HELENA — When Don and Nancy Burnham took over operations on her family’s ranch on Custer Avenue in 1959, about six cars per day passed by on the dirt road that leads to Canyon Ferry Reservoir.

“And I had to pull three of ’em out of the mud after they got stuck,” Don recalled, laughing. “Now they say there’s more than 5,000 cars pass by here every day.”

The increase in vehicles is but one sign of city living encroaching on a rural way of life at the Prickly Pear Simmental Ranch, which used to be considered “in the country” but now has 185 acres within the Helena city limits near Costco and the Helena Regional Airport.

Theirs is the 13th-oldest homestead in Montana.

For decades, they’ve ridden horses to push their cattle from the ranch to the high country south through East Helena to the summer pasture in the Elkhorns or west toward land they own near the Continental Divide.

Today those drives run through a gauntlet of traffic and trains.

Valuable property

They still grow crops, but also are building a Marriott Hotel on their land across from Home Depot. Don said the property is so valuable they can’t afford to farm it.

Even though technological improvements such as electric branding irons, digital scales and computerized records have made ranching easier, it’s a way of life that the Burnhams left behind in 2005 — only to regain their prized herd of Simmental cattle when the purchasers couldn’t make the payments.

“We’re money poor and machinery and land rich,” Don said. “We pay more in property taxes than what they paid for the ranch originally. But it’s a way of life for me, and not work.”

That attitude, along with the ranching lifestyle in transition, brought them to the attention of Indiana documentary filmmaker Will Neumeyer, who led off with Don Burnham in the film “Land Rich,” which profiles a handful of Montana ranchers.

Don is a great neighbor, John Simac said.

“He’s always been there to help me,” Simac said. “When I first started out, Don had water rights, and I didn’t. So, he said I could use his. I just had a few sprinklers for my garden.

“He’s just that type of a guy.”

Don was born and raised in Missoula and met Nancy Lichtwardt at a fraternity party in Bozeman while attending college there. Don left to train at the Naval Officer’s school in Rhode Island, then married Nancy. They moved to Guam, where Don was stationed.

He was released from the service in 1959, three months early, after Nancy’s uncle died and they needed to get the Hereford cattle out of the mountainous summer range.

They bought the ranch in 1962, and in 1968 Don heard about a breed of cattle known as Simmentals.

He points to a brown-and-white hide stretched on his living room wall, 11 by 11 feet square. It’s the remnants of the first Simmental bull he bought for $22,000.

“I went to my banker and told him I needed $30,000 to buy a bull in 1972, the first Simmental bull in Montana,” Don said.

“At auction, I got him for $22,000, and the banker thought I’d gotten quite a deal. It was five months old and already weighed 900 pounds.”

The ranch ended up selling about $2 million worth of semen from that single bull, called “Legacy Returns.”

He chose Simmentals for their quick growth, large muscles, milk production, fertility and gentle disposition.

He bred them with Angus cows so they would be born without horns and for their pigmentation.

“You don’t want white, especially on their udders because they can get sunburned. Around the eyes, white cattle are more susceptible to pink eye,” Burnham said.

“By 1980, I had the only black bull at the national sale, and today 95 out of 100 are black and the other 5 percent are red. I guess I changed the industry.”

His love of traveling got a boost during a chance encounter in Bozeman with a Nigerian student who later brought an African ambassador and senator to the ranch. Don ended up spending a month each year in Africa, from 1988 until 2000, to help ranchers there work on their cattle’s health, nutrition and genetics.

On the wall of his home hangs a sword given to him in 2000 during the installation of a tribal chief. He recalls with a smile how he and his wife were the only white people in a crowd of about 80,000.

“I asked Nancy if she felt out of place, and she said she didn’t see herself reflected there,” Don said.

Across from the sword sits a framed picture of their 1997 Christmas card, with the couple atop a huge Simmental bull decked out in a Santa Claus hat and garlands.

“That’s a 2,600-pound bull, and look how gentle he is,” Don said. “That’s what I like about Simmentals.”

Future preparations

Yet, even as he looks to the past, the Burnhams are preparing for the future.

Parkinson’s disease has slowed Don, and their three sons and one daughter don’t share their love of the ranching life. The couple expects that eventually the ranch will be sold.

And Don and Nancy won’t be at the Prickly Pear Simmental Ranch’s 30th annual cattle sale slated for Feb. 6. Instead, they’re heading south for some sunshine.

But, Don noted, they’ll be back in plenty of time for the June cattle drive because some things never change.

“He just won’t give up,” Simac said. “He’s a doer, and you can’t stop him.”