The Chappel Brothers Corporation

In the nineteen twenties, eastern Montana's thriving horse industry gave way in the nineteen thirties to collapse as the Great Depression, drought, and mechanization led people to abandon farms and ranches, release stock onto the public domain, and leave more horses on the range than it could support. With horses worth only 2 cents a pound and no place to ship them, two brothers who ran a cannery in Illinois moved to Miles City and, from 1928 to 1939, operated the Chappel Brothers Corporation across grazing lands from Hardin to Fort Belknap and from Miles City to Wolf Point, with western ranch headquarters at Sunday Creek on the Kinsey Road. In 1935, 60,000 horses ranged over 10,000 square miles in eastern Montana, and the corporation employed young men to round up free-range horses and drive dry mares, old horses, and others unfit for work to shipping points for the Illinois packing plant. Day herds gathered for slaughter numbered more than 5,000 head, and once shipped, the horses were processed into chicken feed, fertilizer, cat and dog food, and glue. The business expanded after the Russian government agreed to receive tons of horse meat for food. CBC cowboys earned 40 to 45 dollars a month for strenuous and dangerous work, riding from 3 a.m. until 8 or 9 p.m. seven days a week, and after the company closed, several former hands became important in raising stock and putting on many rodeos in eastern Montana, making service with the CBC a badge of honor.

Miles City, Montana · United States