Cow Camp Style
Restoring a historic ranch built by a chief carpenter at Yellowstone.
By: Seabring Davis 03/01/2009
It took a decade to find the property that Mike and Amy Bennett envisioned: a classic little log building not unlike the trailside museum at the confluence of the Madison and Gibbon Rivers in Yellowstone National Park, with a little stream out back, a meadow and lots of trees.
Mike would know it when he saw it, he told his friend and fishing guide, Randy Cain. Then one day, driving along the old gravel road on the east end of Ennis Lake, he spotted his cabin through the trees.
They turned into the driveway to get a closer look. The place wasn’t for sale, but Bennett was smitten with it and eventually negotiated a deal with owner Jack Watkins Jr., a third-generation rancher.
“There was a lifetime accumulation of stuff that a typical rancher would collect, but I could see that the bones of the building were in incredible shape, and I thought it was gorgeous,” Mike recalls.
During the negotiation of the property, the Bennetts learned about the rich history of Watkins Creek Ranch. The Watkins family was one of the first to raise cattle in the Madison Valley in the late 1800s. The main house was constructed in 1906 by Jack Watkins Sr., who was a chief carpenter in the construction of Yellowstone’s Old Faithful Inn. He applied the skills and artistry he’d learned on the job to his own family cabin, for which he harvested long, straight lodgepole pines and carefully stacked and chinked them to create a humble, but thoughtful, abode.
In classic cow camp style, smaller cabins were added to accommodate ranch hands, storage and livestock, and it was these outbuildings that sparked Mike’s interest in creating a ranch compound. Shortly after he acquired the property, he began interviewing architects and contractors to restore the main house. A developer and contractor in his home state of South Carolina, Mike had been restoring historic buildings in Charleston for nearly 30 years.
Ultimately, Mike chose to work with Candace Tillotson-Miller of Miller Architects and Harry Howard of Yellowstone Traditions. “I think they both really appreciated the house,” he says. “Rather than say, ‘It’s an old house that needs a lot of work,’ they said, ‘This is a rare find.’ It’s a charming old building and it needs some tender, loving care.”
Mike wanted to create a ranch compound with a series of small buildings rather than one grand mansion. Miller helped finesse the concept, and the work began. The road was rerouted, the classic weathered buildings were relocated closer to the main house and the property, which was overgrown and neglected, was cleared of junk, including 31 abandoned Cadillacs.
Miller inventoried the existing elements of the main house and outlying buildings, and then carefully enhanced them. Working with Howard and Yellowstone Traditions, she was confident that the sensitivity for the historic quality of the project would be a priority.
“All of us were so endeared by the scale and detail of the house,” Miller explains. “It’s this kind of elegance and intimacy that we try to replicate in new projects.”
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