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Making it pay: Livingston-area ranch a showcase for statewide program
Doug Ensign likes a good rain as much as the next rancher, but he thinks a long dry spell has its benefits, too.
"Droughts are a wonderful thing because they make you look at your resources," he says.
By ED KEMMICK
Of The Gazette Staff
In the case of Ensign’s Mission Ranch about 10 miles east of Livingston, the main resource is grass, but grass in such high, dry, thin-soiled country that it could easily be overgrazed during a drought. That consideration led Ensign and his late wife, Zena, to seek advice from range specialists at Montana State University about four years ago.
They worked with those specialists for nearly a year, exploring options for improving ranch production, conserving resources and finding nontraditional ways of making the ranch pay. During the last of their many meetings with MSU Extension Service workers, one of them suggested that the Ensigns look into the newly created Undaunted Stewardship program, which was developed to help ranchers facing problems familiar to the Ensigns.
As a result, the Mission Ranch became one of the first ranches in the state to take part in the program, which was started by the Montana Stockgrowers Association in partnership with MSU and the Bureau of Land Management. Now, the Mission Ranch is a showcase for Undaunted Stewardship, a model that could be replicated all over Montana and in other states as well.
Doug Ensign said his relative inexperience as a rancher may have benefited him because he wasn’t afraid to ask for help. He was a history teacher at West High School in Billings for 25 years, and it was toward the end of his career that he met Zena, who was working as a substitute teacher and whose father had bought the Mission Ranch in 1947. After they married and Doug retired in 1995, they moved to the ranch full time. Zena and her sister had been running the ranch since the late 1980s, when their father could no longer operate it himself.
Ensign said the Mission Ranch only became a pioneer because it was so close to MSU and was able to obtain a lot of help early on. He said many other ranches had been doing better conservation work for a lot longer than the Mission Ranch.
He and Zena were happy to be pioneers in the Undaunted Stewardship program, he said, but "it was something we felt really kind of embarrassed about, too."
A sense of history
A key part of the program is to preserve historic sites along the Lewis and Clark Trail. In the case of the Mission Ranch, William Clark and his party camped across the Yellowstone River from the ranch on their return from the Pacific in 1806.
The ranch was also the site of Fort Parker, built as the first Crow Indian Agency in 1869. Although there was no mission at the fort, it was usually referred to as "the Mission" by locals, and the name was later adopted for the ranch and the creek it straddles.
Zena’s father, Almon Walborn, was a Chicago native who came west in 1926. He first ranched, coincidentally, near the present-day Crow Agency, increased his holdings during the Depression, then bought the Mission Ranch because his wife felt too isolated down in southeastern Montana.
Most of the local people knew there had once been a fort on the ranch, up on a bench that now overlooks Interstate 90, and in 1971 the Springdale Historical Society erected a small concrete monument on the site. The county owned a short road that led to the fort, which attracted many visitors over the years.
Doug Ensign said most of the visitors were respectful, but others were simply rude or downright destructive. Sometimes he would find people digging for artifacts on the site of the old fort, and he often had to clean up fast-food containers and other debris littering the ground. Once, he said, "some knothead" even had the gall to pull off the interstate, park next to the old fort and dump the holding tank on his RV.
That has all changed, thanks to Undaunted Stewardship. By exchanging easements with the county, the old road has been closed off and tourists instead can drive up to a hill overlooking the scant remains of Fort Parker. There a collection of displays, similar to the historical markers spread across the Little Bighorn Battlefield, tell the story of the fort, the Mission Ranch and the Undaunted Stewardship program.
Visitors can no longer walk across the site of Fort Parker, but from the small exhibit area there are spectacular views of the Absaroka Mountains to the south, and of Sheep Mountain, with its square-topped butte ringed with sandstone rimrocks, to the north. On a clear day, the Crazy Mountains are visible beyond Sheep Mountain.
The site has further historical significance. Because it is near the mouth of the Shields River, where it empties into the Yellowstone, the area was long a crossroads for wildlife, native peoples and pioneers. Forks of the Bozeman Trail crossed the Mission Creek Ranch, and a main stem of the trail ran along the southern flanks of Sheep Mountain.
The exhibit at the Mission Ranch was completed late this summer and is the first in the state, but work is under way to create similar exhibits at eight other ranches along the Lewis and Clark Trail. Jim Peterson, who was executive vice president of the Montana Stockgrowers when Undaunted Stewardship was developed and now works for the College of Agriculture at MSU, said the program benefits everyone.
"This is a way to preserve the site, reward the rancher and give the public an opportunity to learn about the Lewis and Clark Expedition," he said.
Other benefits
Undaunted Stewardship and experts at the Extension Service also have helped Ensign get more out of his land.
Working mainly with Jeff Mosely, a range management specialist at MSU, Ensign developed a system of conservation-minded grazing practices. On the dry, fragile upper reaches of the ranch, encompassing about three-fourths of Mission’s Creek’s 4,100 acres, Ensign has adopted a three-parcel rotation that has cattle using each part lightly before being moved on.
On the other 25 percent, rich river-bottom with thick grass, Ensign practices "high-intensity, short-duration" grazing. There, the land is divided into 10 parcels and his cattle (about 800 head this year) are put on each parcel for short periods of time, forcing them to eat everything in sight, not just the choicest grasses. Then, before the grass starts growing again, usually in four to five days, they are moved to a new parcel.
Ensign said moving them from pasture to pasture is a snap, once the animals learned that an open gate led to a new field of lush grass.
"You better get out of the way because they’ll just stampede to the next pasture," he said.
Ensign has also installed a lot of fencing on Mission Creek, which originates in the Absarokas, and on Mission Spring Creek, a mile-long stream that bubbles up on ranchland north of I-90. The fencing keeps the cattle from destroying the stream banks, but they are allowed to graze along both creeks twice a year, to keep down the growth of trees and shrubs that could choke the waterways if left unchecked.
Mission Spring Creek was ruined as a fishery by the floods of 1996 and ’97. The width of the channel was tripled, holes were filled in with silt and algae sprouted on the surface. Using money from Undaunted Stewardship – participating ranches get $5,000 a year for the life of the agreement to offset production lost to tourism or other impacts – Ensign has since restored the creek.
Though parts of it still need work, it is full of fishing holes again and Ensign makes money by allowing people to fish on it for $80 a day, or $40 for people staying at the Mission Creek Bed and Breakfast.
The bed and breakfast is another outgrowth of Ensign’s involvement with MSU and Undaunted Stewardship. The idea for it came up when Mosely was working with the Ensigns to find other ways of making the ranch profitable.
Ensign said his wife, who died last year, was "a gracious, gregarious person and she was not going to be happy cussin’ at cattle the rest of her life." She also loved to cook and garden. Those interests, and the area’s stunning beauty and recreational opportunities, convinced them to build the B&B, which opened three years ago. Ensign lives in the spacious house, letting out rooms on two floors to visitors.
Sitting in the living room of the B&B, Ensign said Zena designed the house, with its Western décor and its big views of the Absarokas.
"I have to give credit to my wife," he says. "She decorated the inside. And God decorated the outside."
Ed Kemmick can be reached at 657-1293 or [email protected].
Copyright © The Billings Gazette, a division of Lee Enterprises.
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