The History of the Land

In 1867 the settlers in and around the Gallatin Valley worried about the sometimes unfriendly Indians and successfully petitioned Congress to establish a military post just east of the new town of Bozeman.  The fields along Bozeman Creek were the hay meadows and winter pasture for hundreds of Army horses and mules.  The post was named Fort Ellis after a Union Colonel killed at the battle of Gettysburg.  By 1886 the Indian dangers had largely disappeared and the fort was abandoned.

Some years later Herbert Thompson, a prosperous farmer who lived at what is now South Willson Avenue and Mason Street, purchased a major part of what had been the Army’s hay fields, moved in one of the Fort’s barns and became a renowned breeder of registered Hereford cattle.

As Bozeman grew, the demand for residential building lots expanded and much of Thompson’s pasture was annexed to the city.  In 1973 the block which became Woodbrook (a portion of Block 4, the 4^th addition) was purchased by Lowell Springer, an architect, who worked with builder Ken LeClair to begin a townhouse project.  After the first seven Woodbrook units were built, Ken LeClair and Ollie Ellison purchased the remaining property.

LeClair and Ellison proceeded to develop an open-space community of townhouses in four phases successfully completed in 1979, 1981, 1982, and 1986.  The first townhouse purchasers were John and Trudy Braaksma who bought unit number 5.  John was the first president of the owner’s associaion established September, 1980.  The Association has an enviable record of maintaining and protecting a handsome, cooperative residential community.

The History of the Creek

Matthew Bird, for whom the creek running through Woodbrook is named, came to Bozeman in 1866 and took up a farm near the Donald Weaver house on Spring Creek Drive in Westridge.  Some of the logs from Bird’s barn are said to be a part of the Weaver corral.

Bird was a diligent, if not always prosperous farmer, and was a licensed Methodist minister.  He was a neighborly person and led Sunday school classes as well as preaching often.  The church was located in the southwest corner of Main Street and Tracy Avenue.  After the battle of the Little Big Horn in 1876, the Bureau of Indian Affairs established an agency about 15 miles east of the present city of Livingston to serve the Crow Indians.  Bird is known to have been a teacher there at what was called Fort Parker.

A memorable part of Bird lore concerns his old-fashioned buggy of which he was quite proud.  One Sunday as he set forth to preach, he discovered to his dismay that the buggy was missing.  After walking briskly to the church two miles away, he was startled and appalled to see his favorite vehicle resting on the roof of the church.  No one seemed to know how it got there, but Matthew refused to preach that day and sought comfort from his friends, the Story family who lived nearby.  They assured him that it had been only a “practical joke”.   It required 21 men to remove the buggy from the church roof.

Matthew Bird Creek is home not only to trout, muskrats, ducks, deer and garter snakes, it also reminds the knowledgeable of one of our quaint, but earnest forbears.

These stories are based on information provided by Lowell Springer and the late Merrill Burlingame of Montana State University.  They have been complied by John Parker who served as a member of the Woodbrook Townhouses Owner’s Association Board of Directors as secretary for a number of years.