Terry Tietge peers out a window of the historic Alta Ranger Station near Painted Rocks. Tietge's great uncle Hank Tuttle served as a ranger with Than Wilkerson and built the station in 1899. JEREMY LURGIO -- Ravalli Republic

As heritage program officer for the Bitterroot National Forest, Williams said she had been searching for a family member of Hank Tuttle since 1999, when the Alta Ranger Station turned 100.

"We had a 100-year anniversary celebration of the ranger station in July 1999 after we renovated it," Williams said. "We had lots of Wilkersons on hand, but we couldn't find any Tuttles."

After realizing that Terry Tietge's grandfather was Ranger Hank Tuttle's brother, Williams gave the Tietges a brief history of Alta Ranger Station - the first ranger station in the United States.

"I grew up in Conrad and Choteau and didn't know very much about that side of my family," Terry Tietge said. After learning about her great-uncle's role in Bitterroot Valley history, the Tietges decided to volunteer at the historic ranger station.

"We drive up once a month and spruce up in and around the building, cut the grass and make sure the flag is still flying" Mike Tietge said. "It's a neat old building and a beautiful drive."

After stopping by Thursday to see how the grass she planted last year on the roof was growing, Williams elaborated on the parallel histories of Alta and the Bitter Root Forest Reserve.

In the late 1890s, she said, Alta was a mining district with several hundred placer miners searching for gold in and around Hughes and Overwhich creeks.

"This was not a boom town like Bannack or Virginia City," she said. "But because of the concentration of mining camps, there were issues of timber trespass and forest fires, and homesteads were popping up in the area."

To deal with such forest-related issues in the West, she said, the General Land Office created the National Forest Reserve, which in turn created the Bitter Root Forest Reserve.

"The idea behind the reserves was to combat the waste of timber and the overgrazing of the forest," she said. "Watershed protection was also a big priority."

The first few rangers for the Bitter Root were hired in 1898, and Wilkerson and Tuttle were given the area around Darby and Alta, she said.

"They had to build their own log cabin - the Alta Ranger Station - and at one time rode 100 miles round trip into Grantsdale to get nails and windows," she said. "They stayed here in the summer months while they worked in the area."

In 1904, the year before the National Forest Reserve transitioned into the U.S. Forest Service, it was discovered that the Alta Ranger Station was on Pete Bennett's mining claim, so the Forest Reserve abandoned it and it became Bennett's property.

"It's important to note that the Alta Ranger Station was never under the U.S. Forest Service," she said. "It, in fact, was abandoned as a ranger station before the Forest Service ever formed."

In 1941, the Hamilton Lion's Club bought the former ranger station from Bennett's heirs and donated it to the Forest Service. In the 1950s, work was done on the station and Wilkerson assisted in the renovation.

Work was later done on the log building in 1971, and a major renovation occurred in 1999 to mark the building's centennial anniversary.

Williams, who was present during the restoration six years ago, said the small, one-room building is full of history, including names and dates written on the door and inside logs by visitors from the early part of last century.

One of the first Forest Service supervisors, Frank Fenn, scrolled his name on the door of the cabin on September 26, 1918. Fenn later had a ranger station in the Selway named after him.

When restoring the building, Williams said, volunteers took great pains to ensure the materials used were historically accurate, but to minimize future deterioration of the sod roof, they installed a high-tech pond liner between the dirt and wood.

In 1999, workers sowed native grasses on the roof, but drought and the threat of wildfire prevented the grasses from getting established, Williams said.

"In 2000, we wrapped the entire building with fire-resistant material," she said, "which pretty much killed off any grass that was growing on the roof."

In 2004, bound and determined to get grass to grow, Williams and Jim Aronson put grass seed, fertilizer and mulch on the roof. Their diligence, coupled with some needed rain, caused the grass to flourish.

"With all this wet weather, the cabin needs a haircut," she joked.

The Tietges even contemplated cutting the foot-long grass during their monthly sprucing, but decided to let it go another month.

In addition to the historic ranger station, a couple other weathered buildings remain in Alta: A two-story building that likely was the stage coach sits 100 feet north of the ranger station, and the remnants of the former post office beckon from across the dirt road.

Up the road not more than 100 feet is a grove of a dozen or more giant ponderosa pine trees bearing the scars of cambium harvest by American Indians. The living artifacts, Williams said, indicate that the area was a travel corridor and camping area for the Salish, Kootenai, Nez Perce and, possibly, Shoshone Indians.

After cleaning the windows and mowing the grass around the 106-year-old ranger station, the Tietges were satisfied the building looked presentable for the likely visitors on the Independence Day weekend. Afterward they walked down to view the giant trees.

"We love coming out here once a month and trying to imagine what it must have been like when the miners were here," Terry Tietges said. "And seeing these trees shows there were people here long before that."

Preserving a place as historic as Alta, Williams said, is like putting together a puzzle, and many of the pieces are there. But one thing that's missing from the Alta puzzle is pictures.

"Photographs are a real key component of historical restoration," she said. "If anyone has any old photos of Alta, we'd love to see them. We really don't have any."

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