by Roy Millegan

Westphal Creek, Westphal Basin, Dry Lake Mountains, Gooseberry Springs, Splan Springs, Dixon Gulch and Bone Basin Creek all lay south of Whitehall, Montana, in the hills generally referred to as the Bone Basin area. It is bounded on the east by the Mayflower, Perry Canyon to the south, Gold Hill on the west and the Parrot Bench on the north. This area, now owned mainly by two ranchers, once was filled with children's voices, music to dance by, a farmer hollering " giddy-up " to his horses, the smell of good home cooked meals and the screech of chalk on a school blackboard.

Indians frequented the area before the white man settled here. Buffalo skulls, arrowheads, spearheads and teepee rings found by the early settlers attested to this. The first white man was probably a miner searching for his fortune or some hunter looking for either furs or meat. Good springs with some of the best water found in the area soon attracted the homesteaders, just who was first, I was unable to find out. A James Dixon from the Bone Basin area died in 1916 thus one can assume that Dixon Gulch was either named after him or his family, the obituary stating very little was known about the man. In one part of the basin was a tree used by the deer to rub their horns on, shedding them nearby, leaving one person to speculate that was how the name came about. However, the 1899 Jefferson Valley Zephyr noted that every year cattle seemed to die from an unidentified poisonous weed, thus their bleached bones soon drew people with wagons to the area who hauled them out to those desiring to sell them to certain processors. When asked where they were going they always replied " up to the bone basin." It appears the poisonous weeds were larkspur and death camas.

It wasn't long before homesteading of the area started in earnest. Voices echoing throughout the basin came from the Cowdrey, Brijkovec, Morrow, Christian, Ralph Shaw, Buckholtz, Carter, Torrence, Westphal, Sackopoulus, Bisch, Edwards, and a few other families. Today the foundations of their dreams are hard to find except by those few that really know the area. If the Parrot Smelter had become a working reality perhaps the area today would have been a fair sized city.

Information for this story has been gathered through interviews with Theodore Bisch, Vera ( Carter ) Fitzhugh, Charles Metully, and Mary ( Shaw ) Lowden along with information taken from some of the old newspapers. I am indeed indebted to them and they are happy to share some of their experience so that all might know a little more abut this area.

The homesteaders plowed the land planting small grains, dryland winter wheat yielding 55 to 60 bushels in a good year, but there weren't many of these. The small amount of water that was available from the springs and streams was put on the gardens that were a must, usually bigger that what they actually had water for. Excess garden produce found a ready market in the bustling city of Butte. One person asked the Bisch family for 100 pounds of squash so they put four of their finest in a sack and sent him on his way. Every fair time this area was well represented in the garden and produce competition. One year the Carter family had help at harvest time it seems a cloudburst washed all of their Irish Cobbler potatoes out of the ground so all they had to do was pick the clean tubers and store them. Many kept geese on their farmsteads just to keep weeds out of the gardens as well as have them eat the many grasshoppers and crickets, they providing meat for the family and an income.

The grain was cut with either the horse binder or header then threshed when the threshing machine made its rounds. The threshing bees were always a community effort, families traveling from farm to farm to assist each other, farm wives cooking their best meal for the crews. Ralph Shaw was one of those that had a grain separator and traveled from farm to farm. Hay was also put up, this being mostly the native range grass but a few did try alfalfa, especially those that milked cows. Sometimes they ventured into a new crop, flax being tried one time. The area was not always lush. They not only had their droughts, but also were continually battling the grasshoppers and Mormon crickets. During the tough years some left in the winter to take jobs in Whitehall or elsewhere. When the Parrot smelter was being built, many worked on it. The depression and dry years of the 1930's saw many of them leave this area for good. Some evacuated the area in 1904 when a forest fire, fierce in nature, appeared to the southeast of the area. The fire however decided to take a different route so very little destruction was noted.

Trips to Whitehall were few and far between. The Bisch boys however knew that when the cream can was full this meant a trip to town, and they felt it was about time a trip was made. One day their folks left for Waterloo so out to the range they went, rounding up all the cows in sight, regardlesss of whose brand was on them, driving them to the Bisch corral. One by one they were run into the squeeze chute and milked, none of them liking this action at all. When a couple of pails were full they took the milk to the spring where the cans were kept for cooling, separated it, saw how much they had, and scampered back to get more, keeping one eye on the road to see if anybody was coming. Cows that are stirred up, not used to being milked and have calves wanting to be fed can make an awful mess so one can imagine how these two boys looked when the job was completed. Luckily enough the Bisch family had a small reservoir on the place, and it was full of water, so they waded to the deepest part, clothes and all, and started to wash the manure from themselves. When the folks arrived home nothing seemed out of place, the cattle were grazing contentedly on the range, the boys were clean, but the cream can was full. Lucky for them, no one ever found out about their undertaking. and they also thanked their lucky stars that the owners of the cattle just didn't happen by that day. Milking their own cows after that just didn't seem to be as much fun somehow.

Every place had horses, except the Carters. Here it was Larry and Sam, two mules, along with Ralph the horse, and some burros. The burros were used on carts for transportation, or ridden, if one could stay on them. Jim Carter found out that hips could be broken when falling off of the animal. the family could usually be seen traveling to town, " bucking contests, " dances, or wherever on their burros. All horses of course had names, sometimes not always the same one. The Shaw family bought a couple of horses from Frank Kountz and their names
automatically became Frank and Lottie, Lottie being Frank's wife.