For BP woman, ‘Yellowstone’ is home on the range

What do a plumber from Minnesota and a Hollywood creator-producer have in common?

Plenty, as it turns out, not the least of which is a keen eye for natural beauty and traditional values.

“My dad always wanted to live out west,” Lisa Vaith said of her father, Warren Veien, a plumber who owned a small hobby farm outside of Owatonna.

So in 1978, Veien “sold the farm, put everything in storage, we bought a camper and headed out west,” said Vaith, who had just completed seventh grade.

They drove through Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Oregon, Washington and Idaho, looking for the right place to land.

“My dad had a dream that he was in this beautiful mountain area, and he knew that’s where we were supposed to be,” said Vaith, now of Blooming Prairie. “The next day, we came around a bend, and there was that mountain. He grabbed his chest and gasped – his wife thought he was having a heart attack.”

Veien was absolutely fine: He’d just found their new home.

It was a ranch a mile south of Darby, Mont., called the Chief Joseph Ranch, owned by a church group.

Forty years later, it would gain fame as the Dutton Ranch in the drama “Yellowstone,” starring Kevin Costner.

“When they were advertising the first season, I was like, ‘oh, my gosh.’ There it was,” Vaith said.

This time, she was the one grabbing her chest and gasping.

But back in 1978, it wasn’t yet the location for a blockbuster series.

“When we happened upon this ranch, the church would hold revivals there,” Vaith said. “They asked if we would stay there and take care of the ranch.”

Her father – who, remember, loved the western life, and would later use horses for haying on his own property, as well as to haul logs off the mountain for firewood – accepted the offer.

There were a handful of smaller houses on the property for the ranch workers, as well as for pastors associated with the church.

Vaith and her family lived in the lodge – the main setting for most of the indoor action on “Yellowstone.”

Many things remain the same, though after more than 100 years in the Bitterroot Valley, there have obviously been some changes.

The building that is now the bunkhouse on the show was the kitchen and dining area, cafeteria-style, for employees and revival attendees.

The guest house remains; Vaith said she spent a lot of time with the family who lived there then.

“The barns weren’t quite as nice as they are now – but we had to clean the stalls,” she said. Vaith also carried five-gallon buckets of water across the property to a camping area, where she watered flowers and plants.

“And you know that catwalk, on the second level? One of my jobs was to clean up dead flies from the catwalk every day,” she laughed.

The lodge was heated by a sawdust hopper; Vaith was often tasked with filling the hopper with scoops of sawdust.

Their time in the lodge was short – just a year.

“We were just there to help,” Vaith said. “It wasn’t for sale, and my dad wanted his own place.”

Warren Veien bought a trailer and some land in the foothills for a home, and lived there about 20 years. He also bought property in Darby and opened a plumbing business in the town of about 500.

Vaith attended eighth, ninth and tenth grades at Darby High School before returning to Minnesota to live with her mother in Plainview for her junior year. She spent part of her senior year back at Darby High before graduating from Plainview High School in 1983.

Still, she said, “my Darby classmates still invite me to their class reunions. It was smaller classes, it was not cliquey or anything like that; you were friends with everybody at school.”

It’s home, Vaith said – so much so that she and her husband Steve Vaith chose to elope there.

The couple has owned Home Sellers of Minnesota in downtown Blooming Prairie for 25 years.

“I’m in the perfect business,” Lisa Vaith said. “Even as a little girl, I noticed different things about homes … I knew back then that was a really incredible place to live.”

It was built from 1914-1917 by glass tycoon William S. Ford and federal judge Howard Clark Hollister. The 6,000-square-foot lodge used logs and stones from the property itself. The main timber in the roof is 153 feet long – and it’s from one single tree.

The Ford-Hollister Lodge remained in the Ford family until the 1950s, when it was sold and renamed Chief Joseph Ranch. The Nez Perce Chief and his people traveled the land, camping there while hoping to avoid a land-grab by the U.S. Government in 1877.

By 2004, it was operating as a B&B. Shane Libel and his family bought the ranch in 2012.

“Yellowstone’s” Executive Producer Taylor Sheridan visited the property in 2018 – and the rest is history.

“Watching a show that’s filmed in your house, while you’re sitting in your living room in that house is the most surreal thing in the world,” Libel said. “If you think about it too much, it’s just …” He pantomimes his head exploding.

The family, which has made many improvements to the house over the years, runs the ranch as a guest ranch from June through August; it remains a working ranch with livestock.

“There’s always a balance between what we preserve historically, and what we make functional for modern families,” Libel said. “We have a responsibility. We live here, we own this, but we really don’t – we’re here until the next person that we hand it off to.”

Carla Curry, the set decorator for “Yellowstone,” said the creators wanted the lodge to feel “like it had evolved over the generations, much like it has. We leave it here all year round, and encourage the family who lives here to come in and enjoy their family in it.

“This is not a set,” she said. “This is not a stage; this is a private home that we are lucky enough to be in. Not only is it a private home, but it is, historically, an irreplaceable home.”

The ranch, Curry said, “is what makes this show sing. This lodge has actually become a character in our show.”

Vaith, who has returned to Darby multiple times, said “it would be really fun to see it in action. I love seeing that done to homes. They get worn over the years – and to see them being brought back to life is so …”

She trailed off.

“It’s mind-blowing,” she said of seeing her former home on a hit show. “All those areas that I was very familiar with – it’s just crazy.”

Vaith has also had to adjust her holiday TV viewing.

“I’m more a Hallmark Channel girl,” she said. “The new seasons (of Yellowstone) used to come out in September; now it’s November, dang it, and it’s getting into my Christmas movies.”

Vaith laughed and shook her head.

“I like to tell people, Kevin Costner is walking where I once walked.”