The Unsettled Ground:

A History of Land Ownership and Conflict in Montana

Montana, often called "The Last Best Place," is a land of staggering beauty and vast, open spaces. Yet, beneath this idyllic surface lies a complex and often turbulent history of land ownership, a story of conquest, broken promises, and enduring conflict. From the initial, violent encounters between Native American tribes and European-American settlers in the 19th century to today's contentious legal battles over public access and resource rights, the struggle for control of Montana's land is a defining feature of its past and present. This history is not simply about deeds and property lines; it's about fundamentally different worldviews clashing over the very meaning of land itself.

An Irreconcilable Clash: Treaties and Conquest

Before the arrival of Europeans, the land that would become Montana was not "owned" in the European sense; it was stewarded. Tribes like the Salish, Kootenai, Blackfeet, Crow, Cheyenne, and Sioux viewed the land as a communal resource, a sacred provider essential for physical and spiritual sustenance. Land was not a commodity to be bought and sold. This perspective was fundamentally incompatible with the Euro-American concept of private property, a cornerstone of the westward expansion fueled by Manifest Destiny. As one historian notes, for the settlers, land was a resource to be exploited and improved through individual effort, a path to wealth and independence.

The initial conflicts were driven by the quest for resources, first beaver pelts and later, gold. The discovery of gold in the early 1860s at places like Bannack and Virginia City triggered a massive influx of miners and settlers, who trespassed on tribal lands with impunity. To manage this "Indian problem" and open the land for settlement and transportation, the U.S. government pursued a policy of treaty-making. The Fort Laramie Treaties of 1851 and 1868 are prime examples. These agreements were intended to establish defined territories for various tribes and to guarantee safe passage for settlers on trails like the Bozeman Trail.

However, these treaties were consistently violated. Miners ignored the boundaries, and the U.S. Army was often sent not to uphold the treaties, but to protect the trespassers. This led to escalating violence, including Red Cloud's War (1866-1868), a successful campaign by the Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho that temporarily forced the U.S. to abandon its forts. The government's failure to honor the 1868 treaty, which had promised the Black Hills to the Sioux, and the subsequent military expedition led by George Armstrong Custer to confirm rumors of gold, led directly to the famed Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876. While a significant victory for the tribes, it ultimately sealed their fate, galvanizing the U.S. government to intensify its military campaigns and forcibly confine the tribes to reservations. As historian Walter Nugent puts it, the ultimate goal was to "clear the path for the plow."² The reservation system was the final step in dispossessing Native Americans of their ancestral territories, fundamentally altering their way of life.

The Allotment Era and the Checkerboard Landscape

With the tribes confined to reservations, the federal government embarked on a new policy aimed at assimilation: allotment. The General Allotment Act of 1887, also known as the Dawes Act, was a catastrophic piece of legislation for tribal sovereignty and land ownership. The act sought to break up communally owned reservation lands by allotting individual parcels—typically 160 acres—to individual tribal members. The stated goal was to turn Native Americans into Jeffersonian yeoman farmers, encouraging them to adopt the American model of private land ownership.

The reality was far different. The land was often unsuitable for farming, and many tribal members lacked the resources or desire to adopt an agricultural lifestyle so alien to their traditions. The most devastating aspect of the Dawes Act was the provision that declared any land "surplus" after allotment could be opened to white homesteaders. On Montana reservations like the Flathead, Crow, and Fort Peck, this policy resulted in a massive loss of tribal land. Between 1887 and the end of the allotment era in 1934, the total land held by Native Americans nationwide plummeted from 138 million acres to just 48 million acres. In Montana, this created a fractured landscape of "checkerboard" ownership within reservation boundaries, where tribal lands are interspersed with non-Indian owned fee-patent lands, a situation that continues to create complex jurisdictional and resource management challenges today.

Simultaneously, the federal government was actively promoting settlement by non-Indians across the rest of Montana. The Homestead Act of 1862 and its later variations offered free land to settlers willing to live on and "improve" it. This, combined with the expansion of the railroads, fueled a massive land rush in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Northern Pacific Railroad, in particular, was a colossal force in shaping Montana's land ownership patterns. The federal government granted the railroad alternating square-mile sections of public land for every mile of track laid, creating another form of checkerboard ownership that still complicates land management across the state. This railroad land grant system transferred an astonishing 17 million acres in Montana into corporate hands.

Modern Conflicts: The New Land Barons and Contested Spaces

The legacy of these 19th-century policies continues to fuel conflict, but the players have evolved. While the open range wars are over, modern land disputes remain contentious, often pitting private property rights against public access. This tension is now supercharged by a new influx of immense wealth from corporations, philanthropists, and out-of-state billionaires, creating a class of "New Land Barons" who are dramatically reshaping Montana's physical and cultural landscape.

The Corporate Fortress and Luxury Enclaves

A prime example of corporate influence is the Yellowstone Club, a private, 15,200-acre ski and golf resort near Big Sky. This is not just a resort; it is a members-only enclave for the ultra-wealthy, effectively a privatized mountain. While providing high-paying service jobs, its existence has profound effects. It contributes to a "resort economy" characterized by extreme wealth disparity, driving up housing costs to levels unattainable for the local workforce. Furthermore, the development's footprint lies within a critical wildlife corridor connecting the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, raising serious concerns about its impact on the migration patterns of grizzly bears, elk, and other species. The Yellowstone Club represents a trend of turning iconic Montana landscapes into exclusive playgrounds, where access is determined not by public right, but by personal fortune.

Ideological Landowners and the Access Wars

Perhaps the most visible conflicts have been ignited by wealthy individuals who have become some of the state's largest private landowners. Texas fracking billionaires Dan and Farris Wilks, for example, have purchased over 350,000 acres in Montana, including several historic ranches. Their aggressive approach to land management has frequently clashed with Montana's long-held traditions of public access. The Wilks Brothers have been central figures in legal and public battles over access to public lands that are landlocked by their properties. They have been accused of blocking roads historically used by hunters and recreationists, intensifying the fight over corner crossing—the act of stepping from one parcel of public land to another at an intersection of property corners. To many long-time Montanans, these actions represent a fundamental shift from a tradition of neighborly cooperation to an exclusionary philosophy that treats land not as a shared landscape, but as a private fortress.

The Grand Experiment: Philanthropic Re-wilding

A different but equally transformative force is the rise of large, well-funded conservation non-profits. The American Prairie Reserve (APR) is the most prominent and controversial of these. With a mission to create a 3.2-million-acre nature reserve in northeastern Montana—larger than Yellowstone National Park—APR aims to restore the prairie ecosystem to its pre-settlement state, complete with thousands of free-roaming bison. APR operates by purchasing private ranches from willing sellers and then works to acquire the associated grazing permits on adjacent public Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands.

While proponents laud this as a visionary conservation effort, it has created a deep and bitter divide. Ranching communities see APR's mission as a direct threat to their livelihood and cultural heritage. They fear being bought out, losing access to grazing leases their families have used for generations, and facing a future dominated by an ecosystem that is incompatible with cattle ranching. The conflict embodies a clash between two powerful American ideals: the Jeffersonian yeoman farmer (the rancher) and the romantic vision of a wild, untamed frontier (APR's re-wilding project). It is a battle over whose vision for the future of the Great Plains will prevail.

Indirect influence from wealthy patrons also plays a role. Financiers like George Soros, through philanthropic arms such as the Open Society Foundations, do not typically engage in direct, large-scale land purchases. Instead, their influence is felt through the funding of various non-profit and advocacy groups that work on environmental policy, social justice, and conservation issues, shaping the legal and political battles that define land use in the West.

Collectively, these powerful new players are accelerating the trends of rising land prices, making it nearly impossible for working-class families or young ranchers to get a start. They are intensifying the conflicts over public access, shifting vast tracts of land away from traditional agricultural production, and creating deep cultural fissures. The story of land ownership in Montana remains one of struggle, but today, the fight is not over homesteads and gold, but over access, conservation ideologies, and fundamentally different visions for the future of "The Last Best Place."

Bibliography

Aron, Stephen. The American West: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.

Nugent, Walter. Into the West: The Story of Its People. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999.

Carlson, Leonard A. Indians, Bureaucrats, and Land: The Dawes Act and the Decline of Indian Farming. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1981.

Spence, Clark C. Territorial Politics and Government in Montana, 1864-89. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1975.

Robbins, Jim. "A Lawsuit Over a Corner of Wyoming Could Unleash a ‘Revolution’." The New York Times, October 24, 2022. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/24/us/wyoming-corner-crossing.html.

Fretland, John G. "The American Prairie Reserve: A Case Study of the New West." Great Plains Research 28, no. 1 (2018): 41–52.