Rose Anderson Stoneberg lives on the same land where her grandmother filed a homestead claim in 1918, a 50-mile drive south of Hinsdale. Born in 1946, Rosie began a life-long love of learning in a one- room schoolhouse near Tallow Creek, about forty-five minutes (or twenty-two miles of bad roads) from her cabin. She continued her education in Saco, where she stayed during the school week, returning to the ranch to work on the weekends. She was encouraged to take typing and shorthand and to pursue work as either a secretary or teacher, but Rosie preferred science classes. She graduated as valedictorian in 1964.
Rosie completed two years at Eastern Montana College in Billings and finished her pre-vet courses at the University of Montana, where she met her husband-to-be, Ron. She was denied admission to Colorado State University due to an application limit filled by qualified male students. Undeterred, she achieved her Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree in 1971 from Washington State University (WSU).
Rosie immediately returned to Montana and began practicing in the fall of 1971 in Red Lodge. She was not only the first lady veterinarian in the area, but one of the first female veterinarians in all Montana. Rosie won over doubters with her work ethic and capabilities, and many became regular customers.
Throughout the course of their careers (which eventually took them to the Hinsdale area), Ron’s work as a Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks biologist and Rosie’s skills as a veterinarian intersected, and all manner of animals, both domestic and wild, have been beneficiaries of her care and skill. Rosie served as a vet for a variety of Ron’s studies involving swift fox and bighorn sheep, and an initiative to re-populate the prairie with the endangered black- footed ferret. Rosie is the genuine article.
With Ron’s retirement in 2003, and following the death of Rosie’s father in 2004, they accepted the challenge of taking over the Anderson family ranch. As herd manager and in-house veterinarian, Rosie successfully introduced change of season and rotational grazing to the ranch. She has impacted lives and land by hosting sustainable agricultural field trips for national and international students of all ages. Her management of the prairie’s natural resources has resulted not only in a model of good grazing practices, but an induction into the Montana Range Day’s Hall of Fame in 1996.