Montana Land Reliance - Passion and Commitment

Lois Delger-DeMars, long-time Operations Manager of the Montana Land Reliance, grew up with her nine siblings on a farm near Townsend. At that time, she says, there was no such thing as subdivisions, or sprawl, or housing developments in her part of Montana.

“It was all grain fields and open grazing land,” she says. “Whether you headed up toward Helena or down to Three Forks, you would see cows and wheat and very few houses.”

The Helena Valley was just as sparsely populated.

“We’d go to see my grandmother up in Great Falls,” Lois says, “and I remember there was one blue house we’d pass on the northern edge of Helena that was the last building we’d see until we got to Wolf Creek.”

The extent of development in the area over the last decades seems dramatic in hindsight, but the scale of what was occurring was at first difficult to understand.

“It took years,” Lois says, “to fully grasp the implications of what was happening in this area. Then one day I noticed that the blue house we used to pass was no longer on the edge of town — not even close.”

Down the road from where Lois and her family lived, Dennis Williams was having a similar experience. The Williams clan were Welsh immigrants who homesteaded near Radersburg in the late 1800s. Over the years they acquired more land and expanded their operation through “frugal living and good timing,” as Dennis puts it. Today, Dennis, his parents, and his uncle have adjoining properties in the Crow Creek Valley between Toston and Three Forks, an area long known for its wheat production.

“When I was growing up,” he says, “the ranch and farm families had lots of kids, and it was a vibrant community. Today, there are houses popping up everywhere, but the feeling of community has dwindled.”

It didn’t take long for the Williams’ to feel the momentum of development in their area, not to mention in the neighboring Gallatin Valley. After consulting together as a family, they decided to put the bulk of their land under conservation easement with the Montana Land Reliance.

“We asked around quite a bit,” says Dennis, “and we decided to go with the Land Reliance because of their reputation. They’re good people who know agriculture. They have a strong mission and they stick with it.”

Lois couldn’t agree more. “I think what we do is phenomenal,” she says. “We’re Montanans, dealing with Montana issues. We approach what we do in a personal way, because we care about finding ways to keep people on their land. And that is what makes us effective.”

“Some people,” says Dennis Williams, “look at conservation easements in an unimaginative way. They’ll tell you, for example, that you’re stealing from your children’s future. But if you think about what the greatest gift is that a farmer or rancher can give: it is open space. It’s not only a gift to your kids and grandkids, but to someone else’s grandkids as well. And that’s why this stuff matters.”