Matt Little's barn ...

I got to drive up to one of my very favorite places in the state yesterday -- the Nevada Valley, up in northern Powell County along the Big Blackfoot River. The setting is gorgeous, and man's impact on the land is still subtle and appropriate. Big cattle ranches, free-flowing streams, and the two great little towns of Helmville and Ovando.

This was my destination -- an old barn that needed to be researched and photographed. It's a few miles northwest of Helmville, in an area the was mostly settled by Irish immigrants in the late nineteenth century. The barn was built by a man named Matt Little, who started a ranch in the valley back in 1899, and stayed for close to fifty years. It's all that's left of his place today ... except of course for the land itself.