The Valley of a Thousand Haystacks

The patent names the panel's inventors more formally. Herbert S. Armitage and David J. Stephens of Briston, in the Big Hole, filed on September 7, 1909, and United States patent 959,906 for a hay-stacker was granted on May 31, 1910; Dade seems to have been Stephens's nickname, and a Big Hole panel calls the two brothers-in-law. They called the machine the Beaverhead County Slide Stacker, which wore down to beaver slide. Ranch lore holds that no factory ever built one; ranchers made their own and copied them for neighbors.

What the plaque says

The Valley of a Thousand Haystacks The Little Blackfoot Valley is filled with lush hay fields. You already may have noticed the rounded haystacks and commented on the strange lodgepole structures standing in many of the fields. This contraption that looks like a cross between a catapult and a cage is a hay-stacker that actually acts like a little of both. It was invented before 1910 by Dade Stephens and H. Armitage in the Big Hole Valley about sixty miles south of here. The device, called a beaver slide, revolutionized haying in Montana. It helped keep the wind from blowing the hay away and cut stacking time considerably. To work the beaver slide, a large rake piled high with hay is run up the arms of the slide ( the sloping portion of the"catapult" ). At the top the hay dumps onto the stack. The side gates ( the cage part ) keep the stack in a neat pile and make it possible to stack higher. The sides were added to the system in the late 1940s. Although the lifting of the rake is usually powered by a take-off from a tractor, truck or car axle, on some operations horse teams still provide the rpm's to muscle the hay up the slide. Aside from minor improvements, the beaver slide has remained unchanged since its inception. Once used throughout a good portion of the northern west, modern technology that can shape hay into bales, loaves or huge jelly rolls have replaced it in many areas. The Little Blackfoot is one of several valleys in Montana where you can still see the beaver slide and its distinctive haystacks.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Grant-Kohrs Ranch National Historic Site — 13 mi
  A Métis trader's 1862 house, a cattle king's headquarters, and a grandson who threw nothing away.

More markers nearby

• The Mullan Road — 13 mi
• The Frenchwoman's Road — 17 mi
• Over a Billion Years of Montana's Geologic History — 18 mi
• Marysville Montana — 20 mi