Eastern clients visited dude ranches for authentically western experiences in complete comfort or, as one rancher put it, “home-made bedsteads but forty-pound mattresses.” The B Bar K was no exception. Wealthy Chicagoan J. Fred Butler bought the ranch from homesteader Clarence Lytle in 1927. The historic irrigation ditches, a spring house, fence lines, and horse trails are all that remain of Lytle’s original 1910s homestead. Butler and his daughter and son-in-law, Florence and Don Kilbourne, named the property the B Bar K. The families spent some $110,000 (over $1 million in today’s currency) on their summer playground. Trees felled nearby provided logs for the Rustic style buildings, designed to fit an idealized vision of the West. Native stone fireplaces further reinforced a connection to the surrounding wilderness. Florence decorated the cabins with Navajo rugs, Indian beadwork, and hand-crafted furniture, while the bathrooms were “supplied with everything from hot water to shower caps.” A business downturn led the Kilbournes to take paying guests. They were among 150 Montana dude ranchers operating during the Great Depression. Although some impoverished ranchers opened their homes to guests, many dude ranches were run by transplanted Easterners, like the Butler/Kilbourne family, who could anticipate the expectations of their wealthy visitors. After 1947, the ranch briefly became a boy’s camp, and then headquarters for a logging operation. In 1955, Jack and Elaine Hume purchased the property, renaming it Lone Mountain Ranch. Owners today continue in the long-standing tradition, offering a magical combination of comfortable accommodations and outdoor recreation.

Erected by Montana Historical Society.

Frank Crail, County Commissioner from 1889 to 1900, started proving up on his homestead in 1902 at what is now Meadow Village. The ranch became a cattle and wheat ranch of some 960 acres. Crail developed a strain of wheat called Crail Fife. His son Eugene built the Crail log cabin (1/2 mile north). He also built the first Ophir School in 1928. Montana born, Chet Huntley, radio commentator and some corporate investors purchased the Crail and Lone Mountain Ranches. Originally the Lone Mountain Ranch was called B-Bar-K Ranch. In the 1940's it was the Corcoran pulp-wood operation. 1n 1972 Meadow Village opened and later the Mountain Village in Madison County (5 miles west). The Soldiers Chapel was dedicated in 1955 for 82 members of Montana's 163 Infantry killed in World War II. Big Sky Skiing Resort has become a year-round recreation area.

Erected by Montana Cultural Trust and the Gallatin County Historical Society.

Sweeping views of the Spanish Peaks, the Madison Range, and the Gallatin Canyon provided a magnificent setting for Augustus Frank Crail to locate his ranching headquarters. Crail carved out a 960-acre ranch purchasing three homesteads, school lands, and railroad property in 1902. He, his wife Sally, and their three children all contributed to the family business. They settled in the small log cabin while they built the main house, establishing a water-powered sawmill nearby where they milled lumber for private and commercial use. Crail grew a special kind of wheat he developed and raised sheep. By 1934, the Crails’ success allowed them to close the sawmill and switch to raising cattle. Most area ranchers who weathered the Great Depression turned to dude ranching, but the Crails continued to run their working ranch until 1950. For fifty years, the ranch structures were the only evidence of human habitation in this meadow valley. Today, the house and cabin are the sole survivors of the once-sprawling complex. The older log cabin has a unique roof of rough sawn lumber three layers deep. The sturdy main residence, built with care and skill circa 1905, is of hand-hewn logs chinked with mortar. The marks of the ax used to flatten the dove-tailed logs are plainly visible. The two dwellings, now nestled among modern residences, are a rare monument to early homesteading and a poignant reminder of this bygone era in the Gallatin Valley.

Erected by Montana Historical Society.

Geologic processes have created a winter wonderland for skiers and snow boarders on Lone Mountain, the prominent peak that rises above Big Sky. Some geologists think that if the mountain was cut in half, there would be a Christmas tree pattern of igneous rock within the layers of sandstone and shale. Magma from deep in the earth rose up along a vertical crack, then spread out laterally between the layers of sedimentary rock. The magma never erupted as a volcano, but crystalized into an igneous rock called dacite before reaching the surface of the earth. The "trunk and branches of the tree" are dacite. The igneous rock and adjacent baked sedimentary rocks are much more resistant to erosion than softer sedimentary rock, which has eroded away to leave the mountain standing tall. Glaciers, landslides, and rock fall have greatly modified Lone Mountain. The cirques contain rock glaciers, which are piles of rock with year-round ice in their cores. Like ice glaciers, they slowly creep down the mountain slopes.

The rugged mountains to the northwest of Big Sky are the Spanish Peaks, composed of metamorphic rock that is billions of years older than the igneous and sedimentary rocks of Lone Mountain. These extremely old rocks were brought up from the depths along an enormous fault zone that extends from the Tobacco Root Mountains to the town of Gardiner north of Yellowstone Park.

The mountains provided a spectacular backdrop for visitors to one of the Gallatin Canyon's many dude ranches. The ranches offer visitors adventure and a taste of the Old West. They rode horses, hiked mountain trails, fished the area's trout streams, and reveled in the solitude of the mountains. The ranches were immensely popular before World War II, but their popularity diminished in the 1950s until now only a few remain.

GeoFacts:

• This area contains the northern most remnants of the 1.7 million-year-old Huckleberry Ridge Tuff, which was deposited by extremely hot flows of volcanic ash that swept across the region. The ash was the product of immense eruptions from the Yellowstone Caldera, about 50 miles to the south.

• A volcanic field covered an area of about 9,000 square miles of southern Montana and northern Wyoming about 50 million years ago, including much of the Gallatin Range. Many large, violent eruptions occurred that deposited volcanic rocks over a vast area.

• A cirque is a bowl-like valley or hollow carved by a glacier.

Geo-Activity:

• Remember that Lone Mountain is a volcano that never erupted. Why? Because magma that rose up through the mountain spread out among the rock instead of erupting out the top of Lone Mountain. Draw a picture of a volcano erupting then draw a picture of what happened to the magma inside Lone Mountain.

Erected by Montana Department of Transportation.

Barn Complex on the Crail Ranch The barns were clustered in a utilitarian linear plan with the attached system of corrals and outbuildings.

Erected by Montana History Foundation & Gallatin Canyon Women's Club.

The Beaverslide

Patented in 1910 in the Big Hole Valley, this device stacks hay for outside storage in a wind-proof loaf-shaped stack that could rise 30 feet high and contain up to 20 tons of hay. Horse-drawn buckrakes pushed cut hay to the beaver slide. A steel cable or heavy rope, tethered to horses, fed through a pulley to raise the hay basket on the stacker, dropping the hay onto a stack. This stacker decreased the time it took to build a haystack.

Erected by Montana History Foundation & Gallatin Canyon Women's Club.

The Crail Family amassed 960 acres of Basin (now called the Meadow) that stretched from below the national forest in the north across the Meadow to the South Fork and west to the foothills. This Sweetgrass Hills vantage point captures the expanse of the of the ranch, the building complex, and the hay meadows to the northwest.

Erected by Montana History Foundation & Gallatin Canyon Women's Club.

A string of pack animals is prepared to embark on a trip into the Gallatin wilderness. Locals and visiting "dudes" mounted up and packed out to fish pristine lakes and streams, to view or hunt big game wildlife, or simply to enjoy the solitude and beauty of a remote trail. A string packed in a cook stove, a kitchen box, sleeping bags and pallets for each camper. Pack trip food consisted of fresh meals, canned food, frozen meals, and cookies, but not ice.

Erected by Montana History Foundation & Gallatin Canyon Women's Club.

In his early 60s, Augustus (Frank) Crail purchased land in this area and brought his wife and three young children here in 1902. Frank, who migrated to Montana from Indiana when he was 21, had ranched in the Bridger Mountains in the late 1800s. He then lived in Bozeman during the 1890s when he served as the Clerk of the 9th District Court. Sallie Crail, a music teacher, move to Bozeman from Missouri and married Frank in 1886, when she was 22. The Crail Ranch grew to 960 acres, encompassing all of what is now known as The Meadow.

Frank and Sallie had three children: Eugene (b. 1887), Emmett (b. 1888), and Lilian (b. 1896). The family lived at this ranch during the summers. When Emmett was old enough, he lived on the ranch throughout the year. Eugene left while serving in WWI as a Red Cross hospital surveyor in England. He married in his 40s and moved to a ranch on West Babcock Street in Bozeman, and then left the region to work in Port Angeles during WWII. Lilian moved to Chicago to study nursing. After she graduated in 1921, she remained in Chicago until she moved to California as a private nurse and married in her 60s. It was Emmett who stayed on the Crail Ranch, operating it as a true ranch until 1949.

Erected by Montana History Foundation & Gallatin Canyon Women's Club.