Montana Historical Society Thomas D. Campbell ushered in the era of big, mechanized farms in Montana. At one time, he owned the world's largest wheat farm.

28. Thomas D. Campbell

By DON SPRITZER for the Missoulian

Today, wheat production in much of eastern Montana, and, indeed the entire northern Great Plains, is dominated by large-scale mechanized factory farms. The man who pioneered this method of raising wheat was a North Dakota transplant onto Montana's Crow Indian Reservation, Thomas D. Campbell.

Since his childhood, Campbell had been fascinated with machinery. During World War I, he took his vision of mechanized farming to Washington, D.C., where he persuaded federal officials to help him secure leases on huge acreages on Montana's Fort Peck and Crow reservations.

He also obtained a $2 million loan from a group of New York financiers, led by J.P. Morgan.

Campbell then purchased dozens of wagons and trucks, 60 grain drills, 50 plows and 34 Altman Taylor 35 horsepower tractors. The Altman Taylors were 26,000-pound monsters with 8-foot-high steel wheels. They could pull a plow, a disc, a grain drill, and a packer in a single operation.

Campbell concentrated on Montana's Crow Reservation near Hardin, and by 1919 he had 45,000 acres under cultivation. Drought and depressed wheat prices soon led his New York backers to abandon the project, but Campbell doggedly pressed on, plowing up more ground.

By the mid-1920s, he owned the world's largest wheat farm. It stretched for 42 miles north and south, encompassed nearly 100,000 acres, and employed 250 workers. As the rains returned to Montana, it began making profit.

Ultimately, Montana's "manufacturer of wheat" gained world renown. During World War II, Campbell advised government officials in France, England and the Soviet Union on methods to increase their food production.

Campbell's Crow Reservation farm continued to prosper well into the 1970s.

Writer Archibald Macleish called Campbell the "most portentous figure" of the plains and concluded: "The impact of Tom Campbell upon the grasslands of the Great Plains was the impact of the American passion for power, speed and the predictable machine."