Distinctly Montana Magazine

78 D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA N A M A G A Z I N E • S P R I N G 2 0 2 4 I N THE TINY TOWN OF ROUNDUP, MON- TANA, FROM THE 1940S THROUGH THE 1960S, Lee Steen and his twin brother Dee cre- ated a sprawling roadside exhibit of sculptures made of discarded trash and cottonwood tree branches gathered from around their property. Born of imagination, necessity, persistence, and resourcefulness—in other words, all the ingre- dients of creativity—this visionary environment would become the brothers' legacy. The Steen brothers were born in 1897 in Ken- tucky, but grew up in Roundup. While Lee spent his young adulthood in Washington working for the railroad and the Works Progress Administra- tion, his brother Dee served in both World Wars. The two men both moved back to their hometown in the 1940s, where they lived on the same property. On the banks of the Mussellshell River, Lee gathered cottonwood branches of immense size—some six, eight, ten feet long, or even lon- ger. He carved faces into the knots and bark of these branches that occurred to him when looking up at the branch while it was still at- tached to the tree. Handmade hats, scarfs, and other accessories made of various scrap metal and trash would also get attached to the branch, and the resulting statue would be propped up vertically along the highway that ran by the Steens' property. Sometimes, the branch didn't need any more help to make its face more appar- ent to the eye of someone who wasn't the statue's creator. In such cases, Lee would simply stand the branch upright beside its fellow Tree People, as his creations came to be called. He also sculpted mechanical ani- mals out of scrap metal. The Steens sold the statues to locals and passing motorists for five or ten dollars apiece. Many passersby were from out of T H E M O R E Y O U D O , T H E M O R E Y O U D O , LEE STEEN: A MONTANA ORIGINAL, A PERMANENT COLLECTION EXHIBIT AT PARIS GIBSON SQUARE MUSEUM OF ART. IMAGE CREDIT: DARRIN SCHREDER (2) by LINDSAY TRAN L E E S T E E N A N D T H E T R E E P E O P L E T H E M O R E I T C O M E S T O Y O U : T H E M O R E I T C O M E S T O Y O U :

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