Gibson House Branding Wall, Bannack State Park

On September 16, 2016, in Montana, by admin
Interior wall of the Gibson House at Bannack State Park showing various cattle brands

Interior wall of the Gibson House at Bannack State Park showing various cattle brands.  (click to enlarge)

Here is an image of an interior wall of the Gibson House in Montana’s Bannack State Park.  The park’s tour book provides the following history of the Gibson House:

Built in 1862, this large two-story building was known as the Montana Hotel.  When the Gibson’s acquired the building in 1890 they continued to use it as a rooming house.  The smaller building on the left was the Gibson family home.  At some earlier time it served as a blacksmith shop, which is indicated by the brands still visible on the interior wall.

This wall is located in the smaller house, in the room to the left as you enter the front door.  I originally envisioned converting the image to black and white, but was not happy with the finished conversion.  Looking at the image, the bottom two and top two logs are different colors. There is also a color difference in the top two logs between each end and the middle.

These color changes are lost when converting the image to black and white.  I liked that in the above version, these color changes form a dark vignette around the left, bottom, and right side of the image drawing the viewer to the SS and clover shaped brands (maybe the clover is four horseshoes?).

Here is a Google Earth screen capture showing the location of the small Gibson House within Bannack State Park.

 

branding-house-google

 

Branding Iron Wall: N45 09 41 W112 59 49

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