The Dude Ranchers Association is a trade association for promoting and standardizing dude ranches in North America. It was founded in Billings, Montana, in 1926. [1] The association works to preserve the qualities of isolation, remoteness, and unmodified nature in wilderness areas and national forests to sell the dude ranch vacation as the only true American vacation where guests can experience a working ranch in conditions that simulate the American frontier experience. [2]
As the railroads expanded, dude ranches appeared across the west and the southwest in the 1920s. In 1926, Ernest Miller of Elkhorn Ranch in Montana and Max Goodsill of the Northern Pacific Railway recognized an opportunity for a mutually beneficial relationship. Goodsill passed the idea along to A. B. Smith, passenger traffic manager for Northern Pacific, who arranged a meeting at the Bozeman Hotel. This became the first official meeting of the association September 27–28, 1926.
Ranchers, railroad officials, and national park officials attended the two-day event to discuss the five objectives:
Later, the ranchers added a sixth objective: the organized protection of fish and game.
Larry Larom of Valley Ranch was instrumental in starting the organization and became the organization's first president. Ernest Miller was named secretary-treasurer. Twenty-six ranches were charter members in 1926; it grew to 47 the second year. [3]
Today, the Dude Ranchers Association has over 100 ranch members and over 150 affiliated members.
Havre is the county seat and largest city in Hill County, Montana, United States. Havre is nicknamed the crown jewel of the Hi-Line. It is said to be named after the city of Le Havre in France. As of the 2020 census the population was 9,362.
Sheridan is a city in the U.S. state of Wyoming and the county seat of Sheridan County. The city is located halfway between Yellowstone Park and Mount Rushmore by U.S. Route 14 and 16. It is the principal town of the Sheridan, Wyoming, Micropolitan Statistical Area which encompasses all of Sheridan County. The 2020 census put the city's population at 18,737, making it the 6th most populous city in Wyoming.
Dude is American slang for an individual, typically male. From the 1870s to the 1960s, dude primarily meant a male person who dressed in an extremely fashionable manner or a conspicuous citified person who was visiting a rural location, a "city slicker". In the 1960s, dude evolved to mean any male person, a meaning that slipped into mainstream American slang in the 1970s. Current slang retains at least some use of all three of these common meanings.
The Northern Pacific Railway was an important transcontinental railroad that operated across the northern tier of the western United States, from Minnesota to the Pacific Northwest. It was approved and chartered in 1864 by the 38th Congress of the United States in the national / federal capital of Washington, D.C., during the last years of the American Civil War (1861-1865), and given nearly 40 million acres of adjacent land grants, which it used to raise additional money in Europe, for construction funding.
North Dakota was first settled by Native Americans several thousand years ago. The first Europeans explored the area in the 18th century establishing some limited trade with the natives.
A guest ranch, also known as a dude ranch, is a type of ranch oriented towards visitors or tourism. It is considered a form of agrotourism.
This is a broad outline of the history of Montana in the United States.
Cattle drives were a major economic activity in the 19th and early 20th century American West, particularly between 1850s and 1910s. In this period, 27 million cattle were driven from Texas to railheads in Kansas, for shipment to stockyards in St. Louis and points east, and direct to Chicago. The long distances covered, the need for periodic rests by riders and animals, and the establishment of railheads led to the development of "cow towns" across the frontier.
The Evon Zartman Vogt Ranch House is a historic house in the U.S. state of New Mexico. It was constructed in 1915, in the foothills of the Zuni Mountains one mile (1.6 km) southeast of Ramah, New Mexico. It is located about 500 feet (150 m) east of State Highway 53. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1993.
There is evidence of prehistoric human habitation in the region known today as the U.S. state of Wyoming stretching back roughly 13,000 years. Stone projectile points associated with the Clovis, Folsom and Plano cultures have been discovered throughout Wyoming. Evidence from what is now Yellowstone National Park indicates the presence of vast continental trading networks since around 1,000 years ago.
Rawhide is a 1938 American Western film starring Lou Gehrig and released by 20th Century-Fox. It was directed by Ray Taylor and produced by Sol Lesser from a screenplay by Jack Natteford and Daniel Jarrett. The cinematography was by Allen Q. Thompson. This is the only Hollywood movie in which baseball great Lou Gehrig made a screen appearance, playing himself as a vacationing ballplayer visiting his sister Peggy on a ranch in the fictional town of Rawhide, Montana. The film remains available on DVD and VHS formats.
Irving Hastings Larom, known as Larry Larom, was the founding president of the Dude Ranchers Association and an owner of the former Valley Ranch near Yellowstone National Park in northwestern Wyoming.
The Vee Bar Ranch Lodge was built in 1891 as the home of Lionel C.G. Sartoris, a prominent Wyoming rancher. The ranch was later owned by Luther Filmore, a Union Pacific Railroad official, and the Wright family, who operated the ranch as a dude ranch. The property comprises five historic buildings including the lodge, original corral and a stock chute.
The Land Conservancy of San Luis Obispo County (LCSLO) is a non-profit land trust organization that has been operating in San Luis Obispo County, California since 1984. The LCSLO is dedicated to voluntary, collaborative preservation, and improvement of lands that hold significant scenic, agricultural, habitat, and cultural values. Their work aims to benefit both local communities and wildlife.
Harry W. Child (1857–1931) was an entrepreneur who managed development and ranching companies in southern Montana. He was most notable as a founder and longtime president of the Yellowstone Park Company, which provided accommodation and transportation to visitors to Yellowstone National Park from 1892 to 1980. Child was, with park superintendent and National Park Service administrator Horace Albright, singularly responsible for the development of the park as a tourist destination and for the construction of much of the park's visitor infrastructure.
The historical buildings and structures of Grand Teton National Park include a variety of buildings and built remains that pre-date the establishment of Grand Teton National Park, together with facilities built by the National Park Service to serve park visitors. Many of these places and structures have been placed on the National Register of Historic Places. The pre-Park Service structures include homestead cabins from the earliest settlement of Jackson Hole, working ranches that once covered the valley floor, and dude ranches or guest ranches that catered to the tourist trade that grew up in the 1920s and 1930s, before the park was expanded to encompass nearly all of Jackson Hole. Many of these were incorporated into the park to serve as Park Service personnel housing, or were razed to restore the landscape to a natural appearance. Others continued to function as inholdings under a life estate in which their former owners could continue to use and occupy the property until their death. Other buildings, built in the mountains after the initial establishment of the park in 1929, or in the valley after the park was expanded in 1950, were built by the Park Service to serve park visitors, frequently employing the National Park Service Rustic style of design.
Aztec Land and Cattle Company, Limited ("Aztec") is a land company with a historic presence in Arizona. It was formed in 1884 and incorporated in early 1885 as a cattle ranching operation that purchased 1,000,000 acres in northern Arizona from the Atlantic & Pacific Railroad. It then imported approximately 32,000 head of cattle from Texas and commenced ranching operations in Arizona. Because Aztec's brand was the Hashknife, a saddler's knife used on early day ranches, the company was known more famously as The Hashknife Outfit. The company has been in continuous existence since 1884.
The Montana Stockgrowers Association (MSGA) is a non-profit membership organization that works on behalf of Montana cattle ranchers.
The Dude Rancher Lodge is a motel in Billings, Montana, on the National Register of Historic Places. Known as "Billings' most unique motel", it was built in 1950 with a Hollywood-western style theme inside and out with many custom features, most original to the building. Owned for over 40 years by the family corporation of its original owners, with a single change of ownership in 1992, the motel and its attached restaurant is still in operation today and looks much as it did when originally constructed.
The Big Die-Up refers to the death of hundreds of thousands of cattle on the Great Plains of the United States during the unusually cold and snowy winters of 1885-86 and 1886-87. Many ranchers were bankrupted as a result and the era of the open range in which cattle roamed unfenced on the plains began its decline.