Talk about the middle of nowhere.
What were they building? Or is that a cattle ranch?
Norm
The Gov. Land Office for Homesteaders?
Bob
I sure would like to have the cat!!!!!charley
I'm such an idiot..... so much so that I thought I'd share why this time.....
I read Charlie's post above and I thought what a strange thing to say...
so in walks idiot me and as a result I started scanning the photos for a cat..... a meow type cat....... haha
Ohhhhhhhh....... the tractor with caterpillar tracks, duh!!!!
Frank, uh, you're not alone!
gave you guys something to do !!!!!lol charley
My guess is that this was taken right after the establishment of Daniels County, which was split out of larger counties to the east and west. Among the reasons for "county splitting" as it was called, was that counties got money from the State of Montana and the Federal Government for road building from county seats to other major communities. After a hard fought battle and elections, Scobey became the county seat. Peerless is about 20 miles west of Scobey and is considered to be the most rural county in Montana although it is not the smallest population by quite a ways, having about 1700 people in the entire county. Peerless still has a high school and if remember right from a trip there several years ago, a Cenex station, a couple grain elevators and a bar/cafe. It's nice country. Big, big farms, huge tractors, thousands of acres of grain and pasture. It's a ways on west to Flaxville and Opheim.
Yes Charley you gave my mind an exercise....
and
thank you Eric for the moral support.....
Frank
Laughing Out Loud! Thank you Charley, Frank, and Eric, as well as Jay.
It just so happens, that my wife and my mother spent much of today working on a photo book project to be copied and shared with much of my family (lots of cousins). Two of the photos being looked at closely were of my grandfather with such a Caterpillar (likely a Holt) that he owned and operated along with his dad during the mid to late '10s.
So I guess I was prepped to see the correct kind of "Cat".
Wonderful photos, as usual.
Drive carefully, and enjoy, W2
There is a reason that Montana is known as "Big Sky Country".
If you look at the photo closely you can see that there are two crawler tractors. There is a second one next to the building. It has the same distinctive canopy as the closer one.
Thought I would add these two photos of my grandfather and the tractor. My grandfather and his dad were farming beans in Southern California right about where the LA International Airport is today. This was from about 1915 until about 1920.
The little girl standing on the tractor is my aunt Mildred, born in 1918. My mother didn't come along until 1930.
I have no idea what ever happened to the tractor. I understand that my grandfather and his dad ran it on and for other ranchers in the area during those years as well as on the acreage they were farming.
There was a very similar tractor (crawler with the big front steering wheel) in the Miller Ranch private collection outside Modesto CA for many years. My grandparents knew the Millers and used to take us over there to see the cars, carriages and other things in the collection. My grandmother would often tell me that the one in the Miller Collection was very much like the one they had had.
Drive carefully, and enjoy, W2
there will be a running gear sell at auction this fall not to far from me. if you got a motor we could have one. I think they told me it was a 110 hp holt charley