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| Willow Creek Today |
Theodore was born the sixth of eight children to Barton Gourley Cooper and his first wife, Mary Magdaline Bollinger in Rock Grove, Stephenson County, Illinois. By 1910, Theodore had moved west to Seward, Nebraska where he was a farm hand to the August Brandhorst family.
The Willow Creek, Gallatin County, Montana area had first been mapped by Lewis & Clark in 1805.
It’s considered part of the greater Bozeman area. The stage route also ended up routing through the area in the 1860s. The Northern Pacific Railroad came through Willow Creek in 1887. Theodore arrived in 1914, when the town had a population of about 400 people. His brother Frank Oscar Cooper bought land there the same year. Electricity arrived in 1918 and some families had telephone service some time later. The downtown included a saloon and a handful of small businesses, including a grocery/meat market, where he was employed. He later purchased the market and operated it as “Cooper’s Market” until 1944, when he retired to his farm.
Cooper married for the first time to at the age of 41 to Effie M. Coursin/Coursan in Silver Bow, Montana on 09 Dec 1925. Their son Ralph Cooper was born in June of the following year. His daughter Ella was born about 1933. The main road through Willow Creek, bringing trade and traffic, was The Yellowstone Trail. In the early 1930s, Highway 10 began construction and bypassed the town in favor of Jefferson Canyon. This hurt the economy of small Willow Creek in the midst of the Depression. T.L. died in 1957 at a Bozeman hospital and was was buried in Mount Green Cemetery in Willow Creek leaving his wife, children, and four grandchildren. Effie died in 1973 and son Ralph in 1980.
T.L.'s brother Frank became a rancher and next up is a little about the five-generation 5,000 acre ranch just down the road from the little store his brother operated.
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