In the early 1950s, the town of Drummond, Mont.,
boasted busy bus and railroad stations, 11 bars, three grocery
stores and 14 gas stations. Now, you can count what’s left on
one hand. The ranching families that persist are resilient and
dogged, and this book of large-format black-and-white photographs
with accompanying interviews grows on you: You want Drummond to
survive.
Photographer-interviewer Jill Brody relished
getting to know the people of Drummond: “While most Americans have
what we call a ‘lifestyle,’ ” she says, “these people
have a life.” Brody says that though she expected people to wallow
in self-pity, nobody obliged. Sixth-generation rancher Jan Manley
is an example: “I was always treated equal when my husband was
alive,” she tells us. “But since my husband’s died, I have
found out that women are very definitely not equal. To have a woman
in agriculture try and go and borrow money from a bank, for
instance — impossible situation. You just can’t do it.”
And she’s adamant about outsiders. “No one tells me —
especially a man — what I can do with my land. It’s
mine, and I’m smart enough to know how to preserve it, how to
keep our creeks and meadows and things like that clean. Ranchers
are probably the best environmentalists there are. … So for
environmentalists and people who want to tell us how to live our
lives, there is no access across this ranch.”
Brody says
she never pushed the question of survival too hard, though
she’s aware that everyone thinks about it. “So what if some
folks are actually still living what appear to be mythical lives in
the mythical West?” she asks. She might also have asked why it is
that so many people still want to live on the land, just like
ranchers.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Down — but far from out — in Drummond.
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