Joe Stermec, Sr. was born in Dobernic Slovenia in 1862. He married Kunigunde Heiserer in Bavaria in 1888 and immigrated to the United States in May of 1892. Two sons were born in Bavaria. Joe, Jr. and George. Immigration official changed the name spelling to Stermitz. Joe, a coal miner by trade, found work in the area working in coal mines. The family moved to nearby Aldridge in the spring of 1895 where Joe worked in the coal mines. The mines provided coal for the refineries at Butte and Anaconda, Montana. In 1900, Joe Sr. decided he didn’t want his boys working on their hands and knees digging coal, so he bought the “squatters rights” to the ranch in Cinnabar Basin, where they would live in a “soddie” or sod-roofed dug out for most of the next 10 years. Eventually the government surveyed the area, and proper homestead claims could be made. The family was then able to build a log house to live in, and we've lived on the ranch ever since. Click the buttons below to see how our pasture on the ranch looked then versus how it looks now!
