Hiram Marcyes Park

By editor

Forsyth, Rosebud County, Montana

Hiram Marcyes arrived in Forsyth in 1882, a year that must have looked to any sensible man like a lottery ticket with all the numbers lined up in his favor. The Northern Pacific Railroad had just pushed its iron rails into the Yellowstone valley, and with the whistle of each steam engine came a promise of gold, grit, and grit’s accomplice--commerce. Marcyes was twenty-eight years old, freshly off the train from Wisconsin, and carried with him the kind of practical eye that sized up opportunity like a gambler checks his cards.

What did he do first? He opened a butcher shop, then a meat market, and then a general store. You don’t get rich or even stay solvent in a railroad town by sticking to one thing, especially when the railroad is gobbling up land and people like a starved bear. Forsyth was no exception. The tracks had turned a quiet stretch of prairie into a hub that demanded food, tools, and whiskey. Marcyes, who had once been a bugler in the Fourth Minnesota Volunteer Infantry during the Civil War, wasn’t about to let this windfall slip through his fingers.

Born September 11, 1844, in Newberg, Maine, Marcyes had already seen more action than most men twice his age. His war record includes battles from Vicksburg to Sherman’s March to the Sea. The bugle calls he blew could probably have told you more about the chaos of life and death than all the sermons he would later sit through. After the war, he married and headed west, a common enough story, but one with a particular twist--he didn’t just drift or gamble on speculation. He got down to work.

One of his lesser-known but more enduring enterprises was brickmaking. Using local clay, Marcyes manufactured bricks for a fledgling town that needed buildings faster than a preacher can say amen. He even built an elementary school on land he donated, a fact that might make you think he was aiming for sainthood or at least a good obituary. The school, fittingly named after him, was more than just a building; it was a symbol of permanence in a wild place where permanence was as rare as rain in a drought.

Marcyes’s company supplied bricks for homes and businesses not just in Forsyth but all over southeastern Montana. The Commercial Hotel, whose construction began in 1905, was his pride and joy. It took bricks and ambition in equal measure. The hotel was meant to be a beacon for travelers and a place where deals were made over whiskey and bad cigars. “The Commercial Hotel will be the finest in this part of Montana,” a local paper boasted in 1906, “and Mr. Marcyes spares no expense in its construction.” Whether the hotel lived up to this claim is less important than the fact that Marcyes was willing to stake his reputation on it.

Hiram and his wife Louise raised one son and four daughters in Forsyth, a community that was carving itself out of the prairie with the stubbornness of a tick on a hound dog. Marcyes was not content to just sell meat and bricks; he also served as constable and justice of the peace. These roles put him in the thick of local government and law enforcement, positions that were as much political as they were judicial. Later, he took his ambitions to the state legislature, where he was an eager supporter of the separation of Rosebud County from Custer County. The split was a big deal because it meant new seats of power and control over local resources, and Marcyes knew that political boundaries were often drawn with an eye toward personal gain.

In the Montana Legislature, Marcyes reportedly said, “A man’s work is best done when he’s close to the ground he tills--whether with a plow or a pen.” The separation of Rosebud County was finalized in 1901, and Forsyth became the county seat, a feather in Marcyes’s cap and a boon for local business.

But Marcyes was not all law and commerce. He had a passion for music--a fact that seems almost out of place for a man so deeply involved in the rough-and-tumble life of a railroad town. He organized and played in several local bands, and the Marcyes Family Band was something of a local celebrity. His children inherited his musical talent, and the sounds of brass instruments often filled the air during parades and community celebrations. A dedicated Methodist, Marcyes was seldom absent from the church choir on Sundays, proving that his interests ranged from the earthly to the spiritual.

He also took an interest in horticulture, a pursuit that might strike you as odd given the harshness of the Montana environment. Cottonwood trees, he discovered, were the most suitable for the local climate. He planted them throughout Forsyth, creating windbreaks and shade in a place where both were desperately needed. Some of those giant cottonwoods still stand today, stubborn and unyielding, much like the man who planted them.

Marcyes understood that a community was built piece by piece--by bricks baked in local clay, by trees that fought the prairie winds, and by the music that lifted spirits on otherwise gray days. He was a man who wore many hats: businessman, politician, musician, and horticulturist. His life was a series of calculated moves that mirrored the wider forces reshaping Montana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries--the railroad, the carving up of counties, the building of towns, and the relentless human effort to tame the wilderness.

Hiram Marcyes died on March 11, 1913, at the age of sixty-nine. His death was noted in the Forsyth Times, which remarked, “Mr. Marcyes was a man who built more than buildings; he built a community.” That may be the closest thing to a eulogy he ever needed.

See also

• Hiram Marcyes Park at Forsyth, Rosebud County
• Forsyth, MT at Forsyth, Rosebud County
• Custer Campsite -- June 22, 1876 at Rosebud, Rosebud County