Walter Kienenberger…Split a can of tomatoes with an axe

By Eva Hallam Solberg

Published by PCN on November 22, 1979

“Comin’ back from the Little Rockies, we ran out of grub. When we stopped to feed and water our horses, Ole Tom pulled a can of tomatoes out and put it on the wagon pole, took his axe and split it in two, and said, “There’s our dinner!”

Walter Cleveland Kienenberger, better known as Ding, was reminiscing about his freighting days. He hauled freight to the mines in the Little Rockies with his eight-horse team and two wagons in those early days. “There was no roads. Tom Lansten and I took fourteen days to get there from Dodson on one trip. The thermometer was at 30 and 40 below zero. One night we stayed at the Hog Ranch. Other nights we slept out in our bedrolls under the wagon. Sure, it was cold, but we had warm clothes. We never noticed them things.”

Born June 14, 1893, in Geneva, Iowa, to William and Sarah Wiesenberger, Ding was one of four boys and three girls. His father died in 1903 and the following spring his mother moved to a homestead near Elliot, N.D. In 19123 Ding rented an immigrant car and came to Dodson with four horses and some tools. He also hauled some of Art Rapp’s horses out in the railroad car with two other men riding along. “Carl Livdahl from the bank, was locating squatters, so he brought me out north of Dodson and located me.”

Read the rest of the story in "Looking Back Again: Life Stories from the Prairies of Montana"
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