Here’s how Blixseth did it

By SCOTT McMILLION Chronicle Staff Writer

Early in 1992, The Nature Conservancy, with $10 million in backing from CNN founder Ted Turner, was trying to buy 165,000 acres from Plum Creek Timber Co., most of it inside the Gallatin National Forest.

The Nature Conservancy planned to trade some of that land with the U.S. Forest Service and launch an experiment in sustainable logging and recreational development. Negotiations dragged on for months, but fell apart after the news became public.

Within a few weeks, Tim Blixseth, along with partners Mel and Norm McDougal, announced they had bought the Plum Creek property. They paid $27.5 million for the land and a sawmill in Belgrade that employed scores of people. But before the papers were signed, they had arranged to sell some big chunks.

“We went to work and found buyers,” Blixseth said in an interview.

He and his partners, calling themselves Big Sky Lumber Co., arranged for other investors to take a 25,000 acre parcel west of Big Sky, the Jack Creek property, for $6.5 million. Today, it has become the ski and golf resort called Moonlight Basin, a place where 20-acre lots are listed for $3 million.

At the same time, timber giant Louisiana Pacific bought the Belgrade sawmill and a multi-year timber contract with BSL for $9 million, Blixseth said. The mill shut down after the lumber contract was complete, and the property became bustling retail space on the west end of Belgrade.

The sawmill and Moonlight sales reduced BSL’s overall price to $12 million, or about $86 an acre for the remaining 140,000 acres. The partners borrowed half of the purchase price.

Blixseth put up “about $3 million” in cash, he said. Today, condos at the Yellowstone Club cost more than that.

LOGGER FIRST

But it took a lot of work to make the Yellowstone Club happen.

Most of the Plum Creek land was in a checkerboard land pattern that stretched from Yellowstone National Park to the north end of the Bridger Mountains. Plum Creek had tried for decades to arrange land swaps that would allow it and the Forest Service to consolidate their holdings.

Some of the property was pristine, untouched and unroaded, while much of it had been heavily logged.

The Plum Creek swaps had a lot of support, but never made it past Congress.

Enter Blixseth.

He told the Chronicle in 1992 that he had come to saw logs and make money and wasn’t worried about battles with environmentalists.

“Maybe someplace in this United States of America, somebody needs to draw a line and protect private property rights,” he said at the time. “Maybe I’m the guy and that’s the place.”

He referred to the property as a “tree farm” and once said he was “tired of people saying clear-cutting is a bad word.”

Statements like that got people’s attention.

Meanwhile, he worked behind the scenes with members of Congress, the Forest Service and environmental groups to hammer out a deal.

By 1993, Congress had approved the first of two land swaps. BSL gave up 38,000 acres, mostly roadless land along the crest of the Gallatin Range, and got 16,300 acres of prime timberland scattered across western Montana. That property, lower in elevation and easier to reach, was logged and/or sold quickly.

By 1995, land prices were still climbing and BSL sold another 8,100 acres to the Forest Service in the Porcupine drainage — prime elk and grizzly bear habitat southeast of Big Sky — for $16.4 million, the appraised value.

Later, it completed another swap with the Forest Service.

By the time it was all said and done, the company traded to the government 101,000 acres in exchange for 47,000 acres, plus $25 million.

Read more here.

Blixseth, Redford helped shoulder state into new economy

By SCOTT McMILLION Chronicle Staff Writer

Robert Redford and Tim Blixseth don’t have much in common, aside from their big impact on Montana’s landscape.

ERIK PETERSEN/CHRONICLE Yellowstone Club owner Tim Blixseth stands in front of the 120,000-square-foot Warren Miller Lodge at the club. “That’s your basic $100 million lodge,” Blixseth said. One is a Hollywood actor, movie producer and liberal environmental activist. The other is a jet-setting billionaire who wheels and deals in luxury real estate.

But they both changed Montana. Between them, they’ve helped shoulder the state into a new economy, one increasingly based on real estate, construction and recreation. It’s what economists call an “amenity” economy, one that relies on scenic views, pleasing lifestyles and portable money.

Redford, with his beautifully produced and photographed 1992 movie “A River Runs Through It,” made a movie star of both Brad Pitt and Montana’s scenery. The film generated tons of glowing publicity about the state, ignited a new craze for fly fishing and started a population influx and demographic shift that the Montana Department of Commerce has dubbed “A River Runs Through It Syndrome.”

Also in 1992, Blixseth landed in Montana, purchasing 140,000 acres of land, then proceeding with a series of land deals that eventually resulted in The Yellowstone Club, a gated community where only millionaires are allowed.

The club symbolizes wretched excess for some people and King Solomon’s mines for others. But love it or hate it, the club stands as the keystone property in the booming Big Sky resort area, a generator of intense publicity, and a major driver of the region’s economy.

Redford’s movie put Southwestern Montana on the map.

And while he didn’t do it alone, Blixseth put it on the market.

Now, 15 years later, this part of the state is a very different place.

New waves of homesteaders have arrived and they aren’t like the honyockers of the early 20th century, the people lured west by hucksters who promised that rain would follow the plow. The first wave of homesteaders came here for free land and a chance to make a living. Most of them went broke.

The new homesteaders are a different sort. Few of them come here looking to expand their wealth. Instead, they bring their own money. Economically, they make their own rain, and a lot of people are hoisting buckets, trying to catch some.

Gallatin County alone has 828 licensed real estate agents – almost a quarter of the state’s total. Bozeman offers a variety of sushi restaurants, plus Persian rug dealers, cosmetic surgery centers and art galleries of all stripes.

On one block of the sunny side of Bozeman’s Main Street, you can find $2,000 espresso machines, $10,000 sofas and $60,000 home theater systems. Million-dollar McMansions pepper the landscape, designer clothing surrounds the tables in tony restaurants, and just try to count all those Audis and Expeditions and Escalades.

And then there’s the cash money. Federal bank regulators say that Gallatin County banks hold $1.6 billion in cash deposits. That’s $20,000 for every man, woman and child in the county. It’s 30 percent above the state average and the total grew by $1 billion between 2000 and 2007.

And the truly wealthy n Forbes Magazines’s list of the 400 richest Americans names at least 10 people with homes in Montana n tend to do their banking somewhere else. They might have a $10 million property in Montana, but home, and the major bank account, remains elsewhere.

“Lots of people with wealth, whether they’re part-timers or not, don’t necessarily do their banking here,” said Larry Swanson, an economist at the O’Connor Center for the Rocky Mountain West at University of Montana.

Measuring the impact of the new wealth in Montana, Swanson said, is like looking at an iceberg: Most of the bulk is underwater and unseen, but that’s what packs the wallop.

At Blixseth’s Yellowstone Club alone, 340 millionaires have already bought land. And Blixseth says he’s confident he can bring in about 500 more.

Some people, particularly those with marketable skills, benefit from the influx of wealth.

“It means an electrician can drive a $40,000 vehicle and live in a $400,000 house,” said Clark Wheeler, a veteran land appraiser in Bozeman. “Twenty years ago, they were living pretty sparse.”

And while a lot of people are putting a lot of money in the bank, the averages don’t tell the whole story. Some people stash a lot of green. Others can’t find much at all.

Poverty remains high in the Gallatin Valley, though it’s largely out of sight.

Read more here.

Lewis & Clark In Montana: The Expedition Begins

 

The Expedition Begins
In 1804 a hopeful Thomas Jefferson sent Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to find the fabled River of the West. From the time of Columbus, explorers and statesmen had dreamed of a Northwest Passage, an all-water route connecting the trade routes of the Pacific to the Old World of the Atlantic. As president of a still-young nation, Jefferson had pressed for the Louisiana Purchase to strengthen American trade and settlement. The final $15 million-dollar agreement with France doubled America’s size overnight.

Lewis & Clark in Montana
On April 25, 1805, the Corps of Discovery camped by the riverside near the future site of Fort Union. Lewis and Clark hoped they were only weeks away from the Pacific via an all-water route, the mythical Northwest Passage. The group rested and celebrated their arrival at the confluence of the Yellowstone and Missouri rivers. The expedition journals noted the spot’s potential as a trade location between two navigable rivers, the early highways of commerce.  Entering what would be Montana led the expedition into the land of the Blackfeet. Their first contact with this tribe had been less than promising.

The Northwest Passage was not Jefferson’s only priority. In fact, of the tasks assigned them, Lewis and Clark accomplished the most within the modern borders of Montana. Contact and negotiations with native tribes, the reconnaissance of suitable sites for trading posts and forts, and scientific accounts of the land’s plants, animals, and scenic resources were all in keeping with Jefferson’s hopes for the expedition.

Montana Unspoiled Adventure
Today, much of the Montana landscape that Lewis & Clark crossed remains unchanged. From solitary sandstone through river canyons to mountain meadows, Montana’s rivers and highways flow past scores of landmarks related to the expedition. This site is a guide to these landmarks and the many opportunities to enjoy Montana’s beauty and recreation.

 

Please click here to learn more and plan YOUR Montana adventure!

History of John Bozeman

John Bozeman was born in Pickens County, Georgia, in 1835. Like so many men of the Civil War era, he was struck with gold fever and headed west in 1858, abandoning his wife and three children. Bozeman came to Montana from Colorado in 1862 after his lust for gold fizzled when his claims failed to pan out. Seeing a need to supply the mining camps of Bannack and Virginia City, he realized it would be more profitable to “mine the miners” than to mine gold. In 1863, he and John Jacobs blazed the Bozeman Trail, a cutoff route from the Oregon Trail, and guided miners to Virginia City through the Gallatin Valley.

Bozeman saw the fertile Gallatin Valley as a most desirable place to live. He chose the site “standing right in the gate of the mountains ready to swallow up all tenderfeet that would reach the territory from the east, with their golden fleeces to be taken care of” to make his fortune. In 1864, Bozeman, along with Daniel Rouse and William Beall, platted the town which would bear his name. The Bozeman Trail passed directly through the Gallatin Valley and was used by travellers until 1868 when it was closed because of the Indian Wars. It served its purpose; emigrants who saw the lush valley settled in Bozeman’s fledgling town.
 
John Bozeman was murdered under mysterious circumstances along the Yellowstone River, east of present-day Livingston, in April, 1867, three years after establishing his town. His partner on the trip, Tom Cover, reported they had been attacked by a band of Blackfeet Indians. Inconsistencies in Cover’s story have led historians to suspect Bozeman was murdered, either by Cover, or possibly by a jealous husband of one of the few women in town.
 
Local hysteria over a possible Indian attack so close to town led to the establishment of Fort Ellis, three miles east of Bozeman. Fort Ellis kept the tiny settlement afloat by providing protection and a market for local farmers and merchants.
 
John Bozeman is buried in Sunset Hills Cemetery.

 

Thanks to the City of Bozeman website.