Arleen Vance in Family Wheat Field

Arleen Vance, height approximately five feet five inches, barely stands above the bounteous wheat crop of 1948 or 1950--she was unsure of the year when she wrote on the back of the picture some 20 years later. The Vance farm was located in northwestern Cascade County, about one mile south of the Teton County line, and north of Fort Shaw about five miles on what is known locally as the Crowe Bench, which was named after the former nearby grade school. The Vance farm straddled the upper canal of the Greenfield's Irrigation Project, which derived its water from the Sun River and spreads across parts of Teton and Cascade Counties. The Vance's passed away in the 1980s. Family remembers them talking about taking shocks of this wheat to exhibit at the state fair in Great Falls, though no one recalls if they won prizes for it.