William and Elizabeth (Lizzie) McMaster and their son James arrived in Helena, Montana Territory, in 1886. William built a blacksmith shop close to the train depot. Then, in 1893, they filed for a 160-acre homestead located twelve miles east of town. The high, open hilltop along the Diamond City Stage Road was an excellent location for a blacksmith shop supplying farrier needs and freight wagon repairs. The family picked rocks to construct the foundations and line the 100-foot, hand-dug well. William cut logs to build the house, barn, and blacksmith shop, using his own distinctive square corner post design. They became self-sufficient, raising chickens, milk cows, Hereford cattle, and quarter horses. Lizzie kept a garden and planted apple and cherry trees; the orchard is a registered Montana Heritage Orchard. After William died in 1902, Lizzie and James expanded the homestead to 2,000 acres by the 1920s. Lizzie was a fierce defender of her water rights, and through her determination, frugality, and hard work, the ranch survived the hardest times. Following Lizzie’s death in 1941, James operated the ranch until he died in 1972. Under James Jr. (Bud), the ranch again grew and expanded. Before he died, Bud and his sister Dolly created a conservation easement, preserving generations of the McMaster family’s efforts to steward the land. Its expansive acreage, operated by the Bureau of Land Management, is open to the public and protected in perpetuity following Lizzie’s dictum: “take care of the land, and the land will take care of you.”
]]>The Spokane Hill airway beacon guided nighttime pilots flying between Bozeman and Helena along the Northern Transcontinental Airway’s east-west airmail route between New York City and Seattle. The Spokane Hill beacon was one of six such structures lit on September 12, 1935. Five days later, Northwest Airlines made its inaugural nighttime flight between Bozeman and Helena. Ignition of the MacDonald Pass beacon west of Helena on November 10, 1935, completed Montana’s east-west beacon system. The International Derrick and Equipment Company of Columbus, Ohio, fabricated the towers, which were paid for with funds from the Works Projects Administration, a Depression-era federal program designed to create jobs. This fifty-five-foot-tall, steel structure held a revolving, one-million-candle-power beacon originally encased in a glass dome. Red and green directional lights on the tower indicated the route, while flashing red course lights identified the beacon in Morse code. Gas-powered generators housed in a nearby shed powered the beacon until the early 1940s when it was connected to electrical lines. Before the advent of radio navigation, airway beacons served as a critical nighttime navigational aid, guiding pilots along routes between airports. From 1926 to 1938, the U.S. Bureau of Air Commerce created 18,000 miles of airway corridors and installed 1,550 airway beacons to mark the routes for night flying. Though most of the country’s beacons were replaced with ground-based radio stations by the mid-1970s, Montana’s private pilots successfully lobbied to keep seventeen beacons lit through 2017. As of 2021, several adopted beacons still light the night sky, recalling Montana’s aviation heritage.
]]>Helena mining man W. C. Child initiated this ranch about 1885, as the “White Face Farm” stocked with some of the first purebred Herefords in Montana Territory. Then came the infamous “Hard Winter of 1886-87,” when deep snows and months of freezing temperatures followed drought years that had left feed sparse. Open-range cattle herds were decimated. When spring arrived, Child built the massive fieldstone barn, 55 feet tall and 100 square feet on both lower level and loft, along with other stone outbuildings. The barn held stalls for 500 cattle and could store 350 tons of hay; it is Montana’s largest barn. Shortly after its construction came that of the octagonal ranch house, which runs 20 feet on a side. With his permanent residence in Helena, Child used the structure only for meetings and parties; guests arrived via Child’s personal railroad car. The house’s entire second floor was an open ballroom. The Silver Panic of 1893 ruined Child financially, and he died that same year. As the ranch passed from owner to owner, its buildings deteriorated over the years until the Paul Kleffner family began restoration in 1943.
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