I.D. O'Donnell

Moving Water, Building Billings:

The Long Career of I. D. O'Donnell

A Town Without a Reason to Stay

Billings, Montana, was platted in 1882 along the Northern Pacific Railroad and named for Frederick Billings, a former president of that line. By 1900, nearly two decades after its founding, the census counted only 3,221 residents (Bureau of Reclamation, "Huntley Project's"). The railroad had supplied a town site and a route to markets, but the surrounding valley receives little rain and rewards farmers only where ditches carry river water to the land. Ignatius Daniel O'Donnell, known as I. D. and to friends as Bud, reached the valley as a young man with no recorded training in farming or engineering. Over the next six decades he became one of the region's leading irrigators, a promoter of new crops, a federal official, and finally its informal historian. His career shows what irrigation required in practice, and it also shows how far individual expertise could go.

Origins and Arrival

O'Donnell was born on 19 September 1860 in Norfolk County, Ontario, to Scots-Irish parents. The Montana Historical Society counts him as one of ten children. A compiled genealogical page places the family in Saginaw County, Michigan, by 1866 (Montana Historical Society, "I. D. O'Donnell"; Yellowstone Genealogy Forum). The sources agree that he reached Montana Territory in 1882 but differ on how. The Montana Cowboy Hall of Fame says he went to Chicago, found no work, and rode the Northern Pacific to the end of the line. The genealogical page has him in Miles City in 1881 and at Coulson, the river settlement that preceded Billings, by 1882. Both say he found work on a horse ranch, which the Hall of Fame places near Maiden and the genealogical page near Fort Maginnis. The Historical Society says only that it was a large horse ranch.

At the ranch he befriended Parmly Billings and Edward Bailey, the son and nephew of Frederick Billings (Montana Cowboy Hall of Fame; Yellowstone Genealogy Forum). The Billings family held substantial land in the valley. In 1884 Parmly Billings and Bailey moved to Billings to manage those interests, and O'Donnell followed. The Hall of Fame states that Parmly Billings placed the family's agricultural operations under O'Donnell's supervision.

The Big Ditch and Hesper Farm

Water came before farming did. The Minnesota and Montana Land and Improvement Company, which laid out the town, dug an irrigation canal known as the Big Ditch in 1882, and the engineer Henry Rowley came with the company to build it (Montana Cowboy Hall of Fame; Van West, "Billings's"). Historian Carroll Van West writes that Frederick Billings, an experienced farmer from Vermont, recognized that the land would produce little without water. The ditch crossed Hesper Farm, a property that the Congregational minister Benjamin Shuart managed for the Billings family. Van West relates that when Billings lost confidence in Shuart, he turned to O'Donnell, whom he describes as self-taught in the value of land and in irrigation (Van West, "Billings: Heart"). The Hall of Fame says O'Donnell became manager of the Big Ditch and by the end of the 1880s was regarded as a regional irrigation expert. The genealogical page instead credits him with rebuilding the ditch and, in 1892, arranging for farmers to own it. Each of these claims appears in only one source.

In 1887 he married Louise Roeser, whom the Historical Society says he had known in Michigan. They had six children (Montana Historical Society, "I. D. O'Donnell"; Montana Cowboy Hall of Fame). Hesper Farm, about eight miles west of Billings, gradually became his. With Bailey he purchased it, and in 1900 he bought Bailey's share (Yellowstone Genealogy Forum). Van West describes the property as a demonstration farm for the entire region (Van West, "Billings: Heart"). Its best-known product was alfalfa, which earned O'Donnell the nickname "Alfalfa King" (Montana Historical Society, "I.D. O'Donnell Home"). The Hall of Fame adds that his produce won prizes at state fairs and at the 1893 World's Fair. That biography is the only source consulted for the World's Fair claim.

Sugar Beets and Civic Enterprise

The Hall of Fame credits O'Donnell with Montana's first successful sugar beet crop, while the genealogical page says he raised the first beets in the valley. He and the banker and developer Preston B. Moss were instrumental in building the Billings Sugar Company factory in 1906 (Montana Cowboy Hall of Fame; Yellowstone Genealogy Forum). Van West treats O'Donnell and Moss as close collaborators. Their houses, both listed on the National Register of Historic Places, stand near each other in Billings (Van West, "Billings's").

O'Donnell's civic work ran alongside his business interests. He helped establish the Parmly Billings Library in 1901 and served on its board into the 1940s. The genealogical page gives 1945 as the end of his service. Van West adds that he helped supervise construction of the library building with Albert Babcock and that he had been a friend of Parmly Billings (Van West, "Good News"; Montana Cowboy Hall of Fame; Yellowstone Genealogy Forum). The Hall of Fame further reports that he presided over the newly formed Chamber of Commerce in 1907. It also says he served on the board of the Billings Polytechnic Institute, later Rocky Mountain College, and was its president in 1918. It adds that he sat on the school board and donated land from Hesper Farm for a rural school in 1904. Van West uses the term civic capitalists for the group to which O'Donnell belonged. The same men who profited from land, ditches, and beets also paid for and governed the institutions that made the town habitable.

The Huntley Project

The federal Reclamation Act of 1902 brought public money into the business O'Donnell had practiced privately. The Huntley Project irrigates land south of the Yellowstone River east of Billings. That land had been part of the Crow Indian Reservation until the Crow ceded it in 1904 (Bureau of Reclamation, "Huntley Project"). The project was authorized on 18 April 1905, the fifth Reclamation project to be authorized, and construction began on 6 October 1905 (Bureau of Reclamation, "Huntley Project"). Reclamation's regional history calls it only the second project completed. Van West's blog describes it as the Reclamation Service's second project and credits O'Donnell's enthusiasm and connections with attracting federal attention (Van West, "Billings: Heart"). The Hall of Fame says he oversaw the project and founded and managed an experiment station at Huntley to teach new settlers how to grow irrigated crops. Those specific claims appear only in that biography.

Settlement proved slower than promoters expected. President Theodore Roosevelt opened the project to homesteading on 21 May 1907, and 5,491 people filed for land by the June deadline. Many were Billings residents who filed only to draw a number in the lottery, and only 76 of the first 1,000 applicants completed the process. Just 4,100 acres were irrigated in the 1908 season (Bureau of Reclamation, "Huntley Project's").

Supervisor of Irrigation

In 1914, according to the Hall of Fame and the state historical marker, O'Donnell became Supervisor of Irrigation for the federal reclamation program. The Historical Society's educational profile gives 1913 and says he held the post until 1918. Van West's essay on O'Donnell reproduces a photograph of the Reclamation Commission that shows him beside Secretary of the Interior Franklin K. Lane, Director Frederick Newell, Chief Engineer Arthur P. Davis, Chief Counsel Will R. King, and Comptroller W. A. Ryan (Van West, "Creating" 326). The Hall of Fame, paraphrasing a Reclamation annual report, says the office was created so that a practical farmer could speak for water users. It says O'Donnell traveled to projects across seventeen western states. He also wrote for settlers. The same essay records a June 1915 article he contributed to the Reclamation Record titled "Common Birds Around the Farm" (Van West, "Creating" 328). In 1918 he published a treatise titled Better Business, Better Farming, Better Living: Hints from a Practical Farmer (Montana Cowboy Hall of Fame; Montana Historical Society, "I. D. O'Donnell").

Recognition followed. In 1919 The Country Gentleman named him the best farmer in Montana, according to the Historical Society and the historical marker. The genealogical page reports the honor as best farmer in America, and the other two sources are more specific. The Historical Society alone reports that The Saturday Evening Post ran a feature on him in 1925 (Montana Historical Society, "I. D. O'Donnell"; "I.D. O'Donnell Home"; Yellowstone Genealogy Forum).

What the Record Does and Does Not Show

Huntley's history complicates any account of O'Donnell as a straightforward success. Construction ultimately cost about $1,600,000, some 44 percent over the original estimate. By 1913 drainage failures had waterlogged 1,000 acres of the Pryor Division, with 8,000 more at risk. After the First World War, crop value per acre fell by 40 percent between 1918 and 1922, and the project's population fell by more than half. The irrigators formed their own district in 1921 (Bureau of Reclamation, "Huntley Project's"). The Hall of Fame observes that O'Donnell's early experience at Huntley taught him that engineering alone would not turn the arid West into farmland, and that settler criticism of the Reclamation Service grew as projects went into operation. The sources consulted do not show how far his office changed conditions on any particular project, so his influence on Huntley's fortunes remains an open question.

The Historian of the Valley

In the 1920s, after leaving federal service, O'Donnell turned to local history. He interviewed early residents in 1927 and 1928 and gave the resulting biographical collection, called Montana Monographs, to the Billings library, where it remains (Montana Cowboy Hall of Fame; Van West, "Billings's"). Van West credits him with leading the creation of monuments to the scout Luther "Yellowstone" Kelly and to the Coulson, or Foothill, Cemetery. The Hall of Fame adds that he purchased the Boothill and Kelly gravesites and later deeded them to the city, a claim it alone makes. It also credits him with helping bring about the publication of Agnes Jones's Crow Country and Glendolin Damon Wagner's Old Neutriment, and reports that the library's Montana Room was named for him.

Van West draws an irony from the Boothill monument. The river-rock obelisk became Billings's first historic site and fed a popular image of a cemetery full of gunfighters. In his account most of those buried there died of disease and accidents (Van West, "Billings's").

Death and Legacy

O'Donnell died on 28 January 1948, at the age of 87, at his home at 105 Clark Avenue (Yellowstone Genealogy Forum; Montana Historical Society, "I. D. O'Donnell"). His family had moved into the twelve-room house, designed by the architects Link and Haire, on New Year's Day 1905. His eldest daughter, Helene Wallis, lived there from 1905 to 1988 (Montana Historical Society, "I.D. O'Donnell Home"). He is buried in Mountview Cemetery in Billings (Van West, "Billings's"). The Historical Society summarizes his legacy as canals, sugar beets, a public library, city parks, a county fair, and a college. It is a record of institutions built in a town that had a railroad in 1882 and needed a good deal more.

Works Cited

Bureau of Reclamation. "Huntley Project." Projects and Facilities, U.S. Department of the Interior, https://www.usbr.gov/projects/index.php?id=518. Accessed 28 Sept. 2026.

---. "The Huntley Project's Rocky Childhood." Glimpse the Past, Missouri Basin and Arkansas-Rio Grande-Texas Gulf Regions, U.S. Department of the Interior, updated 11 July 2016, https://www.usbr.gov/gp/multimedia/archive/glimpse/huntley.html. Accessed 28 Sept. 2026.

Montana Cowboy Hall of Fame and Western Heritage Center. "Ignatius Daniel 'I.D.' O'Donnell (1860-1948)." Inductee Biographies, 2018, https://montanacowboyfame.org/inductees/2018/7/ignatius-daniel-id-o-donnell. Accessed 28 Sept. 2026.

Montana Historical Society. "I. D. O'Donnell." Montana Historical Society Education, https://mhs.mt.gov/education/Montanans/ODONNELL.pdf. Accessed 28 Sept. 2026.

"I.D. O'Donnell Home." Historic Montana, https://historicmt.org/items/show/2164. Accessed 28 Sept. 2026.

Van West, Carroll. "Billings: Heart of the Midland Empire." Montana's Historic Landscapes, 9 Mar. 2015, https://montanahistoriclandscape.com/2015/03/09/billings-heart-of-the-midland-empire/. Accessed 28 Sept. 2026.

"Billings's Historic Cemeteries." Montana's Historic Landscapes, 1 Jan. 2017, https://montanahistoriclandscape.com/2017/01/01/billingss-historic-cemeteries/. Accessed 28 Sept. 2026.

"Creating an Irrigator's Reclamation Service: I. D. 'Bud' O'Donnell, Civic Capitalism, and the U.S. Reclamation Service in the Yellowstone Valley, 1900-1930." The Bureau of Reclamation: History Essays from the Centennial Symposium, edited by Brit Allan Storey, vol. 1, Bureau of Reclamation, U.S. Department of the Interior, 2008, pp. 315-29, https://www.usbr.gov/history/Symposium_2008/Historical_Essays.pdf. Accessed 28 Sept. 2026.

"Good News in Billings." Montana's Historic Landscapes, 12 Apr. 2026, https://montanahistoriclandscape.com/2026/04/12/good-news-in-billings/. Accessed 28 Sept. 2026.

Yellowstone Genealogy Forum. "Ignatius Daniel O'Donnell - Area Irrigation." RootsWeb, revised 2 June 2004, https://sites.rootsweb.com/~mtygf/county/odonnell.htm. Accessed 28 Sept. 2026.