Protecting Montana's Open Landscapes
CHRIS & NORA HOHENLOHE
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CHRIS AND NORA HOHENLOHE both have ancestors who served in the Montana Territorial Legislature in the 1870s. Today, the Hohenlohes own a remarkable ranch near Wolf Creek, along the Missouri River north of Helena.
In the future, thanks to a new conservation easement the Hohenlohes donated to The Montana Land Reliance, the land will look pretty much the same way it did when those early lawmakers passed through on horseback or in a stagecoach. There’s some fulfillment in that.
“It’s a huge satisfaction,” Nora said.
“Absolutely,” Chris agreed.
The Hohenlohes first purchased the Ox Bow Ranch in 1990, then added to it to create the 11,000-acre holding they have today. The ranch is a stunning place that hugs about three twisting miles of Holter Lake shoreline and a mile of the famous Blue Ribbon stretch of the Missouri River downstream from Holter Dam. From the hay fields in the bottom lands to the craggy peaks dotted with juniper, Douglas fir, and ponderosa pine, the ranch offers refuge to a resident elk herd, abundant deer, bighorn sheep, mountain lions, black bear, and a host of birds and other critters.
THE RANCH ALSO PRODUCES registered Angus cattle. The Hohenlohes and their veteran ranch manager, Ken Cook, manage the place carefully, making sure it remains a functional part of the local economy, a haven for wildlife, and an open, uncluttered vista that helps provide a wildlife migration corridor between the Bob Marshall Wilderness Area to the west and the Beartooth Wildlife Management Area to the east. Along the ranch’s southern border soar the peaks and bowls of the Sleeping Giant Wilderness Study Area. It’s quite a property.
“Our goal in the easement is to ensure that the property, to the extent possible, would remain much as it is now and not be subdivided,” Chris said.
He notes that, while Montana has a lot of rivers, it doesn’t have a lot of lakes. Where it exists, lakeside property stirs high demand.
“The other side of Holter Lake is typical of what you would expect to see on a recreational lake, house after house after house,” Chris said. “It’s great for the people who live there, but it’s not what we want to see happen to our side of the lake.”
“It’s easily what could have happened to our side,” Nora added. “Because we’re just 45 minutes from Helena and an hour from Great Falls.”
Since the future is hard to predict, the easement allows the ranch to be divided into three large parcels, each with limited building envelopes that ban any lakeside development as well as protect the wildlife values at higher elevations. Sandhill cranes sing their gravelly songs on the Ox Bow and bald eagles have been fledging babies in the same nest there for about 15 years.
Because the land won’t change much, those species and others will continue to find a home.
“What makes it so special is the wide open spaces and the wilderness and the animals,” Nora said.
THE HOHENLOHES DIVIDE their time between Washington D.C. and the Ox Bow Ranch. Selecting The Montana Land Reliance as a partner in conservation was a natural choice, they said. They like the Reliance’s focus on protecting open space both for agriculture and for the public, which benefits from the wildlife and the protected vistas. Placing the easement on the ranch has been in the works almost since they found the place on a recommendation from Cathy Campbell, a neighbor and a former Reliance board member.
“The Reliance people knew the ranch and were very helpful in terms of providing information about it,” Chris said.
Now, with the easement in place, these descendents of Montana pioneers have made sure the landscape will be something their ancestors would recognize. If those ghosts show up, they just might smile.
