The Thomas Hagerty Homestead

Like many privately owned properties throughout Montana, the Thomas Hagerty homestead came into private ownership thanks to the Federal government which first surveyed the land, and later opened it up for homesteading.

Hagerty, a single man, filed to homestead Sept. 29, 1915 on 160 acres in the Swan Valley. In 1920, a Forest Service inspector wrote that the southern area of this parcel consisted of a spruce swamp bordering Barber Creek which was practically level and covered with water "owing to numerous beaver dams."

The inspector went on to record that during the first five years on the claim, Hagerty had broken the beaver dams and drained the wetlands. The north half of the claim, he wrote, consisted of gently rolling, forested land with a gravelly soil and a slight westerly slope.

Hagerty moved onto his claim with a team of horses, a wagon, various tools including a stump puller and boundless optimism. In the early years he plowed nearly seven acres of the land and seeded it with oats. The land yielded about five tons of oat hay in 1920, which the government inspector deemed a success, given setbacks attributed to the drought years of 1918 and 1919.

Hagerty completed an almost unbelievable amount of work during his first five years on the claim, especially since he only lived on the property part-time. Like most homesteaders, Hagerty's financial situation forced him to move closer to Missoula for several months each year so he could work and earn his grub stake.

He cleared nearly nine acres of the spruce bottom, where the trees averaged 12 inches in diameter. He then burned the slash from the trees and removed the stumps. Hagerty also planted redtop on about two acres of cleared area. Redtop was a popular grass for livestock and grew easily in the Swan Valley. Hagerty also fenced the cleared area with lodgepole posts and poles, and dug a ditch for continued draining of the swamp. "Hagerty's Ditch" still shows up on many modern maps, though the ditch has been dry for years. Parts of the fence are visible today.

For his homestead cabin, Hagerty erected a 16 x 24-foot log building using unpeeled lodgepole logs and covered the roof with larch shakes. The outside log walls were chinked with clay and the inside logs were chinked with newspapers from Butte. The papers were still in decent condition when they were discovered by the Nelson family many years later.

At some point in time before he died, Hagerty added more insulation to the top of his small cabin, probably in an attempt to keep his living area warmer during the winter. He hammered new purlins in place, then deposited four inches of dirt in the spaces between the purlins. New larch topped off this double roof but nothing prevented the dirt from steadily sifting through the old shakes and into the cabin.

When the Hustons lived here during the 1930s, Clara covered the ceiling with tightly fastened heavy paper. The paper brightened the home's interior and also reduced the amount of dirt falling onto her kitchen table and elsewhere.

In more recent times, the Nelson family replaced the roof and added a supporting wall inside the cabin, using modern materials, in order to keep the roof intact and to maintain the building.

The cabin floor, constructed of 1X12 pine, was laid on lodgepole floor joists. The entire cabin sat on top of a 4X4-foot root cellar, accessed via a trap door in the floor. A pole ladder led down into the storage area, where the walls consisted of shelves amply supplied with potatoes and fruit, along with canned and dried goods.

The front of the cabin faced west, toward the old Swan River Road. Hagerty installed three small windows and one door facing the road (now named Jette Road) and also built a small porch on that side.

For many years Hagerty and other local residents enjoyed the use of a Forest Service phone located on that front porch. Residents communicated with the outside world via No. 9 telephone wire. Ceramic insulators that held the wire between trees can still be found on the property.

The domestic water supply when Hagerty lived at the cabin came from a hand-dug well near Barber Creek. Hagerty was plagued by stomach illness or bowel troubles during the entire time that he lived in the Swan Valley and there is considerable speculation that his health problems were caused by Giardia. People now know that Giardia is present in most streams and wetlands where beaver are active. After Hagerty died, people in the neighborhood retrieved drinking water from Swan River with buckets, until the river water was also found to cause suspicious stomach ailments. After electricity arrived in the Swan Valley in the mid-1950s, a well was dug on the property for drinking water and indoor plumbing.

Hagerty died in his cabin in the late 1920s. Evelyn Jette, daughter of another area homesteader [Bill Deegan], often told a story that a Catholic priest from Missoula comforted Hagerty during the last ten days of his life at his cabin. Jette, and others, have wondered if the priest might have buried Hagerty at the homestead. The location of his burial has not been confirmed.

In 1929, Minnie Nelson, wife of Carl Nelson, purchased this homestead from Thomas Hagerty's estate. She marveled at the work the man had accomplished and felt that Hagerty's old cabin should be preserved.

She cleaned it up to serve as a guest cabin, and in later years she dressed up in a sunbonnet and apron and gave tours of the site to local school children, hoping to enlighten them about the lifestyles of early valley residents. Many years later the family moved the cabin about fifteen feet south of its original location onto a concrete slab, to protect the logs from rot.

The Upper Swan Valley Historical Society will offer a Homestead Tour as a fundraiser event from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Aug. 5. Eight homesteads, including the Hagerty homestead, will be featured as part of the Homestead Tour. Maps and directions to each homestead will be provided. Tickets and information can be obtained at the Swan Valley Museum, the Swan Valley Library or at http://www.swanvalleyhistoricalsociety.org. Following the Tour everyone is encouraged to meet back at the Swan Valley Museum from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. for an open mic session of storytelling and music. See http://www.swanvalleyhistoricalsociety.org, Seeley-Swan Pathfinder ads and local posters for more information.