When I visited Grant-Kohrs Ranch some years ago, Ranger Lyndel Meikle showed off her skills working with fire and iron/Kurt Repanshek

The smithy at Grant-Kohrs Ranch National Historic Site in Montana was a key person when you consider that at its heyday the ranch spanned a 10-million-acre empire that Conrad Kohrs used to run cattle on the open range in four states and two Canadian provinces.

When the brutally cold and snowy winter of 1886-87 swept through the Rockies, it crippled many of the West's cattlemen. For Conrad Kohrs, however, his banker in nearby Butte, Montana, provided him with a $100,000 handshake loan that enabled him to rebuild the largest cattle empire the country has ever known.

The business deal was perhaps the shrewdest and most daring Conrad Kohrs executed, but it gave him the ability to restock his herds while other cattlemen -- some who lost 95 percent of their herds to that terrible winter -- went bankrupt. So successful was the move that the cattle baron paid the loan off in just four years.

When I visited some years ago, I was drawn to the triplet staccato that rang sharply across the ranch compound from the smithy's anvil in the blacksmith shop.

A self-taught smithy, Lyndel Meikle hammered out a hoof pick for me in minutes, and then offered a slice of lodgepole pine tree trunk bearing the ranch's G-K brand. Though she's now retired, it's still worth your time to visit the ranch site at Deer Lodge, Montana.

To learn more about the ranch, read this story from Traveler's archives.