Crail Ranch Buildings
About this property
The Historic Crail Ranch Buildings listed in the National Register of Historic Places are two rustic cabins, the remnants of a homestead dating to the late 1890s in Gallatin County, Montana in the area now known as Big Sky. The historic cabins are part of the Crail Ranch Homestead Museum, which depicts the homestead era in Big Sky from about 1896 to 1970 through displays of objects, photographs and documents on loan from a descendant of the original homesteaders. The Crail Ranch was established as a homestead beginning in 1902 by Augustus Franklin "Frank" Crail (1842 - 1924) and his family. Frank Crail was born in November 1842, the second son of a farming family in Tipton County, Indiana. In 1865, at the age of twenty-two, Crail traveled alone to the Missouri frontier and joined a wagon train heading to the Montana Territory. By 1868, he was working in a quartz mine near Helena, Montana. Finding mining not to his liking, and finding freight hauling through Indian country too dangerous, Crail turned to homesteading based on the Homestead Act of 1862. In 1871, Crail partnered with two other ranchers and developed a homestead parcel in the Bridger Mountains, just north of the town of Bozeman in Gallatin County, Montana. Some of the original cabins and out buildings that Crail built on that land are still in existence. In 1886, at age 44, Frank Crail met and married Sallie Lorrie Creek, age 22, who had come to Montana with her family from Platte County, Missouri in about 1884. Frank and Sallie had three children - Eugene (1887-1985), Emmett (1888-1975) and Lilian (1896-1981). By 1896, Crail had left off farming and was serving as clerk of the Montana District Court for the Ninth District in Bozeman. In December 1901, following an election in which he lost his clerkship, Crail purchased for $150 rights to a 160-acre homestead parcel in the meadow area in the Gallatin Basin above Gallatin Canyon, and now the location of the Big Sky, Montana resort. In the spring of 1902, when nearly 60 years of age, Crail brought his family up the rough logging road along the Gallatin River and moved into a small cabin left by the previous developer of the parcel. Beginning in 1902, Frank Crail and his family proved up their original 160 acre homestead and acquired five additional parcels, expanding their holdings to 960 contiguous acres. By 1910, they had completed a two-story, four-room cabin and added numerous barns and outbuildings on the property. The family raised horses, cattle and sheep and had a large hay-cutting operation for animal feed. Crail also experimented with a strain of winter wheat designed to grow in the high country of the American West. He called his wheat "Crail Fife," perhaps in reference to his family's origins in Crail in the East Neuk of Fife in Scotland. Crail marketed his wheat to growers in Montana and Colorado. Samples of Crail's wheat were entered by the State of Montana in the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St Louis, and won prizes.
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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).
Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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Questions about this property
When was Crail Ranch Buildings listed on the National Register?
Crail Ranch Buildings was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on April 14, 1982.
What type of historic resource is Crail Ranch Buildings?
Crail Ranch Buildings is classified as a building in the National Register of Historic Places.
What is the period of significance for Crail Ranch Buildings?
The period of significance for Crail Ranch Buildings is recorded as the industrial era.
Can I research the history near Crail Ranch Buildings?
Yes. Aubrey Research reports search National Register listings, battlefield records, land patents, and other primary historical sources within any radius of a US address. A report for an address near Crail Ranch Buildings will include this listing and all other historical records in the area.
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