AVIS RANCH

This project is a 20 year engagement based on preserving, renovating, and repurposing, and introducing contemporary elements to a 17,000 acre ranch in southwestern Montana. Interventions completed to date range from modest fence realignments to the renovation of an abandoned turn-of-the-century granary and a derelict Sears Roebuck mail-order house; a more audacious project was the restoration of the creek to its natural drainage. The Ranch Headquarters upgrades several log cabins from chicken coops to small ranch management offices and turns an old outhouse into modern privy with a composting toilet. Future projects include a series of sheep herder cabins repurposed as fishing and hunting cabins. Land management strategies have moved cattle away from the watershed, thereby restoring fish, beavers, and red willows to their natural habitat.
An addition, Montana Cookhouse, was completed in 2012.

Photography credits: JK Lawrence Photography, Tim Hursley, Jim Wilson