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| This information is taken from a newspaper article by Ken Byerly written about Bertha Erlandson while she was living in Denton in 1974.
A third generation HOMESTEADER, Bertha Swenson came to Bear Springs to file for and live on her own homestead. Her grandparents immigrated from Norway and homesteaded in Polk County Minnesota. Her parents homesteaded in Minnesota and, in family tradition, she, herself, came West to homestead at Bear Springs, Montana in 1910, probably the only homesteading daughter of a homestead family. She lived most of her life on her homestead in the fertile and productive country that reaches north to a point where the rugged and deep valleys of the Judith River and the Wolf Creek meet. Her parents had come from Norway and homesteaded near Fertile, Minnesota in northwestern Minnesota where she was born and raised. |
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Her fiance, Carl Erlandson, heard about Central Montana’s rich land and headed west in the fall of 1909 after his sister, Mrs. Joel Vislisel, who had homesteaded with her husband south of Denton, had written, “If you want a homestead you’d better get here in a hurry as they’re going fast.”
The best land around what was to become Denton was all gone when Carl arrived so he went out to the lush Bear Springs country this tucked in between the rugged badlands and breaks. He filed his claim, farmed and also worked for others. |
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