# One Quarter Of Montana?

### Ron's "Cattle Ranch"

It was claimed throughout the 1960s and 1970s that L. Ron Hubbard was raised on a vast cattle ranch covering "one quarter of Montana" - 23.5 million acres - and inherited a vast ranching-earned fortune in the US and, bizarrely, in South Africa. (A Report to Members of Parliament on Scientology, 1969; Mission into Time, 1973). In fact, the ranch owned by his grandfather Lafayette O. Waterbury was little more than 320 acres in size and was situated six miles outside of the town of Kalispell, Montana. These documents prove that assertion.

It should be said, in fairness, that the Church of Scientology has privately admitted that previous accounts of Hubbard's life were "inaccurate". The CoS's latest biographical volume, Images of a Lifetime, contains this statement on page 4:

> `Lafe acquired another several dozen acres for the breeding of blooded mustangs ...`

This is broadly correct, but the question remains of why Hubbard did not see fit to correct statements which circulated for 20 years and which he must have known were false.

Map of land holdings around Kalispell, Montana.

(Kalispell circled in green; Hubbard land marked in centre of red circle)

Page 1 of title deed of land.

Page 2 of title deed of land.

Last updated 7 Dec 1996