320 Ranch, The

Buffalo Horn Creek. Ramshorn Lake. Tepee Pass. Sunken Forest. Connect the dots between these sites and the 320 Guest Ranch fits within the contour. Situated in the folds of the Gallatin Canyon, just five miles shy of the northwestern boundary of Yellowstone National Park, the 320 Ranch has an intriguing history.

Dr. Caroline McGiIl, the long-time owner of the ranch, first viewed the area in November 1911 from the back of a bobsled.1 With heavy wool blankets layered around her from head to toe and her hands burrowed inside thick gloves, she resembled the bundled tubercular patients she had left behind in the Butte hospital where she worked. Just as the cure for tuberculosis was simply being out-ofdoors, Dr. McGiIl sought to restore herself by taking a hunting trip in the Gallatin Canyon. Now, nearly a century later, ranch manager Pat Sage invokes McGill's spirit to attract visitors to the 320.

"The history helps-it is a part of the ranch," Sage explained. When Dr. McGill's 1911 hunting party crossed Buffalo Horn Creek en route to their destination, they too learned the ranch's history. The Buffalo Horn Creek Resort (the 320's original name) was one of the few active dude ranches in the Gallatin Canyon, and McGill's host, Dr. Safely, was among the canyon residents who informally provided lodging for hunters in the fall and winter. As more people from cities toured Yellowstone Park, stories of the large elk herds and other plentiful game spread among hunters. Providing board and room for these visitors brought in much-needed cash.

The owner of the Buffalo Horn resort, Sam Wilson, had brought his young bride, Josie, to homestead on Buffalo Horn Creek in 1899. The Wilsons expanded their homestead and started a year-round dude business in 1907. In the Buffalo Horn's early years, only the wealthy could afford extended vacations, and the dude ranch life was a sought-after alternative for people whose lives had become over-run by "upper-class social mores, political involvements and family traditions."2 Cowboy wranglers 1 made the guests comfortable, cooks dished out wholesome food, and the cabins provided shelter and warmth. In addition to lodging and hunting, dude ranches also offered a sense of peace and quiet. It was this combination-adventure and rest-that appealed to dudes.

Dr. McGiIl, too, found the Buffalo Horn resort a marvelous refuge from her demanding medical practice, and it became her retreat of choice. "The relaxation of the outdoor life," McGiIl wrote, "made it possible to carry on my heavy workload." McGill's visits to the ranch became more frequent, and her concise, descriptive journal entries multiplied. A sampling of these entries over time indicates her growing passion for the place: "Horsed at 320. Got cabins." "Up Ramshorn Peak alone." "Drove into Park. Many Elk." "Sandhill Cranes." "All hay cut. Barn full, big stack." "Rode to Sunken Forest." "Forget-me-nots, moose, elk." In early August 1930 she wrote that she had rented a horse and ridden alone to Ramshorn Lake, some eight and a half miles from the ranch. "Fished from raft. Got 12 trout." An entry the following spring simply listed the wildflowers she saw: "Anemones, carpet pinks, saxifrages, buttercup, spring beauty."3

In 1936, after many visits to the Buffalo Horn, Dr. McGiIl made an offer to Josie Wilson to buy the entire resort, including an adjoining homestead once owned by Sam Wilson's father. The two land parcels added up to 320 acres, and the resort soon became known as the 320 Ranch. McGiIl and the locals referred to it simply as "the 320."

Dr. McGiIl envisioned the 320 as a place of renewal for herself, her friends and family, and convalescing patients. To keep the place running, she convinced Park and Susie Taylor, experienced ranch managers from nearby Madison County, to move to the 320 year-round. What the Taylors did not know was that Dr. McGiIl collected antiques and had in mind a grand scheme to refurbish the run-down cabins with the overflow from her Butte apartment. Beautiful antiques, old clocks, silver teapots, and marble-topped tables found unlikely new homes in the simple log cabins. Electricity, provided by a gasoline-fed generator, came to the 320 in 1938-eleven years before an electrical line allowed for lights in the rest of the canyon.4 The ranch handled just twenty-five to thirty guests at a time, but between Dr. McGill's stream of guests, and an equally steady current of paying guests, the 320 thrived.

Dr. McGiIl cared deeply about the land and the wildlife in the Gallatin Canyon. She was a charter member of the Montana Wilderness Association and also became involved with the issue of local elk management, which had been a source of controversy since the 1890s when the state first set big-game bag limits. Early limits allowed the taking of eight deer, eight mountain sheep, eight mountain goats, two moose, and one elk per hunter, and many hunters came to the Gallatin Canyon to fill their elk quotas. Debate about the Gallatin elk herd continued for the next half century. In 1945 Dr. McGiIl bought land on Porcupine Creek, and in 1950 she agreed to sell the property to the state Department of Fish and Game for use as elk winter range. Her decision to sell the land in the interest of the elk was a sensitive one. This McGiIl property, along with a few other parcels, became the Porcupine Game Range, a refuge used by park elk when winter snows are heavy.5