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This historical marker commemorates the beaver slide, a wooden device used for stacking hay. It was originally called the Beaverhead Country Slide Stacker. It was invented in 1908 by two Big Hole Valley (located in Southwest Montana) residents: Dade Stephens and H. Armitage.

The device can stack hay up to 30 feet high, and the piles can last anywhere from 2 to 6 years. The body is a 30-foot wood frame with an inclined plane. Hay is pulled up to about 20 feet in the air before it’s launched through a gap at the top of the machine. The machine is portable so it could be moved from field to field.

While modern technology has largely replaced this device, it’s still in use in many places today.

Historical Marker Inscription

The Little Blackfoot Valley is filled with lush hay fields. You already may have noticed the rounded haystacks and commented on the strange lodgepole structures standing in many of the fields. This contraption that looks like a cross between a catapult and a cage is a hay-stacker that actually acts like a little of both. It was invented before 1910 by Dade Stephens and H. Armitage in the Big Hole Valley about sixty miles south of here. The device, called a beaver slide, revolutionized haying in Montana. It helped keep the wind from blowing the hay away and cut stacking time considerably.

To work the beaver slide, a large rake piled high with hay is run up the arms of the slide (the sloping portion of the “catapult”). At the top the hay dumps onto the stack. The side gates (the cage part) keep the stack in a neat pile and make it possible to stack higher. The sides were added to the system in the late 1940s. Although the lifting of the rake is usually powered by a take-off from a tractor, truck or car axle, on some operations horse teams still provide the rpm’s to muscle the hay up the slide.

Aside from minor improvements, the beaver slide has remained unchanged since its inception. Once used throughout a good portion of the northern west, modern technology that can shape hay into bales, loaves or huge jelly rolls have replaced it in many areas. The Little Blackfoot is one of several valleys in Montana where you can still see the beaver slide and its distinctive haystacks.

Location

46° 35’ 27.780” N, 112° 39’ 25.218” W
US-12, Avon, MT  59713, United States

Originally called Spark Hill, the location would later be called Greenhill. It was one of several African American communities in the Greater Mount Pleasant area. Freedman Hardy Green bought 30 acres in the area in 1870. Children from the neighboring Old Village community would walk to the town to attend the Laing School. The community was sustained by farming.

Now, the area is a residential community.

Historical Marker Inscription

Greenhill Community

In 1870, freedman Hardy Green purchased 30 acres of land along Mathis Ferry Road. The area was called Spark Hill, but was later named Greenhill by the Moultrie School District. Children walked several miles to Laing School, then in the Old Village of Mount Pleasant. Greenhill received electricity in 1942, paved roads in 1951, and was annexed into Mount Pleasant in 1983.

Greenhill Farming

Farming was the major source of income in Greenhill. People, produce and livestock were carried aboard boats from a dock behind Somerset Point to the Charleston City Market. In the 1920s and ‘30s, mules and wagons transported goods to a ferry at Shem Creek. The LOOP Bus became a major source of transportation in the 1940s. Greenhill continues to thrive as a residential community.

Location

32° 48’ 52.128” N, 79° 52’ 6.900” W

932–940 Mathis Ferry Rd, Mount Pleasant, SC  29464, United States