About Grant-Kohrs Ranch National Historic Site
Grant-Kohrs Ranch commemorates the open-range cattle industry from its 1850s beginnings to the present, on the ground where that industry took root in Montana. Johnny Grant, a Canadian-born fur trader who had made his start trading fresh stock for trail-worn animals on the Oregon Trail, established the ranch in 1862 on Cottonwood Creek along the Clark Fork River, at what became Deer Lodge, and built the front section of the ranch house that same year. In 1866 he sold out to Conrad Kohrs, who with his half-brother John Bielenberg built the operation into the headquarters of a cattle empire that ran stock across ten million acres of open range. Kohrs added the brick rear wing to the house in 1891.
Kohrs and Bielenberg adapted when the open range closed, buying purebred breeding stock, fencing their land, and raising and storing hay. Conrad Warren, who operated the property in the 20th century as the Warren Hereford Ranch, kept the historic core intact and sought to sell it to the National Park Service for preservation. The ranch was designated a National Historic Landmark on December 19, 1960, and Congress authorized the National Historic Site on August 25, 1972; through the 1970s the Park Service acquired further acreage from Warren and built a visitor center and trails. The site now covers 1,618 acres with 88 historic buildings, and it is still a working ranch with Hereford, Shorthorn, and Texas Longhorn cattle, horses, and chickens.
Rangers lead tours of the ranch house, and living history demonstrations of ranch work run through the summer. The Summer Explorer program serves children ages 5 to 15, Junior Ranger activity books come in three age levels, and about ten miles of trails cross the pastures and the river bottom. The park recorded 27,219 visits in 2023.
Collections and Research Services
The site's chief research value is the ranch itself: the 88 surviving buildings and the equipment of the Grant, Kohrs, Bielenberg, and Warren eras make Grant-Kohrs an unusually complete record of how a large Western cattle operation was run across three generations. The park's website offers a virtual tour and photo gallery for those who cannot visit, and its history and culture pages summarize the ranch's business records and family history. The site does not advertise a public reading room; researchers working on Deer Lodge families, Powell County homesteads, or ranch hands who worked here should direct questions to the park through the contact form at nps.gov/grko and pair that with the methods in our guide to free family history research. For locating pioneer graves in the Deer Lodge valley, see how to find where someone is buried.
Planning Your Visit
The ranch is open daily except Thanksgiving Day, December 25, and January 1, from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. between Memorial Day and Labor Day and from 9:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. the rest of the year. There is no admission fee. The entrance is at 266 Warren Lane in Deer Lodge. Ranch house tours are limited in size, so arrive early in summer; the trails can be walked in any season. Current schedules for tours, living history days, and the Summer Explorer program are posted at nps.gov/grko. The other National Park Service unit in Montana listed in our directory is Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument at Crow Agency.
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