This image may be restricted. Contact reference staff for assistance.Collection: 00032 - North Dakota Oral History Project Photograph Collection
Folder: WI-04
Item: 00005
Title: Steve Marmon Athens Township, Williams County (N.D.)
Date: 1910
Creator: Amsbaugh, Mabel B
Inscription/Marks: [facsimile file] Written on the back of photograph: Steve Marmon, Williston."
Summary: Steve Marmon stands in corral holdling piece of wood. He is dressed in dark workshirt with workpants held by suspenders and tucked into knee high riding boots. He has leather gloves and is wearing a small-brimmed hat. __[A History of Williams County, North Dakota, Vol. 1 1975, p158-159] Steve Marmon was born in Green County, Iowa in 1862. He left home and went west at age fourteen. When he arrived at Fort Lincoln, Dakota Territory, they were hiring men for the haying as the Indians had attacked and killed part of the crew that was putting up hay for the Fort. He worked there a short time and then went back down the river to Fort Pierre. There he hired out as a “Bull Whacker” to V. B. Shawn, who ran a freighting outfit between Pierre and Deadwood. On this job he drove eight yoke of oxen (16 head) pulling three wagons hauling mining machinery and supplies for the Homestake Mine and other mining camps in the Black Hills. It took about a month to make a round trip. In the spring of 1882 he hired out to the Frank Whitney freighting outfit; driving bull teams out to Montana Territory where they engaged in freighting from the end of the Northern Pacific Railroad, which was then Junction City, across the Yellowstone (where Custer is now) to mining camps in the Bozeman area and to points in Wyoming. He told of going through the Yellowstone Park area past the hot springs and geysers, sometimes driving as many as 12 yoke of oxen. Several teams traveled together with Steve, a young man, always driving the lead team. When the railroad was completed in 1883, “Bull Whacking” became a thing of the past. He then got work as a cowboy working for the 045 outfit on the Tongue River for about a year. He later rode for several of the big outfits that ran cattle in eastern and central Montanan. In the spring of 1887, Steve came to Williams County and Fort Buford where he worked for the Hedderich brothers. It was about this time that he was hired to trail a herd of government horses down the river where officers from Fort Lincoln were to take delivery. While waiting for the officers, about forty miles east of Williston, he was jumped by a band of vigilantes who thought he had stolen horses. (I can imagine that this was quite a confrontation). Eventually the officers arrived and things were straightened out. It was then that he picked a spot as a good location for a ranch, which he later established (about 1891) near the Grinnell Post Office. After Steve located there, his brother Morg bought a ranch there also. For a few years, Steve and Morg took the contract to plow fireguard along the Great Northern right of way from the Rocky Mountains to Williston, and one year from the summit of the Rockies to Minot. To accomplish this they shipped their horses and equipment to the mountains and plowed their way east, one gang plow on each side of the track, two furrows being sufficient. They had a man along to set up camp and help with the horses. They got fifty cents a mile per furrow for this. Both men were outstanding fiddlers and often drove forty miles to play for a dance. Ranchers in the area usually put on one or two a year attended by ranchers and cowboys from a wide area. In later years, Steve was a regular participant at the Old Fiddlers Contest held annually in Williston. Steve was elected second sheriff of Williams County in 1892. It was during this time he picked a good ranch location on Blacktail Creek about 18 miles north of Williston in what is now Athens township. About 1900 he sold the ranch near Grinnell to Morg and moved his family and stock to the new location. In 1889 he married Florence Marelius at Great Falls, she being a daughter of George Marelius, a Williston pioneer, who later located on a ranch adjoining Steve. Steve raised horses on the Blacktail ranch running between three and four hundred head and sold many to homesteaders. He had a saddle horse “Brownie” that he would ride to Minot from the ranch in one day. Steve used to bring out the mail for the neighbors when he went to Williston, and in 1901 a petition was signed by area people to establish a post office at the Marmon ranch. During the hard winter of 1903-1904, Mrs. Marmon became ill and died. They had four children: Jack age 12, Ruth 9, Lois 3 and Bill 1 year old. The three younger ones were sent to Iowa to be cared for by relatives. Steve then gave up the post office and it was moved to the Bill Kelly place about three miles north. After the homesteaders came in and started breaking up the prairie, Steve was short of range for his horses so he began to look for a different location for his ranch. He decided to move to the Indian reservation near Wolf Point. In 1915 when they drove the horses to the new location, Steve sent a milk cow along. When asked why he bothered to send one cow along, he explained, “I didn’t want the boys to run the horses too hard.” Steve was married the second time, in 1915, to Antoinette Beranek, a Williams County school teacher. They had one son, Steve Jr., who operates the ranch that his father established near Wolf Point. Antoinette died in 1938. Steve went into cattle raising on his Star Ranch after moving to Montana. He tried farming a couple of times but it never worked out; once on the Nesson flats in the nineties but had dry weather and didn’t raise much and again at Wolf Point where he hit the lowest wheat prices ever. Steve died in 1952 at the age of 90; he was still riding the range and helping with the branding while in his eighties. One daughter, Ruth (married to Herman Keopke) of Salem, Oregon, is deceased. Jack, a retired law enforcement officer, lives in Billings; Lois (Flannery) a talented violinist and former teacher in American Dependent Schools in Germany where she and her husband lived for ten years, now lives in Alexandria, Virginia and Bill, following in his father’s footsteps, pioneered in Alaska for 30 years and now lives in Seattle.
Red ID: PH_I_120871 Image ID: 167788 Image Notes: 00032-WI-04-00005
