What’s in a Name?: The Origin Story of “Dunrovin”

Visitors to Dunrovin Ranch frequently assume that Dunrovin is our family name of Scottish origin. It’s a reasonable assumption. “Dunrovin” is the traditional name given by retired British couples to their seaside bungalow or other terminal home. In addition, the similar sounding Dunrobin Castle is one of Glasgow’s most famous and beautiful fairy-tale castles. Alas, my family roots do not lead to Dunrobin castle; and while I love the British, I have very little British blood in my veins.

Rather, my use of the name “Dunrovin” comes to me from my great grandmother’s love of Montana. As a young woman in the 1880s, my great grandmother, Clara, and her husband, Harry, lived in a log cabin along Carpenter Creek near the mining town of Neihart in Montana’s Big Belt Mountains. There, she gave birth to my grandmother, Gertrude. Circumstances, however, forced the family to leave Montana and return to the Midwest where, with the proceeds from his Montana mining adventures, Harry built a mansion on banks of the Mississippi River.

Harry was clearly a risk taker – something he and I share. Unfortunately, his risk taking got him into significant financial trouble (let’s hope this is where the ancestral comparison ends!) and lost his fortune. Ashamed of his losses, Harry literally abandoned his now very large family and fled to the woods of Wisconsin. Left with seven children and a huge house, Clara did the only sensible thing: she piled the family into one bedroom and opened a boarding house. She remained there until the last child left home and she was free to follow her own muse –Montana.

Gertrude and two of her sisters had already been lured back to Montana by the time Clara was free to find her way back to the tiny settlement of cabins along Carpenter Creek. Upon arrival, she declared that she was “Dun Rovin’” – she never meant to leave Montana and she was back to stay. A “Dun Rovin” sign was fashioned from wood and nailed above the front door.

As a child, I spent many wonderful summer days (and a few winter days) with my grandmother at Dun Rovin. My heart is full with memories of long summer days hiking the hills, picking wild raspberries, fishing the streams, and sleeping on the screened-in porch during wild thunderstorms. Best of all, we searched the old mining town dumps for fancy colored glass bottles. Grandma and I gathered a collection of perfume and oil bottles that we kept in a beautiful wooden steamer chest with multiple compartments. That chest with it amber, sage, and azure colored bottles is still vivid in my mind. Oh, to have it today!
Those Montana memories were always fresh in my heart and mind as I moved about the world: Seattle for graduate school, Chile for three years with the Peace Corps, and Alaska for over twenty years of working with natural resource agencies. Montana remained my real home throughout my travels. Once my aging parents required assistance and my husband and I could retire from our positions, we turned our family towards that Montana home. I too was “dun rovin”.

 

Several years ago, I drove back to see if the old cabin was still standing. My father had sold it when my grandmother died. The cabin was there, just as I remembered it. There too was the tiny “princess cabin” that dad had built just for me and my dolls. Gone was much of the forest – fallen to profits of the local timber company. My heart sang and wept at the same time.

 

I left my business card taped to the door, asking if I could rent the cabin. A month later, a call came from the cabin owners who invited me to come and stay as long as I liked. Typical Montanans, they thought nothing of responding favorably to a business card left by a trespasser on their property. Naturally I sent them copies of old photos and outlined the history of the cabin as I knew it. It pleases me greatly to know that new memories are being made by new people at the Dun Rovin cabin.