Stock Farm Course Site Has Rich Montana History

Jan. 2000

While prospecting in the West in 1864, Marcus Daly, a young Irish immigrant, passed through western Montana's Bitterroot Valley. The beauty and possibilities of the area so completely overwhelmed him that he told his wife, Margaret, in a letter: "I'll come back here someday and build me a horse ranch."

Later, as owner of the Anaconda Copper Co., Daly became a major player on Wall Street and ultimately one of the richest men in the world. And he made good on his promise 24 years later in 1888 when he built the renowned Bitterroot Stock farm on 22,000 acres of land on the eastern slope of the Bitterroot Valley. The area's terrain, altitude, vegetation and fresh mountain water made it an ideal setting to raise top-caliber thoroughbreds.

Soon Daly had a rail line set up to ferry in some of the fastest racehorses in the country. He also established the nearby town of Hamilton to provide services for the ranch. Business colleagues were regularly hosted in several ranch hideaways and in the Daly mansion, which was the largest in Montana.

A sample of Daly's hospitality shows in a 1897 telegram that he sent to his ranch manager. It read: "Mr. Roderick Cloty leaves today for Hamilton. Show him over the ranch. Introduce him to Sam Lucas. Arrange an escort for him to go shooting and fishing. Spare no expense. See that he is well taken care of. — Marcus Daly."

From that beginning, it is fitting that an ownership group led by discount brokerage founder Charles Schwab acquired 2,600 acres of the ranch in 1997 and is now developing it into an upscale mountain retreat and recreation area. Located in the foothills of the Sapphire Mountains, the property is on the east side of the Bitterroot River Valley. The Bitterroot Mountains, one of the most spectacular ranges in the Rockies, are to the west. The valley, which is about 80 miles long and 15-20 miles wide, is a wildlife haven; the river a blue-ribbon trout stream.

Combined with the laid-back, rural Montana lifestyle, the area is especially appealing to people who otherwise live in the rat-race.

Of the 2,600 acres acquired by Charles and Helen Schwab and their group, 1,644 remain as common, open space for the protection of the resident 500-head elk herd and for clustered home sites with strict architectural covenants.

There is also a 16-acre equestrian center with 48 private indoor/outdoor horse stalls and over 30 miles of riding, hiking and biking trails, tennis courts, swimming pool, and a restaurant and lounge. The more than 100 home sites, including 30 ranchettes from 5 to 25 acres each, have mountain and hay meadow home settings that are screened from the 7,000-yard, 18-hole championship golf course. "None of the homes are visible from the course, so when you are playing a hole all you usually see is that hole," says Don Tolson, superintendent of the 18-hole, championship Stock Farm Golf Course.

Properties range in price from $500,000 to $1.5 million. About 30 percent of the sites have been sold and real estate sales are ahead of projections. The 350 memberships that were initially made available in the exclusive golf course sold out in less than six months. The only memberships that remain are those that are available through ownership of the home sites.

The course, which was started in the fall of 1997, was opened for limited play last July. A grand opening followed on Aug. 15.

Using a new Dakota 2250 blender purchased especially for that job, Huppert Brothers of Billings, Mont., blended all the sand mix for the greens and the practice greens. "Everything went well. The tests came out right on the nose and everybody was happy. Actually, it couldn't have gone any better," Fred Huppert, one of the brothers in the firm that does golf course construction throughout the nation, says.

"The course has the luxury of being built on a lots of acres," according to Tolson. "One of the modern-day downfalls in golf course development is that the course is usually squeezed into from 110 to 160 acres. As a result, the experience loses some quality. The holes on this 275-acre course are really spread out. With lots of elevation changes, there is great separation between holes and some spectacular scenery as the background to every shot.

"Course designer Tom Fazio did a marvelous job," Tolson says. "The golf pro from Augusta National is a member here and he thinks that playability-wise and scenery-wise this course is as good as there is. We have a number of members who are multiple course members. One of them belongs to five of the top 10 courses. His home course is Pine Valley and, after playing 18 holes here, he came in and plopped his money down (for a membership). He was very complimentary."

An important piece of equipment in both the construction and maintenance of the course has been a Dakota Turf Tender 440, Tolson says. "We bought it about halfway through construction. I was previously in the Denver area and through a relationship with Tom Briddle, who has had a long-term relationship with Dakota Peat & Equipment, worked on the development of some features of the machine.

"That was the beginning of my relationship with the folks at Dakota and, when we got close to starting work on the golf course, we bought the 440 to spread an organic amendment to our topsoil. We use it a lot... for top-dressing fairways, hauling top-dressing, shuttling top-dressing to our greens top-dresser, and for topping off sand in the bunkers.

"We also use it to shuttle fertilizer to the field, but because the golf course has so much elevation change, we haven't started fertilizing with it yet and may not. We are doing that with smaller units, but it is an excellent fertilizer spreader, and, at the golf course that I came from, I wouldn't have been afraid to use it at all. We may install a foamer attachment on the unit and, if we ever get to the point where we don't have the luxury of having a lot of quality labor, we may choose to spread fertilizer that way. But right now, we have a real strong staff and a generous budget, so we're out there putting it down with smaller spreaders. But we use the 440 to haul the product out to the golf course and to fill those smaller spreaders.

"We also used it to surface some of the gravel roads that we built. And we use it to put a fine chips on about 15 miles of roads in the winter during icy conditions," Tolson says. "We use the 440 for many, many things. It has been a great piece of equipment."

But as important as it is to course maintenance, the Dakota Turf Tender 440 can't improve on the natural beauty of the area. Fazio sums it up. As Golf Digest's "best present day architect" in 1991, 93 and 95, and the designer of the private courses ranked No. 1, 3 and 4 by Golf Digest in 1996, he says: "Stock Farm is among the best courses I've ever designed and is in some of the most spectacular country I've ever seen."