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Historical Tourist: Edison Bulbs and Where Buffalo Roam

The last valley in the continental United States to be settled rests in northwestern Montana--the Flathead. One of the primary and most widely-renowned settlers at the time was Charles Conrad. Along with his family, he settled in what is now Kalispell (which he helped to name and found) and operated as a businessman and trader, forming ties with many a famous personage of the day, including Teddy Roosevelt.


The first time I traversed the threshold of the Conrad Mansion into the Victorian, velvet-accented interior, I was a very young elementary student. I knew that the place was old, and therefore important and impressive, but beyond that, I remember only snippets about this technological marvel or another. As I visited time and again over the following years, I garnered more snippets of information and tales of the normalcy of Victorian daily life and the family that once resided in the mansion. Perhaps it was from my repeat touring of the marvelous house that my adoration of the Victorian Era. Its architecture and cultural artifacts, stems, and by and large, the Conrad Mansion did, in fact, give me a more solid grasp of what the time period looked like as opposed to what mere text and sketches in textbooks could provide. Still, whenever the chance arises, the Conrad Mansion is at the forefront of my list of places to visit that so embody not only the era, but also the strange mixture between society and frontier life that dotted the Western landscape.


In any case, the house makes a marvelous tourist destination, both during the summer months and around Christmas time, when the entire house is dressed in greenery and decoration. Mind, they spare the candle-lit tree in modern times, largely to avoid the fire hazard that has been in the documented history of the house. The grounds make an excellent senior picture location, not only for its grand architecture, but for its close geography to Woodland Park. Overall, though, the Conrad Mansion--home of one of the foremost businessmen of the Montana Territory--encapsulates the parallel growth in appreciation of the American West as a natural wonder and the progress of technology over the course of the latter half of the 19th century.


When it was built by a famous Spokane architect, the Conrad Mansion was equipped with fixtures that were both highly appreciated in their time and forward-thinking. Beyond Kirkland K. Cutter's vision for the home of the Montana businessman, Conrad himself held a similar presence of mind concerning forward-thinking. In that way, the architect managed also to capture the spirit of the man and his family who would dwell within the mansion's walls. Indoor plumbing was a first for the city, barely three years old at the time the building was completed, and visitors marveled at the presence of an inside bathroom. Gas lamps were fitted into the home, but were prepared to be easily converted to electrical fixtures come the arrival of a power plant to the town. Conrad himself had seen the arrival of electricity to Fort Benton, then the trade capitol of the territory. In recalling one of my many tours through the museum, I remember hearing that some of the lights in the mansion (barely used ones) were original to the mansion and original Edison bulbs. Further, the foresight of Cutter to have installed a fire hose in the upper floor of the Grand Hall would one day save the building from being burned to the ground. Even in their Christmas celebrations, someone was always at hand manning the fire hose should the tree catch fire.


In its grounds and furnishings, the Conrad Mansion reflects the beauty of the landscape in which it was built. Cutter's attention to detail when he was given free license to design the house was unparalleled. The interior woodworking in the Norman-inspired home was installed by German craftsmen, and he even spent a tedious amount of time designing the gardens and lawn adjacent to the house. An underground watering system was installed in the lawn--quite a modern occurrence--and a gazebo was installed to allow for an outdoor appreciation of the Montana landscape. Perhaps the most important insight into the inspiration that the Valley provided is in Cutter's decision to design the house based around an almost fairy tale-like format inspired by his experience in Europe in the Norman architectural cues strongly conveyed in the building. To Cutter, the paradise of the Flathead Valley before Kalispell stood must have seemed like the untouched forests from the tales of the Brothers Grimm stories. Impressively, this reflected not only Cutter's inspiration, but Charles Conrad's own personal liking for fairy stories. Even the cast iron lamp fixtures on the porch are adorned with small dragons, guarding the grounds of the Conrad estate. Inside the house, the Germanic woodworking brings the Norman influence inside, blending the fantastic with Victorian furnishings and technology. As Conrad himself was always looking toward the future and innovation, he could not escape the adventure and simplicity of outdoor living.


For how remote it is--though at the time, it was positioned at the crossroads of the Great Northern Railroad--the Conrad Mansion is an iconic example of Victorian architecture and interior decor. Over the years since its donation, the Mansion has reacquired a vast majority of its original furnishings. Four-poster beds inhabit multiple bedrooms, and an incredible set of furniture rests in the library, including a desk and shelves. The long dining room table and multiple plush velvet couches are also indicative of refined taste in the finest of Victorian handiwork, both in wood furniture and the style typified of the living furnishings of the era. There is a billiard room in the mansion, too. Though the town is out of the way, and was considered as such even when the mansion was built--only on the promise of lying at the crossroads of the major railroad route--Charles Conrad's presence in the planning of the town of Kalispell and residence in the Valley led to much more traffic through the Flathead than one may have anticipated. In his many ventures, Conrad attracted presidents, politicians, friends, family, American Indian Chiefs and representatives, and even scientists and naturalists. As the home was far more posh than the local hostelry, the Conrads were a popular host family for those traveling through the area. One of the areas of interest of Charles Conrad that attracted outside study was his acquisition of a bison herd toward the end of his life.


In more distant holdings, Charles Conrad purchased a ranch in Smith Valley to serve as a buffalo range in order to rehabilitate their dwindling numbers, with the range of the bison eventually drifting to Buffalo Hill (far closer to the Mansion) after which the golf course there is now named. Though not the furthest away of his investments, the bison herd of the Conrads was perhaps the most iconic of them. Having originally helped in the mass-scale shipment of buffalo hides downriver out of Fort Benton, it is almost poetic that Charles Conrad became the keeper of a small number of bison. He seemed eager to preserve some hint of the American West to which he had come many years before. Originally part of a far larger herd, Conrad purchased the animals to cultivate, sensing an eventual demand for the bison. He owned 46 in his listed property when he died in 1902. His wife continued to cultivate the herd and periodically sold off portions to maintain a reasonable herd size. These sales helped to begin other herds, traveled to zoos, were purchased for scientific study, and were sold to the American Bison Society to establish their prized herd in Montana. Shipped carefully in crates, none of their buffalo died in their journeys or were injured. At two years before the death of Charles Conrad, it was estimated that only 300 North American bison were left. Perhaps influenced in part by his relationship with conservationist Teddy Roosevelt, in part by his time working with the American Indians in trade on the east side of the state, and in part because of his own love of the outdoors and the wilderness of the American West, Mr. Conrad played a significant role in the re-population efforts of the early bison herders.


After arriving in Montana, seeing it as a land full of possibility, Charles Conrad's legacy helped to continue the transformation of the territory into a massive trading hub for the west. In the final landmark to the legacy to himself and his family--the Conrad Mansion--we find a reflection of the people who lived inside. The mansion architect was able to successfully transform Conrad's forward-thinking in turn into the technological fixtures that helped to run the mansion: electric lighting, dumbwaiter, and elevator. The wide-open spaces and dark wood beams brought the outdoors--which Conrad appreciated--into his home. The luxuries of the Victorian era reflected the family's success in the Montana Territory, and art and the care of the outdoor lawns tied the family to their home of the Montana wilderness, a land of opportunity that helped them to flourish and that they, in turn, helped to grow.


 

Bibliography (for further reading):


Marino, Carol. "Celebrating the Conrad Legacy." Daily Inter Lake (Kalispell, MT), Oct. 4, 2020.


"Meet the Conrads." The Conrad Mansion Museum. The Conrad Mansion Museum, 2021. https://conradmansion.com/about-us/.


Murphy, James E. Half Interest in a Silver Dollar: The Saga of Charles E. Conrad. Kalispell, Montana: Mountain Press Publishing Company, 1983.

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Hi, I'm Terri Lynn Mattson

Raised on family road trips and a love of education, I earned my bachelor's in history, pursuing my story-telling passions via associates degrees in English.

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Stories We Live(d)

Stories can extend our lives beyond our deaths and connect us across ages.  Moreover, the struggles that humans have lived through can help us to define our own place within that story.  I enjoy a hands-on approach to history that museums allow; it reminds me that we are more like our historical counterparts than we often realize.

My goal is to tell stories and encourage others to get in touch with the physical history around us in our museums and state parks and, perhaps, to allow some insight into the importance of the stories  in artifacts and writings of our past.

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