Jesse R. Green Homestead
Jesse Green set out on horseback in 1911 at the height of Montana’s homesteading boom in search of unclaimed land. The quest brought him here to 360 acres of rough pastureland nestled in the Horseshoe Hills. Abnormally high precipitation in the 1910s and the promised success of dry land farming gave hope to many small farmers like Green. He set to work in 1912 raising outbuildings first. He finished a two-room home for himself and his bride in 1915 and expanded it the following year. For more than a decade Jesse Green worked his fields with teams of horses and planted durum wheat and rye grass. He once figured he had plowed enough acreage to circle the globe twice. Falling prices and drought of the 1920s, however, caused Green and his family to leave the homestead in 1922, returning to farm part-time. The onset of the Great Depression in 1930 forced Green to abandon the farm, selling one horse team for five dollars and freeing the others to roam the hills. This remote homestead remains today almost untouched by time, its utilitarian vernacular style typical of so many early Montana farms. With the help of modern technology, Ralph Green returned in 1951 to again farm the homestead. Robert Green, third generation, took over in 1987.
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