On October 15, 1892, the federal government opened the land around Absarokee for settlement after Crow tribal leaders, under political pressure, had ceded the territory the year before from the Crow Indian Reservation. Sever Simonson and his family established squatter’s rights at the confluence of the Stillwater and East Rosebud Rivers eleven days before the formal opening, and his twenty-five-year-old nephew, Oliver Hovda, soon joined him. Together they established a trading post that became the Absarokee Cooperative Trading Co., and soon built a saloon, livery stable, hotel, and blacksmith shop. Simonson filed for a post office designation, and Hovda became Absarokee’s first postmaster; he also ranched and founded a local bank. Hovda married Belle Wilson in 1901, and around 1904 the couple hired area rancher and trained carpenter Jacob Wagner to build a two-story home whose design combined an irregular Queen Anne roofline with neo-classical details including Doric column porch supports, a fantail window in the gable end, and a pediment at the main entryway. Its interior featured leaded glass windows, oak trim, maple flooring, and elegantly carved doors. The Hovdas did not live there long: by 1910 the home belonged to Hugh Campbell, manager of the Absarokee Cooperative Trading Co. that Hovda had helped found, and it returned to the family in 1928 when Hovda’s nephew, Elmen Torgrimsen, purchased it and lived there with his wife and children until 1950.