, one entire community in Beaverhead attempted and abandoned dry farming, whereas in other counties where Farm Bureaus and agents have given service and advice no entire community has failed so completely.

The Farm Bureaus not only improve agricultural methods, but are creating local leaders and a community spirit. The Farm Bureau offers a definite program that is rewarding if adopted. It develops in the individual community a spirit of independence and self-respect which must precede coöperation. The Sheridan Farm Bureau records a typical objective: “to promote the development of the most profitable and permanent system of agriculture; the most wholesome and satisfactory living conditions; the highest ideals in home and community life, and a genuine interest in the farm business and rural life on the part of the boys and girls and young people.... There shall be a definite program of work ... based on the results of a careful study of the problems of the county. It shall be formulated and carried out by the members of the organization, with the assistance of their agents and specialists as may be available from the State Agricultural College.”

Each Farm Bureau has county leaders or a board of directors, each member specializing in and promoting some particular project, as poultry, cattle, marketing of grain, dairying, roads, child welfare, clothing, food and county fair. During 1919-1920 forty-three Farm Bureau meetings were held in Sheridan County, with a total attendance of 1,321. Twenty extension schools or courses were given with a total attendance of 261. Two community fairs were held, and six communities put on recreation programs. The Farm Bureau upheld Governor Carey’s announcement of Good Roads Day by donating $3,300 worth of work on the roads. Seventeen communities were organized; twelve have community committees. Nothing can better create community spirit and enlist coöperation.

A FARM BUREAU DEMONSTRATION

The County Agent for Sheridan is making grasshopper poison.

Each community also adopts a program of work of its own under the leadership of the community committee. A community program for Union County, which is inaccessible to the railroad, is as follows:

A HOME DEMONSTRATION AGENT

Here is a Woman’s Club at an all-day meeting in Union County receiving instructions in the workings of an iceless refrigerator.

The Farm Bureau works with the County Agents, the Home Demonstration Agents, and the Boys’ and Girls’ Club leaders, wherever such agents exist. The County Agents are giving themselves whole-heartedly to their jobs, and the demands for their services keep them busy driving through counties for purposes of demonstration or organization. The Hughes County agent reports the following schedule: fifty days on animal disease, thirty-seven and one-half days on boys’ and girls’ club work, thirty-seven days on organization, twenty-three days on marketing and 116 days on miscellaneous work.

Sheridan and Union have Home Demonstration agents, energetic women, who go out over the county organizing groups of women and giving demonstrations and talks. Some of their achievements in Sheridan County may be cited. Hot lunches were established in six rural schools in coöperation with the Public Health Nurse; some phase of health work was carried on in four communities and in Sheridan City schools a clothing school was held; 200 women were taught the Cold Pack method of canning; four home convenience demonstrations were given; five pressure cookers were purchased; twenty-five flocks were culled; twelve American cheese demonstrations were given, and 500 pounds of cheese made.

Boys’ and girls’ club work is carried on in every county except Beaverhead. The boys and girls all over the county are organized into clubs and work on various kinds of projects. Union County’s record for 1920 is notable:

Pure-bred hogs and cattle owned by boys and girls are sold under the auspices of the Farm Bureau. Prizes are offered. In Sheridan County, the county club champions are sent to the “Annual Round-up” at the State University. In Hughes, three teams of three members each were given a free trip to the State Fair as a reward for their efforts and achievements. One member of the Cow-Calf Club won a free trip to the International Live Stock Show in Chicago as a prize for his exhibit at the State Fair.

Development of Coöperation

Irrigation means coöperation, but coöperation in buying and marketing is comparatively a new development. Coöperation, however, is a necessity because so many farmers are distant from the trade centers and shipping points. Coöperation is the prime interest of the Farm Bureaus which, in some counties, undertake coöperative buying and selling. The Hughes County Farm Bureau has been especially effective in promoting coöperative enterprise. Says the County Agent:

The Medicine Valley Farm Bureau has done considerable work along different lines, but the most outstanding has been the promotion of a Farmers’ Coöperative Elevator. Most of the stock in this enterprise has been sold and work will be started very soon on the building.... The Harrold Live Stock Shipping Association was promoted by the Farm Bureau Community Club south of Harrold. Several meetings were held by this club on marketing. Members were supplied with coöperative shipping instructions and information. At the present time, most of the stock shipped out of Harrold is shipped through this organization. It has proved a success. This community club was also instrumental in the promotion of a coöperative elevator at Harrold ... in addition to the organization projects on marketing, considerable buying and selling in car-load lots has been done by the different Farm Bureau Community Clubs. The Snake Butte Community Club has bought four car-loads of coal for its members, with a saving of at least $200. They have also bought a car of flour, a car of apples and a car of fence posts, all of which has effected a saving of another $200. Three other community clubs have bought supplies by the car-load. These purchases have netted members of the county a saving of approximately six hundred dollars.... (The Farm Bureau through its exchange service has located 4,550 bushels of seed flax, 495 pounds of Grimm alfalfa seed, 200 bushels of seed wheat, 100 bushels of rye and 800 bushels of seed corn.) One thousand, six hundred and eighty-five pounds of wool was also directed to the state pool of the National Wool Warehouse and Storage Company at Chicago, Illinois.

A TRUCK FARM IN HUGHES COUNTY

Beaverhead County has three active stock-growers’ associations, the most active of which is the Big Hole Stockmen’s Association which established stock yards at Wisdom and at Divide, their shipping point. They finally induced the railroad to help pay for the yards. This association was founded chiefly to work for a road from the Big Hole over into the Bitter Root Valley. The Forest Service was willing to help build the road if Beaverhead and Ravalli Counties would also help. Beaverhead County did not favor the project because it feared competition from the Bitter Root products. But the Big Hole Valley wanted the road on account of the business it would bring in. The Stockmen’s Association raised about $7,000 towards it and the county finally put in $3,500. Besides their contribution of money, the members of the Association donated time and teams. One reason why they have held together so well and so long was because they shared the debt. It has been hard sledding, but they have won out. Their wage scale, which is established annually, was successfully operated for the first time last year (1921), when all but two ranchers stuck to the prescribed wage of $2.00 per day for hay hands. They have fixed up the Fair Grounds at Wisdom and give a Pow-wow there every year.

FRUITS OF THE EARTH

The Community spirit expresses itself in friendly rivalry at Union County Fair.

Largely through the influence of the Farm Bureau, two coöperative organizations were recently started in Union County, the Union County Farmers’ Mutual Hail Insurance Association and the Registered Live Stock and Pure Bred Poultry Association. There is only one other active coöperative at present, a Telephone Company at Mount Dora, capitalized at $3,000. A state-wide marketing association has 280 Union County members who produced in 1920 one-third of all the products marketed through the organization. Besides the marketing associations, Hughes has a coöperative Farmers’ Lumber Company.

All these counties have coöperative stores. A coöperative store at Wisdom in Beaverhead County has fifty stockholders. Lima had a coöperative store in 1919-1920 which failed through poor management. Two Rochdale Coöperative stores were started three years ago in Ulm and Clearmont in Sheridan County. When the central organization took the surplus earnings of the branch stores to make up failures in other stores in the chain instead of declaring dividends, both the Sheridan County stores withdrew and organized coöperatives of their own in March, 1921. Sheridan City for the past eight years has had a coöperative store in which ranchers and farmers from nearby communities have most of the shares. There is also a Miners’ Store in Sheridan City. Hughes County has one coöperative store with 150 stockholders.

Urban and Rural Rivalry

All the centers are service stations for the farmers. In some places the old, deep-seated antagonism between town and country is noticeable. There is the feeling that the merchants overcharge, that big business sets the prices, that capital is to be distrusted. Most of the merchants have been of the old individualistic type which places the dollar higher than the community, an idea which the Commercial Clubs are altering. This is especially noticeable in Union County, where the feeling between country and town has been very bitter. The farmers unfortunately are unfriendly to and distrustful of the merchants and business men. Each group is really interdependent, but ‘such’ a feeling retards progress and development. As one leading farmer put it, “The prejudice between the farmer and business man must be overcome. There is no limit to the results if we can just get together.”

The farmers feel that the average merchant in buying farm products has not discriminated between a good and a bad product so far as price goes. In short, the honest farmer does not want to sell bad eggs or sandy maize, but he doesn’t like to get a poor price for a good product. Farmers feel that the merchants have overcharged them for goods and obtained high profits and they are undoubtedly right to some extent. The farmers believe that the fact of their charging goods on credit with the merchant gives the latter an unfair advantage over them, that the merchant thinks he can pay any price he wants when purchasing from the farmer.

Chambers of Commerce and Commercial Clubs are working toward a better understanding. Get-together meetings have been started. The first Union County meeting prepared the farmers by letters and visits, in order to suggest a more friendly and constructive meeting ground. In Sheridan and Pierre, the Commercial Clubs have been very ready to coöperate in any movements that would benefit the farmer. An example of happier relations between farmer and merchant is the rest room for farmers’ wives maintained in Dillon by the Good Government Club.

UP-TO-DATE REAPING ON THE PLAINS

Answering the World’s Prayer for Daily Bread.

Hard Times

In the history of this Range area the last three years have been the most difficult for farmers and ranchers. They have suffered acutely from the sharp drop in prices of stock and farm products. Part of the Range section has had a severe drouth. Beaverhead has had several dry years. Last year (1921), thousands of dollars’ worth of hay had to be shipped into the county as feed, and much livestock had to be sent out of the county to graze. In addition to drouth, grasshoppers, fairly plentiful before, became a scourge in part of Sheridan the summer of 1921. The farmers, helped by the Farm Bureau, worked hard to exterminate them with poisoned oats. Simultaneously with the drouth and grasshopper scourge in certain sections, the decrease in prices has led to hard times and much suffering. Whereas a rancher was “well off” a few years ago, he now considers himself lucky if he is “in the hole” for only a few thousand. The farmers are bitter. They feel that something is wrong with the “system.” One can hardly blame them when crops bring no profit, while taxes seem to be higher than ever. The hard times have made ranchers and farmers do more serious thinking about taxes, farm conditions, and the marketing of farm products than they have ever done before.

E. T. Devine, writing on “Montana Farmers” in The Survey Magazine, gives the farmers’ position:

Montana farmers are much like other American producers, urban and rural, but they are even harder hit than most of their fellow countrymen, except, of course, unemployed town workers. They share in the general calamity of relatively low prices for agricultural products and they have also just passed through several years of unprecedented drouth. Freight rates are high and burdensome, and the things the farmers have to buy are still high in proportion to the prices which they get for their grain and stock. These farmers are therefore in debt, and are borrowing more than they can. They are actually and not merely in a chronically distorted imagination, having difficulty in paying their interest and taxes; and if their equity is small they are losing it.... The farmers are not seeking fundamental or permanent solutions. What concerns them is to get immediate and appreciable relief from taxes.

Hard times, as in Union County, usually strike our best assets. The county first had a County Agent in 1915, a Home Demonstration Agent in 1917, and Assistant County Agent in 1918 and a Club Leader in 1918. Unfortunately, the hard times forced upon the country a program of retrenchment. In 1920 the Assistant County Agent and, early in 1921, the Club Leader were removed. At present, there is a determined effort in some quarters to dispense with the other two workers.

Social Agencies

Country folk keep track of things. County papers as well as outside newspapers are read in all communities. These outside newspapers come from Denver, Kansas City, Butte or Omaha, depending upon location. Four newspapers are published in Beaverhead, two in the county seat, and one in each of the two villages. Rural Sheridan prints but one newspaper, The Tongue River News, at Ranchester. Two dailies are published in Sheridan City. Three communities in Union, and three in Hughes County, publish their own papers. The town of Clayton has the Examiner and the Tribune, as well as a paper printed in Spanish. Grenville and Des Moines, two villages in Union, also have local papers. In Hughes County, Pierre has two papers, and Blunt and Harrold one each. The editors are almost all progressive and up-to-date, and vitally interested in the welfare of their communities.

More and better libraries are an urgent need of all these counties. Sheridan, Pierre and Dillon all have splendid Carnegie libraries. The majority of the schools have small school libraries. But there is only one public library in Beaverhead County, besides that in Dillon, in the community house of Wisdom village. Sheridan has no other library in the whole county. The only libraries in Union County are a collection of books for public use in the office of a village lumber yard and a small travelling library. Hughes County has a town library and three circulating libraries.

WISDOM IS JUSTIFIED

The Community House at Wisdom, Beaverhead County.

Good leadership is always essential to progress. Every one of these counties is fortunate in having some splendid county-wide leaders who are devoting themselves to their county’s progress. Wherever a county has a Farm Bureau, leadership is developed by that organization. But in rural sections where distances prevent people from coming together, leadership is wanting. Each ranch is a small isolated world and by the very nature of things there are few community undertakings. The development of local leadership, especially in remote sections, should become the concern of this country. As Hart says in his book, “Community Organization,” “the destiny of civilization is wrapped up in the future of community life. If that life becomes intelligent, richly developed, democratically organized, socially controlled—the future of civilization is secure.... The determination is largely one of leadership.”

Community Spirit

Red Cross work, during the war, did a great deal toward bringing about a unified spirit. The Farm Bureau is working in this direction. When real needs arise, a community spirit is born, and unsuspected qualities of loyalty, coöperation and leadership develop, as happened in one community in Sheridan County, when that community wanted the State highway: they canvassed every load of wheat that went to Sheridan City from their community to show how much their road was used. Another splendid example of community spirit was the pageant staged by Armstead Community, in Beaverhead County, to celebrate the anniversary of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Every one in the community, even the babies as Indian papooses, took part. About half of all the communities have a real community spirit, i.e., a willingness on the part of the people to work unselfishly, coöperatively, for the best interests of the community. This spirit, fostered by the Farm Bureau or by war work, has directed communities to concern themselves with their roads, schools, methods of farming and the creation and strengthening of all community bonds and interests.

The results of this spirit are shown in social and educative agencies like Lodges and the local branches of the Farm Bureau. Of the sixty-eight Lodges only seventeen are for women, and their total enrollment is about 7,000 members. While women have fewer Lodges their attendance is more enthusiastic and regular than in the case of the men. There are Commercial Clubs in the city and towns, and in a number of the villages. The American Legion has five branches in the four counties. Eight communities have Literary Societies meeting regularly. Then there are the many clubs and societies which are purely social. These include sewing clubs, card clubs, athletic clubs and similar organizations which are found in the city and towns, and in about one-third of the other communities. There are musical organizations in seven communities, and four communities have community singing. These organizations, together with the schools and churches, give the inspiration for most of the social life.

CAMPING IN SHERIDAN COUNTY

The colored cook, at least, seems to delight in her surroundings.

“Movies,” Motors and the Dance

All the larger centers have moving-picture theatres. With the coming of the “movie,” and the general ownership of cars, there is a growing tendency to go into the centers for amusement. Dancing is the most popular recreation. If an event is really a success, it ends with a dance. In many communities a dance is the only thing that will “go.” One reason for this is the lack of leadership; a dance needs no planning to speak of, which is not the case with other forms of indoor recreation. Dances attract people from great distances and are generally held on Saturday night, lasting until Sunday morning, with a feast at midnight. Perhaps the Farm Bureau has an exhibition during the day, and there is a community dance in the evening. It is held in the hall over the poolroom. An orchestra of three army veterans plays good lively jazz. The latest tunes and dances of the city are as familiar in these remote communities as are the latest modes and fashions. No country square dances here; nothing older than the very latest dancing, and the most modern of ear-capped coiffures! Whole families attend, and parents take the floor along with the young folks. There is a great friendliness. The young men are well set-up, muscular and tanned, and some of them even wear spurs which clink together as they dance. Feminine noses are not as white as they might be, though powder puffs are here, very properly concealed. Most of these girls ride horseback as well as their brothers, and both young women and men, with their athletic supple figures, their innate sense of grace and rhythm, might put to shame our tired, anæmic city dancers. At midnight, there is a supper of fried chicken, sandwiches and real cake brought a few dozen miles more or less by team or car. Everything tastes good because it is made at home. Afterwards, the tireless feet continue the intricate, graceful measures. But outside the brightly lighted hall, and beyond the sound of laughter and music broods the silent, mysterious night of a spacious country. How many city dancers know the homeward drive through a big country, the moon perhaps lighting the river, the contours of plain and butte, and the sleeping hamlets?

The most popular forms of outdoor recreation are the community barbecues, frontier days and pow-wows. Only those who live this free, healthy life in the heart of nature have appetites worthy of a barbecue. At noon the delicious beef, roasted all night over a deep trough of coals, and basted with real butter, is a social meal that many of us envy. There are frontier field days with sports belonging to ranch life, such as horse racing and broncho busting. The day usually ends with a big dance. Even the “dude” ranches in Sheridan hold Frontier days, and great events they are, too, with many spectators. In sections of Sheridan and Union Counties, but especially in Beaverhead, there is the beauty of the country which furnishes recreation in itself. Nature has lavished upon them every gift of line and color. The mountains and the streams, the woods and the canyons, hold a hundred delightful possibilities that are within the reach of almost every one. It is a playground as varied as it is perfect. On Saturdays and Sundays in the summer, car after car, packed with camp equipment and home-made delicacies, head for the health-giving hills and mountains.

A FRONTIER CELEBRATION

The Barbecue is an institution typical of the Range Country and is attended by settlers from far and near.

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CHURCH AND COMMUNITY MAP OF HUGHES COUNTY, SOUTH DAKOTA

CHAPTER III

What of the Church?

What country landscape is complete without the church spires? In this spacious western region, in the heart of awe-inspiring natural scenery, the church spires are guideposts to almost 50,000 people. This land is new. It has been the changing frontier. Tremendous developments have been in process. The country is in a transition stage between the stock-raising past and the agricultural future. Population has increased rapidly; population has been shifting. The whole background has been kaleidoscopic. The Church has faced bewildering changes and growth. The burden of increasing its service and equipment has been heavy; it has not been able to “keep up” with the pace of civilization.

The story of early church growth in the cowboy country is one inspiring loyalty since it eloquently traces the faithfulness of a few in a country where God was easily forgotten. One of the first things to be read of rough-and-ready Bannock, among the earliest mining towns on the Range, is that church services were held there. The Church migrated with its congregations. Missionaries from the East came through with the fur trappers and preached the word of God. When the land began to be taken up by settlers, impromptu meetings were held, and Sunday schools were started in many places which had no ministers. Some of these points of worship gradually developed into organized religious bodies so that at present there are churches which have grown up with the country.

A Difficult Field

The Church in this frontier country has always faced great difficulties. Chiefly, there is the vast area of it, with a scattered and transient population. Homesteaders are a restless, uncertain, human quantity. Some are engrossed in getting a start. Others move on as soon as they have “proved up” on their claims. All are poor; there is always an economic struggle going on. The old frontier spirit of “let have and let be” survives from the cowboy days. This free and easy spirit says: “Boys drinking?—well, boys have to have their good times. Streets weedy?—well, they might be worse.” The same spirit says: “No churches?—well, we’re just as well off and our money is better in the bank than paying for a minister who never gets out and does an honest day’s work.”

“Good-bye, God, we’re going to Wyoming,” said a little Boston girl as the family was starting west. This typifies what happened as people from the East and Middle West moved out to the frontier. In the desperate struggle for existence homesteaders had little time for Christian enterprise. Because of the great distances and scattered population, adequate church ministry has been difficult if not impossible. People had for so long lived without a church that indifference developed. The longer they stayed the less they took the church for granted. The older the section, one finds to-day, the less likely it is to want church ministry. Newer homesteaders, recently come from other parts of the country where the church was more available, are more eager for church and Sunday school.

A VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS

The M. E. Church at Mosquero, Union County, N. M.

Development and Distribution

The differences in religious development and psychology according to the time of settlement are well illustrated by these counties. Generally speaking, Beaverhead grew up before the Church had made much headway. It is conservative. The general attitude is the wary one of “Let the Church alone.” Men class churches among those feminine luxuries with which a real, red-blooded man has little to do. On the other hand, Union, the most recently developed county of the four, still has a marked “church consciousness.” The majority of the people have not yet broken with the habits and customs of the more closely settled and churched Middle West from which they came. The other two counties combine these two conditions. Part of Sheridan is like Union, a region newly homesteaded. Part of it is like Beaverhead, old and settled with frontier habits. Hughes, on the threshold of the West, retains the frontier sentiment of all the other counties.

NO ROOM FOR BOTH

The Presbyterian Church at Melrose, Montana, and its next-door neighbor, a deserted saloon.

Church work has been going on in these counties since 1867, when Protestant work was started at Bannock, in Beaverhead County. Churches were organized in the other counties in succeeding decades. The first Protestant church was organized in Hughes between 1870 and 1880, in Sheridan and Union Counties between 1880 and 1890. In this comparatively short time, some churches have gone under. Beaverhead has had nine Protestant churches, of which six are now active. One church, located just outside the border of the county in Melrose, a small hamlet, is included in this report. Dillon, the county seat, has four churches, or one Protestant church for about every 675 persons. Outside Dillon, the habitable rural area of the county has two Protestant churches, or one church for about every 1,800 square miles and for about every 2,300 persons. Roman Catholics have two organized churches in the county, Mormons have one active and one inactive church, and there is one Christian Science church.

COMMUNITY MAP OF SHERIDAN COUNTY, WYOMING

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MAP SHOWING CHURCHES AND PARISH BOUNDARIES OF SHERIDAN COUNTY

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CHURCH AND COMMUNITY MAP OF BEAVERHEAD COUNTY

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MAP SHOWING CHURCHES AND PARISH BOUNDARIES OF UNION COUNTY, NEW MEXICO

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COMMUNITY MAP OF UNION COUNTY, NEW MEXICO

Sixteen Protestant churches have been organized in Hughes County, all but one of which are now active. Pierre, the county seat, with six of the churches, has a Protestant church for about every 535 people. Outside Pierre and the section occupied by the Crow Creek Indian Reservation, the rural area of the county has one Protestant church for about every seventy-three square miles, and for every 300 persons. There are three Catholic churches outside the Indian Reservation.

Sheridan County has had twenty-two Protestant churches, of which seventeen are now active and two are inactive. The city of Sheridan has nine Protestant churches, one church for about every 1,020 persons; outside Sheridan, the habitable area of the county has one Protestant church for about every 220 square miles, and for about every 1,130 persons. The county has five Catholic churches, a Mormon, a Christian Science, and a Theosophical organization.

The newest county of the four has the most churches. Thirty-nine Protestant churches have been organized in Union County, thirty-one of which are now active. Clayton, the county seat, has four churches, one for about every 625 persons; outside Clayton, the rural area of the county has one Protestant church for about every 280 square miles and for about every 525 persons. There are five organized Catholic churches.

The four counties now have a total of seventy active Protestant churches representing eleven different denominations, but there is an acute need of a more strategic distribution. Churches located in the city of Sheridan will henceforth be referred to as “city” churches; churches located in the towns of Dillon, Pierre and Clayton will be referred to as “town” churches; those located in villages, a classification applying to all centers with a population of 250 to 2,500, will be referred to as “village” churches; and those located in hamlets of less than 250 population or the open country will be known as “country” churches. Classified in this way, nine, or 13 per cent. of the total, are “city” churches; thirteen, or 19 per cent., are “town” churches; fourteen, or 20 per cent., are “village” churches, and thirty-four, or 48 per cent., are “country” churches. Other than Protestant churches will be discussed in a separate chapter.

God’s Houses

A live church organization should have a building of its own. It is hard, indeed, to preach the reality of religion without a visible house of God. Yet nearly one-third of the organizations have no buildings and must depend on school houses, homes or depots. Some of these churches, located in strategic places, acutely need buildings and equipment if they are to hold their own in the future. For others, however, the possession of buildings would be a tragedy, since they would thus become assured of a permanency which is not justified. All the city and town churches have buildings, as well as twelve of the fourteen village, and fifteen of the thirty-four country, churches. In addition, two inactive organizations have buildings which are available and are used to some extent.

EPISCOPAL CHURCH AND PARISH HOUSE

Beaverhead County, Montana.

The majority of the buildings are of wood; fourteen are of brick, cement or adobe. Unfortunately, the Range has no typical pioneer architecture of its own. Most of the buildings are reminiscent of New England forbears. Many of them look barren and unkempt. Standing forlorn upon the plains, most of the open country churches are unrelieved by any sign of trees. Little or no effort has been made to make them attractive. Thirty buildings are lighted by electricity. Twenty-two churches are of the usual one-room type, eleven have two-room buildings, four have three rooms, three have five rooms, six have six rooms or more. A few possess special facilities for social purposes. One town church has a parish house. Nine have extra rooms and some special equipment, including three gymnasiums. Stereopticon outfits have been installed in one city and in two town churches. One other town church borrows a stereopticon once a month from a public school, and one town church occasionally borrows the county moving-picture machine.

A new kind of community house was built last summer by the Sheridan Presbyterian Church. It is a summer camp on a mountain stream not far from the Big Horn Mountains, about twenty miles south of Sheridan. The building is used for kitchen, dining room, rest room and general headquarters. Each family brings its own tent when using the camp. The purpose is to make it a place for tired people, and especially for those who have no cars or other means of taking an outing during some part of the hot weather. The community idea expresses itself in a plan whereby those owning cars shall sometimes transport a family that otherwise might have no outing.

Church property is valued at $592,323, and it is noteworthy that the churches have acquired property of such value in so short a time. The fact that church growth is a present-day phenomenon is illustrated by the two splendid buildings erected since this survey was made, and the preparations for a third which will cover an entire block. The highest value of any city church is $70,000, of any town church $75,000, of any village church $7,000 and of any country church, $4,000. Twenty-eight churches have parsonages, their total valuation amounting to $61,300, or an average value of $2,189.

About one-third of the churches carry some indebtedness on their property. Twenty-five churches report a total debt of $57,695, of which amount $28,500 was borrowed by six city churches, $21,700 by four town churches, $2,905 by five village churches and $4,590 by eight country churches. The money was spent for new buildings, new parsonages, repairs and, in one case, for a garage to hold the preacher’s Ford. Curiously enough, instead of being a hardship, working to pay off a debt often brings church members together into a unified working group. The interest paid ranges from 4 to 8 per cent.

Church Membership

Even more important than the material assets of the churches are their human assets—their members. The total number enrolled in Protestant churches in the four counties is 5,820. Active members number 3,956, or 68 per cent., while 1,013, or 17.4 per cent., are classed as inactive, i.e., they neither attend church services nor contribute to church support, and 851, or 14.6 per cent., are non-resident. The country and city churches have the highest proportion of non-resident members—16.9 per cent. and 16.6 per cent., respectively; the town figure is next at 11.7 per cent., and the village percentage is 9.83. These people have moved, or else live too far away to come to church services. In addition to the enrolled membership, there are members of distant churches who have never transferred to local churches. They are scattered through all these counties, and their number is, of course, not known and cannot be estimated. Some may have been asked to join local churches, but it is certain that some have not, and that no one knows or seems to care if they have been members of some church elsewhere. They may attend local churches occasionally, but it is more likely that they do not. Some of them feel like the little hard-working ranch lady who said, “I was a church member out in Iowa, thirty-five years ago, but I’ve never done lifted by letter and I’ve been here so long now, I guess I never will.”

CHART I

The Protestant church member who moves away is not followed up by his church as a general thing. This is partly due to frequent ministerial changes, partly to the lack of well-kept church records, and partly to lack of interest. Of course, the fault is not only with the churches on the Range; it is a shortcoming of the churches everywhere. Since, however, a transient population is characteristic of this country, it would seem to be a matter of prime importance for churches to keep track of the movements of their members. This matter concerns not only local churches and their denominations, but also calls for coöperation among different denominations.

CHART II

Most of the churches are in the larger centers. Of the total resident church membership nearly 43 per cent. belong to city churches, 28 per cent. to town churches, 11 per cent. to village churches and only 15 per cent. to country churches. As the center decreases in size, the more it draws from the surrounding country. Thus, 93 per cent. of the total resident families of city churches live in the city and 7 per cent. live outside; 87 per cent. of the total resident families of town churches live in the town and 13 per cent. live outside; 62 per cent. of the total resident families belonging to village churches live in villages and 38 per cent. live outside.

Somehow the Church has failed to appeal to the men. A prominent man who never came to church in one of the towns in the counties studied, said to a minister: “Here is a hundred dollars. For God’s sake, don’t let the church go down!” This man realized that the community needed the church, but he chose to help from the outside. This is the prevailing attitude: the men are not antagonistic, but they are indifferent. All the counties have a higher proportion of men than of women in the population; each has a higher proportion of women than men in the church membership. Beaverhead, preponderant by 58.3 per cent. in males, has the lowest proportion of adult men in the church membership, 23.8 per cent. Union has the highest proportion of men, 32.7 per cent. For all the churches of the four counties, 30.5 per cent. of all church members are males over twenty-one, 8.6 per cent. are males under twenty-one, 47.5 per cent. are females over twenty-one and 13.4 per cent. are females under twenty-one.

A larger proportion of young people are enrolled in the city and town churches than in those of the village and open country. City and town church memberships have 9 per cent. boys, and 14.36 per cent. girls. Villages have 6.75 per cent. boys, and 12.26 per cent. girls. Open country churches have 8.19 per cent. boys, and 9.26 per cent. girls. One reason for the small number of young people is that many grew up without the Church. The children now growing up have better church opportunities. The hope of the Church for the future is to reach the children.

The small church prevails on the Range, the average active membership being only about fifty-seven. For the various groups, the active membership is as follows:

AVERAGE ACTIVE MEMBERSHIP

The country churches have an average of eighteen, the village churches thirty-five, the town churches ninety-one and the city churches 185 members each. Forty-nine of the seventy churches have fifty active members or less, and thirty-six, or 51.4 per cent., of these have less than twenty-five each. Twenty-one churches have each more than fifty active members. Forty-four out of the forty-nine churches of less than fifty members are either in villages or in the open country. All the churches of more than 100 members are either town or city churches.