Archives West Finding Aid

George A. Bruffey, a native of Pocahontas County, Virginia, was born September 24, 1842. When he was two, his family moved to Missouri. Three years later they moved to Marion County, Iowa, where he remained until he was twenty. By 1862, Bruffey traveled to Denver, Colorado, and within a year became part of a freight team headed for the Salmon, Idaho Territory, mines. Once there, the wagon party agreed to continue to Alder Gulch where Bruffey engaged in mining until 1866. Subsequently he moved to the Jefferson River country where he herded cattle, became involved in an unsuccessful toll road venture between Butte and Boulder City, and briefly returned to mining. In 1869, he started the George A. Bruffey Mercantile Company at Fish Creek Station, Madison County, on the Salt Lake Road. He married Matilda Ridlen, a childhood acquaintance, on February 12, 1871. In 1872, Bruffey was elected to the territorial legislature from Madison County. He also served as the Fish Creek postmaster from 1876 until 1889. In 1889, he moved to Park County where he bought a ranch ten miles southeast of Livingston and started a dairy and stock ranch. He was elected in 1896 to the state legislature from Park County. In later life Bruffey became active in the Society of Montana Pioneers. In 1911, his wife died, survived by ten of her eleven children. Bruffey continued to live near Livingston and, in 1925, published his autobiography, Eighty-one Years in the West. George A. Bruffey died in October 1928.