banner image

In 1948, one of the fiercest droughts on record had Texas in its grip. Reservoirs and pastureland alike were going dry.

divider

Choices were grim: stay and try to tough it out or sell and move to town. John R. Scott Jr. chose a third option. 23-years old, native Texan, cowboy, horseman and WWII veteran of the Pacific theatre, John loaded 800 head of his family’s cattle and twenty-five head of good saddles horses onto railroad cars bound for Montana.

Going with him on this adventure was his 18-year-old wife, June, also a native Texan and proud to claim it. The last one on the train, John’s outer calm, perhaps something honed during his service in the Pacific or during the childhood he experienced during the Great Depression, didn’t betray his inner nerves.

divider

The north-country had already caught John’s attention; his rodeo career had taken him to Cheyenne Frontier Days earlier that year, where someone had told him if he thought the tall grass and rangy mountains of Wyoming were good-looking, he ought to just keep going and get a look at Montana. This offhand comment was all John needed when the time came to decide where to transplant the family business located in Mertzon, Texas. John recalled calling his father from a crackly payphone located at the Battle of Little Bighorn Battlefield on the Crow Indian Reservation in Montana, literally begging him to agree to the venture and to help finance the purchase of some Montana ranchland. What John lacked in charm he more than made up for in perseverance, and he was able to convince his father, two brothers and their families to join him on this adventure.

Four days after loading on the train, the Scott family, their cattle, and horses reached their destination in the remote town of Terry, Montana. The family unloaded their cattle and trailed them 30 miles to a ranch on the Powder River near Miles City. The north would not take long to test their mettle: Texas continued to shrivel and burn, but Montana endured one of the bitterest winters in memory. The Texas cattle were poorly-suited to the storms and brutal temperatures. Many bleak months would pass before any calves were born and survived. June recalled going to collect eggs from the henhouse and seeing the birds literally frozen in place on their roosts.

I learned that the only thing
"new" in new country is you.

It was in the midst of this that June gave birth to the first of she and John’s four children, John, III. June would laugh retelling her young mother days. “I read in a baby book that it was important for infants to get fresh air, but it was -30° outside for months. So once a day I’d open a window and hold little John outside for about five seconds and then bring him back in.” The conditions were dire enough to make John, a resolute man who rarely second-guessed himself, doubt if he had made the right decision. John would later tell about how naïve he was when he first arrived in Montana. He said, “I learned that the only thing ‘new’ in new country is you.”

But the Scott family persevered, and they learned. And time vindicated John’s choice—West Texas would wait another eight years for rain, a catastrophic blow to the state’s ranching infrastructure it hasn’t fully recovered from over seventy years later. The Scotts have been in Montana ever since and wouldn’t call any other place home. Their goal is the same as that of their founders: raising good horses and good beef. John’s great-grandchildren are now growing up on the family’s ranch south of Billings, and the family wouldn’t have it any other way.