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I know there has been a lot of controversy about petroleum
development in the Little Missouri National Grassland, but if you’re
sort of lost, looking for a cable car across the Little Missouri River,
then you have reason to be thankful for pump jacks and tank yards. Every
yard has a little sign on the gate giving its legal description.
Having taken a look at the Kruger cable car crossing the Little Missouri
not far north of the Theodore Roosevelt National Park, I headed downriver
in search of another, at the Tescher (previously known as the 4 Bar) Ranch.
There were some low-water crossings and twists and turns en route, but
I finally got down off the bluffs and onto the bottom and made my way
to the east bank of the river. Here was the cable car platform, and the
car was across the river at the Tescher place on the high west bank.
So it was back into the muddy water across a rocky, swift-running ford.
Nobody home at the ranch, so I just had a quick look at the little cable
car.
The car hangs from two pulley wheels that ride atop a single steel cable
stretched some 300 feet across the river. The car comes in at ground level
on the ranch side, but running level across, it arrives at a platform
twenty feet off the ground on the east side. The frame of the car is flat
iron, the bottom and two sides (it’s open front and back) one-inch
lumber.
I stepped gingerly on, bounced a little, and it was a wobbly thing. I
wondered how you propelled it and kept it balanced.
That’s what I asked Troy Tescher, who grew up on the place. He said,
“You unhook the chain, give it a push, and jump on, and it will go
out half or two-thirds of the way.” Then, kneeling, you pull yourself
hand over hand on the cable.
Troy said talk to his dad, Jim, about the cable car, and so I did. He
says he and Loretta moved to the ranch in 1952, raised their five kids
there, and moved off in 1991. Now they live on another ranch on Beaver
Creek northeast of Beach.
The cable car was in place when the Teschers moved onto the ranch on the
Little Missouri. It goes back at least into the 1940s and maybe the 1930s.
If someone knows the earlier history of it, I’d be happy to hear.
The oldest Tescher boy, Gary, was the first in the family to use the cable
car to go to school, which was four and a half miles away from the east
end of the cable car. When the river was low he forded it horseback. When
a storm came on he stayed over with the teacher or other folks on the
east side.
Jim says he’s heard the story of a fellow who, finding the cable
car on the wrong side of high water when he wanted to cross, hung from
the cable and crossed the river hand over hand. He also recalls the time
he and two other guys were coming across from the east side, the cable
was sagging a little, and they got stuck in the middle, dipping into the
water with big old logs coming downstream at them. They made their way
back to the east side and decided to try again later.
For years the mail came just twice a week from Medora, and it was delivered
to the cable car platform on the east bank. The Teschers had to pull across
to get their mail. “That baby was tough pulling,” Jim allows,
“and if there was a wind it was tougher.”
The last new cable was put on in 1950 or so. Sometime in the late 1970s
they rebuilt the car and put new pulleys on it, and although it isn’t
much used, it’s serviceable. “We’ve hauled hay across on
it, we’ve hauled cake, we even took a fanning mill across on it,”
says Jim, and he has taken as many as four other people across on it.
That must have taken with some careful balancing, and perhaps a little
prayer.
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