An ongoing loss of heritage and history

Some time ago I saw a photograph taken at the Helmville cemetery on the day they buried my great grandfather in 1922. In the picture there's a cottonwood sapling, maybe 10 feet high. Both the tree and my great grandfather are still there, but the cottonwood is 80 feet tall and about 3 feet at the butt. I'm sure the old man is part of that tree.

Entering the family ranch, a person sees the corrals and the cow barn built before the 20th century. The first cabin still exists, erected by the old timers around 1867, when they filed the homestead papers that were signed by Ulysses S. Grant.

Like ours, a large part of the ranches in the Helmville area are well over a century old and still in the same families that homesteaded in the valley. Most of the properties are now run by the fourth and fifth generations. Many rural areas in Montana are the same, and in older areas of the U.S., some farms and ranches are probably a number of generations ahead of us.

Continuity like that rarely occurs in urban areas, if at all. People buy and, after some years, sell their houses, sometimes without even getting to know their neighbors' first names.

I studied in the old school house until the 6th grade, when they built the new one. The original school was built around the end of the 19th Century, and now serves as the county shop.

One day in the 1950's, when the teacher was gone, a bunch of us found a ladder and crawled into the attic to explore. In chalk, on the ancient wall, was my great uncle's name, written there when he was in grade school well before WWI.

It's common on many ranches to refer to some areas of the property by the names of the people who originally homesteaded them. All ranches have quarter sections or more known as the "Smith Place," or any other name of families who sold the ground and left the valley maybe 100 years ago.

This close connection with the past brings with it, not an actual reverence, but a respect for the hard work and suffering the old timers experienced. It also brings with it the responsibility to hold the place together for the next generation.

A couple friends my age have told me that none of their children want to continue with the ranch. They've seen the financial struggle and physical toil that a ranch forces on a person and simply aren't interested. Also, families are much smaller now, so all the children can be sent to college and don't need to ranch for their existence. I'm sure that the phenomenon isn't rare in any facets of agriculture.

The town of Helmville itself has retreated from its heyday when it had a drug store, a barber shop, a bank, a butcher shop, a number of saloons, a hotel, a livery stable, and a couple churches. The Great Depression put an end to them, and now the little town has only two churches, a post office, and a bar.

As the birth rate continues to fall, and the financial return from agriculture keeps shrinking, like the Mom and Pop grocery stores, the traditional ranches will be gradually sold to monied, absentee owners who have the ability to take advantage of the economics of scale by operating larger acreages.

The traditional names will be forgotten, and the memories of the old timers who fed their cattle by hand in -40 degree northeasters just so the children could have their own property will fade away. The subtle respect for the ground itself will disappear, with productivity and the bottom line taking precedence, history be damned.

The family names on the tombstones will become those of unknown strangers instead of respected patriarchs and matriarchs they represent now. No one will remember the heritage they built with their struggle and sacrifice.

The process will take a decade or two, but it's inevitable, I think. Gone is the era when the lucky (or by tradition, the eldest) offspring stayed to work the property.

The only thing that will remain is that old cottonwood in the cemetery, fed by my great grandfather's bones.