Toole, K. Ross (Kenneth Ross), 1920-1981

Author, former director of the Montana Historical Society, and professor of history at the University of Montana in Missoula.

Kenneth Ross Toole was born August 8, 1920 in Missoula, Montana. After serving in the Navy during World War II, Toole received a B.A. in History in 1946 and M.A. in History, American West, in 1948, both from the University of Montana – Missoula (then called Montana State University – Missoula). He finished his Ph.D. in History, American West, from the University of California – Los Angeles in 1955. He taught at the University of Montana as the A.B. Hammond Professor of Western History from 1965 until his death in 1981.

Toole served as the first Director of the Montana State Historical Society in Helena (1951-1958), Director of the Museum of the City of New York (1958-1960), and Director of the Museums of New Mexico in Santa Fe (1960-1963). He was also the President of K-J Ranches near Red Lodge, Montana, from 1950-1965. Toole was a fourth-generation Montanan whose relatives had always been heavily involved in Montana’s business, politics, and academia. His older brother, John Toole, served as Mayor of Missoula and held various other political offices.

K. Ross Toole was a prolific writer and one of the foremost historians of Montana. His books included Montana: An Uncommon Land (1959), The Time Has Come (1971), Twentieth-Century Montana: A State of Extremes (1972), and The Rape of the Great Plains: Northwest America, Cattle, and Coal (1976). His many articles and frequent speeches addressed a variety of historical and contemporary topics. One article in particular, “The Tyranny of the Spoiled Brats,” started as a letter to his brother John concerning student activism and the “generation gap.” It became a world-wide publishing sensation after the Billings Gazette and, later, Readers Digest, U.S. News and World Report, and a multitude of other periodicals in the U.S. and abroad reprinted it under various titles. Toole received thousands of letters in response and a book deal that led to The Time Has Come .

At the University of Montana, Toole taught and advised graduate students in the History Department and taught one undergraduate history course every year called “Montana and the West.” The course attracted over 1000 students annually in Toole’s last years at the University. Toole also served on numerous University committees and worked to establish and gather materials for a working historical archives on campus.

K. Ross Toole married Barbara Jean McCullough in 1945. They had one son, Kenneth Ross Toole, Jr., born in 1955. In 1960 Toole and Barbara Jean divorced. That same year he married Joan Trimble. They had two children: Dana (born 1960) and David (born 1962). Joan also had four children from her previous marriage to John Marchi: Jon (born 1946), Jael (born 1948), Charis (born 1950) and Peter (born 1951). Kenneth Ross Toole died of cancer on August 13, 1981.

The Archives in the Mansfield Library at the University of Montana was officially dedicated as the K. Ross Toole Archives on November 4, 1983.