Kate Mahala Rayner and Ralph Emerson Amsden

In May, 1910, Kate Rayner, along with her sister May, her brother Lee, and parents Mr. and Mrs. H. L. Rayner, arrived from Viroqua, Wisconsin in Miles City. The move was made at the behest of Mrs. Rayner who felt compelled by the urge to farm, being of farmer stock, to homestead. They each filed on land on the divide between the Powder River and the Mizpah. Their 87 year old grandmother, Mahala Rayner, also filed. She rode out from Miles City sitting in a rocking chair on top of a load of furniture. Cabins were built on the land. Rayner and his son built 10 by 12 cabins on the girls' claims. They were made out of logs brought down from the pine hills near what is now Broadus. Glass was used in the windows and the homes were heated with wood brought down from the hills. The girls still remember the rattlesnake they found in the cabin the first night they moved in.

The Bob Rices were near neighbors. Gilmores, Hudsons and Coons lived on the Mizpah. Henry Boyes and Ed Gring lived toward the river. Dursts and other folks lived in the vicinity. Many new people kept moving in and settling so that now it is sometimes difficult to remember who was there. News, of course, was mostly by word of mouth. In the fall of 1910, a man was found buried underneath the floor of his cabin on Pilgrim Creek. A young fellow who had been staying with him disappeared with horse and saddle. Kate remembers shivering as she rode horseback past the lonely cabin, mute witness to one of the many unsolved crimes. Unsolved because there just wasn't that much law free to ferret out the criminal and the settlers were far too busy taming the land.

The Rayner girls both taught in schools in the county which was all Custer County at the time. In October 1912 , Kate Rayner married Ralph Amsden, of Groton, South Dakota in Miles City. A year later May married Frank Watters. The two couples worked together to build new, larger homes.

The Amsdens built a 16x32 log home with logs from the pine hills. Ralph hand-planed all the boards for the floor.

The Amsdens had nine children, Art, Rachel, Ralph, Guy, Harrold, Bill and Lyman. Five of the boys were in service in World War II.

During the first years wonderful gardens and crops were raised on the new soil, with very few weeds and ample rainfall. One year when young Amsdens returned to the Dakotas in the fall, the mother and father were left to harvest the garden . When they returned they had seven tubs of carrots. The mother wondered why in the world they wanted to plant all those carrots. In 1919 and 1920 drought came and in later years web-worms and grasshoppers came to plague the farmers.

Ralph Amsden freighted to Miles City in the early days with team and wagon for $1.00 per cwt. The trip with a load usually took three days, making it a week by the time he loaded up and returned. One trip was made when it was -22 degrees and he had to camp out. That same week two girls froze to death in their cabin north of Miles City. That happened in the winter of 1915-16.

Gordon Amsden on the H.L Rayner homestead

Somewhere before 1919 we had acquired a small bunch of cattle. Then came the dry year of 1919. My husband felt an urge to go back to South Dakota to live. He went back and worked that summer and we moved back in the fall. We shipped our cattle back although we had plenty of feed to get through the winter. During the terrible winter of 1919-1920 we lost 10 head of cattle and a favorite saddle horse that slipped on the ice and broke his leg. This was also the year our 3 year old son, Gordon, died after a bout with scarlet fever.

We moved back to Montana the fall of 1925, just in time for the web-worms, Colorado beetles, Mormon crickets and grasshoppers. The grasshoppers got so hungry they started eating wooden posts. There were also plenty of rattlesnakes. Ralph, Sr., killed 37 of them one summer and my brother, Lee Rayner, killed 67 the same year on his place. Rattlesnakes denned up in the buttes lying west of us. Winters were cold and we had lots of snow. Wood, coal and staples were hauled in before bad weather set in. There were pleasant memories too. The holidays were something special to Grandma Rayner. She always had a big dinner for all three families, the Rayners, the Watters, and the Amsdens.

Kingsley School

In 1938 our grade school was taken from us as we had only 2 pupils, Chris Mangen and Lyman Amsden. We moved to Broadus in 1938 in order to have a school.

Following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, five of the 6 sons enlisted in the service of their country. Art and Bill (Wallace) in the Marines, Lyman in the Navy and Guy and Harrold in the Army. Guy was sent to Kodiak Island, Alaska after only 3 weeks of training for radio operator.

What Kate Amsden doesn't discuss in her Echoing Footsteps narrative is the debilitating illness that struck Ralph, which had to have been an existential struggle as Ralph became more and more incapacitated. Read more about his illness here.

Echoing Footsteps by Kate Amsden

Kate and Ralph Amsden by their grandniece Louise Alderman

Excerpts from History

Sedition in Eastern Montana

One of those off and on guys – more off than on.

Going by air

Warm Springs, from Sacred Indigenous Ground to Resort to Asylum