Meredith's Project

The ranch house, Shackford, and the barn signify and symbolize several historic traditions in North Dakota's past. The ranching corporation, the Little Missouri Cattle Company, established in 1883 by Arthur Clark Huidekoper from Pennsylvania testifies to the financial promise and appeal of the west to Americans east of the Mississippi River.

Huidekoper was part of a wealthy Dutch family from Meadville, Pennsylvania, that had acquired its fortune by assisting the revolutionaries during the war of independence. The Huidekoper’s were paid with large land grants in Pennsylvania. In the tall of 1879, Huidekoper and a group of gentlemen from Meadville were invited by their Congressmen, S.B. Dick, to take a trip over the Northern Pacific Railroad to Bismarck. The wild and contagious fever of the frontier got into Huidekoper's blood during the trip, and he resolved to return to the area someday. In the fall of 1881, he made his resolution good, he organized a small hunting party and headed for the badlands near Medora.

In his two trips west, he realized the opportunity that western North Dakota offered for livestock production, a business that his family continued and profited from in Pennsylvania. In 1882, he invested in a ranching opportunity with various partners: the Custer Trail Cattle Company with Howard and Alden Eaton; Missouri Cattle Company; H-T Ranch with Harry Tarbell. In 1884, Huidekoper applied substantial capital to establish a more permanent claim in this affair. Out of this greater commitment, the H-T Ranch was conceived and began its great growth.

Marquis de Mores owned the only other significant livestock operation in the southwest part of the state in the 1880s. Huidekoper and de Mores were followed by a rush of competitors resulting in ranching developing into an industry in the badlands before the end of the 80's.

During the winter of 1886-1887, the area had more livestock than it could feed: three large Texas ranches had driven over cattle into the Badlands grazing areas, while grasshoppers, drought, and an early severe winter eliminated grass and left thousands of Huidekoper's cattle starving, Huidekoper's family background and an extremely hard winter of 1886-1887 turned his attention from cattle to horses. In 1887, he formed the Little Missouri Horse Company. He started with 600 horses purchased from the Eaton brothers and de Mores. By 1889 he had expanded to include show horses by adding 6 purebred Percheron mares and 1 stallion brought in from France. By 1900 the Little Missouri Horse Company had 4,000 horses and sold them to cities for street car conveyance and to farmers for a variety of uses.

While his stock grew in numbers, Huidekoper increased his land base. To his 1882 acquisition of 23,000 acres of railroad lands in Billings (now Slope) County he added 40,000 acres in 1887. He bought all railroad holdings in Townships 134, 135, 136, and Ranges 102, 103, and half of Township 136 Range 104. The unfenced government land added 125,000 acres for grazing to that which the I-I-T owned.

His range land may have encompassed over 4,000 square miles One report defines it as everything east of the Little Missouri River as far as Gladstone, and everything south of the Northern Pacific rails into South Dakota This area comprises part of all of the present-day counties: Stark, Billings, Slope, Bowman, Hettinger, and Adams.

This 'bigness" gave Huidekoper success until the early 1900s when several events kept his corporation from being able to support those numbers, and ultimately led him to sell the business. Huidekoper liquidated his Badlands holdings in 1906 after a series of occurrences strained the profitability of the ranch: the government opened the Badlands to homesteading, which closed the formerly free grazing land to Huidekoper's stock: financial burdens were added by property taxes; the rise of machine transportation reduced the national demand for horses. Through an agent Huidekoper sold 70,000 acres to Pabst Brewing Company in what was the largest real estate transaction of 1906 in North Dakota. Pabst continued to raise Percherons for one year and then sold the ranch to a land company which in turn broke it into many smaller parcels. In 1940, Dickinson businessman W.C.). Rabe bought the homestead of 8,000 acres and began restocking the ranch with cattle.

The two remaining structures that once were part of the I-I-T Ranch are located about ten miles west of Amidon, North Dakota, and are separated by the North-South run of Deep Creek. The ranch complex, once consisting of about ten buildings, survives in the large ranch house dwelling named "Shackford," and in the log-walled barn. The ranch house has three stories and the barn has one and a half, and both are regular in their shape: the log ranch house is square and the log barn is rectangular. Both buildings display their bark-less log-walled exteriors which are supported by posts of sawn-timber and are chinked with a mortar material of recent vintage. Both buildings have tongue and groove hardwood paneling on the interior walls and ceilings. A two-tiered veranda surrounds all but the west side of Shackford.

Shackford and the chimney are of native cut stone. The logs for both buildings came from the ranch's logging operations which were located, when in operation, eight miles to the north.

A north-south wall divides the interior of both floors into a large and small bay, and the third story encloses and open area lighted by dormers on all but the west (back) side. The original dining room occupies the large bay of the first floor. The kitchen and laundry room are in the smaller bay of the same floor. On the story above, a large I—shaped living room warmed by a fireplace and paneled with tongue-and grooved hardwood, and a bedroom take up the large bay. The smaller bay contains three bedrooms, two are the same size and a third in the middle is smaller. The stairways are placed in the southwest corner of both floors.

Shackford and its log barn stand as reminders of the proud heritage of North Dakota's old west history.