Montana Oil And Mining Journal

C. M. BAIR AT 83 IS GOING STRONG

PROMINENT MARTINSDALE FLOCKMASTER CAME TO STATE AS RAILROADER IN 1883

Was Largest Individual Sheep Owner in America in 1910 When He Marketed 500,000 Pounds of Wool From His Bands.

C. M. Bair, 83, prominent Martinsdale flockmaster, met his 83d anniversary a few weeks ago going strong, with his friends around him and his business at the top.

After watching the shearing of 5,600 sheep at the Smith plant, he went to Billings for the cowboys' banquet and western parade. Mrs. Bair and their daughters, Mrs. Dave Lamb and Miss Alberta, accompanied him.

Following long-established custom Harry Mayer of Chicago joined the family at a joint birthday dinner party. Mayer's birthday was June 19.

Bair has been in the sheep business since 1890, when he bought 8,000 acres of land near Lavina. In 1893 he sold the place and began running from 10,000 to 40,000 sheep in Yellowstone valley. He had favorable Crow reservation leases and attracted much publicity when, in 1910, his shipment of 500,000 pounds of wool made him the largest individual woolgrower in North America.

His first work in Montana was as a conductor for the Northern Pacific railroad, with a run between Billings and Helena. The late Frank Kerr wrote Bair, shortly before Kerr's death: "Charley, you began riding the rails and I began climbing the poles about the same time" in 1883. Bair was associated with the late Albert Babcock in the old Yellowstone bank of Billings and is a stockholder and director in the Midland National bank of that city. He holds an interest in the Bair-Collins Coal Co. of Roundup.

Eschewing politics himself, Bair knew the friendship of the prominent men of his party. Theodore Roosevelt, McKinley, Coolidge, Harding. Notables of the west, Charles Russell, Bill Hart, Will Rogers, Will James were his intimates. Jim Hill he knew and admired.

Of all his activities, which range from staging Indian pageants for European visitors to selling ice thawing machines in Alaska, Bair says he is proudest of having financed and built the irrigation ditch at Hardin after the government turned the project down. The original survey for the Martinsdale dams on the Upper Musselshell storage project was made years ago under Bair's direction.

For five years the Bair family has lived near Martinsdale in a country home on the North Fork of the Musselshell. There, four years ago, in their newly completed residence, Mr. and Mrs. Bair celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary.