LIVING INDUCTEE

ROSE (ANDERSON) “ROSIE” STONEBERG

DISTRICT 1 - YEAR 2025

Rose Anderson Stoneberg lives on the same land where her grandmother filed a homestead claim in 1918. The Anderson Horse Ranch is remotely located nine miles north of the Missouri River as the crow flies and a 50-mile drive south of Hinsdale, Montana. To better know “Rosie”, one must understand the ruggedness of the Missouri Breaks and the solitude of the Larb Hills have etched and defined her character and life in the same way that wind and weather can shape stone. 

 The time it takes to travel to Rosie’s ranch is subject to the amount of precipitation the area has received, not to mention the status of one’s four-wheel drive capabilities on dirt roads turned to gumbo. Rosie and her husband, Ron, exist not only off the pavement, but off the grid. Having been raised in the same cottonwood log cabin her grandparents built, Rosie is well-suited to roughing it. Today, the Stoneberg’s have indoor plumbing and solar panels, and a wind turbine provides the modern convenience of electricity. Rather than run to a store to pick up a gallon of milk, Rosie has been known to grab a bucket and milk a cow. The year 2024 marks the first year in fifty-one years, that Rosie has not kept a dairy cow for milking. Self-sufficiency and a pioneering spirit are essential in a place where requests for a service call cannot be answered, and a cloudy week can make or break the length of a phone conversation. 

Born August 1, 1946, Rosie began a life-long love of learning in a one-room schoolhouse near Tallow Creek, about forty-five minutes (or 22 miles of bad roads) from her cabin. Rosie continued her high school education in Saco, Montana. She stayed at a rented house in town during the school week and returned to the ranch to work on the weekends. She was encouraged to take typing and shorthand and to pursue work either as a secretary or as a teacher, but Rosie chose a different path and took science classes. She graduated as valedictorian in 1964.

  Having decided to formalize her knack of caring for all creatures great and small, Rosie completed two years at Eastern Montana College in Billings and finished her pre-vet courses at the University of Montana, where she met her husband-to-be, Ron. Rosie was denied admission to Colorado State University due to an application limit filled by qualified male students. Undeterred, she achieved her Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree in 1971 from Washington State University (WSU) in Pullman, Washington.

Rosie immediately returned to Montana and began practicing at the clinic of Dr. Andy Elting in the fall of 1971 in Red Lodge. Owing to Dr. Elting’s side gig as a high school English teacher, Rosie took the day shifts, often working without a great deal of support or a clinical staff. Rosie was not only the first lady veterinarian in the Red Lodge and Nye area, but one of the first female veterinarians in Montana. She broke the mold again when practicing in Circle, Montana, from 1980 to 1986. The locals in both locations were amazed to hear that a woman vet was working at the clinic. One old rancher made an immediate trip into town when he heard that she would offer a treatment plan for his cattle, partly to collect antibiotics, but mostly to clap eyes on this novelty. Rosie won over doubters with her work ethic and capabilities, and many became regular customers.  

Throughout the course of their careers, which eventually took them to the Hinsdale area, Ron’s work as a Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks biologist and Rosie’s skills as a veterinarian intersected, and all manner of animals, both domestic and wild, have been beneficiaries of her care and skill. Rosie served as a vet for a variety of Ron’s studies involving swift fox and bighorn sheep, and an initiative to re-populate the prairie with the endangered black-footed ferret. Rosie has bottle fed orphaned mule deer and antelope fawns and returned various birds of prey to flight. With Ron’s retirement in 2003, and following the death of Rosie’s father in 2004, they accepted the challenge of taking over the Anderson family ranch as their retirement job. As herd manager and in-house veterinarian, Rosie successfully introduced change of season and rotational grazing to the ranch. Bad drought years caused water shortages, but the grass was resilient enough to withstand the lack of moisture. According to Rosie, her hair turned gray from the stress of making sure her livestock had access to adequate water.

As a life-long supporter of FFA and 4-H clubs, Rosie served as a volunteer, judge, and mentor. She has impacted lives and land by hosting sustainable agricultural field trips for national and international students of all ages. Rosie’s belief in best serving the health of her animals by monitoring and managing the prairie’s natural resources has resulted not only in a model of good grazing practices, but an induction into the Montana Range Day’s Hall of Fame in 1996.

Rosie insists animals are intelligent; they often tell you what you need to know if you listen. She began communicating with horses at a young age. Rosie learned to ride bareback on Brownie, a horse she shared with her siblings, and received a pony of her own, Buttermilk, from a neighboring rancher, when she was nine. By age 12, Rosie was using a saddle (once logging a 14-hour day) whenever she worked cattle. That was right around the same time that she assumed most of the responsibility for the herd, as she was the oldest sibling and because her father would often be away from home, especially in the summertime. Rosie has gentled and trained numerous saddle horses, all of whom she can recall by name, adventures, and personality quirks. And, at the age of 78, it is still her preference to check her cattle and grass by horseback, traveling the same trails she covered with Buttermilk when she was a kid. 

In many ways, because she was raised in isolation, the land and the animals are what Rosie knows the best. Some people who have visited the Stonebergs have commented they couldn’t stand to live so far away from society, but she sees it differently. Rosie knows it’s hard to feel lonely when you’re surrounded by blue skies and beautiful sunsets, and any day the meadowlarks sing and the creek is running is a good day.  

 Rosie Stoneberg is both a life-long learner and teacher, a multi-generational rancher, an expert on range science and a good friend to all, be they human, hooved, furred or feathered. Rosie is a passionate steward of not only the land and animals, but a way of life. She’s a beautiful person inside and out but one who doesn’t have a whit of vanity. Rosie Stoneberg is the genuine article—and, quite possibly, the last of her kind.   

Photo by Robin Walter