No U Turns: On the Road With the Steeles: A Little About Life at Ninemile

We’ve been here almost a month, and it’s rained about everyday, with temps in the 40s and 50s. While spring arrives late in Montana, the locals say it’s been an usually wet and cool June. However, this cool wet weather doesn’t necessarily mean a low fire season in July and August. In fact, it will probably make it worse as these spring rains promote more ground cover fuel when the weather turns hot and dry.

Things have picked up at the visitor center. We now average about 20-25 visitors a day. It’s fun meeting people from all over the country. It appears a mini-gold rush is underway. We’ve had several inquires about “where can I find the gold?” or “how can I file a claim? (Jim can tell the prospectors even before they come in: their vehicles are pretty beat up, and they look like they’ve been living in the backcountry for awhile) Of course, we direct them to the main office for those questions.

Ninemile Depot is certainly an interesting place. It was founded in the 1930s following a decade of devastating fires that destroyed millions of acres and several towns. Modeled after the old western depots that provided fresh stock and supplies to the calvary traveling through, Ninemile was built to provide trained and experirenced animal packers and stock (primarily mules) to transport equipment into the backcountry to fight fires.

All the buildings were constructed by the Civilian Conservation Core, which had one of the largest camps in the nation stationed here, about 600 men. The architecture is unique for a western ranch: the planners thought that having a Kentucky blue grass theme gave the image of an elite stock breeding and training operation.
In the 1940s, the smoke jumpers trained here as well. Their training facility moved to Missoula in the 1950s, but the depot still has a landing strip for when they practice out here.

Today, with the advent of the smoke jumpers and more roads into the forests, pack trains play less of a role in fire fighting. However, they are still used for trail maintenance work and assist the smoke jumpers by hauling out equipment that was parachuted in.

Ninemile Depot is also home to the Wildlands Training Center, which offers courses and clinics to both forest service personnel and the public. These fill up a year in advance and include animal packing, horsemanship, Leave No Trace for back country stock users, crosscut saw use and maintenance, log cabin construction, and use of compasses and GPS (I need to take that one!)

Well, that’s all for now. We just bought season fishing licenses and our goal is to hike into some mountain lakes to camp and fish and hopefully eat fresh trout for dinner.

The CCC Ninemile Remount Barn