Timeline
1967
John Baden is in Montana studying the economics and culture of the Hutterite Brethren, a Christian communist sect. Working with faculty at Montana State University in Bozeman, he first sees the property that would become the Baden-Baden Ranch. For years the property had been operated by short-term lease holders and was terribly rundown (by man, not by nature). Overgrazing was pervasive and wetlands trampled. Erosion was a problem on steep portions of fields that should never have been plowed and farmed. There were no buildings on the site, just a rotting wooden bridge over the historic Kleinschmidt Canal, now the West Gallatin Canal.
1970
John buys the ranch and builds the first structure: a 1,200 square foot pole barn. It’s now a first class insulated workshop heated with natural gas and solar windows.
1973
John, with a background as a logger, builds a small house from timber cut on land he owned on Montana’s Green Mountain. He acquired the timber by building a road to the mountain’s top meadow. Over the years, that log cabin would be expanded several times to its current proportions – a 5,000 square foot super-insulated ranch home. Today, the Baden-Baden Ranch features a small residential apartment, an Airbnb guest cabin on Wortman Creek, and one excellent condo with an attached office with a small loft.
1976
John and Ramona Marotz-Baden are married on the ranch. A gala barbecue for bride, groom and guests follows. Several papers covered this event—due to a highly unusual dinner and fun story involving a trespass hog.
Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Craig Roberts visits the ranch and writes these lines for the paper: “The Baden ranch, straddling a bubbling brook in Montana’s Gallatin Valley and backdropped by the Spanish Peaks, is a pretty place. It is also a productive one specializing in high quality hay and sheep. Ten years ago, it was all gulleys and erosion, naked of fence or building. Once again, man restored … and in the process strengthened on the margin the productive sector of society.”
1979
1985
John establishes the Foundation for Research on Economics & the Environment in Bozeman. FREE had its roots in the Center for Political Economy and Natural Resources, which John earlier founded at Montana State. He was also a founder, and the first chairman, of the Political Economy Research Center, leaving PERC when he created FREE in 1985.
1980s and 1990s
Work commences on steady, incremental improvements to the ranch property, the rehabilitation of more than a mile of the Kleinschmidt Canal, and the construction of four spring creek fed trout ponds. Historically, the Gallatin Valley is known as a “green oasis” because of the extensive irrigation system (66 canals) built since settlement.
The ranch hosts outings for Warriors and Quiet Waters, a nonprofit co-founded by Baden. That foundation brings in service members from national hospitals to fish for trout on the ranch. The Cancer Support Community, a local nonprofit, brings patients and family members to the ranch in the summer to fish the ponds. The local volunteer fire department has used the four miles of ranch trails for off-road fire truck training exercises.
2006
John and Ramona place Baden-Baden in a conservation easement with Gallatin Valley Land Trust. This ensures future owners of the ranch will use it only for recreational or agricultural uses. There are three residential “building pods” of two acres each set aside within the easement.
2020
In the most recent growing season, ranch land farmed under five center pivot irrigation systems produced 85 bushels of wheat per acre (or more than 5 tons of alfalfa hay per acre when not in grain.)