Evelyn Braten: Fire Lookout, Homesteader, and Sunlight Basin Pioneer

Evelyn Braten once worked as a fire lookout atop Windy Mountain in the Sunlight Basin. Today the lookout structure is gone but the pilings and the spectacular views remain.

Evelyn Braten (1911–1999) was born on her parents’ ranch along the Clark’s Fork in 1911. The first of nine children, she grew up in a family newly establishing its roots in the Cody area. Her father, Art Braten, was born in Custer, Montana, in 1889 to parents who had moved west from Michigan. Her mother, Helen Blough Braten, was born in South Dakota in 1893, the daughter of a family originally from Indiana. Both the Braten and Blough families were part of the broader westward movement of German-American farming families seeking new opportunities in ranching and agriculture.

Evelyn Braten Martin (1911-1999). Photo: Ancestry.com

By 1900, ten-year-old Art was living in Red Lodge and attending the local school. Helen, then five, was also enrolled at Red Lodge School. In 1908, when she was 16, Helen’s parents filed for a 144-acre homestead on Paint Creek near Pat O’Hara Mountain. Art and Helen got married two years later in Red Lodge, in October 1910, when Art was 21 and Helen was 18.

The young couple then filed for their own 57-acre homestead on Russell Creek in the Sunlight Basin. Evelyn was born the following year and began attending the Lower Sunlight School at age six. In 1917, the rural school operated only three months during the summer because winter travel was so difficult.

Lower Sunlight School in the Sunlight Basin. Photo: Park County Archives

According to family lore, Evelyn rode to school alone on horseback. Her father Art tied her to the saddle for safety before she left home. One of her first teachers was Jessie Gentner, shown in the photograph below, who later taught in Cody.

Lower Sunlight School Teacher, Jessie Gentner. Photo: Park County Archives.

For a year, the Braten family lived in Cooke City, where Art worked in the freighting business. Census records from 1920 list him as a freighter, and he may have hauled timbers for local mine supports during this time.

Cooke City circa 1920s. Photo: Park County Archives.

The family soon returned to their Russell Creek homestead. When Art carried mail through the Sunlight Basin to Crandall by horse-drawn wagon, Evelyn learned to assist with the route. She also followed him into fire lookout work, serving on both Windy Mountain and Dead Indian Hill. During these assignments she lived alone in a tent and often hiked down to visit family friends, the Dodds, who lived downslope from the Windy Mountain lookout. Evelyn also worked for Mr. and Mrs. Evans, owners of the Painter Ranch.

Evelyn worked as a fire lookout atop Windy Mountain, northwest of Cody.

Evelyn spent her summers working and saving money for room and board so she could attend high school in Powell. She graduated with her high school diploma. Later, at age 27, she filed for her own 520-acre homestead on Blaine Creek, west of the Belfry Highway and below the northern slope of Pat O’Hara Mountain. She ran sheep, cut and hauled wood, and frequently hosted members of her large extended family. She later sold the property to the Taggart family, and it eventually became part of the Two Dot Ranch.

Although deeply attached to her home near Pat O’Hara Mountain, Evelyn also had a strong sense of adventure. Around 1940, she traveled alone to Alaska, taking a train to Seattle and then a ship up the Inside Passage before continuing on to Fairbanks, where she found work. She briefly married a man stationed at the Naval Air Station in Kodiak, but the marriage ended in divorce. Evelyn later lived in California for a few years and studied photography before returning to Wyoming in the mid-1940s.

In her early thirties, Evelyn met Raymond Martin, a hired hand on the Evans ranch. Originally from Minnesota, Raymond had also migrated west in search of agricultural opportunities. The couple married in Billings in November 1947, when Evelyn was 36. They had two sons, Harold and Earl, and spent many years living and working near Whitefish, Montana.

The Dodd’s had no children of their own and left their land to Evelyn. Photo: Park County Archives

Back at Russell Creek, the Dodds, lifelong friends of Evelyn’s, left their land to her after their deaths in the 1970s. Evelyn and her family then returned to the Sunlight Basin, where she spent the remainder of her life. In recognition of her lifetime of hard work and dedication to the region’s ranching heritage, she was honored as Ranchwoman of the Year in 1990 by the Cody Country Cattle Women.

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