western expansion Archives

Preservation and Decay as Public History at the Moon-Randolph Homestead

Past the local dump and the interstate, and separated by foothills from the nearby historic neighborhoods of Missoula, Montana, the Moon-Randolph Homestead can be found, steeling itself against the modern world but not quite stuck in the past. It is an unusual historical site where the ecological and the human, and the past and the present melt into one another.

Figure 1: Entrance gate for the Moon Randolph Homestead Site, June 2019. Photo by Gwen Lockman.

Before U.S. westward expansion and federal homesteading efforts, Indigenous people traversed the North Hills of Missoula on the Trail to the Buffalo. They passed through nearby Hell Gate Canyon, named both for the cold, rough waters of the river and for the ambushes between tribes that occurred at the canyon. Once the U.S. seized the land in the late nineteenth century, homesteaders in the Missoula valley tried to raise subsistence crops and livestock there. These small parcels of land had little of the potential for profit that large, thousand-plus acre ranches enjoyed.

Ray and Luella Moon came to Missoula from Minnesota staking their homestead claim in 1889. They came to “prove up,” sell the land, and move on. Ray Moon sold his land to his relatives, George and Helen Moon, the same day he acquired the deed to the property in 1894. Then Ray and Luella left Missoula. George and Helen Moon had moved to Seattle by 1907. William and Emma Randolph came to Missoula from White Sulphur Springs, Montana to buy a farm so Emma could raise chickens and get William to settle down. The Randolphs tracked down the Moons in Seattle and wrote to them to purchase the land.[1]

William and Emma lived the rest of their lives in Missoula, alternating between the homestead, which they called the Randolph Ranch, and a home in town. They raised their three sons there and often let extended family stay with them for long stretches of time. William and Emma passed away in 1956 within months of each other. Their youngest son, Bill, continued living at ranch until his death in 1995. In 1992, Bill put a conservation easement on his land, which protected it from development after his death. The City of Missoula purchased the nearly 470 acres in 1997 and created the North Hills open space and trail system. Of those acres, 13 became the Moon-Randolph Homestead site. The North Missoula Community Development Corporation, a local nonprofit, created the Hill and Homestead Preservation Commission in 1998 to advocate for the Moon-Randolph Homestead. [2]

Figure 2: Panorama of the Moon Randolph Homestead Site from the Barn looking South and West, August 2019. Photo by Gwen Lockman.

In 1998, the city began a program to house caretakers on site to oversee the Moon-Randolph Homestead, raise livestock, host events, and interface with the public. The Department of Interior listed Moon-Randolph on the National Register of Historic Places in 2010. It is open to the public on Saturdays from 11 am to 5 pm, May through October, and is used by several groups during the week, including the Montana Conservation Corps, Opportunity Resource, Youth Homes, and Parks and Recreation Homestead Camps.[3] Dr. Caitlin DeSilvey, Associate Professor of cultural geography at the University of Exeter, was the first caretaker for the Moon-Randolph Homestead. She wrote her dissertation about her work in the late 1990s and early 2000s cataloging the Randolphs’ belongings.[4] DeSilvey’s scholarship contemplates the role of decay in heritage sites. She advocates for what she calls “encounter[s] with the debris of history,” allowing deterioration to proceed as a mode of historic interpretation.[5] Her approach to Moon-Randolph was to interfere as little as possible with anything on site. Though DeSilvey catalogued all of the artifacts and documents at Moon-Randolph, the decision to curate decay combined with a lack of dedicated city resources left much of what was on site to erode away or be eaten by the mice that inhabit the site.

Figure 3: Photos of decay at the Moon Randolph Homestead Site, June 2019. Photos by Gwen Lockman.

DeSilvey acknowledged in her dissertation the virtual impossibility that the city-managed property be allowed to totally decay. She suggested that, “Future management of the site will have to find a compromise between a celebration of entropic heritage and the conservation of material traces.”[6] As an intern for the City of Missoula Historic Preservation Office and Department of Parks and Recreation, the priority for my summer job at the Homestead was to help the preservation and interpretations methods for the site to evolve.

Figure 4: Photo of winch, still standing after original Mining Shed Collapse in 2014. Photo from Moon Randolph Homestead/City of Missoula.

My duties included the curation of the reconstructed Mining Shed. The Mining Shed had been entirely reconstructed, out of both new and salvaged materials, after collapsing in 2014, and exists in direct contradiction with the decay at the Homestead. The original Mining Shed stood from around 1900 until its collapse in 2014. It sheltered a hoist for the small-scale coal mining operation that William Randolph maintained on his land. Coal mining was not an especially profitable venture in Missoula, though at least one company, Hell Gate Coal, successfully mined the North Hills in the early 1900s. The naming of the Coal Mine Road, which led to the family ranches of the North Hills, Randolphs’ included, suggests Missoulians knew the area to bear coal. One must still use Coal Mine Road to get to Moon-Randolph and its neighbors, the city dump included.[7] Coal at the Homestead was likely found by George Moon, if not Ray Moon. Mining was a special interest for William Randolph, who was more of a dreamer and tinkerer than a farmer. The Randolphs’ quaintly named “Little Phoebe” mine produced low-grade coal, mostly traded with neighbors or used at home. They hired men to work in the mine, signaling either some profit or William’s financial dedication to his side projects. Robert, the middle Randolph son, wrote about the mine in his boyhood diary during the winter of 1916-1917. The Randolphs used coal from Little Phoebe until the 1930s, then let it fill with water to use to irrigate the pasture. In 1937, Robert wrote from Spokane, Washington to ask his father if he had given the coal’s use any further thought. William converted the building into a workshop but worked around the hoist, which still stands in its original place. Snow in the winter of 2014 caused the original building’s collapse. City and private crews completed the reconstruction in 2018. The new building is slightly larger than the original structure but is a close reproduction of the old shed.[8]

Figure 5: Photo of reconstructed Mining Shed, July 2019. Photo by Gwen Lockman.

My curation of the Mining Shed sought to more formally interpret the space while maintaining the Homestead as a place both lost to time and still writing its history. The floor space must be kept free so that the building can be used as a gathering space in inclement weather. It is the safest and largest covered space on site, which will be slow to change, because historic site classification restrictions prohibit new permanent foundation construction. The Mining Shed interpretation does not recreate a specific year of its lifespan but instead illustrates the several layers of its use over time and restoration. We arranged artifacts from mining and shop work. We integrated elements of the original building into the structure of the new building. This protects the intact remains of the old shed and makes the reconstruction apparent through comparison. I wrote limited interpretative signage and selected for display original documents from the Moon Cabin archive related to William Randolph’s mining ventures away from the Homestead.

One of my goals for the Mining Shed was to connect the Homestead to Montana’s economic history from statehood in 1889 through the post-war era. The Moon-Randolph history connects Missoula’s river, trade, agriculture, timber, mining, and railroad economy and history. William Randolph’s investments and work in Montana and beyond call attention to the several ways he sought to make money outside of agriculture. His ventures included work for Standard Brick Company in Missoula, management of the Sibley timber property in Lolo, Montana, and attempts at placer mining in the Nine Mile Valley east of Missoula. Presenting this history highlights piecemeal economic survival in Montana prior to the 1960s and the survival of the Randolphs’ story through material and documentary evidence.

Figure 6 Photo of “Little Phoebe” Mining Adit, June 2019. Photo by Gwen Lockman.

These changes marked a shift toward formal curation at Moon-Randolph. However, we sought to maintain “The Spirit of the Homestead,” a term defined in the Moon-Randolph Strategic Plan Update for 2015-2024. The Spirit of the Homestead aims to maintain Moon-Randolph as “a living place, where historic activities continue and new uses are established, and a place where natural processes of aging and ecological renewal can be appreciated.”[9] The idea of “living history” at the site is not produced as reenactment or period restoration. Rather, the Homestead is kept “alive.” Trees overtake metal refuse from rusty, repurposed farm equipment. There are mice, chipmunks, rabbits, songbirds, hawks, snakes, deer, and the occasional bear. Buildings collapse. Caretakers raise pigs and chickens, haul non-potable water for irrigation from a cistern, and tend to a 130-year-old orchard that still produces cider apples. There is almost no signage and very little written interpretation. The site is left to speak for itself, otherwise visitors must speak to a caretaker or volunteer to ask questions, enjoy a tour, or help with chores.

Figure 7: Photo of Summer 2019 curation in the Mining Shed, August 2019. Photo by Gwen Lockman.

And speak for itself it does: when I returned to the Homestead in May 2020 for a socially distanced excursion, the mining shed had new tenants. Magpies built their winter nests in the rafters of the reconstructed shed. Springtime bunnies darted in and out of the shed. Their curation enhanced ours. As much as there is curated decay at the site, there, too, is resplendent life. History and the present, decay, life, and curation, negotiate their coexistence in the North Hills of Missoula.

Figure 8: Photo of magpie nest in the Moon Randolph Homestead Mining Shed, May 2020. Photo by Caroline Stephens, Moon Randolph Homestead.

[1] DeSilvey, Butterflies and Railroad Ties; DeSilvey, Salvage Rites; Moon-Randolph Homestead, “History,” https://www.moonrandolphhomestead.org/history; Montana Association of Land Trusts, “About Conservation Easements,” http://www.montanalandtrusts.org/conservationeasements/; North Missoula Community Development Corporation, “Moon Randolph Homestead,” http://www.nmcdc.org/programs/moon-randolph-homestead/; United States Department of the Interior, National Parks Service, National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet, Moon-Randolph Ranch, March 1, 2010, https://www.nps.gov/nr/feature/presmonth/2010/Moon-RandolphRanch.pdf; “Moon-Randolph Strategic Plan Update: 2015-2024,” 2-5.

[2] Caitlin DeSilvey, Butterflies and Railroad Ties: a History of a Montana Homestead, second edition (Missoula, MT: Hill and Homestead Preservation Commission, 2002); Caitlin DeSilvey, Salvage Rites: Making Memory on a Montana Homestead, doctoral dissertation, Open University (2003); Moon-Randolph Homestead, “History,” https://www.moonrandolphhomestead.org/history; City of Missoula, North Missoula Community Development Corporation, and Five Valleys Land Trust, “Moon-Randolph Strategic Plan Update: 2015-2024,” Final, Adopted by Missoula City Council May 4, 2015, 7, https://www.ci.missoula.mt.us/DocumentCenter/View/31846/MoonRandolphHomestead_StrategicPlan_2015?bidId=.

[3] Moon-Randolph Homestead, “History,” https://www.moonrandolphhomestead.org/history; North Missoula Community Development Corporation, “Moon Randolph Homestead,” http://www.nmcdc.org/programs/moon-randolph-homestead/; United States Department of the Interior, National Parks Service, National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet, Moon-Randolph Ranch, March 1, 2010, https://www.nps.gov/nr/feature/presmonth/2010/Moon-RandolphRanch.pdf; Moon-Randolph Homestead, “Welcome,” https://www.moonrandolphhomestead.org/.

[4] University of Exeter, “Professor Caitlin DeSilvey,” College of Life and Environmental Sciences, Geography Department, http://geography.exeter.ac.uk/staff/index.php?web_id=Caitlin_Desilvey; DeSilvey, Salvage Rites; “Moon-Randolph Strategic Plan Update: 2015-2024,” 4-5.

[5] DeSilvey, Salvage Rites, 10.

[6] DeSilvey, Salvage Rites, 176.

[7] City of Missoula, Historic Preservation Office, Moon-Randolph Homestead Records; DeSilvey, Butterflies and Railroad Ties; DeSilvey, Salvage Rites; National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet, Moon-Randolph Ranch, March 1, 2010; J.T. Pardee, “Coal in the Tertiary Lake Beds of Southwestern Montana,” Contributions to Economic Geology, Part II (1911);

[8] DeSilvey, Butterflies and Railroad Ties; DeSilvey, Salvage Rites; National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet, Moon-Randolph Ranch, March 1, 2010; Robert Randolph, Diary, 1916-1917, Moon-Randolph Archive; City of Missoula, Historic Preservation Office, Moon-Randolph Homestead Records.

[9] “Moon-Randolph Strategic Plan Update: 2015-2024,” 7.

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by Jennifer Graber

In 1930, historian William Warren Sweet wrote that the “conquest of the continent” was America’s greatest accomplishment and its churches’ “greatest achievement” involved “the extension of their work westward.” Drawing on Frederick Jackson Turner’s thesis about the importance (and closing) of the American frontier, Sweet’s classic and oft-read textbook identified westward movement as fundamentally important to American religion.Historians of American religions have rightfully turned away from Sweet’s conclusions. Indeed, since the 1960s the study of American religions has been transformed from a sleepy corner of the historical profession to what commentators have identified as an increasingly popular subfield. The scholarship now includes excellent monographs on long-neglected groups, oft-overlooked sources, and is shaped by theoretical insights from critical work on religion, race, gender, ethnicity, and labor. During the field’s much-needed transformation, the frontier faded into the background, at least for a time.

A new generation of scholars has returned to the frontier, bringing with them all the critical tools now available in the subfield. Rather than asking how religion fueled American expansion, they have investigated how the experience of expansion reshaped American religions, those practiced by both settlers and Native people. It’s within this new mode of writing that I set out to study the religious transformations prompted by the invasion and defense of lands inhabited by Kiowa Indians and later designated Indian Territory (and eventually Oklahoma) by Americans.

Americans got their first long-term experiences on Kiowa lands and engagements with Kiowa ritual activity when Quakers were assigned to administer the Kiowa, Comanche, and Apache Reservation in 1869. Ready to engage their fellow humans trapped in “heathen darkness,” Quakers distributed food rations, organized schools, and held meetings for worship among the reservation’s more than 5000 Native occupants. Quaker workers frequently mentioned Kiowa “superstition” as the greatest obstacle to their acculturation of Euro-American habits and assimilation into American life.

National Archives, Bureau of Indian Affairs

Several years later, however, a Quaker administrator saw something he recognized as real religion. Kiowa elders and young men requested that he transcribe a petition for them. They were concerned that American buffalo hunters were devastating the herds. These hunters acted illegally and the Kiowa petitioners implored the federal government to stop them. In the petition, they claimed that Kiowas and the buffalo had been created together, to be like brothers. They argued that one could not live without the other. If the U.S. government failed to protect the herds, Kiowas would also die.

National Archives, Bureau of Indian Affairs

While Native claims about relations to other-than-human beings were hardly uncommon, the Quaker employee had no reference point for understanding such connections. But unlike dismissive attitudes he displayed earlier in his tenure, the Quaker seemed open to seeing something new. In his account of the proceedings, he referred to the “gravity” and “reverential feeling” of the smoking session held prior to the discussion. In a letter, he encouraged federal officials to act because the buffalo were a “matter involving [Kiowas’] traditional religious belief.” For years, this Quaker worker had witnessed Kiowa buffalo hunting, as well as their use of hides for tipis and meat for food. He had observed, and even sent troops to monitor, Kiowa Sun Dances, rites in which the people gave thanks for the buffalo. After these experiences, he eventually saw something “religious” where he had once seen only heathenish practices unworthy of the descriptor.

Similar to the Quaker’s change in perspective, American expansion shaped Kiowa ritual life. Around the same time as the buffalo petition, Kiowas struggled to maintain practices that had been central to them for generations. They held Sun Dances in summer, even as hunger beset them and federal officials sent troops to monitor them. Along with efforts to sustain older practices, Kiowas also considered new ritual options. While men who raided south into Texas and Mexico had long encountered Native peoples who engaged peyote as a source of sacred power, Kiowas had never adopted it as a regular practice. That changed in the 1870s. With their Sun Dances under scrutiny and people suffering from outbreaks of disease, Kiowas gathered for peyote meetings. Welcoming ritual specialists from other Indian nations, Kiowas brought the rites to the reservation and developed their own practices and songs. Within two decades, peyote practices were widespread among Kiowas.

The Ghost Dance of 1889-1891 by the Oglala Lakota at Pine Ridge. Illustration by Frederic Remington, 1890.

Eventually, Kiowas would consider two more ritual options from outside their own traditions. In the 1880s, the first Christian missionary arrived. Under the tutelage of a Kiowa man who studied in the East and received Episcopal deacon’s orders, a small number of Kiowas accepted baptism in the early 1880s. Affiliation with Christianity increased after a host of missionaries arrived in the 1890s. Around the same time, messages from Native neighbors told of a Paiute prophet who claimed the world could be renewed through dance. Called the Ghost Dance by Americans, the movement spread to reservations across the West. Kiowas adapted it their situation, using feathers to identify the movement, singing songs and dancing with the hope of restoring depleted buffalo herds and returning loved ones lost to hunger and disease. By 1890, Kiowas participated in older Sun Dance and healing practices, as well as peyote rites, Christian worship, and Ghost Dancing, all in the hope of sustaining their lands and people threatened by American occupation.

William Warren Sweet wrote that there was no more influential “fact” in the development of American religion than “continuous contact with frontier conditions and frontier needs.” No historian working today would make such grand claims. Events on the “frontier” must be considered in relation to American efforts to reconstruct the South, debates about Chinese immigration in California, labor disputes and unrest in the North, and legal conflicts over Mormon plural marriage and what constituted acceptable religious practice. Even so, encounters prompted by expansion played a significant role in reshaping the religious worlds of settlers and Native people. It lay at the heart of settler ideas about American civilization and it functioned as one more resource in the struggle for Native peoplehood, lands, and sovereignty.

Jennifer Graber, The Gods of Indian Country: Religion and the Struggle for the American West

and more on the book here.

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