“It’s a feather in their cap and, any time they are successful at shepherding one of these through the process, it’s a feather in all of North Dakota’s cap.”
I’ve written here before about efforts by some bad guys — some former County Commissioners in the far west of North Dakota, in Billings County — to build a bridge and connecting roads in the valley of the Little Missouri State Scenic River at a place called the Short Ranch (more about that place in a minute) and the efforts of some good guys — some current County Commissioners and a whole bunch of people who love the North Dakota badlands — to stop them.
Well, it looks like the good guys are winning. In fact, they may have won. Here’s some of the best news I’ve heard in a long, long time: The Short Ranch has been named to the National Register of Historic Places. That means the ranch, located about 15 miles north of the badlands headquarters town of Medora, joins the list of the most important historic resources in the United States. And I think it means the threat of the bridge on the historic ranch has gone away. Forever.
Oh, I suppose it is still possible a rogue Billings County Commission could someday take another stab at it. But the listing adds so many hoops to go through it is almost impossible.
I’ve been following this saga for a long, long time. The first proposal to build a bridge over the Little Missouri came 20 years ago, when the bad guys on the Billings County Commission decided to put the bridge right beside the Elkhorn Ranch Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park, the site of Theodore Roosevelt’s historic ranch. It would have crossed the river between the Elkhorn and the ranch on the east side of the river, owned by the Eberts family.
That effort was thwarted by the three Eberts brothers who owned that ranch and did not want to see a truck freeway through their place. They decided to get out of the ranching business and sold their land to a group of conservation organizations, led by a fellow named Lowell Baier, head of the Boone and Crockett Club, founded more than a hundred years ago by Theodore Roosevelt himself.
The conservation groups then gave the land to the U.S. Forest Service, and it became part of the Little Missouri National Grasslands, putting an end to that scheme, but the bad guys didn’t give up. They hired an engineering firm to conduct an environmental impact statement, which identified the Short Ranch as the next best location.
Well, the Shorts didn’t want it either, so they dug deep into their personal pockets, hired lawyers, went to court and stalled it long enough that the bad guys were defeated in their runs to stay in office. A new commission chairman, Dean Rodne, led the commission through an at times painful process, finally voting last year to kill the bridge.
But that could have been only a temporary reprieve. The two good guy commissioners who killed the project, Rodne and Jim Haag, serve at the will of Billings County voters and a change in the makeup of that board could bring the idea back up again. Now, with the listing of the ranch on the National Register, that’s pretty unlikely.
But never try to guess what might happen next in Billings County, North Dakota. If you’d have told me twenty years ago, when discussions of a bridge first surfaced here, that someday there would be a $500 million dollar presidential library in Billings County, with thousands of visitors a week traveling to the second least populated county in the state, I’d have asked what you were smoking.
And never underestimate Sandy Short, who now owns the ranch along with her son Dave and his siblings, who took on one of the richest counties in North Dakota (more oil wells per capita than any county in America, all paying taxes to the county) and won. And then, even after the project was all but dead, the Short family went further. Working with a cultural resources firm and the State Historical Society of North Dakota, they submitted an application for designation as a National Historic Site. The application was a masterpiece. The document that the Historical Society’s Lead Historic Preservationist Lorna Meidinger edited and Director Bill Peterson signed off on, and then sent to the National Register, is one of the best submissions I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen quite a few.
In its summary, the proposal said, in part: “The Short Ranch Historic District is eligible for its historic association with ranching and farming in North Dakota’s Badlands from 1904 to 1976. The ranch, which has raised horses, cattle, sheep and pigs in addition to feed crops and corn, continues to operate. It reflects a continuum from its early 20th century establishment, to the difficult decades of the 1920s and 1930s when drought and economic strife undermined the stability of ranching in the region, to the recovery of ranching in the 1940s and into the post-World War II era. The Short Ranch is an intact reflection of ranching history in Western North Dakota.”
“The Short Ranch Historic District is eligible for its association with an important figure in North Dakota’s history. Don L. Short, who served as a U.S. Congressman from North Dakota from 1959 to 1965, grew up on the ranch,” it continues. “Indeed, the Short Ranch defined his personal and productive life. His connections to the ranch and agriculture were directly linked to his public service career, which began in the local grazing association in 1938 and culminated with his failed reelection to Congress in 1964. Don Short returned to ranching in 1965, when his political career came to an end. Although he briefly lived in Dickinson and Beach, North Dakota, and Washington, D.C., during his adult life, Short always returned home to the ranch.”
Sandy Short and her children are not the first of the family to champion protection of the Little Missouri River corridor. Congressman Short led the effort to stop the construction of a “scenic highway” alongside the river in the 1960s. It was this effort, which was successful, that cost him his seat in Congress, when he lost the support of our U.S. Senator, Milt Young.
I wrote about that a few years ago: “The nature of Don Short’s and Milt Young’s dispute was money versus stewardship. Milt Young and Don Short disagreed about the need for a highway through an unspoiled piece of America’s scenic national treasure, the badlands. Short voted against building a U.S. highway through the National Grasslands. Young disagreed with him. Short’s efforts won in the long run as no U.S. highway was ever built and the land remains unspoiled and pristine.”
The splendid work Lorna Meidinger and Bill Peterson of the State Historical Society presented to the National Register, was first class. Here’s an example: “The ranch was also a social center. Newspapers reported that ‘quite a crowd of young people went down to the Short ranch’ to attend a dance in November 1907. Three years later the ranch was listed as a voting precinct in the upcoming elections, and the ranch was the location of a ‘big barbecue that Con (Hugh) Short hosted for the Dickinson Elks, his neighbors, and guests from other Elks lodges.’ People traveled to the ranch by train and automobile. Upon arrival, they were treated to a meal prepared by Short’s ‘Japanese cook’ and spent the evening hunting game birds. The ranch also had a brush with fame: Tom Mix, one of the first Hollywood movie stars, married his wife, Olive, at the ranch in 1913. Olive worked as a cook at the ranch. Hugh Short and Tom Mix remained in contact, and the movie star planned to spend the summer of 1920 at the Short Ranch while he filmed a movie in the Badlands. Regrettably, the film was never made.”
Good research.
So let me say a few things as I wrap this up. Thank you to Sandy Short and all her kids and grandkids and descendants of Congressman Short (including his grandson, North Dakota’s Game and Fish Director, Jeb Williams), who fought this long and expensive battle to make this happen. Thanks to their lawyers, Derrick Braaten and Tim Purdon, who fought the long court battles to stop the bridge. Thanks to the diligence of the staff of the State Historical Society of North Dakota for their application.
It’s a feather in their cap. And any time they are successful at shepherding one of these through the process, it’s a feather in all of North Dakota’s cap. And especially to Billings County Commission Chairman Dean Rodne, who fought that damn bridge pretty much every day for the last six years and brought Commissioners Mike Kasian and Jim Haag along with him. They stopped the bridge and made this possible.
And you know what makes me really happy? I might never have to write the words “The Short Ranch” again.
