Distinctly Montana Magazine

D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA N A • S S U M M E R 2 0 1 7 88 Skilled craftsmen built these homes. Technically, one of the first private homes in Montana was built in Washington Territory. en from March, 1863, to May, 1864, it was in Idaho Territory. At that time, John F. Grant, son of a Hudson's Bay Company agent, was living in a rough cottonwood shack at the north end of the Deer Lodge Valley, near present- day Garrison. He was approached by two men who asked if he would like a hewed log house. When he asked who they were and where they came from, one replied his name was Joe Prudhomme and he and his compan- ion had deserted from Fort Benton Trading Post. As Grant observed later, "It seemed a poor recommendation, but it was honest." Prudhomme and his partner built the house, and though it was no mansion, it was one of the earli- est contracting jobs in what is now Montana. Prudhomme's name appears occasionally in early newspapers, most frequently describing him as a moun- tain man and gold seeker. Like many others, he drifted on. In his memoir, Johnny Grant re- called that two years later he gave that house away and wrote, "In the fall of 1862, I built a house in Cottonwood, afterwards called Deer Lodge. It cost me a pretty penny…I paid five dollars a day to McLeod, the hewer; and to the carpenter, Alexander Pam- brun, I paid nine dollars a day. Along with thousands of others, Pambrun came to Montana during the gold rush. Like them, he turned to other work when gold proved elusive. Many a Montana fortune was made by such men who found that real wealth in a gold camp was to be made by "mining the miners." He built Grant's new home in the style he had seen at Fort Vancouver, Washington, as a youngster. Two years later, Grant hired Louis LaFrance to do the finish work on the house, including windows, doors, locks and hinges which arrived in the territory by steamboat from St. Louis, Missouri. ough still a far cry from the man- sions of Montana's mining heyday, it was lauded in the Virginia City news- paper in 1865 as "by long odds the fin- est in Montana. It appears as if it had been lifted by the chimneys from the bank of the St. Lawrence, and dropped down in Deer Lodge Valley." In 1866, Grant sold out to rising cattle baron Conrad Kohrs. By the time Kohrs more than doubled the size of the home to 8,800 square feet in 1890, the sort of credit which Grant had given in his memoir was harder to come by. In his autobiography, Kohrs simply states "we began remodeling and putting an addition to our house." Fortunately, due credit can still be given to individual craftsmen because Kohrs meticulously recorded the names and wages in his ledger. H. B. Ross, W. Law, L.C. Bradshaw and Sam Mc- Curdy did carpentry. Charles Forest laid some of the nearly 40,000 bricks of the new addition. Edmonson and Mandinger did stone flag- ging. Keiser and Streacher painted. John Ward was a stone cutter. Christian Schurch, a Swiss immigrant was a tinner who installed the gaslight system: Just a handful of names out of the thousands of men whose skill and labor created the built legacy of Montana. In the DM archives, find related articles about mansions: Governor's Mansion in Helena, Treasures at the Grant- Kohrs Ranch, and the Marcus Daly in Hamilton. www.distinctlymontana.com DISTINCTLY MONTANA | DIGITAL The different colored bricks are puzzling until a careful observer realizes the right side is actually clapboard painted to look like brick where the 1890 addition to the Kohrs home joins the original 1862 Grant home. Inside the attic, McLeod's hand- hewn logs can just be seen where they meet the brickwork. by LYNDEL MEIKLE W EALTHY BUSINESSMAN MARCUS DALY DID NOT BUILD THE DALY MANSION IN HAMILTON. His rival, William C. Clark did not build the Copper King Mansion in Butte. Nor can Nelson Story, C. E. Conrad, Preston B. Moss or Conrad Kohrs make that claim for impressive historic homes in Bozeman, Kalispell, Billings, and Deer Lodge. Yet their names adorn the mansions which thousands of visitors tour every year. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that their money built the homes, but money can't hold a hammer. Cold cash can't lay thousands of bricks or decorate a wall with elaborately combed plaster. CONTINUED

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